Tom the Wanderer

Sometimes I feel like a literary adventurer when it comes to my writing.  Some days I find myself up to my neck in a story.  I am battling a deluge of ideas and words, in an effort to subdue the beast that lurks in my mind.  On other days my creativity is like a vast desert that I have to cross.  But most days, I spend at least part of the time meandering from idea to idea.  New ideas for stories, or even just snippets that could grow into stories with the proper cultivation, spring up from odd places.

The other week a Sword & Sorcery parody came to mind from something my daughter said.  Sydney (8) has this habit of trying to "translate" Connor's (2) babble-speech for us.  Finally, while driving down the freeway, I said to her (tongue-in-cheek, of course) "Sydney, stop trying to translate for your brother.  We know you don't speak Toddlerian."  I have no idea where that came from, but I loved it.  Even used it in my first Thomas Magni entry.  But the image it conjured keeps coming back to me.  I imagine my son in a horned helmet with a battle-axe bigger than he is, a savage grimace on his face, as he battles monsters and demons.  Connor the Toddlerian!  I even tried to imagine what he would fight.  Connor and the Raging Broccodile, Connor and the Killer Kitten, Connor in the Land of Noisy Sisters; the possibilities are endlessly funny.  In my head.  It even inspired a D&D scenario where our gaming group would take on the roles of our children as D&D characters.  I would play Connor as a Gnome Barbarian.  Sydney would be a Wild Elf Sorceress who is also a Princess (and makes sure everyone knows it).  And Faith would be the Goth necromancer NPC, with her Emo-boy minions.  Hilarity would no doubt ensue.

Anyways, back to reality (sorta).  I posted my S&S game, and am eagerly awaiting feedback.  By the way, if you downloaded it and are reading it, pay no attention to the references in the "Enemies" section to the film, Fire & Ice.  Those are placeholder names, and I forgot to edit them out.  The setting I am working on is based on that world, but heavily modified and augmented by other ideas.  The names will be changed, but it will probably still be recognizable to those who know the movie.

Then there's the story I wrote yesterday.  I had invited a couple of friends to share one of my worlds with me.  It was an incomplete world, mainly just some notes and a few general descriptions.  Naturally, they both had a lot of questions.  Which is cool because their questions made me think, and I have added a lot of detail to the world, based on their suggestions and story ideas.  But I hadn't been writing any stories of my own in this world.  Well, yesterday I did.  It was only about 1,200 words, but I liked it (though it needed a LOT of editing, which I did today).  And it occurred to me that it could easily be continued into a much larger story.  So, that's what I am doing with it now.

Fortunately, my Sci-Fi mood seems to have been a flash in the pan, and I am back into a S&S mood again.

I also keep eying my ever-growing "to-read" pile, adding two more books this week, with an RPG on its way.  I am playing WoW again, and enjoying it.  And I discovered that Netflix has the entire Farscape series up for instant view.  I think I may be stretching myself too thin...