Have You Ever Noticed...?

When you've been writing for a while, you start being able to more accurately predict things (& more quickly too) in what you read or watch? That happens for me a lot, most recently when I rented something only yesterday. On one hand, I like it; it's nice to be more able to identify structure & notice clues, (or in some cases, cliches) & character types, etc. But then, on the other hand, it's a little contrary to that whole suspension of disbelief thing to figure out where a movie's going after the first ten minutes.

And the Universe Provides

I know that 'where do you get your ideas?' is a constant question asked of writers & for me, it tends to be from odd places. My NaNo this year started from seeing a commercial for disposable razors, lol. And this morning, I had a new notion for a new project...courtesy of my flooded basement. Yep, I mean it.

Ya see, it's like this, a while back I'd mentioned my truly obnoxious neighbors & I'd mentioned having them in my NaNo. As it happens, they didn't make it in the book but one of you out there had suggested having them have radioactive stuff in amongst the junk in the yard. I liked that idea & think it has potential. Just recently, those neighbors got evicted & the cheers of a grateful neighborhood rang out around the street. I assumed, quite wrongly it seems, that with their hasty departure they'd no longer be a problem. Oh, what little I know.

I came home the other day & when it got to be time for supper, a brief foray was made to the basement to get something out of the freezer, only to find about 4 inches of standing water in my usually dry basement. Nothing appeared to be dripping, there wasn't any sounds of water anywhere. After a bit of looking around, I noticed there was water pouring down the outside of the neighbor's house, below their kitchen, where the house wall met the basement. The cops came out, because who else are you going to call when the legal owner is an out of town bank & it's late on a Saturday afternoon. He looked around & discovered that, on the side of the house opposite mine, one of the basement windows was missing & upon looking inside, saw about four feet of standing water.

Yeah... I was overjoyed.

On the plus side, the cop called in a couple of city guys who came out & shut the main off & may have even drained a bit (I'm not sure what all they did, as it was darkening by then & raining. Not ideal observation conditions really). So, you may be saying "wow...that does suck. But what's it got to do with your writing?" Well, I'll tell you, smartypants...It got me thinking, that's what. Like, were it clean & not full of dingy junk, were it sealed properly & not dripping down the side of the house to soak the surrounding ground so much as to make it leak into other houses & were it not, ya know...the middle of December in an underground room with an open window, for just a minute, that could be kinda fun. Imagine if you didn't have to worry about cleanup or wrecking things or drowning the circuit breaker or anything & could just walk down the stairs & jump in. That'd be kinda fun, on paper at least.

So that's got me thinking...what kind of people might intentionally have a basement full of water? And my first thought was, a family with a mermaid. And what kind of family would have a mermaid? An odd kind, I'd imagine, at least by outside appearances. So, for my next project, I think I'm going to write about a family with a strange secret swimming in their basement & see what other oddities I find.

Whatcha think?

In other news, I got to right an ST post for my game last night! Storyteller (ST) posts are far reaching, plot posts rather than individual char pieces as I usually do. I've done ST posts a couple times before, but not very often. This one is exciting, because it's an ST post for a little side plot I'm actually running. That's a new one. I've got a li'l adventure cooked up to keep people busy over Christmas that'll segue nicely into the main plot after Christmas. So, that should be fun.