I'm dealing with a somewhat dry spot in my brainstorming recently, and though I've a few ideas sketched out, I really don't know what to do next.
This past Sunday, I took myself to visit a friend, and presented three options to her as I needed to shake out the doldrums and such.
The first option was to visit Fort Smith, but we've literally been there and done that a million times. Xmart, Books A Million, Hastings, and Best Buy have revealed all their secrets. There's nothing new in that town.
The second option was to head west into Oklahoma, and visit what we refer to as "The Vortex," as it is a local supernatural hotspot that local mystics have stated will be only one of the few places that survives "when the world ends."
We visited that place once, and I must admit I was hoping to experience these things. I didn't.
The third option was one that displayed how truly bored I am: let's go to Fayetteville. And so we did. There were caves to explore, Barnes And Noble's high prices to decry, and so on.
The visit to northern towns helped...a little.
But inspiration is still a tricky thing to find.
I was cleaning yesterday, and just happened to place my favorite Roxette CD in the disc player and the song "Wish I Could Fly" begin to flow through the room, and it made me think for a moment while I was resting.
I heard the lead singer declare how she wished she could fly (and so on) and then I begin to consider the notion once stated "if man was meant to fly he'd have been born with wings."
Okay...so I considered that very notion.
A deformed child, born with wings upon his or her back. The child grows up, hiding said wings under oversized clothing on through their teenage years. Maybe he or she can fly, and maybe he or she cannot.
It's unclear right now.
But the point is, this would be taken in a dramatically different fashion than, say, the Angel character as seen in X-Men 3, which was just trash. I'm thinking more introspective, less heroics (actually no heroics at all), and so on.
There's two other stories I'm considering, which are (as usual) somewhat supernatural in nature: "Storm Front," and "Ghost Town."
So far "Storm Front" is more interesting as it deals with mysterious happenings that go on during thunderstorms as two people battle it out using the very forces of nature, yet they only appear which the skies turn active with rain, wind, and lightning.
This story was strengthened when I found a reprint of a wood carving that showed witches stirring up a cauldron to induce rain back in the 15'th or 16'th Centuries. I just have no real intention to include witches in it somehow. Think of it as a misplaced "X-File."
Maybe I should go revisit those caves, or head further north.
Or maybe I should plop myself down in some small overpriced cafe with a pen and paper to see what comes out, if anything.
