My "story challenge" (see previous entries) has suffered a slight delay. If you've been reading the journal, you'll know that I've assigned myself seven story ideas to write in seven weeks. Last week went fine, and I'm happy with the story, for all that it'll need some spit and polish.

But today I had the great idea that I should write the remaining six ideas as six interlinked stories, set over a period of about 3,000 years. Not only does that give me an enormous amount of research to do, it also means I have to find some common link and arc as well as coming up with the six individual stories. If it works, it'll be great. If not...

Well, we won't think about that.

One of our Clarion West instructors (Nalo Hopkinson, perhaps?) told us that stories come together when there is a collision of two ideas. I was struggling to come up with stories based on the single ideas that Steph and I assigned ourselves. The linking idea I have for the stories has given me an inkling of the second idea for each. They are certainly seeming more possible immediately.