For whatever reason, I was flipping through the junk I have saved on my Palm Pilot yesterday and came across an electronic copy of Stephen King's story collection, Everything's Eventual, and started reading, for the second time, his story set in the Dark Tower world, called "Little Sisters of Eluria."

As I was reading, I started jotting down ideas that came to me about what I'd like to do in my next novel, spurred on by some of the cool things he does in his story, and in the Dark Tower books as a whole.

His books are a mix of SF, fantasy, horrror, and the western, starring Roland the gunslinger, an iconic figure who can travel between worlds. The series got a bit bloated with the third book, The Waste Lands, and the fourth book I remember reading mostly in one day, and I barely remember much of anything about it, except being annoyed in that it was a 600-page flashback that advanced the main story maybe by five steps. But the second book in the series, The Drawing of the Three, has some of King's best writing and most fascinating, yet damaged characters. I loved that book.

Anyway, the story I read on my Palm first appeared in the Legends anthology, and I have a copy of that fat book, which is a collection of "short novels" by fantasy writers who are writing fat fantasy novels set on other worlds. I may have to read the rest of the tales. I'm getting good ideas of what I could do, but more importantly, what NOT to do.

Because in the King story, it just goes on too long. It's much too flabby, and the thrills and sense of wonder get dulled by the excess wordage. Plus I couldn't help but think of his novel Misery, which also features a helpless hero trapped in a hospital bed (okay, in this story he's suspended ABOVE the bed, but you get the picture). King's last dozen novels or so ALL suffer from this lack of tightening. To me, he's best at short novels and short stories -- the novella (which is what "Little Sisters" is) gives him too much room to flail about. Another annoyance is that not a whole lot of import happens in the story. If I wrote the story, I'd give some sort of tiny, secret history of a key element from the Dark Tower mythos, like a reward to astute readers.

But in any case, I got some good ideas from it, and I'm starting to think more and more about what my next novel is gonna be. And that's what reading other writers does for me -- inspires me to write more. I can try to tell a story that zigs when some other writer tragically zags. I can learn from what I see as mistakes made by another writer. But most of all, I'm motivated to write the best damn stuff I'd ever want to read.

Okay, end of tangent. I need to get some writing of my own done, now. Later!