I don't really know what to call this

Over the past week I have been stricken with an idea to consume hours of thought and endless possiblities. The plot of a novel has started to find root in my mind. In this case, its something a little stronger than my typical ideas. Often, in the past an idea will form around a sentence. "You might want to hold on," with the appropriate mental image turned into a whole series of thought that trace a multi-generational science fiction story. Just the other day "I thought she looked kind of like a rodent" turned into a short story about world war one. A small idea, and you run with it. Not this time. This time, it was a bunch of ideas, ones that had been sitting in my mind for a long time just running into each other all at once. And out of the mist, a story was sitting there, waiting to be written. Just ready to go, with elaborate turns of plot and character dyanmics. This was a little strange, and I was fully prepared to drop any previous ideas and anything else I had been working on recently and write this novel.

Then it happened again.

This leaves me in a tight spot (note: that was a subconcious reference to O Brother Where Art Thou? a most excellent film). I've got two good ideas bucking to be the next story I write. I'm afriad i might have to go with the most recent. It enfolds an idea I had years ago about somebody dying and being given one night to say goodbye - what would happen and what would you say? But there is so much more to it now. No talking, but a journey, Jacob's Ladder, a temptation, and perhaps the most profoundly interesting journal anybody has ever written. Sort of. It'll make more sense when I write it.

Both of these stories will have to be exorcised. The question is when.

On a further note, I just finished reading the latest Terry Pratchett novel, Thud! It is indeed quite an excellent story. Gone are the days of Terry Pratchett trying to write comic fantasy. It might be called that still, but there isn't much comic about it anymore. There are a few jokes here and there, of course, and the humorous dynamics of Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colins and so on, but the stories are serious now. More serious than they used to be. I know Terry Pratchett always wrote stories with fairly profound messages in them - allegory like mad and whatnot, but these days there is so much more to it. I don't know anybody who could so successfully write a novel about politics and make it so very exciting and wonderful and playful at the same time. It really was something else. Every time I read a new City Watch novel, I want there to be another one. Monsterous Regiment and The Truth both involve the characters, but they don't so much count as part of the series. That means there are seven city watch books, and every one is better than the last (withholding judgement on Thud in this case. Its complicated, but its more of a follow up The Fifth Elephant than it is to Night Watch ... Night Watch was the best one, of course, but... I'm not going to get into it. Lets just say that each one better than the last works, but it doesn't at the same time). I woudl reccomend these seven books to anybody. And, of course, the rest of Terry Pratchett's work. The more you read, the better it gets!