That One Time I Had a Story Idea...

So... a long time ago, driving around on an Idaho back road not so far away...

I seem to have my best ideas in one of two places: either whilst driving or riding in cars or whilst sitting on the toilet. As near as I can guess, driving allows me to keep the workaday part of my brain occupied so it doesn't short-circuit my imagination. Meanwhile, the rest of my brain can take off and fly off to where ever the fuck it wants to fly to.

For some reason, I feel completely creatively unfettered while driving. I don't feel a need to impress anyone else with my ideas. I don't need to care if my writer friend like what I come up with. I can just daydream, stretch my mind and explore where the tendrils of my imagination go.

As for why the potty is such a good place to find inspiration, well, your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, a few years ago I had an idea I quite liked. It was different for me, a little more substantive and not just more of the same heavy metal and sci-fi inflected comedy I usually write. I was fascinated by the question the story would pose. Even though I felt it would be a hard sell should I ever decide to do anything with it or show it to anyone else, I was intrigued enough that I thought I should at least give it a shot.

But life distracted me, as life so often distracts all of us, and I put the idea on the backburner. The recent end of my closest friendship has me asking some same question I was asking when I was putting that story together. I'm seriously thinking about dusting it off and writing it out. Before I do, I wanted to pitch it to whoever actually reads my blog (...so, like... maybe Clifton?...) so youse guys can see where my head is at. Here goes:

THE PITCH 

The story opens with a man desperately struggling to save the space station he currently inhabits from becoming a midnight snack for a black hole. Obviously, gravity ALWAYS wins, so homeboy and his ship are sucked down and spaghettified into particles. All is dark and silent and complete.

Until it isn't. We come out of the black hole on the other side of the universe. It is now that we meet our protagonist, subatomic particle J3L2404, a particle with a murky memory. (Yes, that's a reference to Fargo.) J3L is floating through the vacuum of space with no purpose, although he feels pulled in another direction, in search of something he can't remember but that he feels strongly that he lost.

As J3L tries to go his own way, everything he tries to be a part of falls apart and the longing and feeling he's missing something torment him more and more intensely. After growing tired of being pulled in too many directions a once, he gives in and begins to chase this mysterious goal. He eventually finds that the pull he was feeling was emanating from X9P3390, a particle he's entangled with and had been bonded to for his entire existence. They reunite and everyone lives happily ever after. So some such shit.

This story has several obvious problems, chief among them being making the main characters work. I mean, who the fuck's gonna buy into anthropomorphic subatomic particles? But if I can get those characters working, I have the opportunity to research questions I've always wanted answered. Do we really have any choice in who we're attracted to? Is there someone out there I'm gonna end up with, whether I want to or not? If we're fated to orbit in pairs, how can we be happy if we can't find an orbital partner?

I'm not gonna pretend that this is scientifically accurate. I'm no physicist. I'm not even very smart. I would have to do research into quantum mechanics, entanglement, and the behavior of little tiny particles. But George Lucas once said he wanted Star Wars to be artistically accurate, not scientifically accurate. And I think that applies here.

So what do you think? What are you doing with that baseball bat?! Wait. Did that really piss you off THAT MUCH?! Dude, chill the fuck out! Seriously, you want some aspirin- (Whack... Thud...)