An example of how I can’t shut up my brain:

I’m working on a freelance copyediting job (great writer; love her work), but a part of my brain drifts over to the assignment for the SF Workshop that I have to write today. First 500 words of a story, all five senses. We’ve been give the character name, the setting (spaceship), and the problem (jammed or locked door). I’ve already made a couple of notes.

But now my brain starts…hm, how to explain. Some stories come to me as voices in my head. Seriously. My novel What Beck’ning Ghost started because two characters kept having these weird threatening conversations in my head, and I was all, who the fuck are these guys and what are these creepy things they’re talking about? (These conversations do appear in the book, BTW.)

With this story, it’s in first person, and it’s YA so she’s voice-y, and so I’m hearing her voice in my head (even as I’m copyediting), and she says something off-hand, and a moment later that little detail snaps into focus and I know the whole story and the last line and it’s freaking me out because it’s now SF horror.

It’s all I can do not to drop everything and write the whole story. But I have to get this job done by tomorrow, and I have to finish my Winter Witches story first, and…

Oh, I wonder if the story I uploaded last night has processed through all the sites so I can post about it?

Oh, look, a chicken!

Right, copyediting…that’s what I’m doing…

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