In which several plots are revealed

Here we go round the mullberry bush early monday morning...

So, what is to become of my heroine? Shall I leave her in the depths of the seedy underworld, or allow her to see the light of day occasionally? I guess, since she's technically a minor, she still has to go to school, but surely she'll be stuck in the underworld part of the time... I'm envisioning the scene that seals her fate. I hope I remember it when it comes time to write it!

As for the hero, will he have a broken heart? I expect that's his fate... Though of course we'll hold out hope for him. It would never do to take away the hope that he'll win in the end, would it?

I think of books I wish ended differently. If they are the right sort of books, they'll end with just enough ambiguity that you can hope the ending you wanted came about after all, no matter how bad the odds.

I still haven't read Messenger, by Lois Lowry, but I'm told it clears up any ambiguity left from the end of The Giver. Well, you couldn't get more ambiguous than the end of that book, I don't think. At least, I sure had no idea what the author had in mind. I didn't expect what apparently came about, because it seemed things would have to go the other way.

One day, I'd like to write a book that makes people feel the way I felt reading The Giver. I almost tried to do it for this NaNo, but it's too hard. It isn't something I could do the spit out thing with. It's a roll it around in your head forever kind of book.

I am always looking for ways of reaching alternate worlds. Last year for NaNo, I tried to write my train story. When I rode the train, the reflections of the reflections would make buildings rush into each other and disappear. The reflected world was almost as real looking as the real world through those windows. What if a character stepped out into the reflection? Well, I still don't know- it didn't work out right! I have most of my ideas for universe hopping in trains or train stations. There was an area at a station I was waiting at that looked more real than everything else around it. Obviously if you looked at it the right way, you could get into another universe, perhaps the real one that this is a pale imitation of. Was thinking of using that idea for the totalitarian society book, which I may still if I ever write it.

I think about the way things could go. That's the trick of the sf writer- take something to its logical and scientific extreme. Does anyone doubt that within two generations, everyone will be tagged with something that is inserted under the skin and can locate them instantly? You do? Then check up on what is already happening with RFID chips. What would a society like that be like? Well, David Brin takes a crack at it in Sundiver, where the people who carry the "violent" gene have to be marked with transmitters. I could see things getting worse than in 1984 if we aren't careful. We give up a lot in the name of safety. In the book I started for the 3-day novel contest (and boy was I unprepared for THAT!) the tag was made common by a rash of child kidnappings that spurred so much fear parents got all their kids tagged. Nominally the tags were voluntary, but interesting things were going to happen to the protagonist when, as an experiment, she chooses to get hers removed again...

I may combine that with the more-real-than-real area once I have an idea where it is really going.

And then there's my god-world, as I call it. That I have to wait for it to tell me what to write. That's one that, at the right times, tries to write itself... Those happen occasionally.