Yesterday I was assaulted by an idea for a SF story while I was processing samples. I couldn't just leave the samples there to write the idea down, so I had to keep repeating the opening line to myself while I finished the set. It kept growing, too, so soon I had a paragraph to remember.

This is why I write things down, so I don't have to remember them.

Anyway, SF is not my chosen genre. Yes, SF and fantasy get lumped together in one section (usually a small section; the library near work has less than one aisle of the two combined) but to me, they're very different. I like science, yes, I like mechanical workings and how things are put together, but vast starscapes bore me sometimes. Not to look at, of course, but I wouldn't want to see them for years on end. And yes, I'm aware that I sound like a contradiction.

So when I announced the idea assault (after a guy in the group mentioned something he had written that was out of character for him), the ceiling was examined for signs of collapse.

I know whose fault it was: I had to read a short story and crit it for the writing group, and it was futuristic SF with a human side. And I know what was at fault too: after snowing all morning, the sun burst out with a vengeance, shining off the mirror glass of the windows of the building across the construction site outside the lab. Ruminating on SF story+sunlight=story idea, I guess.

Counting this one, that's four separate stories that I've got rattling around in my head since January (well, November, if you count the big still-needs-to-be-finished NaNo 2007 novel). Seems a lot to me. Probably isn't to famous authors, but it makes me want to write. I want to know where these stories go. I want to know why the ideas made themselves known so forcefully, and I want to share them. When they're finished, of course.

Oh yes. Happy half-birthday to me.