A Little of This, A Little of That...

Trying to clear my head up a bit while nursing my first cup of coffee.  Bear with me here...

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What am I reading:  Time Enough For Love and Podkayne of Mars, both by Robert A. Heinlein; Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross; Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (though I haven't picked that one up in a little while).

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A good problem I have is that my mind is constantly coming up with ideas and plot lines.  One is titled, "My Soul to Keep", and concerns a society in a closed habitat.  The 500 citizens live a life of ease in a peaceful, almost bucolic existence.  A couple of catches, one they know about, one they don't.  The one they know about is that on their fortieth birthday, they must report to the Sleep Center, where they go to sleep (that is to say, they're killed).  (Yeah, it's a bit of Logan's Run, but stick with me here).  The catch they don't know about is that they're part of an alien experiment into the nature of existence.  They were kidnapped nearly 640 years in the past, their memories erased and their bodies put into cryogenic storage.  When one dies, another is cloned (the clones are produced as babies, so they grow up in the society).  Every 160 years, the aliens kill everyone, change the layout of the habitat and start again.  They alternate between cycles of peace and war.  When the story starts, they're five years from the end of a peace cycle.  Mayhem ensues.

Another, titled "Through A Glass, Darkly" starts out with a woman falling into a mirror (like Alice and her looking glass).  She finds herself onboard a starship that is traveling through the space between dimensions.  The aliens from "My Soul to Keep" are present there.  I wasn't thinking of it this way, but "Through A Glass, Darkly" has turned into a prequel to "My Soul to Keep".

Oh yeah, the aliens are called the Tralamfan.  They're not really solid matter, more like "intelligent plasma".  They look a bit like blobs of melted wax.

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Why is having too many ideas a good problem?  Well, despite the trouble I'm having with the actual writing at the moment, I'm still coming up with ideas, so at least I know my imagination is still working.  It's a problem because these new ideas are distracting me from the projects I really want to finish.  (I'm into the final third of Before the Dawn and would really like to get it finished.)  I just need to develop more discipline.

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I can't find my Cross pen.  And that's just frustrating.

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Thanks for listening while I clear my head.  Now I can finish my coffee and get ready to do some writing.