The Idea is the Thing

A while back I blogged about the annoying saying that ideas are a dime a dozen. I had an attack of ideas today and remembered that entry. If I sat down for a month and meditated, I could have a career’s worth of ideas, but ideas are infinitely compressible - I could fit that month-long collection into one book if I disguised them properly.

If you set it up properly, you don’t even have to disguise the surplus ideas. I’ve been reading volume two of the Otherland books (they’re not a series, the author claims, but a 3,000 page novel published piecewise), which have one of those structures that allow infinite variation. Multiple universe stories (with a real multiplicity of universes, rather than one universe) also allow idea-packing. You can never have too many ideas at hand.

One Response to “The Idea is the Thing”

  1. LizBeeeeeeeeeeee! Says:

    That’s what I love about the Otherland novels — the sheer breadth of imagination. From cartoons to fantasy pastiches to sheer, pure fantasy … all encased in a nice science-fiction candy shell…