I want my brain back !

Six months ago I was still swearing that I didn't have the imagination to write fiction. Then I re-watched New Doctor Who Season 2 and my brain started teeming with ideas, so now I find myself in the midst of a series of novellas featuring the Tenth Doctor and an original companion. You'd think that would be enough for one person - after all, I've written 5 of these novellas since mid-January - over 110,000 words for goodness sake ! But no, it's not enough apparently.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I read Linda Buckley-Archer's The Tar Man last weekend and it seems to have sparked a whole chain of ideas for a time-travel tale of my own (with nary a Doctor in sight). I went from the mere glimmerings of an idea at the beginning of the week to a 250 word (so far!) synopsis by last night. Which is all well and good, but I am in the midst of writing my sixth Doctor Who story and I've got plans to write several more yet. Plus to do this tale well, I'd have to do a whole lot of research for it - not that I mind doing research (love it, in fact) - but it's finding the time for it and to sleep and work as well !

How is that not only did none of my writer acquaintances warn me that writing fiction is as addictive as hard drugs (well so I assume - I've never actually taken hard drugs), but none of them warned me, either, that writing fiction would result in my brain teeming with ever more ideas - that it's like dropping a large rock into a still pool, the ripples spread out ever wider and end up engulfing everything in their path ?

Of course, this does mean that all those people who've made comments to me about wanting to see me write some "original fiction" (a phrase I find odd, frankly - my Doctor Who stories are original, I'm not stealing them after all - they just happen to feature a single character I didn't create !), will now be happy/pleased, I guess (hope!). Just don't hold your breath waiting for it, because you'll surely expire ! Even if I did set aside the Doctor Who series at the end of the story-in-progress, I can't see this non-Who tale surfacing any time soon !

As yet there's no knowing whether this tale would be a full length novel as opposed to the novella-length stories I've been writing. So far I seem to have naturally fallen into writing tales of around 22 - 23,000 words, but looking at the synopsis, I can see that this might well work out longer than that - I guess I'll have to wait and see, just like everyone else.