An Idea Has Landed In My Brain

Yesterday was a bit of a down day. Not only did I realize that I was burned out and maybe even a little bummed out where Competitive play in Resistance 2 was concerned, but I was also feeling depressed about my own job prospects. As I told AgileBoy over Instant Messenger, I was going through a list of potential job types in my head, and seeing reasons for each one as to why I wouldn't actually be able to do that sort of role anymore. "I couldn't hold down a Java programming contract because ________________; if someone wanted a Project Manager, I wouldn't be able to do it on account of _____________; who'd want to hire an Agile consultant who's only ever done Agile at one company where the results were considerably less than spectacular!" and so on. All of a sudden, I was pretty much unemployable, as far as I was concerned.

That may still be the case today, but at least I woke up with an interesting idea for a (fiction) book, and it's been careening around in my head ever since. It fits the criteria that I believe I'd need in a first book:

• It's subject matter that I'm actually interested in
• It's a framework upon which I could build a lot of subplots that would feed into the main story
• As far as I can tell so far, it's not just something that I've read before and always wanted to tell my own version of, although there's an aspect of that to it
• I know how it starts and I know how it ends, but everything in between is waiting to be discovered through the process of writing (which should keep me entertained for months)

So we'll see if anything actually comes of this notion, since it's officially only about 2 hours old and that's not nearly enough time to know yet whether it has any staying power or not. If it does, then I'm sure readers of this blog will hear more about it in the coming weeks...