Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating the season in such a fabulous way that you need the rest of the week just to recover. I'm soooo jealous!

Since it's turkey time, I thought I'd take a moment to celebrate the other turkeys in our lives. Ahem, I mean the ideas that totally sucked, showed up at the wrong time/wrong place or simply were skipped over because they weren't fully developed yet.

We've all had them. One of my most memorable ideas actually involved an actual turkey, which I didn't bother stuffing since it had "this plastic bag of stuff" already in it. Yeah, we ended up having ham instead. ;)

The nice thing about turkeys is they can be kept in the idea freezer and brought out again when the time is right. For me, it might be a particular character who doesn't have enough room in a certain WIP. Turns out, she needs her own darn novel.

Yeah, I'll get to that next year...

Or article ideas. A lot of new writers mistake topics for article ideas. They're not the same thing. There's a huge difference between an article on "eyebrows" or one on "what to do if you wax off your eyebrows by mistake."

The same can be said for a dinner menu. How would you feel if you made a reservation at Chez Chi-Chi-Poo-Poo weeks ago and, on the given night, you open the menu to see that you can choose from "chicken" or "beef" instead of "rosemary chicken with sweet potato dumplings" or "roast beef served medium-rare with a red wine reduction and asparagus spears"? Wouldn't you be feeling lunchbag letdown?

Can you tell I'm hungry?

So perhaps the key to dealing with those turkeys is to get to know them a little better so you can see where they belong.

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