Unfortunately, the Smartphone Offense is still one or two weeks from now. This means that this week, I can tell you a bit about the creative side of my summer: Planning a new novel.
I'm in my third year at University now and for the Creative Writing dissertation of a BA course you have to make a Portfolio, which is nothing else than a coherent creative piece of writing of about 7000 words plus a reflective commentary of 3000 words.
It's the first time that we have a larger piece that can actually contain a bit more than a short story. On the other hand, it's still not enough to hand in a novel - bummer.
I still want this project to be a major piece of work that should end in a novel. One option is for example to just hand in the introduction to the novel (which I wouldn't wanna do, actually). I'm still contemplating how to use the 7000 words with different pieces of the novel I have in mind.
I guess I should just tell you what I came up with now. Like so many times, I got my inspiration from a dream. I love jotting down the outline of dreams and coming back to them later to use them for my writing. They are always so vivid and ... well, scary sometimes, but good material. This time I was on the run with a group of people, an older guy, a girl and someone else I think. We were driving a truck and tried to follow some guidelines to get somewhere. Suddenly there was a lightening and we had disappeared from that place - at high speed and turned up in another world.
In my mind I knew there were also some background issues. Long story short - I'm writing a novel about parallel worlds, menacing and intelligent storms and scientist apprehensions about gaining unheard-of knowledge and insights. I had to study the universe in depth to understand all the cosmic settings and the theories surrounding parallel worlds. Finally I know what Black Holes are supposed to be and what Einstein's formula is all about. If it weren't for the novel idea, I would have never gotton so much into Sci-Fi to absolutely enjoy it.
I'll tell you more about the novel/portfolio piece once I have more information. I still need to decide on a few details.
Where are you getting your ideas from? And what are you working on right now?