What IF?

As a writer I am equally blessed and cursed with the near constant thought of What If? Mostly for the sake of stories. One important thing I decided upon from near the begining of trying to work towards being published was to keep a notebook for ideas, because new ideas or What If's are always streaming.

I keep spiral notebooks because they open the most easily. I have over a dozen filled with typically one page sections (sometimes more) just on ideas that will evantually be utilized somewhere. Its important to me to always have that to fall back on, because you never know.

My winning first chapter for a recent contest "Dance the Ghost with Me" came from a single late night entry about Porter Rockwell and spirits thick as honey. I took that crude scrawl and hammered it out over two nights, a thursday and friday, spellchecked it saturday afternoon and then sent it out into the ether, just before deadline.

I guessed it would either win or I would be shunned for so brutal and dark a mormon work. Which is still a fine line I worry over. Had I lost, my confidence in ever writing something for the LDS market would have been sorely wounded. Yet even if it had, it was one week later I was offered a contract. So you never know.