The Story’s the Thing!

I’m a writer.

I’m not super-famous like Grishim or King, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen one of my books in the paperback section. Based on my royalties, quite a few of you have bought one - “for a friend” maybe, because I’m not the kind of author people seem happy to admit they read.

I’ll take the money regardless.

Anyway, today I was just freewheeling, throwing ideas up into the air and seeing which ones land, and since I’m a nice guy I thought I might share the process with my readers, so I’m typing this out as I think it - no edits, no corrections, whatever comes, comes.

So first, I was thinking about writing itself, and what it does to a person. See, I kinda disappear from the world when I write. No one and nothing gets between me and my story when its flowing, you know what I mean?

I like to say that the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders could come in here, drop trou and sing “Two, four, six eight, we sure like to masturbate” and I wouldn’t stop writing to watch.

So anyway, I better see what kind of story I want to write so I can keep collecting those super nice royalties that keep me in beer and bad girlfriends. I seem to have a habit for picking some winners, maybe because any decent woman would take one look at the disaster I live in and run the other way.

I’m usually better off buying my female companions - at least that’s a more honest relationship.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, a story. First, we need a main character. We need a guy the reader can be reasonably comfortable with. He cant be a goody-goody, but he cant be a total asshole either, unless he then gets what’s coming to him.

So whose our main character? Well, why not a writer? Hay, if Steven Fricking King can write about a writer who is suspiciously like him, basically jerk off in public and get paid for it, why cant I?

So our main character is like me, that’s fine. What can we have happen to him? Well, its been a while since I did anything kinda spooky, so why not say he gets cursed? Yeh, that works, a curse is always a winner.

A curse from .... A Goddess!

Oh wow, that’s good, that way the publisher has an excuse to put some bikini babe on the cover, that kind of thing helps sales at the bus terminals.

So we got a curse from a goddess, what kind of curse should it be? Old buddy Steve-O there made a mint having a guy get cursed to lose weight, which doesnt sound very scary to me, but what do I know?

So what curse? What could this guy-like-me lose that would really scare him?

What about his manhood?

Oh .. . that might work, the curse slowly turns him into a chick!

Now I got a lot of filler to make, so we have to set up the scene - big time writer .... maybe he goes on holiday to some South American jungle and ends up doing something to offend some local goddess, so she sends him home with a little present ...

Yeh, I was just down in Peru, I can flesh those jungle bits out no problem!

So he comes home, thinking everything is hunky-dory, and he doesnt realize he’s been cursed. But slowly, ever so slowly, he gets more and more like a girl, at least in his looks. So at first, maybe he loses the hair on his arms, legs, and chest, and finds he doesnt need to shave as often. He doesnt really notice, he’s in the writing zone I talked about earlier, and nothing short of WWIII would have the slightest chance of making him even look up.

So by the time he notices something wrong, he’s pretty far gone, and the first person he goes to for help is the county doctor who ... was also an ex-girlfriend!

Yah!

My ex Sarah is a doc, so that works nicely. I can use her as my template. She’s one of the few who I really would go to if something weird was going on with me. No doubt she’d make a few funny remarks about me learning a thing or two about the fairer sex, maybe offer to take me bra shopping, but once I convinced her I was serious, she’d be all business.

So then what? Well, she’d run a bunch of tests, and then somehow they would stumble on to the curse - maybe the guy brought back some cursed Inca thing. I bought some knock off ring off a guide while I was down there, I can use that as my model, that will do fine.

So they figure out about the curse, they do some searching and some phone calls, and they find out he has to return the ring before he has his first period or be stuck as a chick for life. So then its a race, to get back the ring on time.

To make this exciting for the reader, when he gets there, it turns out that this was planned by a rival of his, who is now determined to stop him from being able to get the ring back to the right spot on time.

They have a big fight outside a temple, the doctor ex clocks the bad guy, allowing the writer to go in and go to the right spot with minutes to spare. Finally, there will be a big wrap-up with the doctor ex and the writer getting back together and living happily ever after. A romantic end works great with the chicks, that will help sales a bit.

Ahhh, what the heck am I thinking, this would never sell!

Geez, look at the clock I’ve been at this for hours, and now I got nothing to show for it.

Ah well, not every day can be a winner. I need to stretch ...

Holy cats It happened!

I got boobs!

(click. Ring, ring ...)

"Sarah! Help me ..."