Scribbles & Munch

Hopefully every writer has good support: family who cheer her on; friends who proof-read with enthusiasm. I am quite lucky to have both. What I do NOT have is a husband who can be trusted with suggestions on my stories. Oh, he'll read with decent enthusiasm, and certainly supports me with great empathy in every part of the technical process of writing and publishing, but when it comes to useful suggestions?

Well, is it possible to be diagnosed with Manic Hyper-Pun-ism? Because half the time I ask for help with a title, or the name of a new character, he spend the next half hour coming up with the cheesiest puns in the world. Great for a parody, perhaps, but utterly useless for any kind of serious work.

And as if I needed further proof, there was the dream I had the other night. It was a very meandering dream, with vivid placement of people and objects I know. When I woke and reflected, it was easy to see where these seemingly random visions found their inspiration: e.g. I was watching anime earlier in the day, and my friend the-biggest-anime-enthusiast-ever showed up in my dream. But that didn't prevent my unconscious from putting these people and objects together in the most RANDOM-ass configuration you've ever heard of! In one part, a friend had written a screenplay, and I was doing a walk-through of a scene in which a group of new-world explorers discover a Yellowstone-esque wilderness with giant pools of bubbling toxic cheese.

Yes, cheese. Like fondue, only gross.

Reasonably amused by such a vision, I told my husband about this over breakfast. And bless the man, what does he say, in all 100% seriousness? "Wow, that's amazing! That has all the makings of a great story, don't you think? I mean, nobody could come up with something as creative as that--you have to write that down in your idea journal!"

And he meant it. He wasn't joking. He seriously thought a Jules Verne-type novel in which the characters discover not a land of dinosaurs - nor a land of milk and honey - but a land of naturally-occurring cheese pools would make a brilliant novel. Now, if any of you out there in reader land are seeing this and thinking to yourself, "Z.D., what are you saying? He was right: that IS brilliant, write it down fast!" I concede: my imagination has it's limits, and you have my full permission to take this idea and write whatever story comes to mind. Just send my husband an autographed copy once it gets published--apparently he would love to read it.