Story of the Ruined City

I wish I had more time to write.

I few posts back, I wrote down what I remembered of a dream. The dream featured a multiplayer computer game, and while the "real world" elements of the dream (meeting people, setting up computers, logging in) were random and not that interesting, the game itself was. So, while we were in the hospital for the birth of Secondborn, I started writing about it.

If I were writing this chronologically, it would be a "white room" story: the protagonist wakes up with no idea where she is or what's going on, and the story proceeds from there. Of course, if I were writing it that way, it would be a book.

I'd like for it to be a book, eventually; but right now, it's taken me over two weeks to get to six pages. With the arrival of the newborn, the Beautiful Wife's allergic reaction (to the pain pills, we think), and Firstborn's tummy bug, it's amazing that I've captured even this much of the story.

And that's pretty much what I'm doing, here: capturing it. I'm basically writing a short story, alternating between action I remember from the dream and little bits of backstory to flesh out the situation. The idea is that later on (at this rate, possibly a few years later on), I can come back and rediscover not only the basics of the plot, but also the mood and feel of the story and setting. Hopefully this will help me remember not only what I wanted to write, but why I wanted to write it.

Whether I will then want to expand this piece to a full length book, or make it the first chapter of another book, remains to be seen. Both ideas are appealing, and I think I'll have to get some perspective on the piece before I know. (They aren't mutually exclusive, either; I could expand the piece into a book, then use the capsule version as a catch-me-up opening chapter for a sequel.)

Either way, it's nice to have a new world to play in.