I woke up this morning with a solution to an unusual problem: how to write a fiction story.
There is a little sci-fi story I've been noodling on for a couple years but I haven't done much with it beyond notes because I've never had much luck at writing fiction (this may be due to the fact that I've read very little fiction). I've made a few attempts at it, even did a NaNoWriMo or two, but for whatever reason I've never found a way to go about it that feels good or natural to me.
This morning's idea is simple enough: write the story the way I write a journal.
I do a lot of journaling. Nothing formal, but that's what I consider the writing I do here a journal, and I keep semi-structured "engineers journals" in most of my projects. So that form is very comfortable to me, and this morning I had this realization that I could tell this fiction story in the form of a journal (or rather multiple journals, but I don't want to get ahead of myself).
For me this was a reminder that it's not a good idea to rush a solution. Many times in my life I've used force or will to "push through" a problem and in most cases the solution is worse than what I would have come up with had I just left it alone and allowed the problem to simmer until whatever magical forces are at work in my subconscious delivered an elegant solution. In all cases implementing the solution is no fun, and often turns me of of the entire field until I can forget how much that project sucked (fortunately my short- term memory isn't great).
I'm excited to have a method that feels right for this project, now I just need to remember it until I have some time to work on it...