My subconscious, or Muse, or *$^#$@!!!!! in my head seems to have a problem.
Or maybe it’s them, and I don’t mean that in the Woke sense. it’s much more like popcorn kittens then an single subconscious:
It’s like, the hero’s leading the heavily armed convoy into the burned ruins of the city . . .
Hey! How about a kid with three uncles . . .
What? No. The city ruins inhabited by desperate, defeated and marooned enemy soldiers . . .
He has three uncles! We’ll kill the two abusive ones and keep the drunk . . .
Plus escaped slaves and the criminal gangs all fighting for the dwindling resources . . .
And be sure to describe the stairs, because that’s where his aunt . . .
Shut up. The heavily armed convoy with a mission of finding and repairing . . .
Oh, and he and his cousins are running an antique finishing and repairing . . .
Are you kidding? WTF do I know about antiques?
More than you know about heavily armed convoys. Now the opening scene . . .
A shield low to the ground to clear debris . . .
Hey! “Space Marshal” might be a good story for Sarah’s idea about episodic . . .
It’s not finished, either. As they head for what remained of Government Plaza . . .
Then you’d have to finish it! Finally!
Shut up. Watching to both sides as . . .
Oh, hey, those stairs would make a great background for the cover.
What? No. The ruins of a futuristic city is the back ground I’ll need if you would just shut up and let me get on with this one . . .
Actually “Space Marshal” would be cool with illustrations, you should . . .
Look. I’ll write a quick intro to this plucky sixteen-year-old with the antique business and a drunken uncle, if you’ll just shut up and let me get back to the convoy. Deal?
Good plan! Get writing!
So, it probably won’t come as a surprise to any one that not only do I now have a 30K first draft of K.A.T. Antiques, I have dragged “Space Marshal” out from under the bed, and it might be fun to use for an episodic thing . . .
Radmir, on the other hand, is still just starting into the ruins of the former capital city . . .
And by the way, did you know I’ve written YA under a pen name?
Mad Genius Club 
I seem to get waves of idea-kittens, plot-bunnies, whatever. Then they wander off to do whatever it is they do. Then a dozen jump me all at once again.
*Nods* When the brain’s in a creative mood, all the hamsters jump into their wheels at once.
I get rid of them by setting them down in notebooks, usually. It takes the immediate pressure off, and if they’re important, they’ll come back to me.
Ideas are easy. They’re everywhere, heaped up in the corners and begging for attention.
Turning an idea into a finished short story or book is much harder than getting the idea for me.
They just show up and I have to kick them out of the way!
They go away when you kick them? You have super powers!
Mostly they do, but not without a lot of whimpering and “you’ll be sorry for tossing bestselling me away”.
What’s even more fun is when they may — or may not — play nicely together.
And refuse to tell you.
I got with useful story bits during a recent dress rehearsal. Happily, I had a little notebook and pen and could write them down before they either ran away or started turning into a (very distracting) full-on story right then and there.
Thanks for letting me know about Zoey. It took me ten years to find out that A.A. Fair was Erle Stanley Gardner. I had read and re-read all the Perry Mason books and then found his pseudonym.
When my brain gets creative, it gets creative. I’m having to take notes so that I can keep track of all of these plot bunnies. Because I have to keep track of them.