What the **** is a Megalania?

Everything starts from a single idea. A caveman looked around and noticed that stones roll on the ground, giving him the seeds to develop a wheel, which turned into a cart, which turned into a car. The seeds of my journey were planted long ago, but I didn’t have much to go on.

After years of work, my counselor said “It’s time. You really need to pursue writing.” She gave me a task. Buy a journal and fill that journal with ideas. No matter how mundane the idea was, I was supposed to write it down.

I found a Bart Simpson journal with an angry scowl staring at me from the Barnes and Noble shelves.

Perfect!

Who better to protect my ideas than an angry Bart Simpson? Seriously, who?

I took this journal and began to record an idea here or there. The ideas began to flow a little more each week, until one day they exploded. Sitting at my parents, the story I had been building in my head for years suddenly became a living, breathing thing. I sat down with my journal and mapped out the entire story line. Back at home, I started writing character profiles, location details, creature information, and more. It was fascinating how much information was pouring through me. All I did was start to record my ideas.

At one point, I was playing Dungeons and Dragons as a druidic gnome. I reached a certain level that allowed me to summon a megalania, a giant monitor lizard that went extinct 50,000 years ago in Australia.

The group curiously asked, “What the [] is a megalania?”

Choose your own filler word.

I explained it, knowing that I had just researched it a few days before when creating the world for this older story.

Time would go on and more ideas would come. Puzzle pieces would fit into place. I’d have an idea, and like the megalania, some coincidence would occur around the same time, as though signaling I was on the right track.

By the end of the year, I had completely filled the journal, written several plots, and come up with a myriad of stories to write, some in progress and some will be pushed into the future.

The ideas were flowing.

What’s the best part? Have you ever heard of writer’s block? Hopefully, I’ll never experience it. If I ever run out of ideas, I can unlock Bart’s brain and pull out a few pages.

That’s how I really started moving with my writing. The idea book. If you don’t have one, buy one right away. It will change your life.

I already have 3 and now I’m publishing books. It changed my life.

— Will

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