Plagued by an Overactive Mind

What's that saying—or is it only a general impression? That writers tend to be insane? I've been using that as my motto, lately.

I don't remember my dreams often, but when I do, I dream novels. If I had an agent and were a novelist who could afford to write them for a living, it wouldn't be so bad. It would be quite doable. But as a full-time student who works part time and runs two blogs, uh-uh.

So I write the notes and jot other things till I get stuck, to come back to later. Maybe.

But my most recent one absolutely refuses to get stuck. I'm calling it my unofficial NaNoWriMo entry. (NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is a challenge to write a 50k-word novel in the month of November.) It's even my most straightforward story idea, at the moment.

Please excuse me while I sigh. I need to finish one of my novels, not add Keeper of Shadows to my stack of incompletes, but… It's the easiest idea I have to write, right now.

I'll see how far I get before I get "stuck." If it keeps flowing like it's been, it may be my first finished novel, after all.

The most disturbing thing about it is… Well, certain elements of the plot that I pulled from my dream I seriously considered striking since they bothered—fine, disgusted—me, but I've realized that there's a reason for them. I pull them, I might as well nix the story because it loses its point.

Wonderful. Just when I thought I might've had an almost-normal story idea, for once.

Of course, whenever I try to force myself into one of those, I absolutely hate writing it, so it's for the best, I guess. I rather like the opening line: "That summer, if anyone had told her that she'd be both a Keeper and expecting a child by one of the Kept by Christmas, she would have laughed at the speaker's guillibility and imagination."

Sources that I've realized as influencing my mind in creating this plot have included:

• What little I've managed to read (the online excerpts) from Shanna Swendson's Enchanted, Inc. series.
• The genre confusion of Linnea Sinclair's Gabriel's Ghosts. Basically, Gabriel's somehow not a ghost while being enough of one that the book got an award for paranormal romance. Anyone know the book to explain that?
• What was this one? Oh, right: the idea that morality is relative to cultures. Ooo, this is a big one.
• …And I think there was another one. Oh, well.

Like it, hate it, agree that I'm insane, think that I should stop writing? Anyone? :-)