A great woman once said: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou This much is true, and it is something I--and most of my fellow writers--can attest to. There's something overwhelming about a story being born in your head. It just keeps coming and coming and coming until you either write it down or die of an exploded brain. Well, perhaps the results aren't that drastic, but that's what it feels like in the moment. Here's an example of something that happened to me just a few months ago:

I'm sitting in the car, driving to do the weekly shopping, when all of a sudden an idea strikes me. It's an idea that I find quite appealing, so my mind begins to race, thinking of the story concept and fleshing it out. Words start coming to me, along with pictures, dialogue, and things that happen in the story. My brain feels like it's about to explode, and I have to write this down. Unfortunately, I'm sitting in the middle of traffic, but thank the gods my wife has her phone handy. She signs onto Skype, and starts sending messages to my Skype account signed in on my computer. We continue driving, but I have to stop and pull over half a dozen times just to send myself little messages. The entire hour and a half we're walking through the shopping mall, I'm sending myself more messages to keep the story flowing. I keep getting more and more inspiration, and I don't want the well to dry up before I get it all down. I race home--driving safely, of course--sit at my computer, and in an hour I have compiled all of my notes and hammered out Issue #1 of a brand new comic book script. The story concept is already mostly formed, and over the next few days I flesh it out until I have a 10-issue story fully formed.

The truth is that I had no control over my brain during the time that the story was coming to me, and it just flowed. I'd have to say that I LOVE the story, and I think anyone who reads it will too. (Coming soon from Rothic, gods willing!) That, my friends, is the curse of the untold story. I know many writers experience that sudden urge to sit and hammer away at their keyboards just to get that idea exploding in their head onto a paper. It's like you're releasing the tension when you write it down or start writing the story, and there is no greater feeling than sitting back AFTER you've gotten the idea out and realizing, "Damn! This is a pretty freaking awesome story!"