The end of the world as we know it.

Matt has been on me lately about writing a book, but I am completely without an idea. I told him that writing a blog and writing a book are completely different things and while people find my tiny little blog entertaining, it certainly doesn't mean I can perform at a book level. Plus, what in the world would I write about? As hilarious as I think my kids and my novice parenting are, the rest of the world could easily find it all very annoying. So I don't have a starting place and I am not a good idea person. Once I have the idea, I can really run with it but getting it is hard for me.

So my husband has decided to make "book idea" his personal mission. His exact quote was this, "Melissa, I have a great imagination. It's what I do. In fact my imagination was the only thing that helped me deal with myself." Um, okay, whatever that means. News to me. So after we eliminated Matt's first 13 (no exaggeration there) ideas for a book, which all started with the same sentence....."It was the end of the world and the start of the apocalypse", we decided to start with picking a genre. End of the world/Sci-Fi is just not my bag baby, I am only good at telling stories about people I know. So then Matt got the brilliant idea of writing a book about nothing. No set theme, just whatever normally happens. It sounded great to me, which I am sure is what Larry David thought when he pitched that exact same idea to networks as the premise for the show Seinfeld. "Oh," Matt sighed, "I thought I might have gotten that from somewhere." So, back to the drawing board (by the way, Matt is getting a white board this weekend, a tool he finds crucial to this endeavor).

A few minutes later he had another brilliant plan, he then described a book full of funny, sentimental anecdotes. "You know, Melissa, like those books that teachers and Grandmas love?" Me: "The Chicken Soup for the Soul books?" Matt: "Yes! That's it, it's perfect!" Me:"How do you feel about those books, honey?" Matt: "I hate them. Oh." That minor detail plus the fact that I don't think the stealing of intellectual property is the best way to make the bestseller list and we are back to where we started. With nothing.

To recap: Here is what we have accomplished thus far,
1.Decide who is the idea man (Matt)
2.Discuss and veto countless creepy end of world scenarios
3. Try to plagiarize others work.
4. Listen to Matt derail into a fifteen minute monologue on the awesomeness of the movie Inception. I have to take the blame on that one though, the mention of the words intellectual property set him off to a place that I could not follow.

Well. With a list like that I am shocked that Barnes and Noble isn't knocking down my door. I think I will just stick to blogging for a while longer at least until we get the white board :)