Reluctant stories - pulling ideas from the aether

Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, tells of an interview she did with the musician Tom Waits.  She said that Waits talked about the different forms that songs can take when they're trying to be born.

He talked of songs that came to him with absurd ease, of others that have to be dug out of the ground like potatoes, and others that are "sticky and weird".  To a non-writer that means nothing, but it struck a chord with me.  Because writing short stories feels the same. 

I was reminded of this when writing a new story this week.  Normally when I'm gifted with an idea it comes in one big rush, the "absurd ease" of Waits's songs.  I scribble the general idea down, and then the muses get to work answering the "what if?" questions.  I move from the broad idea to identifying the main character, to how that character relates to the idea, what their problem is, what the story plot is.  And this is often one smooth sequence from the general to the detailed.  When I have one of those ideas I end up with a page full of notes and a complete outline of the story's action.  

But this week I've been working on one of Waits's "sticky and weird" stories.  It started with a snippet of information I saw on a wildlife programme.  The myccorhiza that connect all trees (and a great many plants too) underground glow in the dark.  And nobody's worked out why yet.

This piqued my SF writer's mind, and I asked "what if it could be some kind of computing system".  That led to asking why someone would need to develop that.  And that's where the story became "sticky".  Maybe my characters need a secret, hidden, communications system.  But why did they need that?

It took me a few days to find the answer, then to work out how they would use their system to achieve their goals.  And the story was so "sticky" that I had to keep re-writing sections.  It really did feel like pulling reluctant words from aether.

But the story I've ended up with answers all those questions, via aliens, high-tech blowpipes, and a spirituality that reveres the Great Hawk.  I do love it when a story comes together in this way, and the result is usually different from the sort of story that is born in a rush.

I entirely agree with Waits that stories come in different degrees of difficulty.  And sometimes the idea refuses to be pulled from the aether and the story has to be abandoned.  For now.