In case you haven't, it's about a guy whose life turns to utter shit. Everything goes wrong. It gets bad. His wife dies, he loses his house, his career is a shambles. Rough shit. He screams at the skies for God to explain Himself, and in response, his dog is struck by lightning and killed. This guy then decides that he's going to dedicate his life to breaking all Ten Commandments. Yeah, that's kind of a weird subject for a romantic comedy. (No, I'm not kidding. This is a romantic comedy.)
I remember seeing this movie when it first came out, and as I watched this guy try to fulfill his quest, I started thinking that he was wasting a lot of time breaking them one at a time. And then I tried coming up with a single act that would break them all at the same time.
These are the kinds of thoughts that run through my head when I see a list of things someone's not supposed to do. Which leads me to something else.
I've tried to get published a few times in STRANGE HORIZONS, and I sent in a new submission this morning. They have an interesting list of things writers shouldn't do, which you can read here. They update it sometimes, so I thought I'd read it again. This is a great list, and I agree with almost all of it. But there's that slightly masochistic streak in me that spoke up, the same part of me that wanted to think up of a single act to break all Ten Commandments at once.
God help me, I suddenly wanted to write a story that violated every single item on this list. 51 rules to break, to say nothing of the 65 sub-rules. And I actually started brainstorming what such a tale would consist of. Just for a writing exercise, of course. But still.
I think I might have a problem.
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