novel-sized ideas

Chelsea at LiveJournal has a wonderful and thoughtful post about novel-sized ideas. One of her points:

It’s a good idea to ask a question you can’t answer. This is closely related to themes, but what I’m thinking is a bit of a refinement. I could, for instance, write a story with a theme that’s important to me, like…oh…that balance is a dynamic, changing, active principle, and that the idea of balance as stability is a stagnation that inevitably leads to imbalance. I believe that abstraction. […]Asking a question that I can’t answer gives me the room i need to explore a theme and get into some uncomfortable, scary places with the hope of touching something more powerful.

She’s looking for a novel-sized idea herself, and I trust she’ll find one soon. Thanks to Sillybean for the link.