30 days of fanfic meme, question 19

19 – When you have bunnies story ideas, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?

Neither, most of the time. Occasionally an idea will really grab me and I'll want to start immediately, but my more usual response is to wait a while and see if it goes away. If it doesn't go away, it tends to grow and hopefully connect with other ideas I have and an actual story takes shape, as opposed to "I want to write about Charles in hospital post-movie accidentally telepathically reaching out to Erik while he's unconscious/asleep, and Erik experiencing Charles's pain and fear as a result and thinking Charles is punishing him." (Which is an idea I'm kicking around for someday when I'm done with the story I'm working on, but which has kind of remained stuck at the basic idea stage so may not be workable.)

I tend to have more ideas than I have time to start, and I start far more stories than I ever finish. *eyes WIPs sadly* Seriously, I have about 10,000 words of Hot Fuzz fic which is a completed draft, damn it, but I just can't seem to get around to revising it. And several thousand words of Henry-centric Sanctuary fic, now jossed but still workable as an AU, which I like a lot in part because I'm experimenting with multiple points of view. It was supposed to be finished before the midseason hiatus ended; now I'm just hoping I can get it done before the next season starts. (I'm unlikely to work on either one for a while, because I am in the flush of renewed X-Men love and cannot think about anything but Erik Lehnsherr.)

clothing question

Do any of you happen to know whether good quality men's trousers in the early 1960s would've had zip flies or button flies?

And, yes, this is very much me wondering whether Erik could at least attempt to undo Charles's flies with his mind. (Erik's going to decide not to try it, on the grounds that too much could go wrong . . . )