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Original writing update
Oct. 17th, 2024 05:29 pmSee a submissions call for a cool-looking poetry thing. Google for more information. First hit is the anthology website. Ask editor to be more specific about what they're looking for. Response is "whatever you want it to mean." Procrastinate two months. Draft something. Set it aside for a day to edit knowing perfectly well I will be busy the next couple days and likely forget. Be busy for next couple days and forget. Sleeping off a migraine, wake up at quarter to four and go "when was the deadline for that." Find out the deadline is that day (the day that's just started, not the one that ended). Reread poem and send off. Wake up at quarter to six. Thinking about "the line count wasn't right, did I accidentally skip a line?" Double-check and see that I did. Add missing line and re-submit. So, there's that. Wish me luck.
One issue I am susceptible to (there are many issues, this is just one) is reading something by someone else, not getting it, and going "am I too stupid, is there something wrong with me, is this one of those where the teacher is trying to coax you to magically come up with his deep interpretation"?) Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory / True Art Is Incomprehensible. So then it's like, "clearly when I'm writing a story, I need to only hint at the edges of what's going on and make the readers jump to a conclusion, because they have neurotypical superpowers and they can do that." Which...doesn't always work.
A couple years ago I wrote a flash fiction piece for a contest, told by a narrator who had undergone some type of memory modification. It's susceptible to the above problems (what has been removed from her memory? Why?) Didn't progress. Later I expanded it into a 5k piece with more of a plot, and (hopefully) less superpower-conclusion-jumping, but that hasn't gotten any takers either.
Saw a call for submissions for "altered memories," etc. Intriguing. But they're looking for things in the 1000-2000 word range. That's pretty narrow, I'm not sure the existing story would work...
Was randomly browsing blogs and saw someone (who I don't know) reviewing another book (which I haven't read) and pointing out "this POV choice is original has some risks associated with it, I think the author pulls it off well, but there could be Unfortunate Implications..." Which, naturally, makes me wonder "what other kinds of setups could be just as provocative (but probably less interesting POV-wise...)"
Someone once made the point that speculative fiction can easily lean progressive, not in the sense of "everything the left-wing party agrees with" but in the sense of "not conservative"--you can worldbuild societies that are very different from ours, and have that not be the main point of the story, just a way of making readers wonder "hmm, what if the world worked like this"? If you're trying to write a story where the subtext is "the old ways are the best ways, actually," it's hard to tell the difference between "the setting is a faux-medieval village because the author wants you to appreciate medieval customs," or "the setting is a faux-medieval village because the author just likes the ~aesthetic~." Whereas, if you try to write a parodic take on "here's why the kids these days are wrong," it often comes off as heavy-handed and unfunny.
But I recently had success with a story where I was like "I'm going to try to illustrate a conservative idea, but that's not the main point of the story, the main point of the story is about extraterrestrials." And so now, I tried again, with "yeah, there are some ideas that might be unsettling, but that's not the main thrust of the story, the story is about something else." The setting might be utopian in some ways, but dystopian in others. And again, it's possible that anything subversive might fly completely under the radar because I'm expecting people to have superpowers that they don't actually possess. Which...yeah, it could backfire, it could be terrible, but...wish me luck. (The magic in use is kind of similar to the original altered-memories story, so perhaps they're set in different regions of the same world.) Anyway, 2k is not a very high max, I was able to bang it out pretty quickly, and then come up with a punny title, so I'll probably have time to send it off and get it rejected a couple times before the memory-alterations window opens ;)
I was not thinking about this when writing it, but afterwards, I wonder whether some of Bujold's themes were a subconscious influence. Perhaps. I could do a lot worse!
One issue I am susceptible to (there are many issues, this is just one) is reading something by someone else, not getting it, and going "am I too stupid, is there something wrong with me, is this one of those where the teacher is trying to coax you to magically come up with his deep interpretation"?) Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory / True Art Is Incomprehensible. So then it's like, "clearly when I'm writing a story, I need to only hint at the edges of what's going on and make the readers jump to a conclusion, because they have neurotypical superpowers and they can do that." Which...doesn't always work.
A couple years ago I wrote a flash fiction piece for a contest, told by a narrator who had undergone some type of memory modification. It's susceptible to the above problems (what has been removed from her memory? Why?) Didn't progress. Later I expanded it into a 5k piece with more of a plot, and (hopefully) less superpower-conclusion-jumping, but that hasn't gotten any takers either.
Saw a call for submissions for "altered memories," etc. Intriguing. But they're looking for things in the 1000-2000 word range. That's pretty narrow, I'm not sure the existing story would work...
Was randomly browsing blogs and saw someone (who I don't know) reviewing another book (which I haven't read) and pointing out "this POV choice is original has some risks associated with it, I think the author pulls it off well, but there could be Unfortunate Implications..." Which, naturally, makes me wonder "what other kinds of setups could be just as provocative (but probably less interesting POV-wise...)"
Someone once made the point that speculative fiction can easily lean progressive, not in the sense of "everything the left-wing party agrees with" but in the sense of "not conservative"--you can worldbuild societies that are very different from ours, and have that not be the main point of the story, just a way of making readers wonder "hmm, what if the world worked like this"? If you're trying to write a story where the subtext is "the old ways are the best ways, actually," it's hard to tell the difference between "the setting is a faux-medieval village because the author wants you to appreciate medieval customs," or "the setting is a faux-medieval village because the author just likes the ~aesthetic~." Whereas, if you try to write a parodic take on "here's why the kids these days are wrong," it often comes off as heavy-handed and unfunny.
But I recently had success with a story where I was like "I'm going to try to illustrate a conservative idea, but that's not the main point of the story, the main point of the story is about extraterrestrials." And so now, I tried again, with "yeah, there are some ideas that might be unsettling, but that's not the main thrust of the story, the story is about something else." The setting might be utopian in some ways, but dystopian in others. And again, it's possible that anything subversive might fly completely under the radar because I'm expecting people to have superpowers that they don't actually possess. Which...yeah, it could backfire, it could be terrible, but...wish me luck. (The magic in use is kind of similar to the original altered-memories story, so perhaps they're set in different regions of the same world.) Anyway, 2k is not a very high max, I was able to bang it out pretty quickly, and then come up with a punny title, so I'll probably have time to send it off and get it rejected a couple times before the memory-alterations window opens ;)
I was not thinking about this when writing it, but afterwards, I wonder whether some of Bujold's themes were a subconscious influence. Perhaps. I could do a lot worse!
