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stephbgFor reasons that now escape me I asked the people in my universe to offer suggestions for fiction writing exercises. Over the last couple of days, and particularly this evening, this has led me to discover a few important things. Important, at least, to me.
(1) Having ideas, or at least parasitical ones spawned from the suggestions of others, is easy.
(2) Composing lush prose in one's mind as you effortlessly take that seed and nurture it into a thing of creative beauty and awe-inspiring imagination is easy.
(3) Writing it down is difficult. Well, actually no, writing it down is easy. Writing it down well is bloody impossible.
(4) Trying to avoid the inescapable conclusion that one is full of crap is difficult.
Difficult, but not actually impossible. I don't believe I am *quite* full of crap, but since I do all my problem solving in images, shapes and concepts I can only imagine that:
(5) Over the last couple of days I've been imagining the *shape* of great stories, the *impression* of strings of perfect adjectives. The *concept* of perfect sentences.
I've been directing movies in my head without bothering to print the script first. And now it's time to write the script it won't come, because the projectionist has nipped out for a sandwich and I can't see the movie any more.
(6) I remember narrative and a direction, but the execution has been lost to me, if it was ever there at all. Note to self: leave the laptop ON.
Having realised I'm not all bad I relaxed and was able to remember more about those movies than I had when I started writing this post. (Gosh, would that be Lesson 1 of Writing: Write something, anything.) So what if my first attempt didn't produce 3000 words to make Gardiner Dozois weep and pull out a chequebook? Jeez, get a grip woman.
I remember that the detective-forgetting-the-client's-name story was actually supposed to be about aliens practising the Jedi Mind Trick for their invasion exams. The ultimate challenge was to feed information to an interested, engaged, curious and intelligent human being, and then make them forget. It featured inevitable gags about public servants being easier targets because they never paid attention and didn't want to remember, and aliens who failed the exam forced to repeat "Cattle Mutilation 101" and "Hick Taunting 103".
I remember that the train story was supposed to be about a patience vampire, riding the rails and loving nothing more than commuter chaos, occasionally helping it along by toying with switches, weather or maintenance gangs, or forcing victims on to the tracks purely to disrupt services. It also frequented emergency waiting rooms, banks, Centrelink offices and queues for women's toilets.
I remember that the country gothic story was supposed to be about a teenaged emo forced to move to a small country town by her parents and who unwillingly and secretly comes to appreciate the colours and textures of nature. There was supposed to be a fiendishly clever and subtle transition of the language of colours from violent (fire/blood/carapaces of cockroaches/roadkill) to relaxed (wildflowers, eyes, sky, water, the patterns of tree bark).
I remember that the fast food story was supposed to be about an assistant manager who was desperate to recruit team members, so summoned a demon and suffered the typical consequences when she broke her bonds and was as pissed off as you'd expect a demon to be under the circumstances. If you were a demon how would you react if someone had forced you to say "Do you want fries with that?". How much goat's blood an hour would compensate for that? Even if it did come mixed with Secret Sauce? (Actually, I think it *was* the Secret Sauce).
That last one was allegedly an original idea of mine, but I suspect that I stole it from some Buffy episode, despite being set in the bubbly Perth economy. If you know where I nicked it from do let me know. This is the one I started to write because I particularly enjoyed imagining the destructive rage bits (hmmmm) but it just wouldn't flow. What did come out was painful in all the wrong ways. Suddenly the phrase "savage joy as keen as lust ran through her veins" seemed just embarrassing.
I am still a little afraid for my creative soul, for I once swore that if I became a columnist of any kind (and blogging counts) I would never ever write the "I couldn't think of anything to write today" column, and this comes perilously close.
And the final lesson?
(7) Don't try to create tired, particularly when you're just doing it for art's sake and don't really have to, although I must say that despite this post being an art-is-hard whine it turned out much better than expected.
Therefore the actual final final lesson becomes:
(8) Don't try and force it :-)
Oh, and good for you horrotica writers out there who aren't baby-eating psychosexual sadistic fetishists in real life (the ones who are, er, hi). I appreciate your writing effort and skill even more. I suspect I'll leave you to it :-)
(1) Having ideas, or at least parasitical ones spawned from the suggestions of others, is easy.
(2) Composing lush prose in one's mind as you effortlessly take that seed and nurture it into a thing of creative beauty and awe-inspiring imagination is easy.
(3) Writing it down is difficult. Well, actually no, writing it down is easy. Writing it down well is bloody impossible.
(4) Trying to avoid the inescapable conclusion that one is full of crap is difficult.
Difficult, but not actually impossible. I don't believe I am *quite* full of crap, but since I do all my problem solving in images, shapes and concepts I can only imagine that:
(5) Over the last couple of days I've been imagining the *shape* of great stories, the *impression* of strings of perfect adjectives. The *concept* of perfect sentences.
I've been directing movies in my head without bothering to print the script first. And now it's time to write the script it won't come, because the projectionist has nipped out for a sandwich and I can't see the movie any more.
(6) I remember narrative and a direction, but the execution has been lost to me, if it was ever there at all. Note to self: leave the laptop ON.
Having realised I'm not all bad I relaxed and was able to remember more about those movies than I had when I started writing this post. (Gosh, would that be Lesson 1 of Writing: Write something, anything.) So what if my first attempt didn't produce 3000 words to make Gardiner Dozois weep and pull out a chequebook? Jeez, get a grip woman.
I remember that the detective-forgetting-the-client's-name story was actually supposed to be about aliens practising the Jedi Mind Trick for their invasion exams. The ultimate challenge was to feed information to an interested, engaged, curious and intelligent human being, and then make them forget. It featured inevitable gags about public servants being easier targets because they never paid attention and didn't want to remember, and aliens who failed the exam forced to repeat "Cattle Mutilation 101" and "Hick Taunting 103".
I remember that the train story was supposed to be about a patience vampire, riding the rails and loving nothing more than commuter chaos, occasionally helping it along by toying with switches, weather or maintenance gangs, or forcing victims on to the tracks purely to disrupt services. It also frequented emergency waiting rooms, banks, Centrelink offices and queues for women's toilets.
I remember that the country gothic story was supposed to be about a teenaged emo forced to move to a small country town by her parents and who unwillingly and secretly comes to appreciate the colours and textures of nature. There was supposed to be a fiendishly clever and subtle transition of the language of colours from violent (fire/blood/carapaces of cockroaches/roadkill) to relaxed (wildflowers, eyes, sky, water, the patterns of tree bark).
I remember that the fast food story was supposed to be about an assistant manager who was desperate to recruit team members, so summoned a demon and suffered the typical consequences when she broke her bonds and was as pissed off as you'd expect a demon to be under the circumstances. If you were a demon how would you react if someone had forced you to say "Do you want fries with that?". How much goat's blood an hour would compensate for that? Even if it did come mixed with Secret Sauce? (Actually, I think it *was* the Secret Sauce).
That last one was allegedly an original idea of mine, but I suspect that I stole it from some Buffy episode, despite being set in the bubbly Perth economy. If you know where I nicked it from do let me know. This is the one I started to write because I particularly enjoyed imagining the destructive rage bits (hmmmm) but it just wouldn't flow. What did come out was painful in all the wrong ways. Suddenly the phrase "savage joy as keen as lust ran through her veins" seemed just embarrassing.
I am still a little afraid for my creative soul, for I once swore that if I became a columnist of any kind (and blogging counts) I would never ever write the "I couldn't think of anything to write today" column, and this comes perilously close.
And the final lesson?
(7) Don't try to create tired, particularly when you're just doing it for art's sake and don't really have to, although I must say that despite this post being an art-is-hard whine it turned out much better than expected.
Therefore the actual final final lesson becomes:
(8) Don't try and force it :-)
Oh, and good for you horrotica writers out there who aren't baby-eating psychosexual sadistic fetishists in real life (the ones who are, er, hi). I appreciate your writing effort and skill even more. I suspect I'll leave you to it :-)
