Category: Writing

I finally have a bit of free time again, and I’m finishing the migration from AO3 I started a few years ago. I want to be able to put my stuff up in one place, keep original fiction with the fanfic, and make stuff I intend to publish generally available before publishing.

So what would make it better?

If you have other ideas, let me know. I’ll add them to the poll.

You want more of the kid’s stuff? Fanfic?

I was lurking AO3’s subreddit and found a series of threads about readers who found stories they liked but had been discontinued. The OPs asked what they should do, and invariably, the responses consisted of other people telling OP not to bother the original author.

I find that response incomprehensible. Don’t give offense by telling the author you like some material and gentle urging them to write more? That sentence doesn’t make sense to me. Sure, don’t be a jerk about it. That, obviously. But don’t write, ‘Dear Besty, I love your story, and hope you find inspiration to write more,’ letters for fear of passing insult???? Knock yourself out.

Don’t call me Betsy, but that’s about the only concern I have. If I don’t find inspiration, I won’t write more. I won’t be offended if you ask.

Mind: if that’s etiquette, I won’t do it to others. Different strokes for different folks, et al.

My thinking runs toward making things easier to find. I like the regularity of deadlines, and while I’m not cleaving to them, I do generally like having targets to hit. That means weekly Twilight in Heaven updates, generally at noon, Sundays MDT. I’ve got some stability here.

Fridays of Karesh Ni, also theoretically at noon, take the first slot of flex updates. I do have a job, go to school, and go outside, and sometimes something has to give. I’m going to keep working on it. That’s certain. But it’s early enough hat I’m still making big changes, and every now and then the river changes its route. I was at such a point last week when I got sick. Thankfully, I got lucky and did well, but that took my feet out from under me. I went down in the water.

But that’s the joy of writing. It can’t actually kill you! It just takes a bit.

Between irregularly updating when I can or holding until I can put stuff forward fairly consistently, what do you think?

I’ve got no one in the real world to talk fiction with. The internet is one thing, but I wish I had some people to nerd out about plot threads with.

Denver writing groups are all so serious, and they’re all on Zoom, writing literature. I show up with dragons and bad puns, and it goes over like a fart in church.

So narrator Alice is overhearing Bob and Charlie talking. I need Bob and Charlie to mention they’re going to do a little murder. I’ve got a few difficulties.

First, arguments in the real world sound unrealistic, because most arguments in the real world consist of two people saying the same thing over and over again. Listen to some old, bitter argument. There’s no new information; the people just keep bringing up the same information that they think the other party isn’t properly weighing. If Bob thinks they shouldn’t do the murder because they’ll get caught, but Charlie really doesn’t like Danielle, Bob will really just keep saying, ‘But we’ll get caught!’ over and over again. That doesn’t sound real in text. Likewise, Bob will start harping on how much he doesn’t want to go to jail, get killed by the police, why the investigators will catch them, etc. It’s all stuff Charlie already knows but isn’t weighing as heavily as Bob thinks he should. It’s called maid-and-butler dialogue, two people saying things they already know for the benefit of the audience, but it’s how people talk.

They talk like that when they’re performing for someone. Either themselves or an audience, but they’re performing.

In politics, you know the conversation has halted when people talk to the press like this. ‘I believe in America!’ or ‘We need to help the people!’ These are both obvious statements, and Party A could or should know Party B knows them already. But Party B isn’t weighing a point as heavily as Party A thinks they should. So the truisms reappear, and Party A will say one to the media because they’re performing now, not seriously trying to move ahead.

I’ve worked with teenagers a few times, and they’re a lot of fun (as an adult) when they’re not performing. If they’re performing for each other or themselves, they’re infuriating.

The proverbial maid and butler are performing for the audience. People in real arguments where the positions have calcified are performing for themselves. They’ve visualized this, practiced this, thought about it in the shower and while cooking, and now they’re doing what they practiced. It’s a show where the audience and performer are one.

But for all that it happens in the real world all the time, it sounds terrible and gets me no closer to Bob and Charlie confirming to the eavesdropping narrator that they’re going to do a little murder.

Me: My favorite form of punctuation is the interrobang.

Her: What‽

I got about 60k words into something before really internalizing that setting and world aren’t the same.

The setting is the scene. It’s the hotel, the dragon’s lair, battlefield, or bar. The world is the connection between settings. The world dictates whether the hotel takes payment in dollars, doubloons, or credits. It determines the species of dragon, whether they are multitude or singular. Why are the armies battling? What kind of people are in the bar?

The best way to get to the world is through settings. If the hotel has some people, those people tell the readers concrete specifics about who lives in the world. If the old guys at the bar are complaining about passage rates to Alpha Proxima or the recent profusion of dragons, we know even more.

But the setting tells us more, things that can be in any world. Are A and B having a relationship argument? That’s common to all worlds with people as we know them. Their specifics are useful to the world, but we can’t have their argument about forces of nature, light speed, and good versus evil. They need to be mad about needs, who keeps eating the leftover cake, and why A keeps looking at C. Your story is based on setting. It takes place in the world.

They’re close but not the same.

I read somewhere that stress can be turned to excitement and vice versa largely through mental activity. The claim seems a little excessive, but the cost of trying it is low. Changing my internal monologue from ‘This is going to be rough’ to ‘This is going to be exciting’ is a low-cost activity, and if it works, even a little, good.

Of course I’m not really expecting this to do a whole lot by itself, but I compare it to drinking more water. If you need water, just drink more water (provided you can, yadda yadda). There’s low cost.

Anyway, I’ve got 6 weeks before things get crazy again. 6 weeks. I’m really going to try to knock out my Kindle Vella project and make some progress on the research. With luck I can get the first done and out my door, and if I can finish the FPGA work and segue into the physical detector, the latter will have made big gains.

6 weeks.

This is going to be exciting.

There’s this weird feeling when I realize I’ve written myself into a corner, where the problems can’t be evaded. A yogi couldn’t stretch through this. And I’m merely flailing. I needed to establish arcs, flesh out details, and establish cast 50k words ago.

And then I think, oh right, second draft time. That’s what this is: time for a second draft. There’s a term for it.

And all the tension, frustration, and questions collapse into anticlimax.