On Writing

I was reading an article on horror done by a college English professor, which includes a lot of references to the reaction of his students. Among the things it brought to mind were my own reactions to English Lit classes.
specifically: "Ugh"

Lucky for me I started reading at a very early age, so even the dread of literary analysis couldn't entirely sap me of my love for the written word. It was a close thing though. Let's face it, I seriously doubt anyone involved in producing early writing or type setting or anything else involved in the art ever expected to have a roomful of people carefully analyzing some of the dullest phrases for their "deeper meanings." I can remember a three page short taking as many weeks because so much time was spent on "understanding" the "deeper meanings" within the work. In the mean time we all completely forgot what the book was about. A three page story and every one of us managed to forget who the main character was.

Well despite this horror, I've started to write anyway. I just hope noone is ever subjected to a search for meaning in any of my stories in some English class. I remember one teacher making it quite clear that despite my best efforts at producing a story with ABSOLUTELY no meaning beyond what is said in the words, it had that meaning anyway and we had best discover it. Ugh.

I suppose it's likely it did have some sort of meaning. This stuff usually does, but that doesn't mean you were meant to spend weeks over-analyzing it. If it comes to you, great, you've gotten more out of it then you expected. If not, well I hope you enjoyed the show.

(p.s. the title is a reference to a book of the same title by Stephen King. You should read it.)

Borg Dreams: Some Commentary

One of the main elements of the upcoming short story was a difficult thing to handle. Basically it seemed to create some potential future plot holes, creating an element that would be difficult to rectify. As one of my supporters said to me, "the great thing about fiction is you can make anything work." Some rules in the story had to be changed to keep the story, but it was an important enough element to make this worth while. To be honest I didn't think it needed to remain. The story just felt entirely wrong without it. I could hear my characters saying, "knock it off! Tell it straight or don't tell it!"
So there it is, and hopefully someone will enjoy it when it's done.

I've now outlined a new scene and extended another one, and the original outline is now in rough-draft form. The first draft of the story should be done this week.

Borg Dreams: Updates and Analysis

I've decided to catalogue a bit of what I'm doing here. Alot of people are interested in the process of writing and often ask authors how they do it and how they get their ideas. I thought it'd be interesting to keep some notes as I'm pretty much learning this stuff now. At the least it will be interesting for me to come back and look at it later, and see what I was thinking, be it good or bad.

The first story in the Borg Dreams series is under way, and is going to be a short story. The idea came from a mix of horror and "alternate reality" ideas inspired by Stephen King, numerous Twilight zone episodes and other horror and sci-fi as well as the already (partially) created Borg Dreams back story. It leaves much open and hints at alot of what's to come.

For now, the outline is finished but I'm doing some research and imagination into technologies and events of the world this takes place in. It does take place on Earth in a time not far off from our own, which makes for an easy starting point. Aside from sci-fi and horror, the series is also going to take alot from cyber-punk and various dystopian/utopian literature.

This being my first attempt at a major story, I'm not setting any deadlines, but I am setting aside two days a week when I'm not alowed to do anything but work on this, so I can be sure to be getting somewhere. Once I know my own writing habits better, I'll be able to give myself more of a schedule.

For the curious, there will be at least 3 types of interstellar travel. Warp, Hyper, and Wormhole (though they may have different names) and possibly an extra one between Hyper and Wormhole, a type of "trans-warp" or "super-warp" (still looking for a name) that relies on some ideas of string theory and M-theory. You can see my comments on warp and wormhole travel in earlier posts.