– Or Why Writing Is Hard, Part One Billion –
If you pay attention to my blog at all, you will notice that I deleted a story called ‘The Precession’ that I wrote about two-ish weeks ago. This is because I re-read it and really, really, really hated it. And that’s fine. It was a first draft, and first drafts are allowed to suck. Not everything I write can be awesome (though, it does mean I am now down a blog post).
Thing is, I’m now rewriting this story, and it’s hard. I have to put myself in this terrible, awful mental state to get anything close to what this character is feeling and it’s difficult. One, I’m not missing any limbs, so the closest I can get to the pain of having those replaced is imagining what I would do in the event of an amputation. How would I react? But I’m me, and this character is Cedar, and Cedar is more stoic than I am. She is less willing to cry or admit frustration. How do I portray that? How in the bloody *@$^ am I supposed to convey what she’s going through?
So, I’m writing it in blurbs, in small paragraphs and short sentences, and right now my story is the most disjointed thing I have ever seen. I’m terrified that I’m not going to get it done in time or that it will be just as bad or worse than my first draft. I sit down, look at my word document, and cringe.
So far, I seem to be doing alright. I have an idea, I have a focus, and I only have two full scenes that I have to work on. Really, it shouldn’t be this hard. But it is. It always is. Writing takes everything out of me (unless it’s ‘fun’ writing. Like fluffy, sappy, sunshine-and-rainbows writing) and it is hard on my emotions. I have to pt myself in the situations my characters are in and it takes every ounce of sanity you have just to get the words on paper.
That, I think, makes stories real. I can only hope this one is as real for others as it is for me.
March 17, 2013
On Transhumanism
emigee93 Cedar Reeves, other vague tags, rewriting, short stories, transhumanism, writing Self, Writing 0 Comments
– Or The Individual Dystopia –
I am just going to make this disclaimer now: I am probably full of bulls*** regarding this topic. I’ll be making references to materials that explain Transhumanism and the like, so it’s best to go there for more accurate information. Most of this is just referencial knowledge and brainstorming that I am using to write a story. Thank you for indugling me.
Today, in my creative writing class, we had a discussion on what it meant to be human, and…sort of, what it meant to be a woman, because of a short story I rewrote a couple of weeks ago. The story that I put up and took down almost immediately. It evolved into this fairly philosophical debate about the world I was creating and the social situations I had put my character in (much to my dispair – I actually wanted feed back on how I wrote the piece, more so than my content). So, I thought of a question – had I displayed the dystopia I was attempting to adequately enough?
“No” was the definitive answer (from my own inner critic) so I went back to the drawing board. What was so ‘bad’ about transhumanism, at least in this character’s case, and why does it isolate her?
So I started with transhumanism – or H+ – which is the idea that, at some point, humanity will have the technology to enhance our strength, senses, minds, to previously unheard of heights. [For more info go here, here, here, and here.] That affects my character in this way – she didn’t choose to augment herself, and so she is having trouble adjusting. She has a tendency to blame most of her psychological problems on the tech that’s keeping her alive, which causes the people around her much frustration. She also is now faced with prejudices she previously didn’t think much of.
This is why the universe around my character isolates her. She is judged harshly almost every time she leaves her apartment. It’s difficult for her to do rudimentary tasks with out breaking things or taking too long to execute them. This forces her into a corner she had never previously been in, and sort of distils her natural sarcastic personality into this sort of cynical one.
I want to show this, and the story in its current form does not do an adequate job of really defining the world and my character’s problems with it. So, it will require another round of rewrite-your-story-from-scratch, but it will be worth it.