Wannabe Writers Writing: Revisions, Feedback, Evil Chickens

This is the short story I submitted for a local creative writing contest for the local artsy-fartsy mag at the beginning of the year. I came in second, prize was $100. The top 10 or so all got published, but the winner got hired as a freelancer for a year, continuing the story he started every two weeks.

It's a done deal and all, just thought I'd post it for the bored and curious.

Clem: it's a great setting and hits one the points of McGonigals talk very nicely. As for the darker implications of that talk, I trust you saw Jesse Schell's talk at DICE 2010? Basically makes the point that achievements can be used to modify behaviour. See also the concept of 'whuffie' in Cory Doctorow's 'Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom' for a similar theme in fiction (not to mention a damn good read).

Thanks again folks.

I wanted to briefly say something about idea hording. Once upon a time I had a text file where I stored little snippets of maybe-stories: ideas for characters, or character traits, or interesting scenes, or words that I really liked and wanted to use again sometime (Triskaidekaphobia!).

I wouldn't let anyone see this text file, because I somehow managed to convince myself that people were going to rob me of my 'great ideas'. So I had all this sh*t saved up for when I finally got around to a grand novel, or a big project, or whatever it was that was supposed to make me famous. Pretty narcissistic, right? And the worst part is that I had somehow psyched myself into thinking that all of these pieces were just going to fall into place -- one day -- and the most epic piece of literature of all time was just gonna reveal itself.

Anyway, it struck me recently that this is absolutely the stupidest-ass way to go about doing things. If you have a 'great idea', it needs to be tested. It needs to get launched out into the public sphere, where it can be criticized and refined and where you will find out fairly quickly if your 'great idea' is derivative or not so great after all. And if you're saving all your best stuff for some sort of grand reveal, well, from personal experience, I'm willing to bet that you'll be waiting for your grand reveal for your entire life.

It's sort of like putting a girl you really like onto a pedestal. The reality is that she is fallible; she will have faults, just like every other person. But because you've spent so much time thinking about her, banking everything on the perfection that you yourself have manufactured, you will have a hell of a difficult time approaching her. The fact that you think she's impossibly great is only going to stop you from actually getting anything done -- talking to her, getting her number, kidnapping her in the trunk of your car, whatever.

If you have the 'perfect story' or 'perfect scene' or whatever floating around in your head, it is going to be more and more difficult to turn that idea into a tangible piece of writing the longer you hold onto it in its ideal, non-corporeal form. A flawed something is still better than a perfect hypothetical.

Clemenstation wrote:

If you have the 'perfect story' or 'perfect scene' or whatever floating around in your head, it is going to be more and more difficult to turn that idea into a tangible piece of writing the longer you hold onto it in its ideal, non-corporeal form. A flawed something is still better than a perfect hypothetical.

This is my biggest struggle as a writer. When I write something, no matter how good it is, it inevitably pales in comparison to the ideal story I've envisioned. I realized recently that I've written thousands of words here at GWJ, but I've not written more than a few hundred words of fiction in years. The difference is that I'm not expecting my words here to be flawless. I'm perfectly willing to dash off something that's functional in favor of laboring over something that's elegant. It's difficult for me to write a first draft, with all of the slop and mess that goes into one, because it jars with the much better draft in my head.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

This is my biggest struggle as a writer. When I write something, no matter how good it is, it inevitably pales in comparison to the ideal story I've envisioned. I realized recently that I've written thousands of words here at GWJ, but I've not written more than a few hundred words of fiction in years. The difference is that I'm not expecting my words here to be flawless. I'm perfectly willing to dash off something that's functional in favor of laboring over something that's elegant. It's difficult for me to write a first draft, with all of the slop and mess that goes into one, because it jars with the much better draft in my head.

Right, so it seems to me like what needs to happen is a deliberate shattering of this idealism; an acknowledgement that what you write will never be as good as you hope, but at least it will be writing.

Strangely enough I applied the same logic to Final Fantasy IX the other day. I always get railroaded while playing this game, by my own Collector's Disorder and the game's cruel habit of displaying treasure chests that you've missed and can never obtain. Used to be that this would gnaw at me until I would just give up my playthrough, bogged down by the knowledge that I'll never have 100% of the items or whatever. But now I'm thinking, "Jesus Christ, this is the fifth time I've tried to finish this game. I know I missed that chest and I'll never be able to get it, so my playthrough won't be perfect, but you know what? I'd rather have one complete playthrough at 75% than nothing at all."

Blind_Evil wrote:

This is the short story I submitted for a local creative writing contest for the local artsy-fartsy mag at the beginning of the year. I came in second, prize was $100. The top 10 or so all got published, but the winner got hired as a freelancer for a year, continuing the story he started every two weeks.

It's a done deal and all, just thought I'd post it for the bored and curious.

I read this earlier this afternoon.

Things I liked:

The title, and the note about breasts immediately after. See, it seems like a facile connection at first, then you start reading the story and forget about the title. Then you get to the bit at the very end about how Amy is taken, and realize the title is exceptionally appropriate because she's not looking for any kind of commitment, and is actually the proverbial cow. Very nice.

The list reminds me a bit of High Fidelity.

The writing is short and choppy, adequately descriptive without being overbearing.

The list-items-as-headings chunk up the story into nice, bite-sized sections.

Use of profanity without coming off as gratuitous or needlessly excessive.

Things I tripped up on:

3 sets of parentheses in the first paragraph.

Is Brad's girlfriend ACTUALLY blind, or just blind to the situation?

What's with the narrator? He inserts himself as a character from the very first sentence, stating that he is friends with Brad. Later the narrator reveals that Brad told him that Amy working the front desk is how she's so good with men. So he's presumably a person, not omniscient.

So who, exactly, is this guy? And more disturbingly, how does he know all these intimate details about what Brad and Amy are doing in supply closets? How does he know Brad's pants are too tight?

Clemenstation wrote:

Things I tripped up on:

3 sets of parentheses in the first paragraph.

Is Brad's girlfriend ACTUALLY blind, or just blind to the situation?

What's with the narrator? He inserts himself as a character from the very first sentence, stating that he is friends with Brad. Later the narrator reveals that Brad told him that Amy working the front desk is how she's so good with men. So he's presumably a person, not omniscient.

So who, exactly, is this guy? And more disturbingly, how does he know all these intimate details about what Brad and Amy are doing in supply closets? How does he know Brad's pants are too tight?

-Yeah, maybe the parentheses are a bit odd. I'd never given it any thought, and had no readers with real literary chops to point it out at the time of submission.

-This was a fairly autobiographical piece, and Brad was myself, Amy a girl I used to work with, and his girlfriend my ex. The blindness was what passes for cleverness in my head. My ex was long-distance, so she could never "see" the bouts of grabass I had with the inspiration for Amy. I realize now that this was a sh*tty thing to do, but I was an immature 21, and long-distances over 6 months could get lonely. This was also written post breakup, so I was also a little bitter.

-The story was supposed to be extended over the course of a year, about 24,000 words total. The trick was making interesting characters and an engaging situation with such a tight word limit (1000). Anyway, I was tossing hints in there that you picked up on that Brad was the narrator, telling the story in anonymity due to shame. That was going to be revealed over the course of the story.

Thanks for the read, glad you came away mostly pleased.

Blind_Evil wrote:

-The story was supposed to be extended over the course of a year, about 24,000 words total. The trick was making interesting characters and an engaging situation with such a tight word limit (1000). Anyway, I was tossing hints in there that you picked up on that Brad was the narrator, telling the story in anonymity due to shame. That was going to be revealed over the course of the story.

Ahhh, okay. That makes a whole lot of sense then. Sometimes the context of submission requirements is helpful when trying to figure out a story (and why it ends so abruptly, in this case). Pretty tough to sell a 24 000 word story based on a 1000 word intro, I would imagine.

Clemenstation wrote:

I wanted to briefly say something about idea hording.

I often write ideas, jokes and other whatevers in a text file and hide them away in a folder. Not because anyone is going to steal them, but because I tend to be forgetful. After enough time has passed and I've essentially forgotten everything in there, I'll go back through it. It's fun to see it all over again for the first time. It's almost like it wasn't my idea, so I can be more critical of it. I end up throwing a lot of stuff away, but some of it I manage to salvage and eventually use.

My favorite stuff is always the stuff I wrote down after consuming some sort of mind-altering substance, since it's often out of context and weird. "Mashed potato horse c*ck" will never, ever be used, but I'll always remember it because I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to mean.

Sadly, I currently have no new ideas for stories at the moment. Unless...

A website analyzes your writing and says which famous author you write like.

It says I write like Kurt Vonnegut, which is impossible because he loathed semicolons; I use them compulsively.

Actually, I can already tell you who I write like when I'm composing fiction: one part William Faulkner, one part José Saramago, one part James Joyce. Yes, I like long sentences and complex syntaxes, thank you very much.

Based on my Wheaton/Scalzi story, I write like Nabokov.

Based on What To Do With Player Two and The Last of the Buffalo and pretty much all of my GWJ articles, I write like David Foster Wallace.

Kind of a cool concept, although I really wish they had a summary explaining key components of each authors' style (like Vonnegut's loathing of semicolons, for example?).

Clemenstation wrote:

Based on my Wheaton/Scalzi story, I write like Nabokov.

I don't really see that one; no offense.

Clemenstation wrote:

Based on What To Do With Player Two and The Last of the Buffalo and pretty much all of my GWJ articles, I write like David Foster Wallace.

This one, though, rings true. I haven't read a lot of David Foster Wallace, but based on what I have read, your styles match up pretty well. I still think you write like Sam Lipsyte.

Clemenstation wrote:

Kind of a cool concept, although I really wish they had a summary explaining key components of each authors' style (like Vonnegut's loathing of semicolons, for example?).

That would be nice. I suspect that it's based on things like sentence length, word length, proportion of dialogue to exposition, etc., but it'd be nice to see all of that explained.

Using the first revision of the story I posted here, it puts me as David Foster Wallace. The second revision, Margaret Atwood. I have never read anything by either of these authors.

Using something else I started writing recently, it says Ian Fleming.

Using something I wrote when I was in high school, it says Neil Gaiman.

I question the usefulness of this thing.

I got the same answer for two different styles of writing, one for work and one for fiction: Steven King. I'm going to assume it's a system like ClockworseHouse describes. I don't think anyone expects it to be useful for anything other than a diversion.

It correctly identified a passage from Huck Finn as being written like Mark Twain. I don't know if there's word matching or whatever.

Apparently, the final chapter of the epic multi-part Max Applesauce and the Breakfast saga is written in a similar style to Dan Brown's. I whole-heartedly agree.

P.S. Part 2 is Stephen King, Part 1 is P.G. Wodehouse (I have no idea who that is), and Max Applesauce and the Magical Tragical Unicorn is Margaret Atwood (never read anything from her).

MechaSlinky wrote:

Part 1 is P.G. Wodehouse (I have no idea who that is)

High praise! Wodehouse is the funniest writer of the 20th century. Wrote a ton of books, but the most famous are the 'Jeeves' books about a minor English lord and his butler. Check em out!

(Sorry, know it's a digression, but Wodehouse kicks serious ass.)

jonstock wrote:
MechaSlinky wrote:

Part 1 is P.G. Wodehouse (I have no idea who that is)

High praise! Wodehouse is the funniest writer of the 20th century. Wrote a ton of books, but the most famous are the 'Jeeves' books about a minor English lord and his butler. Check em out!

(Sorry, know it's a digression, but Wodehouse kicks serious ass.)

Wow, you can get 33 of his novels on the Kindle for $0.99, and the Jeeves Collection. Hard to say no.

Using the story I posted a couple pages, I write like Chuck Palahniuk.

Alright, I'll play along. Using the last edit of Remnant, I apparently write like some guy named James Fenimore Cooper. Never heard of him.

EDIT: I BEAT YOU ALL. Using Legacy of the Keepers, I write like William Shakespeare. BOOYAH.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/7CbbQ.jpg)

Okay that is just excellent.

NSMike wins the thread.

So I took the concept from that picture and reapplied it. I inserted the same text but changed Edward Cullen to various other words. Here's what I came up with:

cocaine - David Foster Wallace
whiskey - Ernest Hemingway
bourbon - Ian Fleming
breasts (also penis) - Anne Rice
haunted - Mary Shelley
coffee - Raymond Chandler
blowjob (also abortion) - Stephen King
handjob - Cory Doctorow
bareback - James Joyce
clowns - Harry Harrison

I finally started writing Bruticus Bear today. Not the setting and ideas; I've been adding notes for weeks. But today I started writing the very first chapter.

I am aiming to get 500 words out per day.

500 is a good amount to shoot for on average, but if it's flowing, let it flow. If you get 2 pages out in half an hour, keep it going, ride the inspiration til it stops. Do you go any particular place to write? I can't in the house. I have to go to a restaurant or something.

Blind_Evil wrote:

500 is a good amount to shoot for on average, but if it's flowing, let it flow. If you get 2 pages out in half an hour, keep it going, ride the inspiration til it stops. Do you go any particular place to write? I can't in the house. I have to go to a restaurant or something.

Yeah, I don't see 500 as a deadlock stop point, but rather a minimum goal to shoot for so things can keep rolling from day to day. I am pretty meticulous as I go, so unfortunately 2 pages in 30 minutes is a rarity for me. I just chug out sentences that I like and keep rolling forward, don't really do the style where you pound words out on the page with the idea of making them better later. And I can write in the house but usually only when I'm the only one home.

I've been having a serious creative block recently, and I can't figure out any way to get around it. So, I'm going to ask that anyone give me a location, an object, and a verb, and I'm going to try to write a story with that. I'm going to try not to turn this into just another Max Applesauce-esque story, but most likely that's exactly what's going to happen, but without Max Applesauce in it. It's most definitely not going to be very good. Even so, if this works then perhaps I'll be able to push through this block and do something worthwhile with my existence.

Frying cheese on a grill in Hell.

Library, rifle, hairsplitting.