Scrabble Story Week 1 ("lost" 25-31 January 2010) Writer's Notes
Author's notes below cut so as not to bias anyone's reading or review, not that anyone will do either. dunerat read but will probably not remember to review, and I doubt anyone else will bother.
I started out saying that I didn't really like this particular story but it thought might have some low-level version of literary merit. Honestly, the idea of it has grown on me until I can honestly say I do like it, even as I realize just how much revision I need to do.
The whole last half of the thing came out really rushed and really failed to convey what I wanted it to, but that's mostly because I was sitting on the bed next to dunerat an hour before the deadline trying to finish so I could cook dinner and make him stop poking me. I fully intend to sit down, soon-ish, with more time and revise the thing into some like its real potential. I did manage to get words on paper in some kind of complete form, and honestly, as a writer, the ability to do that and come back to revise later, instead of agonizing for three days over each sentence and never getting anything done, is a step forward and one of the things I hope to gain from this project.
What I was going for was some sort of weird-ass fusion of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men", LOST, and "Bookends" by Simon & Garfunkel.
The idea was that the two nameless characters in the front seat were so completely obsessed with their own discourse-- talk for its own sake, completely disconnected from reality, had for them become a means rather than an end-- and trivia that they lost all attachment to the world around them. They talk and debate and spout facts and references ad nauseum, but neither of them notices the scenery around them; it is Anna who appreciates the scenic drive, who notices the changes and the fact that the car is out of gas.
They also have so completely devoted their priorities to talk for its own sake that the question of how to extricate themselves from the wasteland never even occurs to them, and when the time comes for action they are paralyzed by talk, and it is Anna who is able to act and escape.
It's significant, or at least deliberate, that only Anna has a name and a physical description. The impression I wanted to give is that the other two characters were so completely lost in their ivory-tower world of theory and trivia that they had become only the embodiment of that, not real people anymore.
The driver and the girl, the nameless two, are sort of a critique of the ivory tower culture of academia I left for forensics. It's one thing to have a healthy interest in matters of impractical knowledge-- I consider it a hobby and a passion-- but it's a bit scary when people take it TOO seriously.
I started out saying that I didn't really like this particular story but it thought might have some low-level version of literary merit. Honestly, the idea of it has grown on me until I can honestly say I do like it, even as I realize just how much revision I need to do.
The whole last half of the thing came out really rushed and really failed to convey what I wanted it to, but that's mostly because I was sitting on the bed next to dunerat an hour before the deadline trying to finish so I could cook dinner and make him stop poking me. I fully intend to sit down, soon-ish, with more time and revise the thing into some like its real potential. I did manage to get words on paper in some kind of complete form, and honestly, as a writer, the ability to do that and come back to revise later, instead of agonizing for three days over each sentence and never getting anything done, is a step forward and one of the things I hope to gain from this project.
What I was going for was some sort of weird-ass fusion of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men", LOST, and "Bookends" by Simon & Garfunkel.
The idea was that the two nameless characters in the front seat were so completely obsessed with their own discourse-- talk for its own sake, completely disconnected from reality, had for them become a means rather than an end-- and trivia that they lost all attachment to the world around them. They talk and debate and spout facts and references ad nauseum, but neither of them notices the scenery around them; it is Anna who appreciates the scenic drive, who notices the changes and the fact that the car is out of gas.
They also have so completely devoted their priorities to talk for its own sake that the question of how to extricate themselves from the wasteland never even occurs to them, and when the time comes for action they are paralyzed by talk, and it is Anna who is able to act and escape.
It's significant, or at least deliberate, that only Anna has a name and a physical description. The impression I wanted to give is that the other two characters were so completely lost in their ivory-tower world of theory and trivia that they had become only the embodiment of that, not real people anymore.
The driver and the girl, the nameless two, are sort of a critique of the ivory tower culture of academia I left for forensics. It's one thing to have a healthy interest in matters of impractical knowledge-- I consider it a hobby and a passion-- but it's a bit scary when people take it TOO seriously.