I've decided to turn in the stupid sentient tree alien coming-of-age story and move on to the homosexual Arabian stallion story. I'm growing increasingly satisfied with the 1,000 words I have thus far into this fantasy as the description is flowing much better. I haven't described the world extensively but I have pretty thoroughly detailed all the parts the characters are walking through. At least a horse, a peasant, and Earl, and a stable are things I can visualize better than I can visualize sentinent trees and root systems that convey information. [Not a network. Not! Not! Not!] Also, I went back to the beginning, rounded it out a little better, and put in a few clues so the 1,000-words-in revelation that the horse is really a young man trapped by magic into the shape of a horse no longer comes out of nowhere. It should surprise, but not shock.
It's 0800 hours as I type this. Time to get some food, clean the knife for slicing the bread, and head over to Van Hoosen for the critiquing session and another learning experience.
1238 hours: Critiquing is over for the week. I ran counter to popular opinion on two stories and consistent on one. I stayed behind for Delany's opinion, knowing my story would be a No (and it was, absolutely, a no), primarily because I wanted to see how he viewed the others. My opinion differed and thus the question I'm now asking myself is: Why am I trying to learn to write the kind of stories that I don't like to read?
I prefer Analog stories to Fantasy and Science Fiction stories. I loved Bujold's last novel. I didn't enjoy Gene Wolfe's. So why am I trying to write literary prose when I dislike reading it? Do I really, really want to write the kind of stories that I won't want to read later? Something is very wrong with my thought processing here. I need to mull this one over in my mind for a few days.
1725 hrs: I took a short nap after writing a couple of critiques and discovered that when you express self-doubts in an online journal, some people send you e-mail equivalents of kicks in the seat of the pants.
Gulp!
I've also decided that I don't want to read or write literary prose, but I'd like to be ABLE to write it. If a djini appeared and offered me three styles of writing, I'd take literary, hard science, and clear. Literary and clear are often mutually exclusive. Literary tends to take you for a ride through the beautiful countryside in a Lincoln Towncar taxi with the meter ticking and then refuses to tell you your destination or deliver you to that location until you guess where it is. Clear writing often takes you to the destination in a 1990 Ford Escort with a bad muffler through a series of shortcuts that give you whiplash and then tosses you out onto the concrete.
I guess what I really want is to write like myself only more so. Better plotting. Multi-dimensional characters. Prose that conveys the imagery in my mind without confusing or misleading and yet in terms such that the reader feels propelled into the story.
I need to put the blinders back on and focus on myself instead of comparing myself to everyone around me. This is hard to do when you're surrounded by so much talented diversity.
I haven't been able to accomplish a thing all day. My internal editor keeps shouting insults at me when I try to write. I rewrote a couple of stories, concentrated on critiques, and then went back to writing with equally unsuccessful results.
I tweaked a story that I am NOT turning in. No way. This one is a victorian age debutante with magic story wherein a Lady is basically prostituting all the lovely young debutants and casting spells to remove all memory from their minds about the event. Intended as humor, it is essentially a multiple-rapes story and thus most decidedly NOT funny and potentially offensive. This one stays on the hard drive. I'm not even printing it out.
In the meantime, the incredibly difficult to write man-turned-into-a-stallion story is now about the half-way point and 2,000 words. I'm straddling the line there between humor and horror and I'm still not entirely certain which way it will fall. I think it's horror with just enough moments of lightness to make it all the more dark. But I'm not certain. The challenge here is writing form a male viewpoint and once again I'm trying for a multi- dimensional character. He's not a nice person but he's also not a horrific villain. He's doing what he thinks is necessary for his own survival. This one's giving me fits.
2000 hrs. and the story is over 3,000 words and about 2/3rds complete for the first draft. Gavin stopped by to tell me some of the group are watching movies at the Van Hoosen and while I need a break, I'm afraid to quit while I've got at least a one inch per hour momentum going on the story. Buck also stopped by and helped me brainstorm the story a bit. This one has layers like an onion. Peel away one layer and there's another one underneath. It's a much more controvolated tale than simply saying, homosexual lover magicked into being an Arabian horse.
One of the problems of Clarion (for me) is that I have so much information that it freezes me when I try to write. The internal editor turns on and says, Not enough description here and then Information dump and on and on until I erase everything written in the last three hours.
It's 2330 hours and the horse fantasy is a 4,000 words and no more than a thousand words (I hope) from the end. This one is emotionally draining. I've had several scene shifts and I hate doing so many yet cannot see another way to tell the story without drowing the reader in information dumps or using flashbacks which confuse rather than enhance.