It’s been a pretty quiet weekend.<\/p>\n
Last night I watched Riddick<\/a>, which turned out to be surprisingly entertaining, given how remarkably terrible its predecessor<\/a> turned out to be. It’s not a brilliant movie, and hardly original, but I quite enjoyed it.<\/p>\n Today, I went to my weekly writing group, where we each spent our forty minutes working on a prompt from Writer’s Digest<\/i>, from their monthly contest. Using their first sentence as a jumping-off point, this is what I wrote:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you can guess what I have in my pocket, you can have it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n She says this like I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m supposed to be impressed, when we both know the pocket and whatever she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tossed in it are stolen. She wants me to think she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s learned to fold space, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fine, but she knows as well as I do that this particular pocket of it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t her handiwork. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s too polished a job for that, the seams too neat. It hardly shows up on her ship\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sensors, probably wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t show up at all on mine, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nobody outside the core planets who could have done this kind of work so well. What it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing all the way out here, or why the core might have abandoned it, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not fooling anybody if she thinks I believe she did this herself. This little pocket, and whatever she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got hidden inside it, are like everything else in my sister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life: an unhappy accident she wants to make somebody else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s problem.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What makes you think I want it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I ask. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Even if I guess right, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got cargo of my own left to unload.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re running light and you know it,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. She adjusts the screen with a few random taps and the pocket is outlined in a dark angry green. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing you could see with the naked eye, if you tried staring out into the blackness of space, but Claire knows I trust the ship\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s readings. After all, this salvage tug used to be my own. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re gonna wanna guess. It could earn you millions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so tasty a haul why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you sell it?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I ask. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s with the hide-and-seek, the guessing games? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not why I agreed to come out here.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just checking up on me for the core, reporting back on my movements. Just like Dad would\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve wanted, right?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s angry when she says this, even though she knows it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even half as simple. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you see, Nick,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she adds, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly why I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be the one to unload this. The core\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already got it in for me. They’d take me before I even got planetside.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just talk to them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I tell her, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d drop the charges.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If I just let Dad talk to them, you mean. Let him pull a few strings, rehabilitate his smuggler daughter. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what the core wants, Nick. I set one foot back in the system and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So what, you want to off-load this on me, whatever smuggled goods you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to hide in pocket of space all the way out here in the ass end of nowhere? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got<\/i> cargo, Claire. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a reputable business.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You could also have millions,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And all you have to do is guess.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I don’t think I have any intention of trying to submit that to the contest, not least of all because it isn’t yet a story, and yet at 480 words it’s well past half of the magazine’s 750-word limit. But I had fun writing it, even if it took me a long while to get into anything like a groove.<\/p>\n I noted on Twitter yesterday that I occasionally get stories that were very clearly written based on writing prompts, most notably for the Machine of Death<\/a> anthologies. Those books had such a distinctive premise, no matter how very different the stories that were written for them, that I always feel weird when I encounter it again in my own submissions. I understand the impulse to try and take a story you’re proud of, one that for whatever reason didn’t make it into either of the two anthologies, and try to sell it elsewhere. But even if I loved<\/i> the story, I don’t know that I would feel entirely comfortable accepting it. For one thing, you’re admitting the story has already been rejected elsewhere, although, really, that’s hardly a factor. I have to assume that Kaleidotrope<\/i> isn’t the first stop for a lot of the writers who submit. But, more importantly, it’s such<\/i> a distinctive premise that your story can’t help but be seen as a cast-off, a reject, by the reader. That’s maybe unfair, but I think that’s the reality. I less frequently see stories clearly based off the prompts from The First Line<\/a>, which I’ve noted in the past<\/a>, but I think that’s much different, easier to work around, maybe even less central to the story. I don’t reject stories out of hand just because they clearly were first intended for someone else. But I’m probably more likely to pass on stories where a machine that predicts the cause of everyone’s death is a central concern.<\/p>\n Finally, this evening, I read What now?<\/i> by Ann Patchett. I liked it, although it’s maybe a bit of a cheat as an actual book. It’s the text of a commencement speech that Patchett gave at her alma mater Sarah Lawrence a number of years ago, and while it’s a good speech, the book is really quite short. It’s full of large print and white spaces, as well as many full-page stock photographs of mazes, footprints, puzzle pieces, and other things that would probably put Patchett well above the “clich\u00c3\u00a9 quota” she mentions at the top of the speech. It’s the sort of book you give as a gift, mostly to graduating seniors, and while fifteen bucks seems a little pricey for that gift, it’s a gift of kindly good advice. It’s a very short book, hardly a book<\/i> at all, but it ends well:<\/p>\n The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way. What now is not just a panic-stricken question tossed out into a dark unknown. What now can also be our joy. It is a declaration of possibility, of promise, of chance. It acknowledges that our future is open, that we may well do more than anyone expected of us, that at every point in our development we are still striving to grow. There’s a time in our lives when we all crave the answers. It seems terrifying not to know what’s coming next. But there is another time, a better time, when we see our lives as a series of choices, and What now represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been a pretty quiet weekend. Last night I watched Riddick, which turned out to be surprisingly entertaining, given how remarkably terrible its predecessor turned out to be. It’s not a brilliant movie, and hardly original, but I quite enjoyed it. Today, I went to my weekly writing group, where we each spent our forty … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,4,14,28,12],"class_list":["post-11061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-kaleidotrope","tag-movies","tag-personal","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11061"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11063,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11061\/revisions\/11063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}