via Penny Arcade, Friday, March 16th: ” I’ve always wondered what the conflux of digital goods, interactive storytelling, algorithmic content creation, and democratized funding mean for an idea like authorship. I think we’re beginning to find out.”
i would like to devote my entire life to answering this very thing.
so i actually wrote a short story this week, but i only got a real handle on it today, and i know how useless it is to post things of any kind of substance on a friday afternoon. i’ll get it up sunday night or monday.
fair?
i had an interesting convergence of events yesterday that led to an equally interesting thought experiment. I’ve decided to share. it’s a little long, but that should not be a surprise.
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“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” as heard on the audio recording of “Repent, Harlequin,” Said the Ticktockman, by Harlan Ellison
i love the medium of the short story, and i realized lately that i’ve lost touch with it. in an effort to fix that, i participated in io9.com’s Concept Art Writing Prompt this week. The picture is below, as is my story. i hope you enjoy!
Annie is special. Not like Special Olympics or special ed., but special like those kids you see in horror movies. If I used a made up word to describe it, I would pick ‘hypercognitive.’ She couldn’t read minds or throw things without touching them or start fires with only thoughts and a disturbing stare, but she could tell when a storm was coming, sometimes days before it actually happened. Animals seemed to seek her out; trees and plants seemed to bend her way when she passed. It was a connection with nature that made her special, but that didn’t make it any less scary.
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I turned 33 last week. This is significant for absolutely no reason at all.
But that doesn’t mean that i didn’t try to make it significant. i thought about how repetitive number ages like 33 and 111 were significant to the hobbits in the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkein. Frodo, if i remember right, was 33 when he took the first steps on the journey that would ultimately save middle earth. I tried to use this to apply meaning to my own 33rd birthday–like how i’m embarking on a journey of my own in the coming year as a writer and whatever. You know what? It’s all crap. It’s just me trying to attach meaning to an anniversary because that’s what we do with anniversaries, right? It’s me trying to trick myself into action–into following through on the dreams and plans that i talk about here. The reality is that there are things i want to do, but i still, after everything, have trouble moving my feet. Not to the level that i used to, but it’s there: i’m still ankle deep in carmel sometimes. But, if i don’t get something done–if i have nothing to show for myself–i won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities that i so desperately wish would come my way.
i’m done with contrived meanings and fake deadlines and mind hacks. my goal right now is just awareness–mindfullness. i am aware, in this moment, that i want more than i have and i want to be more than i am. i am aware in this moment that i have the ability and the tools to create the future that i want. i am aware that in order to create it, i will have to chip away at myself a little bit each day, that nothing comes overnight, and that it’s going to be really hard work.
That is all, and that is enough.
i really should have posted this last week in order to capitalize on the small bump in traffic afforded by a guest post on Q’s site, but if i had that kind of forethought and agility, i wouldn’t be me, and this would site would be called mikerocksatwriting.
Notwithstanding what the voices in my head tell me, i really haven’t been slacking off all this time. i’ve actually been trying to focus on some work. Q, my brother, and i have been working on creating a card game in the hopes that we can market it through some back channels that we have open to us. While it’s been a slightly painful process to iron out, it’s also been a good deal of fun, and i think we’re really close to a working prototype.
i’ve also been focused on my characters for Venus. They really are the most important part of any story, and the more i understand that, the more i worry about the ones that i’ve created. This is one area where my propensity to distract myself with ‘tips and tricks’ really gets the better of me, and while i keep telling myself that i need to just get on with it and write, i’m terrified that i haven’t built my characters enough to serve the writing like they should.
Lately, however, i discovered a neat little trick that has not only helped me, it’s injected a lot of FUN back into my writing. A gentleman that i follow on twitter, mr. nate cosby, is an ex-comic book editor and now comic writer. He’s been posting these short character monologues, usually for well known comic characters. What i love about these little snippets of character is how much voice and personality can be packed into just a few sentences. And, as sure as anything, when i started to use this same method on my own characters, i suddenly discovered their passions, their histories, and their points of view. i’ve decided that i’m going to post these monologues for the next few weeks, covering all of my major characters.
First up is Sarah, the over-critical, motherly member of the crew of The Pope Of Fools. i hope you enjoy!
I did everything they wanted me to do, though it was never good enough. I took the piano lessons and the ballet lessons and the tutoring job. I pushed myself in school and and life, as hard as they wanted and beyond. It would be petulant and adolescent for me to say that I hated every minute of it, but I always felt like I was doing it for reasons outside myself.
I believe it was the math that saved me. I discovered algebra when I was 11 (two years before my peers) and I understand it for exactly what it was: Man’s method of communicating with the universe. I could see the patterns in life, and I started to see the seams. Everything was an algorithm: predictable and programmable.
When I wasn’t accepted into Harvard Medical down on Earth, it didn’t surprise me. I knew the math, and maybe I stacked the equation. My parents, however, were crushed. Life in their house quickly unravelled, and I ran away with my piss-off-daddy boyfriend. We ended up crashing in a Wavefinder commune where it was all free love and government vegetables until the Flippers came around. They were the militant ones, the ones who bombed gaming server farms and burned down auto-coffee machines and handed out illegal cream-filled pastries. They needed a programmer, and while I didn’t know the languages, I knew the math.
I spent 6 months running with the Flippers. The things we did I will not admit to anyone outside of my own head, but by the time I walked away I made enough money to put myself through a decent school. I did that and graduated, but the past caught up to me before the ceremony. I skipped it, and ran into Eddie at the docks. I needed a ride; he needed a pilot. Done and done.
Receptionist [nasal, bored]: hello and welcome to the crime-fighters temp agency, Where We Give Your Vigilantism a Boost ™. What is your superhero name and power?
Applicant: I am Ferroman!
Receptionist: uh huh….
Applicant: I am Magnetic!
Receptionist: uh huh….
Applicant: I… I can scale buildings!
Receptionist: metal buildings
Applicant: Yes, right. I can pin bad guys to walls like fingerpaintings to a fridge!
Receptionist: metal walls
Applicant: Yes, well… I… I’m very good with finding keys….
Receptionist: uh huh. we’re now closed for the day, sir. [she slams down a metal shutter on the teller window.]
[Ferroman lowers his gaze in dejected defeat. The top of his becowled head is is immediately attracted to the metal shutter and pulls him forward, sticking him to it like a magnet. His shoulders heave a sigh.]
not dead. just wrestling…
…with the summer, with my promises, and with myself. i am writing, just not as much or as quickly as i would like.
i realized yesterday that i’m approaching a year of the experiment of the new me. i am healthier, stronger, happier, and more productive than i’ve been since my oldest son was born, but those are the symptoms. the one thing that i’ve actually gained over the last year is a comfort with the idea of dissatisfaction. My days now are marked with this nagging feeling that something isn’t altogether copacetic. Whether it’s that i haven’t written, or that i’m still not my ideal weight, or that i’m not happy with how i perform my job, or whatever, i feel like i’m constantly finding things that need improvement. That was probably always the case, but the difference now is that i’m not as afraid to address those things and figure out what to do about them: grab a notebook, look up a new diet, try a standing desk, etc. i’m a little afraid that this dissatisfaction will lead to some Mr. Toad complex where i’m constantly jumping from one new thing to another, trying to fix things that don’t need it, but at the moment there is plenty that is still broken.
Today has been something of a train wreck, full of disappointment and difficulty. Some of it i’m trying to heal as the days goes on, the rest i’ve set aside and decided to have a better day tomorrow. Here’s to hoping that it works.
not going to talk about all of the things that i should be posting right now. instead, i’m going to post a piece of Venus that i’ve had kicking around in my head for a good long while.
“This is a culture that never forgets. It remembers everything that it’s been told was good, all the way back to the birth of the internet, back to the beginning of the television, back to the first radio show, back to the first telephone call, back to the first photograph, back to the first novel, back to the first painting, back to the first cave drawing. We’ve scanned and digitized and catalogued and stored away all of it, made it all available to anyone with a connection and a subscription fee. Jeff looked around in the store, at the towers of stacked comic books, at the cases upon cases of fiction and cookbooks and role playing game books and self-help books, at the rows upon rows of cards that represented disks that represented digital files that represented the sounds of musicians playing instruments into computers that represented music, and thought, ‘Dear god do we ever need a case of Alzheimer’s. We need a lobotomy.’”
thanks for reading.
