I have faith in your good manners for more than one reason.

[mrissa]

I have seen this elsewhere, but phrased in terms of force, and you are all, I feel sure, too inherently polite and too cognizant of your own bodily safety to ever want to force me to do anything. So I will ask it more politely:

If you could urge, persuade, or ask me to write any particular thing, what would it be?

(This can be as specific as "Carter Hall and the Motley Lions" or as general as "ummm...something SF," or as random as "short story with bears and the French Revolution in.")

Comments

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Something grand and sweeping with lots of myth and legends, maybe a prince being rescued by an unlikely woman, set in a story that makes you happy.

Or, you know, a hockey story. I'm not picky. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Prince...being rescued...by unlikely women's hockey team. Got it.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I'd thought of them as separate stories, but your way is better. *g*

[bob54449.livejournal.com]

This is so easy! Of course you should write about rabies, Campanella, Savonarola, Saint-Simon and the lost recipe for ... but, that is he trouble, WHAT was the recipe for? And why or how does it connect the creatures named in beginnin of the request?

[callunav.livejournal.com]

More LJ entries like your first paragraph? Sorry - that phrasing has always bothered me for exactly that reason, so this made me grin a lot.

Hrm. I like your writing, and the things you choose to write about. I don't see anything immediately to change. And the last time I went through and binged on everything of yours freely available online was long enough ago that I can vaguely remember thinking something like, "I like this kind of story she tends to do a little more than this other kind she tends to do," but I don't remember what they were.

Hrm, hm, hm.

Here:

Mrissa, though I would never dream of urging - let alone attempting you to coerce - you to do anything that was not appealing to you, I would love to see you write something completely new (not using worlds or characters you've used before), of middling length (a longish short story, say, or a novelette), for adults and mostly-adults, involving subtle speculative fiction elements but not large-scale science fiction, which in some way involved hyenas. If it also included an older woman who was something of an authorial insert when it came to how properly to behave with courtesy to others, I wouldn't mind.

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

A picaresque novel about a Lady Adventurer(s) (as distinct from Adventuress(es), which is/are A Different Thing Entirely), set during the era of the great steamships and possibly involving Disguises.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

You want her to write Digger?

[timprov.livejournal.com]

What makes the hockey team unlikely? An aversion to purple?

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Ista-ry: how her first days went, where you got her, how she's changed over the years ... best and worst things about her, and dog ownership in general ... how she's changed your family, your relationships, your routine. Compare personality with other family dogs you've had if you have had any.

Dog obsessive much? MOI?!!

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

P.S. Do I get to ask you what you'd want me to write? :)

[kizmet-42.livejournal.com]

Please may I have a story involving a fake "antique" copy of The Prince, a Parisian hostel, three giggling children and a fir tree.

In other words, look at my desk. Except for the hostel. That's just in my dreams.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

First reaction: "No, she doesn't like the Bromeliad books, she said so. ... No, wait, that's Diggers."

Next reaction, after a book search: "Um, no. Thank you."

Although I admit it would be fun to see that reworked Mrissa-style.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing you didn't get to the right Digger (http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/digger.php). I'm not sure how much of it is free online anymore, but it is teh awesome.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Dude, that's maroon.

Anyway, I was thinking of them as Canonically Unlikely, you know, one who barely speaks English and one who used to be a lacrosse player and like that.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Whew; glad there was room left for questions.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

(He is right, it really is awesome.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I actually think picaresque might be a stretch for me. Not necessarily a bad stretch. Hmm.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do you want the links to the posts I wrote at the time, or do you want new stuff?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Of course. It was not my meme to begin with, and I cannot control it once it's released upon the wild.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You have three giggling children and a fir tree on your desk? I mean, I suppose it'd be less distracting than fifteen birds and four additional fir trees, but my golly.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of unlikely to rescue Prince.

Also, since when is a hockey player who barely speaks English unlikely?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ahh, unlikely to rescue Prince? Well, that's all of them, I should hope. He got himself into it, he can get himself out again.

And it's not that the player herself would be unlikely. It's that Unlikely Team thing. You've seen it before. "This one practices voudoun and that one needs glasses and like that." Except, y'know. Less Major League.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

In that case ... what would you like me to write? (I don't want my whole universe to answer this one; just you! Hence, not a post.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

A neighborhood story. Small geographic and temporal focus, not so small emotional/personal focus.

Possibly with magnolia trees in the neighborhood.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

Oh, if you covered all that stuff (especially the dog-personality stuff) then a link would be fine! As you have the time, of course. I figured these requests were all castle-in-air and that the posters wouldn't actually be doing it (unless something struck them).