Sow a seed, I'll give you a flower.

[mrissa]

Apparently I feel like living dangerously this morning, so here's a meme from swan_tower:

Tell me about a story I haven't written, and I'll give you one sentence from that story.

As she says, at least one sentence. Maybe more.

I haven't been having problems with short story juices flowing, so this is possibly a particularly bad idea. But it also looks like fun, and hey, we like fun. Fun gets us good places.

One of the rules people always list for writing is that you must finish what you write. This is great as long as it's not a straitjacket. If you're aiming at an audience, you must finish at least some of what you write, sure, definitely. But I think some novice writers--and some experienced writers who are in a slump or a transition phase--hear that "rule" and subconsciously translate it to "you must finish every story you start before going on to another." I have--look, I write kind of a lot of short stories. You know that because I'm 34 years old and have sold 91 of them. I don't think it's immodest to say that's kind of a lot. But I have a ton of half-finished stories sitting around and even more smaller seeds. Sometimes things have to germinate. Sometimes things are what Mike Ford called nurse logs. It's a jungle back in there. The last few weeks, though, things have been calling out to get finished, a few at a time, and that's satisfying too.

(Of the trudging along on the novel, let us not speak.)

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Well, the one I'd really want to see from you is "Janet Laird finally gets to compete in the Olympics (though I'd settle for the World Cup, or even an important Masters competition - I'm guessing hockey has masters, since most sports eeem to) and her leaving her native soil causes issues with the Queen of Air and Darkness." However, that may not be the best story for one-liners.

So in honor of Diwali, how about a story of solstice / light-in-darkness holidays on another planet?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Janet Laird will never be in the Olympics. I'm sorry. That is not the direction that is going. She will, however, leave her native soil for Canada and parts Underhill before Jess is even born. Working title there is "Carter Hall Crosses the Blue Line."

As for the one you actually asked for:

Our parents all got strange after four or five months of darkness. Not the kind of strange we all expect or plan for, but a desperate and strained sort of strangeness. They tell us that humans are not meant to have a winter darkness that lasts for eight months, but we don't have any experience of Earth cycles. We wait for solstice as long as we wait.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I just keep hoping that she's not completely doomed to the sidelines - even if it's not Olympic or pro level. From my experience with people who have rowed at a high level, some have no interest in ever competing on a lower level, but others row all their lives and compete in Open or Masters.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Look, there's a difference between "being doomed to the sidelines" and choosing a different life. Being an Olympic athlete is a pretty big deal. Can you do it while raising a kid? Sure, maybe, if you're amazing, and you need to be amazing to be an Olympic athlete in the first place. Can you do it while raising a kid and learning magic and becoming the protective anchor for hockey-related magic for a large chunk of geography? No. No, any magic that let you do that is the trivial hand-wavey kind of magic, which I don't think The True Tale actually supports.

Janet is always going to have hockey in her life. She's never going to be off the ice permanently. But I think that the way people have fantasy heroines juggling five things while standing on their heads singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy" is a bit much. It's okay for her to be a hockey player. She doesn't have to be the second coming of Hayley Wickenheiser. I think, in fact, that she can't be. I think that running off in the middle of practice for the national team to deal with a threat from a random god or demon would get you kicked off the national team, and rightly so.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

I was pleasantly surprised that when we collaborated on our Finnish Saunapunk story, that you brought the darkness instead of me! I mean, not that this hasn't happened before, but the northern darkness was not just literal this time.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When the Continuation War was over, Jan Huuri thought about it and decided that he had not had enough of shooting at people. Death, his grandmother had always told him, was nothing but a line drawn in the water, a ripple. He had always liked making ripples.

Nor was he the only one. If he hadn't found the witch-girl bruised and shivering, he probably would have gotten caught much sooner. With her help, though...Jan gripped the barrel of his rifle. It was much more satisfying with her help.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Janet Laird will never be in the Olympics.

In hockey.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

That's more or less what I said, but I used rowing's terms for it which may not be that clear - I'm guessing hockey also has an amateur level where you train hard and compete seriously without having to give up your whole life for it. Anyway, I'm glad to see you say "never going to be off the ice permanently", because to me "on the ice" is much different than "always going to be around hockey".

[jry.livejournal.com]

Space station/lunar colony/generation ship (around long enough with big enough group of people to have kids who were born there). Psychic consequences of lack of weather/seasonal variation.

[pameladean]

I don't remember stories in a recognizable-to-others fashion, so what I am pre-remembering here is the one about the accidental grandchildren on the Mars colony who keep dreaming about ice-skating.

P.

[mechaieh.livejournal.com]

The Aguanieve Cafe Cookbook

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

It's now legal for cats to drive, and they're taking advantage of it.

[moiread]

I think one of the best things about the Carter Hall stuff is that it's small-scale. This is not Harry Potter Saves The World. Nobody is going to get famous. Carter is not going to become an internationally celebrated male model, Janet is not going to go to the Olympics, Tommy is not going to run for Senator, and so on. Nobody is giving Tam a kingdom because he turned out to be the secret heir to the Rivan throne and defeated the Dark God Torak. They're just ordinary people who got wrapped up in some crazy shit and now it follows them around and is really annoying. Sometimes dangerous, but mostly annoying, and either way they deal with it and determinedly go on with their mundane lives as much as they can. And that's awesome. Funny and poignant and awesome.

[moiread]

Sauna...punk?

[moiread]

I think you should write me Carter in an illusion where he is an internationally celebrated male model.

I may or may not be serious about this. I haven't decided yet.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I forget the title, but you know the one with the kid with the teeth? That image stuck with me.

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

It's like steampunk, but Finnish.

I mean, really, what do Finns use steam for? Saunas!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

An idea whose time has come, right?

...right?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

"Tommy Heikkanen for Senate: If You Find a Better Candidate, Vote For Them."

And thank you. Yes. Thank you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Volunteer host for Paralympians is not the same thing as in the Olympics.

Still awesome, though.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Be careful, people will be gluing spruce boards to random things any minute now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You read it here first.

[moiread]

Oh, you. Both of you.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The thing that should have been a tip-off--the thing that Janet would spend the next eight years mocking me for not spotting as a tip-off--was that nobody had made me shave. And no, I don't mean my beard, although no, nobody made me shave that either.

[moiread]

And then they tried to get him into a Speedo and that was just not on.