Mary P. Sue

“Thinking about the maneuvers performed by self-defined“literary” novelists to preserve their purity from genre pollution, I realized that I am in the unusual position of being able to perform the same poses and contortions, only backwards. How am I to protect my unspotted name as a science fiction writer from the scorn of those who might think I have been shamelessly performing acts of realism in public? Thus: How dare you call me a realist? My book “Searoad” has nothing to do with the commercial realism found in all the chain bookstores. I call the book “Social Reality Enhancement.” Realistic novels are for lazy-minded, semi-educated people whose atrophied imagination allows them to appreciate only the most limited and conventional subject-matter. Realistic fiction, or re-fi as its fans call it, is an outworn genre, written by unimaginative hacks who rely on mere mimesis. If they had any self-respect they’d be writing memoir, but they’re too lazy to fact-check. Of course I never read re-fi, but my children keep bringing home these garish realistic novels and talking about them, so I know that it’s an incredibly narrow genre, completely centered on one species, incredibly culture-bound, full of wornout clichés and predictable situations: the quest for the father, mother-bashing, obsessive lust, suburban guilt, and so forth. All it’s good for is being made into mass-market movies. Given its old-fashioned means and limited subject-matter, realism is quite incapable of describing the com-plexity of contemporary experience. Now, would you believe that tripe? There’s some truth in it. But it’s tripe. All judgment of literature by genre is tripe. All judgment of a category of literature as inherently superior or inferior is tripe.”

I got a 4 min long video of Kimchi dreaming today, so here's a clip

Goodnight my lovelies!

So Nick Cave walked this back a while ago:

Please tell Hector I said pspsps

writing challenge!

When i turn an idea into a fic, it means that was an idea that developed far enough to have (for me) a compelling narrative through-line, and like a thesis for what this fic is about.

Like it’s hard to come up with an original and compelling idea and then figuring out how to best wrap and deliver that idea through a set of cohesive narrative beats.

And I think what’s most important about these scenarios is they’re so interruptible. There’s no planning out a truly solid set of narrative beats that need to play out in order. It’s just a pause and play and rewindable scenario. So I can go “oh bus is here” “oh meeting started” “oh oven timer went off” and then come back to it later, whenever, at any part of the story.

And also it does not lend itself well to fic because sometimes the aforementioned self-indulgence is like this

If Your Scene Feels Lifeless, Someone Is Being Too Polite