I'm a writer, a cliche. When I was young writing was easy. Now it's hard. How?
Well, you get scared, don't you? And too ambitious. Your mouth's bigger than your stomach, your arms are puny.
And you're not at school any more. That's the tricky part. There's no Sword of Damocles hanging over your head. You need one, or you sit around wasting your one and only life. It's insane, but that's how it is.
So let me organise one. I, **** ***** do pledge to have written this new story I've come up with before seven days have passed. It's 10 Dec right now, so let's say I get it done by the end of 17 Dec, next Thursday.
I'll say a bit more about my situation. I've been published -- a small publisher, the book sank. I mean, I think people bought it. But I never saw any of the money. I'm not sure to this day if I got scammed.
That was quite some time ago. I was contracted to write a follow-up, but terrible things happened, I went mad, I had no idea what I was doing, I slinked away into the shadows. As I say, I'm not sure to this day if I got scammed. I'm also not sure if scammed my publisher. I've kept my head down since.
It's been quite some time since then. What have I done? Well, not much, right? I did nothing for many years. In the past couple of years I've done some writing, finished one story, nearly finished a bunch of others. I mean, I've always got to the end of the first draft. I've retired from the race every time somewhere about the middle of the second.
Some of these stories are ... not bad. The truth is, though, they're not amazing. They're not what someone of my ego would expect from someone who was published for the first time as early as I was.
I HAVE BEEN HUMBLED. God knows I needed it. You're not as good as you think you are. Someone on Youtube a while ago said something like the tricky thing is we think we're great because we know we have great taste. We read books and go, "I'd do that part better." "I hate how she does this. God, is she stupid?"
It's like watching streamers on Twitch. They are in fact better than their audience, but their audience goes, "Why did he get supply-blocked there?" It's cause he was doing a bunch of things you don't have the eye to notice, and he's 2000 MMR higher than you, shut up.
But I am getting better. I can see improvement in all these stories. Each one is mostly better than the last. Sometimes the ideas are worse, but they're still better-executed.
I just need to do more. I'm not young. It's a bit scary, to have considered yourself a writer all your life but not to have really practiced.
So that's that; there's my pledge. I'm gonna post a diary entry every day, too. Short. I won't go on and on. I like talking, you know. I like writing. But I have no writer friends to talk to. I don't think you need them. Talking does help, though. Some of my best story ideas come from my talking to myself, explaining to imaginary journalists how I made my millions.
I'm putting the source on Gitlab. If you know about Git, you'll know you'll be able to go look at all of the different revisions. You might find it fun. I've thought about streaming on Twitch, too, so you can watch every word, every hesitaiton. But thinking about it today made me nervous, so, no, I won't bother.
This secret blog is about enough for me. It's public, but not really, cause it's unknown. Pretty perfect.
Here follows the first day of notes. They actually written in my diary. I won't post notes like this again. It'll all be in the repo.
I should also say I don't plan to be very comprehensible here. I don't plan to be a blogger, though right now in the throws of enthusiasm it seems to me doing this (pledge, blog) for every story is a very intelligent thing to do. But it's a means to an end. The end, by the way, is riches, fame, an editor. I'd give my right arm for an editor.
2020-12-10T06:26:36+00:00
I'm not going back to mogen. No. One day I will. Let's do something new. Yes. 5,000 words for real. I've had plenty of ideas. As usual I'm influenced by things I've been reading.
Something I've always loved is spies. Really I mean "darkfriends". In the Wheel of Time, there's darkfriends -- they follow Shai'tan. Anyone could be one. It was the thing that made WoT really good. A Song of Ice and Fire has the same thing -- people aren't "darkfriends", but they can betray you. There's always danger.
Though in a short story I don't think I can do that. I could write a story about a guy who's found a spy. Or a guy who's a spy himself. Though that would involve coming up with a palace/court. But I wouldn't have to go into detail. Do I have one already? Not really.
There's also the shogun's wife idea. A story about a shogun's wife trying to keep him occupied, save him / the country in some way.
Since it's a short story it could be about her trying to get his mistress back. She's leaving because he's unstable. But the wife needs her back because she keeps him stable.
A story about a spy who needs to get some papers for his country. That'd need a few more thousand words to be worth it.
A dangerous world. That's another idea I've been having. I've written it down. Worlds with danger -- monsters, weather -- in them are the best. Middle Earth is dangerous. Randland (WoT's world) is dangerous (because of darkfriends). The Shadow of the Echo of All That is Lost's (James Islington's trilogy, not its real name) world is dangerous -- it's full of ancient, dangerous powers.
Another idea I've been having is about a magic that's only "items". Only objects of power, no power that a person can themselves wield. But I've always liked that, fuck knows why.
A story about a magic artefact. That sums up 90% of fantasy.
A fun story about a fun girl.
Which of these do I want to write? I'll look briefly through my story ideas first.
OK, something important: I've made a note to write a story about a character that wants something, needs something else and cant have either. This is how Brandon Sanderson writes. I will make sure to do that.
Another pertinent note: it says to think of the "perfect" world, thinking of all the books, games and films I've read/played/watched.
Middle Earth: loneliness, emptiness. Xenoblade Chronicles: a world on a God's body. Final Fantasy VII: Midgar, black pipes. Final Fantasy VI: cold waste, mechs. The Shadow of the Whatever: an ancient place filled with dormant, dangerous things. WoT: the atmosphere of the first and second novels. The world isn't amazing, come to think about it.
CJ Cherryh's Alliance Universe: it's sci-fi, but there's a lovely tenuous feel. Everyone's vulnerable going through space, everyone's weak.
OK, let's think about that. There's a new season of Attack of Titan. That's got an incredible premise. I could do something similar.
Rather than huge monsters, let's have small beautiful people. Who are kind and intelligent. That's scary because you're the bad guy.
You're an ancient monster. You're perverted, you love fear and pain. Or maybe you're a human. And perverted -- actually perverted but also basically normal. But the "monsters" are these beautiful creatures. They're elven. And they have no respect for you. They'll lock you up or kill you if they find you.
You WANT: To be accepted You want to be one of them You've found a magic spell that can make you into one of them To escape To kill them all, start the human rebellion To escape with A magic artifact Something that could kill them all A weapon that could be used to wage war A portal or ship that could take you to the moon Your mother sister girlfriend father The monsters are: Humans that changed themselves Using a spell They gave themselves magic powers They look just like you, so you can't tell who's who at a glance You can tell pretty quickly, though
It seems ... OK. What the opposite of perfect monsters? Imperfect humans. Maybe it's our guy who is perfect. No, I wouldn't know how to write that.
Let's just try out a lot of these wants and needs.
He WANTS: To be accepted. He NEEDS: To live happily, discrimination-free?
So, he wants to be one of them, but needs to just be accepted. That's fine.
How does he go about getting what he wants? How do you become someone else? He could use the same magic spell they did. He could use a different one. They somehow do it the real way, he the fake way. A bit like Gattaca.
Let's make the community small. It's not a world, just a village. An interesting village, and this will have something to do with what changed the rest of them.
Well, first, how about people start disappearing and appearing outside? It's a bit Attack on Titan. And not that original. Really cool, though.
But that wouldn't come into it. That would have already happened. And maybe wouldn't be explained. So, they became the superior humans by this mysterious mechanism. He's trying to fake it.
They all left and seemed to become really happy/intelligent/healthy. But they won't come back into the city.
They keep disappearing. Are they being taken? I think yes. Finally our guy is the only one left in the town. And he leaves, tries to become one of them.
They look different. They're covered in hair. So he shaves all the dogs and cats in the city, covers himself in their hair and leaves.
He finds a small camp of them. They don't accept him.
Or they do, though they know he's not one of them. I mean, they don't care. Or maybe they do. Maybe whenever he gets close they leave. Or maybe they just accept him. Do what you want, they say. They don't run away. But they don't really talk to him.
If they run away, that'd be cool. Nasty. Lonely for him. If not, you'd be able to see what they say. Maybe it's only when he covers himself in fur they let him stay. But they know he's not one of them.
He'd need to figure out what happened to them. In the end he doesn't do it in time and they all leave.
Or maybe he does figure it out and they leave. He just doesn't get something.
A drug A book A religion A small sphere They keep going to the sphere, standing around, then leaving When he finds it, he stands around He doesn't feel anything, but he changes to look like them The next time he sees them, they're walking -- not as a group He follows, tries to talk to them and they don't say anything. A minstrel
That's a nice mystery. It's got a nice feel to it. Btw I just took a small detour -- 2020-12-10T08:17:37+00:00 -- to make rsn's random number not be based on the time.
Randomness in programs. You start by "seeding" a random number generator. The classic way to do this is "srand (time (NULL))". srand takes an integer. time (NULL) returns the current second (since the start of Unix time).
The problem with with this approach is if you run the program more than once in a second you get the same result. Because the seed is the same.
Now I'm reading from /dev/random:
int fd = open ("/dev/random", 0); int seed; if (fd != -1) { ssize_t ret = read (fd, &seed, sizeof seed); if (ret != sizeof seed) { /* warn ("Couldn't read from /dev/random: using time (NULL) instead"); */ seed = time (NULL); } } else seed = time (NULL); srandom (seed); if (fd != -1 && close (fd)) err (1, "Couldn't close /dev/random");
You will see it defaults to time (NULL) if for some reason /dev/random can't be opened.
/dev/random is a psuedo device. Linux "collects" entropy over time and sticks it in a kind of pool. I have no idea how that works. But you can read random numbers from /dev/random.
Back to the story. It's a nice mystery, one of those what's-going-on stories. Do I explain what's going on? Stephen King says that stories that don't show the monster are cheating. But when you do show the monster you lose something.
Let's just come up with a half-explanation. Like a book, drug or sphere. But say nothing else.
Maybe instead of them leaving they go back to the village and don't let him back in. "Get the fuck out! And stay out!" Or they just acts as if nothing's happened.
Maybe it's him that's put them out there. Magic.
How could he be responsible? It'd be hard for it to be him, if they're supposed to be content.
Maybe they're experiencing something more. They're actually logged into the magical multiverse net.
Maybe he spoils it in some way. And they don't get to ascend.
The important thing is what's the thing that's brought them out there.
It's got to be something weird or incredible. Let's favour weird. Let's get some random sentences:
Its a garbed jollified Its a refractable corrugate Its a remindful hiccupping Its a backboneless chum Its a upland erase Its a cacuminal compart Its a accented bishoping Its a emendatory deceive Its a isoperimetrical reground Its a agrostological appear Its a urticant hinnied Its a reunionistic presses Its a homodont barber Its a unscrupulous cellars Its a psychic harp Its a Laodicean prevaricate Its a clipped hurries Its a quartic worst Its a stimulant eulogised Its a tangiest processes Its a numerable dosing Its a cornered totalizes Its a raggle-taggle focussed Its a sacrificial dissuade Its a synoicous enable Its a kingly recapped Its a unconscionable woofs Its a silver depone Its a self-confessed heathenized Its a led flocks Its a microseismical cons Its a hypodermal rehangs Its a fogless trephined Its a urbanized mutating Its a bewitching trauchling Its a boozy untruss Its a unanxious blow-dries Its a elenctic platinise Its a usurpative alleviates Its a unsatisfiable overbids Its a Jugoslav embedded Its a redder booby-trap Its a torn rinsing Its a intelligible fans Its a decorative restrict Its a annalistic bandying Its a oral shikars Its a sejant outlast Its a sapindaceous mussitate Its a evoked antiquates Its a secular impaled
Its a psychic harp Its a accented bishoping Its a silver depone Its a backboneless chum Its a refractable corrugate Its a secular impaled
A psychic harp. That's straightforward. It'd be just sitting out there, playing itself sometimes. Or is someone playing it? Our guy thinks about going up there, touching the empty space. That's scary.
The accented bishoping -- an accented bishop. Just a bishop, sitting out there on the hills. Not that great.
Its a silver depone. I'm not sure what a depone is. But it doesn't matter. I've settled on the psychic harp.
It's psychic. That means it can hear your thoughts. It can communicate, though, but only in music. Is it communicating, our guy thinks?
It could play folk songs. Our guy would know the words. But he'd know various words and wouldn't get far.
Maybe the crux of the story is the meaning of the tune it's playing. Is it "My Johnny Went off to War" or "The Silver Plate", which is about a woman who kills herself because her Johnny cheats on her?
Or maybe the songs are about the town, or God. Let's just say he listens and changes. He thinks about marching to war. And then everyone leaves.
Probably best to not bother with the words stuff. Won't be able to make it work. It's just a mesmerising tune, and it changes him.
And then people leave. This is fine. Will people think it's just weird / feel unsatisfied? I can't know.
I'm feeling a little self-conscious now because I'm thinking I'll go post this on my blog, announce that I'm going to finish this story in a week, put the repo on Gitlab, stream this on Twitch. I like the idea of it. Probably best not to bother with Twitch.
Alright, let's plan that. Where to post? I can stick it on my Tumblr. Toks has made a website, apparently. I could do the same. I won't, though.
Today Make repo, stick it on Gitlab. Write post for Tumblr, include these notes. Write All characters, names, etc -- temp names -- wants, needs Synopsis Clean kitchen Call Mother Put money on phone Read