I suppose arguably today was day one of the “sit down and commit to writing” part. I got down more than the Stephen King guideline of 2000 words. Close to 3000, when all was said and done, and it started quite literally with me saying to myself, around 9 pm, I need to write something so why not just start with this. A story that was on my mind because part of it was happening live and it gave me enough of an idea to be able to go from there without need for further prompting from reality. Honestly, it’s a story I’ve kind of already daydreamed in some detail but never with the intention of making it externally interesting. It’s either a cool new idea or a vehicle for an idea I’d already been seeking a format for.
Some of the ideas I’ve been struggling for a good way to express lately have been centered around themes of mental and social wellness in the context of the artificial world that we have created around us. To fully understand these ideas, a reader would need to walk through “universe building” of the sort that makes sense in fantasy or science fiction, but is often neglected in contemporary fiction.
How about I write a science fiction novel, using the basic rules of science fiction – that you explain or demonstrate the technologies and cultures involved in enough detail for your reader to understand them without prior background, that you assume no prior knowledge on the part of the reader, and that you give it a narrative voice that you can shape with a fake background and context. So, my character is an AI researcher, not a lawyer who reads neurobiology for fun. I’ve started the story with an anecdote about a not too unusual kind of online conversation, and used it as a vehicle to weave in some anecdotes from my real life and a brief essay about particular changes in our communication techniques as a culture. I’m rather pleased with it even though I’m sure i’ll hate it the next time I look at it. But.. it’s down. It’s saved, in a new file in a new folder in a Word document. It’s 3018 words right now, and about a paragraph worth of direct dialogue out of that. I’m not entirely sure where the plot is going to go, but I think along the way we are going to talk about how these algorithms work, and work in other stories of the ways that things can go differently from what everyone expects. If I write it well, some people will pay attention and expound on the ideas on their own. And if I don’t, I’ll get the catharsis of having shouted it into the void, even if the void is a self-published kindle that sells three copies. But I’m hopeful that this process is off to a good start.
The wildest thing just occurred to me now. One of these stories, I took a story from my real life and just changed the window dressing details, and assigned it to a different character. It stood on its own as something absurd that an absurd character would do or experience. How many more of those do I have just from my own actual life? I’ve got a few. i could make myself a background character, or a dozen different minor side characters. It feels fun, and I haven’t really given this much time to it in a while. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.
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