writing... blues? not quite

This will likely be of interest to no one but myself and perhaps the Blue Boys (almost called you "blue balls" tee hee) and Inland. But I'm writing - straight writing, I call it. A relief after all that revising, and apropos since I started my last series two years ago Easter Sunday. I got super nasty on PHF's ass this am and said to myself, Self, go fucking write already, will you??

Ok, to clarify, I'm writing a science fiction short story set in futuristic Boulder. I've got all sorts of cool ideas to work with, the city is practically a secondary character. It's not flowing and yet it is... It's so different from my series. It must be what it would be to kiss another man besides my husband. Exciting and scary and clumsy. I know Aidan and the boys so well that I can write for them almost without thought. I know what Aidan will say before he says it. I know Kaelin's capacity for violence, and how he controls himself.

I don't know this Jack person at all. (Yup - Jack, you can be flattered. Even though you disappear for over a week without a word. I know it's spring break but you don't write, you don't call... so boo hoo on you.) And it's first person, so I'm telling it in his voice, except he just started talking and so he doesn't really have a voice or hair or a face or anything yet. Kind of weird. I think, though, he looks like Lunatic - whatever HE looks like. No worries. That will come.

The true challenge is how to treat all the futuristic stuff. Jack takes all this new technology and shit for granted, right; like we take our lives, our credit cards, our cell phones, our cars, our internet, our blogs all for granted. Somebody comes to Now from Fifty Years Ago (ooo ooo ooo, I think I just came up with a title) and they're all amazed and we're all, "What? It's just my cell phone, and it's two years old besides. I mean, it doesn't even take pictures."

I've read some stuff in this genre (more as study - I don't love it. Why is what I read and what I write so disparate? I don't know.) Anyway, the best thing I've read yet is a young adult novel called Feed. It's told by this sort of typical teenager who takes everything for granted, as teenagers will. The dimensions of his personality emerge through the details of his narration and through his thoughts and dialogue. You see this dichotomy (why do we use certain words over and over? Apropos and Dichotomy. Jeez, check out thesaurus.com, Sex.)- anyway again, you see this dichotomy between who he is, who he's becoming, and who he has the potential to become (or had, more likely, because it's a tragedy). It's got slang that makes sense immediately. Like, you hear (er, read) their slang and think, "Yep, that's how we'll be talking in twenty five years."

It's a masterful treatment of a brilliantly frightening world, and quite the expansive look at where we're headed as a species. Except that the truly scary thing about the novel is that we're there already, sans the Internet inmplant.

Read Feed.

But back to me and my story.

I won't get into plot and character, etc. My ideas are my own and to talk about them means they won't get written. (At least not by me.) These stories force themselves out of me somehow, and I prefer them to end up as actual fiction, not chatter. But any advice for writing this budding futuristic tale?

I'm gonna end up writing this story twice I bet. Once as discovery for myself and once to subtle it down, to naturalize the narration. For some reason that process seems very appealing. Shit, I'm a weirdo.

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