Is this what they call buttsex (anag)?

[desperance]

I didn't think I'd write at all this weekend just gone. I had friends coming round Sunday afternoon, to meet Mac and help me shelve and shift stuff; what with all the shopping & cleaning & cooking (lunch and dinner! apparently humans expect to eat twice in a day! who knew?) which that inevitably entailed, I was not budgeting for work.

Saturday afternoon, though, heading into town for the second time that day, for all the shopping I'd forgotten first time through, I remembered that we are now committed to a date for the Summer Phantoms gig at the Lit & Phil. (August 2nd, 6.30pm, come one come all: new ghost stories from Sean O'Brien, Gail-Nina Anderson and self. In a mysterious new setting. If you don't come, you'll never know...)(Obviously this is a lie, because I will Reveal All in this very blog; but for now, it serves as an inducement.)

Which means, obviously, that I have to write a story, quietly in the back room while I work on my novel in the front. I've been oddly unstressed about this, because I did already have a title and something of a first line, and what more does any story need? (Any smart-ass saying "A ghost would be good!" will be sent out of the room without supper.)

But there I was, walky-walky over the moor, thinking about it, and I realised that I had something of a plot already, also; and, nay, more! For when I lined it all up in my head - this character, that character, storyline, atmosphere, ghost - it struck me so suddenly that I almost stopped and said the words aloud: "Oh, so that's what this is about...!"

I have said, many times and oft, that if my work ever has a theme it rises through the process and reveals itself to readers, not to me. My stories aren't About stuff, until other people tell me that they are. And yet, and yet, there it was! Staring me in the face!

I can has subtext nao?

(And then I came home and wrote 750 words to start it off, so that's okay...)

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I always think mine are about one thing, and then they turn out to be about another.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

If they expect to eat two Chaz-meals in one day, are you sure they're human?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, I only went overboard in the evening. Hunan Chinese, with variations: if I'd cooked everything I meant to, I could probably have fed the whole province. Lunch was just cold meats and cheeses and interesting breads and such. And Chaz'z chutney, and Chaz'z jam. You know.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I rest my case.

...reveals itself to readers, not to me.

[(Anonymous)]

Not that I'm a real writer, but anything I have written has come to me as a voice in my head. I'm not kidding---I have a male narrator in my head, rattling on when I partly asleep or daydreaming.

Re: ...reveals itself to readers, not to me.

[chickenshoot.livejournal.com]

Sincerely,
Chickenshoot

(I didn't mean to appear anonymous, altho I am indeed a stranger.)

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

I wish I could write about something other than the subjects that seem to power everything I write, no matter what the stories appear to be about. Sigh.