timwburke

I’m using voice to text software for this post to see how well it works. Today I want to talk about starting a short story from scratch without even an idea as to the type of monster to make or even the tone of the story. First thing, I created a list of experiences in life I found disturbing or scary:

Home invasions, Insects on my body, Blood, Helplessness, Cocooning, Parasitism,Delusion, Torture, Pitch black darkness, Greek Tragedy, Turning against loved ones, Betrayal of trust, Loss of free will/identity, Trapped underground, Being an outsider, Vanishing without a trace, Impending unpleasantness

I created a list of movies and media that really made a great impact and I wanted to emulate to any degree. I’m a little disappointed that I recalled more movies than books:

Hereditary, Megan Is Missing (the premise and ending are so disturbing, I dare not see the movie), Get Out, Ringu (I liked Ring more), The Strangers (again, I will not watch this), US, Open Water (nope, not watching it), The Descent (I’ll watch this eventually), Se7en, Frailty, Midsommar, The Mist (movie is better than the novella), Session 9, Tomei, Junji Ito manga, Lolita the novel (listen to Jeremy Irons do the audiobook its amazing)

I was wondering if humor could play a factor in this and if so, I could see if some humor could seep into the story. Here’s a list of stuff that was fun to make: to find out what I considered funny.

The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Steve Martin, Fights that go back and forth across doorways, The Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy (frigging brilliant), Pink Panther movies, Confederacy of Dunces, Hitchhikers Guides, Hyperbole and a Half, Jeeves and Wooster, Addams Family

There are a lot others but, yeah, I’m a middle-aged white bro.

I was surprised at the overlap between the disturbing and the funny.

Subverting tropes, Otherworldly mythos, Wordplay, Motivated yet relentless characters, Home invasions, Unreliable loved ones, More than a little self-delusion.

Now that I’ve done this, I can forget all about these lists and let them sit in the background.

Now let’s talk images and what they can spur. We hear of a writer experiencing something and being inspired by that sensation. I keep my Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, WordPress reader, YouTube, and Twitter loaded with photographers, artists, musicians, scientists, historians, psychologists, philosophers, and other smarties. I don’t get out much, so I need a steady supply of the Neato Ideas.

These Ideas will mix and mash and come up with things like:

A garland of roses looks like a coral worm, what if a vampire had duck louse instead of fangs, what if the YouTube algorithm invoked a primal Elder God, if dogs were elevated would they hire us to lick their asses, why doesn’t Delaware have cryptids or are they just real good at hiding, could post-humans lease out their body parts, would giants use people as kitchen appliances

Which are what’s been banging around in my head for the past week or so. Except the dog thing, that just occurred to me.

I’m doing all this because I am stripped of story ideas right now. I’m hoping something will shake out for a short story. It’s possible I may have to write to market for anthologies for a while just to get momentum back.

In future posts, I’ll show my next steps.

Some years ago, I posted a sour assessment of “Zen and The Art of Writing”, a memoir by Ray Bradbury of his life and writing. He seemed to rest his success on his supportive upbringing and sunny disposition, neither of which I had a lot of while growing up. I have not revisited my post, but this summary makes a good case for ZatAoW as a good writing guide.

Have a look and I do recommend buying the book from your local bookseller.

I’ve written about art and reality are a dialogue allowing the artist to change. I’ve written about how my writers group pushed me to change my protagonist from a tragic romanticist to a protagonist who is more proactive and hopeful. In time, hopefully, I will tell you how that helped me grow past obsessing about supposed deficiencies and actually working toward growing.

Chaos Magick had always appealed to me. It supported the conclusions of my pragmatic upbringing while emphasizing the importance of creativity. I have neither the faith nor the energy for complex ritual and Chaos lets you invent your own process.

I liken it to playing slight of hand with my neurosis. By doing something unusual, by taking a small risk relating tangentially to specific goals, any progress toward that goal helps me to think I have control. Which yes, I do have control over my life, but my neurosis does not believe that. This slight-of-hand makes me more confident to see opportunities more clearly.

My goals are relationship and writing-based. I went to sigilengine.com and followed the instructions. The resulting designs were drawn in sketch pads and adapted into cartoons. Then in accordance with the sigil process, I forget the original requests and pay attention to the cartoons.

Coloring the cartoons needed a liminal state, so I listened to the same song on repeat while drawing and coloring.

Have a look. I have only slight idea what these represent.

So I was finishing my denouement. Capping 15 months of my current, well-received draft. Totally happy with how my novel landed. Then I thought, you know, the ending lacks the body horror that people like from “The Flesh Sutra”. I ought to get some body horror in. But how?

Then I saw “Crimes Of The Future”. And dagnabbit I got to rethinking the whole nice denouement I had going. Went from cursed artwork to possessed tupil polyp jewelry just like that. Does it work? I dunno. That’s for the Beta readers to decide.