Making an SF story around one phrase
The thing I did with the great long going nowhere abortive novel I done on another (now private place) was inspired by the single phrase “travels in albonia”
I’ve written it over the last five years, and I can see the development from clumsy literary fine writing, to clearly influenced by what I was reading, to finally finding my own voice. And my own voice saying /this is shit/
Case in point, there was a fashion for merging Cthulhu with late modern SF and mathematics (pioneered by yer man Stross), and I unconsciously aped that with this whole interlude that was extraneous to the plot (such as it was) and the character arc of the wilfully decentred protagonist. This was clearly bollocks (I realised, a year after).
Even though I had the axioms to develop thereoms there from:
- Big fan of Lovecraft and Ashton Smith
- Qualified mathematician
- Visual imagination (I paint, sometimes more than single colours on suburban walls)
- I write
But it was a done thing just then. So I’ve retired the several thousand words into a private I don’t know.
Also, some of it was autobiographical without intent. Clearly, that’s interesting to me, and therefore disables the filter that would otherwise delete indulgence.
And, also, I have this issue, just exemplified: I write more about doing it than doing it.
There’s some of the best bits dotted around this tumblr weed. There’s a lot of it not.
[I will edit this when I can be arsed]
[removed the parenthetical joke, that broke, the considered rhythm]
[thought of a better joke, inserted it]
[removed another bracketed aside of little worth]