Author: wvandenberg12

FII – Trajectory

Failure Is Instructive is an occasional series where I take unpublished/unpublishable stories and reexamine them. They are often very old and not representative of my current work. Notes on the story are in bold italics.

Trajectory came from the same period as Underground Lights, the previous entry in the series. It was never submitted. I couldn’t ever get it too a point where I felt comfortable with it as a finished product. It also never felt essential — this kind of narrative has been executed better.

Here it goes.

Trajectory

Addams, Jennifer – Interview

“Jacob and I were in fifth grade together, but we weren’t friends or anything. And so much time has passed that I don’t feel like I got an accurate picture of him. I guess what I’m saying is, don’t treat my memories like gospel.

He was solitary. Not unpopular, he’d just go off by himself to practice different little things, like balancing on a thin ledge or hanging upside down on the monkey bars. He seemed to enjoy gathering a crowd of witnesses, but only after he perfected something.

Continue reading FII – Trajectory

on Characteristics of Aberrational Cultic Movements

Characteristics of Aberrational Cultic Movements appeared in Caketrain 9 late last year. It is available here.

Most of my father’s side of the family is in an extreme Christian sect, the kind other Christians call “aberrational.” The religion has no name; they don’t identify as anything, but people outside the church refer to them as the Two by Twos. Their preachers (known as workers) own no possessions. They used to be very anti-technology, although that has softened — they use the internet, don’t have to hide radios when the workers visit. My father thankfully left the church in his teens.

I should mention that I don’t think the church is a cult — they employ systems of control I consider abhorrent and unethical, but they don’t have many of the warning signs of a cult. They lack any central charismatic leader. They communicate with people outside the church. In many ways they are similar to conservative evangelicals. But still, the memory of being young and knowing that my extended family was involved in a secretive, nameless sect had to have contributed to this story.

The other point of reference was simpler, rooted more in horror movies and half remembered news reports of my childhood. The source is much more dramatic than the story I ended up writing, but the fear drove it. Read transcripts of John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats talking about horror movies (here, here, here) and you’ll get the idea.

The actual writing of it was unusually quick and straightforward. I had at first intended more specific voices, but I liked how they jumbled together into one collective voice. The characters of the children came about pretty organically, and they became the most distinctive narrators.

The title I owe to this website.

I’m reasonably happy with how it turned out. The arc of the narrative feels clunky and maybe should have been extended near the end. It feels like there isn’t enough build up. I tried to strike a balance between narrative tension and a more natural approach, but didn’t succeed in either. The language usually works though, and the collective voice makes sense.

That’s about all. I’m grateful to the editors Amanda Raczkowski and Joseph Reed for the acceptance. The other work in the issue is excellent and the book is wonderfully designed. I’m happy to have been included.

Reading

Read China Mieville’s Embassytown. Good beginning and ending, felt like it lost its way in the middle.

Started Best European Short Stories 2012. Thoroughly enjoyed Zsofia Ban‘s When There Were Only Animals — it’s the highlight of the collection so far. I’m worried that, like the 2010 edition, it’ll be too focused on traditional narrative, but we’ll see. Zsofia’s story gives me hope.

Read parts of Cyclonopedia and Zone. Both excellent, slow books.

I keep coming back to Mary Stone’s story We Will Plan Big Things in kill author 15. It refuses to exit my brain; I refuse to shut up about it.

FII – Underground Lights

Failure Is Instructive is an occasional series where I take unpublished/unpublishable stories and reexamine them. They are often very old and not representative of my current work. Notes on the story are in bold italics.

Underground Lights came about during an idea session four or five years ago. I had a week off work and mapped out several stories on whiteboards and easel pads. Other story ideas during that time: a middle aged woman in an empty house with the ghost of an old professor, a child who dies trying to scale a batting cage, a sci-fi story about masked aliens. 

I sent it out to a few places, although it had been completed for almost a year. Rejections all around, but it wasn’t submitted widely. I then lost any ambition for it, having turned my attention to more promising work.

Underground Lights

Underground 1

The inhabitants of the area underground don’t expect to see the sun. They exist without expectations, without contentment or desire. They live most of their lives like moths drawn to a flame, chasing their little lights around. (It starts off kind of pretentious. The moth to the flame image, the repetition of the words underground and without. It’s too self-consciously arty. Also, the first sentence is unjustifiably stilted — it chucks the reader into the world.) 

Occasionally, one will receive the notion that something is missing (The word “one” shouldn’t be used as the subject of a sentence except in case of emergency. It’s particularly confusing in this case. Who is the one? Are they an inhabitant of the area? If you can be more specific you should.) . He will look around the darkness, possessed by a memory, not of light, but of an absence of darkness. The walker will then shake the idea from his skull and walk away.

Continue reading FII – Underground Lights

on Lithification

Edit: It seems that Emprise Review is no more, so it’s unlikely that Lithification will see the light of day. Some parts of it have been cannibalised in this story. I’ll leave this up for, I don’t know, posterity’s sake?

I started writing Lithification 5 years ago, and it shifted a lot in that time. I had been reading Ovid’s Metamorphosis and got the idea to do a collection of creation stories, although only two stories have survived that period. The other one, called “The Five Before,” is done and submitted to a few places. They’ve both changed from the original intention — they are now stories about failed attempts at creation.

The first draft had a similar setting (hybrid island/mountain) and starting point (flood), but the two characters were siblings. The story was called Abominations. Both characters survived the flood, and the sister implored the brother to make new people — there was an unspoken assumption that everyone else on earth had died. They began making these failed creatures, similar to the ones in the finished story. The brother feels like he’s failed and climbs the mountain. He finds the door, goes inside. There is an empty stone room. He spends some time in the room doing nothing, and climbs back down to the sister. There they make even more intricate creatures that are able to talk, grow, and reproduce. That’s where the story ended.

I don’t want to be the kind of writer who bitches about how hard writing is. It can be hard, but the work involved is better than any other work that I’ve experienced. But this one was hard, worth bitching about a little. The work took the form of year long cycles:

1. Pick up the story, do a heavy revision (2 months)

2. Smaller revisions, approach happiness with the piece (2 months)

3. Nagging disappointment, panicked reworking, feeling like there’s an inherent flaw I’m blind to (2 months)

4. Abandonment (4 months)

5. The story pokes at my brain, the nagging feeling that I’m very close, can finish it this time (2 months), and then it all begins again.

So. I should say that while I’m not happy with the story, I’m rarely happy with anything I write. I’ve come to acknowledge that this dissatisfaction is irrational and unavoidable, and if I give into it nothing will ever get done.

That’s all.