100 DAYS PROJECT: #34
Twelve Noon
What I was looking for was a love story, a relationship that survived a society. I’m a much more traditional writer than Steve on any given day. When I’m not in a particularly happily creative frame of mind, it’s difficult for me to force a story to fit into a surrealistic setting.
So, it turned out to be a strange society that I dumped my pair of lovers into and let them fend for themselves. This is one story that certainly was given free rein in where it was going and what it wanted to be. The only control I had (or exercised, since I can manage to browbeat my characters into submission if I so choose) was the Tinderbox map which had been laid out in a semi-organized form of where I thought the story would be strong and what it was depending upon for enhancement and side stories.
So here it is; as with all others, haven’t done final editing (is that ever done?) and I almost feel like I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
June 24th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Gaps! You have gaps to fill! Who are the men? Who do they work for? Who gets taken? Why do they get taken? Why do they have to leave so early? And for God’s sake, what’s in the pastrami?! Is it soylent pastrami??
June 24th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Well, I don’t really know. This is all I got.
I’m wondering if some of these questions are really important to the story though. There are bad people that run the world, things are tough for the people, they eat bad food and get murdered if they’re out at night or can’t reach higher ground on Fridays at noon. And Simone has been asked by “them” to convince Haaji to do something to help them. The tension is their own fight for survival and to be together. Simone makes a choice for them.
The eye color changing didn’t bother you?
What could be worse than cats and cardboard? I couldn’t come up with much. There is a writing space in which a worker speculates but if you missed that one, you might not want to go back.:)
June 25th, 2009 at 9:46 am
Oh by the way, did you catch this?
June 25th, 2009 at 11:09 am
For the story’s philosophy they may be bad questions, but for its purpose, I think they’re relevant. Why did Simone kill herself? Who are “they”? What does Haaji have to do with anything?
June 25th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Neha, by your questions #1 and #3, I’m guessing that you’ve not seen a good number of lexias that follow Simone on her morning away. This would be more of a link problem than a story problem and I’ll look into it later today to see what I can do.
I still feel that who “they” are is irrelevant to story’s purpose, not just here but in any story. If I named them as The Montrachet Purple Grape Squad” would it make any difference? Nothing’s a ‘bad’ question for any reason but not every question need be answered in a story.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Who “they” are seems pertinent because they exert such influence on these people’s lives. I want to translate their panic and fear, and can’t do it because I know nothing about whether “they” are a help or a cause. The Purple Grape Squad may not make any sense, but it will give me something to translate. In this case, I’d definitely use it to lean toward the soylent green theory with the pastrami, and I’d be wondering if all the plants have been poisoned somehow so the people can’t eat them. The PG Squad could be like our Greenpeace! Bring back the Green! See?
June 28th, 2009 at 5:59 am
See what’s neat about this is that you have a completely different take on this story than I do, or another reader. If nothing else, I’ve made Barthes proud in handing that ability over to you. I’m personally leaning towards the peopleburgers.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Yay! That story is slipping away from the social consciousness; that pot needs to be stirred, if you’ll pardon the early morning pun. And just to prove what an idiot I am: who’s Barthes? Is that the person responsible for the “Reader Response Theory”? Because as a reader I am totally behind the notion that I get to tell the other half of the story–or the back half, or I’m in charge of definitions, whatever–but as a writer, I always wonder if a reader gets a different impression, than maybe I didn’t write it well enough? Not you, you are fabulous, it’s me and my lowly ego.
June 28th, 2009 at 9:08 am
Barthes was a French writer who generated the terms “readerly” (where a reader just reads the story as written and seeks no interaction with it) and writerly (where the reader is using his own experience and knowledge to interpret what he is reading and therefore changes the story and is responsible, in Barthes’ view for thus writing it (his own version anyway). Barthes was in favor of “death to the writer” meaning the content of the story stands on its own and is available to the reader to claim as his own by his interpretation of it.
Which is what you say you’re a fan of doing, and which we all really do unless the “original” author left no room for interpretation. As a writer, it’s difficult to allow someone to “misinterpret” your work and therefore claim blame for not making something clear. I have personally fought these maternal instincts for a while–especially with a poem where I had a woman driving around looking at large trees and contemplating suicide while one of our writers/critiquers thought she was out on a lovely Sunday drive.
Then again, maybe I didn’t write it well enough. My ego’s on a par with yours, maybe lower, but I do stand up when I believe I’m right.Though I’m going through #34 again to make sure the “gaps” are not information still in my head that weren’t put down on paper.
June 28th, 2009 at 11:36 am
That happens to me a lot; half of the story stays in the ether, when it all seems so obvious to me. I’m just still so curious about this society I want it to be a longer, fuller piece.
I remember hearing about a huge war Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s husband)had with the editor of a compilation of “women’s poetry”. The reading of Plath’s piece was that she had long concealed lesbian desires and the whole poem was a cry for that unreconciled part of her. Hughes went through the roof, filed a lawsuit, pulled his permission for them to print the poem, etc… But the thing is, once you hear that idea, you can see how the poem may be interpreted that way. (For crying out loud, I think it’s called ‘Lesbos’ or something). But his insistence was that they were mistaken.
If I’m ever so famous to have hordes of people mistake what I’m saying, I think I’ll just visit the bank for reassurance and let them fight it out amongst themselves.