[Fic] "Houseguest" -- original
Feb. 4th, 2005 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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lasultrix:
"Write what you know."
What aspiring fantasy or sci-fi writer hasn't heard that advice and cringed? We don't want to write about *us* - our lives are so boring and mundane. Or are they?
Everything you do that seems deathly dull is probably unknown and new, even alien, to someone somewhere else. Even if it's not, as a writer you should be able to make it seem that way to your readers.
Pick up the challenge. Take a slice of your normal, dull, boring daily routine and write it the way you would a fic. Keep it true but make it interesting. Write yourself in third person, the hero/ine of the newest chart breaking novel about a student/office worker/mother/net geek/whatever. Write what *you* know best.
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Houseguest
---------------------------------------------
Ithaca in winter can be miserable -- cold winds, snow and ice and freezing rain, and rarely any clear sky to relieve the monochrome -- and can make people even more miserable if you let it get to you. Liz knows all about creeping gray, knows how to push it away and forge onward, but winter can still get to her. Sometimes she invites it in.
She tracks her mood with morbid curiosity, marking how gloomy she feels each morning and night, and feels an obscure sense of satisfaction when she realizes that she wants nothing more than to sleep for an entire day and let the world hang.
Forging onward can keep her from spiraling back into clinical depression, but it doesn't make her happy.
She's kicking idly at snow buried shrubs, trying to uncover the dark green needles without getting snow in her shoes. The bus is late. It's usually a few minutes late, but Liz doesn't want to count on that and get caught at work one of these days. So she wraps up a few minutes early, walks across the street to a patch of sidewalk near the airport, and paces to keep the cold from getting to her.
It's been a long day at the end of a long week. Her job is boring, she's no good at turning casual office socializing into real friendships, and most other people she knows in Ithaca are college students. The gap between her life and theirs startles her sometimes, and she has to blink before she remembers that yes, some people really do have nothing to do but sit in lectures and read books all day long.
Maybe that's why she couldn't fit in again after taking medical leave two years ago. She'd had a taste of work, of making her own way through the world, and college seemed even more unreal than when she'd been wrapped up in gray depression.
In any case, she's working now. Liz spends her days typing data into spreadsheets, modifying entries in databases, and sneaking five minutes here and there to read fanfiction online. It isn't that she dislikes her work. She gets a real sense of satisfaction from seeing things put in order, seeing them lined up logically and right, but her attention tends to wander.
Her attention always wanders, really. That's one reason she doesn't feel comfortable with people -- before they're ready to finish a conversation, she's already bored or thinking of something else. Books are a comfort to her; unlike the rest of the world, they let her take them on her own terms, her own time. So she reads. And she thinks. And she tries to stop her mind from wandering, either blanking everything to an even gray or focusing on her current task as if her thoughts will slip away and strangle her if she doesn't keep them under complete control.
The bus arrives, jolting her out of her thoughts, and she flags it down, pass in her gloved hand. This evening it's the older man with the immense beard, who gives every new passenger a disapproving look as they climb aboard. Liz doesn't like the scrutiny and avoids meeting his eyes.
The book in her bag is by Dostoyevsky, and she reads a few pages of "A Nasty Anecdote" until the mental strain of the day (and her lack of sleep) catch up to her. Liz spends the rest of the ride with her eyes closed, snatching a few minutes' rest where she can.
It would be best to go home and eat dinner, but she knows she won't do that, knows with the sickening, twisting self-disdain that always precedes the choices she lets happen. She tells herself she's not really choosing things against her better interests, that she's just refraining from cutting off her impulses, but she knows that's only an excuse.
She chooses to stay up late and be tired all day. She chooses to eat junk for lunch instead of bringing food from home. She chooses to wrap her attention into words and the internet at the expense of her flesh and blood needs.
She didn't write anything yesterday, and she's feeling the emptiness where there ought to be the glow of creation.
Liz sits in the empty library computer lab and wonders why she asked the winter in.
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End
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Hmm. The thing about writing that never fails to interest (and irritate) me, is that when I'm feeling down already, I have a tendency to write myself into feeling even worse.
Eh. Whatever.
While the above is in some ways an accurate picture of my life, it's definitely one-sided. There are good things too, like church, watching football games with my housemates, taking a moment to experience the waterfalls in the area, the comfort of a phone call to absent friends, the glow of writing (when I'm writing), etc.
And I do kind of flirt with gloom. I think it's a reaction to having periodic clinical depression; I'm always tracking my mood and wondering if I'm slipping again, despite the medication. And there's a certain thrill in letting myself wallow in a slump for a day or two, just so I can pull out and thumb my nose at the world. "See, it's not really depression anymore! And I can have bad days without letting my whole life spiral out of control again!"
Something like that, anyway.
lasultrix:"Write what you know."
What aspiring fantasy or sci-fi writer hasn't heard that advice and cringed? We don't want to write about *us* - our lives are so boring and mundane. Or are they?
Everything you do that seems deathly dull is probably unknown and new, even alien, to someone somewhere else. Even if it's not, as a writer you should be able to make it seem that way to your readers.
Pick up the challenge. Take a slice of your normal, dull, boring daily routine and write it the way you would a fic. Keep it true but make it interesting. Write yourself in third person, the hero/ine of the newest chart breaking novel about a student/office worker/mother/net geek/whatever. Write what *you* know best.
---------------------------------------------
Houseguest
---------------------------------------------
Ithaca in winter can be miserable -- cold winds, snow and ice and freezing rain, and rarely any clear sky to relieve the monochrome -- and can make people even more miserable if you let it get to you. Liz knows all about creeping gray, knows how to push it away and forge onward, but winter can still get to her. Sometimes she invites it in.
She tracks her mood with morbid curiosity, marking how gloomy she feels each morning and night, and feels an obscure sense of satisfaction when she realizes that she wants nothing more than to sleep for an entire day and let the world hang.
Forging onward can keep her from spiraling back into clinical depression, but it doesn't make her happy.
She's kicking idly at snow buried shrubs, trying to uncover the dark green needles without getting snow in her shoes. The bus is late. It's usually a few minutes late, but Liz doesn't want to count on that and get caught at work one of these days. So she wraps up a few minutes early, walks across the street to a patch of sidewalk near the airport, and paces to keep the cold from getting to her.
It's been a long day at the end of a long week. Her job is boring, she's no good at turning casual office socializing into real friendships, and most other people she knows in Ithaca are college students. The gap between her life and theirs startles her sometimes, and she has to blink before she remembers that yes, some people really do have nothing to do but sit in lectures and read books all day long.
Maybe that's why she couldn't fit in again after taking medical leave two years ago. She'd had a taste of work, of making her own way through the world, and college seemed even more unreal than when she'd been wrapped up in gray depression.
In any case, she's working now. Liz spends her days typing data into spreadsheets, modifying entries in databases, and sneaking five minutes here and there to read fanfiction online. It isn't that she dislikes her work. She gets a real sense of satisfaction from seeing things put in order, seeing them lined up logically and right, but her attention tends to wander.
Her attention always wanders, really. That's one reason she doesn't feel comfortable with people -- before they're ready to finish a conversation, she's already bored or thinking of something else. Books are a comfort to her; unlike the rest of the world, they let her take them on her own terms, her own time. So she reads. And she thinks. And she tries to stop her mind from wandering, either blanking everything to an even gray or focusing on her current task as if her thoughts will slip away and strangle her if she doesn't keep them under complete control.
The bus arrives, jolting her out of her thoughts, and she flags it down, pass in her gloved hand. This evening it's the older man with the immense beard, who gives every new passenger a disapproving look as they climb aboard. Liz doesn't like the scrutiny and avoids meeting his eyes.
The book in her bag is by Dostoyevsky, and she reads a few pages of "A Nasty Anecdote" until the mental strain of the day (and her lack of sleep) catch up to her. Liz spends the rest of the ride with her eyes closed, snatching a few minutes' rest where she can.
It would be best to go home and eat dinner, but she knows she won't do that, knows with the sickening, twisting self-disdain that always precedes the choices she lets happen. She tells herself she's not really choosing things against her better interests, that she's just refraining from cutting off her impulses, but she knows that's only an excuse.
She chooses to stay up late and be tired all day. She chooses to eat junk for lunch instead of bringing food from home. She chooses to wrap her attention into words and the internet at the expense of her flesh and blood needs.
She didn't write anything yesterday, and she's feeling the emptiness where there ought to be the glow of creation.
Liz sits in the empty library computer lab and wonders why she asked the winter in.
---------------------------------------------
End
---------------------------------------------
Hmm. The thing about writing that never fails to interest (and irritate) me, is that when I'm feeling down already, I have a tendency to write myself into feeling even worse.
Eh. Whatever.
While the above is in some ways an accurate picture of my life, it's definitely one-sided. There are good things too, like church, watching football games with my housemates, taking a moment to experience the waterfalls in the area, the comfort of a phone call to absent friends, the glow of writing (when I'm writing), etc.
And I do kind of flirt with gloom. I think it's a reaction to having periodic clinical depression; I'm always tracking my mood and wondering if I'm slipping again, despite the medication. And there's a certain thrill in letting myself wallow in a slump for a day or two, just so I can pull out and thumb my nose at the world. "See, it's not really depression anymore! And I can have bad days without letting my whole life spiral out of control again!"
Something like that, anyway.