What Would You Write, with Opportunity to Do It?

What story would give you paroxysms of bliss to discover it coming from your imagination?

Yesterday I saw Christopher Moore give a talk to promote his new book, Sacre Bleu. He's a clever dude, and with Neil Gaiman I think one of the seventy people I aspire to be, or be very nearly similar to. Anyway, over the course of his talky talk, M. Moore had cause to explain some of his origin story, as it were. Most of M. Moore's origins--the explanations he gave for being how he was who he is--involved, essentially, dares. He wrote Practical Demon Keeping because Stephen King's literary agent said in the forward of some best-of-horror compilation that horror was great because it could be mixed with any theme...except whimsy. And M. Moore snickered at that and said "like hell!" and wrote Practical Demon Keeping, a whimsical horror novel. Since then he has written almost only whimsical horror, and been successful at it, if not successfully frightening all the time. But we take what is proffered. His air of accepting dares influenced all the stories of why he wrote, and I found that hilarious and I'm mulling it over. A different part of his attitude stuck with me, though; that being his joy in it.

M. Moore writes the stories he wants to read. That sounds reasonably intuitive. A writer is called to write that which he would be pleased reading. Many of my other influences share this sometimes childish glee in what they write. My buddy/mentore, Jenny, and our mutual demon-muse, Ali, take this sometimes creepy enjoyment in things like "jerkified corpses" and the general mayhem arising from unexpected monsters. The gore aside, they write stories that they want to read. They take pleasure in what they write. It's fun to see up close. And the pleasure they take in their stories is apparent in the reading of the stories themselves.

So my musing point: What do you like to read? As much as I do like stories and books, I'm having the devil's own time trying to figure out what I like reading. Like as not, I'm one of the few people like that. I'm trying to figure it out, however. I want to write what I like to read, but I'm not sure what I like to read. It's a peculiar predicament.

I'm going to stew on it, and no doubt produce some odd, ADD, obscure puzzle of a thing, pretty to its maker. In the meantime, just for discussing it, what story would you want to see produced? What weaving thing would you make with the time and energy, eh? Mine eyes are tearing with curiosity, dear heart.

Unexpectedly, I Am Moved to Action

A psychological pseudo-protege of mine, Scrappy the Bear, just wrote a blog about competition. It bothered me for an unexpected reason, which I'll reveal in a second, after explaining how competitive I am.

Competitive I ain't. Competitive is a word I would put on a list of words that least describe me. I have no problem letting other cats have their athletic prowess, their brown-nosing teacher's pet position, their wilding fantastic lives of promiscuous sex, or whatever else they can do better than me. A lot of people can do a lot of things better than me. Do I care? Not really. If I were a species being judged by you Darwinists I'd have gone extinct eons ago through sheer politeness--although pure Darwinism might have trouble explaining how guile and good timing fits into things. I used to care how I measured up to other people, but then I realized it was more entertaining to watch them do things. I feel confident about my own talents and the cozy level of them I've attained through years of careful dramatic poses. I am uncompetitive because I like that other people can do things better than me. The world goes around because a lot of people can do a lot of things way better than I can do them. I do not want to be an athlete, nor an electrician, nor a politician, nor any of a great many things. I already know that the things I do well I do very well, better than most people and not as well as I know I can do them, and that's enough for me. I have no reason to compete.

It turns out that there is one arena in which the talent of other kids has a rankling, scratchy bletch on me. (Shite, "bletch" is considered a real word. Heh.) I am unfamiliar with this bilious rise of "damn their eyes--curse them for breathing, slack-jawed jackanapes." What ghastly turving a feeling it is. And yet not unhealthy, perhaps.... That one competitive arena I have is in writing. And by Christopher Moore's beard, Scrappy the ruddy Bear can write. She's got a lot a damn irritating habits in form and style, sometimes she loses her purpose because she's getting bogged down in being dramatic. These things happen. They can be revised away. But by damn, the girl can turn a phrase, and she writes with soul. It is singularly irritating to me that she genuinely sounds like a human being when she writes her personal essays. A somewhat whiny human being, but that's a good thing. We're all whiny, so we relate to whiny, so it makes her writing real. Sounding real, sounding genuinely there and talking, is so damn hard that I feel compelled to promote her bloggy-wog. I don't like that she done good, because she done better than I think I'm good at doing. But she done good. Y'all should read her bliggity-blig. And nag her when she doesn't update often enough. She almost never updates it.

Nag, nag, nag! Write more!

Come as you are. She needs weird friends.