Tag: #writingscifi

procrastination post 38: talk to me

hi.

what you doing?

oh right, hence being here.

me? i am procrastinating. i am on a writing retreat, working on my novel.

well the best part is i am by the ocean, so i just write and swim and do yoga and eat.

yeah, but i’ve hit the day where i just want to sleep all day instead and every time i open my computer i last ten minutes before coming up with some distraction.

i love writing. but novels are hard – this is my first whole thing and it is kind of working, but also kind of like aaaaggggghhhh what IS this? what was i THINKING? so many words but where do they all GO?

thank god for scrivener.

yeah i guess its part of my process when i write fiction. nonfiction is like…here are thoughts from my brain, you like? but fiction is like, 20 people are trying to tell a story from a near future parallel magical realm reached only through my brain, and they all think they are the star.

it’s been a little self helpy/serious over here the last few posts so i wanted to bring some levity. i even wrote a post while i was high that was a list of blog ideas that came to me when i was high.

eh. it was funny while i was high but then i read it again and it was only aight.

it doesn’t help that the novel is all about grief – its hard to stay in the depth of it, to see the magic in it.

fucking social media and news. every time i look away someone dies or we lose something we can’t afford to lose.

good question…well, usually i am in a place with less wifi access.

you mean self-regulate it?

but the world is changing so rapidly – i need to keep up.

i approach it like everything i write is my resistance.

right. you’re right. it will keep changing. after this retreat i will be facilitating lots of people who will get us through all of this. they give me hope.

i should just get back to it and write.

ok. thank you – this was helpful. i mean sorry if it didn’t help you but…writers have to be selfish sometimes.

ok. love you.

til soon.

Notes, Writing Sci Together

Writing Sci-Fi Together

Today I got the honor, blessing, geek-out of getting to jump in on the Writing Sci-Fi workshop with Walidah Imarisha, my co-editor for Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from the Movement (a real book that’s coming out next year!!!)

She crafted a brilliant agenda and we had an incredible time. I wanted to share some notes with you:

What is visionary fiction and radical sci-Fi?

From Facilitators:
– it explores current social issues
– it’s conscious of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, identity and power, and explores intersecting identities
– supports change from the bottom up
– it moves or places power in the hands of the oppressed
– not neutral…the purpose is social change

Other brilliant ideas, from participants:
– it offers us a way to test drive responses to issues
– gives us freedom to break life’s stereotypes
– makes us question ‘what is human?’
– it’s revolutionary, versus reactionary
– let’s us imagine a new society, and new solutions
– post-colonial
– makes the perspectives of oppression palatable to folks who otherwise couldn’t grasp it

we had folks read an excerpt from Derrick bell’s space traders short story as an example of radical science fiction, and then break into four groups and build stories together, mapping out characters, setting, backdrop and conflict.

here are four synopses from the breakout groups! we hope you agree they are fantastic 🙂

1) Checkpoint Apocalypse: Robots are defending borders in an apocalypse where we no longer have nations. All families are required to donate a child to be robotized. Our character is on a quest to find his robot sibling after his parents die, only to find that his sibling wants to turn him into a robot too!

2) Smash Patriarchy: The main character in smash patriarchy is a gender nonconfirming alien who crash lands in the tent city of the oppressed – queer and trans, poc, immigrants – around the Washington Monument where they have been displaced by the new ruling majority (white women who feel the revolution is done now that they have “smashed patriarchy.”) The white women in charge want to co opt the alien who is old and the alien has to decide whom to align with.

3) the Constructs: main character is a tenant in an animate building in a world where everything is alive and shifting. The building doesn’t want the tenant anymore because she and her intimate are always fighting. dialogue includes: woman: “you’re a construct.” building, “YOU’RE a construct!!!”

4) Quanta: living in a world with the Earth is emitting a numbing agent that dulls human senses so they will no longer be driven to destroy each other and her. the dream world is the only place where people still experience their senses. quanta, our lead character, is able to be in two places at once and she is working in the dream and waking world to help humans evolve so that they can have their senses and be in harmony with planet.

folks shared stories and got applause. we were amazed by each other!!