Category: General

Can you spot the perspective?

I’ve started a story.  Can you identify the perspective that it is being written from?

 

“Mo-om! Hurry up! I got to get to the corner for the bus!” The girl scampered past the walnut-stained oak table and chairs as her mother turned from the refrigerator, and held out a brown paper bag to the child. The girl, her chocolate brown hair done in a pair of pigtails, held by bright orange glass beads and leather ties, skipped towards the door, then turned her pale, freckled face back to the olive-skinned woman in the kitchen. “I’ll see you after school!”

The screen door banged open, the rusty spring giving a groaning tweak as it stretched, then a lower groan as it contracted, slamming the screen back in place. A fly buzzed past the table, landing on one of the matching chairs surrounding it. The chair was armless, resting on four crudely cut legs, that had been squared and joined to the front leg by a cross piece of stained oak. Both sets of legs and crosspieces were then joined by a third crosspiece, joining the two other slats together, forming an ‘H’ between the legs. The front legs were cut flat at near knee-high level to allow the seat to be attached, while the back legs rose, and were joined by two curved slats to create a skeleton backrest. The fly chose the top slat to perch upon as it surveyed the space near it for danger.

The pale, flower-patterned linoleum floor was of no interest to the fly. It had followed the scent of raw meat, flying through the small, seconds available opening just as the daughter had run out. It’s eggs needed protein. The meat scent it followed would supply the new generation. It hovered, then landed on the back of the chair, to rest and re-orient. The woman, clad in blue jeans and a pale yellow blouse, walked past the chair and into another room, startling the fly into flight, then, as it found the scent once more, buzzed over to the counter by the stove.

The smell was overpowering and the fly dropped onto the surface, using it’s feet to hunt for nourishment. Disappointingly, there was nothing but the scent, and no food for it’s impatient eggs to hatch upon. Its attempt to exit the direction it came in was stymied by a harsh grate it was too large to fit through.

The Magic of Perspective

There’s an old adage that says, “There’s your perspective, there’s the other guy’s perspective, and then there’s the truth.”

If you’ve ever been in small claims court, you can see this repeated endlessly. Two people arguing about who is right, who has the truth of it, and utterly convinced that their view, their perspective is the absolute truth.

Some may sidestep this a bit, by laying claim to the absolute of the law, and how they followed the letter of it, even if the results were detrimental to another.  And sometimes this can be a deliberate warping of the letter away from the intent or reason for the law.

But it all comes down to perspective.  How do the people in question on both sides see what happened?

Sometimes in writing, logic doesn’t fulfill the reason for a story. Look beyond just a logical premise.
Llook at other things, like perhaps the mind of a man trapped inside himself, or from the perspective of a chair in a house, which is a silent witness to the comings and goings around it.
Take chances and see what comes from a different perspective.  Because, there’s not just one perspective.

Science and Cyberpunk

Science continues to make amazing strides in technology creation and application.  Note this latest one.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180209170717.htm

Also, this arm seems to be almost cyberpunk-ready.

The force is strong: Amputee controls individual prosthetic fingers — ScienceDaily

These incremental steps are bringing us closer to mechanically replaceable limbs, and perhaps even a nervous system, which would be a way around diseases such as Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Writing, and self-exploration

I find that my own mind can completely amaze me/itself at times. With the new story, being called ‘Beguiling Words’ at this time, I had no idea what would happen in the story. That the title seems prophetic I suppose shouldn’t be unexpected, it’s that how appropriate to the story the title is, has surprised me. I guess the unconscious knows more than the conscious does.

I wonder if that qualifies for schizophrenia?

Writing is also a catharsis. It’s a way of letting the imagination loose to explore ideas, and understand better, some things that trouble me. Being able to articulate fears, anxieties, and dislikes on paper is liberating, but at the same time extremely difficult.

Those things, more than most, are what want to remain hidden in the dark recesses. It’s that being able to articulate them, however incompletely, that gives me a chance to grapple with these hangups and, at least in a story, find a way to deal with them.

A few thoughts on what I’ve learned about writing

What I learned about being a writer is that

a) it’s hard work,

b) there are long days of struggle with few sentences, and occasional bursts of inspiration that can cover pages,

c) the stories are what drive the writer, the desire to see for themselves, what happens next, and finally

d) there is nothing like seeing the end of the story so another can begin.

Writing

I sit here, tapping away on my keyboard to bring you a message of electronic media. Writing can be fun, and snarky, and at times, thoughtful and even prescient. But it does not happen unless someone decides to write. Sharing of stories and ideas is a social process, one might almost call it a social ‘need’.

Writers of any kind are social bellwethers. What is written is part and parcel of the times that they live in, and affect them. As an example, when the nuclear bomb appeared, humanity was shocked by it’s power, and fascinated by it’s potential. Stories and movies appeared that reflected these feelings, both positively and negatively. A famous example is ‘Godzilla’, a creature of the atomic bomb.

Realize we, as writers, are a reflection of the times we live in, and in our writings these values, fears, wonders, and curiosity are reflected. We also shape the future. Another example of this, is are the numerous science fiction stories that presaged the creation of items that now are ubiquitous in our modern world. Lasers, prophesized in H.G. Wells, war of the worlds, is probably the most recognizable example.

As writers, our job, is to entertain, speculate, expose truth, question ourselves and our world, and most of all, stimulate the imagination.

The Importance of reading when writing

Writing is what I like doing, and what I want to do. But I do notice that when I read, words are not as hard to come by.  By reading, I set my mind into looking at, and for, words to use in the story I am writing.  The words still struggle, but I’ve more focus for the writing, and this also benefits in that there are more synonyms that come to mind for a word, and that makes reading more interesting.

New Amazon author site, and thoughts on ‘branding’

As stated in the title, I’ve an Amazon author page. It is difficult as all get out to find, unless you use the link here. There are a LOT of J Dark out there, authors, parts of names, etc. One very important part of sales, both books and nearly everything, as sales people will tell you is ‘branding’. What is it that makes you unique, or intriguing. With books, it’s the cover, and your name. Niki has done great things with the cover, but my name isn’t terribly unique. it may be that a pseudonym would help make me and my books easier to find, though I’m not certain what all that would entail.
For those of you curious about the author page, here’s the link:

Saying Goodbye (A short story) – J Dark – post 2

Mom dressed all the time in old clothes and dark colors. When we went out to the store, it was usually in the very early morning. Mom always told me that it was best, because there weren’t many people around and it made shopping easier. Looking back, I think it was because at those hours, hardly anyone she had met at her ‘job’ would be around. She table-danced, or stripped, whichever describes it best for you. Mom hated it, and came home crying a lot. That would make Dad unhappy and those were when the biggest fights happened. About her job. About the money she brought home because dad couldn’t work. About him not working. They always fought. They didn’t pay much attention to me then. I learned to hide in my room when their voices started to get an edge. It meant that things were going to get broken, and a lot of slapping and throwing. It was better in my bedroom.

As I look at the memory of it, that room was my refuge. The one place I had some little privacy of my own. It wasn’t sacrosanct. Both mom and dad would come in to wake me up, or yell at some accident, or even hide from one another, either in play, or, you know. The not-fun-not-play stuff like fighting or yelling or crying. Dad did it a little more than mom. He’d charge in and slam the door, then lean against it. Mom would pound a few times, then go quiet. Dad watched me as he leaned on the door. He’d hold his first finger to his lips and go ‘shhhh’.