I am coming to realize that, sometimes, an attempt to enjoy a classic work of literature can be marred by the attitudes of the author. This came about over the past week or so as I have begun reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my daughter. Now, I know all about the Christian overtones, though to be honest I never noticed those as a kid. When I first read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, I missed all the religious symbolism. It wasn't until much later that I read about the amount of allegory lurking in the Chronicles, and I didn't think much about it afterwards.
But, having seen the first movie one rainy Sunday, we thought we'd read the books. Aside from learning that TL,TW,&TW was not the first book, narratively speaking, I learned some other troubling facts while reading The Magician's Nephew.
First, TL,TW,&TW is downright subtle when it comes to the religious stuff in the rest of the books. Chapter after chapter was "Hey, this is Genesis in Narnia! Look, there's a tree! With fruit you can't eat!" and other things where I found myself wanting to say "Yes, I get it, can we please move on with the story?" I did not say this, because I was reading to my daughter, and I try not to editorialize when I do so.
(I do stop, at the beginning of each new Lemony Snicket book, and ask my daughter if she wants to go on after we've read the part where the author advises us not to. It's become a thing now that we're halfway through the series, and it's in fun. But that's a different sort of narrative aside.)
I'm not sure how I feel about this heavy-handedness, not because it's religious - I go to church, and I drag my daughter with me, although Lewis' persistent proselytizing gets old - but simply because with the first book in the chronicles, it feels like the allegory got in the way of the story. I can foresee this becoming a bit of a problem later on in the series. (I am familiar with Neil Gaiman's short "The Problem of Susan" for example, in which he, too deals with some of this.)
Second, and by far the more troubling, is the sheer sexism in the book. Now, I know that books are a product of their times. Kipling was heavily influenced by the English Imperialism than ran rampant over everything at the time, and reading some of his works today leads to some cringing. Fenimore Cooper's portrayals of the Native Americans are nowhere near as balanced as that last movie made them out to be. But those were books for adults. Narnia is for kids. Lewis had to have known young girls.
And as far as I can tell, his message to them is "Know your place." He makes blunders in biology (it is the female elephants that are in charge, not the males- which may or may not have been know at that time) based solely on his own chauvinistic leanings. Of course the men are called to a meeting and the women left behind; that's the men's job. And the female character is not only shunted to the sidelines, but is physically cowed by the male character at one point, and it's all very casually dealt with. Too casually.
So, while we will continue to read the series, I foresee the need to have conversations with my daughter about what's going on. We've had similar conversations about the Disney Princesses, too, because as a general whole they are piss-poor role models for young girls.
Or maybe we won't have to. She may not be quite old enough to grasp some of the connotations lurking beneath the surface (which are not as direct as Ariel's whining or Cinderella's "I need a Prince") and I confess to editing some as I read. Where Lewis wrote "he-elephant" and "he-beaver" I left off the gendered pronouns, as it changed nothing in the narrative to do so. And I'm hoping that the rest of the chronicles, most of which were actually written before the first book, will not be as bad.
But if they are, then we'll deal with them, and have a talk about why they are the way they are, and how you go about separating the message from the story. Because this won't be the last thing she reads where that may become necessary.
Showing posts with label old ideas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label old ideas. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Adventures in Poor Handwriting
I was reading another blog the other day when I was struck by an idea. Not immediately, mind you. There was no eureka moment. Just a thought that occurred to me the next day at work. (Yes, I think about non-work things at work. Doesn't everybody?) It's not the first time this has happened, and there's another idea from another blog lurking in the wings here, but this one first, because it occurred to me that perhaps it's part of the reason lately why I've been so bad at keeping up with this one.
... Though, in all honesty, while it would make a nifty excuse, the truth is I just haven't gotten around to it as often as I should have. There have been real-world distractions over the past year, some of which allowed me to come to the realization that while there are writers whose volume of productivity is increased in hard times, I am not one of them. I do not find solace on the page, or at least I wasn't able to distract myself enough to focus on writing. On the plus side, I don't find solace in drink, either, so there is that.
Now that I've digressed enough, the idea was that it can be difficult for some people to write on the computer because it creates a layer of separation between the writer and the ideas. That by writing longhand, ideas flow more freely, more naturally. And there isn't the distraction of the shiny internet.
Which is when it occurred to me that, back in the old, dark days before the internet and yes, children, before computers - er, personal computers, not computers in general as I am not that old quite just yet - whenever I would write down my general thoughts it would be by hand. My journal, which on some days was a writing journal, and on other days just a repository for personal ramblings and musings, was always done by hand. So perhaps one of the problems for me in trying to keep this, a blog, which on some days is a writing journal, and on other days etc, is that I'm having to process things through the interfering medium of the keyboard and computer.
At which point I laughed until I cried.
Ok, not quite so much, but it was good for a chuckle.
There were two immediate problems with such a thought: one, I stumbled across my old hand-written journal some years back. Let me tell you, if you want a good laugh, go back to whatever personal stuff you may have written as a teen. Wow. For an exercise in both self-deprecating amusement and sheer embarrassment, it doesn't get much better than that. Therefore, writing by hand does not guarantee an improvement in the process. If anything, I think knowing there wasn't an immediate audience would directly correlate to a lack of improvement.
Two, and this is perhaps the more important reason: I can't read my handwriting. Granted, lots of people say this, but I have actually taken notes I could not read later on. The only time my handwriting is even approaching neat is when I'm writing on the board for my students.
So unless I start keeping this blog via white board, it's going to have to be on the computer.
Although the Macbook does have a nice white surface. Wonder if it's dry erase friendly?
(In case you are curious, the blog I read was over here. I think you have to appreciate a blog that is run by someone calling herself Zombie Monkey. Which, come to think of it, would be a scary prospect. Monkeys are potentially ill-tempered and prone to violence enough as it is, without being the walking dead. Also, despite the title, I don't prefer writing longhand, for obvious reasons. I'm not terribly sure I'm a gentleman either, so it works out.)
... Though, in all honesty, while it would make a nifty excuse, the truth is I just haven't gotten around to it as often as I should have. There have been real-world distractions over the past year, some of which allowed me to come to the realization that while there are writers whose volume of productivity is increased in hard times, I am not one of them. I do not find solace on the page, or at least I wasn't able to distract myself enough to focus on writing. On the plus side, I don't find solace in drink, either, so there is that.
Now that I've digressed enough, the idea was that it can be difficult for some people to write on the computer because it creates a layer of separation between the writer and the ideas. That by writing longhand, ideas flow more freely, more naturally. And there isn't the distraction of the shiny internet.
Which is when it occurred to me that, back in the old, dark days before the internet and yes, children, before computers - er, personal computers, not computers in general as I am not that old quite just yet - whenever I would write down my general thoughts it would be by hand. My journal, which on some days was a writing journal, and on other days just a repository for personal ramblings and musings, was always done by hand. So perhaps one of the problems for me in trying to keep this, a blog, which on some days is a writing journal, and on other days etc, is that I'm having to process things through the interfering medium of the keyboard and computer.
At which point I laughed until I cried.
Ok, not quite so much, but it was good for a chuckle.
There were two immediate problems with such a thought: one, I stumbled across my old hand-written journal some years back. Let me tell you, if you want a good laugh, go back to whatever personal stuff you may have written as a teen. Wow. For an exercise in both self-deprecating amusement and sheer embarrassment, it doesn't get much better than that. Therefore, writing by hand does not guarantee an improvement in the process. If anything, I think knowing there wasn't an immediate audience would directly correlate to a lack of improvement.
Two, and this is perhaps the more important reason: I can't read my handwriting. Granted, lots of people say this, but I have actually taken notes I could not read later on. The only time my handwriting is even approaching neat is when I'm writing on the board for my students.
So unless I start keeping this blog via white board, it's going to have to be on the computer.
Although the Macbook does have a nice white surface. Wonder if it's dry erase friendly?
(In case you are curious, the blog I read was over here. I think you have to appreciate a blog that is run by someone calling herself Zombie Monkey. Which, come to think of it, would be a scary prospect. Monkeys are potentially ill-tempered and prone to violence enough as it is, without being the walking dead. Also, despite the title, I don't prefer writing longhand, for obvious reasons. I'm not terribly sure I'm a gentleman either, so it works out.)
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Something Old, Something New
So, this is it. 2012. The end. At least according to people with a bad understanding of Mayan cosmology and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the modern Mayans don't share this idea of impending doom and gloom just because their ancestors ran the clock out and didn't bother to start a new one. Needless to say, I really don't think 2012 is going to be the last year for all of us.
It being the new year, it is of course traditional to talk about making resolutions and some such. I'm going to buck tradition this year. It's not that I don't have resolutions; it's just that they were the same things I resolved to do a couple of months ago. They are fresh and new for the new year, which is probably for the better seeing as how so few of those self-made promises we all utter at the start of the new year make it past the end of January. That's part of the illusion of this time of year - that we will, somehow, make good on the things we didn't make good on last year.
Of course, New Year's itself is a bit of an illusion. If you're Chinese, the New Year doesn't officially kick in for another month or so, on the traditional calendar. Not to mention that, simply because we've started a new calendar, it's not as if there were great changes from Dec 31 to Jan 1. I got snow here on the 2nd, but aside from that there wasn't much else to mark the transition once you discount the traditional things like champagne and the Rose Bowl parade. It's a month, like any other, and while people go back to work and students go back to school, these are rituals repeated at other times of the year, too.
About the only thing that is new is the attitude and the optimism. We are somehow inclined, despite all past experience to the contrary, to assign the goals we make at this time of year a certain hopefulness. We will accomplish the things we want, this year, no matter how far short we fell last year. Some of us will no doubt do this, though often by taking a different approach from the past years. Sometimes it isn't the resolution but the execution.
I'm not trying to be gloomy here, despite the surprisingly depressive tone I see as I glance back through what I've written so far. I think where I'm going with this is that it doesn't have to be just this time of year when we make the attempt to better ourselves, and that it doesn't have to be doomed to failure. I would suspect that if someone out there has done a study, and they likely have, that resolutions we make to improve ourselves at other times of the year might have a better chance of success. Those are the ones we come to after looking around and assessing what needs to change, rather than just off the cuff promises made over that first sip of the bubbly stuff.
So that's where I'm aiming this new year. Not with brand new things, but with old things, brought forward into the new year with, perhaps, new determination.
That should get me to March, I think.
It being the new year, it is of course traditional to talk about making resolutions and some such. I'm going to buck tradition this year. It's not that I don't have resolutions; it's just that they were the same things I resolved to do a couple of months ago. They are fresh and new for the new year, which is probably for the better seeing as how so few of those self-made promises we all utter at the start of the new year make it past the end of January. That's part of the illusion of this time of year - that we will, somehow, make good on the things we didn't make good on last year.
Of course, New Year's itself is a bit of an illusion. If you're Chinese, the New Year doesn't officially kick in for another month or so, on the traditional calendar. Not to mention that, simply because we've started a new calendar, it's not as if there were great changes from Dec 31 to Jan 1. I got snow here on the 2nd, but aside from that there wasn't much else to mark the transition once you discount the traditional things like champagne and the Rose Bowl parade. It's a month, like any other, and while people go back to work and students go back to school, these are rituals repeated at other times of the year, too.
About the only thing that is new is the attitude and the optimism. We are somehow inclined, despite all past experience to the contrary, to assign the goals we make at this time of year a certain hopefulness. We will accomplish the things we want, this year, no matter how far short we fell last year. Some of us will no doubt do this, though often by taking a different approach from the past years. Sometimes it isn't the resolution but the execution.
I'm not trying to be gloomy here, despite the surprisingly depressive tone I see as I glance back through what I've written so far. I think where I'm going with this is that it doesn't have to be just this time of year when we make the attempt to better ourselves, and that it doesn't have to be doomed to failure. I would suspect that if someone out there has done a study, and they likely have, that resolutions we make to improve ourselves at other times of the year might have a better chance of success. Those are the ones we come to after looking around and assessing what needs to change, rather than just off the cuff promises made over that first sip of the bubbly stuff.
So that's where I'm aiming this new year. Not with brand new things, but with old things, brought forward into the new year with, perhaps, new determination.
That should get me to March, I think.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Ghosts of Novels Past
I keep a notebook, as any good writer should do. It's there for me to jot ideas in when they occur to me at a time and place where I can't implement them, or simply have no use for them. (I once came up with what I believe is a lovely pastorally poetic line in the little boys' room at a Barnes and Nobles. I haven't used it yet, but it's there.) It's not a fail-safe, as the ideas have to be written down in order to be recorded, and they have to be written so that I can read and decipher them later. A failure on both counts has occurred more than once.
After jotting something down the other day, it occurred to me that I've reached the point where I ought to figure out a way to organize what's in it. Far beyond that point, really, but the easiest solution for me is using different colors. I keep pens of different colors on hand anyway as a holdover habit from my teaching days, and color-coordinating would provide the visual clues I work best from.
Besides, it's pretty.
As I was flipping back through the pages - occasionally scratching my head over an entry - unsurprisingly the bulk of the entries were for what is now the completed novel. (Not my first overall but the first that's worth doing something with.) I spent the better portion of a decade and a half with that book in my head, working on it in various incarnations, so if the notebook - which I've had about half that time - wasn't packed with notes and ideas on that book, it would probably be a sign I wasn't thinking about it enough.
I didn't read through all of it, but I noticed some things that I had once contemplated that were, in the end, left in the notebook. Other items are things that have found there way into the subsequent work, which is set in the same universe. (In a small-scale "world of my own making" meaning of universe. I'm not Herbert or Asimov.) Some of what I had written down was bits of dialog I was trying to make work, or descriptions of items I'd had ideas on in the name of world-building. It was funny to see how something I had reduced to a single, non-descript line to fuel a necessary plot event had at one point taken up an entire page in the notebook.
Though I point out it's a small notebook, 8 1/2 by 5 1/2. It seems a size that suits me, as I use a similar size for my freelance notebooks. Those are one per project though, unlike the writing one which acts as a catch all.
It just felt a little odd to be looking at notes for something which was no longer an active effort, creatively speaking. Sure, I'm agonizing over the query, and hoping like heck I won't have to write a synopsis, but the work itself has sat, largely untouched and unmessed with, since I put it through the editing process and pulled it out the other side. I'm not a tweaker, and once something is done, it's done, and now in it's wake it leaves all those unused notes.
Maybe some of them will be resurrected later, but I suspect most of them will be lovingly packed up and tucked away (metaphorically speaking - the notebook stays out), taken out only occasionally to be reminisced over before being set aside once more. Not all ghosts are restless ones.
After jotting something down the other day, it occurred to me that I've reached the point where I ought to figure out a way to organize what's in it. Far beyond that point, really, but the easiest solution for me is using different colors. I keep pens of different colors on hand anyway as a holdover habit from my teaching days, and color-coordinating would provide the visual clues I work best from.
Besides, it's pretty.
As I was flipping back through the pages - occasionally scratching my head over an entry - unsurprisingly the bulk of the entries were for what is now the completed novel. (Not my first overall but the first that's worth doing something with.) I spent the better portion of a decade and a half with that book in my head, working on it in various incarnations, so if the notebook - which I've had about half that time - wasn't packed with notes and ideas on that book, it would probably be a sign I wasn't thinking about it enough.
I didn't read through all of it, but I noticed some things that I had once contemplated that were, in the end, left in the notebook. Other items are things that have found there way into the subsequent work, which is set in the same universe. (In a small-scale "world of my own making" meaning of universe. I'm not Herbert or Asimov.) Some of what I had written down was bits of dialog I was trying to make work, or descriptions of items I'd had ideas on in the name of world-building. It was funny to see how something I had reduced to a single, non-descript line to fuel a necessary plot event had at one point taken up an entire page in the notebook.
Though I point out it's a small notebook, 8 1/2 by 5 1/2. It seems a size that suits me, as I use a similar size for my freelance notebooks. Those are one per project though, unlike the writing one which acts as a catch all.
It just felt a little odd to be looking at notes for something which was no longer an active effort, creatively speaking. Sure, I'm agonizing over the query, and hoping like heck I won't have to write a synopsis, but the work itself has sat, largely untouched and unmessed with, since I put it through the editing process and pulled it out the other side. I'm not a tweaker, and once something is done, it's done, and now in it's wake it leaves all those unused notes.
Maybe some of them will be resurrected later, but I suspect most of them will be lovingly packed up and tucked away (metaphorically speaking - the notebook stays out), taken out only occasionally to be reminisced over before being set aside once more. Not all ghosts are restless ones.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Very Superstitious
I'm not, mind you, but the Stevie Wonder song popped into my head as I was thinking about the date today. Hopefully, it's as stuck in your head now as it is in mine. If it's not, you can click here and give it a listen, as well as watch a clip that further illustrates what I was saying about Sesame Street. I like to spread the misery around. Not that it isn't a good tune. Quite the contrary. But after two hours of hearing it round and round in my head... well, any tune gets old fast that way.
I can't really afford to be superstitious anyway, as I am the provider of food, snuggles, and a clean litter box for the resident black cat here. She crosses my path frequently on any given day, more so if her water dish is empty. (I have tried to explain to her that if she trips me and I hit my head, her water dish will not get filled, but she's a cat. Reason is lost on her.) Also, if I had the amount of luck that was supposed to go with finding a penny... well, then I ought to be winning the lottery. Or at least have the Prize Patrol on my doorstep.
Neither has happened. Of course, I don't play the lottery, either, and only ever once bought something from Publisher's Clearing House, so that might have something to do with it as well.
Still, I'm not completely dismissive of superstitions. In part this is because I attend church, and while we refer to it as "religion" I am well aware that in large part that's a "po-tay-to, po-tah-to" kind of distinction. Also, because I happen to be a word geek, I love finding out the origins of various words and phrases, and know that some superstitions were rooted in good measures.
Not that any spring to mind, at the moment. But I know some were.
Friday the 13th has historic origins, and if you've read Dan Brown or watched the movie, you'll know what those are. (Yes, he got that right. Blind pigs and acorns and all that. Actually, that's a little unfair. I'm sure he does some research, and the book was entertaining.) Though I have to wonder how that became spread across any Friday the 13th, and not more like the Ides of March wherein it's a particular day associated with a particular event. Maybe because Shakespeare didn't encapsulate that one into snazzy rhyme and meter? Hmm, possible.
Aside from that event though, and a series of ultimately silly movies and one, slightly less silly and slightly more entertaining short-lived television series, I think the day is in large part like any other. I am even inclined to agree with Garfield the cat in that Monday the 13th seems far more ominous to me, having been once in a Monday-Friday kind of job. Mondays were definitely scarier. Especially because of the weekly meetings. *shudders*
Anyway, I don't have a rabbit's foot, or other charms - heck, I haven't even had a bowl of Lucky Charms since college and expect by now I'd find them too sweet. So if this day does hold inauspicious things for me, I guess I'll just have to weather them as best I can. Somehow, though, I don't think it does.
Knock on wood.
I can't really afford to be superstitious anyway, as I am the provider of food, snuggles, and a clean litter box for the resident black cat here. She crosses my path frequently on any given day, more so if her water dish is empty. (I have tried to explain to her that if she trips me and I hit my head, her water dish will not get filled, but she's a cat. Reason is lost on her.) Also, if I had the amount of luck that was supposed to go with finding a penny... well, then I ought to be winning the lottery. Or at least have the Prize Patrol on my doorstep.
Neither has happened. Of course, I don't play the lottery, either, and only ever once bought something from Publisher's Clearing House, so that might have something to do with it as well.
Still, I'm not completely dismissive of superstitions. In part this is because I attend church, and while we refer to it as "religion" I am well aware that in large part that's a "po-tay-to, po-tah-to" kind of distinction. Also, because I happen to be a word geek, I love finding out the origins of various words and phrases, and know that some superstitions were rooted in good measures.
Not that any spring to mind, at the moment. But I know some were.
Friday the 13th has historic origins, and if you've read Dan Brown or watched the movie, you'll know what those are. (Yes, he got that right. Blind pigs and acorns and all that. Actually, that's a little unfair. I'm sure he does some research, and the book was entertaining.) Though I have to wonder how that became spread across any Friday the 13th, and not more like the Ides of March wherein it's a particular day associated with a particular event. Maybe because Shakespeare didn't encapsulate that one into snazzy rhyme and meter? Hmm, possible.
Aside from that event though, and a series of ultimately silly movies and one, slightly less silly and slightly more entertaining short-lived television series, I think the day is in large part like any other. I am even inclined to agree with Garfield the cat in that Monday the 13th seems far more ominous to me, having been once in a Monday-Friday kind of job. Mondays were definitely scarier. Especially because of the weekly meetings. *shudders*
Anyway, I don't have a rabbit's foot, or other charms - heck, I haven't even had a bowl of Lucky Charms since college and expect by now I'd find them too sweet. So if this day does hold inauspicious things for me, I guess I'll just have to weather them as best I can. Somehow, though, I don't think it does.
Knock on wood.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Things Forgotten
So, I'm moving. Which as anyone who has been through it will likely attest to, sucks. Sure, there might be someone out there who enjoys the process... but they are sick, sick individuals and not to be trusted. However, it's a process that does come with its own reward, not least of which is an opportunity to winnow out some of the stuff that's accumulated over the years and yet hasn't been used in decades. (No exaggeration there - I found an old backpack frame that I had back in high school. The camping backpack type, not the books for school type. I figure it may be a while before I can do that again, so it's "hello, Craigslist!")
More importantly though, with that winnowing comes the chance to revisit things I had forgotten about. This includes items of nostalgia (which reminds me, there was another blog entry on that subject I meant to pen a while back...) which, though I'm not keeping them, provide a momentary and pleasant side-trip down memory lane. There are also items that, having suddenly found them again, warrant dusting off and bringing out into the light to be used again. Those are the type of things that you look at them and wonder why you put them away in the first place. Sometimes the answer to that becomes apparent after a moment's reflection, and sometimes you never quite adequately answer it.
I suspect you all see where I'm going with this.
I was sorting through my folders the other day - digital ones, not the physical ones - and came across a number of story ideas that had been started and then for one reason or another not finished. Looking at some of them, I realized that while the idea was good the execution wasn't, and so they need to be filed away again in the idea pile until such time as they germinate into something more. I haven't deleted them, because being digital files they take up hardly any room, but I did right down the central idea in my little writing notebook, alongside other ideas that occurred to me in dreams or bookstore restrooms. (Yes, a bookstore bathroom. It was either the notebook or the toilet paper, and the idea was good enough to merit inclusion on more permanent paper.)
Some of them, though, are gems. Or if they aren't yet they can be with just a little polishing. I am noticing that most of the better ideas - and the ones that made it into better stories - are the ones that are more recent. Though that's relative, because the most recent any of these had been looked at was at least four years ago. Some of them stretch back farther than that, though, back to the time when they were stored on 3.5" floppies. That puts them back in the days when I was in college.
(I have no short stories from high school, as while we did have computers my first one was an Apple IIc. The kind with no hard drive. So anything I wrote on that old monitor, with its black background and strangely fuzzy tri-color text font, has long since been lost unless there is a print copy somewhere in my parents' basement. ... Given the quality of some of the things I wrote then, I would hope not.)
Yet even among the ones layered in feet, not inches of digital dust, there were some concepts worth exploring. If nothing else, by taking them out and looking at them it helps me appreciate not only how long I've been at this, but also how far I've come since I've started. And that's something I can take with me wherever I go, and it doesn't even need bubble wrap or a cardboard box.
More importantly though, with that winnowing comes the chance to revisit things I had forgotten about. This includes items of nostalgia (which reminds me, there was another blog entry on that subject I meant to pen a while back...) which, though I'm not keeping them, provide a momentary and pleasant side-trip down memory lane. There are also items that, having suddenly found them again, warrant dusting off and bringing out into the light to be used again. Those are the type of things that you look at them and wonder why you put them away in the first place. Sometimes the answer to that becomes apparent after a moment's reflection, and sometimes you never quite adequately answer it.
I suspect you all see where I'm going with this.
I was sorting through my folders the other day - digital ones, not the physical ones - and came across a number of story ideas that had been started and then for one reason or another not finished. Looking at some of them, I realized that while the idea was good the execution wasn't, and so they need to be filed away again in the idea pile until such time as they germinate into something more. I haven't deleted them, because being digital files they take up hardly any room, but I did right down the central idea in my little writing notebook, alongside other ideas that occurred to me in dreams or bookstore restrooms. (Yes, a bookstore bathroom. It was either the notebook or the toilet paper, and the idea was good enough to merit inclusion on more permanent paper.)
Some of them, though, are gems. Or if they aren't yet they can be with just a little polishing. I am noticing that most of the better ideas - and the ones that made it into better stories - are the ones that are more recent. Though that's relative, because the most recent any of these had been looked at was at least four years ago. Some of them stretch back farther than that, though, back to the time when they were stored on 3.5" floppies. That puts them back in the days when I was in college.
(I have no short stories from high school, as while we did have computers my first one was an Apple IIc. The kind with no hard drive. So anything I wrote on that old monitor, with its black background and strangely fuzzy tri-color text font, has long since been lost unless there is a print copy somewhere in my parents' basement. ... Given the quality of some of the things I wrote then, I would hope not.)
Yet even among the ones layered in feet, not inches of digital dust, there were some concepts worth exploring. If nothing else, by taking them out and looking at them it helps me appreciate not only how long I've been at this, but also how far I've come since I've started. And that's something I can take with me wherever I go, and it doesn't even need bubble wrap or a cardboard box.
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