Writing Report Saturday May 30 2020

The month of May proved pretty harsh to my writing schedule.

My recorded total is way down, but it should be noted I’m doing a lot of note writing by hand for an upcoming project.

Very little of the actual notes themselves will be used, but I’m planning to use the ideas in them.

It’s a long way to go and I don’t want to spoil the fun by talking about it too much too soon, so we’ll let it slide for now.

Fictoid writing stays fresh; I’ve got short-short stories scheduled through September of 2021.

As stated earlier, I’m reevaluating my short story writing (i.e., stories more that 1,000 words long).  I’ve made several sales, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback, but as much as I enjoy the form, he market really isn’t there (to be honest, the short fiction market was fast drying up in the 1960s; it’s remarkable that even genre fiction has lasted this long).

While I understand the appeal of longform and / or serial novels (heaven knows I read enough series books as a teen and young adult), I’m really leaning towards one-and-done now.

That’s contrary to what the market and audiences want, I know, but I just don’t have the desire to commit to a half-million or more words to tell a story, whether I’m writing or reading them.

I don’t like getting involved in new TV series unless they’re standalone episodes I can take or leave.

Recently I’ve been mulling over the difference between pulp writing (pop fiction, if you’re squeamish about calling it pulp) and more serious writing.

“Serious” need not mean doom and gloom / mundane matters.

Quite the contrary, it can be light and frothy, weird and whimsical.

But to be serious, it needs to carry more weight, it has to show more thought, and not just in the intricacies of plot but in the real wonder of things:  Seeing a familiar thing again as if for the very first time.

Every great story / movie / composition / work of art takes its audience somewhere it’s never been before and shows them something they never suspected existed.

The Godfather is a perfect example of this.  The book is primarily pulp fiction, but between the well worn men’s adventure mag tropes that Mario Puzo relied on, there was also an insight into human nature that few others ever voiced.

In particular he took us inside a modern crime family, and showed us how they functioned (and dysfunctioned).

And not just any run of the mill crime family, but a Mafia family, which was as alien to most modern readers as…well, I was going to say The Hobbit, but The Hobbit is all about thinly disguised Englishmen, so The Godfather is actually more alien than that.

I see too many movies on my Netflix and Amazon Prime queues that are obvious knockoffs of whatever last year’s hit was.

I can’t wrap my mind around wasting one’s time and talent like that.

If you’re going to tell a story -- in whatever medium you choose -- make it something fresh and unique and original.

All the more better if it’s good, but I’d rather see something I’ve never seen before that the most recent soulless imitation of something that looked soulless to begin with.

© Buzz Dixon