You know you have dizzyingly given yourself over to something or someone when you want to talk about it or them for an unusual portion of your time. And I am turning utterly into a lit. mag groupie. I don’t know if this is just a particularly-giddy phase of a brief fling – but considering I submitted my first story about nine months ago and am currently working on the next batch of stories to submit after I’ve exhausted the possibilities of THIS batch; it’s safe to say that it’s part of my medium-term agenda for my writing life.
One of the ways you know you’ve joined a cult is when you start laughing at the inside jokes. Once you’ve done a few rituals yourself, you recognize the process, and so anything that pokes at that familiarity is suddenly funnier – and causes you to make even less sense to the outside world. Just like when you’re in a cute couple. Or a gang.
Every time I pick a mag to which to submit, I browse a couple of stories they’ve published for a sample of what they like. And every time I post an early draft on Zoetrope for feedback, I end up reviewing seven or eight rather random pieces of material. Just recently, someone there posted a screed claiming that they and their partner had written Harry Potter in 1983, only it got stolen by the Masons/Rothschilds/Whatever because their bloodline member J.K. Rowling wanted ever so badly to be a writer. I think they were serious.
So I now have some grounding in what elements are appearing in aspirant-written short stories these days. Which made this list, maintained by the speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons, even funnier than it already is. Along with their submission guidelines, they keep a running tally of story elements of which they’ve grown bored; and it does make for an effectively-ruthless compendium of the many cliched or dumb ideas that every writer has considered, or actually written, before. Examples:
“2. Creative person is having trouble creating.”
“6. Technology and/or modern life turn out to be soulless.
a. Office life turns out to be soul-deadening, literally or metaphorically.
b. All technology is shown to be soulless; in contrast, anything “natural” is by definition good. For example, living in a weather-controlled environment is bad, because it’s artificial, while dying of pneumonia is good, because it’s natural.
c. In the future, all learning is soulless and electronic, until kid is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a book.
d. In the future, everything is soulless and electronic, until protagonist (usually a kid) is exposed to ancient wisdom in the form of a wise old person who’s lived a non-electronic life.”
“30. Brutal violence against women is depicted in loving detail, often in a story that’s ostensibly about violence against women being bad.
a. Man is forced by circumstances or magic to rape a woman even though he really doesn’t want to, honest.
b. The main reason for the main female character to be in the story, and to be female, is so that she can be raped.”
“35. Twee little fairies with wings fly around being twee.”
I haven’t yet read an example of #35. I kind of want to now. Because I’ve joined a cult.