Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

First off: happy Hogmanay! Best wishes to you all in 2025.  

I wrote a long blog about conflict and co-operation as a follow up to my discussion of complexity and coherence, and rather disappeared up my own fundament in the process, lots of dubious anthropology and theories about story. (There was an originality warning attached to that blog also- I am aware that none of what I was saying had any pretence to startling or searing new insight.) In the end I basically decided against writing stories for entertainment only, that they had to be more than that. A snob, basically. SMH, at myself.

Then I watched this video, and it changed my mind. I still think most of the stories I’d ever try to write would have aspirations to be entertaining and more, but I was also convinced that writing freely without trying to prove or make a point would be a ton of fun. I’ve wanted to write pulp fantasy for a few years now, but all the ideas I’ve had ended up being built into something more literary almost by default even in the initial brief sketch of an initial outline or story seed. I can’t help myself.

So I’m thinking of how to write a pulp epic in 40k words. No pressure, write for my inner 16 year old and see what flies out. Write for fun, without the self-imposed weight of expectation to do something great, to make something worthy. It will be trash, to quote The Cozy Creative, but in a good way, and it will be mine, and I suspect I’ll learn a great deal from it.

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So I started. I was going to do a straight Conan rip off, but my brain wouldn’t co-operate. So I went to a different recent random idea I had for stories set in a new world, and doodled around on the page thinking of characters. I produced four to five pretty quickly, plus some generic perspectives of various races in this world. Three openings focused on one character each.

I’ve written two of the three character openings. I can see how I’d interweave their stories and bring them together, but my brain is getting in the way again and asking: Isn’t this a bit complex? I thought this was going to be a fun romp, isn’t there a ton of interracial conflict in this world and a lot of ugliness? Weren’t you intending to do a simple 2 to 3 act story, no muss no fuss – is that what this is evolving into? And where, by the way, is your primary antagonist?

Me. I’m my primary bloody antagonist, that’s what.

But, butbutbutbut, I did have fun writing out the sketches and the intros, so there is that. I really like the idea of limiting myself to a 40K ceiling and seeing what I can do in that space. This world/setting does lend itself to short stories, which I may indulge in, but the goal is to write a novella for fun and not care overmuch, in as much as my brain will allow it, about how it turns out. Just write, let it flow, see where the words and pages take you. The quicker the better, as this is all a grand experiment, but I can’t put time pressure on myself, as that will activate my annoying brain and get me in the way of myself.

Sigh. This writing for fun thing is harder than it looks.

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Word for the week, courtesy of James Boswell: rodomontade. (He spelled it with an h after the r, which seems swankier to me, so rhodomontade, baby!)