Tag: the comfort of beanbags

WIP Teaser: The Ten Commandments from my novella, The Comfort of Beanbags

Can’t resist – Earth has had a revolution, in a most bizarre fashion. Can’t say too much as it would dull the sheen of the story, but imagine if hard core clinical psychologists ran the world – or at least were instrumental at some distant point in the past. Here’s the Ten Commandments that everyone (who can) memorized:

  1. Science is the key to a sustainable future for humankind; you shall not place religion before science. Creationism is poison.
  2. You shall not practice, or even speak of, religion except in your home and in places of worship.
  3. You shall at all times obey the Prefecture Administrators, Prefecture Delegates to the World Council, and the Civilian Protection Officers, whose task it is to maintain the viability and harmony of human society.
  4. You shall respect your mother and father, who have allotted a portion of their lives to your wellbeing.
  5. You shall not kill or murder any citizen of the world, nor should you intentionally harm anyone.
  6. You shall not steal the assigned possessions of individual citizens or family units, nor shall you wantonly take shared possessions without due process.
  7. You shall not lie or distort the truth.
  8. It is an ideal to have no more than two live born children in your life, but you must adhere to the wisdom of the World Council regarding how many you may have. At this time it is one.
  9. You shall respect the common ownership of resources, lands and seas, as administered by Prefectures, and also respect the assigned resources and land to other individuals. It is a sacred task to not squander your, or shared, allotments.
  10. You shall not work or carry out any form of business on Sundays, as it is a time to rest and bond with your family unit.

Reassessing my current WIP

My YA dystopian WIP, The Comfort of Beanbags, is not on hold, but will take longer to write. It’s about getting the world building right. My original conception, reflected in my short story, is fine, but in the expanded version I realized that the world needed to be more detailed, and consistent with the original thoughts. Plot and characterization isn’t an issue; it really is about world building.

I do look forward to this, but I need more time thinking and outlining. Fun, fun, fun.
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History Repeats Itself, part 2

This comment follows directly from my previous entry.

I decided to outline my plot over the next month or two. Because the novel (working title, The Comfort of Beanbags) will be a YA novel, I think, it is likely to be smallish. Maybe around 40 to 60k. I think I can write it pretty rapidly.

More work, but hey, we writers are masochistic.
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History Repeats Itself

Yes, history does repeat itself. I feel like I’m in one of those Sixties b-grade scifi movies where the main character gets caught in a time loop. Or possibly even Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

I wrote a short story a week or so ago (The Comfort of Beanbags) that was quite a challenge (I blogged that point during the process), and I now realize that part of the difficulty of this particular piece was to instill the intended theme and moods in a short work. The jury is still out on that matter, but I have come believe now that the path I should have taken was to write a longer work, a short novel, or novella.

Ironically, going through the process of writing the short story may have been a necessary ingredient to come to this realization…

So… I have another project in scope. I can’t let it go now. I am sure this story will turn into something a lot better in longer form.

Why does history repeat? Because that’s exactly what happened with Guardian of the Sky Realms. A short story turned into a novel.

Stay tuned.
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