Hi everyone!
I'm new to this site, and hoping to get my feet wet as a writer, I'm a musician-in-training but before I was interested in music I wanted to be a writer, I used to spend hours thinking up huge stories then full of enthusiasm I would sit down at the keyboard and write...
Then, once I got through the first page or so and my creative energies started to ebb I would start to edit and all the issues and options, grammar and details would torment me until I realised "No way, this is only the first page of 10,000 and it's already this hard? F*&% this!"
Ah, Youth!
So anyway, over the past couple years my focus has been almost exclusively on music, but writing was always there in the back of my mind and my favourite epic fantasies would not go away... So recently I decided to not be so passive in the realm of active creativity, I should compose and write now, not in some comfortable imagined future because developing the skills to create are probably more difficult than the skills to recreate and I should start working on those skills sooner rather than later. So, in the same way that one should first write single melody pieces then short piano pieces, quartets, symphonies THEN Wagnerian style multi part operas (Yes, I do wish to write a challenge to the Ring Cycle, so sue me!) and as one works on scales with hands seperately, then together, then arpeggios, basic pieces, the Chopin Etudes and THEN the crazy university grade pieces...
Well...
So too should one start small in the field of writing!
For those who care to see what I have done so far I've posted a couple 100 word creations, not much but it's a start, but now I'm looking for something a little meatier, (just a little) so, seeing as I believe art (I hate that word actually, but it's the only way you'll know what I mean) should be a communal and interrelating thing and also given the fact the only writing skill I am particularly proficient at is daydreaming I put forth a challenge!
What should I write?!?!?F
First, I think I should write a set of "written etudes" little studies in writing, each one working on different skills and requiring a different approach, sort of a literary rip-off of the Chopin etudes, made for the purpose of learning the method but (hopefully) also standing as good creative writing in themselves.
I would appreciate all manner of suggestions but to give you some idea of what I'm after please keep the following in mind:
1. Challenge: One of my favourite books (Stanslaw Lem's Cyberiad) contains a delightful story about an electronic bard, a manufactured poet so to speak, created by simulating all the history of existence and then condensing it into a giant thinking machine, though at first it didn't work so well... ("...Mockles, fent on a silpen tree...") and only improves a little in its next attempt, uttering only one line with any semblence of sense ("...In thy pantry dreaming...") but once treated to some russian-style technical ingenuity (violence) and thus able to speak with functional grammar and semantics the machine was challenged to write a poem... about a haircut... but lofty! noble! tragic! vengeful! heroic! and full of love! in 6 lines and with every word beginning with "S"... The machine rose to the challenge marvellously, ("Seduced! Shaggy Samson Sheared... Silently Scheming, Sightlessly Seeking, Some Savage, Spectacular Suicide!") or should I say the author rose to the challenge? (I have a feeling that he solved the conundrum the same way one solves the kiddy mazes on resturant placemats, by working backwards) so please, if a mere machine can accomplish this give me something challenging! But not so hard that I can't make anything decent out of it (remember I'm just a beginner!)
2. Purpose: A Poem to cheer? A story to provide warm company in a dark place? A tale to win hearts and minds? A Philosophical observation? An anatomical dissection of a given topic? Variations on a theme to find new meaning? The presence of purpose is what might raise mere curiosities and studies to actually meaningful works.
3. Originality:They (who anyway?) say everything has been done but it's very enjoyable to try and prove them wrong! all ideas on how to make something original are welcome, but don't just consider premise, often it is the limitations that have made the best stuff, structure, characters, writing style, anything that could make it unique, but preferably tempered by the 2nd and not too much of the 1st (hmmm, how Asimovian...)
So please, put forward whatever you please! A complete and thorough challenge or just a fragment of a concept, I'll mix them together submit the story and you can tell me what you think!
To start I have put forward my own ideas, please vote and make further suggestions and hopefully I'll have something for you all soon!
see ya and please feel free to put forward more ideas for future stories, I have a pretty clear idea of what to do with this one, thanks for helping me choose!