Death and Dreams (better than taxes, right?)

Today is one of those days that keeps me thinking.  My mom died last year, and today would have been her 48^th birthday.  Overall I’m doing all right, but I can’t escape the reality that life is short.  For too many people, it’s far shorter than they ever would have dreamed.  These thoughts have made me, at least for today, into a productive person.  Knowing that I can’t guarantee how much time I will have to accomplish all I dream of, which is a truth we all must contend with, I am motivated in a way that I wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago.

So far, I’ve been keeping up with my blogging goals, and I’m keeping pace with the word count goal that I set for myself earlier this week.  Actually, I need another 50 words or so written in my story before midnight to be absolutely in line with my goal, but given that laundry and dishes are done and my kids are in bed, I should have no issues accomplishing that.

The story itself remains untitled, but that’s all right.  Here I thought I would share some of the details of the story itself.  It’s set in a dystopian future where political extremism from both sides got so bad that America splits in two halves that are separated by a buffer zone.  The two halves no longer want anything to do with each other.  Ideology is so strongly embedded that any citizen of either side that is determined to be a deviant is subject to harsh punishments.  Many end up fleeing to live in the buffer zone to escape persecution.

The story starts with a poem that is recited to young children to scare them away from the buffer zone.  After all no country wants to lose too many of its people.  Here’s the poem.

The godless creature, not even a man,

though locked up, concocted a plan.

This dastardly deed, a violent act.

Written in blood, an irrevocable fact.

He tore them down, and after fled,

leaving behind him a trail of dead.

He ran to the edge and then beyond.

Who here can know what he has spawned?

Tales of wickedness continue to grow,

as he hunts those who dare to go.

So stay home where you are safe and warm.

Do not tempt the dark, the legend, the storm.

The wolf, he prowls, forever a fiend.

He tears at his victims ‘til the bones are cleaned.

Anyway, that’s all I’ll put here for now.  So far I think it’s coming along all right, but I still have a long way to go yet.

The Fun and Functional Role of Science Fiction

I’m writing this because I’m having a difficult time getting through a scene in the story I’ve been working on.  Maybe the process of writing something else will keep my mind moving in the right direction.  And if it doesn’t, oh well.  At least I’ll have done something else I pledged to do in the meantime.

As I know I’ve mentioned before, I write mostly science fiction.  I do this because, as a genre, it offers the most exciting possibilities for me as a writer.  I can place my story wherever and whenever I want.  I have the freedom to create any world I want, and through character interactions with that world, the plot unfolds, entertaining me as well as my audience.  Granted, my audience is small at this point, but I can only take it one step at a time.

Now, many people aren’t willing to give science fiction a chance.  I’ve heard people say that it’s stupid because it doesn’t deal with real people or real problems.  That simply isn’t true.  The opportunity to use a fresh environment with characters developed in the context of that environment enables me to take problems I’ve seen in the world, which often inspire me to write in the first place, and get a new perspective on them.  When I analyze an issue through the eyes of a character I’ve co-created with the world I placed them in, I often find angles of the issue that I hadn’t previously considered.

And, I admit, science fiction is also fun for me.  I don’t see a point in writing something that I wouldn’t enjoy.  Life is too short for that.

Currently, my writing is inspired by the real-world environment of political extremism I’ve been seeing lately.  With the political arena heating up with angry rhetoric, it seems to me that politicians are spending half of their time painting themselves as the opposite of the other side.  I fear that we’re getting away, at least in some cases, from the real issues as we get more mired in the political blame game.  That extremism and anger is what inspired me to write this current story, which is set in a future where both political extremes have become so angry and powerful that they’ve literally destroyed America by splitting the country into halves, which are separated by a neutral buffer zone.

I’m not writing this because I believe such a thing will happen, but instead because I want to speculate about what each extreme would look like, and how that kind of world would adversely impact people.  It seems to me that unbridled extremism can be a very dangerous thing.  In a world like ours where everything is so uncertain, I think these kinds of speculations are a good thing.