Whoops

So I tried to make the latter part of the story jive with what had gone before, even after I'd decided earlier bits of it didn't make much sense. I thought it'd be a good exercise to practice internal consistency. But some of it's still incongruous. Note the amazing vanishing $2 million.

I put that in there to show that Anita had given up "everything" in her quest for Keith; not just her time and all her emotional energy, but also the funds she might have used to start her own business someday. And then I had to stick a section in later to justify why someone'd have to give up their life savings to participate in a government project. I also wondered a bit whether $2 million would seem a bit paltry to be a psychiatrist's life savings 150 years from now. Anyway, as I approached the end of the story, I just couldn't find a graceful way to bring the money back up, so I let it be. Now I'm thinking that I might want to bring it back in in rewrites, but less as a lump sum than as a continuous investiture in getting close to Keith. Kind of like the woman who invests in a gym membership in order to meet men.

The story also took a final turn I didn't expect. I'd always had it in my head that she was going to the moon out of a desire to be close to him, even while I'd always also known he wouldn't be there, that he'd never be selected. When I actually got to writing the part where he reveals he's not going, I realized it just didn't make sense for her to stay on the list out of some kind of loyalty to his unrealized dreams, or even out of a sense of feeling trapped in some way by her commitment. Suddenly the moon presented a convenient escape from her failure, a nicely despairing self-banishment, and also partly her first act of taking a step in the right direction, even if she's doing it for the wrong reasons. I think in the next version I'll write in a scene in which she thinks it over and decides to stay in the running.

I'm not sure what's next up for me... I had been wanting to write a story about a hotel developer about 30 years in the future, though that one might be for the "wrong" reasons too... that is, it's the only idea with anything like a plot that I've thought up in a long time. There's a somewhat faulty reasoning there. Something like "He's the only man who's called me in the past year, so why don't I just marry him." But I think help is in sight.

The book I'd been reading (until I had to return it to the library, anyway) was very heavy on the inseparability of plot and character. Plot, it averred, is what characters do next -- asserting that plot problems can be solved by changing the nature of your character. Now I see that. Stories get a lot easier to write when you have a character who really wants something. And would do just about anything to get it. Woe is the writer who writes what she knows when she knows more about suppressing desires than living them out.

On the library bulletin board is a sheet advertising the Random House 20by20 essay contest. That is, they're selecting 20 essays by 20-somethings for some collection or other. Essays meant to give some kind of interesting insights into what it's like to be a 20-something these days. I recognize that in one sense I ought to submit something, because of my ability to put a sentence together, and my ability to appreciate money. But I'm not sure I have the kind of subject matter they're looking for. I recognize the basic passivity of most of my life. It's more amusing to me now than depressing, but it's not particularly good fodder for stories.

Anyway... this story idea came to me when I was reading an essay about SF writing that said "Imagine a future invention, then imagine who would be hurt by it." And the news provides plenty of ideas about future inventions. I read a story about developments by the military in the field of keeping people awake for longer, without significant side effects. And it seemed to me that we were not so very far from being able to negate the need for sleep for a week at a time. Now supposing people could just pop a pill and stay up all night, no problems. Who'd be hurt? Which industries depend on our need to sleep? (Besides the pharmaceutical industry itself, that is.)