on writing a short story again and again and again and again

A consistent thing I talk about here is that I’m trying to invest more time and energy into writing. I’m trying to treat it ultimately as something that requires thought and energy, not just spontaneous creation. Which is hard for me to do. For some reason (I probably know the reason) being upfront about my desire to create short stories makes me feel dumb and stupid and silly. But, I’m trying to push through that with the idea that anyone who is good at anything they do most likely has to be bad at what they do first and most likely has to plan what they’re working on.

A way I’ve been doing that is just plotting things out more visually, or keeping a board of various story bits. I don’t really believe in the outlining a plot of short story beforehand way of writing because I find that the thing I start writing is never really the thing I finish writing. Sometimes you have to just write to uncover the basics of a story, letting it unfold naturally rather than hammering it into position.

Still, this type of thing works when a first draft of a story is more or less completed and I need some help piecing together the bits that don’t really work.

For a latest story (that I started with the title Drought) I worked on this board, so what follows is some rambles about the different parts of the board and what my thinking was attaching/creating them.

I’ve always really liked Kurt Vonnegutt’s lecture about the plots of short stories. It’s nothing radical or phenomenal, but visually drawing out the arch of a story on an axis really helps you understand that most stories follow only a series of traditional lines. It relieves some of the pressure to create something completely unique.

A lot isn’t filled out because the story isn’t fully fleshed out. But, the practice sort of helped me discover the parts of the story I really like so far and the parts I’m less excited about.

In this story a man moonlights as a sort of fortune remover. In a backroom of a gay bar he pulls out the threads of someone’s past traumas or particular feelings of self hatred and stores them for later.

I was inspired by a couple of things:

I really like the idea of this as a sort of male-focused act of physical touch. I hate being this way about it, but if you look up images of it, it does look a little gay. In some images it almost mirrors the idea of pushing a man’s head down to give you head, which I think works particularly well for the type of story I want to write.

Plus I like the idea of the Guild of St Raphael, or a guild dedicated to healing the sick through laying on hands, as that’s what the main character feels motivated by.

Then, as I started writing more and more I got inspired by a small snippet about nesting dolls I wrote to have the main character explain the process to someone else.

Reading about Matryoshka dolls I liked the idea that the name is like a term of endearment. That led me to think that maybe, for this main character, each of these people he helps are his little dolls: precious little things he becomes obsessed with and displays with pride.

I also liked the idea of the outside of a nesting doll presenting one gender and the inside presenting a series of other genders, possibly a baby. It’s a great metaphor for the layers we keep inside us and a natural metaphor for describing how grief and trauma or self hatred manifests inside us.

Finally, I really liked the idea of each of the dolls following a theme, especially a fairy tale. When I first thought of the bit that inspired this story idea I was really focused on the concept of a traditional Arthurian quest. I wanted to see if it was possible for me to use some of my knowledge of high-fantasy settings and weave them into a more traditional literary fiction setting. Almost in the spirit of fabulism or particularly domestic fabulism (an offshoot of magical realism).

Reading about Matryoshka dolls led me to reading about the Matrioshka brain, which I also thought is an interesting concept. If this story is supposed to be high fantasy than its natural opposite is science fiction and there’s probably no greater science fiction concept than the Dyson sphere.

I also like the idea of using Dyson sphere in a smart way after Sam Altman (I think it was him) and his dumbass concept of making a Dyson sphere that could surround the solar system.

Anyway, I’ve never heard about the idea of a Matrioshka brain, but reading about it I really liked the concept of each layer drawing upon the heat from the previous layer. Like taken metaphorically, our traumas fuel other traumas or the inner parts of ourselves burn hot while the outer parts burn softer.

Some people compare nesting dolls to Kokeshi dolls, which I had some knowledge of but never knew the official name for. I like the idea, for this short story at least, of them being totems of some unwanted thing. From the brief bit I read though that’s just like an urban legend, they’re probably just cute dolls.