Saturday, February 08, 2003
I have the headphones on, and the Sisters of Mercy ("Lucretia, My Reflection") playing so loudly that there's no hope of distraction. And that's what I feel most of all today. Distraction. One of the author's seven deadlies. Distraction. Procrastination. Indifference. Sloppiness. Sloth. Primadonnaism. Insincerity. They're an ugly, seductive lot. They play well together. Days like today, I want to play, too. It's a better option than spending the entire day at this, or any other, keyboard. Spinning gold, loaves and fishes, lead to precious metal, rain from a clear blue sky. I could be sleeping, or sitting in a nice bar somewhere, or reading a book someone else had to write, or just about a thousand other pleasantries I could list. And it's on these days that I must write, because that's the choice I made.
If you can't write on the hard days, you may as well go to bartending school.
Hell, you may as well go to bartending school, anyway. Writers don't get tips.
All of this is to say that the story which I am calling "The Rose Garden" is not going well. Truthfully, it's hardly going at all. And coming off "La Peau Verte," with which I am very pleased, it's more frustrating than usual. I stopped yesterday and looked back over the guidelines for the anthology. Stories in the tradition of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe, and Joyce Carol Oates. There's a pretty big gap in there somewhere. Ages 14 and up. What was I reading at 14? What shouldn't I have been reading at 14? There wasn't much of anything I didn't read at 14, unless it bored me. Lots of things bored me, though. Lots of things still do. Enterprise bores me silly, for example, and so does most rap and hiphop. But I'm drifting, aren't I? Floating away towards something less . . . boring. I suppose stories in the tradition of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson may be a little more than I'm being asked for. Though, I think people underestimate Poe's perversity. Poe was a most admirable pervert.
I don't suppose you watched Farscape last night, did you? Only seven episodes left and the best science-fiction series on television today (and, in my opinion, the best ever on television), will be silenced in mid-story. We'll never know whether the Scarrans get wormhole tech and invade Earth, or if John and Aeryn finally get it together, or D'Argo and Chiana, or Scorpius and Sikozu. We'll never know what Einstein and the Ancients are really up to, or how Earth ultimately deals with that first contact, or how Humans, Sebaceans, and Interions came to be related. Will D'Argo and Rygel ever get home? Where does Chiana go, if not with D'Argo, since home is obviously not an option? Will she join the Nebari Resistance? Will Aeryn have the baby? Who's the father? If it's Crichton's, which Crichton's? Will time and circumstance prove Scorpius a noble anti-hero or a vengeful monster? What the frell happens when the Nebari finally get tired of watching the escalating cold war between the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans and decide to take their place on the battlefield? Where's Nerri? Jothee? Jool? Stark? All stories should end with unanswered questions. That's always been one of my . . . what? . . . one of my mottos. Caitlín sez, "All stories should end with unanswered questions." But. Stories should not end before they're finished being stories. But that's what's going to happen to Farscape, because, as with so many other things, its viability has been determined not by merit, but by popularity. And by a dubious, antiquated means of determining popularity, at that (i.e., the Neilsen rating system). Then again, we get the art that we deserve. That's the big We, not the little we. Some of us deserve better. Those of us who want better. Looking back, I think maybe it was all the chicks and sex that doomed Farscape. That and the complex characterization and plot. But mostly the chicks. Mass-market sci-fi isn't ready for the plethora of strong female characters that has been one of Farscape's trademarks. Strong female characters who have not been divested of their sexuality in exchange for their strength. I expect I'll write a eulogy soon. In some form, Farscape will survive, though, and there's always hope (yeah, yeah, yeah), and the story will be finished somehow, someday. Meanwhile, we have 88 episodes and they are a fine thing, even without a conclusion.
Three-quarters of a good story beats all of a lousy story ten times out of ten.
I am prattling. I should be writing (no, this doesn't count). Or at least staring blankly at the screen. No days off for good behaviour. Well, not since Wednesday, anyway.
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