1,200 words today. After going to a BYU Freedom Society meeting (it’s a new political club), I went to the LRC and just wrote. It’s been so long since my last writing session that I had to read over what I’d written last time, and in doing so I found out that I wanted to rewrite a lot of it. However, I (mostly) resisted the temptation, since I really have to just move forward and leave the rewrite for later. The hardest thing isn’t going to be editing the story; it’s going to be getting it all down, from beginning to end. That’s what I’ve got to focus on.
It was good to write. It’s been too long. However, I’ll bet I could have more time if I just was more efficient with it. Procrastinating homework by playing Street Fighter on my desktop is probably something I could do without. Maybe if I could get into the habit of doing my homework asap every day…
Tonight was the submission deadline for Saturday’s Quark meeting, and I was really surprised that we got so many submissions! About five or six new people are probably going to show up at this next meeting! Apparently, placing the fliers in the dorms was a good idea! I’ve been getting emails that go like this: “hi, I saw the Quark flier in the dorms, I’ve been looking for a writing group since I started coming to BYU and I love writing sci fi / fantasy, so when I heard about your group I got really excited!” In fact, I’ll probably have to not send out the next chapter of my story to this next meeting, just because there are so many submissions! Not including mine we’ve got six, and I’m debating whether or not to send Jakeson’s out, since he said he’d be ok with not sending it out if we’ve got so many other submissions. But I don’t think I should send mine out if I don’t send his out…I don’t know. I would like to get some feedback, but we’ll just have to see how this goes…
Oh, and my cousin should be coming to this next meeting! That would be pretty cool. He’s been writing some really cool stories and poems, such as a conversation between a man waiting in line for the final judgment and the angel St. Peter, where they talk about his life from his point of view (life sucks and God didn’t help me), then the angels’ point of view (you were the one who caused your own problems, not God), and then God’s point of view. It honestly sounds really cool and I’d like to read it sometime. Plus some quantum poetry. Yeah! I hope he can find the time to come to a few of our meetings.
And, on top of all that, I got this really cool idea for a short story as I was walking out of the library. Well, I suppose you could say it’s been bouncing around my head for a little bit longer than that, but it really started to solidify into a story today.
Basically, I thought to myself “what would space combat between single-pilot fighters REALLY be like? Star Wars is pretty cool, but when you really think about it, the real thing (at least, as “real” as spacefighters are) would be completely different. First of all, there would be no sound, since sound can’t travel in a vacuum. Second, the maneuvers would be very different due to the lack of an atmosphere and a zero gravity arena–I imagine they’d fly a lot more like BSG’s Vipers than Xwings. Third, they would probably travel at relativistic speeds, like in Joe Haldeman’s Forever War. I don’t have a particular reason for believing this, other than the notion that the evolution of war in space would probably favor longer range weapons and faster range ships. That, and it would just be cooler.
Joe Haldeman’s space combat scenes, as well as the opening scene in Roger Allen McBride’s The Depths of Time, just really opened me up to a new idea of what space combat could be like. Instead of it being air combat in space, it would involve a lot more physics, more computers, less visualization or reliance on what you can see through a cockpit window, relativistic speeds, high g forces, a lot more danger from relatively small particles (kind of like how a submarine, when it gets hit, gets annihilated), and a ton of other stuff. Basically, something completely different from star wars.
I imagined what one of these fighters would look like, how it would operate, and what would go into this kind of combat. I then started wondering what it would be like to fly one of these things, and then what if, in the course of battle, this guy got thrown out into space at relativistic speeds, and by the time he came back (which to him would only be a few hours) a couple of generations would have passed and the war he’d been fighting was over, replaced with peace! What would that be like?
Basically, that’s when a story really started springing up from this idea. Now, I’m reluctant to start it because I know that I should be finishing stuff instead of starting tons of things and never finishing them. This is an idea for a short story, possibly one I could submit to a few places, and for that reason alone I think it would be good to get started on this. Maybe, like with LZ150207, I could spit out a complete rough draft in one sitting. That is. if I can find the time.
Well, if you’re still reading this incoherent blogfart, all I can say is wow. And thank you. And I hope that I’m not boring you with talking about “me” all the time (though that is one of the basic things that blogging is all about). Now, sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…
Congrats on all the new people! See why I told you to put fliers in the dorms? 😉 That would have been exactly my sentiment had fliers for the writing group been placed there my freshman year.
As for whether or not you submit your own story, I would. I followed Aneeka’s sentiments that the VP should allow themselves to be grilled just like they grilled everyone else. Your call though. It’ll be tough to get through all the stories in two hours. Make sure you stick to that time limit!