Yuletide reveal time!
Jan. 1st, 2013 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ravenI wrote The Light Always Burning for ![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p2.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Taabe, for Nation.
Of this story, I note thathappydork posted a v. sweet rec for it and noted that "the author of this story has written their name on it in ten foot high letters. (If you're reading this, Totally Anonymous Author Of Total Anonymity, then <3.)"
<3 right back, darling. Hi. And okay, I don't usually post extensive commentary on my writing, but this time I kind of want to - a story that was so recognisably me it was visible at a hundred paces sort of demands a few words at least.
Nation is a standalone Pratchett novel about a girl called Daphne, a boy called Mau, and an island that used to be called the Nation before everyone living there was killed by a tsunami. It's about how they rebuild a community, and it's about how communities are built; it's about race and post- and just-plain-colonialism; it's about women and friendship; it's about atheism and faith and, oh, a dozen other things. It is, ashappydork also noted, a story about kindness. It's a novel of ideas but a fundamentally optimistic one, and when I first read it I felt that it said something true that I already knew.
And this story comes from that. It's a story about how I don't believe the world is, but how it ought to be. I am not even going to try and enumerate the ways in which the story is recognisably mine, but I think - perhaps wrongly - that it's recognisably me, and not just in my usual style, which it isn't.
Technically speaking - well, Shim and I had returned from Madeira on December 12th and I still hadn't written a word of it. I'd had a vague idea initially of writing something about terra nullius and Mabo - maybe it's twentieth century and the British government is trying to claim eminent domain, something like that - but you can't write something like that in a week. Then I had the even vaguer-thought that maybe I could write the modern-times story of two modern editors, having a very modern post-colonial battle of ideas interspersed with Daphne and Mau's letters. But that didn't gel, because the theme of that story would be "brown people are pretty cool, you know", and we are, but let's take that as read, okay.
So it got to December 14th and I still hadn't written anything and was considering defaulting, and then I wrote, as a trial run, the 200 words of Winters and Gethin-Archer on the shore, talking about the light always burning, and the questions then became, how do you get them there - how do you get to the point where a white male academic born in the 1920s is barefoot on a beach, holding out his hand to a brown woman? And what is born of that moment - how is the Nation's world shaped by them and Daphne and Mau, how do you take them into a future that differently shines?
The hard part was pretending I know anything about anthropology (spoilers: I don't), or history (spoilers: I don't; Shim wrote three of the historical extracts to order and refused to be credited - I edited them down and was v. grateful) or literature or computer science (guess what I know nothing about either of those things) but having only a few days to write while working full-time is a great idea in many ways - it rids you of the ghost of perfection. I wrote it over three fairly frantic days and swore a lot; Shim read it andsoupytwist read it (thank you!) and then I spent Christmas Eve fighting with the nightmare AO3 formatting, and then I was pretty convinced my recipient would hate it or at least go, "....bwuh?" if they had been expecting, I don't know, a sweet Daphne/Mau romance or whatever. It was an experience.
But I am glad it came out how it did, and that I had an opportunity to write this.
Generally speaking, I think 2012 was a good writing year. It's becoming clear to me that I will never write stories an awful lot like the rest of fandom - mostly because I so rarely write romances qua romances - but always seem to write epistolary planetary histories or paeans to transport planning or space opera espionage or Star Trek AUs of everything but hey. I write what I like, and mostly it's okay.
Of this story, I note that
happydork posted a v. sweet rec for it and noted that "the author of this story has written their name on it in ten foot high letters. (If you're reading this, Totally Anonymous Author Of Total Anonymity, then <3.)"<3 right back, darling. Hi. And okay, I don't usually post extensive commentary on my writing, but this time I kind of want to - a story that was so recognisably me it was visible at a hundred paces sort of demands a few words at least.
Nation is a standalone Pratchett novel about a girl called Daphne, a boy called Mau, and an island that used to be called the Nation before everyone living there was killed by a tsunami. It's about how they rebuild a community, and it's about how communities are built; it's about race and post- and just-plain-colonialism; it's about women and friendship; it's about atheism and faith and, oh, a dozen other things. It is, as
happydork also noted, a story about kindness. It's a novel of ideas but a fundamentally optimistic one, and when I first read it I felt that it said something true that I already knew. And this story comes from that. It's a story about how I don't believe the world is, but how it ought to be. I am not even going to try and enumerate the ways in which the story is recognisably mine, but I think - perhaps wrongly - that it's recognisably me, and not just in my usual style, which it isn't.
Technically speaking - well, Shim and I had returned from Madeira on December 12th and I still hadn't written a word of it. I'd had a vague idea initially of writing something about terra nullius and Mabo - maybe it's twentieth century and the British government is trying to claim eminent domain, something like that - but you can't write something like that in a week. Then I had the even vaguer-thought that maybe I could write the modern-times story of two modern editors, having a very modern post-colonial battle of ideas interspersed with Daphne and Mau's letters. But that didn't gel, because the theme of that story would be "brown people are pretty cool, you know", and we are, but let's take that as read, okay.
So it got to December 14th and I still hadn't written anything and was considering defaulting, and then I wrote, as a trial run, the 200 words of Winters and Gethin-Archer on the shore, talking about the light always burning, and the questions then became, how do you get them there - how do you get to the point where a white male academic born in the 1920s is barefoot on a beach, holding out his hand to a brown woman? And what is born of that moment - how is the Nation's world shaped by them and Daphne and Mau, how do you take them into a future that differently shines?
The hard part was pretending I know anything about anthropology (spoilers: I don't), or history (spoilers: I don't; Shim wrote three of the historical extracts to order and refused to be credited - I edited them down and was v. grateful) or literature or computer science (guess what I know nothing about either of those things) but having only a few days to write while working full-time is a great idea in many ways - it rids you of the ghost of perfection. I wrote it over three fairly frantic days and swore a lot; Shim read it and
soupytwist read it (thank you!) and then I spent Christmas Eve fighting with the nightmare AO3 formatting, and then I was pretty convinced my recipient would hate it or at least go, "....bwuh?" if they had been expecting, I don't know, a sweet Daphne/Mau romance or whatever. It was an experience.But I am glad it came out how it did, and that I had an opportunity to write this.
Generally speaking, I think 2012 was a good writing year. It's becoming clear to me that I will never write stories an awful lot like the rest of fandom - mostly because I so rarely write romances qua romances - but always seem to write epistolary planetary histories or paeans to transport planning or space opera espionage or Star Trek AUs of everything but hey. I write what I like, and mostly it's okay.
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no subject
on 2013-01-01 10:08 pm (UTC)Happy yuletide reveals! I'm glad your story worked out. :)
no subject
on 2013-01-03 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2013-01-02 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2013-01-03 11:36 pm (UTC)