The Swerve/An Event To Attend
How I learned to stop worrying and love a news post on this publication.
The state of the work:
Earlier this week, last week, I don’t know, but earlier I opened up a folder eternally on my desktop named “Almost Lost Writing” It’s filled with writing that had to be dug out of the depths of Facebook, my old Patreon, and emails between me and
.I found a piece in there that I’ve worked and reworked and riffed and most recently an offshoot of which produced an idea for a grand Gonzo Space Opera hiding inside of a dystopian post apocalyptic story that found itself gripping me over the last months of the winter, set not thousands, but millions of years in the future. I was thinking as I worked on some of the worldbuilding for it, determined not to write in the style of any sort of “GrimDark” as set down by Warhammer 40k, let alone the novels that they’ve pumped out by the seeming thousands in the past two decades; how many thick little bricks are there in the Horus Heresy by now? I think I have one friend whose read at least 40 of them, but I what I was finding myself increasingly calling this thing I was working on “GrimNeon.”
That is until the genesis of The Nine Story Hotel, driven by a small group of diehards and the manic energy of late night text storms between
and myself consumed me completely.I shelved the Mad Max to Space Opera multi part epic and dove into the current project, and by proxy Substack itself, with the singlemindedness of a retired dope dealer looking for his next lick. There were bumps along the way, but I like the direction the Hotel is headed as a series, a story, and a potential thug of an IP. I’m also proud that I’m gifted with editorial rights to it.
But this has been a digression entirely.
I found a piece I’ve reworked again and again, that I come back to again and again, and rewrite again and again, and was glad wasn’t lost, because I truly thought the original had been lost even after I started paying iDrive good money to backup every single computing device that I own. Seriously, they have a good reputation and lead the industry in cloud backup for a reason. (If you’re extra paranoid, they’ll even send you an HD to backup yourself and then send back to them securely, which is pretty neat.)
See, I used to write a lot of things on a defunct cloud writing app called WRITE!. They disappeared sometime last year, taking a quarter million of my words with them. Of course it was an option, but it was also one that I didn’t take advantage of, to backup their proprietary file format that attached words to cloud, which no one on the internet I can find has been able to get into. Not my first six figure loss of words.
Anyway I condensed four computer images into one earlier this year, found that I don’t have a lot of writing, and then went digging for what was lost in an a decade long email correspondence.
had lost a lot of emails between us when Google decided that to clean up her email inbox and open up some space, it would do the opposite of what she told it to, and get rid of all the important stuff.There’s a reason they call me the archivist. It’s not just a curse given to me by my suicided best friend to be the last living member of my social and friend group alive because, in her words, “you’re the healthiest one of us and you have to tell all our stories.”
So I started to once again dive into 99 Red Balloons with the intent of giving it a rewrite, light or heavy, come what may, and put it on Burnt Tongue.
I rewrote the introduction and put it up as a teaser in my last post
IMG464195387
“Astronaut starts when you press GO,” is what it says at the bottom of the landing page.
Yeah, that was the one.
And then she came along:
“Stream of Consciousness POV workshop going down tonight.
Looking forward to seeing everyone's work & what they create.
Also people & faces & things. I got my vintage 40s blood red goblet glass filled with words, simplified.
If you want to be in the next one, let me know.
There will be a lot of horror/noir writers in here. If that content freaks you out, I don't recommend it.
-This workshop is a safe space, but also to write without censorship provided it doesn't harm any communities in the process. All genres welcome.
-Anyone who subjects writers or readers to abuse, harm communities, or people will be forever banned.”
, the day before yesterday
Of course, I was going to be there. And so were a lot of other very talented and fantastic writers. Jon T, Jimmy Gardner, Jessica W, Emil Ottoman, will christopher baer, wrongdimension, Zani D, C.J. Stockton, Kristin Peterson, Justin Rosenthal and the absent for time difference but still participating thanks to Edith’s powers of organization, Nick Winney.
tried to make an appearance even though he’s busy this week, but he’s pledged to attend the next salon, whether he knows it or not. But, he probably does.Now I know most of these writers, I’m friends with them, but the ones I wasn’t, I wanted to meet. And it was a free workshop being put on by Edith, who I’ve been doing this same exercise of trading three word prompts with for a decade. (You take a bunch of words, you write them down on paper, fold them up, put them in a hat, draw three, and boom, there’s your prompt. It’s an amazing generative exercise that has helped get me some of my most interesting material, also, it’ll beat writer’s block to death. Just enough constraint to make it interesting, just enough random novelty to spark the brain) Aside from some technical difficulties and hiccups, the salon was absolutely lovely.
Jon T is already hot out the gate, having yesterday posted a prompt from Edith that reminded me so much of Pynchon being digressive that I had to tell him. Find that piece of writing in the link above. Read it and enjoy.
Time limits and crosstalk and confusion reigned for a minute. I panicked and just wanted everyone to get more prompts. In spite of that it was a rousing success, and there will be another workshop/salon next month, with the kinks all worked out, because everyone from the first one wanted another one. Great ideas tend to get repeated, go figure.
This left me in a precarious position. I could continue rewriting 99 Red Balloons, itself the product of one of these triple word prompts, or I could dig into a new batch.
As an example, I came away with these prompts
Edith - Interchangeable, Barley, Banter
Kristin Peterson - Cock, Trapped, Fractured
Justin Rosenthal - Shattering, Coffin, Bones (little on the nose there friend)
Will Christopher Baer - Bullet, Paintbrush, Magnifying glass
Zani D - Xenophobia, Vapid, Obeisance
Nick Linney - Steel, Crocus, Toad
I wanted prompts from everyone, but I wasn’t able to get them, no one was because of tech difficulties and the time limit. (and if you see this post and didn’t give me one, please, DM me with one.) (And I think I may have forgotten to write down a prompt from CJ, but I can’t be sure.)
Now I have this pile of new words and this pile of old writing.
So I’ve decided to work through these prompts as lightning fast as possible (it is a stream of consciousness exercise after all) and THEN rework 99 Red Balloons.
So if anyone was interested in the promise of the teaser from my last post, sorry, it’s been pushed back, I got new words to ruin from people who cared enough to show up to an experimental workshop that turned out being fantastic.
If you want to participate in the next Prompt Workshop, it’ll be a super fun time, and you’ll meet new people, and get a pile of inspiration, so DM about it. Slated for sometime next month.
Besides plugging that the Nine Story Hotel is back up and running in spite of not having any new posts past the announcement:
We’ve got some coming, the promised 3 next week, and every week thereafter, ideally.
In the meantime, check out this cute little lego television with stuff growing out of it I made to chill out after a stressful day earlier this week.
And later today, hopefully check out my new story: Interchangeable, Barley, Banter.
Nick Winney on the prompt needs to be edited.