FAQ: The Importance of Lines

These questions are about the short story “The Importance of Lines”, and definitely contains spoilers which, once seen, cannot be unseen.  For the actual short story itself, please go here.

*CONTAINS SPOILERS!*

 

So this was another of the ten stories you wrote in ten days for the Swinburne Microfiction Challenge in 2017, yeah?

Uh huh.

You didn’t win, right?

No, I didn’t win.  Although I never really went into any of these stories thinking “I’ll totally win this one,” I was always a little bit surprised when I didn’t.   I thought they were damn fine stories, and, if I’m going to be honest here, which I always try to do, I did always feel a teensy bit like “what, that’s the story that won?” while reading the winners.  Taste, huh.  You never can tell.

So, what’s-

Which is why I think it’s super-important to write for yourself, and not pay too much attention to what other people think or say, with praise or criticism.  Because taste is inherently personal, and there’s absolutely no point writing for others.  You’ve just got to be as honest with yourself as you can, and make sure you’re proud of your own work, and try to ignore the haters.

What’s-

I mean, someone will always hate what you do.  No matter how well you’ve expressed it, or how well you think you’ve tapped into whatever secret reservoir of true experience your fiction springs from, or how nicely articulated the argument, or how realistic the characters, or how perfect you think the flow of words is, there will always be someone who thinks it’s complete shit.  And that’s not a problem, but you can’t let that determine how you approach something.  Writing for a committee or a demographic or based on focus groups etc seems like the worst possible way to create something.  Because, even after all of that second-guessing and all of those surveys and so on, there’s guaranteed to be several million people who still hate it.  And are we playing “who can be popular” here, or are we trying to create art?

So-

Sorry for the interruptions, I really am, and I will come back to your question, I promise, but I just wanna say this one thing first.  I was extremely high on magic mushrooms recently, and I had this overwhelming experience, this visual and experiential metaphor, really, where each conscious being is down a deep well, a well that is a metaphor for our own lived experiences and internal thoughts and ponderings etc, each of us are down our own well, and no-one else can ever know what it’s like in our well, what our particular well feels like or smells like or looks like, etc, but we can shout out of our well, and other consciousnesses can hear us.  And so although other consciousness can never experience our own personal well, they can hear us describing the well, and they can think to themselves, “wow, that person’s well is very much like my own in these particular qualities, I feel a shared kinship now”, or “wow, that person’s well is so different from my own, that’s really enlightening, I’m a wiser person now”, etc.  And it was made clear to me, during this fungi-enhanced experience, that making art is us shouting out the top of our own personal well, and sharing what it means to be the person we are, or how life can be, or something.  At the time, I found a piece of paper and scrawled the words “TELL THE OTHERS”.  I still have the piece of paper, it’s up so I can see it when I write.  That’s the mission of art – not pleasing a particular demographic or playing some numbers game with popularity, but telling the others what the experience of experience can be like, as truly as possible, so as to make all of our wells a little less lonely/dank/small/horrible/isolated.

…you’re done?

Yes. Sorry.

So…

…honestly, no more interruptions.  Look at my hand, it’s zipping my mouth shut.

Okay.  So, this story, what was the prompt word here?

The word for this one was “Dirt”.  This one came to me really easily, almost fully-formed.

Do go on.

Well, in the early 90s I had a band, we were called gLOBALmINDfUCK (for some young-person reason we were always capitalised that way), we were like this Mr Bungle-meets-Helmet-meets-Hawkwind kinda thing, heavy songs with grooves and psychedelics and cross-genre shenanigans, it was my first ever live band, playing songs I’d written, I was in my 20s, we won a bunch of band competitions, and I was having some of the best times I’ve ever had.   Anyway, one of the songs was called Dirt, and the lyrics were some rant about the blinkered nature of nationalism, I honestly can’t remember them now but it as something like “what are these countries you’ve made up / what are these flags that you wave / what are these borders you’ve dotted / in the end everything’s dirt”, or something.  And so of course, being a relatively lazy sod steeped in life-long conceptual continuity, I thought about dirt and borders and the imaginary nature of nations, and the story pretty much wrote itself.  It’s a narrativised encapsulation of the gist of the song, basically.

I actually thought you’d ripped it off Pink Floyd’s ‘Us and Them’.

Close, but no cigar.  Geddit?  That was a reference to-

I like how, in the end, no-one won.  That, essentially, all that death and violence and horror was all for nothing.

Yeah, me too.  Heavyhanded, yes, but also quite nice.

Hey, and I’m no meteorologist, but wouldn’t the sound of the rain drown out the buzzing of the flies?

Not if it was a light drizzle.  Incessant, but light, I was thinking. Um.

I know it doesn’t matter, but your protagonist is called Bec – is The Enemy also a woman?

I don’t know.  I deliberately avoided mentioning it, because, exactly as you say, it really doesn’t matter. 

Well, it does raise additional issues-

Which is why I didn’t mention it.  Because, no matter what gender The Enemy presents as, it brings up conceptual baggage.  It’s not a gendered story, it’s not remotely about gender or anything associated with gender.  I gendered Bec, because it’s from her point of view, and she, as a whole person, has a gender to herself.  That’s fine.  But if I gendered The Enemy as well, suddenly the story becomes about A Man and A Woman, or Two Women, or something, rather than about The Futility of War.  If we don’t know the gender of The Enemy, then we’re not thinking about the repercussions of the gender of The Enemy, and we can focus on the fucking story, rather than the potential meta-aspects of the story-

But you said you should never change your story for others.  Remember?  Never think of the reader, you said.  Thinking about demographics makes you a loser, you said.

Oh, touché.

FAQ: What We All Wish Had Happened

These questions are about the short story “What We All Wished Had Happened”, and definitely contains spoilers which, once seen, cannot be unseen.  For the actual short story itself, please go here.

*CONTAINS SPOILERS!*

 

So this was yet another of the ten stories you wrote in ten days for the Swinburne Microfiction Challenge in 2017, wasn’t it?

Yes, and before you ask, no, I didn’t win.  The prompt word for this one was “Home”, and it got me thinking about what “home” can mean, and about people who’ve been born here being told to “go home” by other people who were born here, and about how horrible it is to feel unwelcome in your own country.

It’s a piece of magical realism, isn’t it.

I’m actually not sure what it is.  Is that the genre, “magical realism”?  I’m honestly not down with the microgenrefication of art, I’m very much a “what does it make me feel/think?” kinda person, more than a “where does this fit in terms of recognised labels?” kinda person.  But I could call it “magical realism” if you like.

“Magical realism” is basically a realistic bit of art that also is a bit magical.

Well then, maybe this isn’t that then.  Because, the point of this story to me (and yes, I know that the author’s point of view isn’t necessarily the definitive point of view, but it’s surely at least a relevant point of view) is that what is described in the story didn’t actually happen.

What do you mean?

Well, in the story a group of three racist thugs (and I don't mean to suggest they're bad people - they're kids themselves, after all, and have been indoctrinated to think this way) harass this little kid with Indonesian heritage, tease her about her most obvious points of difference, her slanty eyes and her headscarf.  In the story she then proceeds to grow dragon wings and blast them with her laser-eyes, and they run away, scared and crying, perhaps to re-think their racist ways and to at very least approach people with more caution.   But the story is explicitly called “What We All Wish Had Happened”, not “What Actually Happened” or “What Magically (and Realistically) Happened”. This story is what we wish had happened instead of what actually happened.

What actually happened?

Well, I don’t know. But I’m almost certain it didn’t involve laser-eyes and dragon wings.

That’s pretty depressing.

Yeah, I know. It’s a depressing story, really.  Because the whole situation is a depressing one.  It’s awful.  I mean, what happens in these situations?  In the very best case scenario, Syifa managed to run away and get home safe, and spent the rest of the evening shaking and crying and dealing with PTS.  And that’s the best case scenario.  There’s many worse case scenarios that come to mind, and they’re all pretty fucking distressing. 

Blargh.

I know, right?  And you know, I actually intended for the racist kids to be eaten alive, or torn limb from limb, or sawed in half with her powerful heat-vision, or splattered all over the place.  I wanted to harm them so very much. But in the end I opted for the G-rated 1980s-vibe of having them just be naked and scared (I even used the word “bums”, which I don’t think I’ve ever used before, for maximum primary-school G-rated connotation), rather than gorily eviscerated, just because, I don’t know, I thought that Syifa probably wouldn’t feel good about murdering them all, in the long run.  I mean, she’s just a kid, and is probably not actually interested in obliteration.  She just wants to be left alone.

The little coda was nice: her dad asking her if “anything interesting” had happened, and her saying “nope”.

Thanks.  Yeah, that was a twofold thing, of her kinda keeping her superpowers secret from her old man (another 1980s G-rated movie kinda trope?), but also pointing out that being hassled by fuck-knuckle racists isn’t even interesting – it’s just the norm for a lot of people.  It’s the shitty background noise of life, especially if you look at all Muslim or foreign.  Racist “Aussies” being racist is as uninteresting as it gets (and I put “Aussies” in quotes because, as mentioned in the story, Syifa was born here, just as much as I was, and so is as “Aussie” as I am, if such nationalistic happenstance actually means anything in the first place).

Sigh.  You’re totally right: without even knowing what did actually happen, whatever it was, I wish that this had happened instead.

Me too, anonymous asker of questions, me too.

FAQ: Blood

These questions are about the short story “Blood”, and definitely contains spoilers which, once seen, cannot be unseen.  For the actual short story itself, please go here.

*CONTAINS SPOILERS!*

 

So this was another of the ten stories you wrote in ten days for the Swinburne Microfiction Challenge in 2017, wasn’t it?

Yep.  The prompt word for this one was “Blood”, and I thought an interesting approach to it might be the idea of “blood” being a word for familial bonds, rather than a flowing substance rich in haemoglobin.

Did you win this one?

You seem very interested in the competitive aspects of the challenge, rather than the artistic ones.

Sounds like a ‘no’ to me.

Fine, no, I didn’t win.  But I still think it’s a pretty nice little story.

So this one looks like it interrogates notions of the importance of “blood” in familial relations, right?  In that Cass has found out she’s adopted – “not blood” – to someone she had always identified as not only a close family but in fact her twin, a familial relationship normally seen as perhaps the very closest familial relationship possible.  So in this way, the story interrogates concepts of family and blood, and, Baz, in tearing up the proof of their non-blood relationship, and in his simple response – “Nah” – denies the facts of blood, instead favouring the less-physical-but-still-undeniable facts of their shared childhood, shared experiences, emotional closeness, and their respective positions in their respective lives.  To Baz, the blood actually doesn’t matter, despite having spent the first three quarters of the story insisting that it does. 

Um, right, yes, that’s what this story is about.  Couldn’t’ve said it better myself.

So, what I want to know is – do you have a problem with adopted people searching for their biological parents?

What?

Do you have a problem with adopted people searching for their biological parents.  Because many adopted people feel a real need to discover who their biological parents were, and I wonder if you’re sitting there in your comfy writer’s chair telling them not to worry about it, because “real family is who you grow up with” or some such easy schmaltz.  It could be interpreted that you’re saying “biology is inherently unimportant”, thereby marginalising and erasing and kinda making fun of people for whom biology is deeply important.  You’re basically saying “the Stolen Generations was totally okay”.

Wow, um, I really don’t think I said that.  It wasn’t meant to be a slur against people who want to discover their biological links. Definitely wasn’t attempting to make any kind of comment on the Stolen Generations.  Wow.  And my chair isn’t any kind of special “writer’s chair”, whatever that might be, nor is it particularly comfy.  In fact I’m pretty sure we found it on the side of the road as hard rubbish-

Enough trying to change to topic – what’s your stance on adoption?

I don’t have one!  It’s fine!  It’s good to adopt people.  And it’s fine if you want to find out your biological ancestors too.  It’s all fine.  I have no official stance.  And, for the record, I think taking peoples’ children from them in some kind of genocidal kidnapping, whether good-intentioned or not, is generally pretty despicable.  I’m honestly surprised you think I’m being controversial here-

What about lesbians?

Sorry?

Your character Baz said something about “not minding if she was a lesbian”.  What do you have against lesbians?

Nothing!  Some of my closest family are lesbians! And the character said he didn’t mind if she was lesbian, was the point-

But why would he mind in the first place?

He wouldn’t!  He didn’t!  And even if he did – which he didn’t – this is a character in a story, not an essay about “what Mat Blackwell actually thinks about adoption and/or lesbianism”-

“Death of the Author”, bro.  “Intentional fallacy”.   What you think your story is about can’t be divorced from what belief systems went into creating the story.  What you actually write is interpreted and deconstructed and parsed by the reader, and that interpretation is just as valid as any desperate excuses you make to weasel out of your offensive viewpoints.

I’d love to get into a discussion about this stuff, really I would, but I think you’ve got the wrong idea about me.  I wasn’t saying anything negative about adoption, and I wasn’t saying anything negative about lesbianism, and I never said anything about my hard-rubbish chair.  I was just trying to write a short piece about “blood” and how family might mean more than blood and how one person reacts when one other person suggests that she’s not actually “blood” after all, and how the person silently renegs on his position that blood is really important, and embraces her as his “real sister” even when presented with biological evidence to the contrary.  I can see now how maybe that idea, that “blood doesn’t mean anything after all”, might impact on people searching for their own biological parents, yes, and I can see that I was maybe insensitive in that area, but, honestly, I wasn’t trying to be comprehensive or all-encompassing or whatever, I was just trying to write a short story in 24 hours and I’m sorry to everyone I might have offended.

…Thank you.  It’s not enough, but it’s a good start.