style and content

in the very early days of my marriage, my husband (now ex) and i would sometimes amuse ourselves by doing "free writes." we'd take 10 minutes and a beginning phrase and write whatever fell out of our mind and onto the page. Some of these free writes wound up as stories, some were really funny, some not. One of mine became a sci-fi story i called "the rat game."

in the desperate and confused days after i quit dancing and before i became the worlds oldest law student, i flopped around a lot trying to figure out my next move. I found myself in a writers' workshop, and, not understanding the need to reinvent any fictional wheels, i trotted out "the rat game" as my work in progress. I thought it was good sci-fi: rats had taken over the world; spoke a colorful, fast-paced, highly william gibson influenced argot, and amused themselves by knocking people out, putting extremely poisonous scorpions ready to strike on their bellies, and waking them up. The idea was that if a human could come to fast enough to whip up and knock the scorpion off before it struck, they'd win something. Ok, ok. tame by today's standards i know, but i was going for a burroughs-esque weirdness, and the plot mattered very little to me. i was only interested in my descriptions of speed and sweat and the smells of rat lairs.

well, predictably, the writers workshop ripped "the rat game" to shreds, along with another story i called "the passion of betty" about a woman with stigmata. the basic message was that i had a lot of style, and zero content. I never went back. Funny, after years of choreographers yelling at me, dance teachers ripping my ego to shreds, and reviewers damning me with faint praise, I couldn't even take one bit of constructive criticism on my precious stories. apparently, i had an ego problem after all.