Warren Ellis wrote a pretty fantastic short short story called Jack Baby that I saw yesterday:
I dipped the old jar down into the creeping slurry and scooped a pint
of shit-water out of the Thames, down where the sewers meet the river.
It’s come to this, I said to no-one: making jenkem rather than seeing
the Jack Baby.Seal up the jar, watch it ferment for long
sleepless days, and then inhale the gas off the top. Jenkem: ghetto
drugs. An hour of laying like a corpse and seeing dead things instead
of the orgasm-jerking and spacewalk day of a Jack high. But I couldn’t
afford Jack, and I didn’t want to think about the Jack Baby.
There’s a lot of atmosphere, character, and story wrapped up in the 200 words or so that make up the entire thing, and I had to read it twice to fully absorb it. It was totally worth it.
When I manage to wring fiction out of my brain, it will be because I am inspired by stories like this. I mean, how in the hell can Warren come up with stuff like — well, just go read it, and see if you don’t have the same reaction.
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Wow… Just, wow.
Wow. That is truly a story that must be read several times.
Although very intriguing, I hope you don’t get that “out there” with your writing, because it wouldn’t be you.
We like you just the way you are…
yeah man, it’s kind of cool in its own trippy sort of way, but I like your writing so much better.
The funny thing is that Warren Ellis claims to have had a “normal” childhood. And he is amazingly approachable through his blogs.
I know he draws inspiration for his characters from people he interacts with (My partner has an acknowledgment at the end of CLV), but I still haven’t figured out where he gets the contexts from.
I’m not published but I am a writer and I’ve got a lot of friends who are writers and the thing is? I don’t come up with my ideas, it’s more that they find me, club me upside the head, tie my unconscious body to the computer chair, and when I regain consciousness, hold a gun to my head while I write.
Okay, I exaggerate. I can choose not to write. But that won’t make the ideas go away, it’ll just mean I can’t share them with anyone else.
It’s funny though, because the more you practice writing, the more the ideas flow and the easier it is to get them down. I firmly believe anyone at all can become a fiction writer–if they’re willing to brave the craziness of it!
I don’t think that’s the kind if thing that’s wrung out. I think his writing is in there waiting/needing to come out. Inspiration creates strange/special things. Like an invention called the finglonger.
I’ll tell ya – I think the power there is not in the sci-fi part (the whole nano thing) but rather in the reality. That little piece says so much about people who use.
And you’ve done the same with your work. Like what you’ve written after a trip to Vegas. You describe real people around a poker table in a way that brings them to life.
When you can take that gift of description and apply it to the stories that have only happened in your head – well there you are.
That’s some pretty awesome imagery conveyed in just two small paragraphs. I like to write short fiction, but I find flash fiction easier. I’m writing one now (it may not turn into flash fiction) about a family who owns a boat rental place on a lake (haven’t decided which lake yet), and they have some problems with the retrieval of some jet skis (when the main char. finds them, he sees some bullet holes in one of them, and the other is capsized). The story escalates from there. I’m hoping it turns out good!
So yeah, back to my original point. Fiction like that guy wrote is good to feed off of if you’re looking for some inspiration. Good stuff.
thanks for posting that link; that was one helluva story. Like you I re-read it too.
Completely unrelated, but I was wondering what your thoughts are on the Dodger’s management rumors!
“What If” is the essential to fiction: “What if my wife left me suddenly? How would I feel, what would I do?” “What if that guy over there was a serial killer stalking that lady down the street?” Etcetera. Pose the question, then write an answer.
I kept my old text book from a creative writng course I took in college. It called “What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers” by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. Along the same lines as the previous post, these kind of ideas may help inspire you too.
Do not forget that Isaac Asimov said that he found writing fiction to be much, much harder than non-fiction.
Thanks. That was…touching, for lack of a better word. And by touching I don’t mean sweet, but rather I feel different after reading that. I haven’t read Ellis before, but if he can do something like that in so few words…
Gibsonesque…deeper, darker, compressed and concise. This tidbit would entice me into larger bytes.
I read Warren Ellis’ story yesterday, and then look what I found on Snopes today!
http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp
I seriously thought he just made that up. I didn’t know Jenkem actually existed!
Was Warren prescient? Stories are hitting the media today about a kid/kids in Florida making ‘jenkem’, using the exact same substances and methodology!