the writing bit

Bleh, insomnia during a head cold. I'm just barely too muzzy-headed to do anything useful, and it's not like I'm getting any sleep. May as well finish and post this.

So, in addition to an awful lot of fine writing advice, some excellent company, and insightful if sometimes contradictory critiques of my submission story, I got one more thing out of Viable Paradise: I wrote a story under a strict deadline.

The story I wrote was, word for word, the hardest thing I've ever written. "Catastrophic global warming," they say, "rigorous extrapolation of hard science," they say, "hopeful and non-post-apocalyptic," they say; "bah," sez I. Thankfully I had a bunch of other people around who were in similar boats, and we could all sit around and type madly and grumble at each other.

(It turns out writing's easier in good company. I don't know if it's the shared task, or just the sense that other people are writing and therefore my brain says it's Okay for me to be writing, and in fact I'd better be writing so I can Fit In. O, brain.)

Most of what I learned from the experience can be summed up in a conversation I had around lunchtime on Thursday:

aamcnamara: How's your story coming?
Me: ... do me a favor? Tell me it doesn't suck?
aamcnamara (who has read none of this story): It doesn't suck.

And, you know, that helped, more than I'd expected it to. I knew it had problems. The plot wasn't a plot so much as "some stuff happens to the characters in the middle of a conversation," the theme was thin, etc etc. But it also had things I do well. Dialogue. The rhythm and flow of the prose. Bits of characterization, hints of worldbuilding. It doesn't suck, not entirely, not even when I'm struggling and flailing. I can do this.

That, I'm pretty sure, is the most important thing I brought out of that week.