©2022 Michael Raven
It is tempting to think a tale can be saved. After all, 25k words might have a spot of good somewhere within those many meandering musings, right? Right?
I’m looking over one of those “found” documents, but this one I fully recall writing. After all, it was for 2007’s NaNoWriMo, so I should remember that. I made it half-way through before I got frustrated with some of the flaws already growing from the turds that parts of it had been. I was not quite at rock bottom, that would take a few more years, but I was darned close to skating along that surface. Needless to say, what I wrote made as much sense as how sober I was when I wrote it and, well, some parts made no sense whatsoever on some of those heavier-consumption days. Plus, I was caught up in that “cleverness” syndrome I mentioned in my earlier post. I occasionally got too clever for my writing abilities.
Anyway, I am casually toying with seeing if parts of that story can be salvaged and turned into something workable.
The title is “Fit the Furthermore: Another Agony” and was intended to be a modern urban absurdist fantasy loosely (very loosely) based on The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll. In it, the main character goes about in a relativistic parallel world mirroring that of the Snark’s and the neighborhoods of Seattle, prodded on by a bizarre young woman who both knows more than the main character, and yet seems utterly lacking in how to go about finding a snark to protect from someone who is hunting a snark (“They’re a protected species these days.”). It involved word games an imaginary creatures with real-life counterparts.
It was absurd.
The last time I read through sections I was appalled, but I still think the basic premise holds promise. Perhaps I’ll share some tidbits to see how it is received…
sceadugenga 
I have a couple of these types of works floating around somewhere and I’m hoping somewhat that I won’t come across them again because then I’ll feel obligated to… you know, actually DO something with them! 🙄 You’ve certainly piqued my curiosity.
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I’m somewhat lacking in shame. I’ll post something just because someone is likely to think if it is that awful, I wouldn’t dare.
Chances are I’ll follow up with something. Probably post another one of the better fragments I found before I post anything from this.
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It’s a very interesting idea! Perhaps now that you’ve lived more and are sober you could do what you couldn’t before—perhaps mix some of the old with the new.
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I keep telling myself that, but part of me is afraid of messing it up even more. Every once in a while I stare at this particular arrangement of pixels and wonder how I could hope to salvage anything more than the barest bones of a premise.
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Maybe it’s going to fit with another story, a collection of shorts or perhaps a melding of stories.
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Probably the latter. I’ll end up merging some of it into another tale and only I will know it is there.
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