Marissa Lingen (mrissa) wrote,
Marissa Lingen
mrissa

First lines and tunes

There is a practice, among several members of my friendslist, of listing first lines of works in progress -- sometimes for their friends' enjoyment, sometimes as a motivating factor. I always think, "Oh, I should do that, and then people will pet me and I will feel all happy and motivated too." But every time I try, I get lost in what there actually is to write and end up writing a hundred words each on a dozen stories I hadn't intended to give any attention at all. "No one went to the Jovian moons to forget," for example, to pick the first line of the alphabetically last work in the alphabetically last folder of my unfinished fiction. It is not time for me to write about the Jovian moons and memory and forgiveness. No. It is especially not time for me to write a hundred words about the Jovian moons, memory, and forgiveness, then go on to the next thing and write a hundred words about shared online worlds and historical accuracy and the folk process, and so on.

Tempting, though.

Sars at Tomato Nation got me wanting to hear Paul Simon's "American Tune," which is not one of our standards around here. It's on now. It's...it's not complicated, but it's not complicated in the way that's simple, not the way that's simplistic. I've been trying to think what to say about it, and somewhere along the line I started thinking that maybe all the metaphors for our homelands as our parents are the wrong end of the story. Maybe if we thought of our homelands as our children some of the time, we'd focus more on preparing them for an uncertain future and giving them the tools to do well and to do good.

Or maybe I should stop trying to put words on things like that directly and go write some more apparently unrelated fiction. These things have been known to happen.
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