I wrote my first bit of fiction on here yesterday called Lethe and Mnemos. I haven’t directly linked anyone to it yet because I’m not sure how it turned out and it’s kind of an experiment: like a lot of the things that I planned to put in “Mythic Bios”: both on and offline. I’ll leave it up to you if you want to read it and the subsequent cycles of the thing that I plan.
When I first started “Mythic Bios” as an online Journal, I thought I would be writing a lot more fiction on here than non-fiction. It does make more sense though that I’d be writing articles on films, books and comics on here as well as some of my own personal thoughts. Writing stories takes time and a certain focus: at least on my part.
But this isn’t a bad thing. Not at all. Perhaps it makes more sense for me to have my creative notebook exist offline and have some commentary and popular culture articles be more public here. I also realize that anything I write on here in terms of fiction may well be construed as being published and it would be difficult to send these stories elsewhere.
However, this will not stop me. “Lethe and Mnemos” started off as a joke: or more specifically a creative “half-joke.” It came from a series of “oral stories” that I tend to make when I’m in a brainstorming mood and talking out loud: a more fanciful way of saying that it came from the place where I sometimes “make shit up on the spot.” Originally, Lethe and Mmemos were just the names of the different philosophies or orders of the people that I planned to combat each other and it was meant to be somewhat semi-silly. I do have another story that I wrote down previously that I can adapt onto here as well, and I think at some point I might do that.
I can always self-publish these stories–beyond them simply being on my Blog–and some of the things I come up with deserve to be serialized and have more immediate viewers. I also admit that I really like to have an audience for my work and thoughts and experiments like “Lethe and Mnemos” can be fun.
I will admit though that the above linked story probably has its faults: perhaps being a little too ostentatious and pseudo-philosophical–really just being plain trite at times–but maybe posting my other “Lethe and Mnemos” story might show it something of the way it was supposed to be. Perhaps some of the silliness will offset the cliche: like parodies are supposed to. Still, it was experiment to try it in that tone and I don’t regret it. After all, I’ve learned that a combination of silliness and seriousness–that parody that says something–can be very effective a story.
In other news, I’ve applied to another contest The CZP/Rannu Fund: specifically for the short story segment of their contest. The deadline was yesterday and it was yet another last minute entry on my part. Luckily, I had a short story on hand that I was proud of, and worked on enough to actually send. I have not heard back from them yet as to whether they had received the entry and I know I had some formatting issues with regards to sending it to them (try copying and pasting a Word document into inline email plain-text format sometime without it becoming single-spaced and eliminating all of your underlining: it can be a lot of the fun that it is not). But I was fascinated enough to see where I can go with it, so we will see what happens.
In the meantime, I need to write more stories and send them out. I also need to keep writing, and that is exactly what I am going to do.
Mythic Bios 