Well, the Werewolf Fic is as good as it's going to get without
snarking_boojum taking a look at it. And hopefully he'll have the CatFeet story back for me when we meet next week and then I can give him the Werewolf Fic to poke at.
In the meantime, I'm hunting for the next thing.
As aforementioned, the one concept I had for the Astrobiology and the Sacred competition is way beyond the scope of a 5K-word story. I had another notion along the lines of non-biological life forms, but what the hell sort of form that would take is possibly beyond the scope of my poor brain.
I mean, biological life is basically information (DNA), chemical reactions, and electricity, right? But translating that over to, say, a silicon life form is causing my head to explode. I don't have the science for it; my degree in biology is a handicap for something like this, I think.
And so I'm on to the third thing. Does art have universal meaning? What is art, anyway? Would an alien look at, say, "The Last Supper," or Michelangelo's "David," and see the same thing we do?
The act of creation seems to be a very human thing. Even people living hardscrabble nomadic lives in teepees and caves made things, not just for function, but beauty. Would the urge to do this be present among aliens? To what extent? Do they have extra senses, or see and hear in other spectrums, and how would this affect what they perceive as "art" or "music"?
Argh. Original fiction is making me all thinky. I've got a little over a month to figure something out for this...