Comments | ursulav: Childish Fantasies

ursulav

Childish Fantasies

Aug 21, 2013 21:56

When I was quite young-about seven or eight, say-my mother would take me to church, or as I knew it, The Most Boring Two Hours That Anyone Has Ever Experienced Ever In The History Of The Universe With Extra Boring Sauce.

Needless to say, I was not a fan.

It’d be church for an hour and then Sunday school. Mostly what I gleaned from all this was that ( Read more... )

writing

Comments 92

derakon August 21 2013, 22:11:57 UTC

As an adult, I have the issue that I will daydream a scene, and then I will get bogged down in the backstory and the scene itself ends up sort of dissolving under the weight of justification and motivation. This is a horrible thing to do to daydreams.

wings_on_water August 22 2013, 05:42:32 UTC

Yes, this. Many is the daydream as an adult that I've accidentally squashed with "but why am I here doing this?"

ellixis August 22 2013, 11:27:43 UTC

I actually get bogged down in the backstory and then sidetracked forever exploring that with great interest, so it's not always a bad thing.

beladibaby August 21 2013, 22:13:50 UTC

I suspect that the moral of your story is you were one creative, awesome 8 year old and you never made that inner 8 year old grow up even if the rest of you has to be slightly older than 8 years old *grin*. Lesson a lot of adults I know should have taken to heart.

fyr3lyt3 August 21 2013, 22:23:03 UTC

I still daydream stories like that. Its problematic when I'm actually trying to write a story, and my brain refuses to care about the inbetween-plot-bits and is completely satisfied going "things happen and now we're on to the next really good scene. This one has ninjas."

This! sarkat August 21 2013, 22:50:46 UTC

I was going to reply saying:

My fantasies are STILL about scenes. My biggest problem in writing is the need to have a plot of some sort of justify the existence of all the beautiful, intricately envisioned, emotionally intense scenes and the snippets of dialogue that I've been cheerfully dreaming up while in the shower or driving down the freeway. And plots are hard.

Maybe I should write for children:p

Re: This! ursulav August 21 2013, 22:54:43 UTC

Nah, the editors still demand cause and effect.

Re: This! fyr3lyt3 August 22 2013, 07:08:10 UTC

For me its not so much PLOTS that are hard as it is making the plots work out properly and filling in all the details that get a plot from point A to point B. I've been experimenting with a novel written almost entirely in letters and journal entries - thereby forcing the reader to fill in all the "things happen in between" bits for me ;)

Thread 5

banshea August 21 2013, 22:33:09 UTC

My parents let me draw during church. I'd be given a little notebook and a pen and told that I could go to town except during the homily. Child logic ran something like this: church is a special place, where we have to be respectful and think of Jesus. Therefore, drawings in church should be Jesus-themed. Hey, look, there's a model of Jesus right there in front of us! But... isn't Jesus supposed to have suffered for us? Like, a lot? Isn't it more respectful to show just how much He suffered, instead of looking vaguely bored, seeing as how that could really drive the message home ( ... )

bladespark August 21 2013, 22:42:11 UTC

I had one of the kids I used to teach in Sunday School draw me a Darth Vader Jesus. I never did quite get an explanation out of her for why. But I have it stuck to my fridge anyway, because Darth Vader Jesus!

rusti_knight August 22 2013, 00:23:00 UTC

I would have been all over a Darth Vader Jesus. (And since I believe firmly that God has a decent sense of humor, I think He would have laughed too).

dulcinbradbury August 22 2013, 14:56:08 UTC

I love your 8-year-old brain. I *totally* understand that. By the time I was seven-ish, we'd stopped going to Church, but I was going to Catholic school. So we had Church at school for certain feast days, etc.

I think that's part of why I missed the connection between Palm Sunday & Ash Wednesday.

So until I was like... 12? I thought the ashes for Ash Wednesday came from cremating people's hands. Is this gruesome? Sure. When you think about how Catholics believe in transubstantiation? Probably not that much of a leap actually.

Thread 6

timprov August 21 2013, 22:47:02 UTC

It's probably for the best that I never came up with such a thing, as I'm a pastor's kid and would undoubtedly have made it happen up to the limits of my eight-year-old abilities.

(Or perhaps more likely when I was eleven and our church was also my elementary school, so any rhinoceros damage would do double duty.)