I'm so very jealous. Or envious. Or both?

[verushka70]

I am extraordinarily jealous of everyone who attended bitchinparty aka Pacificon.

Instead, I had a crappy, busy week. However, I survived and passed ACLS (Advanced Cardiac Life Support) and got my ACLS certification. Which is now good for 2 years. And which will make me more attractive to other hospitals, so I can hopefully get hired somewhere else after I've paid my dues gotten my year of experience at the inner city hospital where I currently work.

In the meantime, I made gnocchi ala vodka for my mom and older sister, watched my Sweeney Todd bootleg DVD, caught BSG: The Phenomenon and BSG: Revealed, watched Torchwood Saturday night, and watched Cary Grant (swoon) and Ingrid Bergman (girlcrush) in Hitchcock's Notorious Sunday night. God, I love that movie. I may love it almost as much as Casablanca. Well, maybe not that much. But I would go see Notorious if it screened on a big screen here... like at the Music Box. I did just see Casablanca on February 15 on the big screen at the Music Box.

And I'm writing down all the "how to write a non-chronological/non-narrative" story stuff that's been percolating in my mind as I've read the examples in DS fandom that people have pointed out to me.

Comments

[maxinemayer.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on passing the ACLS - soon you'll be out of the inner city hospital and someplace better for you!

"And I'm writing down all the "how to write a non-chronological/non-narrative" story stuff that's been percolating in my mind as I've read the examples in DS fandom that people have pointed out to me."

Really? Why would you want to write non-narrative stories? Non-chron, I get, but non-narrative? But then, I'm the English major who never read Ulysses!

Have a better week!
Love, max
P.S. - The writing question is rhetorical - you don't need to answer me! I'm just being ornery!

[verushka70.livejournal.com]

The non-chronological/non-narrative thing is a ds_workshop topic I volunteered to write about, since I did recently write an angsty Billy/Fraser & F/K HCL/DS xover deathfic for a challenge at ds_flashfiction, although that's the only non-chronological story with a seriously frakked-up narrative that I've actually finished. (I have a number of unfinished WIP non-chron/non-narrative pieces...)

I'm with ya on Ulysses... so THICK to get through, I never could finish it -- but what I did get through was fascinating to read and really did seem to be the way thoughts flow, ebb and snag in one's head. I've noticed, though, that most people's efforts at stream-of-consciousness in fanfic seem to wind up being narrative after all, though they themselves may not initially think so (and may not even have intended to). I think we're all readers first, or were, before we started writing fanfic. And being a reader first sort of imposes the story-telling structure on your thinking and writing... so even if you don't mean to, you tell a narrative story anyway (with conflict, rising action or plot points, climactic point, and usually denouement). Even the shortest <300 word drabbles seem to be narrative about 98-99% of the time! I find this very interesting, just because it says so much about fanfic authors' overwhelming preference for... chronological narrative stories!

Which is kind of meta, if you think about it, for the entire human storytelling tradition that has gone on for hundreds of thousands of years if not more... almost as if we humans can't think outside that narrative trajectory box; no matter what veneer we lay over it, the underlying structure is still a narrative trajectory 99% of the time...! In film studies, they likened the overwhelming majority of (and audience preference for) narrative films to the similar trajectory of human sexual arousal and eventual orgasm, and suggested that for reasons of physical excitement (especially suspense in mysteries, thrillers, Hitchcock, etc.) people need the narrative trajectory and conclusion... but I'd hate to make it all so Freudian.

I just think humans, because of our underlying mammalian neurophysiology and unsuccessfully sublimated superstitiousness, tend to want closure. And in stories, fairy tales and fables, the narrative trajectory always gives you that closure. We live in such an uncertain world (and it must have been so much more uncertain in times past when we were still hunter/gatherers, with no knowledge or understanding of natural phenomena like disasters e.g. earthquakes, thunderstorms, tornadoes, typhoons, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc.) that the lack of closure is, still, I think, kind of disturbing to us. But then sometimes we get the closure in narratives, and we're not happy with it... because we're, um, human. And we want a different kind of closure. Y'know? And so we wind up writing our own... in fanfic. *g*

[maxinemayer.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you say here - it's human to want some kind of narrative (beginning, conflict, climax, resolution) for the reasons you delineate! In fact, whatever fan fiction I see and comment on, I call a "story" in my Subject line, even if the author calls it a drabble or ficlet or whathaveyou! But as you point out, "fiction" doesn't need to be "story/narrative" - it can be "stream of consciousness" or other "non-linear/non-chron" stuff. I tend to think of these other stuffs as "poetry" but that's just me.... Grins!

Have a wonderful day!
Love, max