For my side quest demons
Hello hello *･༓☾
Welcome to today’s edition!!
- News (publication! upcoming free preso! wheee)
- A pep talk for all y’all, my beautiful side quest demons
- Quick exercise (new section!)
- Lately
News
I’m so thrilled to share my new flash story in Lightspeed, “A Superior Knot”. I’ve always admired Lightspeed and its daring, genre-stretching publication choices, so I’m just trying not to shriek every time I talk about it. All my stories are special to me, but this one is special, also. The audio version is superb, so if you’re more into listening to fiction, it’s there for you.
Do it. The last words she spoke before we cinched the green ribbon around her neck, a stark line bisecting her head from her body, a scrap we’d buried to gather magic under the mother tree.
I’m also excited to be presenting at Flights of Foundry this year, which is an entirely digital and free conference celebrating SFF of all stripes: games, and fandoms included! The programming is absolutely formidable, I believe last time I checked there were 269 events across global timezones.
I’ll be doing a presentation called, “Character-Driven Worldbuilding: Using Personality Tests and Tarot”. We’ll have a little chat on worldbuilding in general, and learn about personality archetyping systems and how to use them generatively to inform your characters, conflict, and world. Here’s the graphic! Hope to see you!
Register for Flights of Foundry
For my side quest demons
My brief days of raving/clubbing/concert-going-without-an-assigned-seat are long behind me (I mean…probably), but I am still rewatching this Instagram reel my college bud shared weeks ago (hi Len!!!). It’s a car confessional from @vibe_wire earnestly addressing us. Please. Just watch it.
“If you go to raves and festivals, and you’re a side quest demon, I have one single question, and I speak on behalf of the entire rave community when I ask this—what are you doing, where are you going? I mean. Did you see Rumpelstiltsken running down the yellow brick road in the crowd and thought, let’s go ask him to spin us an endless pot of gold…you always come back looking like you just went through World War III…you come back with broken buckles, dirty hair, and I’m just really curious…”
The type of hedonism described in this post just delights me. Let’s go on an adventure. Let’s find a pot of gold. Let’s create world peace. Who knows what’s waiting around the corner. Broken buckles and dirty hair.
When things are going well, I think we all recognize that energy. The cliche that comes to mind is being creative is messy!!!! It’s all happy accidents!!! It’s all side quest demon energy. Of course when you reeeeally need to hear the cliches of follow your heart!!!! Let your inner child play!!!! if you’re anything like me, you’re like, ‘frankly—f * * * off forever.’
But it should be wild, shouldn’t it? It should wander. It should lead you by the hand and take you somewhere. Even when you’re skinning your knees on the concrete of your personal trauma, it should feel like you are on your way to something bigger. It should feel fulfilling. No one asks you to do this. So if you do it, do it for you, for that selfish and euphoric feeling of exploring a weird place you’ve never been, for a younger you.
Don’t even do it to please your community. Do it to understand your community, to dream for your community, to be in conversation with your community, but do it for you.
Pardon my romance. I’m in a mood. But you can stand to feel a little out of control with all of this. Your creativity forgives you. It loves you. In the long view, your creativity will never expire. It will never run out. If you take and take and take from it, pour some water on and watch it rehydrate. Every time I think I’ve drawn on it for the last time, that I’ve surely been too cruel or dismissive or or obsessive or improperly devoted, it comes whistling around the bend.
I think in a constructed world like ours it’s scary to believe there are benevolent forces that are just available to us. I think this is part of being human in our modern age: relearning to trust something, anything wholly—and in this world, some of us start with fewer reasons to trust, for reasons we don’t control.
Some would call this faith, love, or even religion. I don’t find the answers I need there, but I respect if you do. I don’t know that it cares what it’s called. But I do think it’s real. I think it exists and it’s right there. It demands only a constantly outstretched hand. That’s all it is. Reaching for something friendly that you will never know completely, but always seems to pull you through. I can think of few more enjoyable feelings than that itch in your side when you access that wild faith in your creativity, that tug of ribs and tendons and muscle.
So I have one question, and I speak on behalf of everybody. What are you doing, where are you going?
I’m trying something new this installment. In addition to a pep talk, here’s a creative exercise to get unstuck. We’ll see how I feel about it in time. Today, let’s call it…
You good, bruh?
I like to call this one, whatcha got?? and it’s the amalgam of many wise folks who came before me. Matt Bell goes into more detail on this in his book Refuse to be Done if you’d like a more lengthy, loving, poetic take on it.
This is for when you are stalled on a project. I’ll speak from a book and story perspective, but you can apply this to literally any project.
- Make a list of all the elements you can think of. For a book: characters, settings, motifs, objects, memories, important phrases, anything that’s important to you.
- What happens when you combine or juxtapose two elements you haven’t combined before? Where is there unexpected energy? Follow it.
What I really love about this (and this is the vibe of Bell’s whole book, honestly) is that you’re taking what you love about your project and creating more of it. I’m actually eager to try this out on generating a story, where I choose two beautiful elements, and then just keep combining out and out and out until I have something surprising.
Lately
I’m reading The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir by Susan Lieu, Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life by Sofia Samatar, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology.
I’m watching Interview with the Vampire, Emily in Paris (someone please help me I hate it and yet), Discovery of Witches (again), and a whole lot of knitting YouTube.
I’m trying to see if I can use Bluesky in a healthy way? I can’t say I totally get the vibe yet, but I’m lurking a little to see what’s up. Do you like it? Tell me why.
As always, thank you for reading. If you made it this far, I would humbly ask you to do two things.
- If you’re in the US, will you check your voter registration and block off the time you need to vote in your calendar? The election is coming up! It takes just a Google search and a few seconds.
- If it’s been a while (and especially if you have matching via your employer) will you donate what you can to an organization on the ground in Palestine, like Palestine Children’s Relief Fund?
Thank you so much. Until next time,
Ash