One of the ways that I help fill my creative well is by flipping through DeviantArt. The website showcases artists from around the world, with a lot of really interesting styles and approaches. (There is--unsurprisingly--a lot of weird stuff on it, too, so discretion is advised.) Professionals and amateurs alike use the site to both bolster their own work and be part of the larger artistic community. Not being particularly artistic (I have my cartoons that I doodle, and I like to use my Surface pen to draw during church on Sundays), I don't add to the website anything substantial. Instead, I just look.
Because of that habit, I noticed that some (very few, in my honest experience) of the pieces of art feel like they're a snapshot in the middle of a story. Among the pencil sketches of hands, yet another Fursona, fanart from the latest Netflix hit, fractal art, and anime characters of sundry shapes and sizes (and clothing options) lurk the occasional piece of art that has a sense of momentum, of dynamism, of being part of something greater than just a practice. These little snippets of a broader story sometimes make me wonder enough that I've decided to start writing what I call DeviantStories. I've so far started three of these (with only finishing one), each one coming from a picture that I spotted, favorited, and let germinate in my brain. One is a picture of a couple in a truck. Another is a cloaked person in an autumnal forest. Another is a mother hugging her son after giving him a bath, or a father helping tie his son's tie. The point is, I see potential for more than what's on the screen or in the frame and then want to explore it. This has been harder than I expected. I can sit down and weave some thousand words or so into an essay and feel content enough with what I've written to send it out into the world. It's not the best way of writing--it certainly doesn't teach me about anything more than nonce editing, for example--but it's what I've the bandwidth to complete most days. When it comes to fiction, however, I expect more of myself…enough that I think that I should probably polish, edit, and improve the original product. Not only that, but my original product as an essayist tends to be a single-shot (that is, I sit down, write the thing, and then I'm done). While there are exceptions, those tend to be because of scheduling constraints--I start an essay, need to do something else, and come back to it--than because I have to let the idea fully form. In a lot of ways, the point of writing the essay is to help form the thoughts. The point of writing the story, however, is to tell the story. And, for some reason, I feel like I'm doing something wrong if I can't get the story out in a single go. I rarely write chunks of chapters--I push through until the chapter is as long as it's supposed to be, only stopping when I've finished that scene. This matters with the DeviantStories because I'm not really adept at seeing the image, "hearing" the inspiration, and then completing the project. It's a lot harder, in other words, for me to put down the story this way. All that being said, I have finished one of the three that I've started. (It was inspired by the picture that's at the top of this post, made by PrismoTheSmoke.) I do feel like I need to read it over before adding it, but I think it's fair to say that, every once in a great while, I'll be posting a piece of short fiction on the website instead of an essay. When possible, I'll add a small behind-the-scenes of why I picked the story, what stood out to me in the picture enough to want to put the words down, and any other thing that strikes my fancy. Who knows? Maybe I'll get practiced enough at this that someday I can look back at my short story collection and feel something like a flash of pride. Maybe. |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
July 2022
Categories
All
|