Day 2

I meant to write in a notebook that I took to the orthodontists today; I've got a new idea for a novel, and I was hoping to play around with some dialogue to help me figure out some characters. Alas, I didn't manage it, and when I got home I was horribly tired. Which was a bit depressing, since I hadn't thought about my illness affecting the challenge. I haven't had a really bad day like this in a while (just some not-so-good days), so it's a downer when I feel like I've suddenly gone a step backwards.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better now, so I think I shall ramble. It won't be a particularly creative ramble (or a long one), so it might stretch the limits of the challenge, but at this point I think anything will do.

I just finished watching a film with my parents entitled Paris, Je T’aime. It's a collection of five-minute shorts set in Paris, each about love of some form or another. The shorts ranged from a strangely hilarious one about a man who falls in love with a vampire, to a story narrated by an American woman (in rather appalling French) about how she fell in love with Paris.

It was really quite wonderful. A lot of the stories were simply "slice of life;" they showed scenes that could happen to anyone, simple moments that aren't particularly exciting or dramatic, but are somehow utterly real and authentic. I'd love to write something like that; most of my ideas for stories are science fiction or fantasy, which can't exactly be called realistic. And while science fiction has been traditionally a wonderful vessel for examining the human condition (honestly, what better way is there to get people thinking about what makes us human than writing about androids?), it doesn't tell it like it is. To be able to write about everyday events, everyday people, and to imbue that writing with meaning and poignancy, well, that seems pretty damn difficult to me.

Heh, not that examining the human condition in science fiction is any easier.