Support for Indie Authors discussion

I find that the stories i write are always born out of some idea that I just become obsessed with and can't get out of my head. Lately all of those ideas have been around identity - how much of who we are is something we can decide on, and how much of it is beyond our control? I ended up writing a whole bunch of stories just trying to control for different aspects of identity to see what happened: a man transferring his consciousness into an artificially constructed female body, a woman developing a friendship with a disembodied brain being prepared for transplant, things like that.

What ideas are you obsessed with right now? It doesn't have to be anything related to writing - we don't just write because we love writing, we write because we love thinking and creating and playing with ideas. What ideas are you playing with right now?

My current work in progress can be summed up in a few words: Teen years are miserable years.

Themes I come back to quite often in my writing, in very broad terms, would be bigotry, cruelty, religion, mental health, and death. Since most of what I do is meant to be humorous, I guess another theme might be: Human beings is kinda silly things.

Huh. Mine is sort of identity as well. Mostly what makes us human, how much control we have over our lives, and whether or not there is such thing as predestination. I would guess this is pretty common among sci-fi and fantasy authors.

Family, life, death, guilt, and the nature of justice, lawful or otherwise. Probably in that order. They're the biggest themes in the series I'm sniping away at, and are endlessly fascinating to me.

I have looked and thought and I guess my primary obsessions are justice, and those who fight oppression and prejudice. But that can be anything from the story of a morally upright ‘monster’ to a woman who has her oppressor’s dick turned into a pot to sit on her dressing table

Dan wrote: "Family, life, death, guilt, and the nature of justice, lawful or otherwise. Probably in that order. They're the biggest themes in the series I'm sniping away at, and are endlessly fascinating to me."

And do you feel like writing about those things has taught you anything new about them over the course of the series?

Jane wrote: "I have looked and thought and I guess my primary obsessions are justice, and those who fight oppression and prejudice. But that can be anything from the story of a morally upright ‘monster’ to a wo..."

That sounds like a very specific example (PLEASE tell me you've used that somewhere). Where do you feel like that obsession came from?

Christina wrote: "Huh. Mine is sort of identity as well. Mostly what makes us human, how much control we have over our lives, and whether or not there is such thing as predestination. I would guess this is pretty co..."

Yeah it seems like sci-fi especially tends to all boil down to using inhuman things to describe the concept of humanity. Have you come to any conclusions to those questions through your writing?

Adam wrote: "Jane wrote: "I have looked and thought and I guess my primary obsessions are justice, and those who fight oppression and prejudice. But that can be anything from the story of a morally upright ‘mon..."

Have used both. The ‘monster’ is the eponymous Aaspa in Aaspa’s Eyes. The dick is in a short called Carpe Penis.

And I think my obsession with justice comes from an upbringing that considered prejudice in all forms to be wrong

age faith and truth
pushing 70 but yet a fledgling writer, I am struck by how everyone is somewhere along those three axes ... and moving.

Adam wrote: "Have you come to any conclusions to those questions through your writing?"

None that can be easily summed up, but then again, if I could, I probably wouldn't keep writing.

What am I obsessed with? Tough question...

Let's see. Alien...aliens...and maybe...ALIENS.

I've always been obsessed with aliens for as far as I can remember. Yes, even as a young child I was asking my father if there were people in the sky, on the Moon, and on Mars, and later on when he told me the stars were in fact suns to other worlds, I was sure there were.

What will I be obsessed with tomorrow? I think it is safe to say that it will still be aliens. :P

There have to be aliens out there, Mod. Just too many galaxies, let alone stars for there not to be. What puzzles me is how can we possibly reach other worlds with the distances so great. I saw Adam's comment on identities. It was really food for thought.

G.G. wrote: "What am I obsessed with? Tough question...

Let's see. Alien...aliens...and maybe...ALIENS.

I've always been obsessed with aliens for as far as I can remember. Yes, even as a young child I was as..."

What do you think it is about aliens that make them so fascinating to you?

Clyde wrote: "There have to be aliens out there, Mod. Just too many galaxies, let alone stars for there not to be. What puzzles me is how can we possibly reach other worlds with the distances so great. I saw Ada..."

Thanks Clyde. (Totally agree about the aliens.) What obsessions do you see coming out in your writing?

I have come to the conclusion that I always write about pain and trauma in some way. Most of us probably write about pain in some way, but there is always something painful in my characters' background that they have to conquer before moving on.

Jane wrote: "Adam wrote: "Jane wrote: "I have looked and thought and I guess my primary obsessions are justice, and those who fight oppression and prejudice. But that can be anything from the story of a morally..."

Yeah I think it's really interesting to consider the role of literature in real-world justice and prejudice-busting a la James Baldwin. Like, it takes the act of writing from something that's fun and personally fulfilling and turns it into something that can actually have physical impact in the world.

Do you have any favorite inspirations? Like, a personal reading list of books about justice?

Adam wrote: "What do you think it is about aliens that make them so fascinating to you? ..."

I just like to think that we can't be alone in such a vast universe. What a waste it would be.

I'm mostly intrigued about their technology. Things I saw back forty years ago that couldn't be explained. The fact that they could be intrigued by us and could be visiting us doesn't disturb me as maybe it should. I hope that some day, they will be there to prevent humankind from doing their biggest mistake.

But sometimes it seems that they might have managed to give humankind just enough technology so we can destroy Earth with it. :/ What a way to get rid of the little buggers that we are. :P

I suppose my obsession isn't so much the question of what is human, but rather what being human will become once humanity is the master of its own physical and mental form: trans-human and post-human.

Aspects of that come into almost all my writing in some way. Although I don't often address the question head on, preferring to follow storylines set in post/trans-human worlds which are more character focused. Hopefully the reader gets a vicarious dose of the overarching theme though.

G.G. wrote: "I'm mostly intrigued about their technology. Things I saw back forty years ago that couldn't be explained..."

That reminds me of another--not really thematic--obsession I have, though it hasn't really shown up in in my published work so far; I like to look at tropes in either literature or pop culture (like the UFO phenomenon) and formulate non-standard explanations. What we see as an alien phenomenon, but which our ancestors might have seen as spiritual, may in fact be neither of these.

I have a couple unfinished stories with different scenarios for what's really going on with the UFO thing. I even have one where the primary theme is that what appears to be alien interest in humanity turns out to not really have anything to do with us. Vain hu-mans!

Adam wrote: "And do you feel like writing about those things has taught you anything new about them over the course of the series? "

I wouldn't necessarily say I've learned anything new, but I've definitely clarified things that were once a little more cloudy.

My obsession in writing would be insecurity. I find that most of my heroines deal with feeling insecure for one reason or another. It is something many of us feel but don't talk about.

The other is the good vs evil trope which plays out in various ways in several of my books I'm gradually polishing. (growl, grump, grump...takes forever to edit)

Hmmm, not sure whether it's an obsession or just a recurring theme that tends to drive my writing, but regardless mine is pretty shallow compared with some of the deep topics mentioned so far. It's the urge to transport people to places nobody can visit in real life.

Sure, I dress it up in themes of revenge and justice, and the dangers of ignorance, but the core is pure escapism.

Adam wrote: "Jane wrote: "Adam wrote: "Jane wrote: "I have looked and thought and I guess my primary obsessions are justice, and those who fight oppression and prejudice. But that can be anything from the story..."

To Kill a Mockingbird

Ian wrote: "Hmmm, not sure whether it's an obsession or just a recurring theme that tends to drive my writing, but regardless mine is pretty shallow compared with some of the deep topics mentioned so far. It's..."

I don't think that's shallow at all! In essence, that's what literature is for - whether escaping your world to explore another, or escaping your mind and your experience to explore someone else's.

Tom wrote: "This is exactly on point for my current work. I'm writing a collection of stories that have a different theme that is suggested by the technology that has become a problem in a futuristic thriller...."

That sounds awesome (I'd love to read those stories). When you write, do you typically start with the theme and then build a plot that illustrates it? Or, do you start with a more concrete idea of what you want to happen and then decide on a theme that can help you shape it?

My favorite writing theme is exploration, whether it be exploring a new, uncharted land, investigating a new scientific principle, or researching in an ancient library. This comes out of my scientific background. I'm always curious, always trying to learn new things and my characters tend to share that curiosity.

This is also why I like to write speculative "field guides". The end purpose of exploration is to share what you've discovered with others, of course.

Transformation also comes a lot in my work. In my first novel, the protagonist is merged with a god of fire and ends up becoming an entirely new being. I also weave in my exploration theme by having her spend much of the book trying to figure out all of her new abilities.

Many of my characters are also transgender, genderfluid or genderqueer, which is another kind of transformation.

I like exploring how identities and even physical forms change over time. How different states of being merge and flow into each other.

Another big theme in my writing is the evolution of mythology. I've been reading a lot about cryptids recently and I'm fascinated by the way these creatures merge with culture and follklore. Just look at how ubiquitous images of Gray Aliens, Bigfoot, the Chupacabra and other creatures have become. I'm also interested in the ways different religions and mythologies have inspired each other. Like how elements of Zoroastrianism have influenced Abrahmic religions. Or how Hellenic Greek sculptures have influenced depictions of the Buddha.

Horror is also a theme that comes up fairly often in my work. Sometimes it's just spooky stuff like ghosts, but I also tend to put some fairly grisly biologically-based stuff in my works. Parasites, body horror, etc. A lot of that comes from my biology background. Plus I just like horror.