Victoria Randall

In Defense of Short Fiction Inspired by Already Existing Art — or Fanfiction

Well, it’s officially been too-damn long since I last wrote something here. 

I should update you as to my writer-ly behaviors, I suppose. 

• I finished the rough draft of my short story toward the beginning of December. I made a promise to myself that I would edit it after letting it sit for a short while.
• That “short while” turned into 6 months. 
• I still haven’t started editing it.
• My bad.
• I have been working on quite a bit of poetry as of late. In the fall semester I had a very encouraging creative writing professor tell me I “must have been a famous poet in a past life.” Which made me blush and then pull a series of faces that no one should ever see me make. Ever.
• I’ve had two promising ideas for short films — film being a medium I am overly eager to start pursuing. 
• Neither of these short films have finished spec scripts as of yet… but it’s a work in progress. 
• Recently I’ve found myself putting a lot of effort into collaborative short fiction pieces inspired by some of the finest writing happening in today’s media based art. 
• By which I mean I’ve been writing fanfiction. 

Okay, now — listen. I am a firm believer in the importance of fanfiction.

Fanfiction is an incredible tool that inexperienced writers can use in honing their skills. It is a way to receive unbiased feedback on prose without needing to worry about copyright issues or idea-stealing. It fosters a sense of community and trust among fellow writers — which can be very important in the long run. Additionally, it allows writers to actually begin writing with out getting hung up on character profiles and intricate plot details. So much of that is supplied for you when you’re piggybacking on someone else’s work. In fact, fanfiction is one of the only activities in life which deems said piggybacking as acceptable. 

Also, it’s just plain fun!

My writing career began when I was but a small child, weaving narratives on the backs of my eyelids. I still do that to this day. I lie down at night and immediately launch my mind into a plot. I entertain myself in this way. I allow my busy mind to rest. It’s also one of the ways I remind myself that, above all else, writing is storytelling. 

Storytelling is an art and no one begins as Plath or Poe or Palahniuk. 

Fanfiction has been the most consistent writing instructor I’ve ever known. It is always there. It is always growing and waiting and calling you back to learn more from it. 

So I feel no shame in admitting that, yes, I write fanfiction. 

I write all kinds of fanfiction and nothing on this great wide earth can stop me!

That said, I can sometimes use fanfiction as an excuse not to tackle the issues in my original work. I try to avoid seeing things like this. I don’t want to encourage in my mind the idea of fanfiction as an escape from reality. So much of my childhood was spent tucked in a book because I was afraid to step outside of it’s crisp, paper world. 

I’d like to believe that’s not the case anymore, but I catch myself sometimes — retreating into the shell of a well worn paperback. And on occasion this can be a well deserved indulgence. It’s just important to remind yourself that it can’t last forever. 

You can’t build a home out of words. 

No matter how hard you might try.

-VR

It’s One in the Morning

I don’t post here nearly as often as I should. 

I’m at a stand still with my work right now. The semester is beginning and I don’t have near enough time to fret over submitting pieces. I did have all Summer. I certainly made progress that I am proud of, but I want so much more. Isn’t that always the case? You get a taste of things, you’re so proud of your accomplishments, and then, not a week later, you’re jonesing for that sweet temptress: validation. 

I’ve made quite a bit of progress on a short story. It’s such a rare occurrence that I take a story idea past the brainstorming phase and yet here I am. The thing that excites me about this particular story is that I’m not tired of it yet. I get bored with things so rapidly. This is the primary reason I hate outlining. Nothing kills the joy of writing more like a 30 page outline for a 7 page story. I have to be deliberately vague when plotting. Character analysis I can do all day. The more depth, the better, but outlines. Sheesh. They’re my kryptonite. 

This story has been a work in progress for three months or so now. I’ve written seven pages of actual prose. With the outline and character analysis it’s probably more like 20. Which I know seems minute, but I promise you, it’s a mountain for me. I’m an immensely slow-going writer. That’s probably why I write so much poetry, despite the fact that I’m not nearly as skilled with that genre. Poetry is quicker. It’s a more critical process for the writer, I think, but brief in comparison to short story construction. Plus, poetry allows me the ability to be selfish. I get to write from my perspective and my perspective only. For a story I have to get into character and think about my angle and my arcs and my themes and so on and so forth. I have to be far more mentally prepared.

Anyway, I just wanted to write a quick little update on my progress. I’ve got a new… muse, you might say, that seems to be having a dramatic effect on my tone. We’ll see how that pans out and if it’s conducive to the production of some new pieces. 

-VR

Amphibi.us

Hey there! 

I recently had a poem published in the AWESOME online literary magazine, Amphibi.us 

You can go read it here. 

Or you can… not go read it.

It’s really your choice. 

You could just look at it I suppose?

You could glaze over whilst on the webpage. 

If you want. 

damn-it-b0b asked: Your '' I Wish I Were A Poet'' poem is amazing! I wish you best of luck of becoming one c:

Thank you so much! I write quite a bit of poetry, but it’s hard to do so without getting frustrated. I’ve always found poetry incredibly subjective, even more so than prose. Everyone has their own style and free verse, which is what I primarily write in, is particularly hard to categorize.

I remember I was trying to edit a poem one night and I became so utterly disgruntled with my work that I pulled up a blank page and plunked out those slightly bitter lines in the most basic rhyme scheme I could muster.

And of course, it’s ended being one of my personal favorites in my ‘collection.’ Doesn’t it always seem the things you work the least on are the things people seem to love? :)

-VR

Yet There is Method in’t

Whenever I write any poetry that I feel proud of, it is intensely personal. I mean, this makes sense. I was introduced to poetry through the likes of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. The private nature of their thoughts was what drew me in. Anyone can write a poem about nature, about flowers and spring leaves. It seemed to me to take a special kind of person to write about emotion, to make flowers and spring leaves and a whole host of other things solely convey humanity. That’s what poetry is for me. You can take your epics, your sonnets, youf free verse and shove them. If they don’t cut you to the core, if the writer didn’t bleed a little bit inside when making them, they simply aren’t worth a damn. 

And maybe that’s a strong opinion, maybe it’s overzealous or rude, but it’s exactly how I feel. 

I started writing when I was young because of an immense need to say something, to express what was happening in my mind. 

I always wrote about dark things, even as a kid. Telling a story was an escape. I could look through the eyes of someone else. I could put these horrifying fears onto paper. I could get them out of my head. 

I wrote about kidnapping and magic and nightmares. I wrote murder mysteries. And I never stopped to think about whether these stories were good or not. I just wrote them. There’s something beautifully naive in that freedom. There is something…

Sometimes I feel that we should all be what we wanted to be as children. I’ve considered many career paths in my lifetime: actor, musician, director, psychiatrist, soldier, politician, teacher. But I have always been a writer. I’ve taken it for granted. It is something I have always known about myself. No matter what I try to do, or where I try to go, I always end up back in the fourth grade, facing a blank piece of paper. 

I get sweaty palms. I lick my lips, which crack and dry out anyway. I smear ink all over the page until something decent pops out of that mess. That mess. 

Because writing is messy. If writing is nothing else it is messy. I hate neat. I hate clean. Lines are for idiots and those without passion. Creativity is amorphous and you must follow its ever changing shape with your eyes, or else risk your sanity trying to rediscover it. 

I could never live a life without that mess. I like the way ideas line up haphazardly in my skull, so many empty soda cans and candy wrappers. They are a necessary clutter and I sift through them every now and again just to see what I’ve got. There is a functionality to it. 

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

And The Bard never lies. 

-VR

killerbookcovers asked: RE: Horror Fiction - If Carrie inspired you (great novel) and you're interested in writing horror, you should give King's "On Writing" a read.

Haha it’s funny you should mention that! The original title for that blog post was Victoria Randall: On Writing but I thought it was too obvious a reference. 

-VR

It’s that time again…

I tend to get pretty nervous right before submitting work. It’s not that I fear the rejection, I almost always expect it. I think what I fear most is calling something ‘finished.’ Things are only ever finished until I get the next rejection letter and then it’s back to work. I am an obsessive self editor, which, I suppose, some consider a flaw. I am constantly searching for the flow that I want, the voice, the rhythm. I want a quality without a name. And so, I slowly whittle down my work until it presents itself in an acceptable manner. No matter how many times I insist that a piece is “done,” I always come back to it. I’ve yet to decide for myself whether this is a gift or a curse.

-VR

Horror Fiction, Thoughts About

I’ve really become interested in horror as a genre. Maybe that’s because of the dark place I’m in right now, but regardless I seem quite drawn to it. I’m a person who believes that there isn’t a precedent for how much action should take place in a story. Some of the more successful things I’ve ever written have been minimalist in their structure. And horror gives you such an ability to play around in that range of action vs. thought and reflection.

I think horror gets a very bad rap. It is shuttled off to the side as a lesser form of fiction. I, at least, used to prescribe to this thought. Partially because, as a young child, I was simultaneously fascinated and petrified by the macabre. I had a love/hate relationship with horror due to my, then un-managed, anxiety issues. I was intrigued by scary stories, but would lose weeks of sleep for reading them. In fact, I slept with a light on until I was 13 and I’m not talking about a night light. My bedside lamp was on for a considerable part of my existence. I had to tell myself that horror stories weren’t worthy of my time to keep myself from perusing them. The world of “litra-ture” made it easy to put stock in this assessment. 

Imagine my surprise when, upon reading Stephen King’s Carrie, I found that horror could be just as nuanced and literary as any other contemporary novel. I love that story. I love the symbolism, the blood! Stephen King uses blood in that novel in an such an incredible way by involving, of all things, the menstrual cycle. It’s not just an omen, or a symbol for death, or lust, or what-have-you. It’s fully represented as a system paralleling the systems of bullying and life and tragedy and violence in youth. It’s mysterious, not fully understood, and human in a way so many horror authors can’t represent it. I know that many aren’t a fan of Stephen King, but you can’t deny that the man is a literary genius. 

And don’t even get me STARTED on The Silence of The Lambs, which is just downright gorgeous. I didn’t think I could possibly love the story more after seeing the film, but I’m so glad I read the novel and proved myself wrong. 

There’s a very basic way of connecting to horror stories. Fear is something that even the bravest of us experience and tapping into that human weakness is exciting and terrifying in it’s own right. I come from a generation of images. We don’t believe unless we see, so finding written word that can literally cause my heart to race is thrilling! It takes skill and timing to create that kind of intense emotional reaction. These skills go back to the very essence of story telling and writers are all storytellers at heart. I have to remind myself of that far too frequently these days. 

I think I might try my hand at a horror story or two. I certainly have the imagination for it. While often crippling in social situations, and at theme parks (I absolutely cannot handle roller coasters in any capacity), my anxiety endows me a certain set of skills; the most relevant of which allows me to dream up numerous horrifying situations that could be waiting around the bend.

Here’s trying.

-VR

P.S. during the time I spent writing this, I kept hearing this awful scratching noise. I thought it might have been an animal that had gotten into the house somehow and my cat was deep in a REM cycle, so she didn’t even notice. I was kind of freaking out, expecting a rabid raccoon to jump up and claw my eyes out at any moment, until I realized it was the HUGE FUCKING FISH BALLOON, that my parents bought for my niece, scratching against the wall. I am moving it away from the wall. It also doesn’t help that this is a particularly dark and stormy night. 

P.P.S. I have also posted this on my personal blog. So, if anyone assumes that either of the blogs are stealing from the other one…. cool your jets. I’m the same person. That is a sentence I never thought I’d utter outside of a mental care facility.

I Wish I Were a Poet

I wish I were a poet

I wish that I could rhyme

I wish that I could write all day

Without wasting my time

              __

I wish that I was published

In a book or magazine

And that all my pretty words were inked

For everyone to see

              __

And If I were a poet

I wouldn’t waste my gift

You’d never find my life cut short

No razors in my wrists

              __

I wouldn’t string my self up high

Where nobody could reach

I wouldn’t play my favorite song

While toasting it with bleach

              __

I wouldn’t leave my work alone

Until my final breath

I wouldn’t pull a Sylvia Plath

And bake myself to death

              __

No if I were a poet

With skills unique and fine

I’d give my life

The stars at night

To write one perfect line

-VR

Edit: These are supposed to be in five separate stanzas, but Tumblr isn’t letting me space them out. So, I’ve put up line breaks instead. Hope it isn’t too obnoxious. 

Edit to the Edit: … six. There are six stanzas. There is a reason I’m not an aspiring mathematician. 

I am. I am. I am.

There’s something to be said about identifying with Sylvia Plath. I know that there are probably, literally, MILLIONS of people for whom this is true, but I think in which way said people relate to Ms. Plath is very important. 

For instance: I think most readers of The Bell Jar identify with Esther in a general sense. They are compelled by her alienation. I think it signifies something completely different about the reader when they are empathetic to Esther’s specific neuroses, they way she physically cannot read and write, or her refusal to bathe and change her clothes. 

I am one of those readers. It’s not that I’m even nearly as mentally unstable as Plath was in her lifetime. I am not manic depressive, or borderline personality. I do however have a substantial amount of anxiety and I struggle with clinical depression. My neuroses aren’t always the same as Esther’s, but they’re likely just as abnormal. It’s usually hard for me to notice this abnormality, but one day I will think about it all and suddenly be overcome with my own strangeness.

I am utterly uncomfortable with doing laundry in a laundromat or public place. When I am forced to do this I experience nausea and the sweats. My voice weakens and I feel meek and at the mercy of my fellow laundromat-ians.

I also obsessively touch the area of my neck just below the chin. I will scrape along my thumb there when nervous, or else push the skin of it backwards until the act becomes painful. Sometimes I’ll even hold my entire neck with one hand, seemingly in an attempt to strangle myself. 

And I only exhibit these behaviors when I am depressed, when I’m drowning. I feel sometimes as if Esther is my worst case scenario. I think I am of a small percentage of Bell Jar readers who truly fear the state that Esther has worked herself into. I fear her because I can imagine myself, one day, having to walk in her shoes. 

Maybe there are two types of Sylvia Plath readers: 

those who are sane,

and those who can fully imagine insanity.

-VR