Early last June I began working on a story centered around the first three characters I had ever fully conceptualized: Celeste Mary Fisher, Alice, and Bernard.
They have evolved much since then. Originally, Alice was the commander of a fleet which would conquer the Andromeda Galaxy. Bernard was a man who had been cryogenically frozen, and found himself awakening on an alien world without any sense of where he was. Celeste stays most true to my original idea. She is a relic of a lost past. Through transhumanist means, she has outlived everyone she used to know. Part of her character is navigating a future which to her, has lost all sense of meaning.
These 3 plot threads all took place in the same universe. It was the first writing endeavor I ever set out to do, and the working title was “Project Andromeda.” I had a lot of time then, and I was very young, around 19. When you first start writing you have so many ideas. They aren’t the best, but they’re ideas nonetheless. Most people can’t just go out and write an epic tale of high fantasy, or a serialized space opera. And, well, I couldn’t either. I lost interest in that project over time anyway, but I still wanted to tell the story of those characters.
I felt that I finally had the maturity as an author, and as a person, to tell this story, so I sat down and started writing it. However, instead of having the goal of a novel, I realized the story of Celeste could be told in a much more grounded way. As a result, I knew this would be a shorter work, in the realm of 5000-7500 words. It came out around 5200.
The initial draft of the story isn’t wildly different than the original. All of the plot points are pretty much exactly as they were. I’m one of those people where I generally have the entire story in my head before I sit down to write it.
I knew what the structure was:
Primordia (Metaphor)
Portroveida, Charon, Hell (Setup/Conflict)
A Ladder to the Stars (Flashback)
Fading Away (Further conflict)
The Silent Chasm (Protagonist’s decision)
The Pestilent River (Action)
Lake of Cosmos (Resolution)
I had these 7 sections written out before I began writing, and started to fill them in. The epigraph came much later, around August. It comes from a Japandroids song, titled “The House that Heaven Built.” I knew that this story would define a certain ethos I bring to my writing. It needed to have all of my standard conventions. The reason for adding the epigraph, for this reason, was “I’m going all out, may as well even have an epigraph.”
As a result, Seraphim was going to be the “big story” of my early published timeline. While being only the 6th actual publication under my pen name, the purpose of it was to define what came before, more than what comes after.
This story is rather personal to me, because it features the first “real” and most beloved character that has haunted the winding twilit corridors of my thoughts for an entire decade: Celeste Fisher. When writing this, I wasn’t just trying to “write” a compelling protagonist and story, I was trying to do her justice. This wasn’t a case where I “wanted” a story to be good, it was one where, for my own sake, it needed to be.
As a result, I toiled over it for the entire summer. I completed the final draft (the one I would officially send out) in early November of 2022. So, it took me about 4 solid months to get it in the shape that I felt was adequate. However, that was not without one major concern.
I was terrified that the situation in which Nyx Nakamura prematurely issues what is essentially a death warrant to Celeste, to be too contrived. It really bothered me, but there was no other way I saw that worked. Here we can discuss the two major sources of conflict in the story:
One: Celeste is going to be executed solely for the perverse entertainment of a corrupt elite, and in a profoundly humiliating and excruciating way.
Two: Even if that doesn’t happen, the ancient computer in her brain is deleting her conscience.
I prefer my use of metaphor to be subtle and arcane. The Greek mythological elements are quite uncharacteristic for me. This is because I don’t like anything to be too heavy-handed, so I treat the use of metaphor and simile as less-is-more. With that said, I felt it worked in this case. I chose Charon as the moon not necessarily because of the name. It’s the isolation of the Pluto system, and also “the moat” is a real geological formation on the moon itself.
With all of this in mind, the idea Celeste is “selected” by nothing more than being in the wrong time and place, troubled me. I just worried, “is this a little too contrived?” It occurred to me that idea is Lynchian in a way, though I hadn’t convinced myself of that.
I decided to send it to a few friends and family. My parents read it, a couple friends at my university read it, and a guy in my WoW guild read it. They all had positive feedback, and made no mention of such a concern.
Obviously, your parents are going to love your story, my friends, probably, but my true guinea pig was the last dude, we’ll call him Zeta. He’s really into scifi/fantasy. Also, you’d have to know him personally, but I’ve never known anyone so hostile to the idea of fun and liking things in my life. He’s one of those people where if asked for advice, the answer is “don’t bother, everything sucks.” So I gave him the story expecting him to eviscerate it, and see where his advice would work. For the limitus test, I knew if the point of conflict was too contrived, he would say it. That’s just how he is.
Strangely enough, he said he really enjoyed it. He had a few issues with the Primordia intro, and actually, what he said about it really helped me polish that section of the story.
If Zeta didn’t rip apart my contrivance, I figured it must not have been too contrived. Plus a friend of mine, when I told her the point of conflict was too contrived, she just shrugged and said “isn’t everything?” Fair enough.
For every writer, rejection is part of the craft. Everyone knows this. And in rejection, this story being a little closer to my heart didn’t make rejections any harder. I really don’t take them personally, because they aren’t. You get one, and delete the email. I probably shrug them off easier than most people.
Rather, the nature of rejections for this one were interesting for one reason, it’s a story which, coincidentally, really shows if the person who sends the rejection actually read the damn thing. I think editors sometimes shoot themselves in the foot by giving unsolicited feedback. The writer knows the story deeper than they ever will, and will understand instantly if the place they sent their story bothered to engage with it. With this in mind, I never ask for feedback, so when I get it, it never tells me anything useful.
Here are a few examples:
This one place told me they really liked it, but took issue with “elves” being in the story. The only place elves are mentioned is in the context of a false memory caused by the computer in Celeste’s brain:
“Then I recall old memories. They’re attempting to merge together, presumably as the computer in my brain makes room for more storage. For instance, I remember a time when I stand on an autumn riverbank with my party of an elven rogue and a long disembodied astromancer. I can almost smell the crisp wind tainted with the stench of the dead…. When they begin to cross they’re washed away in the undercurrent, ushering them toward a waterfall whose basin will shatter their runecursed bones upon colossal stalagmites jutting upward like dragon’s teeth.
I know this memory is not real. It’s likely tying a beautiful fall day with a game I watched someone play, or perhaps I myself once did.”
When people say they take issues with elves, they mean within the context of high fantasy. This is a convention any SFF author is familiar with. However, that’s not what this is. There are obviously no “elves” in the story. So immediately, the reading must have been nothing more than a skimming of the story. Moreover, and this is what is truly damning, the editor just wondered why, gee, the scenarios aren’t more themed to the science fiction theme of the story. The more I thought about this, the more insane my thoughts became.
I had to respond to this. I was drunk and probably didn’t phrase what I said the way I should have properly, but I had to ask. I really wanted to know what they were thinking. As you could imagine I never got a response.
The other truly bewildering rejection I got was from this editor who had an “information overload.” Again, you’re running an SFF publication. What do you mean there’s an information overload? that’s what SFF is. She also mentioned something about punctuation, and to proofread it more. I mean, that’s just insulting, and advice which can always go safely ignored. Any advice regarding mechanics in 99.99% of cases is usually immaterial. I had a friend once who was telling me about this chance she had for a poet to read her poetry, and his feedback went something like “you use too many adverbs.” It makes you physically cringe.
Sure enough, of all the unsolicited feedback I got, none were concerned about the contrivance. Here’s the word of advice I was working towards: if you’re concerned about something in a story, and someone mentions it to you, that means you may actually need revision. However, if a person instead tells you they don’t want elves in a story which contains no such elves, it’s probably their problem, not yours. Rejections: fact of life, but it’s not unreasonable to assume a place which likes reading fiction and publishing fiction, will actually read your story.
Some publications like nice stories written by nice people. People who drink coffee out of a mug on a coaster and have cute little succulents on orderly white bookshelves. People who write tidy sentences and stories about being shorted of valedictorian or mothers who lived vicariously through their academic success or bourgeois sexually frustrated couples who live in a highrise apartment in Manhattan. People who go to therapy and write to express their trauma and their “climate anxiety” and so on. You know what I’m talking about.
My stories contain no such things. In reality, I feel beat to shit. I don’t enjoy things anymore. I try to write stories for people who feel beat to shit and don’t enjoy things anymore. If you haven’t, please Read Story. I promise it will bring you pleasure and joy.
Update 4/23/23: Due to the BCG controversy (if you don’t know, don’t bother), Voidspace offered a permanent home for any story featured in it. I’m deeply appreciative of Katy for giving myself and many others this opportunity.
voidspacezine.com/seraphim
-et