Backstory: How Aging Inspires a Short Story
When I got a chance to sit down and write a short fiction piece for today’s post… it turned out more like a cohesive short story that I think has potential to be published by a literary journal. Since the majority of literary journals and contests don’t except work that has been previously published (including on personal blogs/websites), I’m going to hold onto it for now. But I thought it might be nice to do something a little different—a peek into the thought process behind the piece.
The piece revolves around big dreams and milestones, particularly the feeling of falling short of dreams that felt so inevitable early in life. It’s something I’ve thought a lot about lately. Turning 30 perhaps shouldn’t feel like such an important milestone, and it shouldn’t loom over us the way it does. Everyone handles it differently. Some look forward to it, some dread it. But it does hold a cultural significance.
Personally, looking practically at life expectancy, we’re expected to make it to about our mid- to late-eighties. To me, that means you can kind of divide life up into three segments of about 30 years. So turning 30 feels like closing a pretty big chapter in the book of my life.
Of course, the first 30 years includes a decade that we don’t remember much of, a decade in which we have very little control over our lives, and then what I like to think of as the “oh shit” decade. As in “oh shit, I’m an adult” and “oh shit, what am I supposed to do now” and “oh shit, there are so many things I didn’t know about myself.”
Having not lived the next 60 years, yet, I don’t know if those can be quite so neatly divvied up. But if I’m thinking ahead to the final 30, there’s a period of decline there—not being able to do as much as I used to, needing more help. There’s the prospect of retirement, of figuring out how to hand off everything that’s important to me to the next generation. And figuring out how to do that gracefully, without holding on too long.
Which leaves this next chunk of 30 years as a sort of unmapped wilderness. It’s time to reassess (are the dreams I used to have still important to me?), time to lean into opportunities (you never know what’s at the end of the road unless you actually drive down it), time to recommit to the big goals and take on exciting small goals (30 years really is an awful lot of time).
Still, I keep coming back to this question of how much the first 30 years ought to inform the next 30. Do I excuse the lack of progress on certain goals as part of the nature of the first 30 years, and recommit myself to those goals? Or do I look at it from the perspective that if I haven’t made progress yet, maybe my efforts are better allocated elsewhere?
Avril Lavigne (an old tween-era favorite of mine) came out with a new song, Young and Dumb, which got me back on this thought train, which then spawned the short story which I’ve decided not to post today. I’m not sure there’s a right answer to these questions, but it’s the idea of them, the way we work through these concepts as we segue from “young adults” to actual, real, full-time “adults” that I think is interesting.
Free-Write:
Free-writes are short scenes that come out of a short stint of writing time on a program called FlowState, which deletes everything I’ve written if I stop writing. I go into them blind, can’t stop to think while I write, and don’t edit them before they’re posted here beyond correcting any typos or punctuation. Basically: I don’t know what this is about, either!
I just visited the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona, which inspired this piece. It was gorgeous, and I spotted a couple of desert spiny lizards amongst the cacti. You can see photos of them on my Instagram.
15-Minute Free-Write:
Erus dug her claws into the dirt and reached out, slowly, one eye carefully studying the creature crouching nearby on its hind legs. It was an odd sort of creature, with skin of many colors hanging loosely around its body, and hair seemingly only on its head. She wasn’t sure what the creature’s intentions were. It was reaching for her, but slowly, and it wasn’t a very fast sort of creature, from all she’d seen. It had something in its front paws already, too, so it wouldn’t be able to get a good grip on her if it did suddenly decide to make a go at catching her. Erus studied it, waiting for it to do something, but it froze with its paws clutching the odd square box a few feet away from her, and after a few moments it retreating, making odd noises in its throat as if it were trying to communicate with her. Erus thought it was a very odd sort of creature, and perhaps it would be better to put some distance between herself and it before it got any odd ideas.
She dug in her claws and scrambled over the rocks, darting inbetween and behind them, the better to confuse the creature if it got any ideas about following her. She paused, waiting, but the creature seemed to have lost her and she could hear it lumbering away on its two hind legs, as if it weren’t sure how to use the front ones. Strange indeed.
Erus went along her way in fits and starts, always attending carefully to her surroundings, eyes out for birds. The big sort, with their large talons than made her claws look like mouse teeth and their fearsome beaks that were as large as her head. No one much liked those birds. The smaller ones were alright, Erus supposed, if one didn’t mind the incessant twittering and the way they were constant about, always darting to and fro and plucking up all the detritus that no one else had any use for. Silly creatures, little birds were. But much preferable to big birds, which were just mean and nasty creatures.
Of course, if she were being fair, Erus supposed the mice and the grasshoppers and their ilk all thought she was a mean and nasty creature, too, if they had thoughts about it. Erus thought it was likely they didn’t. The mice, maybe, but grasshoppers were stupid creatures, and they never thought beyond the next hop or the next bite of grass.
Erus picked up a few bites to eat along the way. One particular grasshopper led her on a bit of a chase, and it was thrilling in its way, but otherwise it was a calm, peaceful morning, and it was shaping up to be a very nice day indeed. Her belly was full, and her favorite rock was unoccupied and available for sunning herself in the afternoon sun.
“Erus.”
She sighed. Apparently the peace couldn’t last. She raised her head and turned to study the newcomer with one eye. “Aether.”
“You’re looking well.”
“Yes,” Erus agreed. “And you,” she offered as an afterthought.
It was quiet for a few moments, and Erus settled into the silence, glad for it and hoping it would last. But it wasn’t to be. Aether scuttled a bit closer. “I wondered if you might like to share my den.”
“As you’ve wondered repeatedly for many moons,” Erus scolded. “My answer hasn’t changed.” She turned away. “Perhaps you could try asking someone else.”
Aether moved a few steps closer. Erus straightened, executing a few flawless pushups. She felt vindicated when Aether backed up. He attempted a few weak pushups of his own, but quickly backed down and scuttled off. Erus settled down, content on her warm rock once again.
