Galactic Wonders

My science fiction story, "Galactic Wonders," is now available at Ray Gun Revival: http://www.raygunrevival.com/galactic-wonders-matthew-wuertz/

Bad Ideas Make Good Practice

A story idea may be horrific, but it still allows a writer the chance to practice the art. At some point, a good idea and good writing will need to meet to give a story a decent chance at publication, but while the writing is still in the formative years, any idea, even a bad idea, will work.

In high school, I worked on a novel-length science-fiction story titled “The Key”. Sounds fantastic already, doesn’t it? The key to what? It’s so intriguing.

In the story, the protagonist (I don’t remember his name) works at a cryogenic lab (highly original, I know), freezing people who are dying of incurable diseases. Ironically, the protagonist himself ends up with an incurable disease (no way anyone would see that coming). So he volunteers to join the group of frozen people in hopes that someone will find a cure one day.

The protagonist awakens in the distant future; the United States is in a prolonged war with Canada and robotic spheres hunt people. Not only that, but he soon meets an alien who has escaped to Earth with the technology to open a portal to other worlds (hence where the title comes into play).

Cliché builds upon cliché in this epic failure of a novel that I didn’t even bother to edit (I didn’t understand how to progress through drafts back then). The story is now locked away in the memory of an outdated computer lacking a functional power supply (or some other piece of hardware), but it served the purpose of giving me experience. I worked on dialog, setting, characters and point of view. The fact that the ideas within the novel were horrific didn’t matter because I spent time writing.

I would encourage writers to work with whatever ideas come to mind while learning how to write. It may be fan fiction. It may be clichéd. It may be the worst idea in the world. But if it leads to words on a page and helps with learning the process of writing, it’s worth using for experience. Just don’t try to sell it.

Winnie the Pooh

Yesterday, I took a vacation day to go to a picnic with my daughter’s preschool class. Since I had the day off, I thought it would be fun to see the new Winnie the Pooh movie that afternoon. The kids were still napping mid-afternoon, so the four of us went to the 6:40 showing.

My wife and I hadn’t tried taking the kids to the movies before. Elora’s three and a half, so I wasn’t concerned about her age. William, however, is only 21 months old, and he doesn’t like to sit still for long periods of time unless he’s doing something.

With the expectation that I would only see ten minutes of the movie, we bought lots of candy and a fair amount of popcorn, along with a “small” fruit drink that was large enough for three people. We put Elora in a booster they had at the theatre while William had his own we brought from home. Then we passed out the candy, and the previews started soon afterward.

Each time the green preview screen popped up (the one indicating the preview is for all audiences, etc.), William would say, “Uh-oh.” Perhaps he thought the film was broken.

Surprisingly, the kids did well throughout the movie. William wanted out of his seat toward the end, so I let him stand in the row (we sat in the first raised row, so he could watch the movie through the railing). Since we almost had the theatre to ourselves, I didn’t mind too much while they explored the place during the credits.

I liked the movie. It seemed to be similar in theme to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh from 1977. The kids really enjoyed it, too. I even heard Elora laughing at times (she especially liked it when Pooh’s tummy growled). If you’ve got little ones, I recommend this one; it’s entertaining and also the right length.

Next up for the family – Captain America. Yeah, right.