Sunday musings
Musings on my pen name, posting frequency, and some great short stories I've come across this week.
It has been a good week. I didn’t meet my writing goal (a story every weekday) but I socialised, left the house almost every day, and generally feel more relaxed and less inclined to watch bad TV - I watched Taskmaster instead! I also picked up my juggling balls for the first time in weeks. I’m very much a novice in juggling - I can do the standard three ball cascade and I’m just working on under the leg and “The W”, following the Taylor Tries juggling tutorials.
My writing this week has been…fine. My favourite piece was Concrete and Flesh, about a woman who has left a cult and is talking to a reporter about her experiences. I think its the first non-speculative fiction I’ve written for this Substack, although I’ve written a couple of other things with culty elements.
My other stories this week were Out on a Limb (for the Fictionistas March prompt) which is fine but didn’t meet my hopes for it, and Char, which is also just…fine. I’ll put my more thorough musings about them at the end for people who are interested.
Interesting reads this week
Easy Prey by Sara Pauff - I haven’t read all the other stories from the Fictionistas March prompt (yet!), but this one was my favourite of what I did read. I really enjoyed the friction between the two selves of the character, and the fear that one is being consumed by the other. The way the “beautiful but useless” element of the prompt was worked in was excellent.
The Complaint by A E Deakin - I loved the emotional stiffness of the character and I think the author has a great gift for creating humour at the intersection between the banal and the dark!
The Day I Burned by Shaina Read - There are some lovely phrases in this short story.
Non-Fiction
Met Police report: five findings from Casey review - A depressing news article about behaviour within the Metropolitan Police (the police for greater London). I find it interesting what they choose to use as a subheading vs what is in the body of the article, but I suppose they have to choose some things to highlight.
What a man freed from a 241-year prison sentence finds strangest of all - Bobby Bostic was 16 when he was charged with armed robbery and given an incredibly long prison sentence. The article touches on his feelings having left prison and how the judge who sentenced him ended up being an advocate for him in his parole hearing.
Pen name angst
Earlier this week I woke up and wondered "Why on earth did I choose V L Augustin as my pen name?” It doesn’t at all relate to my real name, which feels odd. I really like the letter V as it sounds strong and decisive (victory, vim, vigour) but I don’t care for any of the common (female) names that go with it. I decided to switch to M (my real first initial) to feel a little more in line with it, although as a letter it feels a bit wishy-washy to me (meek, mealy-mouthed, miserly, morose).
Then I was angsting about the surname. I chose it because it feels connected to Emperor Augustus, but having a surname that isn’t Greek feels a bit weird. My real surname is Greek, and I vaguely feel like I should “represent” that side of me. I did ask my dad for his mother’s maiden name - it began with V and I like it, but its also a mouthful and probably harder for people to remember or spell. I also feel that although I’m half Greek, I am culturally only English, really, and I worry it’s wrong in some way to take on a different Greek name. I don’t even speak any Greek, aside from hello, how are you, thank you, etc. At most I eat more Greek food than the average English person, and I visit Greece every so often as my dad lives there.
I did angst a little about Augustin as a surname as well. It looks like it comes from France and central Europe, although I feel like it’s diffused enough across different places that it isn’t inappropriate, and it ultimately comes from Latin anyway.
So I’ve changed my Substack name to be M L Augustin, and I think I’ll stick with it?
Frequency angst
I had planned to write five stories this week, and ended up writing three - I missed one because I was socialising, and the other because I didn’t feel like it. I still can’t decide how often I want to publish short stories here (now that I’m no longer doing a story a day), so I thought I’d muse about the pros and cons and put up a poll.
For the reader, greater frequency means… more stories to read! That could be a good thing or a bad thing for you. In theory you would think if I just wrote two stories a week they would be higher quality than five stories a week, but I think there’s a possibility that pushing myself to write more results in more chances that a story is engaging, even if I also write some dross. Fewer stories means your inbox is bombarded less.
As a writer, I think its good to flex my creative muscles as much as possible, and while that doesn’t mean I need to throw everything on my Substack, I think I might end up feeling paralyzed by perfectionism again. So far this year I’ve written some stories here that I’ve really liked, even though they were written in a day. More stories may also mean more chances for potential subscribers to see them and decide to subscribe, although it could mean fewer of them actually bother to read them.
Fewer stories means I could start working on longer pieces - either longer short stories, or a long-term project like a novella or a text-based game. If I just published two stories a week here, I could also take time to craft a third story to submit to fiction magazines. I keep talking about wanting to move away from flash fiction, although now I think its become a somewhat comforting zone.
I need to mentally transition from scribbling down a quick story to being able to maintain focus/interest in a piece for longer than a day. Weirdly that sounds more challenging than just writing five stories a week. Challenge is good, but if I fail then I’ve just got a bunch of half-written stories and end up having nothing to to actually show off.
Musings on this week’s stories
The prompt had to include a slacker who steals cats, something beautiful but useless and something wrong with the water, all in under 1000 words. I’m happy that I managed that, but I think it suffers for trying to stick to the word count.
My original word count before editing was about 1300, and had some more flavourful tidbits about the grandmother, the relationship with the siblings, a brief reflection on why both a servant and a lover had gone “missing”. The story as it stands is creative I suppose, but the character and her relationship with others isn’t as fleshed out as I’d like it to be.
I’m also not sure about the inclusion of vomit… It felt right at the time, but I know a lot of people aren’t keen on vomit and neither am I. It suits the grotesqueness of the chopped up body, but it could have been she just felt nauseous, and parts of the map seemed to blur (and thus she decides the area that didn’t is where her father’s body is kept).
The paragraphs around cats, and just after that, feel a little choppy. I think I could have made a smoother transition from using cats as a conduit to using herself. I also didn’t need to take the prompt quite so literally - stealing a cat once would probably be sufficient to fit “steals cats”.
Her desire to “prove her worth” near the end doesn’t quite sit well with the rest of the piece. It implies she seeks unity with her siblings, rather than some sort of outsider status, or superiority even, or else that their approval is irrelevant to her own wants. I think there could be slightly more focus on the semi-religious aspect of her wanting the corpse to be reunited and have proper rites.
The story is more dialogue-heavy than I’d like, but I think it touches on some things that I wanted it to - the different but similar ways you can divulge parts of your life (manipulator vs therapist vs reporter), the transitionary phase once you have fallen out with someone (still obsessed with what Eve thinks of her, still not wanting to dishonour her), and the guilt that comes from engaging with that sort of environment. I think it could do with being a little longer so it can dive more into those aspects.
There’s little physicality in the beginning - the part about washing up feels crowbarred in, and is the only place where part of the conversation is referred to rather than used as dialogue, which feels clunky. It should either be more than once or not at all.
I did mention after the story I wasn’t sure about the reporter, who is just bland and has no character. Other people thought it didn’t matter, but for me I either want a) to somehow be explicit that it is the main character’s perspective that makes him seem bland, or b) give him some colour somehow, have him mention why it interests him (part of his family coming from a cult/cult-like environment?) or be more reassuring, or else seem hungry for sensationalism.
One commenter mentioned it could have the main character think about why they agreed to do the interview, which I agree with. I imagine other ex-members are speaking out and so she feels pushed to do so, either explicitly told she should or just a nagging sense that she has a duty to do so. Currently its all internal conflict, and I think that could introduce something a little external - friction between her and other ex-members, even if it’s just in her head.
The ending is a little rushed, but I like the last line.
It’s fine. As with most stories I liked it more in my head than written out. The writing is a little clunky. Also I struggled with the title!
I think the relationship between Sonia and Carolina needs to be more fleshed out, as well as how Sonia came to be in the position she is in. I vaguely imagine Sonia having been a sex worker or an entertainer (“plaything”), and revealing her power to Carolina is how she ends up having the bizarre role she does.
I only realised after I wrote it that it bears similarities to Out on a Limb, namely that a mixture can be used on the body to invoke a power (this time for real). I even started out thinking she would eat the mixture, then I realised that made it far too similar.
I think the story is less effective by having it be Carolina’s thugs who start the fire. Who started the fire is irrelevant really, it could just have been a cooking accident, the point is that Carolina is in some way responsible because she was in a position to stop the buildings being built like that, but didn’t. Instead of the thugs, I think I’d add some line about Carolina taking bribes from landlords regarding improperly built tenements.
At the same time… The whole thing feels a little heavy-handed, too explicitly leftist “Landlords are bad, politicians are bad, boo.”
I did ponder over the last line a bit. I left it as "You did." Sonia snarled and leapt to her feet. I was thinking maybe she explicitly attacks Carolina (flings some ash into her eyes? Grapples her to the ground and pushes her face into the ash?) but it felt more unfinished that way.
I still don’t know what to call these weekly reflection posts. I like the idea of having a specific name, but “Weekly Friction” is too negative, “Sunday musings” is too wishy-washy and “[Something] reflections” is too self-important. What should I call them?
RE: Author name, consider what the shortened version will be. As your buddies will inevitably use it at conventions and trade shows.
Bring on the body fluids! I voted “you do you” but I also think fewer stories might be good. I have trouble forcing my self to revise. Not sure about you but slowing the pace might allow more space for that!