Vivid, clear, fascinating, but ultimately I wonder if Pratt would even know HOW to make a choice. I have students who can't make choices and we have to take the time to teach them. Giving him the choice of "living in the Wild" may seem an easy choice...but ultimately, I think he'd be paralyzed and either kill himself or die...hmmm...this certainly made me THINK!
This one was hard work. It took me a long time to feel like I understood the Challenge premise enough to pick a story I wanted to tell; it was difficult to get inside the heads of six different characters; it was complicated to build a logical structure as the backdrop for the society's affect on attitudes and psychologies; it was a lot of writing (my longest by far); and proof-reading/editing/polishing was unwieldy. I like the way it turned out, but this one cost me many long, late nights, and not a little sleep.
So, I think the lesson I learned this week is that length matters - every additional ball one has to keep in the air, makes juggling all the harder. I can juggle three balls well enough, but toss me one more and I'm rubbish.
P.S. to Arisia: I didn't get a chance to respond before all the comment threads dried up, but yes indeed I did pick the name 'cera' by contracting 'et cetera'. "et" is Latin for "and" and "cetera" is Latin for "the rest" (as distinct from 'et al' for "and others [persons]"), which is why I was drawn to it for the robot. I took out the middle syllable to make it pleasing to me as a name; then having "ce'ra" I dropped the apostrophe. Lo and behold, (a) it turns out that "cera" is Latin for "wax", which is perfect for the idea of a robot as a faux being, and (b) "cera" appears to also be a female first name. By suspecting a connection yourself, you *totally* made my day!
2 comments:
Vivid, clear, fascinating, but ultimately I wonder if Pratt would even know HOW to make a choice. I have students who can't make choices and we have to take the time to teach them. Giving him the choice of "living in the Wild" may seem an easy choice...but ultimately, I think he'd be paralyzed and either kill himself or die...hmmm...this certainly made me THINK!
This post was submitted for The Friday Challenge named "A Strange Bot in a Strange Land":
See Challenge Posting
See Entries and Comments
See Roundup and Winner
This one was hard work. It took me a long time to feel like I understood the Challenge premise enough to pick a story I wanted to tell; it was difficult to get inside the heads of six different characters; it was complicated to build a logical structure as the backdrop for the society's affect on attitudes and psychologies; it was a lot of writing (my longest by far); and proof-reading/editing/polishing was unwieldy. I like the way it turned out, but this one cost me many long, late nights, and not a little sleep.
So, I think the lesson I learned this week is that length matters - every additional ball one has to keep in the air, makes juggling all the harder. I can juggle three balls well enough, but toss me one more and I'm rubbish.
P.S. to Arisia: I didn't get a chance to respond before all the comment threads dried up, but yes indeed I did pick the name 'cera' by contracting 'et cetera'. "et" is Latin for "and" and "cetera" is Latin for "the rest" (as distinct from 'et al' for "and others [persons]"), which is why I was drawn to it for the robot. I took out the middle syllable to make it pleasing to me as a name; then having "ce'ra" I dropped the apostrophe. Lo and behold, (a) it turns out that "cera" is Latin for "wax", which is perfect for the idea of a robot as a faux being, and (b) "cera" appears to also be a female first name. By suspecting a connection yourself, you *totally* made my day!
Post a Comment