F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Being Human

Short Stories–What Have I Learned?

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Upon Reflection.... (Photo © F. P. Dorchak and Jan C J Jones, 2016)
Upon Reflection…. (Photo © F. P. Dorchak and Jan C J Jones, 2016)

After spending the past year going back over all my short stories, what have I learned?

I’ve learned I was a young testosteroned-fueled writer, writing about sex and violence and all-things-weird. There are definitely some things that are going to remain hidden, but those I’ve released and will release 2017 in my short story collection are the best of my efforts.

I’ve learned that all is not all as it seems.

That the veil between our present and the past (and for that matter, the future…) is far thinner than many realize. Well, I already knew this, but as I ventured back and relived my stories—hell, my life—though I may not have remembered writing some of these things, wow, I was instantly transported to and reliving my twenty-something, thirty-something selves! My teenager self! It was weird. In a very real way…my stories are a reflection of my life. Who I was…what I wrote about. How I wrote. How I felt. It’s like I remembered everything, and was as easy as sliding on a well-worn, “experienced” glove.

Isn’t aging fascinating?

There are different perspectives to the decades of our lives. If you’re in your twenties and thirties, wait until you hit your fifties. If you’re in your forties and fifties, wait until you hit your seventies and eighties. Perhaps “wait” is a bad term to use…do not “wait” for anything—live. Live your life to its fullest. And that doesn’t mean becoming an extreme sportster, never sleeping, or being impatient with people and things. It just means being the best person you can be and being in the moment. Discover and understand who you are…and be true to that. Internalize it. Then do what you’re made to do. Discover and explore your hidden little talents…do you secretly like to dance? Do photography? Visit with the elderly? If so, then be that person. Be fully aware of your present moment.

Perhaps others have other derogatory terms for aging, but I do find “the process” fascinating. The shell of our body shows age first…but the soft, chewy center also shows changes—if you admit to it. I don’t believe it’s so much about “staying young at heart,” as it is to be who you are…and you should change as you age. You should wisen…but also keep your sense of wonder, your sense of adventure about you! Retain your elements of joy and fun! It should not just be six and twenty-year-olds who remain physically and imaginatively active and alive! If you’re “not like that,” then try to develop a sense of adventure and curiosity, if you have any interest in doing so at all. But to place so much importance on youth…of being a person you were in the past…is assigning all the power of who you are to the past and dismissing who you are in the present.

If we were meant to be twenty forever we would forever be twenty.

And, no, I would not want to do it all over again. I had a fun and exiting journey…a truly wonderful life…but I am ready to move into my present’s future. To find new adventures, new perspectives. Though elements of that Past Me remain, I am not that me any longer…and some of those short stories (two immediately come to mind) are actually kinda hard to read because of the events that inspired them. But most…most were wonderful with which to reacquaint myself!

I learned (perhaps “re-experienced” is a better term) that I’d taken chances writing my stories. I learned that just because someone tells you to “Do these 12 steps to get published!” does not mean you will get published. That just because you do anything will get you more of anything. It’s a little trickier and fickle-r than that…and metaphysical….

I learned that I am not above incorporating “awkward topics” (e.g., sex) into my work for the proper telling of a good story. Or a little violence…if it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t like writing about violence, especially for extended periods of time, which was why I left writing straight-horror (I call my current work “paranormal fiction”). But all good stories involve elements of conflict…some romantic and emotional…some physical and violent. I’ve written in both arenas.

I have to be true to the stories I decide to write.

A corollary to this is that I am not my stories or their characters. I have a vivid imagination. Period. I read, I observe, I learn. I try to portray things as realistically as possible, so that readers can walk away and think, “Yeah, that really could happen!” If I am compelled enough to write something up, I sometimes have to go places I don’t like to go. Just like all of us out there in our daily lives and jobs sometimes you have to do things we don’t particularly like doing.

And you just can’t please everybody.

I learned that I had not read all my short stories out loud, which I learned later in my writing career to do. It could have saved me some embarrassingly obvious issues! #OMG

I learned (it was actually pointed out to me by Mandy, my copy editor) that I use car wrecks a lot in my stories to off characters. Huh. No shit. I really do? Never realized that!

I also learned that in my short stories I used the name “Phil” a lot. It was a placeholder for a name. “Philip” is my middle name. Not an ego thing, it just kept me from having to “think hard” for character names at the moment.

So, my retro/introspective complete, I’m moving forward! I have new work I’ve started, new stories to tell…and I do have to get this short story collection out there (which will have some brand new stories in it, like “A Beautiful Summer’s Afternoon,” a new story I’m currently working)….

Thank you all for your support, and have an outstanding “Holiday Season”!

Short Story Links

Links to all my posted short stories are here.

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Sex in Fiction

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Out From Between The Sheets. Art by Victor Olson, Beacon Signal Books, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Out From Between The Sheets. Art by Victor Olson, Beacon Signal Books, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

I am not a writer of porno…but elements of my latest novel, Voice, might well seem that way to some. Or is it “erotica”? And what’s the difference?

There are sex scenes…and there is little left to the imagination in most of them—but in the same breath the sex scenes (I am betting) are not exactly what I’m thinking you’re expecting.

What is it about sex that embarrasses us?

Sex.

Can you even look at the word without flinching?

We don’t feel the same way about violence. Sure, we give lip service to how terrible and abhorrent violence is…but our actions speak otherwise. Violence doesn’t embarrass us—it should, but it doesn’t. Look at all the TV shows and movies…the gaming…that is so accepted that even kids are allowed to watch and/or play. You don’t see the same level of acceptance with things-sexual.

And I’m betting many of you are nodding your heads now, thinking, of course not!

Why is that?

So sex is worse than violence?

We can watch graphic prime-time shows with animals-in-the-wild “mating,” but Heaven forbid there’s a prime-time show with humans graphically “mating” (though arguments can be made this already quickly changing…).

And there’s the embarrassment factor.

People all the time talk about violence, lip service or not…but, again, Heaven forbid anyone bring up the topic of sex. This, on a philosophical and metaphysical level intrigues me. Sex is a natural function of the Human race. Arguably, violence is not. Violence is brought on by other factors that I’m not going to even try to get into in a short blog posting—but, to me—it is not a “natural function” of being a human.

I am not writing more apologist posts about my work, but I’d read this article by Noy Holland that discussed sex in writing, and it got me to (again) thinking. We really are far more accepting of violence than we are of sex. This is a flat-out, disturbing truth.

There is nothing redemptive about violence. There is about sex. Sure, one could say that violence can redeem itself by taking out evil, by “righting a wrong,” but there really is nothing good about inflicting pain or death in and of itself (and the old “two wrongs don’t make a right” come to mind). Doesn’t matter if the end result “corrects” a problem or not, one is still employing violence in said scenario. One is still performing heinous activity upon another. And I’ve heard more than once about how those who inflict actual violence on others do not feel good about it. Even in times of war. But so often it is framed within the guise of “a necessary evil.”

Sex, on the other hand, is not about inflicting pain or death…it’s about “inflicting” (if the word be used) pleasure and closeness. Connectivity. About bringing people together. Enjoying each other. Love can even be involved!

Yet talking about it, writing about it, filming it in movies has always been to certain extents taboo.

This is quite “telling” about the Human Race.

And what is “pornography”? Is it “erotica”?

“I can’t define pornography,” one judge once famously said, “but I know it when I see it.” (Justice Stewart in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 US 184 (1964).)

Pornography is defined as anything that is in words or pictures sexually explicit. Another definition is something that is primarily designed to produce sexual arousal in viewers. But there are further refinements of the definition that describe how erotica has the “saving grace” of “intellectual bookending” (I’ll call it)…an actual story surrounding the sex scenes…the employment of skill in storytelling. Erotica is also intellectually stimulating, while pornography is usually just about “getting one’s rocks off”—and usually for a predominantly male audience at the expense of women.

But what I find curious as I look into this whole debate (subtle unintended pun in there…) is that modifiers are applied to the act of sex…modifiers like “violent and degrading” are the usual suspects.

But these are modifiers to the inherent term, not part of the inherent term.

Sex.

The act of sex is not about degradation and violence…it is about the act of people coming together and experiencing each other on an intimate, physical and emotional level. What we do with that, how we interpret that or “damage” that does not change the inherent neutral and beautiful act that sex is.

Just like farting or breathing or picking one’s nose, there is nothing wrong with sex in and of itself.

Go ahead and debate all the interpretational aspects of society and religions and decorum-what-have-you, but there is nothing wrong with the act of sex.

Yet we continually find fault with it.

In Voice, I depict sexual situations that I feel are important to the story, to the characters. In doing so that makes people feel ill at ease. Uncomfortable. Even I felt more than a little uncomfortable as I wrote and rewrote those scenes (truth be told, I was also uncomfortable writing the violence that unfolded in The Uninvited), and I was embarrassed at myself for having felt that way. No fricking way should I have felt that way! No fricking way should any of us feel that way!

The actions in my novel are between two people. In private. I’m not saying what they did was right…but it was what they did and is critical to the story and the characters’ growth. Without those scenes, there is no story. No impact.

It was just sex.

But it was the story, the emotional impact that bookends “that” activity that elevates the novel beyond the realms of “pornography.”

“Erotica” even?

No. As Noy points out, “All good fiction has an erotic charge.”

I try to write as “real” as possible in all of my work. It doesn’t matter what it is, I give it my all. When I put something out there, I very much intend people to walk away from my work saying something like, “Gee, that really could happen….” I did that for my metaphysical stories, my supernatural stories, my conspiracy theory stories. Of my fifth novel, it happens to have some pretty intense sex scenes in it like The Uninvited had some pretty intense violence in it. Both of these stories were at times difficult to write. And writing—good writing—is supposed to be “difficult” on a metaphysical/philosophical level and to get one to think. Reconsider one’s station, one’s place in life. One’s world. Voice is no different…whether it’s really good writing or dreck…my aim was to get one to reconsider certain aspects of love and life and relationships. Given the subject matter, if there weren’t moments of being uncomfortable then I hadn’t done my job.

Sex in fiction?

It shouldn’t even be an issue.

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