I have actually written about ghostpigs...

[intertribal]

I just felt like passing on this very funny blog entry by Catherynne Valente (I'm kind of stalking Apex right now):

Dudes, a short story is not that long. You do not have 50 pages to hook a reader (you don't, really, in a novel either, but that's another post), you cannot lazily dick around for a page and a half before being all CHECK IT OUT GHOSTPIGS. Because no one ever made it to the GHOSTPIGS, who were buried under: "Robert walked down the street. The sky was cloudy. All the houses were brown. He thought about work."

OH MY GOD.

Don't bury the lede. There is no reason not to open with: GHOSTPIGS MOTHERFUCKERS. You know how Ezra Pound famously cut the first 200 lines of The Wasteland so that it began with April is the cruelest month, one of the most famous lines in poetry, which Eliot, not ever having met a ghostpig, stuffed under a pile of 200 other lines which were not the most famous lines in poetry? Yeah. Do that. For serious. Because I should never be scrolling up to see how long is this story, really after a single paragraph about Robert and the brown houses.

I'm supposed to be editing my ghostpigs story, and now I'm all, "uh-oh, should I put the ghostpigs up front?  they don't come in till (much) later..."  And then I'm like, oh it's okay, I've written other stories where the "ghostpigs" don't come up till later, and then I realized that's not really true.  The "ghostpigs" really were introduced pretty quickly, at least in my most successful stories.  Yo, there's a monster here.  Yo, the lake is alive.  Etc.  If not first paragraph, then first scene.  So... ghostpigs to the front.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

First of all, I am very glad to hear that you have written ghostpigs, because they are something that I have tried to slip into a story somewhere and had never been able to find the write combination of word and ghost and pig (I like pigs; they are intelligent, adaptable, tough, and delicious - like people only tastier [I've heard]). So yeah. Ghostpigs to the front.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Your icon is EXTREMELY frightening, did you know that?

I actually don't like pigs - I think it's all my casual demonology studies (when there's a serious infestation in your house... ok, not gonna finish that sentence, it's too creepy), and Hannibal, and Animal Farm. Maybe that's why it's easier for me to write ghostpigs.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's not the Bean Eating Devil Child one, but... it's one of the ones I think of getting rid of periodically, since I use it only in REALLY DARK MOODS or when the subject matter makes it appropriate - this being the first time for that, and I find it hard to look at.

Ask, and I will take it out of your comment thread and not respect you a whit less for it. I think it came from an online flier for an industrial show in Russia or Finland or someplace cold and hardcore.

You don't need to finish the sentence. I've got some casual demonology, and... yeah. Yeah. Pigs are threatening creatures in western spiritual tradition. I remember from somewhere that a lot of early depictions of Satan were procine, though I don't remember where I saw it and never saw examples or corroboration from elsewhere, so I might have made it up.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh no no - I insist the icon stay a little longer. It's very appropriate to the subject matter.

Huh. Well, I'd believe it. I'd guess it would have something to do with the demon Legion, right (I'm reading Hostage to the Devil on handful_ofdust's rec, and some of them demons are fond of referencing the swine), and maybe with the older religious inclination to see pigs as filthy animals, to sort of quote Pulp Fiction, not to be eaten?

Interesting that goats and pigs got the short end of the stick, but no one seems to have any problem with cows. Or chickens, except for Terry Goodkind.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I always imagined the roots for that were that pigs can be scavengers, but some people eat them anyway (or that they have hooflike feet but are omnivores, which is freaky). Goats are a lot harder to deal with than sheep, and probably not as useful to herd (I'm not sure about that one, though, so don't quote me), which puts them as a contrast to the more placid sheep...

Chickens are straight up evil when you pack them together, but then, so is anything else.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

but then, so is anything else

Word.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

they have hooflike feet but are omnivores,

Huh. Good point. Yeah, sheep are placid, innocent. And Jesus-linked.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

LOL. Love this comment.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I can picture ghost pigs. Actually, more like ghost wild boars. With tusks and a cloud of glowing smokiness around them, and glowing eyes.

That blog entry was pretty funny.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Mine are ghostpiglets. My real weakness, actually, is ghostdeer. Holy crap, I just cannot stop writing creepy deer with majestic antlers, usually disembodied and on a plaque.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Ghostdeer are also really appropriate ghostly animals, especially in a thickly settled area that has lots of roads and lots of deer. It's eerie to see the living ones wandering around the mainstreet of what is technically a city.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Ghostpigs always to the front!;) Though...I dunno, in may case, "ghostpigs" is usually less o hai, I heard you like monsters, dawg, so I got you some monsters than just oh shit, I don't know where we are but the signposts say Creepy Shit May Drop Out Of Walls Any Second, So Get Ready. Mood and/or thesis to the front, maybe? Fear to the front?

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, later on in Valente's blog post she says that she needs something to keep her going (be it language or whatever), is really what she means. I totally get you, though - sometimes I roll that way too. I agree with mood/thesis/fear to the front, in any case.

LOL to Xzibit's writing escapades.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of direct action must happen in first paragraph (can you imagine if every story started that way), so I was glad when she added that paragraph in there.

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

I too have written ghostpigs! What's more, a pigopalypse! But they weren't up front. There was an escalation of weirdness.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Oh God, that's alternately funny/horrific to imagine. Did pigs take over the world? Did they cause the apocalypse?

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

If only! No, there were over-engineered, exploding pigs and a preemptive holocaust to contain the epidemic.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Wow! That is some bizarro nightmare fuel right there.

[imago1.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you lead with the pigs, sometimes you don't. Many bones have been made with each tactic.

Eliot wrote The Waste Land, as I'm sure CV knows. I prefer The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock what with the ragged claws scuttling and the eternal Footman buttling.

[imago1.livejournal.com]

Never mind, I missed what she meant about Pound Gordon-Lishing Eliot.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I actually missed that until you mentioned it too. I re-read that sentence several times in confusion.

[selfavowedgeek.livejournal.com]

I, too, have a fallow story re: GHOSTPIGS. It also involves rock 'n' roll. That's all I'm committing to here.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of "Ghost Riders in the Sky." Which is awesome.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I dunno what a ghostpig is...

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I'm taking it as the ghost of a pig.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Oh. I was hoping it was some kind of code for like, 'point of interest of story' or something. As it is, I dunno, seems kind of cheap. Who cares about ghostpigs?

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

or maybe i'm just being contrary

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd agree that there's no reason to care about the ghosts of pigs in and of themselves, and that goes for possibly all sf/f/h points of interest.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

Also, ghostpigs = "April is the cruelest month"?

???

Hence my original confusion.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

LOL yeah. I think she's just arguing against the idea of "BORING STUFF UP FRONT, AWESOME TO THE BACK." And I guess she thinks "April is the cruelest month" to be very awesome, so it's good that the poem starts with that instead of whatever Pound cut out of it.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

But if one kind of awesome is just outlandishness/craziness/freakiness, and another kind of awesome is beauty/intrigue/whatever, and/or one focuses you on 'hey, here's this thing, isn't it crazy?' and another focuses you on, 'What the fuck does that mean?' that seems like a pretty important difference. It's not just awesome or not.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, I think fantasy fans (and to some extent I'm included) would say that those things are closer than you do - that something crazy can also be intriguing/beautiful, and that "hey, here's this thing, isn't it crazy?" is close to "what the fuck does that mean?" as long as the aforementioned crazy thing isn't just crazy for the sake of being crazy, but has greater meaning. Although I think the sf/f/h community in general latches on very easily to awesome things of all definitions and can get distracted by flashiness - has to kind of remind itself to calm down and include a deeper meaning or at least a story. I can get that way with horror, I guess, though not so much with fantasy. I do think it can get extremely kitschy, but luckily I'm not all that imaginative in thinking up "cool things." A living lake is pretty much the extent of what I've got in that department.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

Well, Valente is definitely using it as code for the point of interest, which in an sf/f/h story (possibly for worse) is going to be the non-real phenomenon that makes it sf/f/h. I don't know what possessed her to call them ghostpigs, but I'd guess she was just trying to think of something outlandish. I thought it was funny because I actually have a story with literal ghostpigs.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I just mean, if it's ghostpigs, and it's just, "Here, gawk at this" b/c it's 'outlandish' or whatever, it seems cheap.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

I see; yeah. There were some commenters on her blog that were talking about how they weren't able to contain themselves from talking about their "ghostpig" because that's all they wanted to do was talk about the "ghostpig," and I was like, uh... I think the reason I end up putting the "ghostpig" up front a lot of the time is because that's where the story gets going, and I like Vonnegut's advice to start a short story as close to the end as possible (so you're going past all the "filler").