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My creative writing professor has a tendency (one I don't terribly like, though I suppose I only slightly dislike it) to ask students, "Where did this story come from?" As though a) we know where it came from and b) it's something impersonal enough to share with a group of relative strangers.
But I'm thinking about the Satan story (titled "First Disobedience" in loving disregard for Milton), and how I'd answer the question if he asked me about it. I came up with the fact that it's a fictional theodicy (helpfully defined as "a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil"). And then I was thinking about the word "theodicy," and decided that it would be beautiful to write a story called "Theodyssey" about a main character questing to come to a personal understanding of the presence of evil in the world.
Yes. This will now be written!! Even if only for personal enjoyment.
EDIT: And I think I have the first paragraph (or at least the first draft of the first paragraph) of my story.
Intellectually, the Satan had known all along that his new job had a high turnover rate, but leaning back in his leather swivel chair and observing the view out the window of his 101st story corner office, he really didn’t understand why. He thought, as he had many times since receiving this ultimate promotion, that being the Satan couldn’t be any harder than his millennia spent as Sub-Director of Public Relations (Unnatural Disasters Department). At the very least, even if the job did turn out to be more difficult than he had expected, it would not be boring. Some jobs, no matter that they each served God in unique and meaningful ways, were made for angels of different stuff than he. A puny ten years as Customer Service Liaison for Lesser Mesopotamia had been enough to instill in him a desire for progression upward through the heavenly hierarchy, but the angel who’d succeeded him seemed to derive great joy from answering prayers about discomforts as diverse as crocodile attacks and food poisoning with the general sense of future well-being, which was all the answer that an angel of his status could provide.
:) Now I just need to write the rest of it!
ANOTHER EDIT: Gah. The story is already turning into something else entirely, and I'm not sure what to make of it. All I know is, I need to get to work!
ANOTHER OTHER EDIT MUCH LATER (4/23/09): But it's related, I swear. In the vein of Theodyssey, I should also write something that makes fun of exegesis (the process of making sense of biblical texts) called "Exe-Jesus."
But I'm thinking about the Satan story (titled "First Disobedience" in loving disregard for Milton), and how I'd answer the question if he asked me about it. I came up with the fact that it's a fictional theodicy (helpfully defined as "a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil"). And then I was thinking about the word "theodicy," and decided that it would be beautiful to write a story called "Theodyssey" about a main character questing to come to a personal understanding of the presence of evil in the world.
Yes. This will now be written!! Even if only for personal enjoyment.
EDIT: And I think I have the first paragraph (or at least the first draft of the first paragraph) of my story.
Intellectually, the Satan had known all along that his new job had a high turnover rate, but leaning back in his leather swivel chair and observing the view out the window of his 101st story corner office, he really didn’t understand why. He thought, as he had many times since receiving this ultimate promotion, that being the Satan couldn’t be any harder than his millennia spent as Sub-Director of Public Relations (Unnatural Disasters Department). At the very least, even if the job did turn out to be more difficult than he had expected, it would not be boring. Some jobs, no matter that they each served God in unique and meaningful ways, were made for angels of different stuff than he. A puny ten years as Customer Service Liaison for Lesser Mesopotamia had been enough to instill in him a desire for progression upward through the heavenly hierarchy, but the angel who’d succeeded him seemed to derive great joy from answering prayers about discomforts as diverse as crocodile attacks and food poisoning with the general sense of future well-being, which was all the answer that an angel of his status could provide.
:) Now I just need to write the rest of it!
ANOTHER EDIT: Gah. The story is already turning into something else entirely, and I'm not sure what to make of it. All I know is, I need to get to work!
ANOTHER OTHER EDIT MUCH LATER (4/23/09): But it's related, I swear. In the vein of Theodyssey, I should also write something that makes fun of exegesis (the process of making sense of biblical texts) called "Exe-Jesus."