The Lotus Girl
Jan. 23rd, 2022 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynling“The Lotus Girl” is about a spirit living in a lotus pond next to an isolated temple in the mountains. The spirit, which takes the form of a young girl, befriends a human girl who offers her a red bean bun during the funeral of her grandfather. The human girl comes back the next year for the funeral of her grandmother, slips on an ornamental bridge, bangs her head on a sharp bit of railing, and falls into the pond.
I’m having trouble with this story because the ending I want to write doesn’t mesh with the ending that I need to write if I want to get the story published.
In what I would like to be the ending, the spirit drowns the girl and eats her soft fleshy bits before burying the rest of the corpse in the mud to be food for the lotus flowers.
The idea is that nature doesn’t always behave in ways that make sense to human society. And also lotus plants are a little creepy! I learned this when I was doing research on how to raise lotus flowers in an indoor container… which is apparently not expensive or difficult, and I’d love to give it a shot one day. Anyway.
I prefer stories that are not wholesome or neatly tied up at the end. If I want to have a chance at getting this story published, however it would probably help to have a more “positive” ending. Like, the human girl becomes a lotus spirit herself, and then the two little creatures are pond friends. Or something.
But you know what, fuck it. If magazines don’t like my writing, it’s because they have no taste. Fiction doesn’t have to have a moral or raise deep philosophical issues; sometimes you just want to see people get murdered in an interesting and aesthetically pleasing manner.
I’m having trouble with this story because the ending I want to write doesn’t mesh with the ending that I need to write if I want to get the story published.
In what I would like to be the ending, the spirit drowns the girl and eats her soft fleshy bits before burying the rest of the corpse in the mud to be food for the lotus flowers.
The idea is that nature doesn’t always behave in ways that make sense to human society. And also lotus plants are a little creepy! I learned this when I was doing research on how to raise lotus flowers in an indoor container… which is apparently not expensive or difficult, and I’d love to give it a shot one day. Anyway.
I prefer stories that are not wholesome or neatly tied up at the end. If I want to have a chance at getting this story published, however it would probably help to have a more “positive” ending. Like, the human girl becomes a lotus spirit herself, and then the two little creatures are pond friends. Or something.
But you know what, fuck it. If magazines don’t like my writing, it’s because they have no taste. Fiction doesn’t have to have a moral or raise deep philosophical issues; sometimes you just want to see people get murdered in an interesting and aesthetically pleasing manner.
