The 2021 Daily Round-Up
- Paddy Dobson
- Jan 4, 2022
- 6 min read
Hello, good folk.
So we're looking down the barrel of another year. God, life's relentless.
It's no different for writers. Especially hermits who have weird habits. And sometimes it's easy to go autopilot and not take stock of your work. You know what I'm talking about: You write a daily. You ping it off into the void. You forget about it. So at the advent of this new year, I figured maybe I'd do a little reflection on the dailies written in 2021, and give a selection another moment in the limelight.
It's the first full year of daily fiction for me, with half a year before that. There's 500+ of the little buggers running around in the halls of this forum now. I've spent the last few days reading back through the 365 I wrote in 2021 and compiling a list of the crème de la crème from each month. Sort of.
These aren't the "best" of each month, whatever that might mean, but rather the ones that contain an idea I like, or explore a style that's a little different, or else just stand out from the others. I've tried to find a variety of characters, genres, and voices within the twelve that I've picked (and the secret thirteenth choice) to keep it fresh. If I was only picking the technical "best" they'd all be pretty similar. I definitely have comfort picks when it comes to the style of stories that I write, which I am trying to change. Variety is the spice of life.
In the process of doing this I've noticed that I can more or less remember exactly where I was and what I was thinking about when I was writing these dailies, even a year on. Weird that. Especially considering how poor my memory is. I suppose they've acted as a kind of dairy.
I've also noticed the trend in my interests as they pitch up and down in my focus meter. Motifs that pop up from time to time over the year. Characters. Ideas. Some of which I think may end up in a longer format at some point. The same goes with tone, style, and genre. These things change daily but might crop up religiously every few weeks, with dailies that are not so different from each other. Some even have the same name.
Such is the nature of making things without any planning. It's all instinctual. It's just what crops into my head, usually when I'm still shaking off the last threads of sleep. Which isn't that much different from my novel writing, now that I think about it. I should probably change that also.
It was a fun process, looking back. Too way longer than I thought it would. In the end I've ended up with thirteen favourites, one for each month and one for the year as a whole. So, without further ado; the daily round-up for 2021:
January
10th - Inertia
Apocalyptic. This whole idea came from a session of DayZ me mates and I played. One of our party had connection issues and would frequently freeze in place. Imagine surviving the Soviet winter apocalypse while one of your mates is afflicted with a temporal anomaly. Has all the vibes of Roadside Picnic, with desperate air of human survival against the unknowable power of weird physics. Spooky stuff.
February
21st - Red Carrots
For whatever reason, I have a lot of stories that are titled "Red *Something*". Red Beak. Red Lightning. Red Mask. And now Red Carrots. I guess its the most dramatic colour. Something about escapism is infinitely appealing, and what's more escapist than having a whole planet to yourself? But its not always about exploring and learning. Sometimes it's just about having the space to decompress. This took a lot of inspiration from Becky Chamber's style of optimistic sci-fi, specifically To Be Taught If Fortunate.
March
2nd - The Shark
My take on a classic style of fable. Nothing exceptional in this one, I just liked the idea of the shark. Not a friend or foe, but something with motivations that operate in a way alien to us. More of a force of nature than anything else.
April
27th - Pink Spit
Life from death. Sending the poor to war. Old themes, well established, and I thought I'd combine the two. The climate crisis is the greatest challenge in humanities history and I don't think it'd be overly pessimistic to say that it'll be the Have-Nots that will bleed the most for it. I like that you can't tell with which weapons this war is fought with. I like the idea of a planet thirsting. I also like the the word "warmasters."
May
1st - Swamp Thing
Oh, swamp thing. I'm not sure if I'd like to know swamp thing, or if I'd like to be swamp thing. Has those magical realism vibes; what would happen if some creature from ancient times slipped through the net of myth and continued on into modern times? And what if, rather than trying to explain it, people were just happy to chill with it.
June
6th - Mixed Kebab
Written shortly after eating a mixed kebab. This is a touch more abstract than most of the narrative dailies. It was written more with emotion than thought, as pedestrian as that is to say. It's kind of like a painting. You're left to infer what you will from the image presented. I'd be interested to know what, if anything, people get from this one. Maybe the sudden urge to order takeaway.
July
3rd - In the King's Study
The fantasy one. Still riding the political intrigue high after finishing Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy months before. Has a similar relationship between a king and his right-hand man. The red mask pops up here. I like the idea of never fully describing what it does, save to say that it's bad. Very bad.
August
26th - Darren
A crumb of humour, m'lord? A little japery. Darren is just a proper bloke's name. And a lot of English blokes have given themselves over to bizarre conspiracy theories that explain away fears about things they're not willing to admit they don't know much about.
September
13th - General Practitioners
What if demonic possession was a health condition like any other? The NHS would still probably get defunded. The division between science and religion always makes for great conflict.
October
1st - The Exquisite Hours
I don't know what I was putting in my cocaine for October, but it was a killer month. This was the hardest month to pick from, because there were a lot of wild ideas that were pretty well executed. If you ever find yourself browsing through the dailies (I don't know why you would) then October 2021 is the month to go through first. This one got picked because I liked the tone and pacing. The melding of the exterior world and the interior is a subject that I find engaging and it tends to crop up in my novel writing pretty often.
November
16th - After
My mate Tom Lee always tells me that when I'm faced with my ultimate writer fear - the sex scene - to employ a time skip followed by "Afterwards..." This is kind of that. Although I've since conquered that fear a little bit and it's no longer so daunting. For clarity I'm not a prude, the main fear is that it will be boring. The comparison to music here is something I've since used in book.
December
29th - The Lighthouse
The first day of something world-changing is a cool setting for a story. A parent protecting their children is also a solid set-up. The light pushing back the dark is on the nose. Again, using the unknown is a cheeky little tactic. I get that from Jaws, mostly. The scariest part is when you can't see the shark.
2021
12th October - Fire
And finally, from that killer month of October, my favourite daily of the year. It's weird. Violent. A cocktail of genres. Sums up what I like in fiction. It just feels punchy and I'm not sure why. I think the images it conjures up. Or the implications it makes. Opening quote is paraphrased from Dutch in Red Dead Redemption 2 as well, which is neat.
So that's it. Me year of dailies in review. If you've got this far, I hope you enjoyed. Feel free to let me know what you think, about the round-up or the dailies themselves. I get a wee bit shy when people talk to me about my work, but it's also a lot of fun for me to hear people's opinions on what I do, good or bad.
I hope 2021 went well for you, reader, or at least as well as it could go. I hope 2022 is kinder and fairer for us all. The dailies will go on as usual. I'll also be doing some other, secret bits.
Take care, friends.
Paddy
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