Version 7

• lessons about focus
  • put time constraint before deadline
  • prefer continuation of the narrative from last time
  • prefer less characters to have enough space explaining
  • prefer less goals to have enough space for one followed through

focus: getting root for grandma. interacting with those people in a comical conflict — she made a conscious decision to betray these people which was worth getting the gift for grandma.

1. she walks into the lab. [description of]
2. she meets the old couple. she is familiar with them because she helped them get into the room. (30 people living in the small lab)
   1. how to show people this knowledge in my head about this world? “illegal” “others shouldn’t know about the place”
      1. 4 hours
      2. how do you know it’s illegal
         1. sign on door
         2. security guard
         3. the way she walks in is secretive
         4. the journey to get there is long
         5. the lab mates are also Lao Xiang so they corroborate
      3. why did they move here illegally? let someone explain this out loud
      4. what is their living situation, how is it possible for so many people in a small room?
         1. I don’t have this difficult experience. Make it fantastic.
3. she wants to get some root from the couple (they are cultivating them, some synthetically) and convince them to let her accelerate it.
   1. she’s talked about it before. she’s always trying to speed things out. having too many goals that it will be not focused.
      1. I want these roots
      2. we can’t speed it up
      3. but I need it for my grandma
      4. what should I do, should I steal them
      5. she decides and goes stealing at night
      6. but she couldn’t find it
      7. they saw her
      8. she ran out wet
   2. now that she is desperate, she tries to steal it.
      1. luminous water lilies
      2. underwater
      3. luminescent genes
      4. she doesn’t know where the roots are in the pond
4. you can’t speed up time (nature).
5. she fails and leaves the lab.

Version 5

Goal: Write a myth that encodes my lesson that I NEED to commit to a focus instead of escape into exploring other questions or approaches.

A girl got told by the doctor that to prevent a family sickness she has to learn how to swim. At first she wore a hoop and drifted around the pool once per week for a summer. Her friend has been practicing with a coach too around the same timeline. But the girl got too lazy to figure out how to improve and she didn’t want to talk to a coach she is shy. Then a relative who didn’t swim actually got drowned and that got her panicking. She asked that friend to push her into the pool without a hoop and watch in case she is in real trouble. She choked for two nights until she finally breathed water and learned to swim. She became a fish woman.

The story is a description of her dance — immediately after. (It’s similar to a stuck dance.) I am picturing An organism stretch out limbs in all directions, almost tearing, like winter branches. The stomach is a green jelly that cannot hold weight from the pull. People would understand the story because it’s just a dance and it’s interesting because there will be interaction with the scene.

Optionally/alternatively: She learned to swim bc She pushed bubbles into the pool making it swimmable to her. The danger of not knowing how to swim is bc she is a time giant whose one day is human one century, but she is human sized. and the continents are drifting apart so if she doesn’t learn to swim she will be separated from her relatives without whom she cannot survive that well. But that was fake news too, the continents did not drift and she could survive without them.

Version 4

Goal: Translate the characters I’ve written before. Set up a problem and environment where they can come together and figure it out (or not) together.

The characters:

1. A guy who just got a cataracts surgery and have blinds on for a month. He became very obsessed with a painting in his hospital room. As his vision recovers he sees more and more details — jungles, giant lotuses, naked woman — and falls more in love. By the end of the month when the blinds fully came off he sees the painting is blank.