On Finishing

On February 2nd of this year, I started a project. I didn’t plan on it going very far, I just had this idea in my head that I wanted to get out. Originally, it was just going to be a standalone prologue for a story I’d never finish, just to fill my Thursday “fiction” slot for Bri 2.0. But it grew from there, and to my surprise, that standalone prologue had a lot more potential. And so, Eugenia was born.

I called it Eugenia the same reason Bill Maher called his offensive documentary “Religulous”, because I wanted to combine two words in an interesting way to make a point. “Eugenics” and “Utopia” were to words I combined, for a lot of reasons. Mostly, though, it was because the “FF” system is basically eugenics, and the only reason that system was justified was because the government wanted to create a sort of intelligent “utopia”. The irony is that they ended up making it a living nightmare.

The more I wrote in this humble book, the more people told me how it sounded like other books. I got compared to Scott Westerfeld’s amazing “Pretties and Uglies” series, Suzanne Collin’s incredible “The Hunger Games” series, and many other “post-apocalyptic” themed popular fiction. Part of that is flattering; I loved those books. But there’s always a danger in being compared so closely- someone might think I’m plagiarizing ideas.

I want to address that right now, if you don’t mind. This is my list of why I did not plagiarize ideas from authors before me:

1. The concept for the ending of Eugenia was brainstormed before I’d even read the Hunger Games. I realized after I read them that there are a lot of parallels between Meg and Katniss, especially their individual statuses in their respective revolutions, but that was unintentional. Also, Katniss was a part of society and chose to leave it, unlike Meg, who was kicked out. Katniss made her revolutionary spirit obvious and public, while Meg did most of her work behind the scenes, leaving the loudness to her associates. But I admit that there are some very similar themes that come up towards the end of the book. Just know, I came up with them on my own before reading Mockingjay.

2. Obviously, a “utopian” society gone horribly wrong novel has been done before. “The Giver”. “Pretties”. But none of these books utilized the idea of the government deciding who should be allowed to reproduce. Ok, so Lois Lowry had specific “birth mothers” in The Giver, but that was different. The only reason those girls were picked was because they had child-bearing bodies. Eugenia allows only those who pass an IQ test to reproduce freely. That’s very different.

3. Eugenia is mostly focused on Meg’s adventure, but one of the overriding themes is that of separate intelligences. While Meg may be a terrible test taker, she’s a budding poet. Julie is an artist, and yet because her IQ score was deemed dangerous for society, she was sentenced to death. I’m basically making the point that just because someone does poorly in school and on tests, it doesn’t make them worth any less in society.

And now onto some other things I want to discuss about my book.

Q: Why is everyone so weirdly smart, even the outliers? All of the characters are incredibly thoughtful, even the kids like Julie and Emma.

A: Even though many of my major characters have failed the FF test, they were still born from an exponentially smarter gene pool than the ones most of us are born into. Everyone born in the Eugenia universe was born to two people who passed the FF test, meaning that got a 160 IQ or higher. A 160 IQ is incredibly smart, and even if their offspring don’t meet that mark, they’re still going to be smarter than the average population in reality.

As to why Emma and Julie are so thoughtful, it’s kind of the same deal. They were both brought up in a very competitively intelligent culture, so they had to grow up a lot faster than we do. Emma has been flash card quizzed to death since she was able to read. Julie’s parents (although this never actually comes up in the book) hounded her constantly on random facts and logic puzzles that may or may not be on the test.

Q: Why did you choose the names that you did?

A: As with all my books, I give the names I find the prettiest or the most interesting to my characters. I’ve been in love with the name Meg ever since I read Inkheart and The Wish List, both excellent books with “Meg” as the protagonist. Decklan’s name is from “Leap Year”, that movie with Matthew Goode (Of Chasing Liberty fame. *swoon*) Julie is the name of a girl I used to play basketball with, and Emma is the name that Craig and I gave our hypothetical child when we were pretending to shop for baby clothes at Sears at nine o’clock at night. Emma is also the name of a girl I was very good friends with back in elementary school. Luke (who you’ll meet in the next few weeks) came from star wars, of course, but also I just think it’s a really nice name.

Q: when did you have time to write a 50,000 word novel in 7 months?

A: For me, writing is as necessary as breathing. Why else would I blog for an entire year the way I did? So it wasn’t that I did or did not have time, I MADE time because I had to. If I have a writing project sitting unfinished, it really grates at me. Diving into these stories I make up is the only thing that keeps me sane. I just have a lot going on in my head that I want to express.

Q: So what happens now?

A: Well, now, that’s up to the universe. I’ve started researching good query writing techniques and potential agents to contact. Hopefully by the end of the month I’ll have sent out a few letters. From there, though, I dunno what’s gonna happen. While on the phone with my mom yesterday I counted; there are somewhere around 23 more sections of content for me to post up. So for the next 23 weeks, you’ll continue to get your bits of the story. After that, I may or may not take it down, depending on if I’ve piqued interest amongst the publishing world. Like I said, it’s up to the universe.

I just realized that in this entire post I have not once specifically mentioned the reason for the existence of this post: I FINISHED EUGENIA. AAAAAAH.

And now some other things:

So this is kind of how Meg looks in my head. I’m bad at drawing faces proportionally, but you get the idea. I was focusing mostly on the small, delicate nose and the hairstyle.

I’ve also been doing a lot of Doctor Who themed sketches.