I have never been the most confident person when it comes to sharing my writing. Constantly stumbling over nervous explanations and the echoing doubt of “none of this would make sense to a normal person.” While I’ve been trying to get over this fear, submitting my work to the eyes of others. Since starting high school, I have written two pieces for our Teen Spirit magazine. One for the 2023 zine issue Growing Together and another for the 2024 issue Dreams of the Future. The first piece, The Sahasra Cycle, totaled at over 4,200 words, a long winded yap-session most people wouldn’t look twice at. The second is called Phoenix 10, is simultaneously longer and shorter, totalling at 4,800 words while only covering a small piece of narrative.
For both of these pieces I pitched rough ideas to people and they only really poked holes in my half baked ideas. Which has led to many discarded pieces and a pinch of a lack of confidence. So for this Blog Post I’m going to pitch to you both of these Teen Spirit pieces, and link the finished piece, if reading it is something that interests you, the reader.
Sahasra Cycle – Junior Year, Teen Spirit
I wrote the Sahasra Cycle in January of 2023 based on a myth. Specifically the Hindu myth, the story of Shikhandi, the trans Prince of Panchala. I’ve been very interested about how much of his story was quite relatable to me, so what if through some weird time travel thing, I got to meet him. This leaves us with two issues;
- I can’t just write myself as myself, I need a character to project onto. Who is that character?
- Where does time travel come from?
For the first issue, we have Veer Dhawan, a historian who lives in a time when no one seems to care about the past or the future. His life is stagnant, he lives the same day over and over again, going to his empty museum to wait for even a single person to walk through those doors. So when his life is disrupted by a figure from the past, how does he react? How did this oddity of time happen?
Enter Sai Kala, a time traveler from the 42nd century. Why is he here? Well that’s the catalyst of the story. At the end of the 21st century, the world forgot history, turned against it, and now in the far future, they are trying to put the pieces back together. Sai is hopeful, and he is dedicated to taking back the past, and part of the past that he is looking for is the Story of Shikhandi.
Shikhandi, Veer and Sai are all intertwined, their lifes reflect each other. Shikhandi’s existence inspired Veer to learn the past, and Veer’s work inspired Sai to seek it. They also all have the same palm lines, which might mean something in palm reading but I couldn’t find any good sources so I pretended it meant something good.
Objectively the whole piece is kinda boring. It’s just a conversation between three people, so honestly I can’t imagine anyone reading it fully, but maybe it will reach someone, who knows.
Phoenix 10 – Senior Year, Teen Spirit
The prompt for this year’s Teen Spirit was “Dreams of the Future” and I was determined to write something that fit the theme. All of my initial ideas didn’t quite fulfill this determination, though they are stored on a piece of paper I lost in my binder of ideas at some point but it’s probably there. The inspiration behind Phoenix 10 was Nobody by Mitski and the ‘Venus planet of love was destroyed by global warming’ Tik Tok trend. That led to an idea: What if planets had a soul?
Alves, the spirit of Venus, was decimated by the people who inhabited her surface, and in time she turned on them to protect herself. When her people jumped ship and resettled on Earth, they became humans. But that’s not the focus of the story, the focus is a man that Venus fell in love with, her champion.
Carmichael Orion was named simply because I thought a guy named Carmichael shortened to Carmen would be really funny. His last name is Orion because he’s an astronaut who was part of a NASA mission in 2055, he is imbued with a message, a warning to humanity from their old home and immortality. For some reason, Venus fell in love with him after her harsh conditions killed everyone else on his crew. How does that work? I don’t know.
The starting idea was that Carmichael (Carmen) has an obsession with a journalist, who is one of the last few bastions of free press in America. This Journalist actually calls himself a poet, a fact I didn’t fully dive into but it’s relevant, his name is Icarus Cao. He is Vietnamese, another irrelevant fact, and he frequents the same cafe as Carmen, which is how Carmen ends up with a slight infatuation with him.
So what is the whole point? Well there are a few key aspects
- The Government is lying to you
- Global Warming is real
- Biosphere technology is really cool. You should visit the Biosphere 2 site in Arizona.
Basically an excuse to nerd out while also being angry at the world, but just like Sahasra Cycle, set in a very long, very boring conversation but this time interrupted by tape recorded interviews. (It’s giving Interview With The Vampire tbh)
The end of the story is a 100 year flash forward, where Carmen visits Icarus’ grave. It’s revealed Icarus was killed very soon after they met, implied to be killed for publishing the interview. With Carmen is a man named Surya, his lover, whose name ironically is that or the Hindu sun god. They are suited up for a dystopian future where the last dregs of humanity lives in biospheres, and the rest of the planet lays into wasteland.
In retrospect, both sparks for these stories were a bit silly. If I told you I was inspired by a tiktok to write 4.8k about a guy who is in love with a planet who sends his psychic visions of doom. Or that I read a wikipedia article about a character from a myth that most people refuse to acknowledge and that inspired a year long infatuation, you should be laughing. It’s silly, but the mind made it something great. So next time you think the idea is stupid or your inspiration isn’t classy enough, well stop. You’re wrong, so start writing.
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