'Pain and Purpose' Fest: Calling For Participants

[jjhunter]

I'm running a fairly specialized speculative fiction fest centered around variations on a particular family scenario from the perspective of a woman of that family (who can be from any background, any time, any place on Earth (or off it)).

Pain and Purpose: Speculative Fiction About Health

Scenario includes:

-woman middle-aged according to her society; may or may not have a job outside the family
-woman's mother, who has an illness of some kind
-woman's spouse/family member who works
-woman's child(ren) who is/are different in some way from other children in terms of neurodiversity

Fest seeks short stories (~300-1,000 words preferred) imagining a single day in the life of such a woman. Final due date is October 1st, though stories can be posted earlier. No restrictions on sharing them before the index post goes up on October 2nd.

This is a great opportunity to world-build within different historical, present, futuristic, or alternative times and places. Have leftover bits of research for a particular fic or other project? Use them to build a sketch of how time/place/background affects or does not affect a particular woman and her family and the social construction of health/illness/difference.

Comments

[recessional]

Query: what are you defining as "middle-aged"? Most of the "middle-aged" (by my understanding of the term) women I know no longer have children in the house as dependents; for me "middle-aged" means "older than 45, younger than 60." *adds* By which I also mean "in that general position in the lifespan/cultural understanding of life-period" - these are women whose children are at the very least beginning to leave home if not all left already, but who are not yet "seniors", retirees etc.

[jjhunter]

I'm afraid I can't be more specific than "according to her society", since the definition of middle-aged here on Earth has changed so much within the last five generations to the present, and the fest covers "any background, any time" etc. There's nothing in the guidelines, however, saying that the child(ren) must be living in the house as dependents: that is up to the author to decide, as is the setting & the associated set of cultural norms for family living situations.

[recessional]

*chinhand* I think I didn't express myself clearly enough: what STAGE OF LIFE are you defining as "middle aged"? The equivalent of an average (for the sake of generalizations) woman in North American society at 30? At 45? At 50? There is, among other things, no guarantee that any society HAS A CONCEPT of "middle aged" (none of the ones I'd be writing do), so I'm trying to get a feel for the life-stage you're labelling thus.

It feels like you're going for the stage in which the culturally-perceived (by that culture) "average woman" is old enough to have an ailing parent, but still young enough have extensive responsibility for a child (the "neuroatypical child" being part of your criterion implies a significant impact on her life by the neuroatypicality as "assumed" rather than "potential") - roughly the equivalent of what our culture might expect from a woman 35-45/47. Is this BROADLY correct?

(eta: it occurs to me I might be coming off cranky, and I don't want to! I'm asking these questions because I think the project sounds really neat, I'm just trying to figure out what point in life your idea of "middle age" - not in terms of years but in terms of life-structure - would fit in for my various cultures, none of which have a concept that could usefully translate to "middle age" - for example, one of them considers women adult only after they've had their first living child, and considers them "adult marriageable women" until menopause, after which they are Elders. Another doesn't consider age relevant after puberty is complete, but rather measures life-achievement by what ritual steps one has or hasn't completed. And so on.)

[jjhunter]

These are all excellent points--thank you for raising them! You've put more thought into it than I had originally, I'm afraid--I added the guideline re: 'middle-aged' because I was groping for an additional dimension of specificity to bind together what will (I hope) be an extraordinarily diverse group of stories, and I had in the back of my mind a desire to include all three of the broad life-stages: young/developing (the child(ren)), old/reduced or less active responsibility (the mother with the illness), and somewhere in between (the female protagonist).

Every time I try to write further and more specifically on this, I keep erasing what I type and starting to write again. Needless to say, the question of whether there is a biological point where decrease in capability necessitates a change in the type of responsibility is a really, really hot-button-hard-to-write-about subject for me. I think I was aiming for level/type of responsibility by biological proxy, but I'm hesitant to try and pin that down any further right now since I'm a.) now intensely interested in how others might interpret it, and b.) now way past my functional bed time.

If 'middle age' is not a culturally useful concept for a particular cultural setting, throw it out on its ear. "Adult marriageable woman" as you've defined it above fits the spirit.