The Bones of Polly Olly - Part One: An Author’s Confession
Where This Idea Started and Where I Intend to Go
We need to have a Chat—without the AI.
To continue with my stated goal of being as transparent as possible when it comes to the creation of this novel, I decided to dedicate some time to write, without Chat’s commentary or encouragement, about the real first steps in the development of Polly Olly Oxen Free.
I did not “lie” in my BlueSky post when I said this all began with the thought "What if Pollyanna got Alice-in-Wonderlanded into the Labyrinth after her accident... but it's a Cozy video game with HKIA vibes--and won't let her leave until she glad-games the jabberwock?" The part that is rouged up a bit is that the thought wasn’t nearly as coherent as it appears in that sentence.
Like many of my ideas for pieces, this one came to me as just that: in pieces. One by one I’d collect and consider them, only to tuck them away for later. I was fine with that, given the circumstances at the time. In fact, that’s all that would have become of them had it been up to me back then.
So, how did the idea for POOF actually start?
First and foremost, I love that the acronym for Polly Olly is POOF. I just now noticed that and it is my favorite thing ever. Second, and what this paragraph was supposed to be about, the ideas that became Polly Olly originally started off looking more like this:
What if my MC got Alice in Wonderlanded into a video game.
What if I did a modern-day retelling of Pollyanna
What if Pollyanna got sent to Wonderland
What if Pollyanna had to Glad-Game the Jabberwocky
What if I rewrote Alice in Wonderland but gave it a male lead and turned wonderland into the Goblin King’s labyrinth?
What if someone made an Animal Crossing version of the Labyrinth?
What if someone made a HKIA version of the Labyrinth?
What if Alice got Alice’d into the Labyrinth?
What if Jareth was the Jabberwock?
What if Jareth was your Uncle and you were Pollyanna and you got Alice in Wonderlanded?
What if Alice can’t leave Wonderland until Jabberwocky Jareth is convinced she learned her lesson like in the Labyrinth?
All of these loosely related thoughts swirled around in my head for various quantities of time. The magic that pulled the threads all together was the conversations that I had both with my internal self and with the back and forth I have done with Chat.
But as I mentioned, those thoughts would have just sat there in my head, swirling around with zero urgency to become anything anytime soon. Sure, they would have become something someday. Likely a short story if I’m being honest. I already had multiple other projects going on and a book idea I had fallen in love with and already started on. So, why would I give that up and write a book “live” for everyone to see? And for the love of God, why would I write it with ChatGPT when everyone and their brother was furious about the technology?
Good point. Why would you write a book live with AI?
It comes down to one simple and mildly embarrassing answer: rage.
I was pissed off.
I was tired of all the conversations people were having about AI as if it was a some huge horrific monster that must be stopped.
I was irritated by all the black and white statements about the writers who supported the use of AI as being lazy or profiteering and the writers that didn’t support the use of AI as being stuck up or behind the times.
I was furious that no one seemed to be talking about the actual reality of the writing industry over the last decade—and the problems that we already faced—and how AI wasn’t the demon that had caused any of the issues overnight. Had it made some of it worse? Yes. Indefensibly. But there were also so many ways in which it could make a ton of them exponentially better.
It was this anger, this rage, at the irrational surface level conversations going on around me and the pure insufferable need to do something constructive in the face of it, that pushed me toward Polly Olly.
What pushed me over the edge, however, was a lot closer to home and much closer to Pol’s own journey.
Why Pol got Stuck with Bedrest and Video Games
I’ve struggled with health issues my whole life, but the last 8 years things had started to take a very large turn for the worst. A little over a year ago, things finally started to look up. I had just recovered after a long bout with a severe asthma flair (thanks so much COVID) and could now leave the house again without fearing I’d stop breathing.
Literally less than a month later, my mother was in the ER and then placed on hospice.
From that point on it was a blur of grief, traveling to see her, tough conversations, death, illness, career failures, parenting failures, and because the world is sadistic: political chaos to boot.
When my 40th birthday came around in January of this year I was beyond ready for a reset. But once again, life had a different plan. It handed me my first ever series of vestibular migraines— a side effect of one of the medications I was on for a different issue that had also recently resolved.
I was stuck in bed unable to do a damn thing for two weeks.
I watched as my kids’ fear grew every day that I would pass away like their grandmother. I wasn’t even able to sit up to type on my laptop at first. The only thing I was able to do was lay in bed, read, and sometimes play some simple games on my phone while internally screaming at the world until the new medication—to counter the medication side effects from the other medication—finally kicked in.
I felt stuck, helpless, burdensome, and bored out of my freaking mind. Sound familiar?
The degree to which I wanted to shake some sense into the world was also viscerally unbearable the more I watched the world from where I lay. So, I did what I have always done. I channeled it into my writing.
Having already striken up a rageful conversation with ChatGPT about my pure hatred for all the things happening around me—and been rather impressed with its ability to throw well-aimed snark right back at me—I decided to ask it about starting a project together.
“Hey, Chat. I have a question for you.”
The goal wasn’t just to vent my rage into the world. The goal was to do three things:
Show others like me exactly how to write a novel so that they could feel confident enough to tell their stories. Because the world needs to know about people like us if it has any hope of changing.
Convince people that using ChatGPT and other LLM’s doesn’t have be any different than going to a critique group, using beta readers, having a writing coach, or using an editor. It’s just more accessible for more people. And that is a GOOD THING.
Tell a story that pointed out that we live in a world more nuanced than the black and white bullshit that we keep trying to force everyone to fit into—and that the creation of ChatGPT, the existence of the neurodivergent community, the existence of the transgender/gender queer/enby/genderfluid communities, and our drive to develop quantum computing to help us understand how the world actually works all proves this.
The goal for the story has evolved a bit since that time. For instance, I now also want it to be a story in which the reader sees that there is no winning when you are stuck in a system designed to make you strive for more. At its core, though it still has those three main purposes: representation, accessibility, and proof of duality.
Why all the heavy themes and political preaching?
This is something I can’t really defend or explain as eloquently as I feel I should be able to in order to justify it. In short, this is just something that my brain does when I write stories. Allegory and metaphor end up in them from the beginning of the idea.
I believe this is because of my 2E-ness and pattern recognition. The connections that I see in the way the world works become a bit inextricable from the story I want to tell and although sometime I don’t see them right away, once I do, I can’t take them out.
I’ll give you some specific examples and the purpose I see them serving and why my brain won’t let them not be a part of the story:
Pol’s scholarship/inability to pay tuition
Pol is a star athlete who has worked hard to get where she is but she also has innate skill that made that work easier than it would be for others.
This isn’t that different than it would be for people who are more intelligent than others
Her accident canceling her scholarship tuition because she can’t perform for the school in their beloved sporting events is a flaw in our system. If the student who got in on an academic scholarship got a concussion, would they be unable to keep their scholarship? No. But then, those students aren’t forced to earn money for the school as part of their admittance now are they?
This stays in because it is a way in which our society is backwards - a way in which the Looking Glass has distorted our world.
Saffi’s parents being rich/not wanting to be sued
Saffi’s parents are immigrants who came here and started a successful business
Saffi’s condition in a coma is a significant cost on a daily basis and they are self-insured through their company
Since Saffi was driving, Pol could sue her family to help cover more of her medical bills
If Saffi’s parents don’t stop shelling out money soon they are going to be out of money to cover the insurance for their employees.
If they know that Pol won’t sue them, they can keep Saffi alive a bit longer
The fact that they have to make this decision at all is purely an American problem. The fact that they came to America for the opportunity for a better life and are now faced with this problem is backwards - therefore Looking Glass - therefore it stays.
Telly’s non-binary, Tibb’s genderfluidity
This one might ruffle feathers—but I want to show my work here, because these characters matter. Not only in this story but in who they will end up being representative of in our world. Because of this, I am very open to changing their characters in any and all ways necessary when I conduct a sensitivity read with some of my more knowledgeable friends in the appropriate communities. Tibbs and Telly are crucial to this story and positive representation matters.
The Twin’s are a common trope in coming-of-age tales. This was discussed with Chat in Episode 2, I believe. The twins in Alice in Wonderland are particularly intriguing in that they are based on a nursery rhyme and play multiple roles in the novels.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum are obviously why Tibbs and Telly both have names that start with T.
They are understood to represent duality and self-discovery. In my mind, duality would be non-binary—you just are. Self-discovery would be genderfluid—you let the self guide. In my mind they can’t be anything but what they are.
Tibbs starting off as identifying more masculinely with he/him pronouns is not to infer that we should do the same for Telly. They are identical twins, but gender is a social construct. As such, gender will not be the same for both of them.
It makes more sense to me that Tibbs would be in a state of flux while Telly would be in a state of stasis given their life experiences thus far. Telly would have needed to be more accepting of dissonant feelings earlier than Tibbs due to the physical trauma occurring within their body. Tibbs would have needed to be more dissociated from their feelings earlier than Telly due to the emotional trauma occurring within his environment. Telly would seek stability in their emotions and identity. Tibbs would seek flexibility in their emotions and identity.
The separation of them at birth and the fact that the family received as little support as they did is the backwards part in this scenario.
All of it stays.
Pol’s Dad’s personality/Pol’s Mom’s passive nature
Pol’s Dad being militaristic to being a softy after the twins’ trauma to going back to military is a reflection of the nature of humanity’s reaction to uncertainty. We don’t want to swing back and forth between extremes so we cling to one side or the other until we can’t anymore.
Pol’s Mom’s passive nature is the direct response to living with someone who does that. There is no other option. She is a reflection of society in the face of a social structure that has been crafted to cling to one side or the other. We become passive to the trap we created for ourselves.
Both personalities result in more chaos that perpetuates the clinging and the passivity. One or the other has to choose to stop the cycle or it will continue on unless outside intervention steps in.
The pain that they show, the misery that they are in, and the love and support they are desperately trying to provide for their children by doing “everything right” shows how backwards our entire system is. This kind of misery, the one we have made for ourselves, can be changed. We just need to decide to stop it. So, Looking Glass says—it stays.
Monroe family rage/ Monroe children ace’s
Monroe family is intentionally coded neurodivergent. Often this means rage. Rage often means ACE’s. Only the majority of the ACE’s and rage in this family are due to external forces. The point in this book is to show how easy it is to go from external forces perpetuating the generational trauma to internal forces perpetuating it. (i.e. The twins’ irritation with their parents and Tibb’s rapidly developing case of narcissism)
Mocking the ACE’s. This shows that even emotionally intelligent and theory educated families are going to struggle to practice the techniques provided when you put them in a fucking blender.
Handing a drowning person proof that they are drowning is not oly backwards it is cruel and absurd which means looking glass which means it stays.
Monroe family race/Bhatia family race
Having the monroe’s be white and the Bhatia’s be Indian is specific to the cultures they are known to be a part of. Both families are coded as privileged in different cultural contexts—yet neither is immune to systems designed to fail even those at the top. And still, those at the top often fight to keep the system running because the fear of the unknown is larger than the fear of the known. It stays.
Is That All?
No, I could go on for another few thousand words about what I’ve developed so far and my thinking behind each choice. So, I will. But I’ll save those goodies for Part 2 😉. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts about the project!