I’m up early. I would rather be sleeping for another twenty minutes, but such is not the case. Actually, I’ve been up since about–lets see, it’s 5:07 AM now . . . since about 4:30. I have my coffee, and I’m typing away–as you can see–but I know it’s going to be a long day.
I’m awake because my dreams have torn me asunder, and sent those pieces flying.
Yesterday started as another long, boring day, and ended up with me being a little on the down side as I returned to The Undisclosed Location. I was in some dire need of human touch, but it wasn’t much around. So that didn’t make me feel any better. You know how this goes: it’s like those VH1 “Where Are They Now?” specials where they disclose how someone’s life ended in a wild orgy of drugs, sex, and way too much rock and roll. My life is sort of like that, save that there are zero sex and drugs, and I don’t rock out as hard as I used to.
You take what you can get, I guess.
I eventually found some people to chat with, and this made me feel better, and I found the strength to get back into Transporting. I didn’t write much–642 words for the mini-scene that makes up the last scene of Chapter 45–but I wrote, and I believe I wrote well. It was a nice, little mini-scene, and right now I’m going for “nice” rather than, “lots of words”.
I also moved one chapter in my story, Chapter 25, which had been the first chapter of Part Three and is now the last Chapter of Part Two. That makes more sense, because the last scene in that chapter ends with what one could consider a cliffhanger, and since I’m looking at breaking the novel into three, it works nicely.
Also, Chapter 25 was huge: 11,116 words. Moving it to Part Two–or should that be “Book Two” now?–boosted the word count for that prospective novel. Like thus:
Part/Book One: 104,812
Part/Book Two: 99,276
Part/Book Three: 62,440
Part Four/Book Three: 28,938
That kicks my second book up to 99k and change, and currently puts the third book at 91k and growing. As I said yesterday, it works out great. It makes a lot of sense, and it’s just a matter of pulling the parts out and setting them up as their own books, giving them a title–which I sort of have, as each part was given its own title–and editing them.
With that out of the way–bedtime. Yay!
What a mistake that was.
Sure, I need sleep; we all do. But once I was there I was in the middle of Dream Hell. I would say Sim Hell, but I am neither Kei nor Yuri, and Kevin J. Sleet is not my dream lord. Either way, they were hard. Very hard, and very vivid.
For once, at least part way through, I was my normal self. And it seemed like there was a woman I was trying to help get to somewhere–which happened to be the end of the novel she was writing. And we walked, and climbed, and ascended stairs, and fell of cliffs a few times, and even ended up having to steal a car and drive it over some crazy landscape that one could never drive a real car. But in the end I got her to the end–
Only to find myself back at the start helping out another woman do the same.
This happened three times, and on the fourth . . . you know my gender bent self is eventually going to show, because it does. I looked a little like Karen Gillian for some reason–maybe it was the red hair, maybe it was the knowledge that, as of this morning, she’s been replaced in the TARDIS–but there I was, very cute and looking for someone to come along and help me . . .
And no one showed.
No one appeared to help me through my journey to get my novel finished. All by my lonesome. Over hill and dale, up the same stairs I’d climbed many times, through shattered landscapes: I did the same trip, but without anyone by my side.
This girl was all alone.
When I finally reached the end, instead of the building I’d led the others to, there was a black wall. And a voice that said, “It’s about time you got here . . .”
I woke up at that point, and decided it was time to get to the day, and to this blog.
It seems like it’s a damn hard trail I’m walking, full of long hours and loneliness. But it’s the one I chose to walk, so I can’t say I didn’t ask for it. I only wish I knew if the voice I heard at the end was that of my Muse: that would have made the entire struggle very worth while.
At least I would have awakened with a smile on my face, rather than the feeling that sometimes the trip can be too lonely to bear at times . . .
