Lingering in the Past to Come

Finally, finally, finally, I have finished Chapter Fourteen of Suggestive Amusements.  Lots of strange things, lots of kinky sex, lots of things left hanging at the end.  I thought I had some hard chapters to write in Diners at the Memory’s End, but this last was eight thousand of some of the toughest words I’ve ever penned.

It’s behind me.  On to Chapter Fifteen.

I have found a few moments during the work on Chapter Fourteen when I’ve wondered if this story should just go away.  I spoke with a friend the other night, and they told me to put it in a drawer and walk away.  I told them that wasn’t an option, because I’m over fifty thousand words into the tale and the Good Doctor Asimov always said to finish what you start.  They told me I was stubborn;  I told them I’m a writer–which is sort of the same thing.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t felt like walking away at some points.  I like the story, I like the world, but the characters are really sort of dicks in their own rights.  Am I projecting some of my own feelings?  Hell, yeah.  They’re my characters, so they have a little bit of me in them.  Which means they’re not always good people, because I’m not always one.

This winter has been a pain in the ass, however.  It started out being out of work, then finding something after completing a seventy thousand word novel, then falling into a lot of long hours with work, travel, and more writing.  It’s taken a bit of a toll on me, as I’ve been tired, ill, and generally feeling as if I’m out of energy.

It’s easy to want to give up.  I’ve done it before, so why should now be any different?  I’ve given myself some crazy things to do, chasing after banners I may never catch.  I have little or no support on my end for my creative endeavors, and if I do get any props it’s to keep workin’,  ’cause gotta pay those bills, yo.

I felt a bit of elation last night, though, because before I got into the last thousand words of Chapter Hell, I helped someone through the process of formatting a project that will eventually become an ebook, and the juice you get when you lend your creative ability to someone who is using theirs, it’s a good feeling, and one that I needed–for I haven’t felt that way in a while.

Before I headed off to dream land, I played a song that I’ve heard many times . . .

Undertow is a song by Genesis found on their album And Then There Were Three . . ..  I had this album when it first came out, because prog rock, you know, and I was a Genesis fan back in the 1970′s.  I listened to the album many times, and as the years grew on I stopped listening–mostly because I lost all my albums at the end of my first marriage, some twenty years ago.  Then I discovered all this stuff out on YouTube, and once more started listing–

Undertow is one of those songs that I’d heard, but never gave a listen.  When you’re young it’s just a song, something you can kick back to and mellow out when you’ve had a hard day being a teen or early twenty-something.  When the album the song appears on came out, I was just three weeks short of turning twenty-one, so thinking about what was ahead of me wasn’t a big issue with me.  I knew . . .

Actually, I knew shit.  I didn’t have much, I had no understand of what I wanted to do, and I knew I wanted to write, but I couldn’t because I couldn’t bring myself to do it–just as there were so many other things I couldn’t bring myself to do.  I went through life thinking I’ll deal with shit tomorrow, ’cause there’s always tomorrow.

I played Undertow for the hell of it last night, but this time I started listening.  Something happened, because when I work up at four AM today, it was playing in my head.  It was still playing as I drove into work.  When I got my system set up just before seven AM, it was the first thing I played.

It moved me to tears.

There was a connection in the words so powerful that, during the first part of the chorus, I could see myself in those lyrics.  But the second stanza–oh, that’s where the song reached out, grabbed me by the ear, and said, “Sit down, fool; I got something to say”:

 

Laughter, music and perfume linger here
And there, and there,
Wine flows from flask to glass and mouth,
As it soothes, confusing our doubts.

And soon we feel,
Why do a single thing to-day,
There’s tomorrow sure as I’m here.

So the days they turn into years
And still no tomorrow appears.

Better think awhile
Or I may never think again.
If this were the last day of your life, my friend,
Tell me, what do you think you would do then? *

 

Then after the question, Tony Banks comes in and kicks my ass with words and melody so powerful that it’s hard to hold back the tears:

 

Stand up to the blow that fate has struck upon you,
Make the most of all you still have coming to you, [or]
Lay down on the ground and let the tears run from you,
Crying to the grass and trees and heaven finally on your knees

Let me live again, let life come find me wanting.
Spring must strike again against the shield of winter.
Let me feel once more the arms of love surround me,
Telling me the danger’s past, I need not fear the icy blast again. *

 

Damn you, Anthony.  Damn you for making me feel.
Despite what they may say in Westeros, winter is over.  Life is hard, but if you want something you don’t have, work towards getting it.  These damn stories won’t write themselves, and if I want them told, I gotta tell them.  I’ve spent enough time lying on the ground crying, and I don’t want that anymore:  I want what I can take from what I have left, and I want that all.

I want to live, I want to move on, I want to kick the icy blast in the ass and leave it behind.  That I can do.  That is always possible.

As for the arms of love telling me the danger’s past?

We’ll see, won’t we?  We’ll see . . .

 

 

* Copyright: Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, EMI Music Publishing.  Written by Anthony Banks.

Coffee and Muses

Yesterday I said I was going to get a lot done, and I didn’t fib.  I did two blog posts, started looking into doing a three dimensional ball of yarn in Blender (hint:  it won’t be easy), and finished Chapter Eight of Suggestive Amusements with a fifteen hundred word dash.  It was productive as hell, and I felt like I actually accomplished something for the first time in a while.

Chapter Eight was, I will admit, a bit of fantasy revenge–or so I told my Muse when I was speaking with them last night.  Yes, I have a Muse, and they help me a lot.  I told them that a lot of my feelings about work, past and present, came out in that chapter, and there are probably a few people who, if they were to read the chapter, would know I was sort of drawing off of a hidden reserve of angst I’ve been hanging onto since leaving The Job From Hell.

While I can say I never had the same conversation my main male character has with his manager, some of the same thoughts he voices I’ve had more than a few times.  There’s nothing like being a cog in an organization where every job that comes your way should have a priority of “Immediate” or “High”.  I’ve been in IT for almost thirty years:  every job is important–save the ones I need done.  Then it’s, “Queue up, loser, don’t you see I’m busy?”  Which, come to think of it, was something I told to a manager once, though not in those same words.

What comes next, in Chapter Nine?  What I hope is going to be one of my favorite conversations.  My main muse gets together with her sister muse, and they sit and chat over coffee, talking about their charges, and . . . well, lets say Erin’s sister is always worried about her.  It’s not a big sister/little sister thing, because they’re identical in age.  It’s just that Erin’s an emotional muse, and her more musical sister always fears that she’s digging herself into a hole with each new charge.

I mean, think about the life of a classical muse.  They’re immortal, they go around casting their magic upon someone to bring forth the best inspiration they can muster, and–at least in my world–they are attracted to intelligence and imagination.  They aren’t there to make you a sandwich, though Erin does make breakfast at one point; they are there to light up your bulbs and make your fingers go clickty-clack upon the keyboard.  They are the box outside of which you are suppose to think, and if you want to make them happy, you best start creating.

In a way, their lives would be somewhat miserable.  They don’t just live for their job, they are their job.  Their excitement comes from what you produce, and then . . . they’re gone.  Erin helps you find that one true store hidden somewhere deep inside that bag of mostly water that is you, and once she yanks it out of you, what else is there for her to do?  Where is her relaxation, her fun, her down time?

Oh, you don’t think I’ve figured this out?

You don’t know me very well, do you?

The Creative Return

The brain is shaky today, because having four days off, and then forcing it to shift gears back into work mode, works against everything that nature says is right.  There’s a difference between being home and doing what you want to do that’s work-related, and having to drive into a location and having to sit and do things.

It’s wrong; very wrong.

I’ll get through the day, but I know what I’d rather be doing . . .

As I drove through the darkness my mind turned towards the upcoming story.  (Yes, it’s dark when I drive into work at 6 AM:  it’s also dark when I arrive home about 5 PM.  Gotta love the winter.)  There’s not much else to think over, as it’s all been thunk.  I can say that, right—thunk?  Well, I did, so we go on . . . at this point I need to set up my three main characters, and the four characters who more or less show up to fill in the background while having speaking roles.  This is how I get into my work:  by figuring out what I need, then going for it.

I think I’ll start on that part tonight, getting the names and descriptions down.  My main female character, the muse in questions, needs a definitive look, and I’ll write that up in her notes just so I can keep it straight in my mind when I’m telling her tale.  Because this is about her, and her charge, and the magic they make together.  But it’s a lot about her, and what the creative process does to her.

A real muse would always seem to be giving, so what do they take from the creative process?  The satisfaction of a job well done?  Most of the time the person doing the creating is going to take all the credit—though they might say something like, “Oh, my muse was there to help”—but most of the time the poor muse is left out in the cold with little to wrap about her body to keep her warm against the chilly breeze of creative nothingness.  What does she take from the event she helps ferment?

Even though this will be something of an erotic story—hey, why not?—I do hope I can show the loneliness of the long-suffering muse.  Because they must suffer, knowing that what they are helping bring forth isn’t always going to be a best seller, or a work of greatness . . . it’s what needs to some out at the right time for the person in question.  At least that’s what I’m seeing; you, dear reader, may have a completely different concept in mind.

Strangely enough, the story didn’t start out this way, but it’s how I see it now.  A good part of the focus is on the muse, though her charge will be on the stage as well.  It’s about them, because they have to work together to create something worthwhile.  Something that is going to touch you . . .

Which is what I’m hoping to do with this story as well.

All I can do is try.

Possession of My Memories

Rest and rest and more rest.  That was the theme for last night, after the very long day I found myself heading off to bed very early in the evening.

It wasn’t as if I didn’t get things done yesterday.  Oh, no:  quite the opposite.  I blogged, I saw my daughter get her black belt, we partied a little, I came home and chatted, I wrote and wrote . . . yes, it was a very full time to be had.

I was on the new chapter for Couples Dance last night, and somehow, even with all the shiny distractions going in, managed to crank out 1850 words.  It was mostly conversation, but still, it was a lot of good flow, a lot of great energy going into the story.  I was doing a lot of search for–I guess you could call it a hook for the chapter.  I’m trying to explain something, and try as I might to get it down, the feeling kept dancing away from him.  It was like, “Here I am!  I’m what you’re looking for, right?  Ha!  You can’t have me–not yet!”  Bastard plot lines.  Just when I need my Muse to come around and grab them around the neck and drag them closer so I can whip them into shape, she’s nowhere in sight.

But that probably had a lot to do with my mental and physical conditions.  The last couple of weeks I’ve been dragging ass something fierce.  Friday and last night I started writing in a state of what I would call near mental exhaustion.  Friday night a managed to get out 800 or so words before I had to pack off to bed, and last night was pretty much a two hour fight between procrastinating, nodding off, and writing.  The writing won out for the most part, but I was in bed before 10:30, which is something I never do.

I did manage a short chat with Trusty Editor^tm, who was around for about 40 minutes in the afternoon.  We had a pleasant, if quick, conversation, and some of that conversation revolved around my writing.  Trusty (if I may call them that) has seen most, if not all, of the writing I’ve produced in the last year.  So if anyone knows about the changes in my style, it is they.

One of the things they brought up is how I handle relationships in stories, which they commented upon after reading a couple of excerpts from my last couple of stories.  They told me that, in my older work, my characters–mostly female–were either very cold and hard, or only interested in relationships where there was the promise of pleasure, but little else.  And that’s a valid criticism, because it is true.  It can be said that the later occurred because of the sort of fanfic I was writing–which was totally fetish erotica, and geared at a particular audience–but still, I rocked that first meme very well.

An example that came up was a character by the name of Helena.  She’s a particular favorite of mine, at least now, but when I created her–bare bones, she was a hurt person, maimed in a battle, and extremely hard edged.  If she’d stayed on the path I’d originally envisioned for her, she would have been a character with zero personality growth, likely remaining one of those semi-bitter women who would slowly grow to hate everything around her.

What changed was I needed a character for another project, and so I pulled Helena into that project.  However, I needed a reason for her being there . . . and that’s when I created another character, Erwyin, who I’ve blogged about.  Erywin–if I may steal the title of a script written for The Grand Moffat–is The Girl Who Waited.  She met Helena when they were tweeners in the early 1980′s, fell in love as they became teens, and then were separated for nearly twenty years.  She never questioned why her “pretty girl” went off on a path that would take her away from Erywin; she didn’t question why she stopped speaking to her; she didn’t question why, after Erywin discovered that Helena had been maimed, Helena refused to speak to her; she never questioned why, after Helena finally did start responding to her correspondence, it would take her months to write back, and that her words were so guarded.  All Erywin wanted was for Helena to be happy–and that, one day, they’d be reunited.

Erywin would never pressure Helena.  She would wait.  If necessary, she’d wait forever just to hold her hand for a few moments before Helena passed on.  Because Erywin was full of love for her pretty girl.  She could never hate her.

She would wait because she knew, in time, things would somehow work in their favor.  All she needed to do was exert the tiniest of pressure here and there, and fate would take care of the rest.

And that’s when Helena began to change.  Once back close to Erywin, I knew the old feelings would have to resurface.  I knew that, in Helena’s youth, she’d been madly in love with Erywin, and her feelings for her was insanely strong.  One of the bits that came up was that a couple of weeks after meeting Erywin, Helena had the displeasure of encountering a girl who knew Erywin was a lesbian, and didn’t like her because of that fact.  She made the mistake of telling Helena that her friend was a “silly faggot”, and deserved to be treated with scorn.  Calmly, coolly, Helena grabbed the girl–who was older and bigger–by the hair, and proceeded to drag her–literally, she dragged her along the floor–away from her friends, saying to her and all who were watching in stunned silence, “You need to be taught proper manners.”

When you’ve established that sort of relationship as kids, you know where you have to go with them as adults.

As Trusty said, “You’re not afraid to explore relationships, to go deeper into romance.”  All true.  I’ve said that I’ve grown as a writer, that I can go places I’ve never been before.  I’ve pointed out that I couldn’t finished Transporting–which is a love story told in a science fiction setting–until recently, because I couldn’t tap into feelings that I needed in order to write the ending.  As Trusty Editor^tm told me about one of the excerpts from Transporting, “It’s raw and needs to be tightened, but it’s great.”  And I don’t doubt either of those summations.

So with all that in mind, I headed off to bed . . .

You know where this is going, don’t you?  Well, maybe not, but I’m going to take you there–

I know I had several dreams last night, but only one of them is sticking with me.  It’s short and sweet, and . . . well, you’ll see.

It’s me and another person, a female type person that I do know.  She knows I write, and she’s said that she enjoys my work.  Now, in the dream, we’re alone and in a bedroom.  We’re getting ready to turn in, and we’re both in our night clothes.  (Yes, I do have dreams where I’m not naked.  You don’t want to see that anyway.)  There’s a single light on in the room, a lamp on a night stand.  She’s got her back to me and is in the final stages of getting into bed.

It’s at that moment that I say her name.  She stops and turns to me.  She’s standing there looking at me as I move closer, slowly, taking my time in my approach.  When I’m finally standing before  her I take my time looking at her, gazing into her eyes, and she back into mine–

Then I slowly reach up and gently remove her glasses.

I take them off, my eyes never leaving hers the whole time.  Once I have them off, and I’m holding them close, she gives me a faint smile, because she knows why I did what I did, and she knows the meaning behind the gesture.  There is a slight beat, and then I see her eyes moisten, followed by a single tear trickling down her right cheeks.

And then she says something.  She says it in a very soft voice, but one choked with emotion.  Her words are simple, but they cut right to my heart, because I know what she means by them.

She says nothing more than, “Yes, you do.”

I return her glasses to her.  She places them on the nightstand, then turns to me–and we kiss as the dream fads to black.

There is power in my memories, in my imagination.  I know what I can do these days, and that, the more I work at my craft, the better I’ll become.

But I also know that, now, I can go places I’ve never would before.  And I’ll get there.  I only have to let fate do its thing while I give it a tiny exertions of pressure now and then.

I don’t mind being The Girl Who Waited.

Because I know how this story ends.