One project ends, another begins; it’s how you do it, really. Suggestive Amusements is in the can–or on the hard drive, as this case may be–and my information for a book cover for Her Demonic Majesty is off to a friend for her appraisal. What is left to do?
Edit, what else?
Replacements is under the literary knife again. I’m giving it another polish in, preparing it for it’s own publication date. That will mean getting a cover for it as well, and prepping the manuscript for ebooks, but that’s easy. Well, the formatting is: not sure on the cover yet. But it’s all coming together. If anything, as I edit, I can format. I did Chapter One last night; I’ll likely edit Chapter Two tonight, then start doing a format on Chapter One–which is a small chapters–to get back into the swing of getting an ebook ready.
Even with all this, there are always things going on in my mind. Are those story ideas you’re talking about, Cassie? Why, yes: yes, they are.
There is a set of stories that I’ve developed of a particular set of characters. As of this moment I have three stories written about them that amount to three long novels, one short novel, and a novella. I’m so tied into these characters, in fact, that I have a time line of their lives figured out, and that the stories that revolve around those lives.
Last week I was thinking about one of those stories, one that takes place further along in their lives, and it’s an event that, as they say in the business, changes them forever. It really does, because it’s needed for later in their lives, and for the stories that follow. As I want to do, I thought out things from a meta standpoint, with the intention of figuring out things later. As for the meta, it goes into a file, or my head, both of which are pretty good for that sort of thing.
Here is the kicker, though: the night before, I had a dream that revolved around what I’d been thinking about, as well as some of the research I’d done, because I’m all about the research . . .
I know it was about a place I’d researched for this story, because I just did. It was in the mountains; it was night and the air was crisp, with fall approaching. I was sitting alongside someone, both of us wearing thick sweaters against the mountain chill. There was wine, just a small glass each, because you want to enjoy the alcohol-infused warmth that comes from sitting a sweet white wine.
Then, after the lateness of the hour became apparent, inside we go to sit before a fire, stretching out upon an overstuffed sofa–
Which is where my dream ended. But the writer in me–ah, I see thing going beyond that. Because the overstuffed sofa reminds me of two people in a very different place, with their own sofa, their over comforters, their own fire . . . and plenty of pumpkin juice, hot chocolate, and cheese banitsas. All the things meant to keep a couple warm . . .
All the things they’d need to remind them of their love.
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?
“This is the first time I’ve been to New York City, ‘cept for driving through.”
That’s what I woke up to about an hour ago, having walked across a river and standing on a Manhattan Island that could never have existed at any time in our history. I was telling this to a very pretty red haired woman who . . . well, more on that in a moment.
The above statement is almost true: I have been to New York City once, but it’s not like you would imagine. I had to fly to Hyannis, Massachusetts for software training in the the summer of 1988, and since we (the people I was with, my manager and project leader from Playboy) were flying cheep, I flew out of Midway and landed at Newark, which was no the airport it is today.
But how to get from Newark to Hyannis, you ask? We flew in a very small, eight passenger twin prop job that never flew higher than a thousand feet the entire way–after we were out of NYC air space, that is. We left Newark going east, flew right over the Statue of Liberty, then headed up the East River at an altitude of maybe five hundred feet. It was still light, and the day was clear, an I was on the left side of the plane, so out my window I had all of Manhattan laid out before me, watching the city in a beauty pass shot right out of a movie.
That is my one and only exposure to New York City. When I say I’ve only driven through, that happened in a dream I had maybe six months ago. I drove over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, when into a part of the city seemed like the Battery, then headed into Brooklyn. I met with a woman later on what may have been Long Island, or it might have been near the Tappan Zee Bridge, because there weren’t nearly as many building around when we sat for coffee, but it wasn’t the city proper, I know that.
I have a hypothesis as to why I might have had this dream last night. David Gerrold, otherwise known as the Father to Tribbles and The Oldest Red Shirt Ever, posted something on his Facebook wall yesterday. It was one of those strange, simple meme statements you find popping up all the time on Facebook when people are posting pictures of cats, or trying to guilt trip you into liking something by saying you’ll go to hell if you don’t share a post being against pistol whipping bulldogs.
The statement was simple: ”If you could go back and tell your younger self something, what you would say?” A very science fictiony concept, because if you could go back and tell your younger self to do something that you haven’t done, you’ll set up another reality that you, the teller, will never see, because quantum physics gives not one fuck about you, but that’s beside the point. The question is: what would you say?
David had left a statement, as had several others. I normally don’t respond to these things, because I’m a pain in the ass bitch, but with that point, I was compelled to respond. I said, “Transition and to hell with what people think, and go to her, you know where she lives.” Why would I say that? Well, those are two things that have become important to me . . .
Neither would make the present me happy, because nothing would change for me, but for New Past Me, there something might happen. One can only guess if I’d decided not to get married in the early 80′s and started my transition, I may have had a twenty years jump on less insanity. I wouldn’t have my daughter, that is true, but I might have had a lot less sadness and hurt and pain. Or I might be dead. Can’t say, you know.
The second part . . . Harlan Ellison’s story Grail tell of a man who spends most of his life in search of a cup that will show him his true love. After decades of search he finds it, looks into is and sees his one true love . . . and as he states at the end, I will met her in death, because she died before I was born.
Last night I walked across the Hudson into the city with a woman who was younger, and who had red hair, but I knew her even though that disguise. I remember saying to her, “I was told you’re nice and curvy,” and she looked at me with a sideways glance and smiled and said, “Yeah? They said that?” and I replied, “Yeah, and you’re soft an warm, too.”
And we stopped after crossing the river and turned to each other. ”You know that for a fact?” she said, and I took her in my arms and said, “Oh, yeah.” And then I kissed her and said–
The cold is at the stage where I can get by now and semi-function throughout the day. Fever is gone, stuffy head is history: all that remains is the slight infection in the chest that makes me want to cough every fifteen minutes. This was similar to what I went through during the summer, but this one seem to be a lot less severe; with that infection I found it almost impossible to speak without choking up and coughing out a smidgen of fluids before I stopped. There’s annoyance here, but nothing that’s keeping me down–other than the feeling I’m completely worn out due to a lack of sleep and food. Give it another week, and maybe I’ll be back to my old self. Maybe.
“But what of the novel, Cassie?” Glad you asked, because I was going to tell you anyway. Suggestive Amusements is through eleven chapters, and I’m facing the final seven chapters leading up to those two most magic words every writer wants to see, “The End”. Actually, every writer wants to see the word, “Congratulations,” at the beginning of an email, but that’s another story . . .
Everything about Erin’s history has been revealed–well, almost everything. Didn’t think I was just going to make it that easy, did you? The tales were told–well, not all of them; I might still have Erin think some more about Hypatia, who she had a real thing for–but there was something I did in the chapter that is meant to set up just a touch of friction. That’s how it happens: you bring up the truth, and before you know it, you’re trying to backtrack with a few white lies that you think will make things all the better in the future.
How that’s going to play out won’t show for a few more chapters, but it will play into things. Erin is playing with her fears, and even though she can see things as they are about to happen, she can’t always see the future, damn it, because sometimes even preternatural goddesses can’t get past those pesky quantum multiverses and the various futures they hold. While you might be able to see, that doesn’t mean you can figure out which one you’re going to be.
The story is about to go a little off the rails in the next few chapters, which is how I want it. Like it or not, dealing with creatures like Erin is going to leave a mark, and that won’t always going to be a good mark. Being creative is a curse; having a muse show up to push your creativity in the right direction is probably going to screw things up in ways a person could never imagine. I even included an example of something that happened to one of Erin’s charges, and it offers an example of what I think this “creation stuff” can do to someone if they’ve wrapped themselves up in it so tightly that the trees are all they see.
Yet we walk into this business with eyes wide open. At least my muse is nice–
Day Two of Sick As Hell, but getting better. No fever now, but I can’t hear out of my right ear, my head is stuffy, and my throat was swollen last night to the point of intense pain. This morning I’m better, though my head is swimming about because I’ve only seen about three hours of sleep in the last two days. Tonight I hope to get enough sleep to be sharp enough that I’m not stumbling about like I don’t know what I’m doing.
I was in decent enough shape last night, though, that I could write. I wanted to get back into Chapter Ten, and it was a good time to do so, because I’d only need about a thousand words to get the job done. So I got into it, and I was right: it took a few words over a thousand to finish Chapter Ten, and now it’s time to move onto pillow talk between my two main characters.
With it being Valentine’s Day today, it’s a bit interesting that last night my muse (not my Muse, just to keep things straight) thought about how her newest charge was going to be another in a very long line of lovers, and that she’d remember him all the way until the end of time, well beyond the time when he is not only forgotten by his descendants, but by history as well. Creatures who are not human, who do have recollections that go back thousands of years, could be expected to remember every encounter they’ve had, every touch they’ve experienced, every kiss that’s graced their lips. As I said in the story, for Erin the Muse it’s both a gift and a curse, because while she can remember all the good times, she will also remember the bad–and there is now way you couldn’t go through thousands of years of encounters with people and never have a bad relationship spring up.
I’m not a muse; there are no thousands of relationships in my life that I can remember, much less write about. The reality is I can count on both hands the number of relationships I’ve had, and still have a few fingers left over. I don’t regret this–and there’s little I could do if I decided to regret my choices. It is what it is, and not even a TARDIS is going to save you from your own time line.
There are also a few that I’d rather not remember. One in particular, the family hatted me with a passion, and that didn’t help when it came to developing a romance. There is one that I do regret ever getting into, though it’s not one most people who know me would understand the reasons why it was such a bad thing for me.
There are others, however, that I will always remember. They showed me things I didn’t know were possible; they allowed me to achieve an intimacy that had never been there. And if I can borrow from Mr. Spock (D. C. Fontana, actually, as she was the one who put the words in his mouth), there is one where it was easy to say, “For the first time in my life, I was happy.”
The one thing I don’t want to know is: do they remember me? And do they remember me with any sort of fondness.
Last night was an off night; I was busy doing other things, and getting over the cold that was trying to force its way back into my life. I think I’ve beaten the cold–again–but give it a few more days when the temps are back down in the teens and I can’t warm up to save my life. Such is winter in Chicago: one day it’s in the 60′s, the next it’s in the 30′s and snowing.
I was chatting with a friend about the current work in progress, Suggestive Amusements. I was saying that this story felt different to me, because it doesn’t fit in with any of the things I’ve developed before now. The characters are new, the situation is new, it’s taking place in a universe that’s pretty much ours.
The story has felt a little strange for me, because I’m not dealing with characters I know; I’m dealing with unknowns.
Allow me to put this in context: a few of my stories tend to exist in universes that are expandable and wide-ranging. I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know the characters, to make them living, and then make them a big part of those worlds. To say I spend a lot of time developing things is something of an understatement.
Suggestive Amusements is different. It’s an idea turned into reality, but everyone seems a bit . . . distant. It’s like you’re watching a scene from afar, and you’re never actually part of the action. The characters are new, they are shiny–they seem a little incomplete.
It’s a strange thing to create characters for a world that might be a one-off, something you write one time and then never visit again. I’ve not done that very often–or have I? When I think about it, more than a few of my stories have been this way. Why would this story be different?
Hell if I know. This is the way my mind works, I guess. It starts setting up barriers when I hit the twenty thousand word mark, I suppose. I’ve taken more time off with this story than I have with any other, and it makes me wonder if I think it’s worth while. Good old writer’s doubt, kicking me in the butt again.
There was an info graph I saw a while back that showed the various stages of writing. You always start out fresh, thinking your story is the greatest ever, and somewhere in the middle you convince yourself that it’s the biggest piece of crap to ever be fostered upon the world. The person I was chatting with last night said she felt as if she was putting “poop on the page,” and was discouraged by her output. I felt the same way at times; I think I’m feeling sort of that way now, even though a few days ago I liked what I was writing.
I wonder if this is common, that during the course of telling a story, you fall in and out of love not only with the story, but with the act of telling your tale. It wouldn’t surprise me, because writers are mysterious creatures, almost as unfathomable as muses, and twice as complex.
Late night for me, because I was out and about visiting, taking in pizza and movies, and staying up a lot later than I would normally. In fact, when I realized the time, I hadn’t realized the time. That’s how the evening went.
I was right about yesterday: I didn’t get a lot of writing done. About three hundred and sixty words, that was it, but it was the initial description of my other main female character for my novel, and that was what I needed to move on to the next part of Chapter Five.
But, once more, I got my motor running to go somewhere, and while going there and back, my mind was on a lot of things. My Muse was on my mind; my story was on my mind; stories I haven’t written were on my mind. It was all there, roaming about, getting down in my memories and making it known that I wasn’t going to forget anything.
Most of what I thought about were scenes from a story that hasn’t been written, but has been on my mind of late. It has to do with having to do a duty that is both exciting and frightening, and once they’ve begun, the characters in question are presented with–call it an alternate reality of their lives. Those the two characters have been together a long time, things happened in their past that pulled them away from people who they’d fallen for very hard. And times and events and people being what they are, the characters were never able to reconcile these relationships, and therefore became somewhat haunted by the dreams of what could have been.
Each is given the opportunity to enjoy time with the “one who got away,” because, as one character is told, “You’ve always deserved to be happy. Even if you are happy now, it is not the happiness you wanted. You deserve to be with your one true soul mate; you deserve to be happy, even if for a little while.” The character in question finds they are unable to disagree, because, deep down, they have always wanted that particular happiness–and even if they question how they are achieving the moment, they don’t care . . .
But, being me, you know they’ll end up in some kind of misery by the end of the story. Actually they end up in some rather strange stuff at the end, but that’s also me . . .
I’ve thought a lot about happiness where it comes to my characters. It’s easy to say that we all need to be happy, that we should have that one, great love that would make our lives complete. It doesn’t always happen: that’s pretty obvious when you look at the general human condition. It’s not always possible, but we try. And if we can’t try, we dream and fantasize.
Some of us take those dreams and fantasies and turn them into the stuff prose is made from, and then bleed upon our pages for the entertainment of others.
Just as a week ago I’d finished the draft on Replacements, last night saw me finishing the draft on Echoes. Last chapter, a few words added, a couple of things edited . . . ta-da! Final Draft is in the bag. Now all that’s required is one more pass, another good polish, a book cover, and it’s ready to take its place next to Banging the Cheer Squad, which is one of the tomes that appears on my Smashwords front page. (There’s even an interesting first sentence: ”Gretchen thought she was the only cheerleader who had been turned into a gangbang slut.” Definitely not my high school.)
The last chapter has always made me cry–my story Echoes, that is, not the one about slutty cheerleaders. I wrote it last year, starting it almost about this time, and it was a reflection of something that I was feeling at the time. I wanted to get everything down inside words I’d remember, everything that I felt would convey how I felt then, and I think–I think–I got it right. It was the first real story I wrote that touched my emotional side, and it’s really one of the first stories that isn’t just words, but possesses feelings as well.
Which is why the ending makes me sad, because the feelings are still there. Probably will be forever.
The thing about Echoes, though, is that if I couldn’t have finished it, I’d have never been able to write the ending to Transporting. The later was delving into some deep, emotional waters as well, and as I’ve stated in other, older posts, in order to finish the story, I needed to get into some feelings I couldn’t access. I’d always been a touch unemotional, and it showed in my writing. I could plot and do prose, but there was something missing.
It’s a fact of life that sometimes your writing is going to make you cry. Can’t be helped, because when you, the writer, goes over a piece, no matter how long before it was written, you’re going to remember when that writing happen, where it happens, and maybe even what you were feeling when you wrote those particular words. That’s assuming you aren’t Scriptomatic 3000, which was something I think Dan Aykroyd called himself when he was developing scripts.
If you’re just hammering away at your stories, getting the words down one after the other, and you’re not putting yourself into them, then maybe you won’t feeling anything when you’re editing them later. I think that will show up in the story, however, because as many of you know, when you’re reading another author’s work, you see things in your head, see the characters a certain way, and the emotions that trickle out are pretty much a combination of yours mixed with those of the writer. But if the writer didn’t put any of themselves into their work, the reads may just feel that.
There is one other thing about getting your feelings onto the page: it means you’re will to open yourself up to things you may not like to remember, or feel, or even admit ever happened. It’s not a pleasant thing to do–I know, I’ve done it. There are a lot of things in my life that I wish hadn’t happened, and would like to forget completely. But when you’re writing . . . damn it, those feelings just seem to pop up, you know?
All that remains are the covers, and a little polish . . .
I’m almost there with the new stories. Here’s hoping people like them.
We move into the evening, and enter the part of the performance where I’m feeling like I’m about to drop dead on my feet. Maybe that’s just the tired talking. Probably. But I’ll get this post out before I crash, just so I can post it to the waiting masses–that’s you–later.
But there has been writing this evening, more or less. Replacements has been and ongoing work, and I’m about half way through it, and looking at the possibility of adding another chapter. Not right now, thought, which is the nice thing about Scrivener: you can set up the card, continue on doing something else, and come back to it when you feel like working on that part. If you don’t need it, though, just delete the card and move on with the rest of the story.
Right now I think I need the chapter. I’m still thinking, and I’ll have a better guess about things after I do the edit on Chapter Six tomorrow.
For a story that I didn’t have feel for, it’s suddenly taken off. Tonight I added one hundred ninety-nine words; last night I added about one hundred and forty to it. I’ve been adding things here and there to make things just a touch clearer, and rewriting things that were way too clumsy when I did the first draft. If this goes on I’ll probably end up with about fourteen thousand words without a new chapter; add that to the mix, and I’ll easily top fifteen thousand.
I can’t say for certain what’s happened, but the story seems to have a new life–or maybe the writer does. Before I was completely bummed to look at it, now I’m thinking about what could happen with it to make it better. What I’m doing now it the clean-up; the next pass through will, I hope, strengthen the story even more.
One of the things I’m considering is putting back in a scene that I was originally told not to write. The advice I was given at the time was, “You’re going to trigger someone,” so it’s probably not going to stretch your imagination as to what I was considering. (Hint: it’s cheesecake. Lots of cheesecake. Actually, I just had an idea for the new chapter . . .) I may put that in; I may just edit the chapter as is, then add another note card in Scrivener and rewrite the chapter with the idea.
It’s not going to hurt me to do so, you know?
It’s funny how I was so down on this just a week or two before, and now I’m cruising through the story. It could be that NaNo had me down, because I went over some of my blogging from last year at this time, and I wasn’t in the best of moods, either. Writing a novel in thirty days can do strange things to you, and given my current schedule, I’d be very hard pressed to crank out two thousand words a night next year.
But I’m not going to start thinking about what I’m going to write next year, as some people are already doing. I have projects I want to develop, but getting something for NaNo isn’t on the table right now. It’s like all the talk about the next election in 2016: we just got over this last one, how’s about giving that shit a break, ‘kay?
I’ll see what pops up in the morning. For all I know I’ll have a strange dream and I’ll suddenly want to write about how I look in purple–
This is a strange thing to say, but I once had an idea for a story . . .
It was a very simple story, about a writer and his muse, which is nothing like that movie, The Muse, which was something of a Hollywood insider movie, and the muse in question may or may not have been a crazy person. Mine is different, naturally. And it’s not about a guy who was successful–it’s about a guy trying to find that success.
The gist of it is this: the guy goes to bed one night, and he’s shaken awake by someone, a very pretty girl–think Manic Pixie Dream Girl type–who’s telling him that he’s got a great idea, and he needs to write it down now. Of course, he does have one, and he writes it down, and when he goes back to bed, the girl is gone, vanished, totally ghosted.
But not for long.
She starts coming into his life when he least expects it. She just shows up: at home, at work, while he’s shopping. She brings him ideas, and she won’t leave him alone until he starts writing. The more he writes, the more she’s around, and eventually, as he works upon this epic novel, she’s living with him pretty much all the time. He and she both know what she is, and they’re happy with that–
Or are they?
That was really as far as I ever got with the idea. There was so much going on in my life at the time that I was lucky to find the time to even consider the idea, much less flesh it out. But I’ve just added it to my idea file, so there!
I talk about my Muse a lot. To me, she is a real person, with real feelings, real needs, real ambitions. She doesn’t exist merely to get me off my ass and into writing–though, in order to write, I have to be on my ass, if you know what I mean. She’s there to do her own thing as well. It’s just that one of the things she does is inspire me to do great things.
I haven’t done those things yet, but I keep working at them.
There was a time when my Muse was the only thing that kept me writing. She was the only one who believed in me, who encouraged me to push myself, who said, “Keep going.” I listened to them, and even when things were so very dark for me that I didn’t know if I could continue, I kept going. Because my Muse would be unhappy if I ever quit.
In my unpublished story Echoes, Albert recollects a dream he had about someone he once knew, a woman named Marissa. There is a line in the story:
But Albert was in the mood to talk—or, if nothing else, to finish describing his dream. “She said, ‘I hope you are touching others as you touched me’.”
“You touched me.” I have heard my Muse say that to me from time to time. At least, I think that’s what she’s said. You know how it is with Muses; one moment they’re very happy, and the next they’re pulling a knife on you.
Like the character in my idea, I would love to be able to sit and talk to my Muse. To enjoy lunch with her. Or dinner. Or to wander a book store. Connect with her in a way beyond the, “Me Muse, You Writer!” relationship.
It’s not possible, though, because my Muse is real only in my mind. But . . . She’s there every day.
Today is Museday, her special day. How will I please her?
If you were in the Chicago area yesterday, you experienced some incredibly weather early in the morning. For about thirty minutes, it was pretty much a downpour, with lots of wind and lightning. The Real Home is up around there, somewhere to the east, and it got caught in the deluge.
From what I was told later, it was pretty bad. Tuesday is Garbage Day for us, and everyone had their stuff out, so that ended up all over the streets. The neighbors had up a canopy, and that ended up in our yard–and may have damaged one of the arborvitaes that we use as a natural fence.
But according to the wife and daughter, our big tree, the one at the front of our house, the one that was there, maybe a year old, when we moved in eleven years ago, took two lightning strikes, and went down.
My daughter is pretty upset over what happened. She wanted to know if there was any way it could be saved, even though–from what I understand–half of it came down during the storm. It upset me as well, because . . . well, I get attached to things. Of course there isn’t any way to save it, because it’s been split to hell and gone, and the only thing to do now is cut away what’s left, and have it hauled off.
I have some unusual feelings about this. Like I said, I was upset yesterday. To be honest, I’ve shed more than a few tears over the fact that our tree is no more. You would think people shouldn’t get upset over a tree.
I’m not like most people, in case you hadn’t noticed.
It used to be that, in China, most people thought a dragon lived in every mountain. Here, and a lot of other places, there are many who think of trees as having spirits residing within, entities that are part of the natural order that surrounds us. Now, I’m a rational person; I’m not suppose to believe in spirits in trees. And yet, I can’t help but think the tree was looking out for us . . .
See, it’s wasn’t one of those really tall trees, not like the ones in the back. It was low and very spread out, with thick foliage. On a hot, summer day, it gave great shade, and more than once, when I needed a break from mowing, I’d go lay down in the grass, stare up into its limbs, and gather my thoughts. It was very comforting to be there, feeling cool and relaxed, and I’ve ideas come to me while I was there, gathering my strength.
We watered it in the beginning, pruned it when necessary, and, if I can be so open, showed it a lot of affection. I love having trees around a yard. Every time I see a house go up a property that’s had every tree cut down prior to construction, I want to find the owner and beat them with a lead-filled rubber hose, because they’ve desecrated their land.
This tree was only about as high as my house. The house had as good a chance of taking the strike as the tree–and there were two strikes, from what my daughter said. If the house had been hit, we probably would have lost all the appliances, the daughter’s computer–maybe the place would have caught fire and burnt down. That’s all very possible.
And the tree, or the spirit inside, or both, decided, “I got this. Don’t worry; you’re going to be safe.”
It took the strikes, and died.
Like when The Doctor lost his sonic screwdriver in The Visitation, I feel like I lost an old friend. I’ll go home tomorrow afternoon, and see it lying upon the ground. I’ll be home Friday, and the service will come to remove it, to take it away, where it’ll likely be chopped up into mulch.
But while the service is there, they are going to dig us another hole, a foot or two away from where our tree used to stand. We’ve planted two other trees since moving in, and they’ve grown tall and strong.
We’ll do the same Friday. As soon as everything is clear, we’ll plant another tree, and help it grow, and let it take its place on the corner of the yard where everyone can see it.
Back to The Real Home, and it’s all rainbows and unicorns this morning. I actually slept in, which is to say that rather than getting up at 5:30 AM, I slept until 6:22 AM, and had enough time for a quick cup of coffee, getting ready, and then taking my daughter off to her martial arts class.
Whereupon I blog. Such is life.
I even managed another 700 words on Part Ten of Diners at the Memory’s End. It was a tough write, not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but because my eyes were telling me they didn’t want to stay open the whole time. However, I managed to find a good break point in the story, so I left Meredith and Cytheria more or less glaring at each other from across a table, a nice, big plate of bara lafwr with cockles and bacon between them, all of it a setup to the hell that’s about to come.
Even though I had half a mind in the process last night, I was starting to enjoy the play I was setting up between the women. It’s going to get a little ugly, but at the last moment, I felt, “Hey, you know, Meredith is a feisty girl, she’s probably not going to roll over and play bottom, not even for a bad-assed duchess,” so when I ended the scene, I had Meredith doing just that–getting her back up just a little as the Duchess Scoth starts getting coolly medievalon her ass.
So much of this story is really about feelings, how people are with each other, how they handle new situations that they never envisioned. Part Twelve will get into that more, but right now–yeah, Cytheria ain’t a happy girl. And when you’re a woman with abilities like telekinesis and you can read minds–it’s a good thing she has a lot of willpower. Or does she? I guess we’ll see.
But even more so than Echoes, this is turning into a very emotional story. That story had hit me in the stomach over and over, but this sucker is giving me some serious groin kicks. Just when I think I’m going to be able to walk away unscathed, I write something else and think, “Damn, I didn’t need to do that, did I?” And then I realize that I’d going to get harder before it gets better–getting better happening somewhere around the end of Part Thirteen and the start of Part Fourteen. After that I’m hoping for a much better ending, but until then–pain. A lot of pain. So much so, I should be listening to country music, the music of pain . . . naw, I ain’t goin’ that far.
If there is anything I’ve discovered as a writer, it’s that we not only half to push ourselves into places we don’t often want to go, but even when it makes us feel bad, we do it again, and again, because we understand that by going there, we are learning. We learn about our characters, our story, and ourselves. If you aren’t growing as you write, then you’re not really writing.
Trust me, why pay for a therapist? Just write some fiction and see what happens.
If you aren’t crazy already, you’ll probably drive yourself in that direction.
