JOYCE SULLY :: Why Not Wonder

I started to walk. I felt like a ghost, an unreal observer of everything happening. There was nothing I could do to help. I knew that, the sensible part of me knew that, so I did not run. I walked. I tapped my headset. “Call Alistair.”

The smoke rose up in plumes until an erratic localized wind rushed down the street and sent all that smoke sideways. Onlookers, kept at bay by fire service barriers and a handful of assisting police, recoiled from the sudden choking cloud. Even at a distance, my eyes stung and watered as I listened to my headset ring and ring. No answer.

“Call Pike,” I told it and it started ringing again.

from Incognito: the Vertical Street

Took a couple days away from writing again. I mostly spent them running errands and shopping. Just trivial stuff. It felt good, actually. I guess I needed to get out of the house a bit more. I’m reading a lot of stuff about what I guess qualifies as life hacking. I’m not really sure, which is part of what I’m learning more about. I’m always trying to work out what I’m doing and how I can most effectively and enjoyably do it. I’m always planning and tinkering. I hope to have some cool things happening in the next few months.

About the scene, well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and all that. I’ve written about fire in two other stories, only one of which ever saw the light of day. That’s House of Cats (see links above) and, no spoilers intended, there’s fire. Repeatedly. It’s a thing.

Fire is a thing in my life and it works its way into my writing often. It’s a long story, sometimes even a funny story, but when I was about eight, I spent a couple days trapped on my family’s ranch, where we were surrounded on all sides by a brush fire. There were trucks from two fire departments living with us, making a last stand to save us because we had about twenty horses, eight people, assorted smaller pets, and no way of getting any of them out. I spent those days half out of my mind from all the smoke, barely able to function. (The rancid meat I was accidentally fed [I told you, long story] did not help matters.) The world was ending.

Brush fires remain my personal hell on earth. I am generally a good person to have in most emergencies. I am calm and competent; if I do not have specialized skills to solve a problem, I am at least a help and not a hindrance. Except if it is a fire. If I am in close proximity to it, even if I am far from home, I will become hysterical, sobbing and hyperventilating. If I am home and there is a fire in the general Southern California area, I will watch the news with a focus bordering on madness. It does not matter that half the damn state would have to burn up before it reached me. Part of me is still eight years old and knows that fire will come and eat me.

So. Fire. It’s a thing. It crops up. On the plus side, I really, really know how to write it by now and I love the scenes that use it. Personal demons make the best fiction.

“Can’t you just kidnap him?” Nelly looked bored with the whole idea. She was never one for restraint, of course, especially if the only reason was social convention.

“I am ashamed to admit that I have considered the possibility.” I kept sipping the same disgusting drink. I felt too lazy to get up for a new one. It was early and I was stuck sitting on my hands while Pike did all the exciting work. I yawned with my hand over my mouth.

Nelly’s false face echoed the yawn before she said, “Well, I don’t believe in shame so–Morgan, what is that infernal beeping?”

from Incognito: the Vertical Street

I’m not being very consistent with my writing. I can make excuses, like, oh, I was having real human interactions with my friend after weeks of solitude. Actually…okay, that might be reasonable. Whatever. Today, Morgan got to have the same chance to talk to a friend. About work, of course, because what else is there? Is it possible that Morgan and I approach our work in some of the same ways? Why, yes, it is. My characters get all my worst habits.

Having Pike constantly buzzing in my ear started to seem normal. He had a tendency to talk to himself, especially when he was nervous or upset about something. He kept his voice low so that most people would not notice even if they were near him, but of course, Nelly’s mic picked up everything he said. It was sensitive enough that I sometimes found myself wondering why my heart was racing, only to realize that I was hearing the faint swish and thump of Pike’s heartbeat and mistaking it for my own. He became a voice in my head and a comfortable one, at that.

So I mostly tuned out what he was saying while I worked on other things, until something sank through my brain and I realized the person he had just introduced himself to had called himself “Lenny.”

Pike’s tone of voice perked up with the same interest I had. “Hey, Lenny, nice to meet you. Do you–Did you know that woman who disappeared from here? Rozamar?” I tensed up. I did not know what they were doing or who might overhear them.

“Yes, I know Roz. She went away, but she’s going to come back some day,” Lenny said. He had a low and wistful voice like someone filled with infinite calm or infinite stupidity.

from Incognito: the Vertical Street

My muse has started to forgive me for the whole word count debacle. I still feel stressed about it because I want to get caught up from those two days of not writing, even if I’m going to keep the same pace from now on. (I realize those two objectives–getting caught up and keeping a reasonable pace–are most likely mutually exclusive.) Why? Because I want the day of the year to match how many scenes I have written. My calendar tells me what day of the year it is and how many remain on any given day. Um. I like this sort of thing.

I do get unreasonably hung up on these ideas of starting and ending things at precisely the right time. Like when I’m going to use a timer for writing sessions, but I won’t even begin if I can’t start right on a formal minute marker, like ten after or something. I experience actual difficulty in functioning because of this need for things to be just so. If nothing else, I have an unhappy tendency to conflate good organization with good fiction. If only I am organized enough, precise enough, perfect enough, the words will all come out perfectly, too. Lack of confirming evidence for this theory has not disabused me of it yet.

“I’m flat broke. This is the only chance I’ve got. I’d owe you,” Pike said intensely. This time, it didn’t sound like innuendo, but it was still a suggestion. I could see Cedric regain his mental footing and perk up at the idea of someone owing him. Oh, Pike had played him well. Pike added, in an off-hand way, “And rumor is that it’s the plushest group you can get. Where are you guys set up, anyway?” Pike played the desperate, slightly dizzy rent boy well.

Cedric smiled like a predator. It did not set a person at ease. “I suppose you’ll find out soon enough. Very well. Follow me.”

from Incognito: the Vertical Street

Hm. Well. I once again decided, before ever starting on a project, that I TOTES knew how much I would be able to write in a day. I made myself a nice little calendar, all filled in with goals for myself. I gave myself a little more than a week of what I classified as light days to ease into the story, then I was supposed to start writing more. 2k a day, five days a week, with two 1k days. Uh-huh. Sure. That’s swell.

I know I am capable of writing at such a pace. I do it in NaNoWriMo every year. Except for the part where, after a week, I start to feel tired, fall behind, and spend the rest of the month doing extra words to get caught up. Then December comes and I’m so burnt out, I take a month off. In the past, I’ve taken rather more than a month off. Closer to six. Because I just emptied my brain that badly.

So after eleven days, I saw that nice note to myself, saying, do double what you’re doing now. (Which is actually more than 2k. I seldom leave scenes unfinished and these have been running 1.5k. So that note really reads as “write two scenes,” which means up to 3k in a day.) To which my muse, my unconscious, whatever, said, “Yeah, awesome, have fun with that. Fuck off and let me sleep.” And that was that. No words. Time at the computer, sure. But no words.

Sometime, I will write the essay I have in my head about self-talk, demands and threats, and the difference between what I can write and what I should write. Suffice to say for now, I make the same stupid mistakes again and again and suffer for it every time. I’m so desperate to just be there, at the end, that I demand I write at lunatic paces. Then I am surprised and offended and ashamed when some part of me with a lot more sense refuses to do that. Indeed, my muse refuses to play at all when I start making demands. I either write at a sane pace or I don’t write at all. So why do I carry around these expectations of doing more, faster?

Some day, I’ll learn. Some day, I’ll accept what I can do, instead of dreaming of what I think I ought to be able to do. For now, the best I can do is take the hint already and go back to what works. Bit by bit, I get there. It’s the only way, even when I wish it wasn’t so.

Squared off like that, I finally got a good look at her. I had thus far only seen a portrait of her in her renter’s file at the Vertical Street. She was, by society’s standards, fairly good-looking, which meant she was an almost perfect specimen of humanity. Her hair was silver-blond in a way that did not suggest advanced age so much as some supernatural pedigree. She had a pert nose and small mouth, the overall effect being one of almost child-like perkiness. The effect was mitigated substantially by the snarling fury that currently twisted her features. Another unexpected addition skewed what would have been perfect proportions and lines: a small bulge stretched the fabric of her shirt tight across her belly.

“You’re pregnant,” I said, more to myself than her, since she was most certainly aware of it by now.

from Incognito: the Vertical Street

Bleh. I didn’t feel ready for this scene but I didn’t feel any more ready for any other one, so I just went ahead and did it. Aaaaand hated what I got. Not really sure why. There’s nothing specifically wrong with it. It just doesn’t do anything for me. This is getting filed under the rule of “don’t get it right, get it written.” It can get fixed or scrapped later. I would feel better saying that if only it wasn’t the midpoint scene and thus kind of important. Picking a snippet was difficult because EVERYTHING was a spoiler.

Sigh.