The 35th Precinct

I'm paddling determinedly along on Sprache XVI. It's a hard slog, this one. Usually, my chapters are quite clear in my mind at the outset, and I know where the characters need to be by the end of them. I see them in my mind's eye as friezes etched in marble, wherein everyone has a specific role to play or a specific posture to hold. Now, the characters are often sly and obstreperous, and they have the precocious habit of shuffling positions and shifting postures when I'm not looking. Sometimes this is maddening, because as a writer, I cherish the occasional delusion that I am in control of the crazed circus that inhabits my pages, but often, this turns out to be a very fine thing. The characters know how to get there with more grace than I do, and if I'm smart and let them be, they'll get me there in the end.

In the case of this chapter, however, I cannot see the initial frieze clearly. An arm here, a leg there, a fold of clothing or a corner of a table near the bottom, but the cohesive whole eludes me. I cannot coat their feet to move across the stage if I cannot see where they stand. So I'm writing blind, filling in the middle without being able to see the edges, and it's frustrating and frightening and disorienting, like standing in a dark room and having a disembodied voice tell you that's not a lip you're standing on even though you can feel the brittle, traitorous curve of it beneath your bare feet.

"Just take a step," the voice urges, and you're not sure if you're going to find the ground, invisible yet solid beneath your feet, or if you're going to step off the edge of the world and go pinwheeling into nothingness.

But you take the step anyway because there is no choice and never really was, and because it feels good, a grotty, shameless, sordid pleasure, like touching yourself in a deserted elevator when you know those doors could open and reveal you to anyone standing there. Because you secretly like the thought that you could step out and touch nothing but empty space, that you could tumble off the edge of the world and fall forever, fall until you forgot everything but the rush of air over your skin and the euphoria of weightlessness. Sometimes, you take that step just because you can, because some dark, dangerous part of you wants to find out if there's a bottom. And if there is, you want to reach out and touch it, even if what waits there takes your fingers as the price of knowledge. You take the step because it's the ultimate gamble. Most of the time, you lose and end up with blood on your knees and bones poking through your skin. But when you win, oh...

When you win...

When you win, you remember why you keep getting out of bed and opening the door to that dark room, why you keep shuffling to that edge and waiting for that voice to whisper in your ear. When you win, you remember what you were like before the lashes and stones found their mark, who you were when you believed that love was possible even for the fearful, shy, and broken and that the world was mostly fair and forgiving when it wasn't. When you win, you catch the scent of roses on the wind and the heat of the sun on your face, and for a while, you believe that your treacherous, twisted legs will bear you up, that if you close your eyes and spread your arms, you will be able to fly, to feel the wind in your hair like a lover's caress.

When you win, you glimpse the face of God and a place sweeter than this squalid ball of dirt suspended in eternal midnight. When you win, you are beautiful, and you can't hear the voices that tell you you'll die alone in some airless room with too much light and not enough love.

It never lasts. Eventually, the anger and the hurt and the tedium between the pages and paragraphs and periods return. That is the way of it, but that is why you go back to the room day after day and take that step. You know that you'll die in that room, that one day, you'll step off that edge and find a bed of broken glass or a cluster of jagged rocks or pongi sticks arranged like stalagmites. You know that one day you will step off the edge for the last time. You step off anyway, and with a perverse fillip of happiness in the center of your chest, because there's a chance that what you find at the bottom is the hand of a stranger reaching out of the darkness and inviting you to dance.

So I can't see, but I'll write anyway, wait anyway, because sooner or later, a voice will come out of the dark and bid me take that single step.

And I will.

Ganked from neotoma:

If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
— Alfred Hitchcock

When I write a story, what do you immediately look for?

Alas, I managed no fic last night. I did, however, write 1,300 words of my Rammstein/NYC odyssey, which is closing in on 13,000 words. I haven't even made it onto the train yet. I expected the Atlanta portion to be the least relevant part of the tale, but in many ways, it has become one of the most important. I have never spoken so frankly of the topography of my interior landscape, so baldly. I don't know what has impelled me to write so openly, but I do know--or at least suspect--that some of it might paint me in an unflattering light. I hope not, of course, but sometimes the warts bleed through no matter how much makeup you spackle on.

And screw you, typesetters. There are two spaces after a period. Two. One space looks like Jack Sprat's wife trying to squeeze into his jeans./orthographic old fogey who cares not a whit for the revised rules.

I got off my ass and wrote 1,500 words of my account of my grand adventure. It's amazing what happens when you're not hypnotized by Youtube and its video game walkthroughs. If I can keep up this pace, the Atlanta section should be finished and posted by the end of the week. The second part will be the train and the first day in NYC, and the third will be Rammstein. The fourth section will be my Times Square adventure. If I'm feeling masochistic, part five will detail the hotel checkout follies and the twenty-two-hour no-peeing, no-eating-or-drinking hellride home, where I spent ten minutes having sobbing, snot-choked hysterics in the KFC parking lot because my brain simply refused to function at any other level until I had a proper meal and some unbroken sleep. Ah, the joys of overdrawing your spoon account.

We're still snowbound and might be until the weekend, so we've watched a great deal of TV and eaten a great deal of soup and frozen food. I am beginning to hate ESPN because it's all Roomie wants to watch, and he gets his bitchface on if I dare change the channel. Never mind that he has access to the downstairs television. If he uses that one, then he can't surf the Internet and chat with his friends at the same time. I'm sure he would tell me that I'm free to go downstairs to watch TV, never mind that he would have to carry me downstairs, and that being downstairs would prohibit me from doing anything else, including using the toilet or eating, until he felt like carrying me back into the house proper. No writing, no Internet. He's the only one allowed to multitask, apparently.

We haven't started giving each other the stinkeye yet, but one more day of TV-hogging and put-upon huffing when I ask for food or hot chocolate, and I make no guarantees.

Has anyone used Google Chrome? Firefox has been my best Internet friend since 2003, and I love its extensions and addons, but the tech guy from whom I bought my laptop installed Chrome just in case I wanted to give it a whirl, and I've been eyeing it ever since. I know there have been some privacy concerns, but I've been unable to find a coherent, clear explanation of those concerns beyond, "It records everything you do." Okay, but don't most browsers when you get right down to it? If they didn't, then law enforcement wouldn't have such a jolly time rooting through people's computers and subpoenaing their ISPs.

Writing good smut is hard. Whereas sex is a lush sensory experience, tactile and organic, writing is a dry intellectual exercise in translating ideas into relatable images, and the two are difficult to integrate. It's even harder for someone like me, whose sexual experiences are limited and far outside the norm. And it gets even thornier when dealing with circumstances to which you are unaccustomed and in which you have never found yourself. I've never dealt with horny German men or uncircumcised penises, and so I'm t00bing around Google, surreptitiously clicking on links about fellatio with uncircumcised men and praying that my mother doesn't catch me reading about the Sacred Peepee from the corner of her eye. I shouldn't have to hide my sexuality or justify my interest in sex, but it's just another glorious perk of crippledom. I'm thirty-something going on three in my family's eyes, and nothing will ever change that.

I woke to the threat of a panic attack that never quite materialized and spent twenty minutes squatting on the toilet with the designated barf pot on my lap, and now I'm sitting here, blinking blearily and cursing the fact that I'm awake. I suppose I should quit complaining and seize the opportunity to work on Sprache.

I'm going to have to edit the hell out of Sprache IX before I post it on the Rosenrot forums because it contains frank references to sex. I don't consider it excessively graphic, but people get incredibly shirty and tightassed where peens and vajayjays are involved, and I don't want to get called on the carpet because I had the audacity to write that a seventeen-year-old-boy came his brains out the first time he had sex, or that a young rock star might use the term cunt to refer to a vagina. I find "cunt" a much more erotic and sensual word than "pussy" by far and have no concern about using it in the appropriate context, but I also know that it's a word that inspires otherwise rational folks to froth at the mouth and scream, "The children! Think of the children on this forum, you naughty, bad pervert." Hence, the unfortunate need to bowdlerize it until it meets the puritanical standard of Febreze freshness required by hysterical, moon-eyed parents and twitchy admins who don't want to see their boards nuked into oblivion over a boner.

The chapter will, of course, be available here in its unexpurgated glory for all none of you who are currently reading it here.

I think I've written one of my longest sentences. Behold:

( Don't Tease; It Has a Glandular Problem. )

It's wordy, and I'm sure that somewhere, a proponent of concision is weeping and reaching for a bottle of Grey Goose and their cherished copy of Strunk and White, but I like the imagery, and so, it stays.

My fannish admirer has sent me another spate of giddy queries, and because I don't want to be the dour, buzz-killing Grinch who sours his/her squee, I shall endeavor to answer them.

( Click for the Lint )

Yet another reason to love Neil Gaiman. I wish he'd written this years ago, when SLS fans were haranguing me about delivering the next chapter. I loved the story, and still do, but the constant harping about updates--or a lack thereof--transformed a joy into an onerous obligation that I began to resent. The more readers asked for updates, the less able I was to provide them, not through any desire to be contrarian or spiteful, but because each query, no matter how well-intended, inspired guilt. I'd bought into the idea that beginning a story was an implied social contract with the reader, a promise that I would finish it. When the writing became the dirty, yeoman scut work of one word at a time rather than the giddy euphoria of inspiration and readers began to complain that the story was getting bogged down in the minutiae of the telling, I was suddenly paralyzed. I felt like I was disappointing them and the story by not being good enough, by Doing It Wrong. And I decided that I would rather disappoint them by leaving it undone than by presenting them with a finished story that didn't live up to its initial potential. So I did.

If I read this back then, I might not have succumbed to gnawing guilt and self-doubt. I might've realized that I didn't owe the readers a damn thing, that a fannish want wasn't a need I was obligated to fulfill. That it was all right to be tired or uninspired or just plain bored, and that I didn't owe fandom an explanation. If I had understood then what I understand now, SLS might have been finished, or nearer to it, at least. As it is, I hope my next stories benefit from the lessons of SLS and the wisdom of Mr. Gaiman.

As I've previously mentioned, I have a Dreamwidth account. There won't be an exclusive content, that is to say, posts you can't read on LJ, but if you're moving and want to keep abreast of my oh-so-thrilling life, drop me a line.

( CSI:NY Finale RUMORS--SPOILERS )

I keep meaning to get my rant on about Bentley Little, writer and Stephen King protege, but I never do because I get sidetracked or am too tired to organize my thoughts. I wasted most of today watching Car Crash TV, AKA SpikeTV, so extensive thoughts on Mr. Little will have to wait. But I think I can muster a few sentences of opinion. Or maybe not since I just gave opinion an extra syllable. Oh, well, it's LJ, not grad school, so here goes.

Bentley Little writes very good short stories. He wrote one, "The Washingtonians", that is, simply put, fucking awesome. Every time I think of George Washington now, I think, not of Our Founding Father, but of Little's Washington, a very bad man with wooden teeth. Good for tearing flesh from bone...

But Bentley Little is a shitty novelist. He starts out with a bang, but his limitations become readily apparent at the one-hundred page point, and it's all downhill from there. Much has been made of his "folksy, King-like characterization and narrative," but this is bunk. His characters are paper dolls who never behave believably at any point, and whose emotional motives never ring true.

King's characters are 3-D people behaving as people ought; Little's are Fisher Price people--empty inside so that they can be grossly and unskillfully manipulated by someone whose mental and emotional development arrested at sixteen.

And his narrative...oh, holy criminy. The man loves his plotlines, and I sympathize here because I, too, get caught up in grandiose plots and multi-faceted backstories. Thing is, I finish my backstories, even if the story is nine thousand pages. I don't introduce them and then leave them dangling when the story is finished. It's important to make that distinction because I am guilty of leaving stories unfinished, most notably Summon the Lambs to Slaughter. But when I begin a story, I do so with the intention of introducing only those elements, characters, and plot points which will prove important to the story or overall universe later.

Not so with Little, who has a hardon for dangling names and past events in front of readers with no intention of ever resolving them. In the book I suffered through read, Death Instinct, there are no fewer than three major backstories that are never resolved. One is verisimilitude; three is lazy writing. When you spend two-thirds of a book referencing the heroine's sexual hangups and her crazy brother who may or may not have molested her, you have to resolve it, however obliquely. In the words of Little's mentor, Mr. King, eventually, you have to give the reader some steak to go along with the sizzle, especially when the sizzle carries with it not the enticing aroma of a juicy porterhouse, but the acrid, landfill reek of a burning, second-tread tire. Little is excellent at beginning stories, but he's rubbish at finishing them. He sketches the people and the places but neglects to color and shade the finer details.

In short, he writes discount airport reading, and not very well. Too bad it only took me six Little books to figure it out. Still, I got "The Washingtonians" out of it.

If only Ramsey Campbell were readily available in the U.S., especially "The Companion", a short, and "The Doll Who Ate His Mother". Actually, any Ramsey would be fabulous.