That Silence Again

Right there. Been wandering around the dark fields looking for my stupid dog, Damndelion. Shaking a cup of food because I'm pretty sure he thinks that's his name, and "DANDLEION" means "RUN LIKE HELL!!!1!" But in all that darkness, my thoughts wander around stuff I want to write. Images that come to mind. Memories. Cool stuff. sweet stuff. Ballet and jiujitsu stuff. Until I settle myself beside a warm Coyote Curls, who looks at me with bleary eyes and says "You scared me, mom. You took too long."

That's when my first title came to mind. "Head in a Kroger Bag". It's not a short story. It's not some piece of flash. It's a piece of history that won't leave any of us alone. She went missing four years ago. Took us two years to find that bag. Us. I wasn't there, thank god, but I was part of the endless searches. Take too long to do anything alone, and that's where the mind wanders. But that's not even remotely where I wanted to go. I got a little lost shortly after that, and settled on that silence between the blank page and the opening title.

But I'm writing. Which hadn't done much of today, or the day before because the to-do list piles up and if you sit too long, you can actually hear it growing like some kind of cancer on the creative mind.

So I painted the kitchen white (UGH), then colorwashed the ceiling and now I have to do the walls. Not a lot of walls to do, but still. I've made it as inconvenient as humanly possible to navigate the kitchen so I would annoy myself out of this complacency...it's not working like I wanted it to. So I'm writing instead. Because the walls need painted, of course, and nothing inspires creativity like the scent of latex paint. Or something like that.

So check one off the to-do list; I've written. next I read. My husband brought home a graphic novel series called "Rising Stars" that he thinks I'd really like, and from everything he's said, I am sure I will. And with all things like that I will likely get sucked in so hard, I will have to set alarms to remind me to surface long enough to go to the bathroom and do parenty things. Mannen min has been pretty good at picking the things I'd like in the past. He's cool that way.

Rising Stars it is.

Ja, that was Norsk :)

Alpha

She took a hard pull from her cigarette, but that's not what she was hungry for. It didn't matter though. It was something. Anything. She stared at the cherry in the darkness, then flicked it all away, sending it spinning into the night. She took her drugs where she could find them now. Mini-highs to stave off the hunger for the real ones.

Leaned back against the cement stairs and waited for him to come along, a quiet tide, a little darker than nighttime. A dream. A nightmare. A fix packaged in a body made of sinew and guts, blood and brains. She knew he hated it when she smoked. That's why she did it. She knew he hated a lot of things that she'd never give up. Not for him. He wasn't the answer, just a fix.

She felt a wave of him; the first wave. The one that told her to get up. Go to the page and listen. Record. She wasn't a writer, she was a cipher. His cipher and while he was born of her...he had his own life. They all did. And when she was immersed, it was as good as any fix. But the fix ended. It always did, leaving her spent. Too tired for more than a smoke, and maybe some music.

Writers. Writing. All That.

I always seem to have a head full of thoughts until I get the code right for the title. Then everything either goes blank, or suddenly sounds presumptuous. Like this evening, I was thinking that I am not a huge fan of other writers...and that's not as people. As people, I find a depth in other writers, and sometimes ours are a similar shade. It's the numbers game that gets to me.

It goes: How many words have you written today? I try to keep my daily word count around 20,000. My last piece was 500,000 words, but it could have been longer. I've gotten to my personal magic number, which is 15,000, but I was tired at the time and I had to drive across the state.

I don't understand numbers. That doesn't mean I don't know how many pages 20,000 words will fill. It means it's a foreign concept to me. I can't wrap my head around it. Seriously. Maybe that will change some day, I don't know. But it always sounds like "My baby is SO smart!!!!1!" Maybe it's making writing into a competition in a way that just doesn't need to happen. Some days I'm happy that I got three words out...but they were the EXACT three I was looking for, and at four in the morning, that's pretty good (because I've been up all night puzzling over those words). I do flash fiction, and I think that's why. I trust my reader. I say "kitchen" and an image comes to your mind of what a kitchen looks like. I'm not going to argue with your ideas, unless it's important where the sink is (in one of my pieces, I stalled at the description of a kitchen...why? I don't know. I was only in that kitchen for about five minutes while I was being grilled over drivers licenses and vegetarianism. All that mattered was it smelled really good, and there was a REALLY hot guy in that kitchen...which ended up my downfall, but hey. I won't spoil the book once I take it out of time out for lying). "Tree" Quick. Describe a tree. One tree in one book mattered because it snapped and made a main character break her arm.

I tried to read a book titled "Writing Tight". I quit about ten pages in because it was nonstop bonsai references, that just seemed to clutter the point. If I wrote a book about it, there would be four words: "Use fewer words. Fin"

And it's also why I'm a crappy blogger. I'm writing now because our new dog Damndelion has disappeared into the night, I am sure to commune with his newest bestests, coyotes. No I'm not concerned if he gets beat up; he's a scrappy little guy and I'm not entirely sure he's not at least some coyote himself. Goofy, and at stupid times very skittish. I could work on my work but I keep eyeing the door in hopes I can go to bed soon. Sometimes I have to shake a cup full of dog food to get his attention, but I'm guessing with the thaw, there's a lot of interesting stuff out there to roll in. Yummay.

And Biker Jacket has been woven in to my most recent work. I'm fond of that piece. It takes me places I need to be sometimes.

Now I'm just tired, and while I could continue on with words so I can up my count for the day (hahaha), I already got the transition piece I needed done and now I'm killing time.

Again. I like other writers. I just don't understand most of them.

Fin

Guidelines

So I pulled the past post for a few hours while I rechecked some submission guidelines. They can be finicky, and no two are the same. I tend to write outrageously short fiction, so when I find a place for it, I submit my work. Biker Jacket just happened one evening as I stared at a blank blogpost, and then I thought "Well? Maybe..." So. We will see.

My current longer work started with a lot of flash fic pieces that created a skeleton. I've been weaving gut and sinew along the way, and I'm pretty happy with how it's going. A little like a connect-the-dots, really.

I may rework my last book-length piece to the same structure, because it's what works best for me. That one had a lot of problems anyway because I wasn't ready to face some very uncomfortable truths about myself. I wanted to be better than me, and in doing that I wasn't being fair to those who have been in my shoes. Jay Roberts ripped open that world for me and though I've never met him, I have him to thank for peace.