The beard of pain falls.
A meteor ends the foul
bug-eyed shinobi.
The famous red can
is my soul’s mate and lusty
metal sin. Chomp chomp!
[Kind of a cop-out, I know — but they’re haiku! You have to like them, or you are disrespecting thousands of years of Japanese culture. With regrets for H.N. and Jeremy.]
Hey, demand a story! You deserve it.
Drop a story idea in the comments, and I will select on using a complicated algorithm. Yeah!
Hit my word count mark for the week –despite the negativity and pressure from all directions. JUST LET ME WORK PEOPLE.
Ha — it’s fun channeling your inner angsty tween. [Is there any other kind of tween?]
I’m getting into a bad habit of waiting until Friday to do the bulk of my week’s allotment. It’s mostly been other work/life factors that have contributed to this — but still. STILL. Putting myself on notice — for all the good that will do.
The pages I wrote this week, were something of an experiment. I decided to write a side chapter/villain interlude — then go back and plug it in somewhere earlier in That Thing. A little nerve-wracking, honestly. I’ve been so focused on keeping forward momentum with the plot – that it felt very much like leaving my security blanket at home for my first Big Boy sleepover.
I’m pleased with the results — and after some constructive criticism from my beloved, the villain interlude improved markedly.
Two more villain interludes – then back to the fray with …oh wait, you don’t know the names of my protagonists.
AND ITS GONNA STAY THAT WAY, NOSY. GET OUT OF MY ROOM, DAD.
All of the lovely writer blogs that I follow, posting up your daily/weekly/hourly/minutely word count – making my draw drop.
“Oh, I just wrote 10,000 words this afternoon — still plenty of time to go work at the homeless shelter before dinner!”
“Hmm, stuck in the elevator — better crank out three chapters…..”
“3 minutes for the popcorn? Great! I can do that 30,000 word backstory for my second protagonist.”
Consider me very jealous – and full to the brim with green-colored Envy Bile.
My arts. Deal with them.
There! All three Stories on Demand completed — I hope to some sort of satisfaction.
I don’t know what it was, but I had a hard time with these three — and I’m not doing my normal level of self-back-patting.
But, there’s a value to delivering a product, even when you’re not in the mood, or feeling inspired.
Right, Gurney?
My brain feels like a cotton ball that’s been left floating in a cup of luke-warm tea- soggy, and poorly caffeinated.
I’m pushing the three story prompts around my plate like broccoli, but I am working on them and will finish them this week.
But today …today I don’t wanna do nothin’.
Blech.
This picture is nice, though.
Sorry that I didn’t deliver last week — so as a way of apology, I’ll write a short piece about all three Story Demands from last week. It may take me most of the week to deliver, but consider it a promise.
Yeah. Proud of that.
Other people’s grief has always made me deeply uncomfortable. Averting my eyes, and scurrying out of the area as quickly as possible.
Grief was this grey-jacket loomer, an insurance salesman with faded hat — pushing his pamphlets, with a concrete-block hand flopped on his customer’s shoulder.
Seeing their eyes, their tears, the megaton-emotion radiating — I accelerate and ghost out of the room. Relieved and glad as the sun and wind found me on the outside, and away.
But then, one day for all of us — the knock at the door.
Grief slides in through the keyhole, looking for a place to hang its hat and dripping rain on the linoleum. It smiles a greasy smile and guides you to a chair, water and paper spattering on the kitchen table.
Now it’s your grief.
Now it’s my grief.
He visits each of us in turn. Sometimes rarely, sometime with pop tart regularity — sometimes he moves right in, propping his big rubber shoes on the ottoman, ruining the fabric with rain, and stays and stays. A few find a way to love their Grief, holding him close in the fish-clammy darkness of their beds.
Grief is a devoted husband.
Grief will break you, if you let him. Gum you slowly into oblivion, catfish jaws working and dripping dripping dripping.
My Grief is mine. If I try to explain what brought him to my door, you will nod and seem to understand — but you won’t. Just like I won’t understand if you tell me about your grey-fish insurance man. We all lose souls, and only the client knows what brings the pamphlet-pusher.
All I want to say, as I get heavier with rain and concrete — is that I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I ran out of the room when your Grief came to call.
And some advice, that a very wise friend once gave me. The Three Rules of Grief.
Every day you must:
1. Take a shower.
2. Eat.
3. Go to work.
That’s it. That’s all you should ask of yourself. If you do those three things you can feel as bad as you want, for as long as you want. If you don’t do those three things, you will follow them down into the grave.
If you need to break the rules, you will. That’s okay – it’s the Fourth Rule.
Handle it as you can, when you can – and recognize that you’ll sometimes snicker, or sing a song, or smile in the sun – and your Grief will sigh, and look very importantly at you over his glasses. And you’ll feel like you should cry a little harder to make up for forgetting that he was in the room.
Don’t.
spell-sword.com 