Moving chapters all at once is TERRIFYING.
Just that moment when you’ve cut one chapter, and it’s hanging in word processing limbo before you paste it into its new location — WHAT IF. What if someone bumps your hand and it vanishes forever?
Coupled with the terror of change — the TERROR OF CHANGING THINGS.
No wonder writers drink.
Editing on Spell/Sword continues this week. I’ve stalled long enough, picking at the edges, making the easy fixes. Time to get in there — not with the fire and sword — but with the spade and the watering can. I will be cutting a few sections – mainly when I combine two chapters into one. I come to raise Caesar, not to bury him. Time to make the good stuff — GOODER.
Most of my problems are with the first eight chapters. The story doesn’t really settle into a groove,
and “become good” until a third of the way through the book. That’s, you know, kind of a problem.
The first chapters aren’t bad, per se. Just a little unfocused. I need to clarify the positive, and beat back the connective tissue. It had to be there to get me far enough into the book to know what it was about, but now it disgusts me. DISGUST.
Now that I’m getting closer to actually publishing the thing, I find myself worrying about the classical forms. Stupid, I know, for a book that heavily features wyverns. All of the great tales are a circle, the heroes return to the beginning with the Elixir and the world is made anew. The full arc of Spell/Sword is a tragedy of course, but this first episode is tangentially heroic. Or faux-heroic?
Ha, do I even know anymore?
It’s a story about two people, two kids. Two people that are doing pretty shit-tastically on their own. They meet, become friends, and learn that together they can incrementally reduce their level of life pooch-screwing.
In classical terms: No Big Whoop.
Two characters, incomplete. Then two characters, complete.
With no romance. Moirails, to use the excellent term that Homestuck provided.
Blah, blah — time to get to it.
I made this! Deal with it. I dream of the day when readers anxiously wait for my next book, they check my blog, nut in GRRM NFL-fixation style I only post the current model I’m building. “Damn, Book Six is taking forever! But that Zaku is kind of sweet…”
The small inn at the base of Mt. Kyojin is known for three things.
The first is for the excellent saki that the owner, Erojin, brews in thick, oak casks passed down for nine generations in his family. This first thing is known because Erojin repeats this often to all of his guests.
The second is that it is the final inn on the Imperial Road that leads to Kori Horudo, ancestral keep of the Matsu family. This second thing is known because travelers that pass it by on their way to the keep face several hours of cold, dangerous climbing up the rough hewn passes that protect it, covered in snow except for the deepest part of summer.
The third is that the spring water found in a nearby cleft of rock is unparalleled for the making of tea. This third thing is known only by true students and masters of the tea ceremony. Erojin’s grandfather built a special structure around the spring, and took great care in preparing a perfect setup for the brewing and preparation of tea. The water flows hot from the spring in the central pool, a stone table encircles it like a ring – and cunning hooks hang at even intervals, allowing kettles to be hung.
It is said that a cup of tea prepared at this spring is a kiss from the Fortunes themselves — and not to be missed if a Tea Master is available and willing to perform a ceremony.
So it was, when six travelers on their way to Kori Horudo ate their quiet meals in the common room of the inn. When a seventh traveler invited them all to join her in a cup of tea, none could bring themselves to reject so polite and fortunate an invitation.
The hot water of rushed into the dark green kettle, and the quick hands of the seventh traveler pulled it free of the spring never minding the heat. She moved her hands in calm patterns, adding a pinch of powder, a fall of leaves –– her hands and eyes focused and sure, a dance. The six guests felt their souls fill with peace as they watched the serene preparation of the tea.
At last the dance was done, and the seventh traveler placed the lid on the kettle with a quiet clink. Then she looked up at the six samurai and smiled. Her face was plain, with a sharp chin — but the easy warmth of her smile was beauty enough. Her kimono was of good material, but showed signs of much wear and travel. On her right breast was carefully stitched the mon of the Fox Clan.
“And now the waiting. For even we must bear the quiet wind of Time, and fill the interval between the leaves and the tea. Hot water will do its work, no doubt.”She bowed her head respectfully to the others. ” Please forgive me, in my haste to begin the preparation of the tea, I have neglected to introduce myself. I am Kitsune Miho, a scholar. Would you honor me with your own names as we wait for the tea to become tea — and perhaps tell us a little of what has brought you to the little corner of the world?”
What will make you buy my book?
“Sit down, Lucas.”
The young boy took his place at the keys of the grand piano. He set his fingers carefully in the proper positions, the polished bone cool to the touch.
“Now play.” The madman leered. ” Play the lines, the lines of light in the dark. Play them. Play them well, and play them now.”
Lucas Grahd tried not to think of the blood that oozed down his shoulder from the thin puncture. He tried not to think of the dried blood on his knuckles, a friend’s blood. He tried and failed, but his eyes stayed dry and his fingers steady.
“Play them now,” the masked man howled. “The lines, connect the lines!”
Lucas could feel every whorl of his fingertips, as he touched the first key.
It does. It will. It must.
I will defend the honor of Lodoss…with my life.
Warming up on Spell/Sword editing — poking at the edges of it again, wrapping my head around some potential chapter moves, edits, re-writes, additions, subtractions, etc.
Lodestar interview collate. Reasonable approximations of iconography glimpsed on Inf. Mural during their sojourn to the plane of Hell. Cross reference with several sources for possible/potential identification. Most listed by description/popular epithet from lore. – PGRAM
1. ????? – The Knight with Brown Armor
2. Blackwire – The King of Move
3. Fairchild – The King of Glass
4. ????? – The King of Open and Shut
5. ????? – The King of Forever
6. ????? -The Hound with Blue Eyes
7. Beldran – The King of Forget
8. ????? – The Snake with Green Scales
9. ????? – The Maiden Illuminated
10. ????? – The Beast of Quiet
11. Cassandreia – The Lady in White
12. ????? – The Bleeding Lion
13. ????? – The Crow with Yellow Talons
She’s in love
With her broken heart
She’s in love
With the dark
She’s in love
With her broken heart
She’s in love with the dark
– With the Dark / They Might Be Giants
I’ve been thinking about evil, lately. Or rather I’ve been thinking about Evil.
Mainly in a literary sense, but never just. The membrane that separates Fiction from Reality is quite porous, and I’ve never quite understood where one leaves off and the other begins — if there even is a clear demarcation. I don’t think they are binary, is what I’m saying. Our eyes, our hands, the senses five — all can lie, and the story of a hero can make pulses quick and move the heart blood of a nation. Things that aren’t Real still are. Certain ideas and stories and incarnate ideals have a weight, a presence. They matter. They have matter and mass, and gravity begins to bow at their approach.
Without dipping into too theological depths, allow me to elucidate. Superman, The Doctor, Jesus, Coyote, Heracles, the Monkey King, Shiva, Sam and Dean Winchester, Frodo, Katniss, Tyrion,Santa Claus, Odin, Horus. They aren’t just empty names — they have meaning, they have weight. They have a place in their own stories, but also in the stories of our own lives. As a symbol, a periodic element of courage, or grace, or love, or cunning — these names have wrought great change. Measurable, quantifiable change in the laboratory of Reality. I may be assuming a lot, but I know that in my own mind, my own psycho-chemistry these names have had their effect. I try to align myself with the good, and avoid the evil.
So, as I tell my own stories — I realize that I’m creating my own pantheon.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the Evil Ones, the dark shadows to these heroes’ light, they matter too. Sauron, Shai’tan, Lucifer, the Master, Lex Luthor. If there must be an absolute negative pole in my view of the cosmos, what am I to name it?
Names matter too, maybe most of all.
Which is an even more roundabout way of saying, I’m calling it The Dark. Whatever it is, that quiet force of End, the blotter of sunny skies, the sideways laughter in empty halls. The Option serves The Dark, of that I’m reasonably certain.
So, no one asked, isn’t this just the Nothing and the Gmork all over again? Probably. But I like to think I’m reflecting a universal truth, a universal name. As a child I was afraid of the Nothing and it’s servant — and now when I write I am afraid of the Option and its master.
I’m honestly not sure what I’m getting at.
“It’s one of those things a person has to do; sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.”
― Edward Albee, The American Dream & The Zoo Story
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