Writing

Tonight it went well. I’m get­ting numb-bum from sit­ting in the office chair, but I got clear of 1200 words in an hour and a bit. I’m work­ing on the sto­ry of a woman try­ing to bro­ker a peace treaty among the far-flung descen­dants of the human race, on an Earth lit by a red giant sun, two and a half bil­lion years in the future.

There was a moment when I feared I might have to scrap the whole sto­ry, but then I was lis­ten­ing to a song by Corb Lund and this line gave me some inspiration:

half heard voic­es from the ghosts, from the graves
grand­fa­thers tell us at the mouths of the caves

Can’t tell you yet how it’ll all end, but here’s a scene that I did tonight:

The black plain had been called Pan­tha­las­sa, and it had been called the Pacif­ic Ocean, and the Broad Sea, and the Grey Swamps, and any num­ber of oth­er names, names record­ed or lost to his­to­ry’s sweep­ing indif­fer­ence. Now it was a desert of black glass, a shift­ing sur­face lay­er of fine dark sand blow­ing across a deep bedrock lay­er that had been baked for a bil­lion years by a swollen, mur­dered sun.

Overnight some­one had plant­ed a gar­den. It had to have been one of the AIs, or one of the robots, and they prob­a­bly had used time shapers, some­thing Lady Schrone was cer­tain she’d marked down as pro­scribed. But it was hard to be angry, because the gar­den was beau­ti­ful: flow­ers, flow­ers of all descrip­tions, radi­at­ing away from a cen­tral point like the spokes of a great wheel, and at the wheel’s cen­ter, a tree reached for the heav­ens. Leaves the size of her body unfurled them­selves at the tree’s top, near­ly twen­ty meters from the ground. They were sharp and green against the blue of the sky.

The gar­den was a per­fumery, a green oasis in the glit­ter­ing black desert, and Lady Schrone was ill inclined to hunt down and pun­ish the mech­a­nism or mech­a­nisms that had giv­en it birth.

I almost don’t want to quit writ­ing, but it’s get­ting toward bed­time, and I have com­pa­ny, and I’ve dis­cov­ered that the best place to quit is right before I write some­thing that I’ve been wait­ing to write for a while. That way, I’m eager to go the next time I sit down to write, and the scene has time to per­co­late and dis­till and it tends to come out even bet­ter that way.

Usu­al­ly, anyways.

So: writ­ten any­thing good lately?

More from Salyx:

Some­times Igraine would have to go down the axis to the ship’s engine room, where the walk­ing dead worked, men and women so rid­dled with can­cer that they did­n’t both­er to pre­tend any­more that they’d sur­vive. They had a ghast­ly humor down there, a gal­lows humor, and one of them had set up a spher­i­cal force-field and filled it with water, just to see it glow with blue Cerenkov radi­a­tion. Igraine hat­ed hav­ing to go to the engine room, hat­ed see­ing the thin, crow­like engi­neers, sprout­ing dark tumors and cough­ing out blood and teeth, rain­ing hair. She’d go in, hand them the flow cor­rec­tions she’d cal­cu­lat­ed, and flee, hat­ing her­self for her fear.

Some­times inspi­ra­tion strikes at the odd­est times. Some­times, though, it comes when I call it. Maybe inspi­ra­tion is a cat.

Because this post will con­tain some spoil­ers for Salyx, I’ll put the rest “below the fold”, as all the kidz say theze dayz.

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Inspi­ra­tion” →

The knight dreamt of home: vast oceans of grass rip­pling in unfelt breezes, the whis­per of leaves, the back­ground hiss of his aug­men­ta­tion cloud’s comm cycles. A cas­tle sus­pend­ed in the air winked reflect­ed sun­light from crys­tal win­dows. Man’s first sun lay low to the hori­zon, a bulging red oval near­ly kiss­ing the edge of the world.

He looked around, and his vision was bright with sec­ondary knowl­edge. The aug-cloud sprayed knowl­edge at him, com­pressed microbursts of data that were lay­ered over his vision: the float­ing cas­tle was named Yama-arashi, which meant “Moun­tain Storm” in a samu­rai lan­guage, and its smooth blue under­side con­cealed float-field gen­er­a­tors and pulsed laser arrays that deter­mined, microsec­ond by microsec­ond, how the winds and humid­i­ty and tem­per­a­ture affect­ed the castle’s height. The leaves hiss­ing on the breeze hung from a stand of aspens plant­ed by King Ultrecht IX of Vafn­rheim in the eighty-eighth year of his reign. It was nine min­utes and twen­ty-two sec­onds till local sun­set, and to the south­east, against the dark sky, the first of the geo­syn­chro­nous fairy cities would already be vis­i­ble, a dim smudge of light stud­ded with brighter star­lets with­in, can­is­ters and wheels in a cloud of escaped gas­es and space­craft exhaust vapor.

A dead woman spoke his name, and the dream col­lapsed, walls of light that passed through each oth­er, tum­bling away to infinity.

I’ve been busy with writ­ing late­ly; the Trees sto­ry (“Can’t See the Stars for the Trees” or what­ev­er I’m cur­rent­ly call­ing it), so post­ing here has been a lit­tle spo­radic. Here’s a snip­pet from the story:

Right from the start, the boy was a godsend.

Toi and Chad­ow found him one evening, the sun just begin­ning to slide behind the night plate, in a pad­dy to wid­der­shins of their hutch.

They were walk­ing hand in hand, let­ting the scents of night blos­soms and the damp earthy scent of the rice waft over them, when Toi stopped, let go of his wife’s hand, and said, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh,” he said, putting his fin­ger to his lips. Chad­ow’s face took on a look of mixed con­ster­na­tion at being shushed and con­cen­tra­tion on find­ing the sound Toi thought that he had heard.

“I don’t hear–” she began.

Toi’s face lit up. “That,” he said, point­ing to spin­wise, into the pad­dies. He kicked off his san­dals, rolled up the cuffs of his loose cot­ton trousers, and wad­ed into the muck. Chad­ow watched him go, think­ing, My hus­band will dri­ve me mad one day.
She smiled, watch­ing him tak­ing care­ful steps, mind­ful not to com­mit his weight till he was sure the mud would­n’t swal­low him to the thigh, care­ful to keep his light-yel­low trousers clean.

Then some­thing made him stop cold in his tracks. Behind him, the mud was clos­ing over his foot­prints, set­tling back into a flat expanse of dull grey. He turned and looked back at her, over his shoul­der. “Chad­ow?” he said.

“Yes?” Some­thing in his tone made her voice catch in the back of her throat, so that her reply came out stran­gled and weak. She coughed. “Yes?” she said again, loud­er this time.

“You’re not going to believe this.” And then he plunged for­ward, arms flail­ing for bal­ance, heed­less of how much mud spat­tered on his clothes, of how many plants he trampled.

“What is it?” she asked, but he did­n’t spare her a reply.

#

It was a child.

She stared down into the bun­dle that Toi held in his arms. He’d wad­ed back out of the pad­dy, filthy with mud that he’d some­how man­aged to spat­ter all the way up to his neck, cradling the met­al bowl like it con­tained the most pre­cious, most frag­ile thing in the world.

It was a child, a naked baby boy. His smile broke her heart.

“How could–?” Words failed her, failed the sit­u­a­tion. How could some­one aban­don a child in the pad­dies? How could they live with them­selves after?

“He looks all right,” said Toi.

His face and hands, legs and tho­rax were pink with sun­burn. Tiny scars criss-crossed his tor­so, fine white lines against the bright rash. A thin blan­ket, tight­ly woven of some dark mate­r­i­al, was attached to the rim of the hemi­spher­i­cal sil­ver bowl, but the baby had kicked it off so that it hung down, worth­less for pro­tect­ing him from the sun or keep­ing him warm in the night.

“He can’t have been here too long,” said Toi.

His words pen­e­trat­ed the dull fog of rage that had suf­fused Chad­ow. She real­ized that her face must be a ric­tus, a con­tort­ed mask of anger. She could feel the flush all through her body. Her ears were burning.

She forced her­self to take a deep breath, a sec­ond, a third. She closed her eyes a long moment and whis­pered Calm calm calm to her­self, repeat­ing it like a mantra till it lost its mean­ing and became a sim­ple syl­la­ble to attach her world­view to.

“What do we do now?” she said to her husband.

But he was gaz­ing into the baby’s pale eyes, entranced, and the boy was star­ing back at him with the solemn face that only a baby can make. After a moment the child gig­gled, a sound that car­ried with it a per­fect inno­cence, and Chad­ow felt tears stream­ing unbid­den down her face.

Or they can be, anyways.

I’m work­ing on expand­ing and com­plet­ing the first draft of a sto­ry I start­ed in June. It’s set on a slice of a Dyson shell made of trees woven into each oth­ers’ root sys­tems, wrapped around a star and sent on its way into the inter­galac­tic dark. No one alive knows where they’re going, or why the world’s mak­ers (the For­got­ten Gods) sent them in the first place.

I’ve been call­ing it “Wis­dom Finds Me”, because that’s what the main char­ac­ter’s name means in the local for­est tongue, but I want some­thing more… some­thing more. Tonight I came up with “Can’t See the For­est for the Stars”, and I kind of like it, but I’m not entire­ly sure.

Any sug­ges­tions?