Writing

For those of you that are inter­est­ed in writ­ing: check out Ficlets. It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tive short-short sto­ry envi­ron­ment where you’re encour­aged to write pre­quels or sequels to oth­ers’ sto­ries, or come up with your own. Have a peek. Maybe you’ll even get inspired.

(Found via John Scalz­i’s What­ev­er post.)

Since I should be writ­ing tonight (I got 6,000 words while we were in Edmon­ton, and not a let­ter since), I’m going to dip into my works-in-progress file for tonight’s 13, and present:

13 snip­pets from works in progress

Hope­ful­ly each and every one of these bite-sized morsels from short fic­tion or nov­els-in-ges­ta­tion will make you slaver to read the com­plete, fin­ished work. Let me know, if you so desire, what works for you, and what doesn’t.

1. Demoi­selle Noir was younger than Riley had expect­ed. Only the pal­lor of her skin spoke of her present con­di­tion; her hair was the col­or of hon­ey, dressed up in ringlets, and her clear eyes were the grey of a storm at sea. Here in her office she wore a dark blouse of some mate­r­i­al that shone like silk and loose flow­ing trousers in a col­or that remind­ed Riley of the foam that crest­ed white­caps. (from Every­thing that Nev­er Hap­pened)
2. Tom­my, though, his spe­cial­ty was church songs. There were a few that the rest of us would join in on, like “Amaz­ing Grace”, but for most of them Tom­my was on his own. He did­n’t sing them often–he’d get an embar­rassed look when we’d request them, like we were maybe going to make fun of him–but when he did sing one it was unre­al. His voice was a per­fect instru­ment, not some­thing you’d expect from a gan­g­ly kid who spoke with a lisp, and when he’d belt out the cho­rus with the fire­light flick­er­ing across his face, let­ting his voice rise with the smoke, coil­ing upwards past the whis­per­ing trees to the stars them­selves, I’d feel a shiv­er crawl up and down my spine. (from “Three Months and Two Days”)
3. “I under­stand you’re on the way to kill your broth­er,” said the dog. “Sure you’ve got it in you?” (from “The Flood”)
4. A girl met Yak­oub at the door, naked as birth. A gryphon ram­pant marched across her chest, tat­tooed in gold and red and black, its tuft­ed lion’s tail held high, one paw reach­ing for her left breast. Her hair was blonde, falling in soft waves to her bare shoul­ders. (from Salyx)
5. Ghost-cap­tain Muir sum­moned me to his office. The room was a palace of the imag­i­na­tion, floored in pale mar­ble, with ludi­crous columns and spires reach­ing for a ceil­ing lost in mist. Rain­clouds had formed over by the west win­dows, and a slow but steady driz­zle watered his for­est of trop­i­cal bon­sai. (from “Out­side, Look­ing In”)
6. Toi and Chad­ow slept in the roots, twin­ing their sleep­ing bags into the fine white cap­il­lar­ies that branched off from the main sys­tems. Toi lay on his stom­ach, wak­ing to face the tiny dots of light that were uncount­ably dis­tant, unimag­in­ably vast fam­i­lies of stars. Chad­ow pref­ered to lay on her back, fac­ing the dark under­sides of leaves through which, some­times, she would catch a glimpse of fil­tered sun­light. (from The Tree)
7. In a bowl carved from the burl of a cher­ry tree sat a sphere the col­or of cognac, a stone from Earth her­self. Grz­gy picked it up, care­ful not to let his claws scratch its sur­face, and rolled it around in his palm. Its cool heft had a calm­ing effect on him. (from Earth Fleet)
8. Final­ly, in a nar­row shop wedged between a bistro and a book­store, she found a tiny Pekingese hand-carved from a piece of Chi­nese jade. The thing was ancient, and the price made me weak in the knees, but Zdama slapped her cred­it card down on the spot­less glass counter and the clerk care­ful­ly wrapped the tiny dog in stra­ta of white tis­sue paper. (from “Between Heav­en and Earth”)
9. Imry glanced at the cal­en­dar tacked above the eye; Miss Sep­tem­ber, in the best tra­di­tion of men’s mag­a­zines from a pre­vi­ous mil­len­ni­um, had a look about her that was simul­ta­ne­ous­ly hum­ming­bird-shy and hard-core slut­ty. “D’y­ou sup­pose it’s Sep­tem­ber? Out there?” (from “The Long Fall”)
10. 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. (from “The Parley”)
11. Some­day, he hoped, he’d find a tow­er tall enough to show him the part of the world with­out snow. He was con­vinced it must exist some­where. Sure­ly the whole Earth could­n’t be cov­ered in twen­ty feet of snow. Could it? (from “Fim­bul­vetr”)
12. For nine days the sky itself had burned, and even now, five years lat­er, John did­n’t like sun­sets. But Miko did, and he was­n’t stub­born enough to argue his way around her insis­tences, so they sat on the black­ened con­crete stoop and watched the sky light up all over again. (from “After the Mis­sile Rain”)
13. “I know a great many things. My web of thought spans galax­ies.” She was a group mind, he knew, a galaxy-wide enti­ty that shared a com­mon name and a com­mon out­look. Her thought was net­worked in an instan­ta­neous com­mu­ni­ca­tion web; some­how, though the physi­cists and xeno­bi­ol­o­gists had yet to explain it, what one Yasht knew, every Yasht knew. (from “Yasht”)

Tech­no­rati: Thurs­day Thirteen

Post a com­ment and I’ll add you to the list!

• Doug’s cat­a­log of night­mare foods
• You could be next!

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.