Time to Get Crackin'
There's something mesmerizing and a little scary about the concept of writing a novel. I've been playing with several different book ideas for 15 years now, and I've discovered that I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to getting the words out of my head and onto the paper. When I first started writing, I used pens in a spiral notebook. Then pencil in composition books. Then back to spirals. For a period of time, it was all about turning the lights and the monitor off and tapping away on my keyboard while listening to depeche mode. Several reams of horrible submarine-based drama came out of this method, and I resolved to never do it again. I'll leave the undersea action to Tom Clancy, thank you.
Now I'm using a combination of fountain pen and paper and computer. My antique portable typewriter collects dust in the corner, a relic twice over. I tend to use the pen for fleshing out ideas and writing particularly difficult passages. The computer is good for speed - the ability to type close to 100 words per minute is useful for getting the words out of my head as quickly as possible.
Why am I talking about this? Because I've decided that I'm going to try this National Novel Writing Month thing. Writing is what I've always wanted to do with my life, and I'd like to think that I'm good at it. I just need to develop the discipline to do it for sustained periods of time. I'm hoping that being forced to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days will cram some of that much needed backbone into my slouchy frame.
I posted some of my work in a previous entry, and I'll post a bit more now. I probably won't post everything that I write here, since some of it is bound to be horrible, horrible dreck, but I should be able to throw a few things up here. Much like a decent hairball, they will be rough, may contain things that you'd rather not know about, and may possibly be a bit moist.
Finally, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to reading whatever Space Nakji comes up with, as she'll be embarking on this tortuous (yet potentially very rewarding) trip as well. In all honesty, she is one of the best writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Her voice and vision is superbly balanced and assured, and I'm inspired every time I get to read a bit of the art that comes out of her head. She's also funny as fuck-all, which is really hard to pull off on a consistent basis (trust me).
That said, here's a bit more of my stuff. This is the beginning:
------
Excerpt from Shell Game (working title)
Agglo Dome - Field 645 / September 4 / 15:43:23
Ibrahim Garzo had about a minute thirty left to live. He drove his little yellow Izuko tractor along a dirt path under the high octane light from bulb banks thousands of feet overhead. The shadows lengthened beside him and his train of seed carts as he made his way slowly toward the edge of the dome. The electric motor in the tractor made no sound, there was no wind, there was no birdsong. Just the gentle susurration of soft earth being pushed through tire treads and the tuneless hum of Ibrahim’s deep voice. Something by haydn. He glanced at the indicator panel to make sure the seeds were being fired from the cart trays correctly. A quick flick of the eyes ensured that they were efficiently stitching the ground with a constant stream of corn seeds.
He was nearing the very edge of the dome; the sharp edged yellow glare from overhead slowly gave way to a mellow emerald green glow, the by-product of the greensteel that the dome was constructed from. He knew that the dome was all that stood between him and airless vacuum and death, but he also knew that Agglo Corp. employed one of the best AEs (Artificial Entity) around. He felt safe. He was thinking about choral practice that night at 8. He was thinking about Shelby Hitower, and how she looked in that green dress with the thin straps, how her golden hair curled around her face. Then the green glow disappeared, the vacuum rushed in, and Ibrahim Garzo’s minute thirty was up. He died with a tiny shocked gasp. The water in his body froze within seconds, ripping skin and muscle and cracking bone in its merciless need to expand. His tractor kept going, firing seed corpses into drifts of sterile oxygen snow.
Agglo Dome - Control Booth / September 4 / 15:43:23
Bya (technically BYA4217) had an arm slung around the back of her chair, and her feet were up on the edge of her desk. There was a blotter covered with doodles, a few antique pencils, a flat slate with the display turned off, and a pair of swords. Her chair was wood, it swiveled, and it squeaked like a banshee giving birth. She could have oiled it, but it didn’t really bother her and it annoyed the hell out of her boss.
A number of thin cables sprouted from a variety of machines shoved against the walls of the booth. Track one of them across the grimy floor until it merges with one, then another, until they all wind up twisted together in a fat bundle wrapped with black tape. This bundle slithers across the floor like a boa constrictor that ate a rapid succession of small lumpy dogs. It spirals around the post of the chair and up onto the seat, where it terminates in a small socket at the base of Bya’s spine. Well, not a spine per se. the things in her back are vertebrae shaped, but if you were to pull one of them out (assuming you can get past the inevitable swords should you be idiotic enough to make the attempt), you’d see that it was made of a shiny, frictionless, featureless metal. Inside this casing was a cluster of hideously complex nanocircuitry, quantum gates and enough dynamic and permanent storage to catalogue the position of all the molecules in a medium sized town. Bya had no “normal” vertebrae; every single one of these modules linked together to form a potent parallel computer that was able to simultaneously monitor, maintain and position every single nanite in the 3 billion square meter expanse of the greensteel dome.
At the moment, she was amusing herself by making greensteel faces at a very surprised dog (named Chauncy) at the east edge of the dome. Then each of the machines she was plugged into exploded as they were subjected to a huge surge of power. Bya screamed as the same surge traveled up her spine and exploded behind her eyes. She tried to hang on to consciousness, struggled to keep herself online and processing, but she was shutting down piecemeal. The cables that ran to the greensteel tanks were deteriorating as they burned, and data was slowing to a crawl.
A number kept running through her mind. 657. The number of people who were now dead. She was supposed to protect them. Hers was the only airtight, self-contained structure in the dome. This did not comfort her as her world fuzzed around the edges and faded out.
Carbo Montrier’s Flat - Andale Dome / September 4 / 16:10:23
In his dream, Carbo Montrier stood on the edge of the roof and looked down. The crystalline transport tubes cut through the tops of the buildings, snaking in and out like glass arteries. Bright shapes flashed through them every few seconds, each flash a snapshot, a moment frozen in time. Mouths opened in laughter, a hand on a thigh, faces contorted in anger in the midst of an argument.
In his mind's eye, the woman was a shadow, flickering ahead of him, slipping away as he tried to grasp her, to hold on. He caught glimpses of her through the mask of fog that covered her. A smooth cheek, the flash of white teeth, a wisp of dark hair.
He could not see the ground below. The building he was standing on was two miles high. The ground would be covered with cables as thick as he was tall, and they'd be covered with a fine grey dust that rained down like snow; the effluvia of the massive air filtration units lodged in the top levels of all buildings.
If he squinted, Carbo could see this dust. Not as a cloud of particles, but as a haziness in his field of view. He could define the edges of it.
Always edges. His life had been lived on one edge or another; madness, bankruptcy, success. He never managed to cross over, always fell back at critical moments by small steps forward, or by a failure of nerve.
Not this time. Carbo leaned forward and felt the wind in his face for the first time in his life. He met it with the gritted teeth of a ferocious grin as he plunged downward, flashing past the windows of the building, peering in as he went by, hungry for those snapshots, pictures of people who had perhaps made it over an edge.
He woke with a violent start, and remembered nothing of his dream.
Now I'm using a combination of fountain pen and paper and computer. My antique portable typewriter collects dust in the corner, a relic twice over. I tend to use the pen for fleshing out ideas and writing particularly difficult passages. The computer is good for speed - the ability to type close to 100 words per minute is useful for getting the words out of my head as quickly as possible.
Why am I talking about this? Because I've decided that I'm going to try this National Novel Writing Month thing. Writing is what I've always wanted to do with my life, and I'd like to think that I'm good at it. I just need to develop the discipline to do it for sustained periods of time. I'm hoping that being forced to crank out 50,000 words in 30 days will cram some of that much needed backbone into my slouchy frame.
I posted some of my work in a previous entry, and I'll post a bit more now. I probably won't post everything that I write here, since some of it is bound to be horrible, horrible dreck, but I should be able to throw a few things up here. Much like a decent hairball, they will be rough, may contain things that you'd rather not know about, and may possibly be a bit moist.
Finally, I have to say that I'm really looking forward to reading whatever Space Nakji comes up with, as she'll be embarking on this tortuous (yet potentially very rewarding) trip as well. In all honesty, she is one of the best writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Her voice and vision is superbly balanced and assured, and I'm inspired every time I get to read a bit of the art that comes out of her head. She's also funny as fuck-all, which is really hard to pull off on a consistent basis (trust me).
That said, here's a bit more of my stuff. This is the beginning:
------
Excerpt from Shell Game (working title)
Agglo Dome - Field 645 / September 4 / 15:43:23
Ibrahim Garzo had about a minute thirty left to live. He drove his little yellow Izuko tractor along a dirt path under the high octane light from bulb banks thousands of feet overhead. The shadows lengthened beside him and his train of seed carts as he made his way slowly toward the edge of the dome. The electric motor in the tractor made no sound, there was no wind, there was no birdsong. Just the gentle susurration of soft earth being pushed through tire treads and the tuneless hum of Ibrahim’s deep voice. Something by haydn. He glanced at the indicator panel to make sure the seeds were being fired from the cart trays correctly. A quick flick of the eyes ensured that they were efficiently stitching the ground with a constant stream of corn seeds.
He was nearing the very edge of the dome; the sharp edged yellow glare from overhead slowly gave way to a mellow emerald green glow, the by-product of the greensteel that the dome was constructed from. He knew that the dome was all that stood between him and airless vacuum and death, but he also knew that Agglo Corp. employed one of the best AEs (Artificial Entity) around. He felt safe. He was thinking about choral practice that night at 8. He was thinking about Shelby Hitower, and how she looked in that green dress with the thin straps, how her golden hair curled around her face. Then the green glow disappeared, the vacuum rushed in, and Ibrahim Garzo’s minute thirty was up. He died with a tiny shocked gasp. The water in his body froze within seconds, ripping skin and muscle and cracking bone in its merciless need to expand. His tractor kept going, firing seed corpses into drifts of sterile oxygen snow.
Agglo Dome - Control Booth / September 4 / 15:43:23
Bya (technically BYA4217) had an arm slung around the back of her chair, and her feet were up on the edge of her desk. There was a blotter covered with doodles, a few antique pencils, a flat slate with the display turned off, and a pair of swords. Her chair was wood, it swiveled, and it squeaked like a banshee giving birth. She could have oiled it, but it didn’t really bother her and it annoyed the hell out of her boss.
A number of thin cables sprouted from a variety of machines shoved against the walls of the booth. Track one of them across the grimy floor until it merges with one, then another, until they all wind up twisted together in a fat bundle wrapped with black tape. This bundle slithers across the floor like a boa constrictor that ate a rapid succession of small lumpy dogs. It spirals around the post of the chair and up onto the seat, where it terminates in a small socket at the base of Bya’s spine. Well, not a spine per se. the things in her back are vertebrae shaped, but if you were to pull one of them out (assuming you can get past the inevitable swords should you be idiotic enough to make the attempt), you’d see that it was made of a shiny, frictionless, featureless metal. Inside this casing was a cluster of hideously complex nanocircuitry, quantum gates and enough dynamic and permanent storage to catalogue the position of all the molecules in a medium sized town. Bya had no “normal” vertebrae; every single one of these modules linked together to form a potent parallel computer that was able to simultaneously monitor, maintain and position every single nanite in the 3 billion square meter expanse of the greensteel dome.
At the moment, she was amusing herself by making greensteel faces at a very surprised dog (named Chauncy) at the east edge of the dome. Then each of the machines she was plugged into exploded as they were subjected to a huge surge of power. Bya screamed as the same surge traveled up her spine and exploded behind her eyes. She tried to hang on to consciousness, struggled to keep herself online and processing, but she was shutting down piecemeal. The cables that ran to the greensteel tanks were deteriorating as they burned, and data was slowing to a crawl.
A number kept running through her mind. 657. The number of people who were now dead. She was supposed to protect them. Hers was the only airtight, self-contained structure in the dome. This did not comfort her as her world fuzzed around the edges and faded out.
Carbo Montrier’s Flat - Andale Dome / September 4 / 16:10:23
In his dream, Carbo Montrier stood on the edge of the roof and looked down. The crystalline transport tubes cut through the tops of the buildings, snaking in and out like glass arteries. Bright shapes flashed through them every few seconds, each flash a snapshot, a moment frozen in time. Mouths opened in laughter, a hand on a thigh, faces contorted in anger in the midst of an argument.
In his mind's eye, the woman was a shadow, flickering ahead of him, slipping away as he tried to grasp her, to hold on. He caught glimpses of her through the mask of fog that covered her. A smooth cheek, the flash of white teeth, a wisp of dark hair.
He could not see the ground below. The building he was standing on was two miles high. The ground would be covered with cables as thick as he was tall, and they'd be covered with a fine grey dust that rained down like snow; the effluvia of the massive air filtration units lodged in the top levels of all buildings.
If he squinted, Carbo could see this dust. Not as a cloud of particles, but as a haziness in his field of view. He could define the edges of it.
Always edges. His life had been lived on one edge or another; madness, bankruptcy, success. He never managed to cross over, always fell back at critical moments by small steps forward, or by a failure of nerve.
Not this time. Carbo leaned forward and felt the wind in his face for the first time in his life. He met it with the gritted teeth of a ferocious grin as he plunged downward, flashing past the windows of the building, peering in as he went by, hungry for those snapshots, pictures of people who had perhaps made it over an edge.
He woke with a violent start, and remembered nothing of his dream.
coughed this up at 3:23 PM
2 El Commentos:
It sounds like hard work to me, but I think it should be no problem for you. I like this story. While Space is a bloody good writer, I think your stuff ain't too bad! Your styles are quite different. I look forward to reading more and hopefully this can lead to a writing career for you. You can come here on a promotion tour!
sweet! can i stay at your place? i don't snore (much), and i don't wander the hallways at night looking for things to strangle (much).
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