I can’t believe I decided Duoroo would understand politics. I don’t understand politics. How do I write a character that does?

Worse than that, I keep coming back to a Dune-esque sort of dynastic economy and politics. Shit. Hello, bite. You look like more than I can chew. But I’ll roll with it for tonight since I’ve alread pissed away too much time to start over and pretend this didn’t happen.

Duoroo has been cast off by her family. There is an official casting-off process whereby a dynastic family recognizes the abundance of heirs and seeks to mitigate the backstabbing by limiting the playing field to the top tier. Cast-offs are not allowed to ‘take the thrown’ once cast off. They become safe from the dangers of being in that upper tier. If a family were to exhaust it’s upper tier—unlikley—then it would be like a king losing his only born son: it would get messy.

And that’s whats happened or will happen or is being planned (by someone). That someone is having Duoroo collected for manipulation. Despite being cast off now, Duoroo had been part of the first tier—maybe quite close to the top even—but had scorned the life or her family’s business because of her blindness. She forced her family to cast her off so she could be safe. And now, because of that unusual circumstance, someone is looking to exploit that angle.

They’ll exploit it by having in place a plan to kill a larget number of that upper tier in bulk. Something unlikley enough that few would accomodate that sort of thing in their scheming, so someone is the only one to know why Duoroo is still important. Duoroo figures it out though—quickly. She convinces Kraite of the truth and enlists him to help. I suspect the large number of people being killed would be leverage for Kraite. He’s a bounty hunter but not ruthless. Maybe it will be some public event likely to result in innocent deaths as well. Maybe Mallen’s.

This public event could provide a countdown as well as a ‘end of the world’ type disaster.

I must have more than just playing the game however. I must have a real reason for this somebody to be motivated. There must be a payoff more substantial than crown or title. Or the crown must come with a clear personal or professional payoff—maybe just revenge? I hear revenge is motivating.

If I’m going to have politics I might as well have a motivator I don’t understand too!

426 words

I had a nice visitor yesterday. Of the many of you who arrive here trying to uncover the mystery of how many years or months 1000 days happens to be none of you so far has bothered to click the link in that post where I recommend some interesting reading of my work here on 1000 Days. A birthday gift to me from Anon.

My thanks. Because of your reminder I read many of the posts you read and am reminded that I used to do more creative and more coherent work.

I like the four characters of the Shanty (ah’Taconschientee) posts. The deserve better care and feeding. A better world. And a better life to live. I’m not sure I’m prepared to give them those amenities however. I’m not sure I’m ready to write a three-plot interwoven as these need. I need a solid single thru-line executed start to finish. I think I should let Tritti, Johnka, Brother Gane, and You cool their heels a bit longer.

What will I write this week? Who comes out of the mothballs?

184 words

Yesterday I tried to clean up an old bit of script, but spent more time than I should have tweaking and remeniscing. Noticed too late that whatever it was I had was not the complete story I’d written back in college. The distance of time helped me see how poorly I’d learned the screenwriting craft at that point and how dull the dialog had been. I can’t decide if I should move on, novelize, or edit the short piece. They all have different educational appeals.

I don’t have to decide now. All I have to do now is write.

Zhirvon propped back the shotocar pelt he slept under and slipped his feet onto the ox-blood floor. Years past, after he was a young man but before he was old, he decided never to linger in a warm bed on a cold morning. He sifted a few nut sized coals from the grey ashes of his overnight hearth and layered on shaved pine. Heat emerged slowly so he stepped outside to relieve himself—naked.

Whenever he wasn’t reticent in a conversation he was brusk. When he wasn’t brusk he was inadvertantly rude. Chelly would cling to his arm and pat his chest at the end of an evening with friends apologizing, “He has a warm heart though, my Zhirv.” He would form a practiced smile. If they had just spent the evening drinking and eating with his brother, Marken would reply, “Someday maybe it will warm up his tongue.” And they would laugh and he would form a better practiced smile. The truth Zhirvon knew was a fierce heart. An often angry heart. A sometimes vile heart. A demon heart he kept tied down with the flimsiest cord and a practiced smile. His warm feet melted frost while steam rose from an unending stream of urine.

Zhirvon was a lean muscular man who would be gaunt in a few more years. His once taunt skin slackened. His ribs easier to count. His knife hand trembling unless the whole arm moved. A thoughtful Zhirvon appreciated these changes and accomodated for them in a fight. A willful Zhirvon despised them and fuel his anger with them. His skill, his training, his experience were no longer equal to the task he’d set himself against, but maybe his bitter heart could be tapped. Maybe the vileness he’d stoppered all these years could garner him his revenge.

402 words

I think I’ll rework something this morning. Be right back…

Did this elsewhere and it will take some time to transfer to plain text. Hold tight.

The four day stale snow covered the land like a tattered blanket or corpses on a battle plain. Overnight chill froze the horse-trod slush in the roadway and crusted the still white lumps under the shadowed firs. The sun may have risen or it may still be mired in the horizon. Either way, grey clouds had hammered the earth shut in a dim lit coffin.

Back from the empty serf-road Jora squated to see below the branch-line. A small dark-metalled dagger appeared in her hand. If you hadn’t been just hovering over the narrator’s shoulder you’d be dead now. Jora ranged ahead of her three sisters scouting. Sometimes she waited for them to catch up and sometimes she traveled back to them. She waited.

In this weather Jora’s ears picked out voices in the distance with preternatural ease but the clarity cheated distances and timing. Jessa, Jemma, and Jia arrived later than Jora anticipated. Jia clomped down the road because she just didn’t give a shit. She could kick your ass if needed too.

Jora scowled at Jia. The youngest sister gave Jora the finger but hushed her tromping and jumped the ditch to join the other three gathered in the grass and frost.

Jessa, the oldest, gestured for Jora to share her scouting.

Jora shrugged a silent ‘all clear’.

“Then why are we being so fucking quiet here?” asked Jia. Jemma elbowed her. Jia replied with, “Cut that shit.”

“Maybe the gypsies will share their coffee. Right now you need to hush,” Jessa said, “How far to the camp? I’ve been smelling their cookfires for a while now.”

“Just over the hill. They’ve split the road and put up a shop or two. Jia can get her coffee and some food from what I saw,” Jora said.

“Strange. They know something we don’t?” asked Jessa.

“Must.”

“Or they don’t know something we do,” said Jemma.

Jia snorted. “Let’s just get something to eat. I could have eaten last night’s rabbit myself.”

No one looked to Jessa for leadership, but they waited for her assent. “Fine, but don’t stuff yourselves. Be alert. We should have found Crotter by now. And you,” Jessa tapped the hilt of Jora’s concealed blade, “eat last and keep watch.”

“I’ll second,” said Jia.

If you’re thinking this is a trap then you’re thinking the same as all four women, but they’re hungry and confident. And gypsies are fun.

When I first started stacking up girl progeny like a squirrel packing acorns away for a rainy day I tried to read feminist writings on the web. Not classical writings or vetted writings or even popular writings, just the random rants of bloggers who happened to be women and happend to be upset about something. I say ’something’ not because I can’t recall what it was they were upset about, but because I was never sure inthe first place. They all seemed angry and eventually I stopped reading their anger.

I’d been looking for idea on how to raise my kids more gender neutral. To give them a person’s perspective of the world rather than a gender’s. I’m sure I didn’t look hard enough because I didn’t find what I was looking for until yesterday. Kinda.

In two instances related only by temporal proximity I did a bit of thinking. The first was a status update I made on Facebook: “Thanks to Kathryn Bigelow none of my children will ever be the first woman to win Best Director”. The other was a pair of articles about DC Comics’ character Wonder Woman and the bio of the author of each (http://www.digitalfemme.com/journal/index.php?itemid=1272).

So the first bit is tongue in cheek in a way designed to make others think. Most went for the straight up interpretation that I am just commenting on the hoard of girls I’ve got headed out into the great wide world here in the next several years. That’s fine. I, however, thought down the path of why-are-we-still-having-to-make-these-distinctions and how-long-will-it-be-before-we-don’t-?. That and I hadn’t ever spent much time considering that one of my daughters would be a lead creator. Anyhow, thinking.

The second instance got me thinking less about how Wonder Woman is a man’s tough princess, a madonna-whore, and more about author CherylLynn’s bio. I haven’t a clue what a “warrior woman” is or how one would go about being a “bad-ass mamajama”. I don’t know what it means to be either of those things because I’m not entirely certain what it means to be a warrior or a bad-ass. I’m not an aggressor. I’m not taking life by the balls and making it what I want—never have. This isn’t a plea, just an observation. It’s the thing (lack of thing) that makes understanding my friend’s desire to ride his bike for 100s of miles in a week difficult.

My personality aside, I can see why someone would want to plunge into icy water first, dance without inhibition, or generally suck the marrow of life from the bones of the world (metaphorically of course) and I want some of that for my children.

Maybe someday I’ll feel more shame that I never write on weekends anymore. I’m certain were I to go back and check I’d find that those days’ contributions to 1000 Days to be below the average quality I maintain here. I cling to the absurd notion that Saturday and Sunday mornings allow for sleeping in. They don’t.

Place absurd clinging here.

As for the current weather, I’m not buying it. Gray, raining, and warm? I don’t think so. This ain’t Seattle.

I’d like to thank Kathryn Bigelow for fucking it up for all of my daughters. Yet another woman based hurdle they won’t break. Cheers Kat! What was up with Sandra Bullock? She appeared embarrassed to win—genuinely upset. I thought it was nice Jeff Bridges calmed his nerves with some pharmaceutical or another. Jim undoubtly curled up in his $100 bill quilt crying himself to sleep.

This was not my plan.

http://gorillaartfare.com/2010/02/dont-finkfeeeel/

She was naked. And halfway in and halfway out of a marble wall.

I was a dog, another species unable to appreciate her beauty. Except I wasn’t. I was as human as she appeared to be.

Of the three of us, her, me, and the marble wall, only the wall responded to her prescense. It swirled and splashed with pastel illustrations of feathers, fronds, and joyous bongols. These happy illustrations radiated from the rose-like flower blooming between her pale breasts. I wasn’t sure if she caused this or if the wall volunteered. Many of the sinuous petals looked to have smiling faces.

Except for her hands, which she tucked modestly between her legs, a crisp angle defined the intersection of her body and the plane of the wall. Her hands though, more her fingers…fingertips really, extended vaguely into a shadow beyond the surface of the wall’s reality. In that deeper world she might have perched on the cusp of a tall tower like a gargoyle or sat on the prow of a fantastic sailing ship. She wore short brown hair.

The body and face of a maiden with the eyes of a matron.

“I am asking you a question,” the maiden said.

She asked me a question? Or will ask? “Huh?”

“I will be asking you a question. You may choose to answer yes or no,” the matron clarified.

“But in the end I’ll be doing whatever you wish of me?”

“Of course,” answered the heart of a crone.

I read all of Elmore Leonard’s rules for writing yesterday. I’d not read them all together until now, but seen a couple here and there. I don’t recall nine but one of the ten stuck with me overnight: don’t begin with weather. I can’t recall if I’ve ever opened with weather here on 1000 Days. Sure I’ve opened with environmental conditions: raining, wet, snow, cold, dark, misty. I don’t think those have ever been elevated to actors within the landscape. I’m going to give it a shot this morning.

I expected to call up a thunderstorm, but seem that forest fires dominate my thoughts. Today that’s weather. Hopefully I can pull this off without using the words licking or raging or roaring.

Flames licked the base of a pine tree while the frontline raged on the other slope; the main fire had roared through here earlier in the morning. Just kidding.

Downwind, the smoke taints the light pale orange. Sarah hooks a grocery bag of photos over a pointy lump of something and latches the backglass of her Toyota 4Runner. The cave-like atmosphere is both novel and frightening. When she pauses for moments like this she wonders if somehow she won’t make it to safety by the span of time she’s wasting right now. She envisions her escape barred by a toppling flaming Ponderosa and her 4Runner skidding to a sideways halt in the dirt road. Surely she could throw it into 4-wheel drive and skirt the main trunk.

She realizes she’s gasping from loading the truck and from breathing the smoke. She goes inside one more one-last-time to seek cleaner air and mementos. She finds neither.

Back outside she grabs the extra propane tank and vents it open. Twenty bucks is worth not coming home to a perfectly sound house with a scortched hole near the grill. Should she lock the doors?

“Fuck it.” She leaves the doors unlocked.

And there I didn’t really write about weather or fire. By the second line I had a character. Hmmm.

I have this title that came to me from somewhere some time ago. I associate it with a scene from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator movie in which the gladiators walk through dripping red strands of cloth. The scene is handled ambiguously enough that I’ve never been sure if I should recognize this event as some traditional blessing of the gladiators or just a bit of scenery dipicting life in Rome not having anything to do with the arena—just a shortcut passageway to the fight. Maybe I should know. I don’t though. I’ve not bothered to research it as I’d rather not know.

Why this scene and this title are linked in my thoughts escapes me. The one overt linkage between the two is the most tenuous. That connection is the spark but not the flame. Ambiguity fires my title.

My title is not ambiguous. My title is susinct and specific. My title is the kind which immediately tells you all about the story. Except it hasn’t told me all about the story. The story is the part I can’t figure out.

In an expansive 100-character high fantasy trilogy this story would be the subplot not incorporated. It’s the novella or short story collected posthumously in a poorly sold compendium—if it were written at all. Lately I’m wanting to write the commoner’s story: not the princess, not the foundling, not the dragon killer. I want to know how the nobody baker, the unattractive barmaid, or the sallow footman contribute to the dismisal of the ultimate evil. And not in the heroic caught up in the whirlwind of important people way, but in the quiet unspoken almost uninteresting way.

This Dyemaker’s Conjecture.