I reused a file folder that had previously been labeled “Bitter Machines Flash Fiction.” Since the new label didn’t entirely cover the old one, it now says “Health Insurance Flash Fiction,” which is the worst, most boring, and also most soul-chilling and existentially dreadful type of flash fiction there is.
In these days of coronavirus isolation, I already miss my Thursday morning writing routine at Dunkin Donuts.
Rereading some of my scenes in Stars Fall Out lead me to develop the theory that I gave one of my secondary-world characters coronavirus.
Back in November, I set myself the goal of either finishing Stars Fall Out or writing 25 scenes. I did my 25 scenes, but my planned ending has taken many more words than I anticipated. Now, at the beginning of March, I think I’m at a point where I can say I have a month of work left. This time, I’m basing that on the rate at which I’ve been finishing scenes since November, and that I can much more accurately count how many I have left. Here’s a recent excerpt:
“Can’t you make another one?’
“Do you have any idea of the intricacies of creating that particular item?”
In fact, I did not. For all the reading I’d done, for all the notes I’d found scattered in his various places of work, I still had found nothing that explained how his vials worked.
What I had found instead was his attempt at a book of aphorisms—his answer to the widespread popularity he was certain his magic would enjoy. Everyone would look to him not only as the creator of a new magical discipline, but as a fount of wisdom in all areas. It combined abstractions about shadowmantic theory—long paragraphs as winding and impenetrable as a hedge maze—with advice on sleep, diet, and the raising of children. Rise with the sun. Meat only on Athuday. He’d even written rules of etiquette for how to treat oneiromancers once his own magic supplanted theirs: treat them with the bemused kindness one would show an elder, but the distant wariness one would show a strange dog.
“You’ve yet to teach me how the vials work,” I said at last.
I’ve aimed to structure Stars Fall Out as a slow-burning story where everything explodes at the end. I’m still on the first draft, so it’s hard to say whether or not I’ve succeeded on the slow burn. But I’ve definitely reached the exploding part: in the past week alone I’ve written an arrest, an interrogation, a confrontation between two points of a love triangle, and finally, a jail break.
I caught him by the wrist a little over halfway up to the planetarium. High enough up the tower that we had cleared the buildings around us, and we stood before windows bursting with sky and lazy sunlight.
“We’re alone now,” I said. “Can you tell me what this is? Why did you break me out?”
“Break you out? That was an elegant feat of clerical sleight-of-hand.”
“Noted. Why did you do it?”
“Because you had a smart idea some weeks ago, but no way to execute it properly.” He must have noted absolute incomprehension in my expression because he continued on, “The magic test, Tyatavar. Why did you retake it?”
I hit 200,000 words on Stars Fall Out. A fair chunk of this is worldbuilding, brainstorming, deleted scenes, and bits that popped into my head for the next two books. Still, figuring 250 words per page, I’m somewhere between 600 and 800 pages. As my partner eloquently put it:
“Your book is fucking long. You keep fucking writing.”
When I publish this thing, that shall be my blurb. Here’s another quick excerpt, from my main character’s third experience being interrogated by an imperial oneiromancer:
“I’m sure you’ve heard rumor of my three fearsome beasts. They’re in the adjoining room. Waiting. Hungry.”
“Isn’t one of them on a mush diet?”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that fearsomeness and a mush diet are mutually exclusive. I could tell you things about Emperor Lirghala that would freeze your heart, and you can count his teeth at a glance.”
What can you say to a reluctant bride besides “congratulations?” To answer this question for my current draft, I read some terrible wedding advice.
My small town’s Facebook group inspired me to reread Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” for the first time since eighth grade.
The Grammarly browser extension now has a feature that detects tone, or at least attempts to, in much the same, fumbling way that the Grammarly software attempts to do anything.
It labeled a flat-out rant I’d written as having an “appreciative” tone.
It also labeled a draft of my blog post on 2019 as “accusatory.” Take that, 2019!
Apparently, if you have a secret marriage and an emotional affair, relationship math dictates that you will end up with a love triangle. This came about organically with Stars Fall Out after I developed a couple of the characters more, so I think it deserves its place in the story.
But I’ve been wrestling with resolving it in a non-melodramatic way that deepens the already-existing conflict and doesn’t hijack the rest of the story, kill my ending, or kill my characters, who already have future book storylines.
I’m less confident in this excerpt than in most of the other excerpts I’ve posted. Apparently, it’s tough to write a balanced, reasonable jealous rage.
But he didn’t stop. He hauled himself through streets the color of winter’s muddy death at the hands of a vicious spring, and he came to The House by the Sea Inn.
It loomed up at the top of the hill, a fortification against everything he needed to know and didn’t want to know. His heart thudded in his chest from the exertion of the hills, and only grew heavier, faster like the chugging of machinery.
No one had told him this was where the floppy-haired glass merchant was staying, but he’d pieced it together. The last job of the Rill Ryonin bakery had been a king’s ransom of rolls. They had been sent here, and Tyatavar had been the one to make that delivery.
And after that, hours after that, they’d leaned together against the wall of the locksmith’s shop, their faces lit by firelight that could never touch them.
He had been there with her there in the thick of things, where a son-in-law should be.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-bilingual/201108/emotions-in-more-one-language
This article discusses the myth of bilingual people reverting to their native language when expressing strong emotions. From what I’ve read, it’s not necessarily untrue that this happens, but there’s more nuance than automatically reverting to one’s earliest language, and more variables than time.
A couple quotes I found interesting:
When a childhood in one language lacked affection or was marked by distressing events, then bilinguals may prefer to express emotion in their second language.
When bilinguals are angry, excited, tired or stressed, their accent in a language can reappear or increase in strength. In addition, they often revert to the language(s) in which they express their emotions, be it their first or their second language, or both.
I read the article as part of my research for Stars Fall Out, and it’s not totally applicable in my case, since I’m writing a multi-lingual character who starts slipping out of an assumed accent. But this is still useful information to have it mind.
Stars Fall Out takes place in a small coastal city dominated by the most prominent university in the northern provinces. The city is under occupation by a vast empire with extensive resources, including people with magical abilities. The catalyst for the bulk of the book’s events is the creation of a new form of magic by one of the university’s professors.
This snippet comes from a scene in which Tirsan ends up listening to that professor’s conspiracy theories. While the professor doesn’t convince him to join him, he does end up being the last straw for Tirsan, who soon writes to his grandfather and asks for a change in the terms that will allow him to inherit land only after he’s finished his studies and found a wife.
Tirsan shrugged, and edged down the street a bit again.
Ghordaa only came closer. “If we come into our own magic, finally, that’s one less way they have to control us. But now, my creation is missing. Even my pencils are missing!”
“Your—you think he took your pencils?”
“Yes! Even those! But it makes sense. How am I supposed to do work of the mind without proper tools?”
