writing

Sunday writing

So this kind of got away from me, or maybe I never really had a handle on it in the first place. It’s free-writing, based on a newspaper headline and a drawing from the New York Times book review pages. So it’s almost guaranteed to not be completely coherent. But it’s what I wrote today, beyond the morning pages, which I’ve been doing consistently since the end of January.

If they had killed her, she didn’t remember it. She couldn’t let herself think about that now, anyway, not with the portal behind her closing — no, wait, she’d blinked, and now it was closed — and the next portal not scheduled to appear until she didn’t know when, or how, or where. She didn’t even know what this city was called, much less where the portal had dumped her inside of it. Where were the street signs, the people? It looked so different than it had just a minute ago — not that a minute ago it had looked any less strange. The thing on her belt, what she thought Leo had called the actopulse when he’d first hooked it there and shoved her through, that was blinking; and when she looked at its readout, the red flashing numbers painted across its dented and silvery face, it seemed to suggest she’d traveled forty years into the future. Which, okay, sure, fine, she could believe that. She’d seen a lot weirder happen since she’d bumped into Leo that morning, and time travel at least seemed plausible enough as far as explanations went. But then, was this still the same place, that crazy city that Leo had stranded her in when he pushed her through that first portal? Because then where were the people? And not just the two who had been chasing her, had opened fire just as she’d —

Damn, why couldn’t she remember? It was these portals, or maybe just this last one, that had Swiss-cheesed her brain. She’d liked to give that jerk Leo a piece of her brain when — no, wait, of her mind. He’d probably wanta piece of her brain after this, stuffed in a formaldehyde jar on a shelf in his lab, studying what had happened to her, what happened to a person exposed to the portals, the actopulse — if that even was what he’d called it. And why couldn’t she remember? Had they killed her? She couldn’t be here, forty years later, if they’d done that, could she?

Okay, she thought, brain’s still a little foggy after that last jump. I know I opened the portal to get away from those two guys, the two in black with the weird guns. And they’re not here, so at least that much is good. She just needed to figure out where she was, and —

Maybe there was another Leo here, too? He’s the one who’d sent those goons after her, right? She was starting to remember, at least a little. This was some kind of parallel dimension, and she wasn’t supposed to be here, like physically not supposed to be here, on a quantum level. And the actopulse didn’t really work worth a damn. It kept her from getting ripped apart, atom by atom, whenever she stepped — or got shoved — through a portal, but it didn’t stop wear and tear on those atoms, didn’t keep her memory safe from that wear and tear, and didn’t help her one bit when parallel versions of Leo tried to have her killed for invading his private kingdom.

Would he still be king of this world forty years later? She couldn’t imagine any world dumb enough to let that happen. She needed to find out, get off the street, and then figure out a way to get home. Or at least get to the next portal, which probably wouldn’t be good for her memory or atoms but which might at least lead somewhere better, somewhere else. She’d keep going till the actopulse, or her brain, conked out.

Tonight, I think I’m going to spend reading Kaleidotrope submissions. Because there ain’t no party like a slush-reading party.

Weekend

I’m not watching the Oscars tonight. I have no problem with anybody who is watching it, or spending what promises to be a very long evening live-tweeting about it, but I pretty much lost all interest in the spectacle of it several years ago.

On Friday afternoon, my parents returned after three weeks down south, in Georgia and Florida, sightseeing and seeing my father’s extended family. It’s good to have my parents back — I was immediately thrown over by them in the dog’s affections, since they brought him toys — but it’s also a little strange getting used to sharing the house again. I love them dearly — they brought me gifts, too — but I do think this needs to be the year I move out on my own again.

Last night, I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which is an odd movie. Jimmy Stewart is very good in it, and it’s understandable why it’s such a classic — recently beating out Citizen Kane as critics’ choice of best movie ever. There’s just a lot to unpack in the movie. Roger Ebert goes into some of it here, but…well, it’s an odd movie, maybe even by Hitchcock standards.

Today, I did the crossword puzzle and finally went back to my weekly writing group. I hope this means I go back to regular writing as well. Anyway, here’s what I wrote off of today’s three-index-card prompt:

As she turned the silver key, a Mask, the same one who’d been following her ever since 85th Street, stepped out of the shadows and leveled his gun at her back. She could hear him pull back the hammer, chamber a round, and even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew his hands were shaky on the makeshift pistol. He wasn’t nearly as good at this as he thought.

“You should leave,” she said, still not turning around. In front of her, the door unlocked. She repocketed the key but she did not open the door; she would not enter the apartment building with this Mask they’d sent to kill her still waiting in the street below. She would not let him see what was waiting just inside. “Put that stupid thing away and go home like a good boy.”

And he was just a boy. She’d seen him lurking on the subway platform, and then failing to look inconspicuous on the train ride downtown. The mask and cowl hid many of his features — she assumed they were supposed to look imposing — but they could not hide the obvious fact of his age, which she pegged at maybe fifteen. At first, she had almost felt insulted, that they’d put a young pup like this on her trail, that they had such little respect for her as a quarry. But then she’d laughed. If the Masks were recruiting this young, they were in more serious trouble than she’d even dared hope. It was ridiculous: the tail, the gun — everything. She wasn’t going to let some teenager interfere with the ritual that was awaiting her inside.

As he pulled back the trigger, she started to reconsider. He was just a boy, but he might also be a true believer, and he might very well prove to be dangerous, even if just by accident. This wasn’t a panicked shot. She’d refrained from showing her true powers deliberately so not to spook him. This was deliberate; she could sense that now. He was nervous as hell but he believed in what he was doing. He was, after all, a Mask. And she, after all, was the enemy. The bullet speeding even now towards her back wasn’t a message or a warning or an accident. It was an execution.

She’d maybe read the kid wrong, but she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. She threw open the building’s front door and the let the darkness swell out into the street.

That, plus a little bit of cleaning, was my weekend. Seriously, I am no that exciting. Did I tell you? I’m not even watching the Oscars.

Friday

I knew I wasn’t going to finish the short story tonight, so I gave myself permission to take the night off from it completely. I’d rather return to it again in a day or two with fresh eyes, eager to finish, then struggle for hours and still not be anywhere near the end. There’s an end in sight, I think, but I didn’t want to rush to get just a little bit closer but still not there.

So I watched an episode of Bunheads instead.

I did finish a couple of reports on political psychology today and do my morning pages, so there’s that.

Thursday has Friday-envy

I tried to sleep a little late this morning, a decision I actually came to a little late this morning — however much I try to fit the impulse to hit the proverbial snooze alarm — but it didn’t quite work out as planned. I thought I’d get the 8:15 train, which gets me to the office a little later than I like, but which means another hour of sleep. But I wound up on the 7:37, which is just slightly later, but also kind of annoying. It doesn’t go to Hunterspoint, but to Penn Station, where the subway’s less fun, and this morning it crawled along a snail’s (or Long Island Railroad’s) pace. Plus I had to stand.

Tomorrow, I think I’m going to either be on the 7:20 again or oversleep properly.

Meanwhile, still writing. Tonight, the single page of short story was a lot harder to produce, but I finally managed to pull something together. And it’s something that actually moves the story forward in a good way, so there’s that. I’m going to give myself permission to not finish the story tomorrow, since I don’t think that’s possible, or even advisable. I don’t know if that will extend as far as not working on it at all tomorrow evening. But it’s pretty clear this isn’t going to be done for a February 1 deadline.

Speaking of which, how in heck did it get to be February already?

Wednesday

We had a team meeting this morning all about digital products like e-books and companion websites.

And I did some writing, both in the morning and the evening. The short story is progressing, I think, but I’m increasingly convinced I’m not going to make Friday’s deadline. I’ll continue to try, but I’m currently at 15 pages, a few hundred words shy of 4,000, and I think it’s going to need more than just another page or two. And that’s just to be finished, not polished. That might be better, since I want to finally submit something to the Online Writing Workshop — a month and I’ve done nothing there — but I’ll need to bring it to some kind of conclusion either way.