don’t like going places.
Years ago, when we first tried to learn how to plan to travel together, we couldn’t agree over how to begin. David begins by choosing a destination and heading for it. I’m a journeyer, not a goer. I want to stop and see things along the way, maybe unexpected things that weren’t planned on, that might throw off the timeline, ruin the schedule, make us miss some goal further along. I don’t care. The goal further along is repugnant if it’s a forced viewing, if I’ve been herded and corralled there, marched to the beat of requirement. I can’t enjoy it or the getting there if it’s all just obligation.
Yesterday after David left for work, I lay in bed, wrapped in the dark blue sheets. The afternoon sun slipped across my feet as I lay and wrote, not a pen, not a movement. I wrote about standing in an alfalfa field, a silent music in those flowers that reaches back to childhood wonder, and being completely alone in the world where I live, where it’s okay to be me. I wrote about how far away heaven is, and how heaven doesn’t matter, because Christ is right here with me. If there were no heaven, I would still be okay, alone with Him. Perhaps the most pitiable creature, but certainly the most complete. I fell asleep writing in the silent space inside of me which, for those quiet moments, reached out all the way to the walls.
When I woke up, the sun was making orange bars on the far wall, cut in long pieces by the tied-back curtains. The white wall reflected the light kitty-corner onto the Quebec maple leaves imprisoned under glass, and they laid their shadows on the blank wall behind, feather-edged and soft. In their dark corner, rarely do I see them do that.
The grey came in gently, like the smudge of a finger. It traced the room as the guitar sat silent on its stand — I heard its strings for a second. Behind it, the warm, rich cello that I haven’t tried to play in nearly a year — the throaty, sweet vibration tickled my inner ear and vanished.
The charcoal silence deepened, and the antique lamp with its sharp tan shade became one with the navy curtains behind, the only difference textures. A bell-shaped block against vertical lines of grey and darker grey. The chair — it was grey before the sun set. It belonged to David’s Grandpa, and came to us when Grandpa died.
I lay in bed for hours, watching silence. It deepened and darkened around me, and I sank into the silent space, so glad to be alone. Knowing I was missing other things, not meeting goals. Disappointing people. Feeling the inherent rawness of a sinner’s collateral inside. Feeling the comfort that goes with this affliction.
Watching silence. Being myself. Yes, it’s disappointing, but I can’t be anyone else.
The smudged-out room took on soft, subtle hints of horizontal light from the partly open door, like my grandparents’ house. The only place where I ever lay awake in the dark in peace. It seems that place came with me, and I’m glad it will stay till my days are numbered out.
I thought about journeys and their endings, and how much I hate writing to reach an ending. There’s no ending to the story I’m telling you right now. The part we call the ending is just the end of the beginning; I wonder what can possibly come of this half-empty exposition, used up in dalliances with shadows and silence.
I’m probably not a writer of books, and I should probably stop trying. I realized yesterday that I can’t write endings because I don’t believe in them. I know that they exist; but they are not real.
In other words: he’s results and you’re process. (You would love U.S. Route 11 through the Shenandoah Valley, PF (pre-freeway)–geologic formations, dinosaur and auto museums, civil war battlefields, and Stuckey’s!)
As for writing books, just do what a lot of fantasy writers do–write multi-volume, never-ending trilogies.
Beautiful. I feel exactly the same way about endings, which is EXACTLY why I gave up attempting to write.
However, should you give up trying to write a book? No, I don’t think so. However may I suggest that you try to write a book the way you write your blog posts? Haven’t finished reading what you sent me due to all the other stuff but also because it takes a lot of brain to read. A lot more than your posts, even though your posts are just as full and beautiful. Reminds me a lot of reading the Silmarilian compared to reading LOtR. I love reading it but it is so deep and rich that I can only do it it in small bursts, whereas I could sit down and read LOtR straight through with no stops. I keep going back and reading a few paragraphs or even sentences of your WIP then having to stop and let it digest because it is so deep and rich, so full of visual and solidity that I can’t process more than a small chunk at a time.
“As for writing books, just do what a lot of fantasy writers do–write multi-volume, never-ending trilogies.”
Walt, that’s pretty much it. The never-ending trilogy. I don’t see a whole lot of other options, since I can’t quit writing.
“However may I suggest that you try to write a book the way you write your blog posts?”
You are the second person to say that to me this week.
The other will be incorrigibly validated by this turn of events.
Thank you so much for your encouraging thoughts. Visual/solidity especially. I’m very bad for skimming the surface in first drafts, and that’s one of the major editing points I always have to tune up.
When I blog, I’m writing aimlessly, purely just writing down my personal thoughts. I find that telling a longer, purposeful story is substantially different. I’ve been considering seeing if I can learn to blend the two by doing an off-the-cuff serial story of some kind and just posting it online for fun.
Oh, you are a different little thing, aren’t you?
I cannot /stand/ stories or books that meander along with no obvious direction. A journey without a destination messes with my need to put things in buckets, discrete and understood. I love Google Maps. I can chart my way there, and I can chart my way back again. It gives me the control that I crave as a man.
I won’t read stories that are so thick because the author was so in love with the character that they couldn’t chart the end from the beginning. The journey may be the thing, but it has to be a finite thing (at least here on Earth).
One of the things that I love about the 19 book Vlad Taltos series is that while they each are a chapter in his life, there’s no doubt where he’ll end up. He’s the burr under the saddle that threatens to undo the world of Dragaera, and he knows he’ll end up dead. He’s killed too many people and pissed off too many powerful organizations, starting with his own. He won’t leave his world alive, and he knows it.
Vlad mentions time and again how he knows he will die because he opposed the Jhereg organization of which he used to be a member in good standing. He uses gallows humor to poke fun at the iron-clad, rock-solid knowledge that his opposition back in the day leaves room for only one ending for him, and it’s only a matter of time; it may be hours or it may be decades, but there’s no escaping the fact that sooner or later, somebody good enough will kill him with a Morganti blade and there will be no coming back from that. And yet knowing the ending doesn’t diminish his journey, it makes it more valuable, more interesting.
The thing is that a 19 book series takes a lifetime to write, and we’re now on book 12. The end, if not in sight, approaches. But the journey isn’t one uninterrupted adventure, it’s a series of discrete episodes, each with its own beginning and ending. And if the character doesn’t know what will happen at the beginning of a new episode, the author does, and that’s a comfort to me as a reader. Vlad opens up some new part of himself and closes down another with each novel. That is something I can get my arms around. The larger journey is made up a series of intermediate destinations, and we’ve seen the character change and grow with each one along the way.
Of course, this fulfills both my testosterone as a man (do things! get things done! plan! execute! action! results!) and my writer’s sensibilities (three acts, climax, denouement).
In short, I love wandering, but don’t believe in wandering without a goal. Without a goal, the wandering is less sweet. Without wandering, the goal is too regimented. Moderation in all things, even this.
That’s how /I/ do it!
LOL I get done video chatting with Grace about how we SF writers are the weird ones, and I come home and step through Scienda’s door to this!
Why, yes, yes I am a different little thing. Thank you for noticing. 
See, the 19-book lifetime project thing doesn’t appeal to me. In keeping with my descriptor, I want to do many different things. At the same time, I’m with you in despising wandery books with no apparent purpose. I’m always looking for it, and always hoping to read something smartly written enough to trick me or to make a straight journey like Vlad’s hugely engaging.
What I don’t like is feeling obligated to write simply to get to the ending or to preach the purpose. I would like it if I could be as surprised in the writing process as I am in the best reads. Sometimes I am. That’s when it’s fun. The rest of the time is an exercise in self-discipline, and I entertain myself by mucking about in technique, which brings an appreciably different result — sometimes good, sometimes bad — than banging out a blog post in half an hour.
That sounds AWESOME. You should do that. Do it now.
I think, however, with your WIP, the thing to do would be go back over it, and read it from a readers standpoint, or even take 1 story from it and blow that up into a fuller more personal story, if that makes sense. Or maybe just wait and see. There is a huge quantity of potential there, and as I said, so much depth and solidity — almost too much for a one story. And it may be that now is the time to finish that and LATER you will be able to go back and pull a more attainable book out of it. I can’t help being grateful that Tolkien couldn’t get his Silmarillian printed first as it was too much to begin with–he never would have had so many in love with his work if that had come first.
“take 1 story from it and blow that up into a fuller more personal story, if that makes sense.”
Yeah, it does, and again, somebody will be incorrigibly validated to see this.
Basically, you guys are giving me an admittedly deserved butt-kicking: it’s compressed the way it is because I don’t really want to spend the time developing it…howEVER, I will have to do what works for the story/ies. If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing without compromise.
Sighhhh. Honest friends. Sheesh. What am I going to do with you guys?
I’ll just have to order some minions from Acme or something.
You REALLY don’t want to order from Acme. They use non-union necromancers. Besides, remember: “Keep it in this dimension–Buy NAFTA!”
Wow, I had no idea, Walt. I’ll have to watch that. But don’t let Karina (and especially Vern) hear about the NAFTA thing. They’ll send the space nuns after you.
“However may I suggest that you try to write a book the way you write your blog posts?”
Bless you, Heather. Bless you.
“I’m probably not a writer of books, and I should probably stop trying.”
Balderdash. This post is evidence to the contrary. and everyone here is captivated by it. Hmmm…now that I think about it, the quote above would be an ending itself. You better start writing and keep writing, thus, no ending.
“I know that they exist; but they are not real.”
Salient point, even if it is your non-ending. They will cease to stand out of anything oneday. They’ll cease to exist, as all endings certainly will. Go ahead and write them then, knowing you don’t have to believe in them. they’re but one stop along the way.
I can’t think of a book offhand where the “ending” was genuinely the end. Don’t you always wonder what the characters do afterward, and sometimes even imagine for yourself what occurs? I do. The only book that could conceivably have a genuine ending is one that ends with nothingness. I’m sure there are some out there, but then, we know them to be false. Hence, there really is no ending, even though a book may end with “the end.” It’s all a fiction.
Go ahead and write, knowing that you speak true. The end is not the end.
“I don’t like going places.”
You’ve obviously never been to Texas…
“Bless you, Heather. Bless you.”
See, I told you, Heather. Incorrigibly validated. I will never hear the end…
“Don’t you always wonder what the characters do afterward, and sometimes even imagine for yourself what occurs?”
Hmm. Sometimes I think I sense it, though I don’t mull it over.
“The only book that could conceivably have a genuine ending is one that ends with nothingness.”
Yes, and we saw how difficult the nothingness thought experiment is one time at your place, I believe.
Oh, and, Texas: I believe it was you yourself who told us Houston is a place to *be*, not really a place to *visit*.
I love journeying. That’s the key.
Ser. Precisamente. Es difícil mantenerlos en la granja una vez que han visto el paraíso.
Pas du tout, ca ici est en fait paradis; rien qu’un charognard pourrait le voir et l’abandonner pour la marécage…et aussi, je pense que ton accent Espagnol est beaucoup meilleur en texte.
Looking at the last two posts, I now understand why Canadian is considered one of the harder ancient languages in the Empire (see “Neither Fish Nor Foul” at Residential Aliens Magazine, February 2010).
{pointing} He started it.
Deploying universal Cat translator:
I shall certainly have to look up Fish or Foul, and compliment Lynn on her fine editorial taste.
Okay, so like my last comment there was posted in a rush during a quick break on a flyby trip to Winnipeg to get my passport while Dave was momentarily distracted by a tuba store.
WALT!!!! And does Frank Creed know about this??
The rest of my review of Walt’s story tomorrow. For anyone who doesn’t want to wait for me to post a link, ResAliens online mag is in the Reading Room.
And by the way, that means it’s good.
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