Category: Excerpts

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#NaNoWriMo: Biting and Sucking are fun, Oooh yeah.

i bite

Just a quick post today. By tomorrow, you’re going to actually know where the story is going for, like, the first time, and we’re going to talk about that, but for today? Quick post.

You’re writing crap.

Yes, you’re biting that elephant to death, but in another very real way you are, as the kids say, “biting it.”

And that’s okay. There’s a freedom and joy in the first draft, because the stuff you’re writing, you’re writing for YOU, and if it sounds horrible the second time you read it, that’s fine, because at least during the process of getting it down on paper, it was awesome.

It brought you joy.

It was play, and sometimes the result of play is dirt and stained clothes and sand in your bathing suit area that will take a week to get out.

We have a lot of sand in our bathing suit area right now, don’t we?

So… let’s see it! (Not the bathing suit area. Eww.) Hop into the comments and trot out the most overwritten chunk of text you’ve dumped on the screen so far. I wanna see!

And, just to prime the well, here’s one of MANY POSSIBLE EXAMPLES from Adrift.

The Drift — what little of it I could see of from our vantage point — was the same as I remember: a vast patchwork quilt of mismatched metal; multi-millennia-deep piles of ships welded into a moon-sized satellite that predates any written history to which anyone from Caliban has access. It’s unsteady orbit – the source of its name – circled an otherwise unremarkable star on the border between what the Concordant Navy called ‘controlled space’ and the Remnants; a location that attracted any number of unsavory Remnant species, vagabonds, vagrants, traders, beggers, mercenaries, killers, crime lords, and those too unlucky to get away from them. It was a huge, dead, beast’s carcass infested throughout by millions of parasites and scavengers.

I picked this paragraph at random.

Just… for fun… try to count the times I switch between present and past tense. And forget about all the needless exposition. Sweet jumpin’ Jesus.

In edits, that paragraph is going to be like… one sentence.

But right now, it’s WORD COUNT, baby, and more importantly, I had fun writing it.

I had fun.

Writing for a living is a fine and good thing (in one way or another, that’s what I do, even at the day job), but the key thing to remember is we love this.

And it’s fun.

And we get to do it all month long.

Seriously: I am so fucking happy right now.

Even when I read that paragraph.

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Adrift, part 1, Twitter-edition, now in one file

Couldn’t follow it well enough on Twitter (or, come to that, Facebook)?
Couldn’t follow it on a newsreader?
Couldn’t go to the website and read it one month at a time?

Fiiiiine.

Just for you (yes, you), I used my infinite internet powers and commanded Tweetbook to grab the whole “part one” one of the Adrift story and munge it into a single, somewhat ugly PDF. (Said document will, I should point out, effectively act as my outline for my NaNoWriMo project this year.)

The page numbering is screwed up, and it ain’t pretty, but it’s all in one place, all one story, in all it’s original Twitter-formatted glory, for your leisure scanning.

Adrift: Tweet-Book. Assume the CC license for this version is NC-SA-Attribution. Don’t be a dick.

Enjoy.

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I’ve been Adrift for seven months

Almost eight months, actually. That’s how long I’ve been writing my twitter-based bit of serial fiction and collecting/archiving it over on the “Adrift” blog. That amounts to just a bit over 200 posts, more than a few shootings, several deaths, lots of questions of loyalty and trust, one bloody zero-g amputation, and a friend left behind.

The story has proceeded largely without planning — one day’s post might get me thinking about what would happen next, and that might give me ideas for the next couple days (which, sometimes, I even remember when it comes time to post something the next day), but that’s about as far as it goes — when I comment on my main Twitter page that I’m excited to find out what happens next, I’m not self-marketing or being disingenuous — I don’t know what’s coming, and I am absolutely enjoying the story as much as any other reader (some of whom have been even more enthusiastic about spreading the word about the story than I have).

So I was a little surprised, yesterday, when I realized (about two hours after posting my update yesterday, then re-reading it), that I’d finished the first story — the first ‘book’, if you will.

It ended like this:

I tap in two messages, and send them in opposite directions. The first reads, “I am coming.” The second, “I am coming back.” Then I tell De to jump.

As I said, it was only thinking (and talking with Kate) about it later that I realized I’d written the last scene of the first story – the one properly labeled “The Drift” – and that we were moving on to the Next Thing.

Let's just see how bad it can get.
Let's just see how bad it can get.

What’s the Next Thing? I’m no more sure of that than I have been with anything else pertaining to this yarn, but I know I’m not stopping any time soon. There’s a lot more story there, and a great deal of distance for Finnras to go (both forward and, possibly, down). Verily, we shall see. S’possible I might even write the whole first story up in proper novel format, using the twitterfiction as an outline, but who knows. In the meantime, I have a story to write. Heck, I’ve already posted the first entry in the next story arc, so it’s not as though there’s a big cliffhanger to wait on. Plus, I’ve got some revisions on Hidden Things to finish up, and a not-totally-exciting trip this weekend on which to work on them; there’s plenty going on. In fact, there always is; aside from the rather arbitrary moment marking the end of one arc and the start of the next, there really isn’t much reason to even stop here for this bit of reflection and naval gazing.

Except for the obvious; I’ve been doing this weird thing for awhile, and sometimes it’s worth pausing to see if you even know what you’re doing, or if you’re enjoying it.

I don’t.

But I sure am.

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Nekkid

A few weeks ago, I was explaining to Kate why I prefer to keep the shades down in my office when I’m in there. People can look in… I can’t see them… et cetera.

“It all boils down,” I said, “to the Old Nekkid Guy story.”

“The what?” she replied.

I just stopped and stared. I thought everyone knew the Old Nekkid Guy story. I for damn sure thought my wife knew it.

Apparently not.

So I went digging around my old blog archives… and… nothing. Then I went digging in my really old blog archives.

THEN I went digging in my really, really old blog archives. You know the ones I mean: dusty html files with no css code, from the two or three months in early 2001 when you were using Blogger, but Blogger was so overwhelmed with new users (cough*Twitter*cough) that you finally gave up and just installed MovableType v0.7 on your website and started over? Yeah, those old blog archives.

And, finally, I found the story.

Which I will now share. Again.

Because I think it’s important for everyone to have something humbling sitting out there on the internet.

So, I was checking out some stuff online tonight (“Why, that’s amazing, Doyce… that almost never happens.” — shut up, you). To do this, I have to sit at my computer; to sit at my computer, I must face the window in my office, which faces the street. Are we all clear? Geographically oriented? Good.

There I sat, pointing and clicking, muttering to myself about downtown Denver’s ability to completely confound Mapquest, when I heard a group of kids passing by on the sidewalk. Ahh, walking nostalgia. They were speaking in the particular tones used only by teens and people who are talking to themselves and scared of being in alone in the cemetery/empty parking garage/jail — I think high school illicites this behavior.

I was starting to smirk at the conversation, remembering similar ones in my (distant) past, when suddenly I became their new topic.

“Look, there’s a guy.”
“There’s a guy.”
“Is he naked?”
“He looks naked.”
“A naked guy? We can see him.” (Apparently, being naked might render one invisible, I have to check on this.)
(calling out) “Hey naked guy, are you naked?” (nervous laughter)

For the record, I was clothed; wearing gym shorts and no shirt. This is how I normally dress around my house in the summer, and the number one reason I can think of to CALL before coming over.

You can’t see the shorts from the street, though, at least not while I’m sitting at the computer… thus, Nekkid.

(Also for the record, I’m not making the kids sound any more assinine than they did on their own.)

Needless to say, this turn of conversation eliminated my nostalgia. Sure, I’m aware that I’m thirty-mumble years old and thus unspeakably ancient to the teen set, but I still play the wacky video games, I still listen to that rock-and/or-roll, and I don’t want to be the next funny old guy a pack of kids taunts at 10 pm.

What the hell do you shout back? “No?” “Not yet?” “You kids get off my lawn?”

What did I do? Nothing. I kept staring at my old-nekkid-guy screen, clicking my old-nekkid-guy mouse, muttering old-nekkid-guy things about RTD, a frown creasing my wrinkled, whiskery, gonna-die-of-old-age-soon-enough face. I waited for them to keep walking. I prayed fervently for them to keep walking.

Then I crawled back into the house and got a shirt. I’m still wearing it.

I might never take it off.

All weird old guys have that one polo shirt that they wear every weekend for lawn work, beer drinking, and barbequeing, right?

Well, now I know why that happens.

Happy Friday, everyone. Remember to wear your polo shirts this weekend.

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Humorless, page 2

What the heck, here’s the second page of Humorless.

Humorless, page 1 is over here.

“I haven’t said why because I don’t know why,” the ship snarled. “And I haven’t said who because I don’t think there’s a word for them yet, but there are too many people,” the ship paused as though gathering its thoughts, “too many people here. ‘S too tempting for them. My whole crew was wiped out, to the man – and woman – by these things, just because there were so many of us. The crew of -”

“Wiped out, you say?” The city had gone from patronizing to ever so slightly amused. “How, then, did you make it back to us?”

“We -”

“For that matter,” the city continued, “how did you survive?”

“I didn’t, you twat. I died.” The airship paused. Below, the citizens of Bodea-Lotnikk murmured in concern and confusion, a slow sound, like the surf that one suspected might get quite a bit louder as the tide rose, if it was given half a chance.

“You died.” The city, unlike its people, did not sound particularly convinced.

“Yes. Have you not been paying attention? I’ve been trying to -”

“You’re very talkative for a dead man,” the city commented, somewhat dryly. 3

“Well, no.” This actually seemed to set the ship back for a moment.

“I’m… I’m not dead, now.”

“How lucky,” remarked the city. “What about your crew?”

Silence. The people of the city waited. The city itself seemed a bit smug. Finally:

“They’re not dead either,” the ship said, “but that is not -”

“OH, BUT IT IS.” The city shook. “You have come into our sovereign skies, trumpeting fear and creating panic in our streets, and for what? NOTHING.” 4

“I -”

“You,” the city cut in. “Will cease all broadcasts and remove yourself from our sky, or you will be blasted out of it.”

As one (very large) creature, the Bodeans and Lotnikkans exhaled a long oooohhh at this; the promise of fireworks, and not even a holiday.

The Grand Duke knew how to entertain his people.

3 – Deadpan delivery is a particular gift of inanimate objects, even large ones, owed in no small part to the lack of any discernible face.

4 – Not terribly effective, if panic was in fact the goal; most of those listening to the exchange were about as worked up as a crowd watching a tennis match.

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Humorless, page 1

With Hidden Things now revised and sent off into the ether, I have time to start (or resume) other projects. A little bird is whispering in my ear about a couple anthologies that are asking for short stories, but at least for today I’m reacquainting myself with Humorless (a story which, if nothing else, amuses me; sod you all).

Anyway, in honor of it being… (*checks date, then Googles*) ahh… the anniversary of the purchase of the Alaskan territory from Russia, I thought I’d post up the first page of the story.

So… right. Here ’tis; footnotes and all.

Continue reading “Humorless, page 1”

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Bracelet

A snippet of fiction, inspired by today’s one word.

“It’s a bracelet.”

“Well, it’s a bit more than that. It’s a DNA imprint that can be used to identify you to any of a hundred different systems on this ship.”

“It’s pretty.”

“… and it’s pretty, yes.”