As I mentioned, I am in the midst of the tenth draft of Anori.
Which means that I go back and forth between feeling like a writer – at the exact center of a marvelously spinning wheel with moments and experiences flashing out in wonder – and a monosyllabic imbecile who blathers on about nothing. Or both at the same time, the wheel spinning out blather.
Well, at least I wrote this. It feels like something, even if it isn’t.
Lanny is a delivery driver and talks incessantly about cleaning the roads of debris to his girlfriend, Vera. He talks about all of the blown-out tires, the plastic and metal of every description, the roadkill in all their decaying stages, all of it dissolving into the pavement, grass and bushes, all of that needing to be cleaned, sorted and dumped.
He then talks about their apartment, how they need to clean the kitchen and cupboards, get everything in order. Vera takes the comments as an attack and tells him she is going away for the weekend. He throws her suitcase down the hallways. She screams at him and he hits her and leaves. He comes home to find her drowned in bath
Gustave Flaubert famously coined the term mot juste. The idea of finding the right word and avoiding synonyms to vary the language was famously seized upon by Ernest Hemingway in his autobiographic tale of boozing and writing in Paris, A Moveable Feast.
I always appreciated the idea and tended in that direction but have come to wonder if it is more so mot paresseux (lazy), just sticking in the word out of habit, rather than some kind of idealization. I still prefer the idea to Mot SAT, but it’s something to consider.
I’m always in a rush to get my characters in place so they can get to having a conversation about what’s on my mind. I don’t paper the walls.
I don’t allow them to find a spot, to gauge the room. In they come and away they go. I’ve got to work on that.
As a writer of science fiction, I have a bit of a problem. I don’t like science fiction. It’s not exactly that simple – well, it is – but it does make me feel a wee bit wonky at times, given my all-in investment into writing The Cx Trilogy.
The problem with the genre is an all-out investment in building worlds, which just boils down to made-up places (planets), odd-looking creatures and weird names.
The thing of it is that it’s just humans in masks, doing the things we do, talking as we do, interacting just the same. In other words, the Orcs, Darth Vadars and Dr. Dooms are identical to the villains of today, just that it’s playtime. This is not my science fiction. I want people being people, fictionalized, yes, but exactly as we are now.
My book, Anori, begins with Hurricane Sandy in New York City and goes from there, all the way to another planet. Some of the names might be odd – Och, Nico and Pax, for example – but they just signify the change that comes, which is not good, and thus the point of the fucking genre.
So, here’s to changing things. (And to blogging twice in one day, a first for me.)
I’ll tell you where the hell I’ve been! In some tech black hole where the server won’t let me log onto my blogsite, like I’m some kind of fucked-up psycho ranting on about crazy stuff. And even if I am, it’s my right to be like that, goddamn it.
And so, yes, I’m back, at a local watering hole (with wifi that doesn’t screen my flawed genius) sending out a sadly and recently scene from my Anori opus:
“I ever tell you about the Hooded Seal?”
“I know all about that one.”
“The Hooded Seal is born off the coast of your island, Newfoundland, and it has five days to suckle. Then it’s on its own.”
“It’s a tough world out there. We all know that.”
“Five days to figure out how to fish, or else it’s dead. Five days or you’re dead. You know how far it swims, Fitz?”
“Everything is a long way out there.”
“It swims across the Labrador Sea to Greenland, all of that, a thousand kilometers, following along the continental shelf. It eats tons of shrimp and squid.” Dee put on a kettle for tea. “Oh, and it can dive down to 120 meters and stay underwater for over an hour. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“The seals are better than us now?” He swigged from his pewter flask. “Is that what you’re on about? The dogs of the water? They know better and all that?”
“There are eighteen species of seal in the world, everywhere in the world, and they’ve evolved into what they are.” She stopped, expecting Apollo to be behind her and coil through her legs. “Do we care about any of this? I mean, they’re just seals. We eat them or club them or whatever.”
“You joined her animal group. You told me about that.”
“It’s not about protecting seals, Fitz. It’s not even about appreciating them. It’s just awareness, being aware. And we’re not.”
“Maybe we’re not up to such high demands, Deirdre.”
“Why can’t we be better?”
I should be done with my break. I gave myself 15 minutes off, only that, and I’ve already clicked on everything I could click on – all the sports, girls and Fishdom levels – but I scroll through it all again.
My brain, if it was working, is thinking that there has to be another site, something that I haven’t checked, something that will make me move forward perfectly with my day and get back into my writing.
Maybe an inspiring Instagram video? A police chase! How did he survive that crash? A boat flipped upside down. How did they do that? Not the scripted ones. They’re contrived and stupid. What’s wrong with these people? Don’t they have anything better to do? But the animals! Wildebeests fighting back against lions? A pug chasing a bear? Extraordinary! And then, of course, all the pretty girls.
I think I might have an idea for writing. It’s there, in the corner of a thought. I can write now. I have it. Or maybe not. No. I am lost. I know that. I need to go for a walk, anything to get away from my stupidity. Yes, a walk. That’s a good idea. Just give me another five minutes. I’m really almost done.
I had this bizarre idea – which did seem great at the time – of using an extended reference to Friends in my previous draft of Anori. The reasoning for this fails me now. Neither is it compelling nor does it develop character, and I don’t even like the show. Anyway, it’s all out now and here for you.
“I’ve figured you out, Dee.” Dennis, his t-shirt sleeve rolled up over his left bicep, revealing his phylogenetic tattoo. “You think you’re a Monica when you’re actually a Phoebe.”
“What are you talking about?” Dee asked.
“You think you’re a Monica, but you’re not. You’re a Phoebe.”
“Friends!” Saarva explained. “I love that show.”
“Seriously? That is what I’ve been reduced to?” Dee glowered. “A sitcom archetype?”
“You’re a Phoebe,” Dennis reiterated.
“What does that even mean?”
“Phoebe is a dreamer,” Saarva explained. “She sees the world from a different place. Seemingly not all there, but then surprisingly she is.”
“You watch Friends?” Dee demanded. “Why do you watch Friends?”
“Study the white American ways,” he replied.
“What?”
“I’m joking. I’m a Joey, right?”
“The point is,” Dennis continued, “is that you think you’re a Monica, controlling. You think that, but you’re not. You’re a Phoebe, head in the clouds.”
“I’m not a Phoebe!” She snapped back. “If anything, I’m a fucking Rachel.”
“Rachel,” Em laughed. “No.”
“You’re supposed to be Rachel then?”
“I’m nothing like her. I’m a Ross, the science nerd.”
“You can cross gender?” Dee asked.
“Why can’t you cross genders?” Saarva asked.
“I’ll get some wine,” Dee announced.
“That’s such a Phoebe thing to say,” Pax replied.
“They all drink wine,” Em replied. “They all say that.”
I am still in recovery mode from reading bad sci-fi and think on ‘as’-prefix words today, ‘as’ meaning ‘with regard to’. Askance (a look of suspicion), Askew (not in a level position) & Asunder (apart).
Looking askance, askew on the heath, the lamb bleated not to be torn asunder.
Two more scenes have been aborted – still legal in the writing world – from my speculative novel, Anori. My aim for both scenes was to give context, both historical and geographical, for the narrative, but seemed redundant in the end.
Scene One: Dee looked out at the Temple of Poseidon across the bay and thought about how it had been built, the exhaustive excavation of the site, mining the stone and carving of so many columns, dragging them through the brush, and imagined all the people who died to build it.
All of that labor and pain for that, something that was supposed to be permanent. That was the idea, that they just had to level out the ground and pile up stones to prove that their existence mattered. It was odd how important all of this once had been, this civilization with its government, rights and citizenship. And now all of that was gone, the temple now a tourist attraction atop a barren, thorny place.
Scene Two: The ship carried on to Karachi and then Sri Lanka, Dee cataloguing everything all of the shrews, jerboas, sun bears and dholes. The deliveries were at night, trucks waiting, the tailgates toward the edge of the docks, militiamen always there, black SUVs, cranes towering above in a metallic sky.
It was a routine, sleeping much of the day, watching the shore. The Repaks were the hardest, at the end of each month-long segment. What should have been satisfying, an accomplishment, was wrong, the animals taken back to Greenland. The feeling wouldn’t leave her, nor in Aden or Marka, not anywhere on her seven months at sea.
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