Hello, here I am, squirreling away a quiet moment while I drop asleep at the office. Rain isn’t here, but it’s due, and I feel delightfully slow and sleepy while it brews.
A couple of weeks ago I project hopped to a story called The Lightning Heartbeat – and mentioned how it wore many masks, tried developing from various angles, but I was closing in on what I felt it should be.
Surprisingly. or not, I am still chewing away at it, despite feeling the end was in sight. And, lo and behold, the story wears another outfit. Same face, for sure, but definitely a different outfit at the least.
It’s been a steady trickle of ink blots expanding on waterlogged paper. Frustratingly slow. Fussy. Not fully formed. A bit suffocating, as well, actually. I can see the end of The Lightning Heartbeat and have written most of it, but it is also causing catastrophic cock-ups leading up to that point where my roads keep veering off and I don’t know whether I’m doing a service to myself in forcing it back on the pavement or not.
Quite a lot of my stories share this process. I can only recall one story – Call of the Tide – that came out in one semi-smooth roll. The others are bits of overprinted paper getting jammed up, and I have to forcibly pull them out of plastic teeth. I’m still really happy with them once they’re out and about, but fucking hell, does it have to be this painfully slow all the time? Or is this normal? And ya’ll are lying are being so fast? I choose the latter for my own bruised ego.
It’s a scene or two away if I could stop being lethargic in the humidity, and the creases are ironing out bit by bit, so I should be somewhat happy even if I am apparently very sluggish now.
For now, anyway, have a couple of poems that cropped up on my radar recently that I adored.
I am too tired to relay much else apart from my well wishes, a promise, and the offering of a couple of small delights.