TRAVERSING Z

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no write

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a bad work project and a trip back east have conspired to keep me from finishing my last difficult scene.  more to the point, though, this is the first time i have been separated from the work since i began, at least for more than a day or two.  we are on day 11 now of being away from home, which is to say away from the work as well as all the other things that go with the concept home.

add to that the always-disconcerting feeling of being in my old home, and the homesickness that provokes, and it is all provoking strange thoughts in me. i am dwelling on the work, of course, but far more sensually than i have been for some time: thinking of it not in terms of plot but of touch and taste and smell, texture, the flavor of air and the public texts and the smell of bodies as they go about their day.  perhaps, then, this is a positive to take from this abrupt rupture–that i have not instantly forgotten the work, but instead can feel it simmering in me still; that its environment is still incubating and growing in my mind.

those are the positives.  the negatives are that it has heightened the sense that i am guessing every writer has, at least every writer who immerses in an imagined world, no matter how fantastic: the sense of committing a kind of emotional adultery with your family.  i should be here, now, but a small part of me is always there; when left alone with my thoughts they drift back there, like sneaking off for a rendezvous; i even jump and act guilty when caught daydreaming.  an act fraught with a vague sense of financial privilege as well: to be able to leave the mundane at will, to transport yourself at the drop of a hat, feels like an extremity of wealth, like winning a lottery but not telling anyone.  when did daydreaming become so fraught?

plot not plot

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back was hurting yesterday from too much time in the chair (writing and working both require being in front of a computer).  and i was starting to bore myself with the writing, never a good sign.  so i switched to paper on the floor, drawing rough “floor plans” of this last set piece and sketching who goes where, who hits who, who flees, who dies.

i did this once before with this same “final” scene; only that time it was in 6 panels and i knew it wasn’t right.  this still doesn’t feel 100% right, but it is much, much closer to right than the last one (i keep writing write for right).

and lo! 6 became 14, which can be said for just about everything in this project.  but we now get from a to z, everyone is accounted for, and some motivation/placement confusion is alleviated.  now i just have to write the effin’ thing.

snippety snip

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so very close to finishing what i am starting to think of as “book one.”  only the end is becoming a four-act extravaganza unto itself; i am in the most foreign position of coming to terms with death in my own work.  people are going to die, there is no way around it, and while i am glowing with pride that my hodgepodge plot should so mirror life, at the same time i find myself steeling for this last spurt of writing much as you would steel yourself for the impending death of an ill relative.  it’s frightening, truly (truly! my newfound word-tic!) that pixels on a screen could feel this alive.

so i am steeling myself, and at the same time dawdling as one would, say, in a hospital waiting room, trimming useless bits and pretending there is a way out of this, that everyone will still be alive comes the end of this particularly troubled night.

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. . . finally he continued on, settling himself at the far end of the hall to wait.  Folding into himself, slowly immersing in his own mind, until the orchestra, the voices, all were muffled, the bodies passing around him mere shapes and colors, and there was only himself and that one door midway down the creamy white tunnel that was the hallway—
And then a finger jabbed him in the arm, and a voice barked, “I want to see Adrian.”
Magnus blinked, coming out of his reverie to see the peaked, glaring face of Louis-Pierre.  “He is not taking audiences,” he said wearily.  “You can come tomorrow night, we will be happy to receive you—”
“Claude is missing,” Louis-Pierre interrupted.
“You are certain of this? He has not merely disappeared, as Eugene did?” He gave Louis-Pierre a stern look. “I have already told you, Louis-Pierre, if Eugene suddenly appears hale and hearty after some country sojourn, and the two of you badgering us and threatening Michel—”
“It is no threat to ask for the service we pay for,” Louis-Pierre interrupted again. “I am telling you, Chevalier: Claude is missing, and this is becoming quite suspicious. We are fully aware that Adrian possesses the ethos of a Greek farmer and thus frowns upon the very culture he was assigned to govern, but like it or not this is France, Chevalier, and you would do well to honor its chosen sons. I only hope your utter ineptitude is in fact an honest expression of your abilities, instead of signalling a law based on bias?”