I'm becoming a writer. Prior to last Wednesday the longest thing I had ever written was 2300 words; an early teenage attempt at a novel. I got to chapter four before giving up on it entirely. Prior to last Wednesday I had finished a single short story. It was just under 2200 words and was dominated by a sex scene - so, you know, the climax was handed to me. I have started and not completed about five or six sci-fi short stories. Rarely making it beyond a page of text.
Since last Wednesday I have been working on another novel. I have twenty one chapters and eight thousand words as of tonight. About two thousand are old essays and poems that I am incorporating into the plot and about one thousand are character sketches, chapter titles and *'s that I have been using to mark divisions within chapters. Considering that, it is still almost three times as long as anything I've ever written in my life, and there are no signs of slowing down.
Chapter four is complete, if subject to minor revision at a later date. For your reading pleasure:
The Dream
Towering serpentine body rising out of the sea, preparing to plow downward to the deck. I could only gape up at it, immobilized by fear.
(optics)
“No!” someone screamed. The snake was gone. “Fire arrows just in case! Volley on my mark! FIRE!” I grabbed my bow, wondering where the draw-cord was. Aha! I thought. This is a boomerang not a bow. Drawing it back across my body I prepared to fling with all the force I could muster.
(humour)
Seeing it sail through the air I felt satisfied. A hand clasped on my shoulder as it finally splashed in the distance. “You idiot,” he said. “Those were the drugs.” I nodded and smiled, still satisfied. They threw me overboard.
* * *
Our band of mighty warrior-sailors were back in the game, traveling through a cave. Here, stone like chocolate pudding, dark brown and smooth ripples, morphing easily into the floor. Deeper in! I knew not what we sought, deeper though I went. Brown puddings turned to ice, blue glass, rippling until it shattered; jagged edges, array of knives.
(marmalade)
Great, tall oak doors with brass handles all across my field of vision. Through! On deeper in, past the gate, I knew not where to. Into a hall, towering high, Dutch architecture. Who are the Dutch? I wondered.
“Be quiet, they are the Dutch,” he said, and I accepted.
Through the hall, my warrior-band long gone and forgotten. A smaller gate, the back way. Through! Onward and downward, I knew not where. Stairs down, red cloth and a reflecting pool at sunset. A reflecting pool outside the hall of the Mountain?
“It had been an opera hall you know. The stage was the favorite place for men of the evening (Aye, men, not ladies) to laze about their business. They never made much money.”
(haze)
Silence. I pleaded, please silence, turn down that glare, I beg you. I’m sleeping you know. Sleeping and dreaming, I know; Should this be? I should sleep – I must be awake.
* * *
