Fist fights with God

Hey cats & kittens. So I actually promised I'd post Sunday and here I am. This is also the last amount of prepared chapter rewrites I have to share with you. I'm currently working on chapter 20 of To Slice The Sky, and I'm about halfway done. I thankfully don't have much in the way of work getting in my way.

To preface tonight's selection, it's the official meeting of the novel's, "Big Bad," that's made some physical appearances in The Raw prior to this meeting. It so far has not been popular in regard to content, and I definitely kinda slacked in tying things together well. I more wanted to be done and get over with the chapter, and I feel it suffered for it. I'll have to go back over this and give it a little smoother transition and more of an ominous tone. I feel I breezed over this important moment, and I've been wanting it to really pop and shine. I mostly wanted to just get it over with because this chapter has been what's hung me up 2 years in a row from completing this project and it just needs to be done. I'm planning on one more pass before it goes off to the editor anyway, so I'll tighten it up then.

I'm just excited that the end is finally in sight, and the look of it is way different than how it started. You've been enjoying yourselves, right? For my beta readers that know what the rough draft looks like, I imagine it's a vast improvement.

In other writing project ideas, my NaNoWriMo book, Suicide Queen, has been coming together in my notes. I've got a good idea of the direction I want to go, but it seems very subdued for the genre it's going to be. It'll come out differently in the mix, and I'll have to work not to impede myself. It's weird that writing a story really is helping to create a living, breathing, thing, and watching it outgrow your own weak aspirations.

I've never gotten the people so timid to get started writing because they don't have a good enough idea. It's not about having a super original idea, it's about just having an idea. There's so many different forms of storytelling out there that as long as you tell it in your voice, that's all that matters. To quote Neil Gaiman's Sandman, "Trust the story, not the teller." The story is always going to be there at the core, but the changes are with the person that tells it.

I've always loved sitting around a table, trading stories, especially ones that involve more than one person in the circle. Tag teaming stories, trading off different perspectives all Rashomon style, the inevitable, "You're telling it wrong." I live for that stuff. Humans share stories and that's how we pass on the wisdom we've gained.

Well, enough beating myself off about writing stuff, here's a completed chapter that needs more work but has still been hit with the rewrite train.

DOG!

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Dude, I would have like three times as many posts on this blog if I posted consistently.

So, what's up neglected yet faithful readers? I have a couple chapters that I want to share still, and I really want to hold myself accountable to post on Sunday again. It's not like I'm doing anything with my time on Sunday anyway. Well, nothing that requires me to not be at a computer.

I've been unenthused to write just out of being exhausted for no reason whatsoever. It's not like I have kids to sap my energy, but working in an office and doing classwork has been leaving me with a strong desire to just switch off my mind, relax, and float down stream.

The downside is that it doesn't afford me much creative juice to forge on ahead in the novel this close to the end. But I'm still determined to have Version 2.0 complete by the end of the year. NaNoWriMo is going to be a serious obstacle, and I'm also feeling worried going into the challenge if I'm going to be successful at it.

So, I'm just going to dive right in. I believe we're on chapter 18 now. Beginning Act 3. The heroes are returning home to cross the final thresholds into manhood. And threshold they meet.

This hasn't won many upvotes, so the chapter probably still needs some work. It was largely unchanged from its original version, and still seems contextually relevant, even though it was inspired by Occupy Wall Street and the suppression of the movement. Especially since the movement is looked at as a failure, opposed to the silencing of the voice of the people, and the turning of the American people against each other again.The heavy handed metaphor of a corporate sponsored rebellion of the slave class that permeates the novel? That's what it was inspired by.

That's another reason why I've been silent for the week. I'm so burnt out on people talking politics everywhere I turn. Especially the partisan answers and how fucking smug everyone's been about it. I worry and fret over the results of this election, because seriously, the damage is going to be great. We're going to be stuck with a tepid fraud or a delusional megalomaniac. I mean, that's not really that different than any other nation's choice, but America has done a pretty decent job of not electing tyrants up to this point. Your feelings on the subject may change depending on if you believe Johnny Booth or Spielberg.

Whatever, we're far beyond the point of voting. A definite line has been crossed in American history at some point, and unfortunately it's as crass as the gang wars of the '90s, all about Red vs. Blue. Once again our eyes are off the real enemies. The slaves fight among themselves to their master's delight. Because at the end of this fight, unless we look at who benefits from everyone salivating at the mouth to lash out at someone who is out of line with their groupthink, we'll end up back in the same old rut.

See, this is why I didn't want to blog.

Just glossing right over it

So here's my dilemma. I finished rewrites on two chapters for To Slice The Sky, and now that I have a moment in between school sessions, I want to blog at least more than a week in a row. So, do I milk out content in a cheap manner over multiple weeks, or do I shove it all down your throat and make it so I have something new for next week?

Well, since you really have no say in this, outside of whether or not you're going to continue reading this blog again, I think I'm going to go for option 1. And hey, what's up gang? Haven't seen you in a while. What has it been, like 28 days? A lunar cycle? Really? Wonderful news!

I just finished session A for my fall semester. Session B is going to run halfway through November, and into NaNoWriMo. I'm all ripped and raring to get started, working on my crime/heist/noir deconstruction, Suicide Queen. It'll be fun writing a story about a trio of outlaws in a Sin City-esque manner. I haven't done an extended Noir piece, but I've always been a disciple of Chandler.

The only thing really on my mind has been politics, but such is life during an election year. This isn't a place for me to indoctrinate you into the reason why anarchy works as a sustainable method, but like any other form of governance runs afoul because of its mitigation through humans. But let's just say, if you're a red or blue, we should be uniting over the fact we're pissed this country is fucked up, and the sides we're yelling at aren't to blame. And that's the most political I'm going to get.

I did a lotta stuff in the last month, and going over it would take a long time, soooo... DOG PICTURE AND STORY TIME!