Vagabond

This was written a few years ago; poetry being subjective, I'll leave any deeper meaning up to you.

Vagabond

My map is crossed
with thin blue highways
and squiggled yellow highlighter
and fat red interstates.

Do I take the easy ways,
the broad, straight roads
with bright green signs
and regular mile markers
that tick off the time
and make me feel safe?

How can I get lost
with so many things to guide me?

But what if I don’t want to be safe?
What if something tugs me
toward the dust
and the rolling curves
and the green isolation
of the backroads,
toward the towns travelers never see
except when they take the wrong exits

and are lost?

KB, June 2003

Read This!

Head on over to Eagle's Roost, and check out this short story. It's a quick read, and it's some good writing.

Action and Emotion

Yesterday, I raked more leaves fallen last autumn (from the neighbors 'trees) and filled eleven--eleven--trash bags. And that's just from one side of the house. Some people rake yards during the fall; here, with so many trees that sometimes hold their leaves for a long time, such an exercise is futile. I tend to rake during late winter/early spring.

Meantime, despite all that exercise, which often leads to more creativity in the writing process, I've hit a wall. How do I convey great emotion and intense inner conflict without explaining it? Without being over the top and melodramatic and all the things I hate about lazy writing? Actions should speak for themselves, should reveal the subtext, no explanation necessary.

Fiction Arts & Crafts, the Continuing Saga

As promised, here's a page from the cut-and-paste project--which, if all goes well, should be completed this weekend. If you look closely, you can see text printed on the opposite side of the page; the scrap paper contains a previous incarnation of this manuscript.

* * *

I've taken full advantage of this being Saturday, and have slept half the day away. After a week like this last one has been, I fell asleep at my desk here in the home office, woke, stumbled out to the living room to turn off the television (I listen to TV more than I watch it), and fell asleep on the couch--and this was around 9:30-ish last night. I'm a night owl; falling asleep before midnight has to be a violation of the night owl's code. There might even be some sort of fine.

It's almost 12:30 pm on Saturday, and I'm about to get to work on the manuscript again. I should be mowing the yard, thwacking at the tall purple clover and wild onions, but that would mean buying gas for the mower, and that in turn would mean spending a small fortune.

I need to get one of those old-fashioned push mowers, no fuel required.

Crazy Busy

Brought home some work last night, because I didn't want to stay at the office to finish it. Sometimes, there's less stress if I can bring "busy work" (a/k/a paperwork) home where I can at least watch television and be distracted a little from the boringness of it all.

Unfortunately, the reason there was any work to bring home is the amount of work still waiting on my desk. Too many little fires to put out during the day, not enough time to get to the mountain of tasks looming ever higher.

So, not much writing getting done. No cutting and pasting the Dragon novel for the last two nights. That's okay, though, because I've still been writing: I've been dreaming and daydreaming a crucial scene, reworking events, choosing which character's POV will work best, and so on.

I've been getting requests from my 12-year-old reader at the Club; he wants to know if there's anything on the Emerson & Uncle Eban story. Weeeellll, yes and no. About three pages of scribbled material in the little spiral notebook, but not enough for an avid reader like him to become immersed in the story again.

So many stories, so much interruption.

Fiction Arts & Crafts

Wish I had a picture to share of my cut-and-paste project: the result of literally cutting apart the manuscript and putting it back together, with scissors and tape and pieces of scrap paper for the backing.

Maybe I'll take a photo later and post it. There's a lot of scribbled writing in between the portions of neat type, most of it just the roughest outline of what I will later type in that space.

Much of the pasted material is from old stuff that I cut from the original manuscript and saved in various files for use later, such as now. Unless you know it's utter crap, never, never, never throw anything away. You never know when you'll need it again.

Opening Lines

I've been working, off and on, toward the completion of the Dragon novels for the past ten years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear ya: only one book complete, the second almost finished, and the third existing only in notes -- I should have finished the series by now.

Yet, through the years, the opening line of the prologue (which has moved from the first book to the second) refuses to be changed. I've been told to never include prologues--personally, I like 'em--or to never include difficult words in the opening sentence or paragraph. However, much as I have tried, this line remains the same:

In the darkness of the Prymmiddion Age, when clan fought clan and chaos ruled, Dragons broke their bond with Men.

It is adamant. It will not change.

Other opening lines are not so indomitable:

“Cargo aboard, sir. Freight lockers secure.”

Or this one:

“Advocate Temm. ISC Wyoming in two minutes.”

Or this one:

The old man, a little hunched at the shoulders but otherwise straight, set an old-fashioned medical bag on the table and opened it.

Yeah, I tend to open stories with dialogue or action, even if the action is small, such as opening a medical bag. These three examples are all from stories in progress, the first two from futuristic science fiction tales--space pirates and space mystery, respectively--and the third from a modern fantasy-suspense set in the American southwest. Their opening lines are subject to change.

What is it about the Dragon prologue that refuses alteration?

It tells the story. The entire series is wrapped up in that line. And, when spoken aloud, the sentence sounds like it could have come from a bard's mouth. It sounds like oral tradition.

So, despite advice, despite complaints that "no one will know how to say that P-word," the line remains as it is.

(FYI: Prymmiddion = prim-MID-dee-ON)