Another journal

So. The grand experiment seems to be working. For the month of January I focused on writing, with a few specific goals, allowing myself to not worry about not doing All The Things (and therefore not getting distracted). Because of my stunning lack of real self-confidence I didn’t share my goals for the month beforehand, but here’s what I accomplished this month:

• Posted four short stories that had been sitting gathering dust.
  • Re-read (after the perfect amount of away time) and edited those stories.
    • In Search for the King
    • It’s the Little Things
    • Morning Star (part 1, part 2)
    • The Trader and the Devil (part 1, part 2, part 3)
• Wrote two short stories whose base themes had been scribbled down in my notebooks for at least half a year.
  • Got the feeling enough of one world that I’ll probably revisit it.
    • Primp
    • Comparative
• Finished the first section of a novella I’d been letting gather dust.
  • Forced it under the eyes of two people to give me legit feedback.
  • Have begun prepping it to post here.

Oh wait, what was that? Yeah, once I’ve finished its editing the story is going up here, on a probably once a week schedule. One of the plans for the focus months was that once I’ve dedicated a month to a thing I’m to work it back into life, seeing how I can integrate it while I’m working on the following months’ focuses. The schedule I’m looking at should give me several months to build up more backlog and that perfect terror of failure to finish something that posting ongoing work online does.

Out of a mixture of vanity and convenience I’ve also gathered all my work that fits into the pastoral post apocalyptic theme into one place: Pastoral Post Apoc (natch). All the Five Cities stories are there, as well as the first chunk of Slow Build, which had been unavailable online for a some time and will still have to wait awhile before being finished. The story from this month, Comparative, is also there. Other short stand-alones I write in that general theme will end up there also.

And! If you’d like to flatter my vanity, the Five Cities stories are available in a collected printed form, with one story that is not online (a lady needs a hook).

So, fiction writing focus month done! I know what I’m doing next month. Like I planned, about midway through the month two things kept popping up in my mind to work on and I was able to decide on which one to focus on just this week. I’ll post what February’s focus will be and its goals tomorrow.

Woo!

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

A friend of mine is doing a project called “Secret Chicago”, which now has a wider-ranging LJ group.  They’re ultra-short vignettes that open little mind-doors of (often dark) magical realism into whatever place the writer is from or holds dear.  Some places have strong existences, once you’ve lived there a while and you go past that shop that has been closed for years or take public transit daily it can start your memory reeling into possibilities of whys and what ifs.  Secret Cities is a fascinating project, expanding pocket worlds from chance impressions.

I’ve played with the idea of writing a couple myself, but I think what magical realism I’ve found in the Portland metro area is already being tapped in a couple of ways.  The area in and around where I live I photograph.  Yes, rural suburbia is weird, but in a way I mostly enjoy by living in it.  The city I work in I have a love-hate relationship with and I’ve already got the place drawn up in a different genre of writing experiment.

Besides, the magical realism aspects of the city are, for me, incredibly tied up in someone else’s work.

If I’m waiting for a bus and start a cigarette, I think of Jo in Anvil (#6).  Ghost bikes have a new dimension.  More or less, when I’m looking at the city I’m either wondering what it would look like if the plants went un-battled or if that’s the Safeway in book eight.

It’s a kind of nepotism, I guess.  I am of course fond of my own ideas and I know the writer of City of Roses, who is damned charming—except maybe for how his saga totally overwhelms my impression of the city and keeps me waiting for the next instalment like my own personal narcotic.

Which is still rather charming.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Johnnie stood in his garden and tried to see the hills. The fog was up, making the western boundary a towering dark smear in a light grey wall. Between him and the hills were a hell of a lot of other buildings, but his family’s place was taller than most and the hulking view from the rooftop garden was good—in better weather.

Ignoring the misting damp, Johnnie sat, straddling a bench. Though the garden was food-producing enough to justify their solar voucher, it was mostly ornamental. Greenery swarmed in arbours and grottoes, sheltering tables and benches that filled on warmer days.

With the view from the roof, the luxury of the solar inside and privacy for both, the Tip-Top Teahouse wooed customers and did brisk business. Johnnie’s grandfather had seen the need for pleasure spots even in the Five Cities’ infancy, beating most of his competitors to the punch by half a decade. When his daughter took over she refined the business, getting her fingers in the spreading trade.

Unlike most of the buildings in their nook of the Hound, Tip-Top, now technically a hostel and café, used all their floors; each themed and designed for different purposes and clientèle. Though, of course, each served tea.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

There were more than a thousand gardens, of course.  The place that became the Five Cities was built on the skeleton of a forest and haunted by its fecund past.  It was lush with a flamboyant excess of greenspace, laid out and continually added to in an attempt to appease the leafy fates.  But such stately verdance was proved a pale shade once dame nature had room to stretch.

The Five Cities gave her that, tearing up asphalt to get to the dirt, handing out flyers about rooftop gardens, letting the ivy and the blackberries have their way with public structures.  People who planned gardens were more likely to get solars, oil and meat, which was enough to encourage those who were not inclined to community work.

Taking an already existing system of shame for selfish actions, the Five Cities aimed it precisely.  It wasn’t the whole earth they cared about now, just 100-odd square miles.  With bribes, requests and guilt, they got their people to let nature have her head.

In hearsay, the Five Cities looked like an eden.  A lower population and a retreat from industrialism, combined with enforced community effort, made it true.  Where cars had parked, groves now grew.  Manicured grass was consumed by clover.  Decorative trees cracked sidewalks and turned streets to shady groves. It was as if the place had been waiting all this time, shoots coiled and ready to spring.

And so a place that had been where most people ended up anyway became a sought-after destination.  Some used it as a jumping board to the north or to the ocean; others were captured in its green snare.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Bliss was pretty goddamn bored.  She was pretty fucking bored.  She was goddamned, fucking bored because she’d recently learned how cool it was to swear and her parents had moved the family to the Five Cities.  It wasn’t just that they’d left the East, where she had perfectly good friends, but they’d moved to the stupid, shitting, Bridge, of all places.

“We’re getting in on the ground floor, ha, ha,” her dad said.  And continued to say.  Bliss wanted to think her mom was secretly on her side, but ever since they’d arrived she’d heard nothing but ringing praise of “how modern” and “can you believe it!”  Yes, her dad seemed happier setting up shop than when he was travelling to do it.  Sure, Bliss had her own room above the store, instead of sharing a caravan with her folks.  But hell and damnation!  The whole place was so new there was nothing to do.

Bliss flopped onto her bed, kicking over on her back to stare mournfully at the ceiling.  On top of everything, the Bridge had a ‘school’.  This was a thing that, from what Bliss had gathered, could not be any more boring.  She could read just fine and write, even.  Sitting in a room with a bunch of other kids did not seem like an improvement over sitting by the fire with her mom to read or perching on a stool next to her dad when he balanced accounts.

“Fucking stupid,” Bliss told her ceiling.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

    Flashing a smile, Angie remembered to involve the muscles under her eyes to make it look genuine.  She replaced the empty carafe with a full one after refilling the board member’s cups and fading out of the room.  Comfortably out of sight behind the door, her shoulders fell and she tugged at the uncomfortable uniform collar that always felt like it was choking her.
    Angie took a pocket watch out of her apron and checked the time. The dinner mess was gone, wheeled away by the rest of the staff to the dish room and compost bins before they left for home.  It was just her, the percolator, airpot and icebox until the meeting finished up.  From the after-dinner coffee onward it was a closed meeting, but she had to hang around in case there was any dire drinks emergency.  Angie killed a little time straightening the catering nook, then peered through the little panel of one-way glass.  They were still at it, hunched over papers, toying with delicate cups on matching saucers.  Pre-Five Cities china, actually from China, as indicated by faded blue marks on the underside.
    Loosening the hateful collar, Angie moved on quiet waiter feet to the percolator and poured herself a cup.  However draining and often degrading serving the powerhouse minds that ran the Five Cities was, there were perks.  Coffee instead of tea.  Sugar from the east instead of honey.  Leftovers smuggled home, buffalo and salmon from the coast.
    In the flickering light of the candles and alcohol lamp turned low, Angie let the first sip run over her tongue, all grassy and heavy, with berry tones.  The roaster’s guild, despite the small amount of stock they had to work with, were masters.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

   Hunt was, frankly, pretty damn pleased with his personal situation.  Sure, he didn’t have solar or gas and lived by the candle, plus he had just the one goat. But he had a hell of a garden and a bioswale just a couple of blocks off, with the river just beyond, if he needed it.  There was none of the push-shove you got living right along the river, which was perfect.  Hunt liked to keep to himself.
   That was another plus to the whole thing.  There were only a couple dozen families in a five-block radius, living a happy limbo between the clannish western hills—with their lumber and salvage—and the weird, half-dead downtown.  Even after everything, one thing held true about folks: despite the various pros to a neighbourhood, only trashers and the young wanted to live under the god-damn interstate.
   Kneeling in his tomatoes, with their summer-warm smell, Hunt looked up at the beautiful eyesore of an overpass.  It was too big, too much for even the blackberries and ivy to entangle.  It would exist forever, like the Roman aqueducts, a symbol of civilisation past.  Unlike its predecessor, however, the interstate would not remain unused and beyond common man, mocking his decline.  The Five Cities were going to put their stamp on it, building a sort of welcoming district for émigrés from the eastern desert.
   There would be shops, inns, entertainment (of the skirted variety, Hunt presumed) and city quarters up there; with plenty of space for carts and people on both levels.  Hunt was proud of the whole thing in a vague sort of way, like when the Hives won a basketball game.  He might personally have nothing to do with the achievement, but it was his people doing the achieving.
   Peering, Hunt could just make out black specks of a construction team leaning on the barriers for a smoke.  Hunt was prevented from further expansive meandering by a glance at his watch.  He had a date and that tail would not wait.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

    It was common knowledge what an overpass was—that is, what they used to be.  Vehicles once sped across them, taking people over buildings and streets to the hearts of neighbourhoods.  People knew this.  They saw vehicles, cars and trucks and panel vans, at the museum for a suggested donation.  They could also see them, rusted to anonymity, in any corner of the Five Cities.
    People knew about overpasses the same way they knew that thirty miles west was where the good wine came from, hills rolling with vineyards instead of houses and cul-de-sacs.  They also knew by the same means that past the vineyards was a thick forest and beyond that, ocean.

    A Big Horrible Thing had happened, half gradually, half suddenly.  It brought the world (or at least this part of it) back to the crossroads of the pre-industrial era.  It had not, however, made idiots of those remaining.  They still had maps and endless books.  There were still those who had taught and doctored, travelled and been born somewhere else.
    So, when it was all over, they found a solid well of knowledge to draw from.  They’d been very lucky overall.  The Big Horrible Thing had not considered them very important and left mostly intact the area that became the Five Cities.
    After a suitable period of mourning and madness, the people rebuilt and modified, finding that they—outside of some unpleasant instances—had adapted rather nicely.  Children were taught history and an attempt was made to instill them with the same respect for knowledge which had been the privilege of their parents, more or less.
    It was not strange then, that (years and years later) the first houses built on an overpass reminded people of the Old London Bridge.  Nor was it surprising, after this realisation, that they took great precautions against fire.  The people of the Five Cities were whimsical and flippant, not stupid.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.