A Spork in the Road

(I realize that my category title is delusional: “Daily Post.” 50% accurate, since it’s a post, but not daily. Still, one can dream.)

Today I dug into my writing archive, which includes work I wrote as far back as 1998. More than a decade!

I found a story that was not awful, but not really good either. The writing was mostly stilted, the concept uninspired, the plot flat. I decided to metamorphose this piece into a new story, which is the first genuine science fiction story I’ve worked on in years. I’m enjoying that.

I also found a bunch of writing exercises from the late 90’s. I can see how far I’ve come in my craft since then. Not that writing exercises represent one’s most polished work, but they do indicate a person’s general competence at the language level. And unless I’m as delusional about writing as I am about blog categories, I’ve come a long way.

Here’s a sample from August 17, 1998:

I clash about the room, banging the iron posts as I pass them. The silver chimes about me shiver with frightened excitement as I brush past them. In a moment of silence, I glance out the lace-covered window and see the rose.

I am frozen, quivering with repressed rage. The rose sways slightly in the wind, tapping its pale head against the glass. An uninvited breath of air touches the chimes, and again they tinkle against each other nervously. The rose pays me no attention, nodding its head calmly in the frozen outside air, every so often tapping against the window to see if it’s still there.

Furious, I pick up the scabbard from the table and fling it against the window.

This was for a very nice little exercise I did in which you select several words at random and match them with the senses. This particular combination was “Sound” and “Rose.” It’s not hideous, but it shows how I was still trying too hard with descriptors, not paying attention to unintended images (I’ve had a good laugh thinking about those chimes tinkling nervously), letting redundant phrasing through (”tapping against” instead of “tapping,” “nodding its head” — “nod” already implies “head”), etc. I remember having an awful addiction to the word “glance” in those days.

Here’s a quick edit to bring it up to 2009 levels:

I charge against the walls, the columns, the iron posts. Chimes shiver amidst the violence. I pause. In the abrupt silence, I stare through lace curtains at the rose.

I am rooted where I stand, quivering with rage. The rose sways in the wind, tapping its creamy head against the glass. An uninvited breeze touches the chimes, and again they titter with anxiety. The rose ignores me, nodding in the frost, intermittently tapping the window, to see if it’s still there.

Furious, I seize the scabbard from the table and fling it against the window.

(By the way, what’s up with “seize”? It does NOT follow the rules! “I before E” and all that. Frickin’ weird language.)

Cancer swag pays off real-time in the blog! Recently Clarion pal Rick Polney sent me two books (thus tipping the swag balance back in favor of the East Coast, oh-ho!), including Ursula K. LeGuin’s Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew, in which I found the perfect writing exercise.

Simple but difficult: write a descriptive page, 250-300 words, without using any adjectives or adverbs. No dialogue. Try it and link to yours in the comments of this post.

LeGuin calls the exercise “chastity,” for obvious reasons.

Here is mine:

A chair huddled beside a table. Beside it crouched a twin, and so around the perimeter. The chairs formed a quorum and held their council. A runner crawled across the expanse of oak, then draped at the ends. Tassels quivered in the air.

A window yawned from the end of the room, inviting breezes. Muslin billowed, breathing in the summer. Flies drifted into, across, around, out of the room, buzzed their harmonies and escaped. They found neither butter nor sugar nor fly-paper, thus found neither reason to tarry nor reason to flee.

The sideboard bore a teapot whose belly contained air. Vines encircled its handle and lid. It dreamed in silence, conjuring steam and honey, the tang of lemons, leaves that steeped and released notes into the afternoon. Its neighbor languished at the edge: a basket of flowers that aimed for reality and missed by a yard of silk. The blooms collected dust and the corpses of flies that had surrendered to the gloom.

Two sofas squared off. Each claimed the rug, could defend an edge. Each held the loyalty of a brigade of pillows. The war stretched across years. No one in the room imagined its conclusion.

The rug slept. It recalled the history of the room from drywall to redecoration. It hoped for traffic but accepted breezes, dust, accumulation. Accepted the anticipation that permeated the house, awaiting a destiny, awaiting the action that would transform them into an existence they could not imagine but would inhabit with joy and abandon.