A Pledge before the Calendar Scurries Away

I will not write much now, for my pledge is to have two more chapters complete by 11:59 PM this Monday, 31 December 2007. I did something similar to this last year, and, well, it worked, so why not do it again?
One of these chapters, the one for Part II, is almost done. I think I might be forced to call it "Tarot and Tea Leaves". As for the second, the one for Part I, I have absolutely no idea what to write about!
So now I must write away.

The Clockmaker's Clocks

There are days when I think that I have let things get very confused in my novel--that Mark is too much a reflection of myself. There are other days when I deny it because I hate to admit that it is true. I hate to admit that my writing means that much too me--that it is the ultimate reflection of myself. But it is, and I know that. Mark is my doppleganger; he is me laid to words. Therefore, it is fitting that his beliefs should match mine.

The times he had tried to convert—to Atheism, to Agnosticism, to Deism, to the Truth—to the ever-changing Doctrine of Doubt.

Sounds remarkably like me speaking. But apparently, I am a...

What spirituality is for you? Deist You are, in fact, a Deist. You believe in a clockmaker God who created the universe and initiated the natural equilibrium, but not a "personal god."

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

And I think Mark is, too.

Why I Fight

Sometimes I wonder why I write. I have a few stock answers stored up. I love it. I live to write. I do it to escape from the world; it is my Second Life and even my Second Second Life. It is everything I want.
But then I remember that writing isn't about the stagnant--it's about fighting either for or against something. Thus, the question shouldn't be "Why do I write?" but "Why do I fight?" And most days, I try to hide from the answer to that question because... because examining the answer means accepting terrible truths.
This morning I decided to watch JFK's "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech for the hundredth time, and there was a comment from this usasucks1 character. I found it offensive enough to check his profile, and this is what I found. I immediately sent him a simple message pleading, "Why?" God, I wish I knew why seeing this broke me up inside, but it did. I look at this, and I want to fight it--this person and all others like him.
Yet, other days, I do not think that it is that simple. I think about the things that I write, and sometimes I wonder if they do not speak for themselves.

"God, Ralph, I want America to live so much,” he cried. “I want her to live so much that I do not know how to save her!"

It seems so clear when I read this quote. I read it, I reflect on it, and I think that maybe Ellsworth Toohey was right about it.

Book Stats: Why Can't I Abandon My Firstborn's Corpse?

Pages: 193. Words: 58,355. Chapters: 12. Prologue? Not yet. Epilogue? Yes, it's quite nice. Favorite Passage: The part where Ralph looks at the stars.

I include this tonight only because I finally finished the "last" new chapter, or the first Cabinet meeting. This is the new chapter four, and it has inherited the name that the original chapter nine (now chapter eleven) once possessed. I am aware that that makes no sense, so I will diagram (* denotes a chapter started after 24 February 2007):

Part One: This Earthly World
I. San Francisco
II. The Sieve
III. Color
IV. The Kitchen Cabinet*
V. Hong Kong
VI. Catalyst
Part Two: The Lost Frontier
VII. Secession
VIII. Dualism
IX. The Trinity
X. Sandbox*
XI. The Loneliest Job
XII. The Roundness of History

I can only spend so long on this third of the triptych. Sooner or later I must move on to the second installment, the Calmness of Martyrs. The trouble is, I think I am going to have some trouble leaving Mark behind. That's what they don't tell you when you become an author--how terribly difficult it is to kill off your main character. It's like murdering your firstborn and leaving the corpse to rot on the side of the dirt road.

Not About Mark

Today seemed like an appropriate day to write, considering it was the anniversary of JFK's assassination and that the premise of my book is that JFK was never elected. Wait, did I say today? My clock tells me it is 2:24 AM; I must mean yesterday.
Yet the writing is slow, and I am tempted to reuse my metaphor that equates writers' block with the Berlin Wall. I have only written 300 words in 36 hours. Aside from that, I have done some editing, but not very much. I sometimes think that writing a novel has made me forget how to write. But then again, this day is about JFK, not Mark Adams; perhaps I should look to JFK, not MTA.

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Does it help? I ask myself. No, not really, but it gets easier to pretend that it does.

From Bodily Fluids to Personality Types

These simple emoticons represent the Four Humors, or the Four Temperaments. Clockwise, from the top right we see yellow bile, black bile, blood, and phlegm. I analyzed all characters in the Fallen Caryatid and found their temperaments. Mark is phlegm, but I think he is also largely yellow bile. I am well aware that the former is counter-intuitive, but he is an ENTP. He is witty and likes to be in control. He values ideas immensely, possibly above all else.
Ralph is black bile. He is an ISTJ and concerned with morals and ethics above all. Everything must be right for him to stand behind it.
Jane Chamberlain is blood.
Henry Erikson is yellow bile.
Paul Navarro is phlegm.
Carl Samuels is black bile (primary) and phlegm (secondary).
William Johnson is phlegm (primary) and blood (secondary).
Jillian McCarthy is yellow bile (primary) and blood (secondary).
Scruples is black bile.
As for myself, I am something of a combination. I am largely phlegm (and yes, I know how self-deprecating that sounds) but am black bile is well. I think the divide is 60-40 or so. I am an INTJ--a Rational Mastermind--which explains the former, but the latter... Even if it was not one of my quiz results, it is just a feeling--an empathetic understanding when reading the descriptions. I feel tragedy poignantly; the writer in me feels everything poignantly.

My Skeleton and Tidbits from "The Kitchen Cabinet"

Every time I look at this picture, I see my own skeleton sitting on the rock, downcast and disappointed. I have no reason to see this, I have no desire to see this, and I have no will to see this. Yet I see this all the same.
Perhaps it is because I always write about tragic things. The Fallen Caryatid is a traditional Shakespearean tragedy, after all; Mark has his tragic flaw. I think his Richard II monologue says it all:

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Presidents... How some have been impeached, some slain in the throes of war, some haunted by the ghosts they have impeached, some poisoned by their people, some politics killed, all murdered. For within the hollow oath denies the mortality of a President, keeps Death his Cabinet. And for ever-so short a time, he is let to breathe, to play tyrant, to pen a page in the history of the free world, to be feared, to kill with a mere inflection of his voice; in ever-so short a time, he is let to become an egotistical ass who acts with the air of Zeus, as if this flesh were not so mortal but a bastion impregnable; and so fooled, darkness fells the castle wall, and adieu, dear President! Cover your heads and lay down your hands and forget the lewd station that to me you have given. Forget respect, tradition, protocol, and duty, for Demos has fooled us all. I eat the same fruits of liberty as you, have appetites the same, taste grief the same, and need friends the same. Subjected thus, how can you say to me that I am a President?

I still cannot decide if I like that passage. It seems almost...brutally inappropriate to twist Shakespeare's words so. Yet, on the contrary, there is something oddly satsifying about it. Perhaps it is merely because I am able to end the chapter with this:

There was a thin line of ants marching just outside the glass. There little black beady bodies fell together like a strand of black pearls. On their tired backs they held crumbs twice their size—probably breadcrumbs from Mark’s dinner last night. He watched them march military-like through a small hole in the White House’s exterior. They were taking these crumbs to their queen, he knew, a queen who neither worked nor proved her worth, a queen who sat tyrannical atop a little throne and whiled away the days while the workers toiled on. The thought of it made him nauseous. He longed to take a sheet of paper and put it in front of the hole, caging the queen and freeing the workers, but they were outside while he was trapped within. He could not help them, could not save them.
He turned away from the door’s glass, pushed his back again it, contemplated the nuances of his shadow, tried to forget the ants, and fought to forget the world.
He sat thinking a long time in the dying light.

C'est finis pour ce soir.

Beginnings

And so it begins. I have officially decided that my writing warrants a blog of its own. It is time I tell the world what I write, for it is quite a burden to carry wholly on my tired shoulders. When I was still young and innocent, I explained myself with the normal tired excuses:

Sharing your writing can be a menacing prospect—rather like how I should expect jumping off a cliff to feel. I have always been what one might call a closet writer—I seldom share my work more than is required. I am always filled with that itching sense of self-doubt, which causes me to worry how good my writing is, if it is any good at all. I used to think that a fear of criticism was the reason I withheld my writing from my family and everyone else...

But I can no longer use those excuses in good faith. I am neither young nor innocent any more. And after all, it was also I who wrote:

Rereading these Principles, I see flashing that America and freeman alike need men and women who will stand up for these fine Principles without Fear... Thus today I recommit myself , without Fear, to this fine task of ensuring that my Principles, as well as the Principles of this great country and of all freemen, do not perish. I recommit myself, body and soul, to these, and to these I will hold.

And so I begin; now I take up the author's burden.