Progress Update: Lost Causes

It is quite clear to me that, like Ralph, I am killing myself. I had writers' block all of yesterday so I didn't write. I told myself that it would be okay--that I would write two chapters in one day. The first one, Chapter 4, is done. Thank God. It is significant in that Ralph snaps at Erikson and does something completely against his better judgment that I can't bring myself to type here. An excerpt in reference to the Erikson fiasco.

Erikson’s eyes settled on Ralph’s lapel. The American flag pin was not just any American flag lapel pin. It was a custom design that Erikson had seen before. “You’re right, Mr. President. I am running for President because you insist on fighting the Western States of America.” He knew who had worn that pin before its current bearer. “But there is something else that needs to be clarified, and that is the reason why you insist on fighting the sovereign and independent Western States of America. For me, this election is about California, yes, but for you, California is about Mark Adams.”
Ralph turned dead pale.
“I don’t know why, considering you only really met the man the day of the attack on San Francisco. I only know what I saw at that last Cabinet meeting, when we took the vote. When you raised your hand to vote with him, you looked as you do now. You voted with him against your better judgment because you thought it was your duty. You continue to fight the WSA because you think it is your duty to continue Adams’s delusional policy. But it is time that you get over his death and accept reality.”
Quietly, weakly, Ralph plead, “Mr. Erikson.”
“At that meeting, your would-be Vice President Paul Navarro voted to let go of the West.”
A little firmer, Ralph tried again, “Mr. Erikson.”
“At that meeting, your own wife voted to let go of the West.”
“Erikson!” Ralph screamed with the sum of his rage and hatred.
Finally, Erikson stopped talking and stared at his pathetic prey with a cruel and sadistic smile.
“Erikson,” Ralph was hoarse. He glared at the man with all his might. He spoke as firmly as he could, “This is not about Mark Adams.”
“Of course it is. What happened to your straight talk? What happened to your so-called honesty, Mr. President? What happened to doing the quote-on quote,” he could not resist the urge to make demeaning little air quotes with his fingers “right thing no matter what? Face it,” he sneered, “this is about Mark Adams.”
“Shut the hell up!” Ralph gasped in exasperation. Erikson was killing him—in public, and on his birthday, for God’s sake. “I’ve continued Adams’s policies because Mark Adams was right. I’ve continued his policies because I know them to be right.” Suddenly, as he spoke and believed himself, he regained the strength that he had lost when Erikson breached the subject of Mark. Ralph found the strength for buoyancy. “We cannot simply let our country fall apart. We have not wronged California, Oregon, Washington, or Nevada in any way. They have no reason to leave this sacred Union, and by God, I cannot let them do it. That is not because of any sense of duty I may or may not feel towards the memory of Mark Adams; no, indeed, it is because of what I learned from Mark Adams in the three days between the secession and his death. He taught me that you don’t give up on something just because it seems like a lost cause. You fight harder. Erikson, I am more myself now than I have ever been. This is straight talk, and this is honest truth. Fighting for our Union in the face of your foolish adversity is the right thing to do. And that is why I have fought for a seemingly lost cause these past nineteen months. That is why I intend to continue fighting for a seemingly lost cause. I’ve done and will continue to do it because I don’t care that it is a seemingly lost cause. Our Union cannot be lost, and I will fight for it and lose if I must.” He stopped for air. He surveyed the auditorium full of blank, shocked faces. Bob Schlesinger looked like he really might have that heart attack now. Erikson, again, was shocked into silence.
He stood up slowly, breathing heavily. He did not smile, did not even try. He turned to walk off stage, but he caught another glimpse of Erikson’s face. He turned back. “By the way,” he snickered, “if you wanted to run against Mark Adams, you should have run for President four years ago.”

Progress Update: The Silent Scream

Finally, at almost 3:30 am, I can say that I have finished Chapter 3. It has just about killed me, considering I wrote it without much of a plan. It is about the conventions, which means that it required both research and coordination. There is very little back-and-forth dialogue, which is probably why it took six hours to write.There are, however, two 850+ word speeches. Those are damn near impossible to write. Anyhow, overall, this chapter is 4600 words and 14 full pages. I feel a need to sleep now.

Now it was Thursday, or Day Four of convention Hell, and it was his turn to make a few ill-received jokes. He was supposed to be getting ready, but he didn’t much feel like getting ready. Thus he sat in the rickety director-style chair in an undershirt and Johns Hopkins sweats, staring at his reflection in a well-lit mirror while the television humming in the background. He considered his reflection. He looked relatively good for a wartime President running for reelection with dismal approval ratings. He got four and a half hours of sleep, on average, and to be sure, there were bluish circles under his eyes. But they didn’t look as dark or deep as he would have thought. He was a little pale, but not alarmingly so. He still had some sense of youth about him. His fortieth birthday was in exactly two weeks, now that he thought about it. Everything seemed to be in order in this visual inventory—everything except his eyes. They were as black as always, and they sparkled a little in the blinding incandescence. Physically, they were fine. The problem lay in what he saw behind them. The pain and torment that he felt constantly burned brilliantly in the reflection. He saw the silhouette of his soul silently screaming like the famous Edvard Munch painting. Knowing the pain was there and feeling it was wholly different from seeing yourself tormented by it. In the depths of his eyes, he did not look healthy. He did not look like he got any sleep at all. He looked paler than the Grim Reaper and older than the country. And he knew, looking into his eyes, that the truth lay here, and not in the rest of his reflection. He was not healthy, not in the least. He was just Dorian Gray, putting up a youthful, cheerful façade for everyone in the world, even his wife. On the inside, he was just as haggard as Mark’s corpse was sure to be.
He forced his face into his hands and massaged it vigorously. He rubbed his eyelids with a passion, praying that he could rub away the truth he had just seen. It could not help him to keep the memory on the surface of his consciousness; nay, it could only detonate his self-destruct sequence a little sooner. And who could that possibly help? Not him. Not Jane. Not the country. Not Mark. No one.

Progress Update: Handkerchiefs and Hardships

Well, again, I am still behind where I should be, though I seem to be making up ground rather respectably. I feel good--like I have accomplished quite a bit more in one day than I have in a long while. Chapter 2 has 4500 words and 15 full pages. I am doing well on consistency this book, I think. Again, I must go write another 4000+ word chapter. Here is an excerpt of what happens when Ralph asks Jane what she really thinks of the neo-War Between the States.

She sat up. “Ralph, I understand your side of it. I do. I understand that you need to defeat the Western States of America because that’s what he would have done. I understand that you can’t bear the thought of letting a third of the country slip away on your watch because you think that that will mean you failed to do your duty—by the country and him. I understand that you feel you need to fight his battles now that he’s gone. I understand that, I really do, Ralph.” Her eyes shined in the darkness. “But Ralph, what about your other duties? You have a duty to the preserve the Constitution, which you can’t do while the Nationalist Act is in effect. You have a duty to the people—not to mislead them, not to strangle them, not to have soldiers killed in a losing battle while we are losing another battle an ocean away that we cannot afford to lose. I understand what you’re doing, Ralph, but” she seemed to calculate whether she should say what she was about to say or let it wait until she could see through his eyes to his soul, “it isn’t what I would do.”
If she had been able to see through the darkness, through his eyes, to his soul, she would have known that her words were killing a part of him. His soul screamed silently while he stared on blankly. He had no response to what she had just said. He had expected it, or at least, he should have expected it. But hearing his wife—his wife—as good as say that she would leave the rebels alone and free to establish there own government and do all things which free nations ought to do—it hurt more than the daily pain of missing Mark. He was truly alone in the universe, with the exception of a construct of his imagination and its real-life daughter. He was sinking again, drowning in the depths of his pain.

Progress Update: The Last Honest Man in Washington

This is going rather slowly. I just finished Chapter 1, significantly later than expected. Oh well. I have faith in my ability to recover. It is rather longer than expected: 16 pages and 4600 words. Not too shabby. Ralph's new campaign slogan is "The Last Honest Man in Washington" and Erikson's is "Change We Can Trust". And yes, Erikson's is indeed a gramatically correct hommage to Barack Obama. I really can't say much more if I want to write another chapter and a quarter today. But here is a brief excerpt, anyways.

He reflected tersely upon his lost life and forced himself to spin faster. The objects of his contemplation blurred beyond recognition, along with his pained reminiscences. He lowered his gaze to his feet and watched his scuffed black shoes spin in rhythm with the world. He felt the sum of his doubts well up in his throat and wondered if he was going to be sick. He shut his eyes and willed the speed to increase. The inertia carried he and his along. He missed him so much. He kept trying to forget, but he couldn’t. Whenever the CIA briefed him or a military official tried to explain it to him or Erikson made some vicious attack on national television or a dove—or even, for God’s sake, a pigeon—flew past his window, he remembered who he used to be and what he was now. He used to be the Baltimore District Attorney. He used to be successful and popular. He used to have morals. He used to do his duty, and never second-guess it. He used to know, with every fiber of his being, that he was doing right. He used to be an optimist, and happy all the time. But now… Now, sure, he was the President of the United States, but he still felt as powerless as he had as Vice President. Now, he was a failure and had approval ratings in the mid 20s. Now, he had lost all his once precious morals. Now, he did his duty—did it better than ever before—but second-guessed every single move he made. Now, he knew, with every fiber of his being, that he was not doing right. Now, he was closer to a nihilist than anything else, and truly happy around only one person, moderately happy around two, and thoroughly miserable around everyone else and by himself. So what about now? Now, life was a veritable Hell.
He knew that he should think that all of this was because of Mark. He knew he should realize that Mark had destroyed his life by asking him to replace Davidson. He should have known then, a year and a half ago, that nothing but trouble could come from being the second most powerful man in the world, and he should have said no. In fact, he did try to say no, at first. But Secretary Navarro, acting as Mark’s nonexistent Chief of Staff, had said it was President Adams’s personal wish that he take the offer; Navarro had told him that it was his duty to his country to take the offer. Ralph had caved; he should have insisted that he could not do it. It wasn’t Mark’s fault. It was his. He had accepted the damned job. He had let Mark warp him into his own personal yes-man. He had made the conscious decision to carry on Mark’s wars and policies after his death. He was wholly responsible for his own unhappiness.

Before the Ball Drops

It would seem to me that it is almost 2009. When it was almost 2008, I publicly pledged to write two new chapters for the first book. When it was almost 2007, I pledged, not publicly, to finish part one of the then only book. It seems fitting, thus, that I should set myself another wholly impractical goal, seeing as the aforementioned were both accomplished.

Therefore, I hereby solemnly swear that I shall finish Part I of my second book, The Calmness of Martyrs, by 6:00 am on the First of January 2009. (Last year I finished around 4 am, if I do recall.) If I am to accomplish this goal, I have quite a bit of work to do. I must finish chapters 1 and 2 today, I suppose, and then write one chapter a day. That is a rather brisker pace than I am used to, considering I have done so little with this book.

It is my intention to entitle Part I Cosmos and Part II Chaos. I think Carl Sagan would be pleased. I would quote him at the beginning of the section; however, I quote Sagan much too much. Thus I will quote Will Durant: "Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos."

But I should really get to writing if I want to accomplish my goal for the third year in a row. Good luck, self.

The Fine Frenzy of My Feverish Mind

For the past 364 days or so, I have fallen asleep to the songs of Alison Sudol, or A Fine Frenzy, as she calls herself. I am a fan of the entire album; however, two songs always stood out. They always seemed relevant to my novel universe. I thought perhaps that they partially expressed Ralph's sentiments following Mark's death.

The first song is perhaps the most well-known on the CD, "Almost Lover". There is a certain profound sadness to it that is seldom heard in music. It never quite felt perfect, considering Ralph is not a homosexual. But something felt right. A few days ago, I listened to this song and realized that I had been wrong. It wasn't relevant because of Ralph; it was relevant because of me. I am the one who loves him, who killed and lost him. The chorus:

Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I'm trying not to think about you
Can't you just let me be?
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should've known you'd bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

It fits so goddamn well. He is just my hopeless dream. I try not to think about him, considering I killed him and all, but he won't leave me alone. I created my dream man, and by God, I keep thinking of Pygmalion. I should have known that this would happen, and I should have avoided it.

The second song is entitled "Near to You". It always seemed to work better from Ralph's perspective, in terms of Jane and Mark. There were still the gender issues, but whatever. After I had my realization about the first song, though, I rethought this one. I listened to it, and immediately it fit. The first stanza clearly seemed to describe my feelings about Mark.

He and I had something beautiful
But so dysfunctional, it couldn't last
I loved him so but I let him go
'Cause I knew he'd never love me back

Then it goes on. The rest of the song deals with the speaker's feelings toward her audience. I assume that my audience is Ralph. I know that he is so much better for me to write about. He's just better. And while it hurts like hell, I'm getting over the obstacles I wrote for myself. It's getting easier. Or isn't that what I told myself 13 months ago?

Such pain as this
Shouldn't have to be experienced
I'm still reeling from the loss,
Still a little bit delirious

Near to you, I am healing
But it's taking so long
'Cause though he's gone
And you are wonderful
It's hard to move on
Yet, I'm better near to you.

Bravery and Beauty

I am now going to be incredibly pretentious and compliment myself. I have shown a high form of literary bravery in the past few weeks, I think. To be sure, I post excerpts of my writing on this blog, but no one reads this blog, and they are but excerpts. Now, I have begun to spoon feed my entire first novel to a real live human being. I gave it to him out of guilt, I think, seeing as he was the only one of my friends who, after having known me for two years, still did not know that I had written a novel. That and the fact that he pestered me incessantly for a week. Oh, I should be made of sterner stuff.

He has read the prologue and entire first part; he currently has in his possession the first two chapters of part two. He says he likes it, that it is good, and that he doesn't mind Mark's being completely bipolar. I doubt he will maintain any of these once he finishes the book.

Yet all the same, despite my childish insecurities, it was a step. Every time I hand him a neatly stapled stack of crisp white novel the adrenaline pounds against my veins, and I feel so alive. It isn't about giving my writing to someone else--it's about holding it in my hand. Seeing the chunks of manuscript--of thought transmitted onto hundreds of sheets of paper, stacked and stapled, and knowing that those words are yours--my God, it is the most numinous feeling. I can only imagine what it must feel like to hold the first copy of a published book...

Note: The novel in the picture is not my novel. Mine is considerably shorter, yet beautiful all the same.