Precession is a Force to be Trusted

Finally. Finally. Finally. I finally finished the third draft of the first chapter of my first novel. It took me how many months? I have lost count. All summer, I think. Anyhow, I just finished it. I have no idea what to think of it. It is 5500 words and 18 pages, considerably longer than even my freakishly consistent long chapters in Martyrs.And oddly enough, I think it says less than the first two versions. I'm getting more verbose. I think that's a bad thing. Oh whatever. Mark is less bipolar in it. Which is very, very good.

And the other thing about it? It's fun. It is so much more fun. In a dark, twisted, morbidly-ironic-for-the-omniscient-author sort of way. As in, I enjoyed writing part of it tonight. Mark is such a jerk. I love him. Poor Ralph. God I love this.

Anyhow, the whole thing is really about precession. I pushed. Went a direction I didn't mean to go, but whatever, I love it anyway.

With a tired shrug, Ralph offered, “Sir, I’m not sure that many people would see peace as compromising liberty.”

Mark pulled his lips into a thin, grim smile. “Do not be so sure, Ralph. Terror is a force of precession.”

Ralph’s eyes flashed in confusion. “What do you mean, sir?”

“Terror is intended as a source of chaos, Ralph. Terrorists use terror to incite fear and thus gain attention for their cause. They push for sympathy. They receive, almost invariably, hatred. And fear, yes, but they fail to understand that fear is only an effective management technique.”

“I’m not sure I understand, sir. An effective management technique?”

Mark leaned in, his eyes sparkling in the incandescence. “Let’s try an experiment.” He turned up his charisma to full, smiling his brilliant, intoxicating smile. “An experiment to prove the worth of terror.” He leaned in just a little farther. “Are you afraid of me, Ralph?”

Ralph’s eyebrows shot up. His facial features shrank together. He was keenly aware of the feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he wouldn’t call it fear. It was just a never-ending sense of shock at the President’s eccentricity. “Sir, why would I be afraid of you?” he asked, his stomach dreading the answer.

“Oh, you are naïve, aren’t you?” Mark marveled at the mouse before him. “Let’s see if you can’t answer that in one week from today. You will be afraid of me Ralph, mark my words. You will see that fear is quite an effective management technique. You will not doubt me. You will trust me implicitly—without reservation.” His voice darkened despite his smile, as if to foreshadow the fear that was to follow, “And let’s see how it turns out for the both of us. I have my hypothesis; you make yours.”

Ralph was pale, his black eyes shimmering, reflecting the frenzy of the man across from him. He sat straighter in his chair. His stomach squirmed. “I think you assume too much, sir.” He shook his head. “Don’t I have better things to be afraid of than you?”

“You mean China?”

"I mean the Red National Army, sir."

Loneliness is more than a feeling--

This is a little over a week old. But it feels truer tonight than when I wrote it. So... Oh, I don't know. I've been writing a new short story. Science fiction. A nameless lunatic finds redemption in words. More or less. I don't know. I don't like it. I'm crying. Why? I think I must be bipolar. Or severely hormonal. Oh well. I meant to post the poem. That's the point, right?

Loneliness is more than a feeling—

More than a drop in serotonin,

More than the dark winter light,

More than the silence of a crowd,

More than the simple nothing.

Loneliness is the lack of a simple nothing—

Where all the lies crumble away

And we see ourselves for who we truly are.

Loneliness is the emptiness of the soul—

When we stand in front of an antique mirror,

With tears sparkling in our eyes,

And see that we are truly alone.

Loneliness is the claustrophobia—

That comes to our untouched skin

When we remember those psychology articles

About the human need for touch.

Loneliness is the irony—

Of the machine turning itself to a fetus

When we see that we are all too human

And that loneliness is so much more than a feeling—

Loneliness is a noun.

Forgotten Diagrams

Pages: 202. Words: 61,755. Chapters: 12. Prologue? Yes, and it is damn good.. Epilogue? It'll do pig. Favorite Passage: Still everything Mark says in Chapter 7: "Check Your Premises".

So yeah. Last night, i.e., this morning turned out pretty much how I expected. I went to sleep around five. Slept about two and a half hours. Woke up. Watched The Prestige. Made plans. Ate a cookie. Made more plans. Drank some caffeine--I mean tea. Made a bunch of sandwiches for other people. Got some bad news. Kept smiling. Realized I never actually diagrammed for Martyrs after I finished the epilogue... Figured this was as good of a time as any. Realized that I seem to have screwed up my arithmetic last time I diagrammed. Decided I am kind of epically failing at life today. Decided I don't really give a damn.

Because, for some uncanny reason, I feel just as good now as I did seven hours ago. And sleep deprivation doesn't seem to have ruined my mood. I don't get it. I should feel like crap. I don't. So I'm going to stop analyzing and just enjoy it. Coldplay tonight.

Awesome and very appropriate quote that I came up with. Will appear somewhere in Gates, just don't know where yet. "Happiness is just a chemical reaction..." Henry Erikson. And I am riding the serotonin. The diagram above depicts serotonin, coincidentally.

Part One: Cosmos
I. The Last Honest Man in Washington
II. Handkerchiefs and Hardships
III. The Silent Scream
IV. Lost Causes
V. The Human Bomb
Part Two: Chaos

VI. A Mouse in the Perfect Trap

VII. Check Your Premises

VIII. For How Life Should Be

IX. To Jump Off a Cliff

X. Forgiveness at Gunpoint

XI. No Way Out

XII. The Truth About Hope

New Caffeine-Induced Highs

I wanted to call this new lows, but I don't feel low. I feel kind of high. On caffeine. On the thrill of doing something new. On having been awake for 20 hours or so.

So, the point. I'm getting there, trust me.

I wrote fan fiction tonight. Yes. I haven't written fan fiction in years. Many, many years. But I did tonight. And I had a hell of a lot of fun with it. Because, you know, if you're going to write fanfic, it needs to be fun and crazy, right?

So one half of me feels like a sleazy cheap copy cat writer. The other half is too high to care.

I posted it on a site, even. A special site whose web address I will not give here. I can't decide if it would sully this blog or if this blog having any connection to that site would be the travesty. I'm not writing coherently. Oh well. Who gives a fuck?

In other news, the rewrite of Chapter 1: An Elegy for San Francisco, is almost compete.

I should try to sleep. Not going to happen, but I should try.

Back at Page One

So I seem to be back at page one, literally. I am trying to rewrite Caryatid now. I'm not having much luck. It hurts to write it. It hurts, and I don't know how to deal with the pain. Writing about Mark as a living, breathing, fallible human being is so... different, after these past few years. I don't know if I know him anymore. I seem to be clinging to the memory of him, not the real him. Kind of like Ralph, which figures, really. Anyhow, the rewrite (take three, actually) is going slowly. I am working on the flow, first and foremost, because that has always been my weakness. Or my primary foible. Ha. The voice is smoother, too, I think. It's deeper, as well. I use more words where they're needed. It is a slow and grueling process. I don't know if I'll ever actually get through it. Oh well.

I decided to rename most of the chapters in book one, too. The names were too... boring. I am now amused. Here are the changes:

Prologue. Once Upon a Time

1. San Francisco -- TBD after rewrite

2. The Sieve -- The Truth in the Sieve

3. Color -- TBD after a much-needed rewrite

4. The Kitchen Cabinet -- Ants in the Kitchen Cabinet

5. Hong Kong -- Ten Questions

6. Catalyst -- Crimson Catalysts

7. Secession -- A Shakespearean Comedy

8. Dualism -- Everything in Nothing

9. Scraps of Paper

10. The Trinity

11. Sandbox -- The Menagerie in the Box

12. The Loneliest Job

13. The Roundness of History

Epilogue. Inauguration Day