Writer's Journal

(Inspired partially by the photos of Al-Hajarah, Yemen, found here [scroll to the bottom.]  That website–Dark Roasted Blend–is a goldmine of weird images and trivia.  A great resource.)

The city was built directly above the cliff-face; row upon row of stone buildings marching along the jagged edge. Some hung out over the misty valley below.

There were streets there that led out to the cliff, opening into wide vistas overlooking the valley, stopping as if broken when the land sank beneath the mist. The streets were lit by new electric lamps, and power-lines sagged over the cityscape, put in by a government trying especially hard to be modern.

The locals didn’t complain. They bought televisions and electric stoves, but still read by oil-lamp in the evenings, gingerly picking at the onion-skin pages of yellowing old books written in a language spoken nowhere else.

The people there had almost universally pallid skin and light brown hair. While usually quiet around outsiders, they occasionally spoke in their own tongue, a language isolate peculiar to the city.

There have been several attempts to categorize it: The language itself is polysynthetic, like that of the Algonquin, Iroquois, or Ainu. The boundary between “word” and “sentence” is unclear, and it is near impossible for an outsider to learn. Beyond that, it incorporates many sounds commonly associated with south semitic languages, such as Old South Arabian and Ethiopian.

I stumbled through the city for several days, my phrasebook and foreign mouth giving me the diction of a terminally drunken child, most likely with a developmental disorder of some kind. The natives were polite, and would smile, but communicated primarily through pointing, when they wouldn’t, it was usually an attempt at English, Spanish, or Italian.

The city itself is a living thing; not constructed on a grid, like those of my own homeland, or like a spoked wheel, as I have seen elsewhere, but around a dozen or so plazas in a warped hexagon, each connected to the others by wide boulevards, with canvass sheets dangling overhead from ropes as old as my grandparents.

Several times, I almost fell off roads that led over the valley only being stopped by the shouted warnings of the natives who observed it almost happen.

On the whole, it was a fascinating experience, but I wonder about the valley, and how those streets came to lead into its gaping vastness.

I work in a campus writing center, helping people with their academic writing.

This has done two things to me:  It has made me more conscious of sentence structure, and it has made me into an asshole.

While some people might argue that the latter isn’t exactly a new thing, what I mean to say is that an entirely new crop of problematic behaviors have come out in dealing with people who don’t understand my purpose there.

“Can you edit this for me?  I’ll be back in an hour or two to pick it up,” is not something I’m there to help people with.  I’ve been asked that on several occasions and I’ve said no on just as many.

On others, the following exchange happened:

“Do you have your assignment sheet?”

“Assignment sheet?”

“You know.  The sheet that tells you what your assignment is.”

“Uh…no…”

And I try to help them as best I can.  Some people I know how to help:

“You need a comma here,” I tell her.
“That’s not quite how you spell that,” I inform him.
“I’d suggest moving this paragraph…here.”
“Are you sure this is entirely accurate?”

On other occasions, I’m not quite sure what I’m doing:
“Go to file, and hit ‘open.’  No.  ‘Open.’  Here, let me do it.”
“Could you tell me what this word is?”
“I don’t mean to offend…but is english your first language?”

That last one is a minefield, especially with the immigration debate.  A large number of students here legitimately don’t speak English as a first language, which is why I ask.  I have yet to ask someone that it wasn’t true of, but I dread the possibility that I might.
I can usually tell those who are working in a second language from those who aren’t.  The latter tend to ignore me while I’m speaking to them and send text messages, at which point I tend to stop caring.

“Yeah, you’re fine,” I tell them, after counting up the usage errors and trying to make my way through the unintentionally labyrinthine idea-space presented by their essay.

The non-natives present a different issue, though:  most of the at-home editing techniques I prescribe for them don’t work, and I have to find everything and give them a concise explanation.

“English doesn’t make any sense, actually,” I end up having to admit.  It’s not enitrely true, but it’s only intuitive if you’ve been speaking it long enough.
It’s not unrewarding; it’s a good enough job.  But I’m not sure I’m cut out for teaching.

Oh, god, it’s the world.  I’m not in the proper state of mind for this.

Cicatriz Episode 2

Need more sleep.

(I went to great pains to imitate  Derrida’s style.  You have no idea how difficult it was for me to willfully create sentences this complex and obfuscatory.)

The ambulatory corpse of Jacques Derrida stumbled toward the podium, its rotting cheek dangling down by his collar bone.

“My time rotting in a coffin, buried under the ground, with worms crawling through my intestines, with things digging in my entrails, has given me time to think and expand upon my theories…”

He took a drink of water, and the fluid spilled out of his unclosable mouth, down onto his colorless suit.

“As I said during my pre-mortem period of work, we have a tendency to divide language into dichotomies, binary opposites, and then to privilege one over the other; good over evil, white over black, masculine over feminine, quilted bathroom tissue over non-quilted bathroom tissue.  Now, I seek to propose that the ultimate linguistically-constructed dichotomy has been uncovered, the cornerstone of the so-called ‘objective’ system of values that leads us to believe that there is something transcendental, that reality is founded in something other than the interplay of language, of signifier and signified.”

He made a sweeping gesture, and the ring-finger of his left hand slid off and plopped to the ground in the aisle of the auditorium.

“By ‘ultimate’ I do not mean greatest, merely the last conceivable pair of opposites that has been left unanalyzed by deconstructionism; that is to say, a dichotomy that has been, until now, at this moment, left ‘constructed.’  If it pleases you, and I know it does, to join me on this journey into the final bastion of meaning, to raze that illusory fortress to the metaphorical ground, I invite you to consider the sociorhetorical–the ultimately linguistically-defined–construct within the text of the ‘world’ known as the dichotomy of life versus death.  Of the living versus the dead.”

A janitor entered in the back, his hat pulled low over his eyes, and proceeded to empty a trashcan.

“It is obvious that our culture places emphasis on the positives of being alive, of possessing all of your bodily organs and fluids within the thin envelope that is referred to as ’skin;’ dead is seen as a sorry condition, a subject-position marked by being the recipient of society’s pity and not moving unless you seek to consume the brains of the living.  This is obviously and transparently a construct perpetuated in the contemporary world by the medical profession, explicitly in the business of preventing the living from becoming the dead, and thus depriving them of customers, for it is a well-known fact that the dead do not get sick, and thus have no need of doctors, surgeons, nurses, orderlies, psychologists, psychiatrists, or any other individual in the business of perpetuating the myth of public health–I would continue further, but this is not a Marxist lecture.”

Several people in the audience laughed; the janitor walked back to his hand-cart and began to rifle through the contents.

“As such, it is quite clear that the only reason that any individual ever seeks to remain among the living is because of their subscription to the linguistically-perpetuated privileging of ‘live’ over ‘dead.’  It is obvious that this dichotomy produces a great deal of distress, for who among you has not feared for the loss of life, or of limb, or the depletion of your precious bodily fluids? this is truly a sorry state in which to be, and as such, it is absolutely and completely necessary that everyone in this lecture hall immediately and without protest surrender to me their brains.”

The corpse moved to speak again, but the janitor produced a shotgun; he chambered a round and raised the barrel before pulling the trigger.

The slug took the Zombie-Derrida in the face, and destroyed his brain.

Noam Chomsky lowered his weapon.

“My eyes glazed over at the third comma,” he declared.

“Dr. Chomsky!  You killed the zombie!” a member of the audience cried out.

“Zombie?” Noam Chomsky asked, confused.

(I admit that this is a shallow parody.  But I loved the idea of Noam Chomsky with a shotgun.)

As I approached the massive building, I swung my car around in a tight turn, and planted myself perfectly between two SUVs, stopping just even with their tail-lights.

I hopped out of the car, my brain screaming for nicotine, and ran toward the automatic door.

Walking past the $1 DVD rental kiosk and the machines that distribute high-fructose corn syrup, I entered the Wal*Mart.

My greatest shame is that I’ve become the sort of person who shops at Wal*Mart.  After my experience with the local grocery store, I haven’t really had a choice (the apples had been brown, and the beef had left a metallic taste in my mouth even after I’d thoroughly cooked it.)

But I wasn’t coming here for food.

Walking in, I passed the greeter, who looked at me disinterestedly, and hung a left around the carts and headed for the check-out aisle that sold tobacco products.

It was 10 PM, and the banks of halogen-bright lights were turned on full-blast.  I watched as the old man (Who looked like some unholy cross between Allen Ginsberg and Charles Manson) went through.  The family behind me did their best to convince their daughter that they didn’t need to buy any “candy.”

There was no candy in that aisle; only lighters and playing cards.  The kid would have been disappointed biting into a butane-filled tube of plastic, anyway.

Getting up to the cashier, I spoke:

“Box of Top, please.”

She went over to the shelves of cigarettes, and examined them critically, before looking back at me.

I pointed at the yellow box, down near the bottom.

She smiled, uncomprehending, before looking back at the exact spot I pointed.

“Regular,” I said, “not menthol.”

She pointed at the cannister, the option that would give me cigarrettes for a month but cost forty bucks.

“This?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “the box.  It’s two slots over.”

She picked out the cannister, and held it up.

“This?” she asked.

I shook my head, again.

“The box.”

After a brief exchange of this sort, I finally got my cigarettes, and remembered what my cover artist had told me about people who go to Wal*Mart late at night, implying that she felt a bit like Jane Goodall when she went.  I don’t think it applies in this town, as it’s the only real option.

Doesn’t mean it’s pleasant.

“Have a nice night,” the greeter said, not looking up from his gameboy.

“You, too,” I said.

(For those interested, I’m reposting the episode right…here:   Cicatriz Episode 1)

I have to admit, part of why I’m doing these essays is to keep my productivity superficially up while doing a bit less work. But there’s still some interesting things to say about the writing process I’m using to produce Cicatriz. Either that, or I’m trying to put up some Warren Ellis/Matt Fraction sort of backmatter front (of course, if so, I’d be writing this at 4AM, Friday, September 18, wouldn’t I?) But that’s what this is.

Backmatter for Cicatriz #1.

To tell you the truth, everything I’ve written has, in some way, mirrored my psychological state. Behemoth (which I hope to have out by the end of the year) is about alienation and dealing with absurdity; Archon Sutras (which I hope to have out by the end of next year, somewhat unlikely) is about a desire for transcendence; White Knight is about not knowing where to go.

Cicatriz is about…well, I’m still figuring it out. It’s a chimeric little thing, isn’t it? Not alternate history (not just,) not secondary world (not quite,) not really anything…yet.

There are numerous themes, but the way I’m planning it out, Cicatriz is less centered than my previous works. Wade is a main character, but I came up with Algernon, first, and Mari has her own character arc plotted out further than either of them. You haven’t even met the fourth central character. She’s showing up in the next episode.

(That’s right, I’m thinking of them as episodes, not chapters. Other than the lines of text marching across your screen, it has more to do with a television show than a book. I’m particularly proud of the cold open. [before you say anything, I happen to like parentheticals.])

But that’s enough rambling.

This is an essay about having ideas, and beginning to turn them into stories. It’s not a formula, not a recipe, but it’s an abstract for an unwritable article. Not so short, not so sweet, and certainly not to the point.

Neil Gaiman says that we all have ideas, all the time. The only difference between a storyteller and a supposed, hypothetical non-storyteller is that the former understands what’s happening, while the latter doesn’t.

The next time you’re daydreaming, get out a pen or pencil and write down what you’re thinking about on a napkin. Next time you think “I wonder what would happen if…” or “why is it that…” write it down.

That’s the stuff of stories, right there, and it’s the hard part—one of many hard parts, as there’s no easy point in the process—but how is a question a story?

How is a raven like a writing desk?

The former makes more sense.

All stories begin as questions, even if we don’t see it. To every story, there is a question that the storyteller asked.

“How did the Trojan War happen?”

“What if a lord killed his king?”

“Why would a man sell his soul to the devil?”

“What if a man turned into a giant bug?”

“Where are the snowdens of yesteryear?”

“What if the postal service were a conspiracy? What if a housewife discovered it?”

“What if a man found an ear in the middle of a lawn?”

The story is the answer you find to that question. Sometimes, as is usually the case with speculative fiction, you’ve got to construct a framework for the question, an idea of how you go about answering it.

You just take that answer and you stretch it out as far as it will go before it becomes a pointless exercise, then you write it out as best you can.

Which is the hard part.

Trivia about Cicatriz:

The title was something that I had trouble coming up with. Sometimes titles are easy–Behemoth and White Knight were easy to come up with; both relate to the main character–but the title for Cicatriz eluded me.

I played around with several alternatives: “The 72” (72 is going to be something of an arc number, for reasons that will be seen later on) “Asclepius” (Asclepius is a motif, taken from a line that’s stuck with me for a while: “Asclepius, why are you weeping?”) and “Scar Tissue.”

None seemed to fit, and up until I finished episode 1, I had no title.

I first encountered the word Cicatriz on the Mars Volta’s “De-Loused in the Comatorium” and I originally thought it was one of their notorious word-salad lyrics. But I later found out that it was the Spanish equivalent of “Cicatrice,” from the Latin “Cicatrix.”

It means “Scar,” but (from what I understand) it refers specifically to the scar that forms after a surgical procedure.

I found it appropriate as a title, but I’m not going to tell you why.

–Cameron Summers,

September, 2009

(Another would-be short-story idea I’ve been kicking around for a bit under a month. Hope to actually get to this one, even if it’s the setting more than the story that’s fascinating.)

The journeyman led the schoolchildren along the catwalk over the workshop floor, where neanderthaloid craftsmen in protective suits bolted ceramic shells onto the crustacean foundry-workers being assembled there.

Behind the schoolchildren, his valet—also a neanderthaloid Frank—made cooing noises, urging them onward, and picking up stragglers before placing them in the middle of the pack.

“What we see here,” the Craftsman said, “is the ultimate expression of industry. In the times before the Fall, men and women used machines to do their work. Metal Minds and Metal Bodies that broke down, and needed people to repair them, that couldn’t adapt, and needed people to guide them. It’s easy to see the fortune in the fall, now that we don’t rely on machines, isn’t it?”

“Yes, craftsman,” the schoolchildren chorused.

“You can see here as two Franks fit the ceramic shell onto the foundry-crab. Shapeless without the shell, it becomes a near-tireless and adaptive worker with it attached.”

One of the children raised her hand.

“Yes, you,” the craftsman said, irritated that the children would keep him from real work.

“How smart are the crabs?” she asked.

A proud smile broke out on his face when the child brought up his area of expertise.

“They can be made as smart as necessary. Usually, they’re no more intelligent than a cat, but a foreman crab is altered, with extra ganglia sewn and grafted into its brain, until it’s as smart as a Frank.”

The children turned and looked at his valet, who smiled.

“Franks smart,” he confided to them, hiding his own disgust with the pedagogy that was to be their task today.

The children laughed derisively, though the valet didn’t care.

“Can anything be made smarter?” a child asked without raising his hand.

The journeyman forced a smile, and held up wagging fingers.

The child complied, and the journeyman waited a count of eight.

“Yes, you.”

“Can anything be made smarter?”

The journeyman smiled derisively.

“In theory, but they still have to be taught. A leg must be broken, here and there. The guard beasts are taught to do that. You remember them? The great big birds with no wings and tubes for beaks? Each is as smart as you or I–” no, not as smart as I, he corrected silently “–but much stronger.”

The children were silent for a moment, and he led them to the door.

“Now, after all that thinking and questioning,” he asked, “wouldn’t it be fine to look at where Franks are made?”

The children chorused their agreement.

#

“Wretched beasts,” the journeyman said.

“Wretched indeed,” the valet concurred.

The journeyman sat in his small office, where a colony of glow-worms dozed behind a glass pane, awaiting his tapping, and a recording bird sat on its perch, a disk of white bone suspended before it.

“We could just build more people,” the craftsman declared, “I could do it. They could spring from the womb-chambers fully formed and fully educated.”

“True,” the Frank said, “but what would separate us, then?”

The craftsman sighed, and turned away.

“I made you too smart,” he said.

“You copied your mind into me, but made me servile. My ganglia are yours, save that one thing. I wouldn’t be a very good valet if I let you get set on an idea that would have you disassembled.”

The journeyman nodded, the threat of mutual disassembly made them excellent partners.

“I’m not going to get any more work done, today,” he said.

“No. I suppose not,” the valet concurred, “shall we go home?”

“Yes. I suppose we shall.”

The two stood and left.

#

Outside, the valet held a sunshade over his master’s head, the black frond absorbing the hard light from the sun overhead. Both wore lenses of treated chitin over their eyes.

A guard-beast blocked their way. A giant, featherless bird five times the size of a man. Its wicked, taloned feet dug into the ground, and it blared a warning that all the craftsmen of the firm knew.

He produced his papers while the bird dug in the pouch on its stomach for a bullet-grub. Sucking one up into its beak, it positioned its hammer-like tongue on the worm’s head, holding it in place.

The bird-thing turned its head and put one vast, black eye very close to the leather page, searching for any sign of counterfeit.

It trumpeted again, through its nose, a low, flat noise.

The craftsman was unfamiliar with that noise.

It turned towards him, and he lurched out of the way, his valet following him with the sunshade.

The hammer-tongue pounded on the head of the bullet-grub, and its metal-filled thorax shot through the air, followed by the chitinous confetti of its head and abdomen.

The two ran, fleeing the bird.

It trumpeted again, calling more guard-beasts.

But the two were gone.

“What was that?” the Valet asked, when they had passed through the archway of the gate.

“I don’t know,” the Craftsman responded.

“It’s like it didn’t recognize you!”

“I know!” he growled back.

“What could’ve done that?” the valet asked.

“Only someone using my techniques,” the craftsman said, darkly.

(I have theories about 4AM.  When I realized I’d forgotten to do flash fiction for today, this is what came to mind.)

“Preparing for a party?” the cashier asked.

Twenty-one cans of tomato juice, large ones, being sold at a discount rate.

“Not really,” he said, his head lazily moving in a figure-8.

She looked out the window of the all-night supermarket. It must be four AM, now. She wanted nothing more than to go home and get to bed.

After a moment of examining the produce, she said:

“Guests?” she scanned five bundles of celery stalks, “are you having guests?”

“No, just me, tonight,” he said, smiling.

“You mean this morning?”

A can of olives, three containers of cayenne pepper, four of black pepper.

“Yeah. What time is it, anyway?”

Four bottles of cheap vodka.

“Four AM,” she said.

“Oh. Don’t you stop selling liquor earlier?”

“No, that’s more of a custom around here than a law.”

“Hot damn.”

Lemon juice, salt, Worcestershire Sauce.

“Okay, you’re total is…seventy-nine, eighty-one.”

He turned his pockets inside out, and sighed. Grabbing one bottle of vodka, he ran out of the store into the not-quite-dark of 4AM.

Cicatriz Episode 01

And now, as a bonus, a bit of explanation on the new formatting.

Ideally, each Episode will be somewhat stand-alone, but a greater enjoyment will be had by reading each one.  Moreover, each Episode is divided up into segments, each no more than four pages long, and possibly shorter than a page.   These are meant to be natural points to stop, meaning that you can get up and come back to it later, provided you’re the type of person who has no attention span.

Also, next week, I’ll present a short essay on the process behind writing this, and the week after I’ll post another episode.  The first 6 Episodes form a story arc, and I’ve already got them plotted out.

I’m going drinking.