Work, as she is seen by plumbers

[desperance]

...So I finished playing around with the urban fantasy, and sent that off on Friday; and on Saturday - thinking that I would start work on a short story that I owe - I remembered instead that it needed synopses for its two sequels, so I wrote those (oh, look! they've got plots! stuff happens! development! progress! conclusion...!) and then went out for my second Burns supper of the week. More haggis, more whisky. In a lighthouse.

And went to bed thinking that I'd start the short story next day, yesterday, Sunday.

And, um, didn't. Didn't really do anything, beyond a little light administration; but was just winding up to get started in the evening when friends phoned, just in from a day on Hadrian's Wall, and would I like curry and drinking and company?

Well, yes. So Sunday became a retrospective day off, and today - well, today I am working on the story. And I've just reached that point, about three paragraphs in, where I suddenly understand that - although I have had this story in my head, titled and everything, for literally years - I really know precious little about it and I'm kind of scared of pitching into the thing in this state of utter ignorance, I can't make it work and I can't make it well, all I can do in this condition is spoil it entirely. So ordinarily I would hurl myself away from the computer at this point and go for a walk, go shopping, get the hell away from it for a while until I have a bright idea or recover my nerve or just get desperate enough to come back and poke at it anyway; only I can't do that, because my plumber is fixing my toilet today. He's been and gone and is coming back; so I am rooted to the house, cannot flee the story, and so - well, yes. I am writing the story. Ruining it, most likely, because truly I know nothing; but 'twas ever thus. We blunder about in darkness, and gather stuff together, and whimper "Does it make a shape yet?" to some presumptive higher power who can actually see.

Remind me again, why we do this...?

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Because in the end, after the lip-gnawing and the worrying and the fussing and the mistakes and the fixing, it makes a shape, and it's a shape no one else has made before.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. That'll do for me, actually. I've just paid the plumber - yay! flushing toilet! no leaks! - and I'm nearly two pages in. Almost enough to give it gravitational attraction, to feel pulled in rather than having to push. Almost. But now I do have to go out, for lo, 'tis lunchtime; and I have no lunch, on account of having had to stay in all morning, so not shopping.

Just up the road? Best samosas in the country, bar the ones I make myself. Be right back...

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

for the glamour, silly.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Of course. Slipped my mind. How could I let it do that? 'Scuse me, while I just go and sweep up after the plumber...

[szandara.livejournal.com]

You do this for people like me, who very much like to read books, but cannot write them ourselves. Without people like you writing books, there would be a large number of very smart people spending much of their time being very bored, which sounds to me like a recipe for badness.

Also, Recipe for Badness would be a great name for a band.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Also, you are right. Names of bands are like short-story titles; they are everywhere. Except, of course, when you need one.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

We (meaning you) do this, because this is who you are: this is who you are because you do this. Was there a choice?

Was the lighthouse as good as it looks?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, the lighthouse is lovely. And the people are good, too.

[danjite.livejournal.com]

Three words:

Day. Jobs. Suck.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

So I have always been given to understand. Every now and then, tho', I just get a yen to have one. Be like my dad, y'know? Go to work, do the job, go home. Not to do what he did, but - well, I've played in retail, I like selling stuff. I coulda bin a shop assistant...

[devonellington.livejournal.com]

We do this because our heads explode if we keep all the stories and characters inside.

BRIDGE OF DREAMS is one of my top picks for the books I've read over the past few months:

http://biblioparadise.wordpress.com

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Thanks, hon...

[(Anonymous)]

we do this... because we can :)

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Because we like looking in the mirror and seeing God looking back (not necessarily THE god, maybe only a small god, the god of short stories [better not let Pratchett see that] but a god nonetheless)