For the past two months, every visit to a nearby Barnes and Noble either started or ended with a trip to that section of the store where beautifully ornate but overpriced journals are kept, displayed in such a way that even the blind could appreciate their beauty. Some of them are bright, others subtle; some come in hard or soft covers while others seem to be somewhere in between; they’re bound in leather, and plastic, and cardboard; some look as if they were designed to become fixtures upon desks while still others look as if they were meant to be tossed in a small bag and taken on a hike in the forrest, where a writer would note nature-inspired tales and observations.

On a trip to Puerto Rico in 2001, one of these–a small, black journal with a soft-leather cover containing two spots for writing implements and a string to tie the thing shut–became the preferred recording device of thought, conversations, and observations made during the visit. It was a place in which ideas and descriptions and pictures and memories could dance. That journal’s still around, siting in a box in a storage closet, stuffed with post cards, pictures, and other memorabilia.

That trip was eight years ago. Was it time to get another?

During a honeymoon trip to Orlando, just over five years ago, another one of those journals, received as a wedding gift, sat open in a hotel, its blank pages stared upon by eyes lusting for words but without the will to commit them. It was spiral-bound and had a hard cover of red and autumn, with the words “I hope you dance” inscribed in gold lettering. Eventually, the events and thoughts of that day were indeed committed to the pages, but that was the last time that journal would be written on for another four years, when those eyes, now filled with reverence for the notebook, would again gaze upon its still blank pages, thinking of what could be.

That journal now sits inside a desk, less than fifteen of its pages written on. Ironic.

This time there was no trip to precipitate the purchase, and it wasn’t a gift. Instead it was simply a matter of desire, which is why it took two months and multiple trips to that particular store to finally decide that it was worth it. Two months and numerous trips for a $40 purchase. Why?

Someone in a writing group once quipped that it had taken her years of writing before she was finally convinced she was good enough to write on one of those fancy journals. Another person jumped in saying that she had felt the same way, until she realized that the thing wasn’t some magical tome, it was just a notebook–an expensive notebook!–one in which she could write, make mistakes, and doodle if she wanted.

Between two living room chairs, on the floor, sits the “Medici Lions Kraft Recycled Italian Leather Journal.” That, by the way, is a rococoesque, marketing-inspired name for “pricey notebook”. Pressed on to the leather of both the front and back covers, the edges protected by a thin wrapping of leather string, are fanciful patterns featuring plants and decorative lines. These are bordered a by a string of petite, golden leaves. On the center of the front cover is a shield with the Medici lion, a beast on its hind legs, facing right.

When it was first removed from plastic packaging–protecting this notebook from passing hands until ready for use–the relaxing smell of soft leather filled the air as the notebook slipped out. That was followed by some time spent enjoying the thing for what it was, smelling it, touching it, and imagining the words that could be. Pages turned one by one, blank, waiting until the moment when they would be forever scarred and at the same time blessed with the fulfillment of their implicit raison d’être.

The only books written which can often be considered near-perfect the first time around are journals. Thinking about that, it became a possibility that this would be its use. But maybe there was something more. The soft feel of its cover and sturdiness of its pages demanded that more than the trivial thoughts and goings on of an average day be conferred upon it. A novel? A collection of short stories? An outlining of philosophical inquiries and thought experiments?

Ideas for what to write in the journal abound, but fleshing out these before beginning to write is at least somewhat important. Unlike the many tens of legal pads onto which hundreds of pens’ worth of ink have been spilled, this type of notebook isn’t one to be readily discarded. Is it okay to fill it with something trite?

Not surprisingly, a week after its purchase its pages are, of course, still empty.

It is not a holy relic, nor is it some decorative piece meant only to enhance a place by simply existing. It’s a notebook, one in which words will eventually be written, one which will eventually be filled, and one which may eventually be read by eyes other than that of the words’ author. In any case, one thing’s for sure: after a months-long line and a $40 entrance fee, it would surely be a waste to not dance.

• The love of story: The belief that your vision can be expressed only through story, that characters can be more “real” than people, that the fictional world is more profound than the concrete.
• The love of the dramatic: A fascination with the sudden surprises and revelations that bring sea-changes in life.
• The love of truth: The belief that lies cripple the artist, that every truth in life must be questioned, down to one’s own secret motives.
• The love of humanity: A willingness to empathize with suffering souls, to crawl inside their skins, and see the world through their eyes.
• The love of sensation: The desire to indulge not only the physical but the inner senses.
• The love of dreaming: The pleasure in taking leisurely rides in your imagination just to see where it leads.
• The love of humor: A joy in the saving grace that restores the balance of life.
• The love of language: The delight in sound and sense, syntax and semantics.
• The love of duality: A feel for life’s hidden contradictions, a healthy suspicion that things are not what they seem.
• The love of perfection: The passion to write and rewrite in pursuit of the perfect moment.
• The love of uniqueness: The thrill of audacity and a stone-faced calm when it is met by ridicule. The love of beauty: an innate sense that treasures good writing, hates bad writing, and knows the difference.
• The love of self: a strength that doesn’t need to be constantly reassured. T, that never doubts that you are indeed a writer. You must love to write and bear the loneliness.

I suppose I’m not surprised that “The love of people” wasn’t included on this list. After all, to write stories about people–good ones, anyway–a certain love of humanity has to exist. But, loving humanity and loving people could be considered different things. (Just ask Mark Twain, who used to write scathing letters to people which his wife would then secretly dump, claiming she had taken them to the post office.) Still, I’ve always found it odd–and I’m sure I’m not alone here–that a craft so dependent on an understanding of the multilevel reality of the world and of people would demand such solitude. To know yourself is to know the world, I guess.

With that in mind, it brings up the question on how fiction writers are expected to know and understand people at a deep enough level to be able to show that depth through story, especially given their necessary seclusion. For example, in a story it’s not enough to say, “Joe and Abby decided to travel north together, and while Joe hoped this would blossom to something greater than a mere friendship, Abby focused on revenge.” Telling this kind of story is great, but what’s under there? Not only why is Abby focused on revenge, or why Joe is interested in her, but why someone like Joe would be interested in Abby, and why someone like Abby feels the need to take revenge. Knowing people is the only way to satisfactorily answer these questions, at least without being superficial or resorting to cliches like the hopeful but awkward nerd, or the vengeful lover. You can’t know people by sitting in front of your computer (or typewriter, for that matter) all day.

The only writer I ever saw mention anything about needing social interactions was Stephen King in his marvelous biography-cum-writing course On Writing, where he mentions that writers, despite the inherent loneliness of the craft, must make sure to go out and talk to real people, since this is the only way they’ll be able to write convincing dialog. Otherwise, he points out, we start falling back on cliches.

And just to be clear, reading a bunch of blogs, trolling a bunch of forums, and catching people on Twitter are not substitutes for real, face-to-face interaction, even though they supply their own set of cultural rules and regulations which should be considered when writing.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just dimwitted enough to be sufficiently insensitive about people–and this may very well be the case–that while other writers, particularly great story writers, are able to understand that intrinsically, I have to bust my hump.

I’ll be optimistic here and say that I don’t think this to be the case. Mind you, I will admit to not being as good with people as I’d like, but that’s why I read books on people skills and psychology. (Something I’m picking back up on after learning once again that unless you’re improving, you’re decaying, that there’s no such thing as staying steady.) Still, I think it–the gift, the understanding, the sense, whatever you want to call it–has more to do with experience having built both knowledge and belief than anything else. Knowledge about how people talk, about how people think (a level of empathy is needed here), and about how people interact with the world around them. Belief that the story you tell can be deeper and more meaningful than, as multi-layered as, and more convincing than real life. Knowledge which can only be arrived at from actually getting out there and meeting people and living life and finding joy and getting hurt and getting up after each fall and seeing the danger of the alternative. And belief that the worlds you create can be just as real if not more so than what you see, as well as a belief in your ability to one way or the other tell the story. Mind you, there’s always the need for some level of talent, things which come more naturally for some than others, not the least of which is desire. Yet as Amy Tan once said, “talent is for amateurs.”

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” — Mark Twain

In the end, it’s about work. Work you have to be willing to love even when it’s unlovable, sort of like a prodigal child. And that work comes from love. That and whatever else you can throw at it.

With that in mind, I figured it was time to find out about blogging software. I did some research, grabbed a bunch of packages I found and reviewed them. During the tests, here’s what I was looking for:

• Ease of use/Design
• Cost
• The ability to write while off-line (then again, this one’s a given)
• The ability to upload pictures
• If my blog’s backend can do it, this should be able to as well.
• The ability to edit uploaded posts.
• Code produced must be clean enough to be easily readable/editable.

While this comparison review won’t focus strictly on these criteria (because most of them satisfy it to some extent), they’ll serve the primary determinant factor in what I end up using. Of course, every one of the software packages I tried had its own distinctive features outside of this, and while I’m not necessarily looking for these extras, I’ll be looking at them for the sake of the review.

This review includes the following applications:

• MarsEdit
• Ecto
• MacJournal (and vicariously, WinJournal)
• ScribeFire for Firefox
• Flock

Of course, if you just want to go ahead and skip to the conclusion, by all means do so.

First up…MarsEdit

But the story? It’s sucking. Hard. Maybe you can help me out here?

The story tells the tale of this guy, Nicandro, who’s… well, hell, I don’t even know what he does. That’s part of the problem. I don’t care what he does. I don’t care about any of the characters in the story, except one, Grandpa (also named Nicandro), and he dies in the second chapter.

So maybe I should make the story about him.

Anyway, the story deals with Nicandro and some of the situations that come up during the holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s) after an especially tumultuous set of years. First, in Halloween, we learn of some of the challenges he’s faced in the areas of health, romance, religion and death, and that sets us up for seeing how they’re resolved (or dealt with) over the next three holidays, as well as what happens when they crop up again. Thanksgiving, for example, continues the whole religion question, but focuses more on family issues, including the whole romance. (Problem is the guy’s married, but a friend who was more than just a friend shows up in his life, which leads to some conflict.) It also focuses more heavily on money. Then Christmas focuses almost entirely around money and religion. By this time, things are getting weird between the “friend” and Nicandro, and that begings to spill over into other parts of his life. At the same time, he’s making strides in fixing his money situations and we begin to understand how religious and family issues begin to get resolved. Finally, there’s New Year’s, where things are resolved (somewhat), and new challenges arise, but now that we know Nicandro we can guess how he’ll meet them.

In short, the novel’s one giant flashback after another. And it doesn’t really have a bad guy, it’s more like a literary novel, which is unlike anything I’ve ever written. For the most part, most of my stories have been about discovering a good guy or a bad guy, about lessons learned and about awakening, but none of these have been novel length. I guess I’m left wondering whether I’d want to READ something like this novel, let alone WRITE this.

I’m considering dropping Nicandro’s story and going with Grandpa’s story instead. Maybe after the death, Nicandro finds diaries outlining his grandfather’s various adventures during travels, but… that’s sort of cliche. Or maybe Nicandro goes insane and becomes a cult leader and, strangely enough, retains his place as the hero of the story. Perhaps some sort of catastrophe hits, and the story… completely and utterly changes. I don’t know. But I think the point is that perhaps it’s time to revisit the drawing board.

Time is short. If I want to complete the NaNoWriMo challenge, I better make changes and make them fast. And I have to get more interested in this story. Some story.

Honestly, I think the bulk of my problem is that I haven’t read anywhere near enough novels as of late. I’ve been so busy with other things that reading novels has taken a back seat. (And yes, I’ll put the blame here on watching too much Stargate SG-1. I’m on the fourth season, which is really, really good. I’d blame it on Heores, too, but this season nothing short of sucks.) Last night, I picked up Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvouz with Rama. If I’m going to start somewhere I might as well make it in the pages of a novel by one of the greats, right?

The scariest part in all of this? Like most of my characters, Nicandro has a somewhat autobiographical aspect. Problem is, he’s turned out to be far more autobiographical than I’d anticipated. He’s not me, but he does have similar challenges (plus a number of his own). And maybe that’s my problem: he’s too close, and I’m just too boring. Also it violates one of my core rules, which is to never base characters on real people, not even myself.

Maybe it’s time I sit down with Nicandro and Vevila (his wife), Andrea (a long-time friend), Gallah (his sister), Gallah’s kids (Thor, Eddie and Kay), Andrew and Maysun (his parents), Warcraft the cat (who likes to hang out in the toilet), and Dobbie the smiling dog and see what makes them interesting. Part of me wonders whether this is smart, considering my time constraints, but that part’s quickly silenced by the knowledge that if I don’t get that done then the novel will remain unfinished.

P.S.
For those of you who I know will ask, I decided not to write about Monkey because the NaNoWriMo rules state that it has to be a new concept. Monkey already has a history, has characters, has a world, and I wanted to follow the rules and start from scratch. But who knows, maybe I’ll end up tying this to that anyway. Actually…

It wasn’t like I was expecting to participate this year. I really wasn’t. But ever since I first learned of the challenge two years ago, something within has screamed at me to participate. Having just bought a house and finally gotten close to settling in, I didn’t know whether I was prepared to undertake he challenge. Still, the weight of peer pressure came into play, as I started seeing person after person in my Twitter stream begin to commit themselves to the undertaking, starting with Jamie, from HowNotToWrite.com (wonderful site, by the way) who I found via StrikeThru, whose advice I followed to attain a few of my very own typewriters.

Just in case you’re wondering, no I’m not writing my novel on a typewriter. Instead I’ve decided to use my MacBook, specifically using Scrivener. (Man, I love that program!) I was planning to use Mr. Universe, my Olympia SM-3, but it looks like the platen needs to be replaced, and the last thing I wanted to do was to rub out the letters from the hammers because of a hard platen.

In case you’re wondering here’s what my novel’s about: The main character’s name is Nicandro. He’s married to Vevila, lives in a house in an older part of town, surrounded by newer developments. Not that this matters much to the story, but I thought it would be nice to give you a bit of the setting. Anyway, so the story deals with his growth, as accented by the types of relational and personal challenges often revealed (or accented) by four major holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Basically, it’s a literary piece where the focus involves the different lessons he learns. I guess it could e counted as a “coming of age” novel, though it’s more like a “coming of the realization of the multileveness of existence.” (It has a lot of existentialist themes, particularly those of Sartre and Dabrowski.)

As you can probably tell, the novel will likely be somewhat autobiographical. That’s fine, at least for the first draft. Subsequent drafts, should I choose to actually (re)write any, will likely involve major rewriting of some parts, which is fine. The point of NaNoWriMo isn’t to get a perfect novel done, it is to get a novel done. Perfection can come later. The big rule is therefore “don’t edit, just write.” (Which is basically the rule for anyone writing a novel, anyway.)

So what will this mean for blogging? Nothing really. I still plan on doing at least one post a week, and likely two, though I don’t suppose I’ll be doing any massive posts, unless I decide to put up a passage I particularly like, or unless something gets me really rilled up, or unless I want to talk about the characters in the novel, and sort of “think out loud” about their development. (You don’t mind if I use you as a sounding board, do you?) I might do a few more videos than normal, though I promise that if I have videos, they’ll be good ones; I’ll probably also do another Le Linkage post. I mean, with all the links I find–most thanks to the people on Twitter these days–I’m surprised I haven’t done one recently. (By the way, if you’re interested in transhumanist topics, you’ve GOT to check out H+ Magazine.)

Oh, and just in case it wasn’t obviously clear, the title refers to how many words I’ve already written, and how many more I’ve yet to go. Guess I better get cracking, huh?

Last night I had a dream, about going back to USF, this time for film. During the entire thing, everything I did was juxtaposed against my experience as a music student, with the worst of moments–those I’d go back and erase, for they brought nothing but ill–being accented most of all. In the end, I awoke with both dread at the idea of going back to school and facing demons, and hope that I could actually be successful in film.

But first and foremost, I’d like to continue further with my writings.

You may not know it, since I don’t remember whether I’ve mentioned this here or not, but I’m a musician by training. I started playing the violin when I was 10, the double-bass when I was 13, and the viola when I was 18. In 2002 I got a B.M. (Bachelors of Musicology) in music composition. Since then music has been, at at best , secondary in my life. Hell of an expensive hobby, wouldn’t you say?

It was during that time that I started writing, first for computer companies, then eventually for my own, in the form of commentary and fiction. This has been moderately successful, by which I mean I’ve been able to make a fairly good living off of it, though I’ve yet to attain any massive fame or fortune from my writing. Still, even with that, I feel I need to do more, like if the creative process, at least mine, can’t really be constricted to one format. That, and I’ve always fancied myself as a bit of a stage and film “creator” (I won’t use “director”, since it’s not entirely what I’d like to do). As well as an actor, since I’ve also always enjoyed being on the stage. But then, maybe I’ve been watching too much television.

My office, if I may change the subject, is coming along nicely. When we moved here, it was the one room I knew I had to set up before concerning myself with any of the others, including the bedroom or kitchen. But in reality there are two offices, not one. The first is my job office/library. It’s a 12′ x 12′ room facing the conservation area in the back yard. It has its own bathroom and a walk-in closet. That walk-in closet is the second office, what I call my writing office. In it there is one small AC vent, one light, and no electrical plugs. That’s because I don’t intend to use any electronic devices in the office, at least not for long. (I’m writing this on my MacBook and yes, I’m sitting in the writing office.) I’ve added a bookshelf, a (beautiful) writing desk, and a chair, but that’s it as far as furniture is concerned. On the desk is my typewriter, and until last night, a stack of papers full of unfinished stories, bits of diary entries, and plans for a couple of books.

In that stack of papers were the drafts for seven distinct works, including two books. One’s a comic book script. Another is a book I started a year ago, but which I don’t quite feel the need to write right now, another is a collection of short stories set in a universe of absurd realism. And then there are a few short stories. Of the stack, most were written on my computer. Some were written on my typewriters. Yet all were written with the desire to create something, a world, a universe.

You know what my dream is? I admire guys like Joss Whedon, Gene Roddenberry, and J. Michael Straczynski. Why? Because they’ve been able to do what I can only dream of doing: they created universes so enjoyable to be in that people will choose it over the universe in which they currently exist. So, yeah, maybe that’s my dream: to become the purveyor of escapism. But I think of it as creating something that makes so many people feel good, that so many enjoy, that it takes on a life of its own.

Someone wise once told me that God created us in His own image, and that since He is a creator, then that must mean we are also. I’ve held that belief as my own ever since.

While I completely admire people like Steven King and Gene Wolfe (hard to imagine the two being held up to the same light), people whose lives are defined by their words, I’ve come to the realization that my ambitions stray a bit from this solitary discipline and encompass also the visual and aural arts. That’s why I look to people like Neil Gaiman, whose works transcend the written word and move to the visual arts, whether that be via comics or films; and Stanley Kubrick, who create a world of not only sight and words, but of sounds.

The office isn’t very large, as you can imagine. At 6′ x 8′ it isn’t small, either. It’s just the right size for its purpose. It’s only window to the outside world is the closed door to the main office. Yet in here I can sit with my own thoughts, write, and dream up worlds which will one day, I hope, exist somewhere other than in my own mind.

I suppose what I’m running into is the creation of multiple, flawed characters whose flaws are first and foremost not readily apparent, but which come into direct conflict.

Actually, when I put it like that it seems very easy. Here’s the quirk: the flaw is actually associated with a specific event. Either it’s amplified by the event (very likely), or it appears as a result of the event (unlikely) or it is embodied by some issue unrelated to the event, but which when the event occurs takes a different form of expression (which most mirrors real-life psychology).

So here’s a question for all the fiction authors out there: how do you handle this sort of interaction? How do you create characters with flaws which fall into the four standard categories [(a) flaws you know that no one knows, (b) flaws you know that everybody knows, (c) flaws others know that you don't know, and (d) flaws that you don't know that nobody knows]?

I’m going to venture a guess here and say that the answer to this depends on whether the persons are supposed to be protagonists, antagonists, or on opposite sides of the spectrum. In popular culture, the “bad” guys are usually those whose flaws have overtaken them, or do bad things due to their flaw, whereas the “good” guys are usually those whose flaws have been overcome. This can usually be seen in the way villains are humanized. (A perfect example of this is “Mr. Glass” in Unbreakable, where the audience is drawn in to pity the guy, believing that he’s turned all his misfortunes into positives (owning an art gallery) only to find out that they instead led him to be a monster in search for proof of his hypothesis.)

But what happens when there is no clear protagonist or antagonist in the story, where you know the character you’re cheering for is in at best an ambiguous “right”, and the character you’re not cheering for is in at best an ambiguous “wrong”? What happens then (other than a really good, heated book club discussion)? There are those stories in which the person who you’re cheering for the entire time turns out to be the bad guy. These stories are usually enjoyed better during the second reading when you as the reader realize that the author was pulling you in a certain direction all along in order to dash your hopes. Reminds me of the Futurama episode where Tinny Tim tells Bender, in his pathetically optimistic tone, “You raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly. Bravo, sir!”

I’ll be thinking about this for a while while I put together a few short stories for which I’m currently scribbling ideas.

[T]ypos will lurk and creep and scuttle on the edges of the text and, despite my best efforts, jump out and wave furiously at everyone as soon as I’m done…

from Neil Gaiman’s Journal.

You know, I should start a “quotes” miniblog or something.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what to write. I have the ideas, just not the time to bring them to fruition. Sorry ’bout that. You’ll have something new this week, I promise, even if it’s just a link post. (By the way, click here for good reading.)

You know, that just totally killed this post. Or maybe I just made it better, by making you grateful you still have your hands, don’t have ALS or Alzheimer’s. So I’ll go on anyway. Here’s what you should do when faced with “writer’s block”.

First of all, remember one thing: there’s no such thing as writer’s block, got it? No such thing. Keep telling yourself that. Writer’s block is the magical bogey monster writer’s use when they either need an excuse not to write (because they don’t feel like it) or when they’re afraid that all they have to write about is absolute crap.

So, how do you beat the imaginary bogey monster?

First, start writing. Seriously, just start writing. A friend of mine once told me, “Turn off your computer monitor, and just start typing. Do it for an hour. Then turn the monitor on. You might surprise yourself with what’s there.” While I’m not a big fan of turning your monitor off, the point is well made.

See, the biggest reason people claim they have writer’s block — that feeling of wanting to write, but not being able to put together a coherent sentence — is because they’re afraid to write something bad. They try to recreate the works of Mark Twain with the same effort it takes to mix a bowl of cereal. And when what they write sounds like it was written by a twelve year old on LSD, they sink back and blame the bogey monster. They go out, do their lawn, sleep, play with the dog… anything to avoid writing, since the muse, it seems, is currently giving them the cold shoulder.

During these times, the thing to do is to — drum roll, please — WRITE! Yes, that’s right. Start writing about anything. Make up a crappy, horrible, nonsensical story about how the people in the TV came out and tortured your dog, or about that time in seventh grade when some random kid decided to start picking on you for no apparent reason, or about a pretty day when. Write about anything. Write about everything! Why? Because writing is the oil that’ll keep your engine working. And sometimes you just need an oil change. Remember: It’s OK tor write crap. Seriously, it’s OK. If you find what you’ve written horrible then just throw it away, or file it away fro later editing/improvement. Just because what you wrote was crap doesn’t mean the idea behind it was.

Now, as soon as I tell someone that, the first reaction I get is “but what if it’s a lot?” So what if it is? I don’t know how many times I’ve written four-, ten-, and even twenty-thousand word stories and simply cast them aside because I didn’t like them. (Mind you, I keep the longer ones in case I want to either develop them when I’m in a better frame of mind, or mine them for ideas later.) Honestly, it’s not a waste of time. Why? Because if your goal is to write, then the more you do of it, the easier it’ll be to get in the mood to write, and the easier it’ll be to get back into the groove once you find yourself in a funk. It’s sort of like driving. If you’re 16 and just learning how to drive, taking off a year will likely result in you having to learn again. If you’re 36 and have been an experienced driver for years, taking a year off will make you a bit rusty, but you’ll very soon be back to driving competently.

OK, so you feel like writing, you feel like you have something good to say, but you don’t know how to really start it. What you do at this point depends heavily on what you want to write about. I’ll hit the four most common points here:

• If you’re writing a school paper on a particular subject: Here’s my quick and dirty guide to writing a paper. Grab a sheet of paper. In the center draw a circle. Put your main topic there. Draw five circles attached to that circle so it looks like a really bad spaceship, or a business plan. In the first circle write “Intro”. In the last, write “Conclusion”. In the middle three write three subjects you’d like to address. (This can be more than three, but three’s a good starting number.) Now, for the first subject, make a bulleted list of the topics you want to touch on, the points you’d like to make. Do that for the second and the third. Congratulations, you have your paper. For the intro paragraph, write what you’ll cover, and the three points you plan to show. The next three paragraphs, write about what you’ve outlined. The last paragraph, rewrite the first paragraph, but in ending form. In short, tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell ‘em, then tell ‘em, then tell ‘em what you just told ‘em.

  By the way you don’t have to start at the beginning. If the easiest circle for you to write about is circle three, start with that one. You can always clean up any weird transitions later.

  (You know I really should do a whole post on just this. I probably will. Notice, if you will, the format of this particular piece. Look familiar?)

• If you’re writing fiction: Whenever you get writer’s block and are writing fiction, that usually tells me one thing: you don’t know your characters well enough. Think about it, do people just stop with their lives because they don’t know what to do? No, they keep going. They may do a whole lot of nothing for a while, but they keep going. Likewise, your characters should keep going. (You can edit out the boring parts later.) If you don’t know what your character will do, then interview them. Ask them all kinds of questions. In fact, if you do this enough, you’ll find you’re never lonely, because you can talk to all these people in your head. And I probably shouldn’t have written that, but whatever, there it is. (In another post, I’ll put up the 160 or so questions I tend to ask my characters. Halfway through I already know enough about them to let them drive a story.) once you know your character(s) well enough, have them talk to each other. Eventually a scene will come out. Don’t worry if you have to throw out 1,000 words. Think about it, do you prefer books and stories that linger on for 10 pages with a point they could have easily and more effectively made in one, or worse yet, with something that doesn’t matter at all?

  The moral of this story is that you should know your characters.

• In cases of writing a cover letter for a resume: Now, this is one of the easiest, yet hardest things to do. Why? Because people have been told constantly that they shouldn’t brag, that they should be humble. Thing is, in this type of letter all that goes out the window. The way you get through here is to write a small biography about yourself. Write about all the good things you’ve done. (Well, good and great. Don’t limit yourself.) Remember that award you got from the YMCA for cleaning the floors? Write it down! What about your 3.78 GPA? Write it down! What about when at your last job you created over 10,000 pages of documentation? Write it down! Don’t worry about how much space you use. Be specific with people, examples, and numbers. Remember: you offer experience, knowledge, and an attitude that is impossible to duplicate, so let it show. Remember that a cover letter is a time for you to shine, so shine, darn it! Shine! Sure, the brightest flame burns quickest, but it’s also the one that people remember most. And that’s exactly what you want when someone reads your cover letter.

  After you’re done with all that wonderful biography, grab the best parts, and put them down. Be flamboyant! Be a little cocky! The worst possible thing that can happen is that they’ll say “no”. So?! There are a million other jobs out there that want not just someone LIKE you, THEY WANT YOU! And these people should to. It’s your job to tell them. Even if it means you write 60 pages of info just to get a couple of autobiographical paragraphs in. Besides, you’ll be able to use the stuff you wrote down for other cover letters, so don’t throw it away!

• You want to write a blog post: This one’s easy: Just. Start. Writing. On whatever topic you want. You know your blog better than anyone, and no one is more qualified than you to take a completely random subject — say, watermelons and Japanese robots — and somehow tie them into your blog, whether it be about Apple computers, theology, science, or western musicals about watermelons in Japanese robot culture. Will you have posts you don’t put up? Absolutely. Hell, I have 68 in the back-end right now, most of which will likely never see the light of day. So? And it doesn’t matter how long or short a blog post is. Readers will appreciate a good post whether it’s 8,000 words or 8. And yes, you’ll have some flops. Everyone does. Just don’t make it a habit. If you find yourself making it one, then you need to get out and talk to people. Go hang out with people familiar with your blog topics (though not necessarily your blog), or go do something totally different. Believe it or not, I got the idea for this post (and a couple others) at an acupuncture session yesterday. How weird is that, to think about writing when you’re getting poked by needles? And this wasn’t even my primary thought. My primary thought had to do with healing and medical issues. Again, how weird is that? Embrace the weird.

  Oh, and don’t be afraid to edit after you’ve posted. That’s the wonderful thing about blogs, you can edit later when you see that what you wrote sounded a lot better in your head than it reads on the site.

Finally — and this is imperative — read. A lot. On varied topics. The more you read the better writer you’re likely to be. Can’t think of anything to read? Hit up Wikipedia and start thumbing through subjects. Who knows, maybe that’ll spark your imagination. (It did mine. The result? I’m working on my first comic. The script’s finished and now I’m working with an artist to make the concept art for the series. That’s right, we’re planning a 12-issue run!)

OK, so there we are: a few of the ways to battle the imaginary bogey monster known as writer’s block. There are as many ways as there are writers, so if the solutions here don’t appeal to you, come up with your own, and tell us about them in the comments.

P.S.
I just cured a bit of writer’s block I was having, and came up with a few more blog post ideas. Neat, eh?

“I learned that I was right and everyone else was wrong when I was nine. Buck Rogers arrived on the scene that year, and it was instant love. I collected the daily strips, and was madness maddened by them. Friends criticized. Friends made fun. I tore up the Buck Rogers strips. For a month I walked through my fourth-grade classes, stunned and empty. One day I burst into tears, wondering what devastation had happened to me. The answer was: Buck Rogers. He was gone, and life simply wasn’t worth living. The next thought was: Those are not my friends, the ones who got me to tear the strips apart and so tear my own life down the middle; they are my enemies.

“I went back to collecting Buck Rogers. My life has been happy ever since. For that was the beginning of my writing science fiction. Since then, I never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas. When this occurs, I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.”

– Quote by Ray Bradbury, from Zen in the Art of Writing

Dreams are a funny thing. Listen to them, and you’ll inevitably encounter ridicule. Listen to the wisdom of the masses, and yes, you become normal, part of the pattern, part of the tapestry that makes up the background of history. But you also become boring and forgotten. Ah, but to ignore the detractors and listen to your own dreams. That is where the artistry in the tapestry comes in, for it is those things which jump out of the pattern, the seemingly improbable, yet inevitable black swans which make the tapestry come alive. Remember: The failures in life are remembered for their failures. The successes are remembered for their successes. And the rest, the majority of people in the middle? Why, they’re simply forgotten.

Did I do an OK sales job? If I didn’t — and I probably didn’t — forgive me: I’m new at that. For now, just enjoy the story. (By the way, this is a pretty long story — 8250 words! — so I’ve made it available on a PDF. You can choose to download it double spaced (33 pages), or single spaced (15 pages). And, of course, you can continue reading on the site to understand a bit of how this story came about, as well as to read it online.)

As before, the way I created this story was by first asking for totally random ideas. These elements are all included in the story, regardless of how wildly divergent they are. I just hope they don’t sound too awkward or out of place. Here were the ideas/themes and their submitters:

• Joe Lencioni: Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica
• Carl Holscher: Cats, Croissants, Calligraphy
• Nils Geylen: Delirium Tremens, “Don’t you love my Lederhosen”, “Directory not found, please try again”
• Melissa Garrett: “He won’t even eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich”, “he likes his ham sliced thinly”, “she prefers the taste of beer”
• Rich Dunlop-Walters: “You fucking fiend”, Occam’s Razor, Time travel
• Hrafn Thorisson: The cigarette was broken, “How could he fit all that on one fork?!”

Special thanks goes out to all of these folks without whom this story would still have been possible, but it certainly wouldn’t be as good.

Alright now, without further stalling for time, here’s the story.

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9

Chapter 1

“So, the kid falls into the pit of laser vipers, and now he has their laser powers. Isn’t that awesome?!” Radley held the copy of ViperKid in front of Carlos, telling him the story of the unlikely superhero as the two eleven year old boys walked home from the Fat Daisy’s comic book shop. They had each gone with five dollars on hand, excited to pick up the new issues of Ultimate Warlock, Condorito 2000, and Occam’s Razor. Instead what they found was Fat Daisy, the store’s owner, just about giving away a box-full of old comics, fifty of them, for ten dollars. This was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. Collectibles, in fact, or so Radley swore.

Radley Cummings was a short, chunky, brown kid whose mother dressed him straight from the pages of the Sears catalog, only three sizes larger, as if she expected him to hurry up and grow into his clothes. Of course, with the way she fed him one would think she was more worried about his girth than his height, and about giving him a size that matched his attitude. He stared at the issue of ViperKid, included in the batch they had bought, with both pride and amazement. This was issue number two, where ViperKid first met SciGuy, the character who would first become ViperKid’s sidekick, and then his archnemesis. He explained this to Carlos like an over excited music teacher would teach pupils not just music, but artistry.

Carlos Andropov, the taller of the two boys, hunched to see what Radely pointed at. He was thin, tall for his age. Cuban and Russian by heritage, he was very light skinned, making the dark Radley look all the darker. Like today, Carlos more often than not wore his older brother’s hand-me-downs, usually jeans and hoodies. When he didn’t wear those, he wore their older sister’s hand-me-downs, at least those shirts and sweaters he could get away with wearing.

Until today, Carlos hadn’t heard of ViperKid, or most of the comics Radley had convinced him to combine their money to buy. But, wanting to eventually call himself a true graphic novel connoisseur, and feeling that Radley already was, Carlos let himself be persuaded by the more outwardly excitable of the pair and went along with deal. Only now, he was getting his first real taste of buyer’s remorse.

“That’s… cool. Yeah, I guess.” Carlos wasn’t sure what to say. He would have rather been reading this month’s edition of Ultimate Warlock, where Ulwar the Warlock was about to uncover the true identity of Pugratlion, the villain who killed all of Ulwar students with army of chimeras that attacked Salem School. Rumors were circulating on the Web that Pugratlion was actually Ulwar’s brightest pupil, Amethyst Crystala, who Ulwar had expelled from Salem School in issue #73, after she started to create transgenic homunculi in the school’s biology lab. Instead, he was about to find out how some ViperKid with laser viper vision would befriend SkyGuy, or whatever his name was.

Already, Carlos had grown bored. He started to walk ahead of Radley when suddenly the boy grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “Hey, check this out!” Radley said excitedly. “There’s a cuss word in here!”

“Nah ah!” Carlos’s eyes snapped back to the comic with sudden renewed interest.

“Yeah, check this out!” Radley pointed pudgy finger at a chat bubble with the words “SciGuy, you fucking fiend!” printed in large, bold lettering.

“Whoa!”

“I told you this was cool!”

“Yeah… Uh… cool…” Then, with unsure voice he added, “You know, I think maybe we shouldn’t be reading these…”

Radley stopped, looked at the other boy and raised one eyebrow questioningly. “Why?”

“Because it has cuss words in it, and my mom says cuss words are bad.” Actually, his mom had always told him that cuss words would get him into Hell. Would he go there because he read the word? No, worse, because he bought the comic which contained it?

“They’re not that bad. My dad uses them all the time.”

“Yeah, and my mom says your dad is a fat drunk.” Carlos’s eyes went wide and his head snapped towards his friend as his body suddenly tensed. “I’m sorry! I mean, that’s what my mom says, but –”

“It’s OK,” Radley said, shrugging. “My mom says the same thing every time I come back from his house.” Radley’s father lived almost eight hours away, which is why he only really got to visit every couple of weeks.

Carlos looked at the magazine in Radley’s hands then took off his backpack, which held half of what they had bought, put the back on the floor, and opened it. “Let’s take these back.”

“No way!” Radley grabbed the backpack, closed it, and slung it on his shoulder. He was now carrying the two back packs, one on each shoulder to even him out. “I’ll give you five bucks when we get to my house for your half.”

“You don’t have five dollars,” Carlos said.

“I’ll get five dollars tomorrow. Allowance.”

“But… what if they’re sold out by the time you get ‘em?”

Radley thought for a second. This was, after all, a very real possibility. It had happened before, last month, in fact, when they missed out on the last copy of Amey Zing. Then, it hit him. “Why don’t we go back to the store and ask Fat Daisy if she’ll save you a copy?”

It sounded like a fair enough idea. Heck, it was a great idea! After all, why wouldn’t she hold a copy for a couple of loyal customers? Had they not already spent months’ worth of allowance buying comics and game cards from her shop? Carlos agreed, and the boys headed back to Fat Daisy’s. He was still a little unsure, but for the most part confident that all this would turn out just fine, and that he wouldn’t be sent to Hell — or worse, be grounded — for keeping a comic with cuss words in it.

Next Chapter (Chapter 2)

A few weeks ago I finally started using Twitter, a Web 2.0 application which allows users to send out messages to which no one can really reply. Think of them as status reports you put out for your friends. The thing is, these little messages must be under 140 characters. Not exactly a lot of room.

After the excitement over Pownce died down, a large number of ex-Twitter users became ex-Pownce users, and returned to their Twitter roots. I decided to follow the pack and open up a Twitter account, just so I could keep in touch with people. (I didn’t drop Pownce, mind you, since I still use it on this site. Notice the short blurbs on the sidebar? Yep, that’s all on Pownce.)

Well, as it turns out, Twitter doesn’t exactly have the features I like, mostly features which Pownce has, like comments to posts. What it did have, however, was opportunity. See, with a 140 limit, there wasn’t much I could do, and as I mentioned there, I wasn’t exactly crazy about holding a terse, one-way conversation with the ether to which I would deny it the dignity of a response. I was, however, looking for a new writing challenge, and after a while, I figured I could use this to meet that need.

Welcome to the scene “Microfiction”, the art of creating complete, self contained stories within 140 characters.

I started a few days ago writing these microfiction stories, and frankly, I love them! I’ve also received a number of comments about them from various people, so I guess I’m onto something good here.

Anyway, since I hadn’t before mentioned by Twitter account, I figured I’d go ahead and post the Microfiction stories here. Enjoy:

• Once, in a little house, there lived a boy and his dog. And like all stories that begin with a boy and a dog, you know this won’t end well. (To this one I got replies indicating that Lassie usually ended well. I guess they missed that last episode, where Timmy died in the well and Lassie got rabies and had to be put down.)
• In the spring I met her. By fall I’d lost her. We laughed and loved and lived. But she matured. And I didn’t. Never even got the chance.
• In space no one can hear you scream? Wrong. When the Vong attacked our ships, everyone heard the screams. Their screams. We won the battle.
• He waited alone on the icy shelf for the rescue ship to appear. As it did, he shed a tear. His seven years of solitude would soon conclude.
• The end of the world wasn’t at all what anyone expected. Indeed, those who even bothered to notice it found that it was akin to birth.
• Last week: zombies. This week: More zombies, though that second wave took out the reanimation machine’s inventor. Now we can’t turn it off.
• An antediluvian apocalypse attracted Artemis’s attention. Amazingly, as Artemis attested afterward, alien apocalypses always annihilate all. (Someone tried to reply to this using all A’s, but couldn’t, so I replied to him as such: “*acknowledging acclamation* Attempting an artful answer at an alliterative anomaly acts as an allegorical applause at an author.”
• Cow tipping was always fun, ’til last time. The field empty, all we heard was “Y’all boys done tip’d your last cow,” then mooing laughs.
• “So,you came to Key West, fought a ninja army, cloned Jimmy Buffet, and transferred his soul into the new body? You’re our contest winners!”
• We called him the Gray Man. He wasn’t with the captors, but he wasn’t one of us. And he took everything away. Starting with our shackles.
• He waited anxiously for the sunshine, a once-a-life event in the planet Rain. He napped, dreamed of seeing it, and awoke in time to miss it.

By the way, feel free to friend me on Twitter if you want to keep reading more of these. I try to update them at least once a day. And if you feel like doing some of your own, even better!

Last Thursday I attended my first ever writer’s group meeting. I had been looking for one for a while, figuring that to be the next logical step towards developing a career as a fiction writer (short stories, novels, and maybe even movie scripts, if I ever get to be as popular as, say, Neil Gaiman). I’ve done more than enough writing alone, and it’s about time I shared some of my stuff with others. Of course, I intended to do this in a manner which would allow me to sell some of the works to print publications. (Those I don’t sell will, of course, make their way to the Web, either here or somewhere else.)

The writing group was… not at all what I expected. Where I had though I’d find a well structured, classroom-like environment I instead found a group of people gathered around a table in a coffee house, talking about writing related stuff.

I loved it.

In fact, it sort of reminded me of high school: the same kind of sophomoric excitement could be felt from all group members, the same kind of energetic wonder, the same mix of shyness and group encouragement which marks the amateurs there as being more than just people who can’t do something well (this not being at all the case), but rather people who do what they do out of love. Of course, I sincerely doubt any of them would object to making money from their craft. I certainly don’t.

The meeting started with a 20-minute writing session in which we were shown a picture and given an idea about what may be happening in the picture (girl waking up in a place she didn’t know). Not a terribly original idea, but certainly fun, and challenging. After we finished, some of us decided to read out loud what we had just written. Although I certainly wouldn’t put this to public critique, here’s what I wrote. I hope you enjoy it:

“Hey, you! What are you doing there?”

Alyss heard the disembodied voice coming from the dark, a gruff, quick, high pitched voice which reminded her of her dog’s (Millie’s) bark.

She opened her eyes, and was suddenly hit by a wave of nausea. Reality had become a tapestry of ill-defined colors and nebulous shapes. Towers which looked like man-sized candy canes shot out from a forest of balloons, each containing a piece of something familiar, though she couldn’t tell what.

Looking around, she spotted a group of boys walking towards her. While everything else was blurry, nebulous, the boys were well defined, each dressed in a garment so fine it bent light, giving each a translucent look.

A voice from the crowd called out, “Do you hear me? You’re not supposed to be here!” It was the same voice as before, though she still couldn’t see who it belonged to, as it came from the back of the group.

Alyss stood, trying to remember where she had come from, trying to figure out where she was. “Who are you?” she called out. “Where am I?”

“You’re in your room,” the voice answered. The group of boys had stopped walking towards her, and now only stared at her while she stood up. The boys, none of whom looked older than five years old, were about her height. This was surprising in that she had grown accustomed to being the tallest of her peers.

“Who are you?” she again called out. “Where am I?”

“You’re in your bedroom, Alyss. I already told you that.” The gruff, high pitched voice again answered, though it now sounded as if it was moving closer. The boys, she noticed, began parting, starting with the back of the group. “And to answer your first question, I’m Millie.” As he said this, the pug stood there, having now emerged from the group of boys.

Millie continued. “You’re not supposed to be here. I’m reconstructing reality, just like I do every night. Now go back to sleep, I’m not done yet.”

After the short story session, we began to critique someone’s work. Being the new guy there (or rather, one of the two new guys there), I didn’t really get to join in, and spent most of my time listening. Of course, I chimed in where I thought I could help, but frankly the people there probably found this more annoying than helpful. I sort of tend to do that in real life, where I don’t get to go back and edit what I’ve just said. I’m much better at this than before, though, now that I’ve learned to shut my mouth most of the time.

During this time I also handed out a story that’s to be critiqued this coming week. I gave everyone there a printed copy, but too late did I realize that I gave them an older version. I can see now that things won’t bode well. I’ve sent the participants a new copy electronically via the writing group’s website, but I don’t know how many of them got the new copy. The old version was plagued by unnecessary words, run-on sentences, and ambiguity which served to confuse the heck out of most first time readers, especially those not familiar with the concepts I talk about there. (Hurray for vague references! See what being on the Interwebz for long can do to a person? Lesson here: don’t do drugs kids, and stay in school, because if you don’t, the terrorists win.)

Towards the end of the meeting things broke down some and people began having individual conversations. It was at this time that I got a chance to better meet some of the people there, including other professional writers. I also got a chance to pick up this little line, which I plan to somehow use in a story sometime: “[He] shoots lasers out of his eyes because he fell into a laser snake pit as a boy.” Ah, yes, the wonders of comics. This, by the way, came during a conversation of graphic novels as character/plot based versus situationally based. Finally, I got to find out about things like the upcoming Miami Book Fair, which is supposed to take place sometime in December.

All in all I had a great time. If you’re in the Fort Lauderdale area, and are looking for a writers’ group, come and check out the Davie Writers’ Group, which meets on Thursday nights, at 7:00 PM, at The Roasted Bean on S University Blvd, just south of 595, near Nova Southeastern University’s main campus.

I decided to go about this by asking for story ideas from people. (Source for the idea.) I made the following announcement using Pownce:

Give me your ideas! I want to write a short story about… something. I just don’t know what. So, here’s what I need you to do, powncers: reply with a subject on any topic. Story elements offered up to now:

Subjects, statements, sentences, phrases only, please. Premises need not apply, as already sort of have one. Sort of. Which I won’t tell about here.

I will use ALL those topics to write up a short story, sources will be credited, and a good time will be had by all. Also, this announcement will go up a few times over the next few days, in case some of you with 200+ friends missed it the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, or any other time.

I got the following suggestions:

• Sex scandals (Nils Geylen)
• Seal hunting (Nils Geylen)
• The old lady had it in for him. (Hrafn Thorisson)
• Rotting fish (Hrafn Thorisson)
• Burning greenhouse (Hrafn Thorisson)
• A large, strange and deep hole that suddenly appeared somewhere. (Hrafn Thorisson)
• A monkey that’s a junkie (Matt Murchison)
• “…and she was hardly aware of what lurked around the corner.”(Esther Tseng)

So then, let’s see what I was able to come up with.

Note: The story isn’t particularly well researched, so if you see some discrepancies with reality, sorry about that.

Instant Cowboy: Just Add Water

Rotting fish, Monkey thought. It was just his luck that his life would end as it had started: surrounded by rotting fish.

It all started about a week ago, when Nancy Langston enlisted the services of private investigator Chivas Monkey (pronounced “mon-KHE-y”). Mrs Langston suspected her husband, the Honorable Senator Peter Langston, of being involved in some dishonorable dealings, and she suspected he might be having an affair with a staffer at the Capitol Building. Monkey had been hired to find out whether he had been unfaithful, and whether there was something else afoot. If there was anything to know she wanted to know about it before the newspapers.

At first Monkey didn’t want to take the case: he didn’t get a good feeling about it. But the money was too good. What she offered to pay, in cash, was more than enough to cover both his debt to his stint dealer (someone he knew only as Yevon), and for the rehab therapy which would finally get him off his addiction to stints. Stint was an increasingly common drug used by people in time consuming professions: doctors, lawyers, law enforcement. In small amounts stints simply lowered the required amount of sleep, allowing the user to function normally for extended period of times. This was referred to as becoming an “instant cowboy,” since the lack of sleep often coincided with a temporary increase in both bravado and intelligence. They were made illegal due to their highly addictive nature: once addicted, stint junkies couldn’t stop taking them, and would altogether lose the ability to sleep, as well as become immune to any intelligence gains. If a stint junkie went off stints cold turkey he would soon enter a very deep slumber, and likely end up comatose. Without proper medical attention he would die within a matter of days, since if undiscovered, the victim would simply die of dehydration. Because of this, the street name for stint was “water”, leading to the joke, “Instant Cowboy: Just Add Water.” Chivas Monkey was a junkie.

It wasn’t long after Monkey started working on the case that he found his first clue. Senator Langston had been working late every night since the beginning of the year, right at about the same time as the High School Paige program was re-introduced. Assigned to his office were six students from the local high school, ranging in ages from fourteen to seventeen, and working in the office as part of their OJT, or On the Job Training program. Monkey discovered that two of the students, Tara Ells and Francis Sagan both sixteen, would often work late nights alongside the Senator. At first these were unscheduled stays, but in less than a month these overtime hours were officially made part of the schedule.

Monkey decided to go in deeper. He started by interviewing the other students. Using his old police force badge, Monkey was able to get information from the students, who during their questioning believed they were under oath. The most interesting evidence came from one Vic Mann, who gave Monkey his second clue.

Vic told Monkey that the Senator was friendly with all of them. He would take them all out to lunch and dinner, even take them with him on various state-related trips. However, he seemed to take a special interest in Tara and Francis. Young, attractive, and attracted to power, scuttlebutt was that they had caught the Senator’s fancy. In fact, he revealed, a weekend trip had been scheduled for all three of them. The Senator had said he needed go on a fact-finding mission to Alaska, and the two girls quickly volunteered.

Monkey could see where this was going. Did the press know about this? He called Al Frost, a columnist with the Capitol Post, and an old time friend from the force, to tell him what he was up to. Al was about to run a story on the Senator, alleging the Senator had been receiving gifts from industry heads who would benefit from his policies. He agreed not to run it until Monkey was done with his investigation. After all, this would give him one hell of a story: a Senator gaining favors from industry, involved with sixteen year old staffers. It was a good story, almost too good.

Monkey decided that if there was something to the rumors, it was best to catch the Senator in the act. If indeed his suspicions proved true, this could tear not only the Senator’s marriage, but his career. Monkey didn’t like seeing cases like these, he liked to believe the best in people, but people screwed up more often than not, especially those in power.

Instead of going by commercial carrier, Monkey decided it would be safer and faster to hire a private jet. This trip, he knew, might take a lot of stints to get through, and trying to bring them into a commercial carrier guaranteed trouble. Under the pretense of costs and covertness, Monkey decided to ask Mrs. Langston to fund the private jet flight, which she quickly agreed to. He then gave a call to Yevon.

The weekend trip took Monkey to the Aleutians, where the Senator had recently been spending a lot of his political capital. Monkey observed the Senator and the two girls getting into a fishing boat. The crew accompanying them consisted mostly of men in their late thirties and early forties. Surprisingly, one of the girls, Tara, was seen to be extra friendly with some of the crew, especially an older man who looked to be in his late fifties. Who was this girl, and why all the attention?

Monkey discovered that this boat, and the company to which it belonged, was property of Ells Sealers, a fur trading company based in Canada, and owned by Marcos Ells, Tara’s father. He was the mid-fifties man she had been with before they took off. The company’s vice president was Carlos Andropov, the uncle of Francis Sagan. Monkey found it impossible to believe that anything would be going on between the Senator and the two girls, at least here, if their family members were present.

That night, Monkey searched the Senator’s legislative record. The Senator had been voted in as a Republican, but later dropped the affiliation and became an independent, citing discontent with the direction the party had been taking, especially in light of his own libertarian views. He had been pushing for legislation which allowed American firms to begin working with seal hunters in Canada. This type of collaboration had been outlawed by the previous administration, and the Senator strongly believed that it was not the government’s job to regulate which groups companies can and can’t work with. This, in addition to his stated goals of the decriminalization of certain narcotics and re-legalization of assault rifles had made him popular with his constituency, and very, very unpopular with his opponents.

For the rest of the weekend, Monkey observed the Senator. He tapped his phone, video taped his movements, and noted his whereabouts. The Senator’s trip, it turns out, had been to observe a seal hunting expedition, though no one on the ship took part in it. Although this was in itself onerous, Monkey concluded that if there was a sex scandal involving Senator Langston, it wasn’t here. In fact, it was beginning to look as if there wasn’t a sex scandal at all, at least not one involving the Senator. Could he be covering up for someone?

The evening following his return, Monkey met with Mrs Langston to share his findings. “Congratulations Mrs Langston, your husband seems to be clean, at least as far as infidelity is concerned. But… do you by any chance know Mr Ells?” he asked. She said she did, that he had been a family friend since long before Mr Langston was elected. “The only concern I have,” he continued, “is that your husband may be getting freebies and kickbacks from industries which would benefit from his legislation. Still, as it stands now, it doesn’t look like he’s really done anything wrong.”

“I’m very… glad to hear that,” said Mrs Langston. Her tone was careful, Monkey noticed. “Well then, now that that’s over with, Mr Monkey, mind if I take a minute of your time? There’s something here I believe you might find interesting.”

Monkey followed her through Southern-styled plantation mansion. There, in the back yard stood a large, but simple greenhouse. Mrs Langston entered it, then, noting Monkey’s hesitation, looked back and signaled for him to follow her in.

“Do you know what this is, Mr Monkey?”

“A greenhouse?” he answered, joking because he wasn’t sure where she was going with this.

“No, no. Look closer.”

He looked around, looked at the plants and walls, and looked at the bench at the other end of the greenhouse.

“There was a reason I called you, Mr Monkey, the reason I asked you to spy on my husband, wasn’t to find out whether he’s out screwing sixteen year olds. I know he’s screwing around. You’re just too burnt out to see what’s right in front of your eyes.” She continued. “I hired you because you, my dear, are an easy scapegoat.”

Monkey looked at her in silence.

“The reason you don’t know what this is,” she began to explain, walking slowly towards the bench, “is because you only know what it looks like after we’re done with it.” She reached the bench and grabbed something off of it, too quickly for Monkey to notice what it was. She turned around, holding up a small, clear globule. “Do you know now what this is Mr Monkey? It’s millions of dollars. It’s gold and silver and more precious than both. It’s what keeps people like you from being the complete failures you truly are.”

“Stints.”

“Yes, Mr Monkey. Stints. The same stints you’ve been calling me about for months now.” She let out a slight laugh. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking a him with mocking wide eyes and her hand to her chest, “the same stints you’ve been calling Yevon about.”

A sudden pain shot through Monkey’s body, bringing him immediately to his knees, then to the floor. His right leg had been shot. Looking around, he saw a dark figure at the entrance to the greenhouse, getting closer. It was Vic Mann.

Standing above him, Vic pointed the gun down at Monkey. “So, what do we do with him?” he asked.

Mrs Langston headed to the oil filled convection heater. “Nothing,” she answered. “He won’t be in a position to do a thing once this place goes in flames.”

“Why are you doing this?” asked Monkey.

“A fair question. But don’t think I plan to monologue about this. This isn’t some cheap story like you’d read on a blog or some such thing.

“My husband’s been fighting for the decriminalization of certain drugs, including stints. The bulk of the stint trade in these parts goes through me, sweet little Mrs Langston, or rather, through ‘Yevon’.” She looked at him intently. “Once the drug is decriminalized, how long do you think it will be before people start cutting into my trade? I make millions as it is, and this isn’t something I care to give up.”

She increased the temperature in the convection heater and increased the amount of methane output from the methane tanks. “My plan, and it’s a simple one — all the good ones are — is to blow this place up, with you in it. I’ll say that you had been tracking my husband because you believed he did you wrong on a deal, and that you tried to plant evidence on him to make it seem like he was involved in a sex scandal. Then I’ll say you showed up here and you tried to kill me, with Vic here coming to my rescue. My husband will be suspected of producing and supplying stints, weakening his position on the matter, and sending the issue back ten years. He’ll probably be arrested, and will definitely be forced to resign. Meanwhile,” she walked close to Vic, who still held the gun pointed at Monkey, “Vic and I will spend that–”

In a moment, Mrs Langston fell limp unto the floor, her head now covered in blood.

“Actually I don’t need her,” Vic said, again pointing the gun towards Monkey. “The network’s already been set up. Once Francis finishes with the… Honorable Senator,” Vic said that with a spiteful jesting tone, “we’ll be set. That, by the way, was Francis’s part in all this. There doesn’t actually have to be sex in order for there to be a sex scandal, Mr Monkey. Just the allegations, and we have enough of those. The old lady had it in for him, you know.”

“Well no shit, kid. I hadn’t noticed,” responded Monkey, taking a sarcastic tone.

“Yeah well she was hardly aware of what lurked around the corner of her own plan. Now I just need to keep Yevon around, and that’s easy enough. As for you, Mr Mon–”

Monkey jumped at Vic. Immediately, Vic pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the methane tank, which instantly became a ball of fire. As the greenhouse became engulfed in flames, Monkey and Vic fought for control of the gun. Monkey bit Vic’s arm, causing him to drop the weapon. Vic kicked Monkey’s gunshot wound, got up and ran. Pain wracked Monkey’s body.

Monkey, having bled heavily in the past few minutes, picked up the stint globule and swallowed it. Normally, stints were applied directly into the bloodstream at the neck, but lacking any way with which to inject himself, and realizing that dropping it into the hole in his leg wouldn’t help him much, he decided his best shot was to swallow it. Instant cowboy, he thought. Just add water.

The gun shot had missed his bone, and with the sudden burst of energy from the stint Monkey was able to stand. The flames had by now engulfed the entire greenhouse, and he hobbled toward the exit as fast as he could. Vic was already gone.

As he made it outside, a large, strange and deep hole suddenly appeared below Monkey. He felt weightless for a second, then he hit bottom. The surface he landed on was soft, slimy, and smelled like old fish. Old lady Langston had been using old fish as fertilizer. And now he was in it. Better than shit, I guess.

Monkey looked up and he saw Vic, pointing a gun at him. Monkey, frantically, began checking his pockets.

“You’re looking at it,” Vic said. Monkey knew he had dropped the gun Vic now held, pointed directly at him.

In resignation, Monkey closed his eyes. Rotting fish, Monkey thought. It was just his luck that his life would end as it had started: surrounded by rotting fish. All he could hope for now was that Al Frost received the copy of the information. And that Vic was a bad shot.