writing

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I Dreamed This

I missed a week of Inspiration Monday, but I’m back.

I’ve been busy writing draft one of my third book, which is actually the prequel in the series. I’m about one hundred pages in. My manuscripts usually end up being 500-600, but I have a lot of ground to cover in this prequel and I’m starting to wonder if it’s going to turn into two novels. Or three. I’m also procrastinating working on the synopsis for book one so I can start querying. It’s written, but needs major tweaking.

So here’s my attempt at this week’s Inspiration Monday.

* * * * *

I dreamed this. Wind so violent, tearing at my hair, my clothes. The ground rumbles underfoot, and the city falls before my eyes. The dust becomes a new entity, rising up, higher than the top of the once highest building, yet suddenly the wind cuts off and I’m shielded inside a clean, soundless space, like an insect caught in an upside down glass.

You dreamed this, from the other side. Your distance flavored your terror with helplessness. You didn’t know I was inside that glass.

And when I woke up, you were there, but I was not. I was still inside that glass, watching you try to wake me.

by

Outstretched Fingers

Inspiration Monday XVI

* * * * *

The warrior shoots another glance at me. This time, he doesn’t look away. If his aim with a weapon is as pointed, as determined, he will return undefeated. This ceremony is his, but as the night slips along, with each glance, he seems to make it more about me.

His skin is the darkest of my generation, several shades darker than babies born this season. Our sun dissolves into the indigo sky more each day. Sky of periwinkle when I was a child. Now indigo, soon to black. What color will our babies’ skin be when our sun has abandoned us? Will we lighten into nothingness?

He coasts through the crowd without breaking our gaze. He stops in front of me. The celebration around us muffles, like a giant has clamped a shell over the two of us.

He touches my shoulder. “Ing-nikg-ah.” His name, a name my tongue could never pronounce.

I touch his shoulder. “Shee-ylan-bsh.” My name, as foreign to his tongue as his name is to mine. Sounds only heard among women. Unknown to men as his language is unknown to me.

Bodies silhouetted against flame dance in his dark eyes. His skin shows through the symbol of protection carved into the fuzz on his cheeks, the hair on his newly shaved head. The symbol inked on his arms and down his back hours ago. Inked on my belly the day I became a woman.

He trails his fingers across my collarbone, then along my shoulders as he walks around me. His touch on my skin is hotter than the embers from the fire, tracing an invisible rope. A snare. He wants me on his last night here.

When he returns to his position facing me, he lowers his hand. He smiles. He waits. I wish I could say his name, vocalize a response his ears would understand. The only language between man and woman is that of the body.

My outstretched fingers give him my answer.

by

Wait For My Signal

Here’s this week’s Inspiration Monday.

* * * * *

His lips taste like the dust of the desert when he wakes me in the mornin’. The night before, they flavored mine with whiskey and cinnamon. I ain’t never known a better combination. The next time I bake cinnamon cookies I’m fittin’ to add a splash of whiskey.

“Darlin’, you better git before that papa of yours finds yer bed missin’ its sleeper.” He raises himself on one elbow and squints in the morning sun, one eye closed tighter than the other.

I gather my skirts, but he pulls me against him. The muscles of the man movin’ under me and I about lose my knickers all over again.

“I ain’t fibbin’ what I said,” he says, his lips grazing mine. His horse whinnies, and he lets me go.

I hightail it all the way home. I plum fall through my window when I get there, right at Mama’s boots.

“Couldn’ta picked better timin’. I’m fresh outta lies for your papa. Now get out there before he loses his head again.”

I stand and brush off my fanny. “Sorry, Mama.”

“Ain’t it just like my girl to fall for the first stranger who rides into town.”

“He ain’t no stranger. He’s from Lexy. An’ he wants to take me there and marry me.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “Trustin’ strangers ain’t no good. No good at all.”

“I spent the night with him, Mama.”

“Better let him marry you then. Oh Lord. Papa’s gonna lose his head.”

“If I ain’t by the waterin’ hole at sundown, he’s comin’ to call on Papa.”

“Lord oh lord. That shotgun’s gonna find us all tonight.”

The sun wanders the sky all day while I work my chores. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was slidin’ backwards. Mama slips a bag of gold in my hand when Papa ain’t lookin’, then hugs me ’til I cry for mercy.

“My lil girl, off to have lil girls of her own. You stay out here an’ wait ’til I get Papa inside. When it’s clear, I’ll come out back an’ wave my apron. You run like the devil’s chasin’ you and don’t look back.”

“I’ll come visit, Mama. I promise.”

“Scoot.”

The sun’s about touched the farthest trees when Mama comes outside. She waves her apron, and I turn and run. My skirts kick the dust all the way to the hill where I see his gang waitin’ on horseback. He’s dead center, his smile brighter than my heart, which ain’t no easy feat.

Another cowboy in his gang whoops and throws his hat in the air. I stop at my fella’s horse. He sweeps me up, behind him. The horses buck and charge away. I hold his waist tight as our horse takes off. First stop, I gotta ask my fella his name.

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The Art of Subtlety

For writers learning the craft, subtlety may be one of the most difficult concepts to hone – not because it’s hard to do, but because it’s difficult to realize we need to do it. We see the details in our minds, and we feel every one of them is important. First drafts are usually detail overload. Full of adverbs and dialogue tags. Whole sentences, paragraphs, pages that need to be cut. Getting it all out is natural to free the story from our minds. We can only begin to clear away the clutter once it’s all out on the screen.

Subtlety is Chapter 15 of The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile by Noah Lukeman. It’s worth buying this book just for these six pages.

Subtlety is the mark of confidence… A writer who is confident need not prove anything, need not try to grab attention with spates of stylism or hyperbole or melodrama… He will often leave things unsaid, may even employ a bit of confusion, and often allow you to come to your own conclusions.

Lukeman goes on to say that books written by unsubtle writers leave you with a short-lasting fix. Once finished, you haven’t been fully satisfied. You’ll forget the book and move on to something better. It won’t leave an impression.

If you can master subtlety, your books will stay with readers for a long time.

How to be subtle? It’s easier than you think. Less is more. Don’t serve out words as if your readers are starving. Serve them to readers who just ate Thanksgiving dinner and only need one last taste of pie. Make that taste really matter, and make it small. Make them ask for more. And don’t give them every kind of pie. Just give them one. A really, really good one. Your best. Resist the urge to tell the reader, “This is my best pie. The recipe has been handed down for seven generations. You are going to love it.” Just let your reader taste it and make that decision himself. Pretend this reader is a world-famous chef who understands fine cuisine, maybe even better than you.

Readers don’t need to know everything. The more you beat them over the head with information, the less interested they are going to be. Play hard to get. And don’t underestimate your reader.

“Showing not telling” goes hand in hand with subtlety.

But don’t take it too far. There’s a line, and if you cross it you’ll have worse problems.

I wish I had know all this when I was working on the second or third draft. It would have saved me a lot of time with the parts that just weren’t right.

Do any of you specifically write for subtlety, or is this something you work out in a later draft by cutting?

by

One Man’s Trash

Here’s my attempt at this week’s Inspiration Monday. I’m not too happy with this one but I’ll post it anyway. Go easy on me. I suck at third person.

*****

He chased her up the escalator. When they reached the top, they were both out of breath, as anyone would be after sprinting up a long flight of stairs while laughing so hard.

“You know there’s cameras everywhere,” she said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

He raised his eyebrow and stifled a grin. “Maybe I turned them off.”

She studied him. “Are you as good at turning things off as you are at turning them on?”

An open door. A “Welcome, Please Come In” sign. He took a step forward.

She retreated one step into a rack of Calvin Klein. “What kind of girl would I be if I let you kiss me that easily?”

He felt his eyes get wide before he looked down. Coward. He looked straight into her eyes. “Guess you’d be easy.”

“Guess so.”

“Want to climb the elevator cable?”

“You turned that off too?”

“No, but I could.” He slipped his backpack to his front and went for the zipper. His laptop battery was about to die. If he was going to do it, he’d better do it now.

Her gaze slid along the wall behind him, obviously searching for the elevator sign in the dim light. “Race you.” She took off, in the wrong direction.

He threw his backpack to his back and ducked between the racks. He could beat her there. If he kept down she wouldn’t see where he was headed. Something ripped his backpack off his shoulder and he spun around. Darn clothing rack. He jerked himself free only to hook the other strap on another rack. He’d never beat her now.

He crept toward the elevator, head low. Cold air blasted over him. The air conditioner shouldn’t be running after hours. She was hunched down in the light of the elevator sign, holding her ankle. Her face turned to him. Lips parted. Frozen. Blood seeped through the fingers gripping her ankle.

“Meg? What happened?” He dropped to his knees next to her.

“I don’t know,” she whispered. Blood puddled around her foot, sticky and reflective. “It was like something slapped me. God, it hurts. I think it’s cut through. My Achilles tendon. I can’t walk on it.”

He took off his jacket because that’s what people do in movies when someone’s bleeding. She moaned as he tied it around. Then she grabbed his shoulder, her eyes wide and staring past him.

“Something. Over there.”

He jerked his head toward a light screeching. Metal on metal. Hangers, sliding on racks. He spun to face the sound. Quiet settled on them, hung in the air. He looked at her. “Maybe we should-”

A black length whipped out of nowhere and he shoved backward, out of the way. She cried out, grabbing her other ankle. Metal screeched, the racks swayed, and he got around her and slid his arms under hers and dragged her around the elevator behind a plastic dumpster.

Her eyes were watery, but she looked too afraid to cry. “What is that? My god what is that!”

“I don’t know.” He pulled her hand away from her ankle. Her second tendon was severed just like the first. He wiped the blood on his jeans. If she could barely walk before, now she couldn’t at all.

He stood and yanked the broken arm of a metal clothing rack out of the dumpster. One man’s trash is another man’s weapon.

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You Don’t Think of It as Murder

This week’s attempt at Inspiration Monday. This is the quickest I’ve written and it’s going up unedited. Yikes! But what fun!

*****

He turned around and looked at me even though we were supposed to be reading the exercise to ourselves. He picked up one of my freshly sharpened pencils and smiled.

That’s when the bombs started going off. One. Two. Three four five. The wall to my right collapsed. Six. Seven. He grabbed my hand, and we were running. Eight. And then I stopped counting. The screams so close to my ears spread out, thinned, dampened by the heavy air around us. Air too heavy to breathe. We fell to our knees in the grass. He pulled me up, and we were running again. Dodging bodies. People I should know, but I couldn’t recognize. Some upright, running like us. Some not.

You don’t think of it as murder when it’s happening to you. It’s survival.

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Why Is the Sky Black?

My first attempt at Inspiration Monday. I’ll be brave and post this unedited. (Eek.)

*****

I didn’t see you that day. You had gone off on a mission, and who was I to judge? I tried to take your advice and not think about it. But something about cleaning your cabin always put my mind on the runway, shooting out the side of the ship, searching the depth of space for you.

I remember the blood on your pillow. I remember the clean pillowcase I put on it. I remember collecting my sponge and pail. Closing and locking your door. Then I let myself in next door and walked in on Jax removing his combat suit. I didn’t expect the two of you back so soon.

He wasn’t mad. He just hugged me to him, sponge and pail and all.

“We won,” he said. He had blood all over him. I knew it couldn’t be his.

I stared past him, out the little porthole window, knowing you weren’t with him like you should be.

“Why is the sky black?”