Who Cares?

Who cares?

That's what I'm asking myself as I work on a short story these days.

It's a question that you have to ask, but I've noticed if you ask it too soon or to harshly, you kill your own magic.  Imagination is everything, but the freedom to let it fly as far as it needs to before you start hauling it down for repairs is even more key, I believe.  Self-censorship too early on makes for a crash landing.  

There are a lot of aspects of storytelling that you should never really notice if you're reading or listening.  If you're lucky, you are pulled into a story as if by some magnet.  You cling to the scenery desperately as the story winds to a close and never want to leave that new landscape behind.  You really care about what happens, you understand deeply,  and your own imagination carries the story far beyond its original pages.  It all really matters.

When I was in seventh grade, our English teacher read us a story for about 15 minutes at the end of each class.  The bell would ring, she'd have finished her reading and we would exit the room.  Once, there was a suspenseful story in which the main character was facing certain death, and all of us were on the edge of our seats, spellbound.  The bell rang.  She looked up, and we all urged her, "Keep going!  Don't stop!"  We were all late for our next class, but nothing was more important than hearing what happened next.  It was the coolest thing.  No Star Trek transporter ever did a more effective job moving 30 kids to another world.

As I write my story, I feel really glad I am not God.  No disrespect intended, but it's crazy enough keeping track of one ordinary character.  Imagine seven billion of them swarming everywhere.  What a headache.  Sometimes, my character just sits there no matter what I do, and other times he is going to town, moving like mad, and I can barely keep up with him.  Who knows why.  I'm letting him roam for now.  Later, I'll net him, examine him and see what needs trimming.  I'll find out who cares, and hopefully it will be me.

So, there was this man, a successful man with a broken heart ...

The Beginning of a Book

If you've been following my blog (and I appreciate you sticking with me if you have), you'll notice I am not confining myself to travel writing or anything in particular, although Pacific Grove gets in my sights more often than not because I live here.

I've begun work on a book, but it would be more accurate to say it has begun working on me.  Yesterday's post reflects some of the content in a small glimpse.  I am not going to predict when it will be done or much about it, but I have a feeling you readers will the first to know when it's done.  Don't you feel lucky?  In the meantime, I'll keep on posting here on my blog and looking for your comments.

I've considered trying out several genres and slotting myself into something recognizable to the reading public, and eventually that might happen.  A good bodice ripper might be fun:

Helga, with red lips parted in a teasing smile, threw the clucking chicken back into the henhouse, dropped the pan of corn in the cobbled yard and ran barefooted to her lover, Bob, who sat on a prancing white horse, his black cape flowing in the wind.

"I made you some goulash, my love," she panted.  She wasn't used to running across the yard in bare feet like she had in days of yore.

He reached down for her, puzzled by the goulash remark.  He dimly recalled telling her that he preferred aspic with Wasa crispbread and gruyere cheese.  But, no, it didn't matter.  His loins were aching, his shirt ripping away from his broad tanned chest, waxed hairless as a marble statue.  Their hands touched and it was as if flames leapt up in her bosom, which was heaving like a bellows.

He began to swing her up to his saddle, but the impossibility of their love overwhelmed him.  Yes, he had told her about the aspic and crispbread, he was certain of it.  She let go her hand and she wailed with surprise and shocked disbelief.

Now his choice was no longer in question.  Helga had betrayed him and revealed her true love, the love she had tried to hide deep within her heaving bosom.  Bob looked at the heaving sea of soft flesh and felt disdain.  He knew Urgundheind had always begged for goulash when they were boyhood friends.  He felt bile rising in his throat and hot tears of anguish blind his eyes.  His dark hair streamed dramatically in silhouette in the blowing wind.   His cape was still billowing and the horse's mane and tail also billowed.  The effect was that of a whole clothesline full of freshly cleaned costumes pinned out to dry on a summer's day, whipping and cracking in the stiff breeze blowing at 20 knots or so from the southwest, an unusual direction for this time of year, which was autumn.  

"Helga, this is the last time you will ever see me.  The time has come for me to join the little general at Waterloo and win once and for all.  I must do this in memory of my father who gave me this golden amulet!  You don't love me anymore.  You love Urgundheind, who loves goulash.  Farewell."

"No, Bob!  How can I live without you?  I have nothing but these horrid chickens if you leave me!"  She wailed and sobbed, bosom still heaving -- the dash across the henyard still having its effect on her.

Or, how about a slasher novel:  Blood and guts everywhere and screams galore, a woman running down dark hallways in Topeka while a loud storm thrashes the trees outside.  Oh, and I'd toss in an insane postal service worker, delivering something a bit more sinister than an ordinary envelope, banging heavily on her door....