I should make clear that we didn't actually buy the key board, by the way.
I woke up this morning, got out of bed and felt sickeningly dizzy. I think the clomid is finally kicking in.
Then I went downstairs and was shocked to see that I hadn't washed last night's dishes. That is not like me. Furthermore, I couldn't even remember how I forgot- I couldn't bring to mind the whole sequence of the night before, the point at which I was like, ok, I'm good, heading up to bed now.
I've been on this kick lately where all I've done is reread old books. It's been close to six months since I've had any new reading material. The strange thing is, those books I'm rereading are more alive to me now than they ever were before.
I've never seen the writing so clearly. I see the world the book is creating, and I love it. It's my own world. But, I also see how the author is structuring her paragraphs, how many she uses for descriptions, the words she uses to evoke an entire feeling. I keep switching my focus in and out of the story.
And by the way, never has Maxim de Winter ever appeared so attractive to me. Oh my sweet lord. I think probably because he reminds me vividly of our man in Magic. I suppose because both of them are much older men who had the worst luck to fall in love with girls that hadn't finished growing up yet and then botched things royally by having good intentions but no clue.
Speaking of which, I've straightened out the ending sequence and I am now mere paragraphs away from being completely finished, in terms of beginning and ending. The middle still needs a fair amount of editing and filling in.
But in a few paragraphs, my characters will live no more. I will be able to reread the story and they'll leap back up into life once again, but the creative process of bringing them to life, with its feeling of limitless possibility, has ended. They were finite after all; they have run their course.
They don't go quiet into that dark night, no, they live on vividly in my mind, playing their parts, ad libing, perfecting, going off on tangents. They seem full of life yet, glowing with possibility, and I have been listening with half an ear.
Half an ear, because I already have another story that I keep toying with. It lacks only a plot. But, oh, how the characters do spark, the best of their type. I have several, distinct character types that are integral to my imagination, and the Sephiroth character is one of them.
Yes, by the way. For those of you who might have played Final Fantasy II, I do mean the character from that game. In order to put the following in context, you will have to remember that when I was playing that game, I was twenty years old, in a miserable marriage, having only recently ruined my entire idea of myself and the world. I was sitting amid the wreckage.
I assumed that Sephiroth was a character that I could play. And oh, did I want him on my team. I played half the game away before I realized, after a fair amount of slaughter on his part, that he was, in point of fact, the ultimate foe, and not ever going to be on my team.
I almost didn't finish the game. And I adopted Sephiroth as my own. Over the next ten plus years, he evolved, leaving behind the character of the game and taking on those aspects that I wanted him to have. I wrote over half a dozen short stories that feature the character.
Only two of those stories are any good at all, one is Taxi Fair and that doesn't have the possibility of opening up any wider. The other has no title. I rewrote it as I copied it out of my old lap top and was deeply intrigued. Where on earth was I thinking of going with that story? I don't think I had any idea at the time.
Now I want to try and answer it again, if I can. The characters in that story are so alive already, nuanced already and they have undeniable chemistry together. The story is set in the present, which I wouldn' tmind trying to tackle. Against the modern world, even the smallest amount of Faerie can be stunning.
Doesn't the following just pull at you? It pulls at me.
I thought that would be the end of it, something interesting to tell my friends around coffee. But it was only the first chapter in something longer, and stranger.
I was in the library, studying at the wooden table in the Reference section when a person walked by. Something in the lithe, almost arrogant stride snagged my attention. I looked up from my papers.
The man was slender and tall, wearing a thick, worn leather coat over cord trousers, brown leather boots to his knee. His hair was silver gray, long and pulled back from his face in a braid.
I heard the tenor of his voice as he spoke quietly to the librarian and I knew then that it must be him. The librarian rose deferentially and walked away from the desk to fetch something in the room beyond. The man turned from the desk, idly looking over the books on a nearby shelf.
His face, in that strong light, was pale and finely chiseled, terribly masculine in its strength and arrogance. Under the bright florescent lights his eyes were dark, shadowed. His gray hair belied his age; he could not have been more than forty.
I must have been staring, for he looked up at me. His smile was at once unexpected, and slightly roguish. It caught me off guard.
“Well, if it isn’t the misplaced baby sitter,” he said quietly, respecting the universal rule of the library.
“Well, if it isn’t the eccentric New England Heathcliff,” I quipped, before I could stop myself.
His smile deepened. He slipped himself gracefully into the empty chair beside mine. “How does your car fare these days?” he asked, his eyes on my face.
“Not so bad. I had to change the oil recently.”
“No fault of mine, I hope,” he said.
“If it was…?”
“Well, we’d have to come to some kind of terms,” he said easily. “What would you like from me?”
“Your name, to start with.”
I have a hundred things to do today, stuff I've been putting of. I must go grocery shop, do the laundry, clean the bathrooms. Off I go.
