Wednesday, April 6, 2011

April 6th

I have a pounding headache. Maybe I'm coming down with Keith's cold.

The movers come tomorrow. I have the last loads of laundry going right now, after this, it's the laundromat or nothin'.

I don't want to move. I never really fell in love with Kentucky, but it's not awful. And spring and fall are beautiful, and our house was comfortable and sunny and we had a nice neighborhood.

Everything is interrupted. I can't do any really hard work on my story, because my internal mechanism has stalled. I just keep going over and over stuff I already wrote, and there's this huge piece I need to completely rewrite and I can't, I'm afraid to start it and then not finish it and then lose the thread of where I was going in all the chaos of moving.

So it just sits there, up in my head, like a blinker someone left on, click, click, click, click and I'm like, damn it, turn the blinker off already and I flash my lights at them, but they don't notice and I end up following them for the next twenty miles.

It's like that.

I've completely rewritten section three, but I have yet to write the ending and it's just raw, in my head, like a bridge that broke in an earthquake, with steel girders bent and jagged, hanging over the river and cables swinging in the wind and dust sweeping off it into the water.

I was so afraid this would happen, it was why I wanted to finish the damn thing before the move, but there's just no way in hell. I have to completely redo the entire forth section, as well as write that ending.

Excerpt:

In the morning, everything sparkled and the river was swollen, went rolling between its banks, mud brown and flecked with leaves and grass. I had long, pale willow leaves caught in my hair. When I knelt by the river to drink, I saw the slender shapes of tiny, silver fish darting about in the warm shallows. If I held my hands still, they came and nibbled on my fingertips.

“Phillipa,” Ceallach called, his voice low.

I turned and stood. Coming through the hedges that hid the road from the bend of the river was a horseman, dressed in armor of a deep, bottle green, highlighted by a lighter, celadon green along the edges. I half ran across the grass to where Ceallach stood by the horses and took his hand.

“Ceallach,” the knight called, happily. “I thought I might meet you on this road. My name is Siofra. I was at Thirn Ei Rua but I couldn’t make my way to you; I was pinned at the eastern end for most of the day, dealing with Othgeird and his men.”

He was a young Sidhe, his hair a dark, red gold. Strands of his hair were braided, the braids falling in amid the rest of the loose hair. In the morning light, his head flared up like a penny in the sun. He sat on his white horse proudly and easily, his eyes looking eager. He glanced over at me and his face lit up.

“And I heard about the Middangeard girl who rides with you. After I’ve thrown your sword down, maybe I’ll take her under my care for a while. I‘ve heard some very interesting stories about human women. I’ll wait while you armor yourself.”

Ceallach’s sword was already fastened to the back of Cashlin’s saddle, along with the rest of our stuff. Ceallach reached up and drew his sword free with a long, metallic rasp.

“I won’t need armor to put a boy like you on your back,” he said calmly.