Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Going with a simple, memorable song today, “Imagine,” by John Lennon. As a fiction writer, I enjoy imagining characters, settings, places, et cetera, along with a better existence for all of us.
Hope you’re familiar with the song. If not, listen and hear something new. Being sentimental, I decided to go with Chris Cornell‘s acoustic version, recording in twenty fifteen. His suicide this year was something I never imagined.
Kakrep (Catfinition): A morning advisory of what cat vomited in what location, so nobody steps in anything, the cat’s health can be checked, and everything gets cleaned up.
I think this is true, but sometimes my mind is so damn slow, more likely, I’m so damn impatient.
Hmm, maybe it’s both.
She has decided she will have her breasts removed.
Not easily decided, she’d been moving along this river since she first discovered that she and the gender binary structure of the modern western world didn’t match up well. She didn’t feel female, and when she acted upon her urges, she was a lesbian. But she had no desire to be a man, with a penis hanging between her legs. That didn’t appeal to her at all. Just because she wasn’t a woman, it didn’t mean she wanted to be man.
It’s a shocking decision to most, to cut off her breasts, because it’s outside of their realm of normal expectations to cut off healthy tissue. She accepts it as healthy tissue, but not as a part of her. She’s never liked them, perhaps, he speculates, because others tried to define her by this outward trait. Breasts, after all, seem to be the defining trait for American women. Heterosexual males in America love to see breasts displayed, as long as they’re refined into shapes thrust upon Victoria’s Secret models, and aren’t being used to breastfeed a child in public. Egads, has she no shame?
That’s unfair, he cries, for he is a man, and he doesn’t think like that, except he secretly does, due to the vein of social sexual commercialization in which he was raised. He recognizes the absurdity and hypocrisy, and fights it as he can.
He thinks about the thirty-year-old woman having her breasts removed. He was fortunate to be born a sex and sexual preference with which his society is comfortable. He fits neatly into the gender binary slots. He’s never had to think through having his penis removed, for example, for any reason. He thought, what if I was her? What if I was a female, and hated my breasts, and wanted them removed? He thought about the strength and clarity such a decision needed. He thought about the woman and her intelligence, creativity, and personality. None of that would change.
Strong people come in all shapes and genders, even if it defies our categorization. But Jesus, why do we need these categories, anyway?
Who do they serve?
I’ve been on pause from editing the novel in progress, “Incomplete States.” I’d become troubled that it was missing an overall aspect that could tie it together.
It wasn’t something I immediately jumped on. I let it flow through me for a while and considered what I’d written, the novel’s totality. I didn’t want to be rash. I convinced myself it was necessary to add a greater arc.
I didn’t have any idea what that arc would be.
I began addressing the problem by thinking and writing about it. Exactly what was it that I was looking for in the greater arc? The novels and series that are most in mind with this novel came back to me:
To a lessor extent, I also thought of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. All that reading helps.
This wasn’t a quest novel, though; I wanted to ensure I didn’t accept an easy route and create another quest.
Several aspects attracted me. One, the epic sweep. Two, was how these novels and series embraced multiple levels of acceptance about the past, legends and myths, and prophecies. As the past receded in them, the past blended with myth and legend. More people in the novels grew enamored with lessor concerns that gathered importance in their lives, like fortunes, empires, and revenge. These smaller concerns were magnified into important concerns that eventually dwarfed the true, greater threats. In a way, I saw mirrors with our own planet and human civilizations, and how often we put profits, nation, and empire ahead of civilization and the planet.
But —
These novels and series also attracted me because of the greater and lessor acceptance. Uniform agreement about what was to happen, what had happened, and why, didn’t exist. Elements told their own stories. The differences in these stories provided the foundations for tension and conflict.
I wrote a one paragraph summary of each of these novels and series, defining their greater arcs against the dominant sub-stories that often propelled most of the action. That helped me clarify what I though my novel lacked.
Then I turned my attention to my novel and the situation.
I began by organizing information. Hundreds of thousands of words had been written. Deciding I needed visual assistance, I created character cards for the six major characters. Keeping faithful to the novel’s concept induced me to create character cards for each of their major iterations. As this novel is about cosmic and other entanglements, several of the characters are sometimes male, and sometimes female, with and without children, and sometimes married to one another. Sometimes one is the other’s parent, and sometimes, they’re enemies. Cards were created for each of them.
Having the cards allowed me to tack them up and move them around, hoping to prompt new thinking and insights. That approach produced; I brainstormed potential ideas, and then walked, thinking through what attracted me to each, and discarding some. After doing this, I thought I’d come up with the structure for the greater arc.
About four days had passed.
I sat down to write this morning. While I’d been thinking through all of these angles, the muse, or the muses, were at work in me. Sitting down with the slimmest idea of what was now to happen, I began typing. Within a few lines, I was on a world I’d not conceived before this. Memory of Jack Chalker’s “The Four Lords of the Diamond” series flashed into me along with Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia trilogy. New characters jumped into action, along with the agenda they pursued, in accordance with the greater arc.
Finishing with thirty-five hundred words about an hour later, I felt excellent about where I was. There’s still a tremendous amount to be done, but I had the semblance of the direction, the outlines of a plan, and vague ideas about events.
It was a good day of writing like crazy.
Tummy-tease (Catfinition): When a cat lays on their back, exposing their furry belly, as if in invitation to rub it, only to roll over and leap away when approached, or attack the hand (or foot) with fang and claw.
He was in the bath room, fresh from the shower and reaching for a towel, when he heard the sound.
It sounded like a thump in the other room, like someone was in the house. Knowing he was home alone, he grew still and listened for it again. He’d left the windows open to bring in fresh, cold mountain air before the day became the oven in hell’s kitchen. Someone may have come through one of the windows.
The thump came again.
It was not from the other room, but from below.
He looked down, considering what he’d heard and where it emanated. For, it seemed like the sound had come from his abdomen.
Listening for it, he heard it again, like someone jumping on the floor, coming from his abdomen.
Was that normal? He’d never heard a noise like that from his body before.
He resumed drying. Growing old was a murky business. The more he aged, the less he knew his body, and the less he trusted it.
He never knew what it was going to do next.
To counter our dry, hot weather, I thought I’d post something with precipitation.
First songs to stream in were, “Let It Snow,” and “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” “Singing in the Rain” quickly followed. Songs by New Edition, Seal and The Rescues jumped in there. Tina Turner, “I Can’t Stand the Rain,” joined the queue, and then Blind Melon, “No Rain.”
Peter Gabriel’s “Red Rain” streamed in. Yes, that’s the one. Although it offers a lightly macabre vision of someone screaming and red rain falling, Gabriel’s dreams inspired the song, and I like its heavy percussion presence. We were living in Columbia, South Carolina, when this song was released. Columbia had fantastic afternoon deluges throughout the summer, and this song reminded me of sitting on our apartment’s balcony as the rain poured, chilling the air.
Here we are, from nineteen eighty-six, and the “So” album, “Red Rain.”
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Michael Seidel, writer 