the crack of the WIP / verbage: Junkyard Dog

Because it might be interesting later to see if anything comes of these, I give you Works in Progress, with first lines. Some are In more Progress than others.

"Scavenger Hunt," started 05/2006. Inspired by hearing Gene Wolfe read at Balticon. The basic premise can be summed up as "on distant colony planet, scavenger hunts YOU." Stalled out because I wasn't that interested in writing it, and because I have literally no idea what can possibly happen after a certain point.

Billy had been playing with the ruined gears from the machine shop all afternoon, so he was pretty bored.

Untitled / Words, started 12/2006. Inspired by UKL's Orsinian Tales and Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. I started writing this for uilos when I was away for my grandfather's funeral. It was meant to be only a couple of pages. It got away from me, and now it's "that thing I'm not good enough to write yet."

When they kicked in the door to the attic apartment they found Edard Sherko alone at an empty table, reading Kalariov's last poems.

Untitled / Scarythings, started late 2008. I no longer remember where I thought this was going. It's got potential.

Sometimes the things in the night just laugh.
Sometimes after they laugh, they eat you anyway.

Untitled / Jasper, started 06/2009. This is only barely a fragment, but it's the kind of fragment that makes me curious to see where it goes next.

Jasper Five Niner Leaf Three: this is a recording. Pay careful attention.

Untitled / "Steering the Craft" exercise, started 06/2009. I love the sound of this piece. Definitely going to do more with it at some point.

One could, if one wished, cut straight through the greenwood twixt Hillestang and Arx.

"Junkyard Dog," started 07/2009. The Work I've made the most Progress on. I know the end and I've mostly written the beginning. It's all that stuff in the middle that's likely to trip me up.

"I didn't hear anything."
Snap.
"Okay, I heard that."

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Words: 543
Total words: 1970
Neat things: Bottled ginger ale. Janey gets defensive about her Camaro.

How this scene gets resolved shapes a lot of the middle of the story. Thus, it's being exceptionally difficult to write. I've already had to go back and fill in extra space in the first scene to explain why this one's happening at all. With luck and persistence I'll get through it on Tuesday.

And once I'm through it, all the pieces will be in place. All that remains is to push and see how they fall over, and what else they take down with them. (Plus, you know, editing and revising and filling in WRITE MORE HERE and all.)

why I run

I run because the morning clouds delight me.

I run because my neighborhood has a couple of cool houses, and parks I would have never found otherwise, and last year there was an old guy doing t'ai chi on the school lawn when I went by.

I run because there's genuine, measurable improvement in my ability from day to day.

I run because I don't like gasping for breath when I climb stairs.

I run because I value having time with my own thoughts.

I run because I can.

I run because balance is the way of the runner. (The line from that book that has always stuck with me: "A lie: speed is the way of the runner.")

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The ache in my calves this morning (and yesterday morning) seems unrelated to running; while I was moving this morning it mostly dissipated. Came back with a vengeance when I walked down the steps to go to work, though. I'm blaming it on the preponderance of stairs in elf's (obscenely opulent) new digs.

Also, it's so much easier to keep moving when the air's cooled down a bit and I don't feel like I'm redlining. Friday was horrid. Today, I didn't even notice much difficulty until after the 20-minute mark. I cannot wait for August to be over.