Writing the Ending

I know this blog is a bit self-centered. I'm working on it but it seems to want to remain that way. It can't be a writing advice blog or a publishing advice blog. One would need some form of expertise in those areas. All I have is opinion, generally based on what I read in those types of writing blogs. All that remains is what I write and what I discover, sometimes just by playing with an idea.

"I don't plot," she said for what seemed like the hundredth time. "But it doesn't mean I don't know where I'm going, even if it takes me a couple of chapters to discover specifics."

So today I am going to play a little game. I'm going to write a couple of final scenes I already know. No character names included. It may be spoiler-ish but who knows? These are not final. They're rough drafts. Things could change.

Always Coming Home: A Touch of Memoir

A few months ago I posted some poetry I had written while on a visit to Vermont. The poem I started thinking about was "Always Coming Home."

I'm southern by birth and blood--over five or six generations worth. I can claim that much but even now when someone asks me where I am from I still equivocate. The question is not meant to ask you where you were born but where you grew up.

My high school graduation class Facebook page sometimes has postings where someone talks about the elementary schools they attended and with who. Do you remember? Have you seen so-and-so who played Little League with us? Or that time we did something in elementary school? So many reminiscences and questions. I read those postings with a kind of longing. Those kind of memories I don't have with any of those there.

Where are you from? Definitely a question to equivocate with. I can't answer it with any kind of conviction.

I grew up in many places as a child: my place of birth, West Germany (yes, West Germany, not to be confused with East Germany at the time) , Washington State, Hawaii, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. From birth to the age of 13 I never lived any place longer than three years and even when I did manage two or three years I never attended the same school two years in a row. Time was I could name every single one of them but not anymore. Memories fade as new ones shoulder them out. It's an inevitability and fourth graders don't keep diaries.

I am an army brat---a military gypsy who followed a father from post to post. Changing schools, making friends I knew I would not have the following year, and knowing that a house was just a house, all of them just shelter. Life was very temporary. Some of us did not thrive in such an environment; some of us learned to adapt. And with that adaptation came a few shortcomings.

I've never done the research; I can only relate my own experience and epiphanies.

Changing schools so often led to abrupt changes in curriculum. One would just start to learn something, enjoy it, and look forward to the next part—then wham! Not at the new school. They thought something else was more important. I recall being tested in late elementary school and placed in a group being taught the ‘new math’.  It was an abysmal experience, trying to twist my mind into different pathways after I had managed to finally make the ‘old’ system make sense. Then I entered junior high after my father’s retirement and some enthusiastic academic decided I needed to be exposed or something to advanced mathematics. The experience sent my brain into mathematical seizures and I’ve been mathematically brain-damaged ever since, always squeaking by, in high school and college, on the absolute minimum necessary.  And did I mention lucky? My college professor wanted to pass us math morons so much they rewarded constant attendance, laboriously completed homework, and graded on a curve. Bless him!

Making new friends and leaving old friends? Ah, friendship is the most difficult task of all. New post means new school, new neighborhood, and new faces. If you’re housed on post everyone understands and friendships form quickly. You have so much in common. Off-base is harder. You’re always the new kid. You can only do the best you can. But after a few changes you learn friends come and friends go. You can promise, once you’re literate, to write but it rarely lasts when you’re only eight or ten years old. I learned friends are not life-time figures. I’ve learned how hard it is to hang on to those you want to keep. And I’ve accepted I will never reminisce with anyone who can remember that tree house we found or singing at the annual May Day Festival. No one person, other than family, runs through my lifeline.

It all sounds kind of sad, doesn’t it? Not really. I remember all my friends with affection and a bit of nostalgia. Any one of them could walk into my life right now and I would be happy to see them. No anger parted us---just life circumstances. My welcome back would be as warm as if we never parted.

And ,yes, houses are just houses. Something composed of brick, wood, natural stone with tin roofs, asphalt roofs, and shingled ones. Some were larger than others. Some were prettier. I do remember most of them. Some of them were pits. One of the reasons we had so many addresses was my father could not be trusted to find a decent domicile. He took the first and cheapest place he could find without a thought there was a wife and two children who needed to live in it as well. My mother corrected his mistake on a frequent basis. The man could take care of a platoon of men but had no idea about what it took to take care of a family.

More than the houses, I remember the places we lived---the geographical and natural space that contained us. Snow and tall, looming mountains. Trees which shrunk me down to the size of Gulliver. Turquoise waves lapping against gray-white sand. The smell of ginger flowers. The sound of rain on coconut trees. A sky full of bright stars. Warm, green forests with spring-fed streams. All of these and more are the images of my childhood. I do not understand to this day why they impressed me, a small child, beyond any reasonable expectation. But they are there, indelible and full of wonder, just behind my eyes.

Now when I travel some place hits my mind and heart with just one word: home. I look out around myself and my heart says “home”.  I suppose since I don’t have a single place to say I grew up in this is a good thing. Perhaps it is a gift, this adaptation. I will never be lost. Wherever I go I am always coming home. So where am I from? I'm from here and I'm from everywhere.


Always Coming Home

Windswept grasses

Blue haze in the distance
Sand dunes sculpted in wind
Rainbows crowning mountaintops
Turquoise water lapping at sugared sand

Dark green fir and spruce

Burying their heads in soft gray clouds
A winding wet-black road
Where redbuds peek
Wide, muddy rivers and sparkling streams
My heart always says
I’m home—I’m always coming home.

 






 

Excerpts and Snippets: "Snow"

Another excerpt today I think. This one is from "Snow". I think the era or time frame should be explicit.

“Mark, I want to know why you came all the way to Wisconsin,” Desiree asked as they sat down at the small dining table at the apartment for a late night snack.

“It’s complicated, Lizzie.” Mark played with the pickle she placed next to the grilled cheese sandwich he had asked for. “I guess I’m looking for some support for a decision I don’t really want to have to make.”

Desiree propped her arms on the table and looked at her brother for a moment. “What decision?”

“I graduate this May,” he said and snapped his pickle in half. “My degree will be finished.”

“Yes, Mama is so excited about it.”

“I know. But I don’t think she realizes what will come with it. And I do. I’ll have . . . do have some choices to make and none of them are ones I want to make.”

“What choices?”

“Lizzie, for God’s sake. You read the newspapers; you watch Walter Cronkite. Have you been living in a cave?” His voice rose and his eyes gleamed bright with tears she hadn’t seen since their father died. “Listen to me again. I graduate this May; my degree will be finished. I’m not married with kids like Monroe and Tal.”

Desiree dropped her head to her propped arms and fought the urge to pound her head against the wood. He was talking about Vietnam and she knew it. She looked back up at her brother. “Mark, what happened to med school? You’ve been dreaming and planning for med school since junior high.”

“I got my fifth application back. ‘Thank you for applying’, ‘our best wishes in your pursuit of a medical career’, and all that other crap that adds up to ‘tough luck, buddy.’ I’ve got two more applications still out but I can read the writing on the wall.”

Mark seemed to grow smaller in the dining chair like he was physically shrinking in front of her. The words finally began to sink into her, calling up images of fallen baby sparrows and the wounded rabbit he had brought home when he was only in the fifth grade. Big, tough football player he might have been but his grades were stellar and his scholarships were not based on his athletic ability. Medicine was his dream. Pediatrics to be specific. She had always known that. To see the big guy with children, newborns in particular, sent some girls she knew into hormonal overdrive.

“You’ll have a degree, Mark. They’ll probably send you to OCC.”

“Maybe,” he answered. “It would be a sure bet if I had joined ROTC like Monroe told me to last year.”

“Why didn’t you? It sounded like a good idea at the time,” Desiree asked.

Mark sighed and shrugged. “I thought about it. I already had the short hair and with the family history no one would have thought anything of it. But I just couldn’t. It was fine for Monroe and Tal but. Lizzie, even officers have to be ready to shoot to kill.”

Mark’s blue eyes looked hollow in his face, his mouth drawn. Desiree sat silent, not knowing what to say next.

“Dad did what he thought was right and , God knows, we were raised to believe in our country and all that. But the stories I hear from guys who’ve been in Vietnam make me want to puke. It’s not the war Dad was in. The reporters don’t tell half the story, even if they’ve been trying lately. But it’s not just that. Hell, I go deer hunting every year with Tal and his friends and every year I have to pretend I like it. I don’t. I never have. Imagine that, a southern boy who doesn’t like guns or shooting. Pull up a gun and shoot another human being? I can’t do it, Lizzie. I just can’t.”

No, it's not the most romantic part of the story. I just like Mark, my female protagonist's youngest brother.

 

 

Writing Clutter and Quilting Pieces

I find it interesting to go through old document files. One can find all kinds of interesting tidbits: poems you've forgotten (sometimes with excellent reason!), old letters you've written and thankfully didn't send, and snippets of stories you started but, for whatever reason, simply never continued with.

Heaven knows, I  have enough on my 'writing' plate right now but I found at least five things I started but never worked on. What happened? I dunno. Perhaps they simply weren't working or going in a direction that led nowhere. They should be deleted from my files I suppose, like stained tee-shirts you  don't want to wear out in public anymore and you know you only need so many 'I'll need painting clothes' in your dresser drawer.

But, like some old clothes, you simply don't want to toss them out. There must be something to be done with them. Maybe I'll just pack them into a zip file and call them quilting pieces. My grandmother did that and my mother did it, too. They might just make a nice quilt some day. The pattern may simply not be apparent to me right now. Shall we look?

Quilt Scrap #1:

Of all her incarnations and forms this one had worked best for the job; she had to admit it to herself. Margaret Cochrane could have modeled for any one's grandmother: not too tall, round and plump, carefully waved silver hair with a touch of blue, and a peaches and cream complexion. With just the right amount of laugh lines, of course. But she couldn't say she really liked it, although people did seem to respect it. All right, except for that time in northern France during the witch hunts. Her resting quarters seemed to mirror her form. Comfortable, lived in, and filled with a hodgepodge of human artifacts.

 

"Margaret!" The call was getting shrill now.

"I'm coming! I'm coming!" She called back at it. The glass surface of the antique mirror was mottled to begin with; now, it was swirling and twisting with all shades of gray and a touch of purple. Really, Max had such an old fashioned approach to communication. The last time in the office she had tried to talk him into getting on the Internet or maybe just a fax machine.


Quilt Scrap #2:
 

The screeching howl was ear-shattering, an angry, full-throated note that cleaved through the air and seemed to hang there for several seconds. Daria cowered beneath the rocks, unable to move and unable to look. Her eardrums rang despite the hands she clasped over her ears. Above the ringing came another sound. . .speech. No, not a speech. A word, a single word.

“NO!”

The timbre of the voice was unlike any other. It was almost human with an underlying hiss and vibration that coated her skin with terror. It was a shout. Sheer volume told her that but the words were human.

 “INVADERS! MURDERERS! DAMN YOU ALL!”

 Daria opened her eyes at the epithets. Cowering under the rocks was no longer an option. She didn’t care what Philippe had said; she didn’t care about the terror crawling over her skin. The one who was shouting those words was a threat. Fear and shame coated her inside. Phillipe was in danger and here she was cowering in the rocks like a coney, leaving her brother to face whatever it was with only the semi-useless Mark at his back. She was the trained one, not him.

“NO!” Daria shouted, a faint echo of the booming voice. She ran out of the cover of the rocks, slipping a steel-tipped arrow into her bow. Her eyes really didn’t start to focus until she drew back and sighted along the arrow’s shaft. Phillipe was no where to be seen but a dark figure loomed on the mountain’s edge, a winged figure with a tremendous span. Where was the owner of that voice? She glanced swiftly left and then right. Phillipe’s fallen figure laid deadly still with a simple dagger next to him. Idiot! Where was Mark?

“NO!” She shouted again, sighting down the shaft once more. The creature started to turn. Daria let the arrow loose and had another one ready to fly without even thinking of it. A sudden gust of wind threw up a cloud of dust and small gravel. Daria’s vision was cut off as the dust stung her eyes. For a few seconds there was nothing but darkness shot with only brief spears of light. It was enough. A pair of large strong hands seized her wrists, striking her bow from her hands. Daria strained against the thumbs but was only partially successful as her free hand was immediately grabbed again and her arm twisted painfully behind her back. There seemed to be a dark wind rushing all around her.

“Let her go!” It was Mark’s voice. “You don’t want her! You want us!”

“No! I want you to suffer as you made her suffer. Men! The Storyteller was right. You are killers of life and hope. You took mine from me now I will take yours!”

 

 

Scrap or quilting blocks? I'm not quite sure.

Excerpts and Snippets: from 'Dragon in the Snow'

Today’s excerpt comes from “Dragon in the Snow”. I don’t know yet if it simply a novella or a a novel. It isn’t finished yet. But, yes, the story comes from the same realm as “Dani’s Song”. I told myself  I would write it if “Dani’s Song” found any kind of audience but changed my mind. I’m writing it anyway. What follows is the prologue I wrote.

 

Prologue: The Beginning of Myth

Once upon a time high up in the Mayatan Mountains dragons lived. In great abundance once but even in that long ago time there weren’t many left... Solitary . . . quiet creatures they bore little resemblance to the fiery, combative creatures of human myth. Given their choice, dragons would have avoided humankind and its kin altogether. There was, however, no true choice about the matter for dragons remember what humankind has chosen to forget.

Back in the Days of Creation when the Maker still walked the land . . . before the forming of the Willow Garden, the Maker made thousands of creatures before humans were made. Fantastical creatures. . .griffins. . .unicorns. . .flying horses. . .all the kith and kin of faerie. . .and, yes, dragons. When the Maker finally formed the first of humankind there was a pause before the awakening. The Maker looked around at all the fantastical creatures and thought deep and long.

“I wonder if I haven’t made a mistake at last. All of you are so strong and beautiful. I have given you so much magic. There isn’t much left. Strength . . . wings . . . years of life counting into the hundreds . . . even thousands. Humankind will look upon you with awe and wonder. Perhaps even a touch of envy. They will know their own weaknesses.”

“Perhaps so,” rumbled the griffins, shaking their manes of fire. “But is there not something unique left You can give them?”

“Perhaps,” the Maker murmured softly and tapped fingertips together for not an inconsiderably long time.

The creatures gasped as the Maker opened a fingertip and three drops of celestial light formed. The first was the palest iridescent blue, the second a rich golden, and the third a shimmering rose. Slowly the drops fell, illuminating the air then disappearing into the newly made form. Sheets and columns of light seemed to flow and dance through the sleeping figure.

“What? What have You given them?”  There was a loud outcry from all the creatures. “Us You simply made. What have You done?”

The Maker smiled. “The only thing I could do . . . the only thing I could give . . . part of Myself.”

The creatures were appalled, rocked. Some went almost crazy with jealousy. This fragile skinned thing now shivering in the cold unable to warm itself was the vessel for part of the Maker? What made it worthy of such a gift? Why? All those questions and more the other creatures asked and asked again but the Maker just smiled and walked away.

“Unjust!” The chimeras protested.

“Why them and not us?” The phoenix roared.

“Intolerable!” The serpents of the deep declared.

And so, out of a pique of jealousy and ignorance, the Great Tribulation between humankind and Creation began. Battles of epic proportions at first then smaller skirmishes as the creatures began to realize their rivals were more than a match for them. Thin-skinned, humans learned to clothe themselves. Hunted and tormented, they learned how to fight back with amazing cunning and remarkable perseverance but even so the other creatures did not relent. Simple jealousy had turned into a burning rage bent on humankind’s total destruction.

The conflict was both successful and unsuccessful, depending on one’s point of view. Human adaptability and ability to learn eventually drove most of the creatures into far off, unreachable places or into the very land of misty myth. For all their strength and long lives they could not match the human creation. Jealous rage was replaced by angry fear and deep felt pain, for none of them reproduced at any frequent interval. Young ones and hatchlings came rarely so each loss was deeply felt. No, they were no match at all for humankind’s ability to reproduce in just ten short moons.

For some centuries, as has been told, the dragons were able to hold out in the high mountains. They unsuccessfully tried to reason with the others. The most they could do was keep to their selves but still it did not keep them from being hunted by the humans for the crimes of their kin and sometimes for no reason at all. Soon, even in the fastness of the high mountains, there were less than a hundred left. Blessedly, as the dragons became more and more reclusive, humans forgot about them, except in song and story. And yet dragons remembered . . . everything.

 

Is it a love story? Oh, yes . . . always.