Inspiration Strikes Like LIghtning

It's not a good idea to wait on inspiration, but when it strikes, you grab that shit and hold on. It can be a winning lottery ticket, and if you tell it to wait until later, you might never get to scratch off those numbers and hit the big score.

/simile

I was leaving work late today, as I have done for weeks now. It's the busier time of year, made busier because I'm trying to get everything done so my holidays can be holidayicious. AND I had skate practice tonight, for which I was running late. As I hustle to the elevator, I hit the button, the down arrow lights up, I hear a ding, and...

...nothing. The doors don't open. Another door behind me opens. I look. That arrow is lit up too and there's a person inside. I watch the opposite elevator the entire time. I step in, watch, the doors close, I watch to the last. The light was on, but the doors never opened. How strange! Especially since I just listened to a piece on NPR's Marketplace about the science of elevators. I've been paying attention, and that was certainly weird.

Wouldn't it have been horrible if I had gotten on that elevator and then it broke down and then I missed skate practice entirely rather than just showing up late.

What if... what if... what if...

So many possibilities come to mind, and then I hear the first lyrical construction of what becomes the first few lines below. After I finish my current rewrite, I have two novels on deck. One is a larger fantasy I've tried to write twice before. The other is a science fiction who-dunnit with the working title of FAMILY JEWELS. I may have done a wind sprint for that one previously. I dabbled on it because I couldn't get it out of my mind. And I admit, I was unimpressed with the wind sprint. This, however, these few paragraphs capture the tone and attitude I want for the story.

BAM! Inspiration to the face! Hop past the break (if you see a break) to read the first few paragraphs. I'll let this simmer on the back burner for when I write the full thing. This may move it up to the next-to-bat position even though I've been world building on 7TH SACRIFICE a lot lately. We'll see when we get there. For now I still have a lot more to do with BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE.


Chapter 1: Benedict Quick Hated Running

There is always a singular instant, a domino moment, when What Is deviates from What Should Be and becomes What If. All of a person's nicely ordered and freely chosen decisions become the victims of causality, falling one after the other. For Benedict Quick, lead detective at Quick and Easy Investigations, that moment occurred on Saturday the 15th of April at 0731. He stood on the fifth floor of the Bellanton Building, waiting for the uppevator to turn into a downevator, but when the up-arrow light turned off and the down-arrow light turned on, the doors did not open.

Another down-arrow light turned on, and a synthesized bell dinged as the doors to a second downevator opened behind him. Ben stepped into the metal box, an old-style pulley/engine conveyance that worked against gravity in both directions to move a person to differing floors while keeping their feet on a solid plane.
“Backward fucking planet,” Ben grumbled for the billionth time, punching a plastic circle marked “G” that lit up after he touched it.

That kind of antique novelty was common on planet Wozniak, the odd and eccentric, the vogue and the retro. Most members of the Galactic Cooperative of Planets used anti-graviton movement tubes, uppevators, downevators, leftevators, rightevators, and so on. These old style boxes only moved up and down and had a tendency to get stuck, even back when they were the only method of transport from the first to the fiftieth floor.

The first downevator's light remained on, but its doors never opened. It sat there, waiting for someone to call for service, while Ben made his way to the ground floor. Ben Should Have gotten on that first downevator. It Should Have gotten stuck between the fifth and the fourth floors with him inside. Then he wouldn't have reached the lobby when he did. He wouldn't have spotted Xio Xiolin--a white-collar biometics counterfeiter with a bounty on his head--walking toward the exit. Xiolin wouldn't have made eye contact. Xiolin wouldn't have run. And Ben wouldn't have had to chase him.

Benedict Quick hated running.

The Right Ingredients

Have you watched the 10th Anniversary Firefly Panel from ComicCon yet? If not, we'll wait for you.



That hour was well spent, yes? I watched it again while you were watching it. It was time well spent, I think. (Granted, I'm a hardcore Firefly fan.) There's one scene in particular that struck me as amazing, and I wanted to talk about it here.

In established media like film and television, it's hard to know how much we as fans learn about the show, the cast, etc is real and how much of it is spin. You can take it on face value. You might see them in person and think, yeah that seems real. Or you might wonder if the actors are still acting. They can do that, you know. Act. It's what they do for a living.

I bring this up because the family-like nature of the cast of Firefly is well documented and the pessimist inside me has always wondered just how true that was. You see it in special features, but that's just a glimpse and a glimpse can be misleading. The moderator of the panel actually mentioned that, and that's how we got to the coolest story about the "business" side of this that I think I've heard. (Business being the craft of making a television show and not the story they're telling.)

It's a natural segregation that actors spend their time with other actors and crew spend their time with other crew. They have the most in common. It's natural that they would divide themselves as such. But that can create a division that inhibits the overall goal of everyone to create the best possible product. So Nathan Fillion (who is always credited for fostering the family-like nature of the show) walks up to a group of other actors early on in filming. He says "This is a contest. The person who can name the most people's name is the winner. That's Brian, Tom, Tim, and Frank. I'm winning." And just like that, rather than people forming into small groups, everyone made the effort to know everyone else. Even if it began as a manufactured competition, it ended with a group of people that knew each other and made an amazing product.

Having experienced live performance first-hand, I cannot stress how large an impact the attitudes of everyone involved has on the final product. One bad seed can turn something magical into something miserable. And, as Nathan demonstrates, the opposite is true as well. More than ever I love the Firefly crew and cast. My respect for Nathan as a professional is through the roof. And as soon as all my books make me JK Rawling rich, I'll take steps to reward these people. They've earned it.

Until then, watch the video. Watch Firefly if you haven't done so in awhile. If you want an awesome lesson in writing craft, listen to the director's commentary for Out of Gas. Tim Minear did some amazing things with that story.


Completely unrelated to this, if you haven't watched Thomas Jane's fan-made short for The Punisher, check it out.

Fuckis

When I was in college, everyone I knew had seen Mallrats. If I said "fuckis," I didn't have to explain what that meant. Unfortunately, the fortune teller scene from Mallrats isn't on YouTube so if you haven't seen the movie, I can't explain it to you.

Lately, I've needed to improve my fuckis. I'm querying a manuscript, and usually I'll take a little bit of time off before starting something new. (It used to be tow weeks, then one, then at least a couple days.) But, because I held off on the final draft before querying, I finished a first draft of another book. So I've been revising that one to get it in shape for sending to beta readers. There are some things getting in the way of that.

I got a new CPAP machine, and I don't think it's as effective as my old one. I'm tired more often, although it's not as bad as when I first got it.

I finished my December "busy schedule" months late (as content was turned over late, not because I'm not awesome) and unfortunately that rolled right into my summer busy season. So I'm kind of tired because there was no down time. There are also big changes going on at work, which means a lot of people making a lot of mistakes, and I have to run around with my hands in the air going, "No, no that's not right! Stop that! Stop that this instant!"

I downloaded "Towers n Trolls" to my phone. I've had bad luck with tower defense games before. None of them really held my interest. This one, despite it's pay-to-play structure after level 2, has been scratching that itch. Usually I play it until the conductor sees my pass and then I bust out the computer. But today, I played it all the way into Boston (and on the subway and during lunch). I've beaten the game already, but now I'm beating on BRUTAL! and for some reason, I'm making that effort. I don't usually need to make that effort, but this time around I am. *shrug*

It's also leading to a lot of introspection. I've mentioned that I prefer intrigue to standard adventure, but I keep writing adventure instead of intrigue. It feels like I used up all my intrigue juice writing D&D adventures, and I'm just waiting for it to rejuvenate. I gotta take a break from adventure, though. These stories are starting to feel too similar.

How's your work going? Are you writing? Because you said you were going to put more effort into writing, so you should be doing that. Chop chop, and stuff.