Yes, It Is All My Fault!

Just received the front cover for the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology that “The Reap Assessors” is lead story in. It looks super cool, check it out!

Friday I “finished” the roughest first draft of a story yet. In fact, I felt a little weird about calling that draft done.

But…it has a beginning, an end, and a good chunk of the middle, with notes for the rest of the fill. It has notes about what to fix and add in the next draft and I know what I did right and where I need to delve deeper. Sounds close enough for Shakespeare’s monkeys, a first draft it is.

It’s likely to end up as flash fiction (1000 words or less) and looks like I’m back on my “short story=horror or dark fantasy” trend for now; if it works it should end up a delightfully creepy little piece. However, now that I have a draft I can call done, I’m setting it aside until probably August, since I have another short story due sooner and ready to write.

Working on the other story’s chronological outline now. Taking a short break (yay hot tub) for brain rejuvenation, then to come back and play with the outline.

It was all very simple, really. I was sitting here, reading this story from someone wanting to join our writer’s group (clever story, literate, not quite ready for publication but easily able to be made so, good style overall, can’t see why we wouldn’t let said applicant in). Five minutes after finishing, something was still tickling the back of my editor brain, and I went searching the crevasses of the internet. (Ok, I found most of what I needed on Wikipedia, but moving on…) (Reader Beware Warning: Thar be discussion of arthropoda and bodily fluids in the words ahead.)

Dark secret revelation time (no not THAT one): In another life, I was an entomologist. Or perhaps even in this life, if I ever decide to go back to school. Yes, I really am that weird. I used to collect roly-polys (in a jar at first, and later outside under the bricks in vast colonies). I wore cicada shells in my hair and on my clothes as a child–I had a jar where I collected each season’s found shells. (Looking back, I bet my mom liked that habit about as much as she liked my inability to quietly burp, but that’s too much tangenting for now. But wait, check out this cool cicada-molting animated gif!) Though I’ve not taken many formal entomology classes, they were very memorable for me, and pieces of what I learned there were reinforced in some of the other animal science classes I took when we got to the pests and parasites lesson sections.

To paraphrase and completely take out of its context the bit of the story that was poking me (and get back somewhere near my point), at one point in passing “horse flies” are equated to “stable flies”. My fidgety mind finally bursts out with “Hey, I think I remember learning that a stable fly was a different species from a horse fly. And aren’t horse flies those really huge fuckers that bite worse than a fire ant, and the stable flies are the ones that suck blood?” Quick, to the Wikimobile!

And I found that there was rightness on both sides (or wrongness, depending on your viewing lens). According to the Demi-gods of Wikery, it is a true statement to say a stable fly is also known as a horse fly, but not true to say that a horse-fly is the same as a stable fly. Or even more nerdily explained: both flies in question are of the order Diptera, also known as “true flies”. However the stable fly (sometimes called a horse fly) is of the Family Muscidae, and are bloodsuckers with mouth-parts similar to mosquito construction. The horse fly (which is similar to a deer fly, but is not a stable fly) is of the Family Tabanidae, where the adult female (but not the male) fly has mandibles that are serrated and designed to tear a piece of flesh off and drink the blood that oozes forth. So it all depends on your perspective (or which fly-borne transmissible disease you prefer), and mine is I’ll stay away from both the muscidae piercers and the tabanid masticators, thanks.

I think I crossed the line from geek far into nerd with this admission. Why yes, that was fifteen minutes of my life spent seriously contemplating fly mouths, why do you ask?

I wrote 7.5 pages (so far) today on my story in the collaborative project. I spent 2+ hours giving some editing advice to a friend who is newly discovering her prose writing talents, hopefully she’ll go back later and read all the thoughts people gave. It’s gorgeous to see her blooming and turning out quality, literate first drafts, learning how to revise, and having obviously lots of fun playing in the created(-ing) world sandbox. We (DreamCafe) did many household calls and errands and shopping. Had a writing date with fellow Voluptuary Jennifer and cleaned up more parts of rooms and moved a freezer with her help.

A productive day, however you slice it.

So far I’m not worried about my individual writing work, so long as I start on it within the next few days. The whole point of doing this mindfully is to balance being able to work on both personal and collaborative projects without either one suffering from Creative Attention Deficit (or CAD-like behavior). (I’m already doing daily work on the business work.)

The day’s work seems like good stuff, too. Fun to write, full of exciting cool bits, a new genre (for me) to explore, positive feedback on the first written parts. Even if it was utter tripe, I’m glad to be writing again. It’s all (pointy-teethed) kittens and (man-eating) butterflies from here on out!

Fear-of-heights check: inconclusive

Body-seriously-fucked check: affirmative

I rather think that I won’t know if I have a fear of heights until my body is working more the way I’m used to, and it’s quite possible by that time I’ll have engendered a phobia from not trusting my body. I’ll keep climbing, keep stretching, pick a little higher rock as a goal each time. We’ll see whether my body bends or my mind breaks first. Yay self-experimentation.

In other interesting climbing news, I talked Kit into taking the orientation class last night, and he took to it like a monkey in a tree, like Andrea did to her spinning, like a cliche clings to a bad metaphor. It was really nice to see him excited and charged up on the exertion high afterward, hopefully he’ll keep coming back. Yay catalyst goodness for others.

Especially because I think I need a smaller harness; mine fits fine now, but if I lose any more weight at all (likely) I won’t be able to tighten it at the waist any further. So if we take Kit shopping for gear then he can have mine and I can get a new one.