Author: Bob

With my overwhelming work schedule this semester, creative things have been finding alternate routes out of my head. I’m sure this is a sanity-saving safety device built into my brain’s biology. One of the mechanisms is the spontaneous composition of poems just as I’m preparing for bed.

I enjoy writing poetry. The mixture of rhythms, images, and word play in a compact form is fascinating. During more restful periods, I like to pick random words and try to build a poem around them. With a rough poem in hand, I start the linguistic lapidary needed to find the best facets and features, making it shine with, what I hope, is brilliance.

With the end of a long day, and the prospect of another tomorrow, the poetry builds up pressure in the mantle of my mind. From time to time, it finds some cravase, and forces its way to the surface. Grabbing the notebook beside my bed, I scribble the words as they erupt and guide them to safety. If I don’t, there will be no sleep that night.

The pressure safely relieved, rest comes, such as it is. It is a reminder of what lurks beneath. It also makes me wonder what would happen if these smaller releases failed. What is a poetry eruption?

Have you ever looked at a physical task and thought you should be able to perform it only to find out that you can’t? Your first thought may be, “I used to do that all the time,” and then you remember that you haven’t been exercising like that for a while. Writing can suffer from the same problem.

My day job has been extra hectic this semester. Almost all of our classes are full of eager students, but my program is short one instructor. That leaves two of us to teach nearly 140 students. Not only does that fill the day with lectures, but there is a massive quantity of grading to do. This has left me with very little time for personal writing.

Today, I completed grading early and realized I hadn’t planned for any non-grading activities. Recovering from the shock, I realized I could write. There was finally time for it.

Only, I couldn’t, not very well, at least. My brain has gotten out of the habit. It was as though my brain had packed all my writing clothes and put them away until next season. It took a lot of relaxing to get into the writing mood. Even then, it was not great work.

I remembered something I wrote in the early two-thousands called Dream Car. The short piece described a car driving through a dreamscape in which all the aspects had something to with the subconscious mind. More importantly, every word was carefully chosen to represent a concrete object in the image and yet an ephemeral part of the thinking. For example, “Some things blurred by on the street, barely passing thoughts. Others crept slowly, like lethargy itself.”

This ancient scribbling is notable in that it took almost no time to write. At that point in my life, I wrote constantly. With all that practice, it was easy to create skillful prose, poetry, lyrics, or anything else that took my fancy.

Lately, it has been more of a struggle. Except in summer, I don’t have time for creative endeavors. I still create worlds and characters, but just enumerate the facts about them. There’s no real artistry to the things I’ve written.

I’ve been wanting to do a fantasy novel for awhile. I know the basic tale, the name of characters, and all of the motivations. So far, it seems to be a brief history lesson about the story. I’ve described the economic and religious motivations of the parties involved and the origins of city names, but there is no life to it.

Basically, I haven’t been exercising my writing brain properly and it has gotten flabby. This is why the constant advice is to write all the time. If you want the big gains, then you have to pump iron, or keyboard keys in this case. It is critical to find some time to write something every day.

I only have thirteen more weeks of class left this term. Even if I can write a little, a few times a week, I will be in better shape when summer arrives. I just need to keep writing.

“It ain’t natural.”

Jesse’s gruff voice practically spat the words into the dark.

Jose, the expectant father tried to dismiss him. “It’s just something left over from the Storm. It’s just a new world, Jesse. I will love him or her no matter if they have spots.”

They sat quietly outside the culvert that led to the underground shelter. It was an eerie night; humans weren’t the only species nearly wiped out. Without the sounds of insects and other things, it just seemed wrong. At least the stars were still there. They outlined the edge of the treeline where the stronger trees recovered.

The old man cleared his throat and shifted his weight a little. “You may love your baby, but others may not. You thought of that?”

“Yea, we thought of that,” Jose answered. “We can’t worry much about what other people think.”

“You better worry about it. They may run you out… or worse.”

Jose sighed. “We are already packed, just in case.” He had seen bigotry before, but since the Storm it was worse.

The starlight let them see each other as dark phantoms in the shadows. The quiet let them hear each other breathe.

Jesse grunted. “Maybe there won’t be no spots. Maybe things will be just fine.”

“I suppose,” said the father, “but ours would be the first normal baby born in this shelter. We pray, but…”

“Well, I hope your prayers are answered. You’re a good guy, and your missus is a good woman too. Y’all ain’t like the Franks, you know. They didn’t do a lot for others and all.”

There was another long pause as each thought about and tried to forget the Franks and what happened to them.

The Franks were a nice enough couple. Neither had any real survival skills and hadn’t adapted to life after the Storm. They kept wanting to live like the times before. Everybody wanted that, really, but knew it wasn’t realistic.

When their daughter arrived with gray blotches on her skin, the real trouble began. Some in the shelter were openly hostile. Others, like Jose, had no room for hating someone just for being different. They were the minority.

The shelter council called for a vote. Even with an anonymous ballot, everyone knew how everyone voted. The result: banishment.

The Franks begged to stay, but they couldn’t bargain any better than they could do anything else. They refused to leave voluntarily, so a mob dragged all three of them out of the shelter and into the wild. No food, no clothes, nothing but the injuries sustained in the act.

A few days later, hunters found the bodies. Someone had beaten the Franks. Parents and newborn, murdered in the woods. It could have been bandits but everyone was sure there was a savage in the shelter. At least one.

The memory of those events added chill to the night. Jose pulled his arms in tighter to keep the heat in.

He knew what would happen if his wife gave birth to a spotted child. He was better prepared. He was packed to leave voluntarily. He had already stashed supplies in the woods when no one was around. Nobody in the shelter knew he had a pistol; that was always his biggest secret. Anyone trying to beat him and his family were in for trouble.

“I don’t understand why everybody gets so upset about the spots anyway,” Jose said.

“You heard them,” Jesse replied. “The spots are just a sign of disease. Got to get rid of disease before everybody gets it.”

The father shook his head. “That don’t make sense. It’s only ever babies born that have the grey spots. The only way they would get a disease was if everybody already had it.”

“Just the momma, maybe the daddy. That’s why we get rid of the parents too. Like I said, it ain’t natural.”

The rusted shelter hatch screeched open. As the entry widened, light spilled into the area. Sarah, the closest thing to a doctor at the shelter, stepped out. “Your wife and new daughter are fine and resting.”

Jose leapt from his seat, a broad grin on his face.

His companion rose more slowly. “What about spots? Did the baby have any spots?”

Sarah looked away with pursed lips. After a moment, she nodded.

The father’s grin left. His posture straightened as his hands clenched at his sides. He took a deep breath and forced it back out through his nose. “How long before my girls are ready to travel?”

The coming summer brings writing time. Story ideas flood my thoughts. Starting as the occasional drip, it’s grown into a full rush of plans and plots. I wonder where they will go and if I can capture them all. It looks promising, so far.

The last two novels generated notes for several more stories involving the same world. One story is positioning itself as the next candidate. It gives glimpses of scenes, and plot points. The hero minds his own business. The antagonists prepare to pounce.

My original plan was to write another story involving Mason Leroy, the hero of Cordell’s Rebellion. The story line is solid with plenty of action and suspense, but that’s it. All I have is a play-by-play of the events of the story, but no character arcs. At this point, the characters would just be reacting to circumstance and that does not make for a good read.

Instead, the likely story uses an old character, but this time it is Gary from Hour of Consequence. He was the radio engineer at the station where Reverend John worked. Now he has moved on to other adventures, but he thinks he has seen someone he recognizes. That someone is up to no good.

If this works out, it connects the Cordell world with short stories and notes I’ve written over the past few decades. That means all of these stories will form a cohesive whole, making use of all my previous effort. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll have a convoluted mess.

The real trick is to fit this around my regular work schedule. Still shorthanded, I’m in for a busy spring semester. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ve got eight straight hours in the classroom, ending at ten o’clock in the evening, with barely a break in the middle. Mondays and Wednesdays will be shorter, but start earlier in the morning. Add my office hours, and it makes for exhausting days. Sixteen weeks of that is likely to wipe me out.

Still, I just need to hold out till summer. If I can keep my notes until then, and stay healthy, I’ll be ready to slap together a story in no time. I’ll map the plot and the character arcs and let the rest fall into place. With any luck, I’ll be done before the fall semester when my time goes away again.

For another year, I’ve been unable to participate in NaNoWriMo. It’s one of the conditions of my job that I’m just too busy during the semester to do much creative writing, or anything else creative. At this point, though, I only have to wait another month and a half to have my next batch of free time. How will I ever make it that long?

In my day job, I teach software development and databases. It’s a good job, but it takes up a lot of time. I’ve got full classes, my program is short a faculty member, and the technology keeps changing. That last one keeps me on my toes because all of my class preparation can go out the window with one update. All of these things use up my day, making it hard to turn off long enough to write.

To worsen the situation, my work already involves long hours at the computer. The idea of staring at a word processor when the job is done is not inviting. My vision blurs. My wrists and knuckles ache. Anything I do will need to be on paper, and even that is difficult to see.

Unfortunately, the writing is an important part of my sanity regimen. I can feel the stress build when I’m not creating things. Writing software can help, but it’s not the same as kicking out a short story or poem. The stress is bad for my health and that of the people who have to put up with me.

For now, I spend time making notes. When I can, I write notes for things I would like to write or modifications to things already written. Sometimes, the notes are just creative gibberish for my own amusement. Whatever the notes entail, they are the release valve that keeps me from exploding in a creative cloud, scalding all in range.

I will have a break between the end of fall semester and the start of spring. There will be some work that I need to do, but there will also be time for writing. At that point, I will gather my notes, organize them, panic at the sheer number of them, and not get around to writing. The avoidance and chaos will be very creative though. It may be enough to last until the coming summer.

Last summer, I spent a great deal of time on curriculum updates. For both physical and mental health, this summer will not be spent on work. I will engage in purely creative things. I may even knock out another novel; I’ve got several lined up. Whatever the case, I just need to keep finding enough creative outlets to keep my sanity until then.