Sight Unseen was not-accepted. I think I mentioned that. I managed to stuff whatever reactions I had to that until I had written; if I had the reactions first, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t write for a few days while I tried to pull my head out. So. Wrote. Good for me.

This morning reaction set in. My spine’s natural shape was like that of a shepherd’s crook, and the world was gray, gray, gray. I worked through with clenched teeth; I was unwilling to give in to the doldrums. I continued Lisa’s method of synopsis -> draft; I wrote bare-bones statements blocking the movement in the story. “Herman walked to the edge of the gazebo. He leaned on a post. He nursed his rum.”

Not what you would call exciting writing, but the better part of the first scene was laid out in detail in about ten minutes. Some description slipped in when I wasn’t looking, and some reactions. I wrote another 200 words — and escaped the killing calm indifference of the post-rejection doldrums.

*whew*

I think I may be in sufficient repair that, tonight, I can rewrite Sight Unseen as a cyberpunk story (thanks for the suggestion ) which will take it out of the difficult-to-accept “psychological almost-horror” genre and move it more firmly into “science fiction”. Or I may yet send it off again, unchanged. I will undoubtedly find out when I sit down to rewrite it.

Today I learned that my resume had been rejected from a company that actually quite needs me, and that Sight Unseen had been not-accepted (it isn’t a rejection until the bother to tell one) by the most recent magazine to which I’d submitted. And I was up late for a Pet Emergency, and there’s packing to do. And the Zombie Love Story awaits.

Clearly I should be doing things. I’ve little energy with which to do them.

*sigh* Life. (“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”)

Okay. Nap has been had. Sake has been had. Sake has been had again. I am, in fact, planning to get some sake now. And then - positing an ability to walk the hallway without bludgeoning myself unconscious against one or more walls - I shall write something. Just so I can say that I did.

It is, as I understand it, what we writers do. And I am apparently one of those, these days. About damned time, that’s my feeling.

Where’s my sake?

Edit: I skipped more sake, but wrote 250 words. Good ’nuff.

Normally the creative process, for me, is luck; do I have an idea, aimless energy, time to write, and interest all at the same time. Then, if those conditions are met, did I happen (without thinking things through properly) to start the story in the right place, in the right way?

Amazing, I feel, that I have ever written anything.A few weeks ago, I was meeting with Lisa and we were dissecting the craze for supernatural love encounters. Vampires, were-creatures, fae of assorted textures and flavors…I was feeling grumpy that the fullness of the genre wasn’t being explored. (Except, of course, for , who has been playing with gargoyles and such - and kudos to her for it.) “Why,” I snarled pettishly, if one can do such a thing in such a way, “aren’t people writing about sexual creatures from lagoons? Why no horny hags? Someone,” I gestured to the writing world at large with a bit of tofu that would have been better used plugging my flapping jaw, “someone needs to write a zombie love story.”Lisa smiled broadly. “Great idea.”

“It would improve the paranormal genre.”

“It would.”

“It must be done.”

“It must. And you are a writer.”

“Yes, abso –” I stopped waving tofu. Evasive movement was called for. I summoned all of my cunning, all my wit. “Er,” I said.

“So when will you write your zombie love story?”

Never bitch about the state of the art while in one’s writer’s group. In spite of my attempts to derail the idea, I was committed by the end of lunch.

Now. The reasonable thing to do, by my past successes, was to wait for all conditions to be met and then revel in the happy coincidence. But there’s this synopsis thing I’ve been meaning to try, and a synopsis doesn’t require actual inspiration. It merely requires effort.

This is what I did:

1. I fiddled with the idea for a while, and decided that I liked voodoo zombies, and that there should be a love triangle — maybe two. And that the protag should be not-a-normal voodoo priest. I still didn’t really know where this was going, but I had a sense that it needed to either tug the heartstrings or be Addams Family romantic. AF romance was easier, so….
2. I wrote a one-sentence summary of the story.
3. Then I wrote a one-paragraph summary, not requiring myself to stick to what I’d already done.
4. Then I started figuring out what had to happen, to get from a beginning to the end I had in my head. Each happening got a line in sequence of the story.
5. I started changing the happenings to scenes, still at one line each…
6. …which began to evolve to several lines each…
7. …until there was nearly two pages of synopsis of moderate detail.

No inspiration ever took me. I still had a nice time. It was fun to think about. Tonight I’ll start writing from the synopsis, which should be much easier than usual; pacing, character, and plot are all determined, a nice improvement on my usual method. If this works at all well, it will be much faster and much less stressful than my normal methodless method. I’ll letcha all know.

When the stress of the day gets me down and I feel the weight of the world settling into my bones, I hang upside down. Really.

Like this; a few months ago my lower back would hurt after I’d been lying down for several hours. The upshot of that would be that after sleeping for a period of time, pain would start to build. I theorized several things: my stomach muscles were not as strong as my back, and when I relaxed my spine bowed backwards; my back muscles were not as strong as my stomach; my work chair was brutal to my posture; my exercise was insufficiently mobility-centric; it was too much so. And so on. I experimented carefully to test each theory, and every experiment was a success; I disproved every hypothesis I came up with.

My sleep was down to 90 minute bursts when I took Shannon’s suggestion and went to a chiropractor. Having someone crack my bones seemed…superstitious. Why would that help? After running (carefully) and yoga and general good habits, I should be stretched and toned and relaxed and shaken into place. Pain, lack of sleep, and trust in the redhead’s opinions led me, in any case, to get ‘em cracked.

It worked. Well, good. I don’t have to understand things to note that they work. I went, at the usual ruinous expense for things that are doing one good, until I couldn’t afford the visits.

The thing is, I wasn’t getting better. I was just relieving the symptoms. Not a useful long-range solution by my lights. Further, my chiro felt me up, gave me a gross observation, and determined to crack me. No X-rays, no clever equipment, no careful study, no sacrificing a goat, staring into a pool of water, or spreading his enemy’s entrails over the Liglamenti Times. Just a blind decision that crackin’ me was a good idea.

I found another chiro when I could afford to, one who actually applied some sort of thought rather than blind faith. He X-rayed me, ran me through a series of postures and exercises while he watched and probed with hands and diagnostic equipment. He measured and considered.

Then he cracked my bones, just as the other fellow had done. He was significantly less successful; my symptoms weren’t relieved at all.

HOWEVER.

The X-rays were wonderfully useful. They showed a wonderfully healthy spine, with an exception right above my pelvis, where I had a pad that was half the width of any of the others. My self-care is probably the only reason it hasn’t spurted out one direction or another. Compressed disk. Fine. Treatment for that?

Crack yer bones!

Uhm. And that helps, exactly, how?

The new chiro ran down some other alternatives, which included traction. Basically, anything that relieves the pressure in the area will permit tissue recovery to some degree, and I will experience relief. His feeling is that crackin’ my bones will do that, although he allows that there are other things. In fact, he said that if everyone practices yoga and uses gravity boots or traction, he wouldn’t have a job.

Well, all right, then. I acquired a pair of gravity boots on ebay.

Boom. Immediate relief. Progressively better sleep this week. Dandy.

Unfortunately, I sort of over-did yesterday, and I’m feeling very over-used today. Very like the feeling one gets from too much vigor at the gym. I’ll be taking a day or two off from hanging like a bat.

So. There you are. No punch line commends itself to this, so we’ll just have to accept that some things are merely reported, rather than related engagingly with a zing at the end that drives the entire thing home and makes it a part of the reader’s soul forever. Sad, but there it is.

Yesterday I spent the better part of three hours studying voodoun and synopsizing a short story.

At least I think it’s a short story. I’m beginning to think that any story that has a mortal love triangle, a deity love triangle, and the protagonist’s concerns as well should be a longer story. Not a novel, though. I’ve enough of those in process or unstarted.

…it would make a nice novel….

So. Three hours working on synopsis. Exhausting. Can’t explain it; after all was said and done, I had about a page and a half of typing, but my brain was very similar to one of the softer cheeses.

Good. I don’t understand why that should be so much harder than actually writing something, but if it is, it is. I hope to have some amount of a rough draft by the end of this weekend.

Today we packed. And packed. Things that have not been touched in four years — that have not been seen for four years, except by our ubiquitous spiders — were uncovered and sorted, cleaned or disposed of, categorized and packed.

I’m tired. I don’t feel that I’ve done anything, but I’m tired.

There are trout in the oven, a pilaf of seven grains, porcini mushrooms, and sun dried tomatoes on the stove, and a redhead at the spinning wheel creating Miraculous String. A good day, even if it was spent packing.

There’s a smile on my lips, a song in my heart, and a joyful tremble through the very core of me. This world, I feel, is the best of all possible worlds, and all, I also feel, is for the very best.