(no subject)
Sometimes, I find it very hard to talk to almost all of the people that I know. I'm good with words but I don't necessarily read social cues very well. You'd think that would be harder online, but it's the same when I'm in a room with someone. Sometimes, it feels like I don't know how to stop talking and my mouth runs away with me. Sometimes, I feel like I don't know how to start.
Not a sad thing. I feel okay today. Just a thing.
I'm stalled, at the moment. My writing isn't really happening. I'm working on three things:
a) Other's Anchors, a YA novel, steampunk, about pirates and cowboys.
b) A Generation Kill AU in which Bravo 2 is an outlaw motorcyle gang; Nate's the president, Brad's the Sergeant-at-Arms and everything very quickly goes to shit.
c) A Suits AU set in a Dystopia, where Mike is working to infiltrate Pearson-Hardman for the Resistance.
Other's Anchors
The rain set in for certain about a mile from the ship, bringing with it the scent of sage and wet dust. Finn’s hair curled quickly in the damp; droplets formed on the brim of Ella’s hat. He’d offered her his arm but she’d refused it and so they walked in comfortable silence, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
Her clothes felt strange, like a new skin. Before they’d left, Ella had stood in front of the full length mirror in her quarters and studied herself, in her fitted vest and her shirt of striped linen. She’d gathered her hair into a tight, neat knot at the nape of her neck. She barely recognised herself; dressed in borrowed clothes, it was as though she’d changed shape entirely.
When she’d walked into the kitchen, Gale had laughed and shook her head.
“Very good,” she said, arching one eyebrow. “Maybe we’ll make a pirate of you yet.”
The desert was like no place that Ella had ever been before; its colours were, at once, both flat and vibrant, like paint smeared across canvas. There was more green that she’d expected there would be. She hadn’t anticipated so much rain.
“There’s a word,” said Finn, seemingly from nowhere, “for the way that dry earth smells after rain.”
“What is it?” asked Ella.
“I’ve completely forgotten,” he said. “I just know that it exists.”
There didn’t seem to be anything that she could say to that.
Generation Kill - Biker!AU
You probably don’t even remember it, though it made all the local papers at the time. An accident on a long, wet road: a bike that skidded and couldn’t keep its centre of gravity. Two people were riding on the bike but only one woke up in hospital a week later with his hair shaved stubble short on one side and a long red scar that he would never live to out-grow. Dan Fick buried his wife in the graveyard at the edge of town, under a stone carved with her name and a line from her favourite book but no dates.
Maya Jane Fick was twenty-one years old when they put her in the ground. She was outlived by Bravo 2 and by her son, Nate who was five years old at the time. Often, clubs like Bravo 2 take collateral damage. Two months before Maya’s death, there was a schism in the club. Godfather walked away and formed his own chapter, Alpha. John James Murphy tore the patch from his sleeve, leaving the club without a Sergeant-at-Arms.
This is the nature of motorcycle clubs such as Bravo 2: more often than not, they die bloody - torn apart from within.
Suits - Dystopian!AU
Riding through empty streets, heading across bridges that are strung with light in the darkness, he thinks about how easy it must have been to change everything. It didn’t happen in New York. It reminds him of a line in a poem that he read, once, about how my life will shut very beautiful, easily. Pearson Hardman isn’t the first firm to control things - they’re just the latest in a long line. A new generation, but brutally efficient. What Mike knows is this: that, once, New York had museums and art galleries and concerts and little clubs, dark corners where people made music and read poetry from laptop screens. He likes to think that, somewhere in its D.N.A the city might remember that, even though the windows are broken now, the museums closed and Central Park is dark and silent. Once, this was a city that never slept but now everything is quiet, everything is still, limited and maintained. People are scared to step out of line.
Because people are closed down by Pearson Hardman, by the men and women who work for them. ‘Closed’, Mike knows, is a euphemism, and people use euphemisms when they’re scared of something. Death. Cancer. Taxes.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
So nothing's really moving at the moment, but I wish it would. I recently discovered (late) Ze Frank. There is something about his vlogs that are beautiful, but I was particularly struck by his an invocation for beginnings.
Don’t call it a comb-back; I’ll have hair for years.
I’m scared.
I’m scared that my abilities are gone.
I’m scared that I’m going to fuck this up.
And I’m scared of you.
I don’t want to start, but I will.
This is an invocation for anyone who hasn’t begun, who’s stuck in a terrible place between zero and one.
Let me realize that my past failures at follow-through are no indication of my future performance.
They’re just healthy little fires that are going to warm up my ass.
If my FILDI (fuck it let’s do it) is strong let me keep him in a velvet box until I really, really need him.
,b>If my FILDI is weak let me feed him oranges and not let him gorge himself on ego and arrogance.
Let me not hit up my Facebook like it’s a crack pipe
Keep the browser closed.
If I catch myself wearing a too-too (too fat, too late, too old) let me shake it off like a donkey would shake off something it doesn’t like.
And when I get that feeling in my stomach - you know the feeling when all of a sudden you get a ball of energy and it shoots down into your legs and up into your arms and tells you to get up and stand up and go to the refrigerator and get a cheese sandwich - that’s my cheese monster talking.
And my cheese monster will never be satisfied by cheddar, only the cheese of accomplishment.
Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me… I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them.
Let me extend that generosity to myself.
Let me find and use metaphors to help me understand the world around me and give me the strength to get rid of them when it’s apparent they no longer work.
Let me thank the parts of me that I don’t understand or are outside of my rational control like my creativity and my courage.
And let me remember that my courage is a wild dog.
It won’t just come when I call it, I have to chase it down and hold on as tight as I can.
Let me not be so vain to think that I’m the sole author of my victories and a victim of my defeats.
Let me remember that the unintended meaning that people project onto what I do is neither my fault or something I can take credit for.
Perfectionism may look good in his shiny shoes but he’s a little bit of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties.
Let me remember that the impact of criticism is often not the intent of the critic, but when the intent is evil, that’s what the block button’s for.
And when I eat my critique, let me be able to separate out the good advice from the bitter herbs.
(There are few people who won’t be disarmed by a genuine smile
A big impact on a few can be worth more than a small impact)
Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated with the shape of the stone.
Let me take the idea that has gotten me this far and put it to bed.
What I am about to do will not be that, but it will be something.
There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore.
My pencils are sharp enough.
Even the dull ones will make a mark.
Warts and all.
LET'S START THIS SHIT UP.
And God let me enjoy this.
Life isn’t just a sequence of waiting for things to be done.
I feel like there's a tattoo in there, somewhere. And God let me enjoy this could be the story of my life. This is a little bit like shake the dust by anis mogjani. It plugs into something that's in me that I don't really know how to do on my own.
Let's do it.
Let's start this shit up.
Crossposted ( with
comments) at my dreamwidth | comment at the original entry
Not a sad thing. I feel okay today. Just a thing.
I'm stalled, at the moment. My writing isn't really happening. I'm working on three things:
a) Other's Anchors, a YA novel, steampunk, about pirates and cowboys.
b) A Generation Kill AU in which Bravo 2 is an outlaw motorcyle gang; Nate's the president, Brad's the Sergeant-at-Arms and everything very quickly goes to shit.
c) A Suits AU set in a Dystopia, where Mike is working to infiltrate Pearson-Hardman for the Resistance.
Other's Anchors
The rain set in for certain about a mile from the ship, bringing with it the scent of sage and wet dust. Finn’s hair curled quickly in the damp; droplets formed on the brim of Ella’s hat. He’d offered her his arm but she’d refused it and so they walked in comfortable silence, close enough that their shoulders almost touched.
Her clothes felt strange, like a new skin. Before they’d left, Ella had stood in front of the full length mirror in her quarters and studied herself, in her fitted vest and her shirt of striped linen. She’d gathered her hair into a tight, neat knot at the nape of her neck. She barely recognised herself; dressed in borrowed clothes, it was as though she’d changed shape entirely.
When she’d walked into the kitchen, Gale had laughed and shook her head.
“Very good,” she said, arching one eyebrow. “Maybe we’ll make a pirate of you yet.”
The desert was like no place that Ella had ever been before; its colours were, at once, both flat and vibrant, like paint smeared across canvas. There was more green that she’d expected there would be. She hadn’t anticipated so much rain.
“There’s a word,” said Finn, seemingly from nowhere, “for the way that dry earth smells after rain.”
“What is it?” asked Ella.
“I’ve completely forgotten,” he said. “I just know that it exists.”
There didn’t seem to be anything that she could say to that.
Generation Kill - Biker!AU
You probably don’t even remember it, though it made all the local papers at the time. An accident on a long, wet road: a bike that skidded and couldn’t keep its centre of gravity. Two people were riding on the bike but only one woke up in hospital a week later with his hair shaved stubble short on one side and a long red scar that he would never live to out-grow. Dan Fick buried his wife in the graveyard at the edge of town, under a stone carved with her name and a line from her favourite book but no dates.
Maya Jane Fick was twenty-one years old when they put her in the ground. She was outlived by Bravo 2 and by her son, Nate who was five years old at the time. Often, clubs like Bravo 2 take collateral damage. Two months before Maya’s death, there was a schism in the club. Godfather walked away and formed his own chapter, Alpha. John James Murphy tore the patch from his sleeve, leaving the club without a Sergeant-at-Arms.
This is the nature of motorcycle clubs such as Bravo 2: more often than not, they die bloody - torn apart from within.
Suits - Dystopian!AU
Riding through empty streets, heading across bridges that are strung with light in the darkness, he thinks about how easy it must have been to change everything. It didn’t happen in New York. It reminds him of a line in a poem that he read, once, about how my life will shut very beautiful, easily. Pearson Hardman isn’t the first firm to control things - they’re just the latest in a long line. A new generation, but brutally efficient. What Mike knows is this: that, once, New York had museums and art galleries and concerts and little clubs, dark corners where people made music and read poetry from laptop screens. He likes to think that, somewhere in its D.N.A the city might remember that, even though the windows are broken now, the museums closed and Central Park is dark and silent. Once, this was a city that never slept but now everything is quiet, everything is still, limited and maintained. People are scared to step out of line.
Because people are closed down by Pearson Hardman, by the men and women who work for them. ‘Closed’, Mike knows, is a euphemism, and people use euphemisms when they’re scared of something. Death. Cancer. Taxes.
How easy it is to make a ghost.
So nothing's really moving at the moment, but I wish it would. I recently discovered (late) Ze Frank. There is something about his vlogs that are beautiful, but I was particularly struck by his an invocation for beginnings.
Don’t call it a comb-back; I’ll have hair for years.
I’m scared.
I’m scared that my abilities are gone.
I’m scared that I’m going to fuck this up.
And I’m scared of you.
I don’t want to start, but I will.
This is an invocation for anyone who hasn’t begun, who’s stuck in a terrible place between zero and one.
Let me realize that my past failures at follow-through are no indication of my future performance.
They’re just healthy little fires that are going to warm up my ass.
If my FILDI (fuck it let’s do it) is strong let me keep him in a velvet box until I really, really need him.
,b>If my FILDI is weak let me feed him oranges and not let him gorge himself on ego and arrogance.
Let me not hit up my Facebook like it’s a crack pipe
Keep the browser closed.
If I catch myself wearing a too-too (too fat, too late, too old) let me shake it off like a donkey would shake off something it doesn’t like.
And when I get that feeling in my stomach - you know the feeling when all of a sudden you get a ball of energy and it shoots down into your legs and up into your arms and tells you to get up and stand up and go to the refrigerator and get a cheese sandwich - that’s my cheese monster talking.
And my cheese monster will never be satisfied by cheddar, only the cheese of accomplishment.
Let me think about the people who I care about the most, and how when they fail or disappoint me… I still love them, I still give them chances, and I still see the best in them.
Let me extend that generosity to myself.
Let me find and use metaphors to help me understand the world around me and give me the strength to get rid of them when it’s apparent they no longer work.
Let me thank the parts of me that I don’t understand or are outside of my rational control like my creativity and my courage.
And let me remember that my courage is a wild dog.
It won’t just come when I call it, I have to chase it down and hold on as tight as I can.
Let me not be so vain to think that I’m the sole author of my victories and a victim of my defeats.
Let me remember that the unintended meaning that people project onto what I do is neither my fault or something I can take credit for.
Perfectionism may look good in his shiny shoes but he’s a little bit of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties.
Let me remember that the impact of criticism is often not the intent of the critic, but when the intent is evil, that’s what the block button’s for.
And when I eat my critique, let me be able to separate out the good advice from the bitter herbs.
(There are few people who won’t be disarmed by a genuine smile
A big impact on a few can be worth more than a small impact)
Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated with the shape of the stone.
Let me take the idea that has gotten me this far and put it to bed.
What I am about to do will not be that, but it will be something.
There is no need to sharpen my pencils anymore.
My pencils are sharp enough.
Even the dull ones will make a mark.
Warts and all.
LET'S START THIS SHIT UP.
And God let me enjoy this.
Life isn’t just a sequence of waiting for things to be done.
I feel like there's a tattoo in there, somewhere. And God let me enjoy this could be the story of my life. This is a little bit like shake the dust by anis mogjani. It plugs into something that's in me that I don't really know how to do on my own.
Let's do it.
Let's start this shit up.
Crossposted ( with
comments) at my dreamwidth | comment at the original entry