Remembered my password! WOOT!

OK, so part of the reason I haven't posted here in forever is because I forgot my password and then the whole integrate-blogger-into-your-google-account thing screwed things up (had a different password on my gmail account). I am still alive, this project just got put on big time hold due to family stuff going crazy (in-laws got laid off and moved in with us, bought a house around the same time I got pregnant with kid #2, my health went to crap, and still adjusting to inlaws living under the same roof). I've started writing on this again, but I'm not going to post it here anymore (particulary because I'm writing scenes that happen in various parts of the story and give too much away if posted, not to mention are confusing as heck to anyone who doesn't know the whole story line as planned). I have a domain name for myself - sofiaomoore.com - and now I'm going to have to decide if I'm going to blog here or there (or point that to here) but I will be blogging again. Likely there. I'll see if I can get it to cross-post here tho.

The story is at least double the length it was the last time I posted here (possibly 3x, I haven't actually done a full word-count, but I wrote 2000 words in one day last week and I suspect that right there doubled the word count total). I'm setting a target date to get the first draft done of July 28th of this year (2009), though if I get really ambitious that may include at least a short story of Apollo's perspective during the same time period as major points of this story.

I seem to be writing in 700-800 word chunks, for the record. I write whatever scene the voices in my head allow me to write when I have a few spare moments to write around the kids needs (I'm a full-time mom). I don't get a chance to write that much every day tho I try, and sometimes I wind up writing something else (like poetry or a thesis) instead.

I'm also now on Facebook and Twitter for those who might like to follow me through this process in those venues (my Twitter account is feeding into my Facebook one, so you don't have to follow on both if you don't want to). These links should get you to each profile - Facebook and Twitter

Question of Spirit beginning - extended version

This takes you up to the first diary entry (the blog entry below this one), there will be more between the two diary entries written later but my head hurts right now. I've expanded this section by about 100 words from the "first expansion" that I'd mentioned below, so now it is almost exactly double the pitiful showing I made during Nanowrimo (this is the section I wrote, then it was only 599 words, it is now 1195, which still isn't even what you're supposed to write PER DAY during Nanowrimo, but hey, it's an improvement, right?). Hopefully the formatting will cooperate as I cut-and-paste from Word here or I'm going to be VERY annoyed. I'll try to remember to audioblog it soon, and will likely just include the first diary entry in the same file when I do (if you see the link here, then I've already done it and was too lazy/distracted to edit this text).

SO

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Laying on my bed, fingers curled into my hair, I flip through the pages of one of the scrapbooks from the stack on my nightstand. Images of familiar faces in settings I don’t recognize flit before me, experiencing emotions I don’t understand but can’t deny. Lives that seems so alien, intangible.

The papers and layouts, chosen with such care, give details of tales that are stored in my body memory, yet inaccessible without this external trigger. Like a gun, it fires holes in my perception, filling the room with the smoke of yesterday and stinging my eyes until they tear. Letters, interspersed with the photographs, scribble out excitement I cannot share, sorrows that fail to tug at my heart. I reach out and trace the lines, trying to feel some lingering bit of the spirits that wrote them. The connection has been lost to time; they are now just cold words on a page.

Sighing, I roll over and look out the window. Night has fallen but the streetlight in front of the house blocks out the twinkle of the stars. The tattered lace curtains suggest the outline of a form against the window frame, ghost image of one of the inhabitants of the photographs, but then I move and the thought disappears. I feel the sudden, desperate need to feel the starlight and the bite of the cool spring night air on this flesh. The sleeping dogs lift their heads in interest as pass them, moving swiftly through the small, time-weary house. I grab my keys off the dingy kitchen counter and rush out the back door to the car that waits like a stallion, impatient to be ridden.

I know where I’m going. I’ve been there before, but as someone else. Something calls every cell of my being to this spot, magnetically. I take the same route she did, but with more care. I would walk there, but I don’t know any way except this high-speed road full of twists. I revel in the thrill of the sharp circle turn that takes me westward, my foot willing itself to press harder on the petal toward the more daring speed my predecessor required to feel alive. My nerves and muscles become alert for the outward force the turns of the road exert on the less cautious. I will myself to lighten up on the pedal, to go at a more sane speed, though there really is no point. Mine is the lone car on the road at this hour, just as it was that other night. Every sense is reliving the experiences, though it is less bitterly cold tonight. The bitterness is internal now. I wonder briefly if the taste in my mouth will ever change as I pull off the exit ramp and into the parking lot for the pier.

Leaving the car behind me, I walk up the solid concrete stairs and toward the cold metal railing, stopping under one of the main over-head lanterns. The lights of Cleveland’s skyline play in friendly competition with the brilliance of the stars over the grand lake. For a brief second I think I feel the waves below slapping across my face, angrily telling me to turn back and remember the lessons this form has already been taught, but I shrug it off. That’s not why I’m here tonight anyway.

“Hello, Artemis.” Her voice carries a metallic tone of boredom instead of the tinkle of bells it used to bear.

“Hello, Euryphaessa,” I respond with a slight bow of my head.

When I look up again, she is scrutinizing me. “You are not here to end your existence.” Her tone is matter-of-fact, not a question. “Have you found what you came here for?”

I turn my gaze back to the stars. Ghost-lights from thousands of years past play upon my eyes, dilating them enough that I experience a slight pain when I turn my gaze back to the brighter light bathing my companion.

“I don’t know what I was looking for,” I finally reply. “Does the dream exist beyond the dreaming?” An owl hoots from a nearby tree as we share silence. “If all we do is dream, do we exist at all?”

“Tales are built upon dreams of men, my dear,” she replies.

“But what use are tales?”

“They tell us who we are, the tales we tell of ourselves and others. They give our lives shape and meaning.”

“And what if we decide we don’t like those tales any more?” There is a sourness in my throat as these words rise on the frigid air.

“Worse, what if everyone stops telling the tales you know to be true?”

It is my turn to scrutinize, and I notice subtle differences. The gold of her hair has faded, not to silver but to a dull grey. The light that shone from her eyes in all the tales we used to tell has gone out.

“Your stories are still told,” I counter.

“Stories are still told, but they are not my stories. My name is used, but to describe a being I have never met, with desires completely foreign to my own.” She grips the railing, white-knuckled, and then looks me in the eye again. “Your stories still bear some resemblance to the girl I knew.” Her hand rises to my cheek, almost of its own accord, and the touch is as cold and insubstantial as the breeze.

“Euryphaessa -”

“My time has ended. I cannot even answer the call of my own name with the surety that it is I who is called. May your time continue, my child.”

With these last words, her arms rise to the heavens, the lantern above us sputters out, and she falls forward toward the waiting waves. When I can finally bear to look down, there is a glimmer upon the surface, glittering like flakes of gold. I blow a kiss to her memory and walk back toward the car, somehow unable to shed even a single tear.

The drive home is slower, reverent, a solitary funeral procession for Euryphaessa. I drive toward the shining spectacle of downtown, around the flirtatious curves of the highway as it follows the lake, past steaming smoke stacks of industry and the iridescent glow of the hospital and back to my home on Castle Avenue.

Once I am securely inside again and the dogs have been acknowledged to their satisfaction, I return to my bedroom. Instead of the scrapbooks, kneal beside the bed and I reach for a box hidden beneath. Opening it cautiously, I rifle through the contents, carefully set aside the delicate carbon-duplicates of hospital discharge papers, slightly crumpled bills, and some bland greeting cards mostly saved for the return addresses on their envelopes. My objective lies at the bottom, and sticks slightly to the elderly box, resisting my efforts. A delapitated diary, looking as if it has had several episodes of violence inflicted upon it, finally sits in my lap. I open it gently, but dispite my caution, a page falls partway out. I turn to it and feel submerged in the psyche of the woman who penned the words.

Diary entry 1

From the diary of Diane Thomas (fictional character, the person whose body Artemis is in habiting), this is planned to be fairly early in the book, most likely shortly after the opening scene I posted earlier (which has since been mildly revised and almost doubled in length, I'll post the revised version sortly).

- Sofie

(edit: trying to fix the formatting issues, hope this returns our friends the commas and apostrophes to the scene. ~SO)

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November 3

Home from work and I can’t seem to shut off and go to sleep. It’s 3:30am and I need to be up & out of the house in less than four hours. The infomercials are on; beautiful, happy people stare at me at tell me how much better – how happy – I could be if I would just try. I’m tired, weary, used up, and no one cares. Me least of all lately. I heard through the rumor mill that my sister got married. The “family” didn’t make much of an attempt (if any) to let me know, much less invite me. I wonder if I’m really as much of an embarrassment to them as they are a disappointment to me.

The house just seems so empty, and I have to admit to some jealousy that Mary found someone worth spending time with. The last few attempts at a social life here have been a total wash. The nurses and receptionists at the office all keep trying to fix me up with one loser son or another, and I just don’t have the energy to make excuses not to go anymore. At least it’s generally a meal I didn’t have to cook. Sometimes I wonder how many of these “men” are having to borrow money for the date off their mommies.

How do I explain to these women that I’m simply not interested in trying to develop a relationship that will probably just turn out like my parents’ anyway? I really think I’m better off alone – at least then there is no risk of putting a child through what I went through. Human beings are just too messed up to be worth creating more of them, but these women seem to positively delight in pointing out how I’m not getting any younger. I wonder if precious Doctor Mary will manage to squeeze out a few perfect children in her spare moments. She is welcome to my breeding quota.

Last night I had the date with David. He’s the middle son of Georgia, the night shift nurse. Talk about people who shouldn’t breed. It started out well enough – at least he let me pick the movie – but I don’t know what his mother might have told him about me. He needs a serious lesson on respecting people’s personal space. I didn’t even finish the movie. His wandering hands freaked me out too much. I don’t know how I’m going to face Georgia next time our shifts overlap. Luckily, I don’t think that’s until next week sometime. One of the blessings of such a messed up work schedule, don’t think it balances out the damage it does to my sleep routine though.

Well, thinking of sleep, best I try again I guess. Staying awake is an implied part of the job description.

~Dia~