Note to Self:

When you’ve got Coyotes of Silver Moon done, check this out. You enjoy Fantasy. You enjoy naval stories. You enjoy naval fantasy stories. So, if you’re going to play in the genre pool, you might as well have some fun. If no one else is going to write a naval fantasy short, you might as well, and while you’re at it you might as well get paid for it.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Got my swiss ball all inflated and am just raring to go here. Would have been working on this earlier, but Carrie called me out to mow the lawn as soon as we got home because we really don’t need more chores on Saturday, and it may very well rain tomorrow. Plus, I want to go to CABS (that’s the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society, for those in the know) tomorrow night. Whatever, I think tomorrow is going to be a good night.

Which reminds me, this thing on SparkPeople about helping you to stay motivated, one of the daily goals is to remind yourself that you’re going to have a good day today. I did it this morning, and I forgot about it. But then, I had a pretty nice day. It’ll be different if I have an absolutely horrid day, but it’s good to remind myself that I don’t necessarily have control over what is going to happen to me on any given day, but I can control how I react to it. Or if I react to it. I’m a reactionary kind of person by nature, and I am reading this book, I know I’ve mentioned it before, Unleashing the Warrior Within. It’s about focus and reaching potential. In particular, it’s about using your personal focus to reach your personal potential in whatever goals you may have. I don’t know if it really works, but the stuff it says makes sense. It was written by a Navy SEAL, and some of the things I’ve learned from it is to examine problems head on, get stuff that distracts me from my goals out of my way, if I have something that isn’t important to me, or can’t help me reach my goals, get rid of it. That was very empowering and important. And it makes a lot of sense. I learned that – what else, I learned that I can achieve more in a bad situation if I plan for it ahead of time. I can do better in a good situation the same way. Instead of focusing on everything that can go wrong, which generally leads to worry and fear and disables me from moving, anticipate what might happen and see how I can turn it to my advantage, like in job interviews, how you always practice questions you might get so you’re comfortable with your answers, so you won’t be nervous when you go in for the interview. Instead of being surprised, you can be ready and prepared, and even if you are surprised, you’ll be more apt and able to roll with the punches because you did prepare and you aren’t nervous.

Tomorrow I’m going to put it to the test when I hand over writing samples to a possible new boss unexpectedly. I’m viewing it as a mission to get in, make an impact and get out with the minimum of resistance. I’ll keep you posted.

Over half way there. I better get started on the story. I’ve kind of painted myself into a thematic corner here. This story may not last much longer, so it may time that things get a little weird and wacky. May be time to bring in that man with a gun, you know?

Okay, to sum up where we’ve gone thus far and where we are now; Coyotes are terrorizing the small town of Silver Moon, South Dakota in the years leading up to Custer’s last stand (REMINDER: CHECK OUT CUSTER’S LAST—forget it, do it now. I’ll be back.

–George. General George A. Custer.

My Swiss ball feels decidedly lopsided. That may be bad.

When John Fulton discovers that his young son Roswell has become a were-coyote (as it were, no pun intended, but certainly enjoyed) himself, he and another of his sons, Custer head out to a local tribe of Lakota Indians to see if they can do anything (you know, this now strikes me as immenently silly, a man and his son setting out alone to visit Indians they have no relationship with, without any escort at all. I may have to rethink this entire thing, honestly. Just roll with it for the time being, though). So they are traveling to this tribe, but on the way they interrupt a buffalo hunting party and Roswell is taken from them. When they reach the camp, they are given a vision that tells them of Coyote the trickster god of the Indians, and what his plan for the white man is (this also sounds silly now, considering what comes up next). Then they meet Henri and Mary Garoup. Mary is a Lakota, married Henri, who is a French Canadian trapper. They escort John and Custer from the camp, where they see the Indian who took Roswell. When they chase the Indian, they lose everything they have over the embankment of a ravine. What is not known is that Henri is really Coyote himself, toying with them.

I’m really beginning to think that I need to rethink this entire story from the ground up. Reminds me of all the false starts I had with Unlicensed Magic before I found a good direction. This isn’t the story I wanted at all. I mean, it has elements I like, and I really like the fact that Coyote is known to me, but a lot of it is based on stuff that really makes no sense whatsoever in light of a little reality. There are logic holes and the whole tone of the story isn’t what I really wanted.

Yeah, I think I’ll go back to the drawing board tomorrow. Punch it up, make it pulpy, the way I wanted to in the first place. I need this to be a ‘Weird Western.’

Well, it was a long road, but I think I’ve made progress today, even if it isn’t necessarily positive progress. Even scientists have to prove something won’t work before they find the answer they’re looking for.

A nice way to end my 1,000 words for the day.

Note to Self

Whoever named packing peanuts should change the name to packing popcorn. Because, when you buy the cheap popcorn from those rented air-poppers you see at fund-raisers, they taste and sound about the same.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

It is 10:01 PM on Wednesday night. My goal for tonight is to blow through these 1,000 words as quickly as possible instead of harranging myself over how something sounds or whether or not something makes sense. And I’m starting with almost 1,000 to go, certainly less than 900.
Just to sum up a little bit. I’m going to continue plotting the story I’m working on and polishing it until I have a full treatment of the story. If I don’t like it at that point, I’m going to let myself off the hook and write a pulpier story that I originally intended.
Having said that. Right now things are getting pretty exciting. John and Custer have left the Lakota camp, heading back to Silver Moon with Mary Tree and Henri Garoup the French Canadian trapper who also just happens to be Coyote, the Lakota trickster god. They’ve seen a Lakota warrior who took Roswell during the buffalo stampede off in the distance. They chase him down, only to have him mysteriously disappear in a ravine so closely ahead of them that they can’t stop. They lose their horses and cart, and they have to rely on Henri to help them out.
That’s where we are right now. Got all that? Good.
6,266, 10:06PM. Not bad. Here comes the hard part.
The math. 1,000 minus 266 is 734 approximately 15 words per minute. I should be able to do that easily. I think at that speed. I can type almost 60 words per minute. So this should be a snap.
I’m going to update this periodically when I have nothing else to say.
6,327, 10:10.
So we have Henri pull them back up to safety with a giggle behind his lips. He’s the kind of man who always seems to be on the verge of laughing every single minute. That’s got to become important later on. On one hand he can be like the weasels in Who Framed Roger Rabbit or the Hyenas in The Lion King, who are in danger of laughing themselves to death.
You know, there’s an idea. Maybe this doesn’t have to have a bloody, Clint Eastwood style ending. Maybe it can be more African in nature, where the Fultons beat Coyote at his own game. They trick him somehow. But I don’t know if I want that. I like the idea of the old western, Mexican stand-off at the end of the story, or some bloody massacre at the end, like the Fultons trapped in their farm surrounded by hundreds of coyotes. But I want to keep this in mind for anything else. Perhaps they DO try to trick him in some fashion, only to have it blow up in their faces, literally.
Just an idea.
This reminds me of nothing, but just a reminder to myself, I need to re-edit all this later so I don’t have to double-return after every paragraph. It’s faster, and now while I’ve pulled the formatting out of the blog, I keep finding myself double returning and having to go back and delete one before going on. That’s bringing my time down.
I’m not going to check the time again until 10:20. I promised myself that much.
Okay, so Henri helps them up. Then what? Bring in a man with a gun? The idea has merit, but I don’t think so.
I could bring back the man who has Roswell, but for what purpose. I like the idea of not knowing myself yet if this Indian is a real person or just an illusion created by Coyote. That intrigues me.
So what we have is John and Custer without their cart, horses, or, just for the hell of it, any firearm that wasn’t strapped to their sides when the cart went over. And, again, just for the hell of it, let’s just say that, for whatever reason, John had pulled his gun out and started driving the horses with it in his hand when they started chasing the figment, but dropped it when he realized they were going over a cliff. So it’s gone as well.
So John and Custer have nothing on them except the clothes on their backs, and whatever knives they may have with them, and ammunition to guns they don’t have.
That’s pretty dire straights.
6,774, 10:20. That’s going better than I could have imagined.
They’re up off the ground, pissed that they got tricked that way, pissed that Henri seems to be amused at their tragedy, because horses aren’t cheap. At least I don’t think they are, I’ll have to research that. Rifles aren’t cheap. Six-shooters aren’t cheap. Carts aren’t cheap. They’ve just lost the equivelant of thousands of dollars, and still don’t have Roswell.
Henri places it in their heads, almost as a joke more than anything else, of course, that maybe the Indian who seems to have Roswell is none other than Coyote himself. And Custer wants to believe him.
NOTE TO SELF: Find out what General Custer’s first name was. I think it’s William, but if it’s John, I’m going to have to change one or the other of the names.
NOTE TO SELF: appropo of nothing, remember to check the TV listings of channel 28 to see what’s on at 11AM. That show is really beginning to intrigue me as I work out in the morning, but since I can’t hear it, I really don’t know what it is. Looks like a relationship/psychology kind of show, a la Dr. Phil, but on the cheap, because it’s, you know, channel 28.
Okay, back to The Coyotes of Silver Moon, already in progress… I really gotta do a story where everytime I get stuck, I bring in a man with a gun. That would be a heck of a story, don’t you think?
…And THAT’S my 1,000 words. No, not much got done today. Maybe I’ll be able to get more done tomorrow.

The Cheating has commenced…

I’ve been on the program for over a week now. And I’ve been routinely suprised by how easy it is for me to hover just below my daily recommended minimum caloric intake. I figured if I just worked out regularly and kept an eye on snacking and portion control, I’d do just fine.

Last night, even after eating at Taco Bell (eating too much, I might add–I’ll have to remember that for next time), I was below my recommended minimum caloric intake, so I thought I’d help myself to a little ice cream.

And then, after Mrs. Wesley went to bed, I helped myself to a little more. I ended up having about two cups by my best guess (it’s hard to estimate when you’re eating directly from the container). And, for the first time since getting on the program, I went over my recommended MAXIMUM caloric intake.

I’m not going to beat myself up over it. Just acknowledge that this is an area of weakness and reign it in next time. With exception to this blip, the diet I’m on has been really easy to stay on. I’m not monitoring my weight just yet–I’ll wait to do that on the first of the month–but I feel like I’m losing inches, and it’s not difficult to stay within the parameters of the program.

Just another reason to STICK WITH THE PLAN.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Okay, I’m writing this (or at least starting it) from work, because I really don’t think I’ll be able to manage a full 1,000 words tonight at home, for a couple of reasons:

1. Mrs. Wesley and I have a meeting at church, and I probably won’t be home earlier than 9PM. That in itself might not be a big deal, but…
2. My back’s hurting. I’d like to minimize the time sitting erect in front of the computer as much as possible; and a corollary to Number 2…
3. I’m friggin exhausted. I’m stiiing here at work, barely able to type, I’m so tired. And this is me just back from lunch, without any carbonated beverages in a week or more. On the other hand, it’s also me right after sweating like the oldies for a half-hour. I’m whipped.

So, insomuch as I can, I’m going to try to get as much of my 1,000 done now. I may not be able to finish the entire thing, but anything helps, and I’m sure if I can get done most of what I need to do, I’ll be able to muster enough energy for a 30-minute, 500 word push.

And look, only 800 to go.

I’ve been thinking about that piece of advice (I know there’s a better word for it, but I’ll be durned if I can think of it at the moment—syllogism, maybe?) that when you get stuck or when the plot bogs down, bring in a man with a gun in his hand. And I’m wondering if maybe that’s the tack I should have taken with this story. It’s definitely become more… well, it’s just become more EVERYTHING than I was expecting. I was originally intending for this to be a rollicking, pulpy kind of story. Maybe even a shoot ‘em up. What I have now is this treatise of the werewolf as metaphor for Indian resistance.

There’s part of me that wants to go back to the beginning (“Go back to the beginning, you said, Vinzini. Well, this is where we got the job, so this is the beginning”) and start over with the idea of werewolves in the old west, and pack it more full of action than it is currently. Not that what I have is bad at all, considering that I’m not done plotting. But it is rather… bigger than I had anticipated, and it’s definitely taken a few twists and turns that I hadn’t anticipated either. The whole story is just rather more… thoughtful than I had originally planned.

The other part of me wants to forge ahead. I like the idea of the Sioux Coyote Trickster God being behind it all, and even being in the story in human form. I like that quite a bit, actually. I’m just afraid it’s taken a long, rambling ride to get there.

What to do, what to do?

Oh, I know, I’ll hit the word count again!

494. Half way there.

Okay. Here’s what I’m going to do. I will finish out the next couple of days with the plot of the story that I have, until I have a complete outline. Then I’ll go back and check the structure and plot out the actual scenes to see if they have any drama, suspense or punch. If I don’t like it, I can always go back. I mean, it’s not like I don’t have a month to turn the story in.

On the other hand, I only have a month to turn the story in.

Alright. One more bathroom break, and then I jump right in for the next 400 words.

*

And, again, THAT’S why you stick to the plan. When I returned to my seat from the above paragraphs, I was asked to embark on a large project that took me about an hour and a half. Now I have approximately 40 minutes to hit 350 words. It can be done (and I will do it—oh yes, I WILL do it), but it puts me in something of a crunch.

Alright, we’re leaving the Indian camp, heading back to Silver Moon. There’s John Fulton, his son Custer, the French trapper Henri (we’ll call him Henri Garoup for the moement, but that will change), and his wife Mary/Sings in a Tree.

So, what happens next? Bring in a man with a gun. No, no, no. I can’t do that just yet. Maybe later.

Got to establish that Henri is a maybe a little more than he seems. Maybe a little nuts. Maybe a little Powerful. Maybe a little desperate to destroy the white man whom he’s masquerading. But how?

They’re riding along, John and Custer in their wagon, Mary in hers, and Henri on his horse.

Ah, yes, the fake out. This may be a good time for a fake out. But it’ll have to be good. I hate an obvious fake out. The four of them will be riding along, when they’ll hear Roswell shouting out for them, way off in the distance. They’ll see him and the Indian who picked him up dash off on a horse. The Fultons and Henri will go chasing after him, and strangely enough, considering they’re in a wagon, almost catch up to him. Roswell and the Indian will bound off the next hill, and John & Custer will—oh, what the hell—they’ll go over the next hill, only to find it’s a steep ravine or a cliff or something. They’ll go barreling over and lose their horses and wagon. They’ll barely survive themselves, and Henri, who was alone on horseback, will be trailing them. I point that out because, being alone on a horse, he should be able to go a lot faster than they would. He’ll help them climb back to the top of the ravine, but will smiling as he does so.

And off in the distance, they’ll hear a coyote yip and howl.

Hey, wouldja look at that? I actually made my 1,000 words with a half-hour to spare! And nearly 200 of those words actually apply to the story at hand!

Probably Shouldn’ta Blogged Last Night.

Yesterday I had an appointment with my chiropractor. It was the last one for a week, and now I’m phasing off the big machine that stretched your vertebrae (they say it’s a ‘decompression table,’ but I know what it really is: a medieval rack with a chrome finish).

I should have just camped out on the couch alternating between heating pads and ice pads, but I promised myself I’d write my 1,000 words, and then proceeded to hem and haw for an hour-and-a-half before I got to it, goofing around on the internet instead.

And now I’m paying for it. I could have stretched out, but I didn’t, and now my lower back is groaning. Hopefully I’ll feel better in a few hours, after I hit the gym, but I’ve got a meeting at church tonight, and I won’t be home until 9:00PM at the earliest. If I don’t feel better by THEN, I’ll HAVE to take it easy on the couch, which means I won’t be able to write at all. And THAT means I guess I’ll have to write my 1,000 here at work, and that’s NEVER fun.

Let this be a lesson to you. THIS is what happens when you deviate from the plan.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Okay. After yesterday’s little trip to Neverland, it’s time to get off the crapper (as it were) and on the ball (as it is), and get back to South Dakota (as I will do right now).

Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty.

…

Yeah, okay, so I suck. I just spent the past… what, maybe an hour… trolling the internet, seeing if I could find old friends on MySpace (what a waste of bandwidth THAT is) and generally avoiding work (which is, after all, what I do), when I should be here trying to figure out how John and Custer and Roswell get out of the situation with the Lakota, and then playing a few hands.

And my Suisse Ball needs inflating.

Okay, John and Custer are in the Lakota camp. Roswell is missing, and they’ve had a VERY trippy night wherein they were led on a merry romp by Coyote, capital C. When they awake, Roswell is still missing, but they will see a Lakota woman in a tailored American dress. Her name is Sings in the Tree, but her American name is Mary Tree. She is a serious woman with a broad, flat face, and looks unnatural wearing the dress. She lives an American life with her husband Henry, but was raised Lakota. She will act as liaison between the Fultons and the Lakota, but basically, all she says is that Coyote has been visiting many people recently, and the Lakota refuse to do anything because Coyote will do as he will. To do anything else would be to unbalance the natural will of Mother Earth.

So basically John and Custer leave worse off than they arrived, with no idea how to stop these were-coyotes, and now Roswell is gone. Nobody in the camp seems to know who might have taken him. Definitely sounds like a Lakota Indian picked him up, but nobody is missing from camp, so what can they do.

They let John and Custer leave with an escort of mary and Henry, but also with a warning: There will come a time when the Lakota will not let the White Man herd or pen them the way He has the buffalo. And maybe Coyote is tormenting the White Man because of the White Man’s torment of the Lakota. Maybe that is why no Lakota has been affected, but local towns and trading posts have.

Okay, I think maybe I have my bad guy right here. Or bad guys. Or bad guy and bad girl: the Trees. I got a feeling I’m going to have to change that name to something or other. Garoup or some such.

Okay, I don’t know where I’m going with this, but let’s say that Henry Tree is not just a French Trapper (okay, maybe it should be Henri Tree), maybe he’s also smoething of a medicine man of himself. But, maybe, just maybe, he’s also the Lakota Trickster God Coyote himself, doing exactly what other have said he would do. Maybe he’s making the White Man pay for moving so many of his Coyote (capital C) brothers around, forcing them to make war on each other while the White Man simply takes what he wants.

Henri would have to be something of a scrawny fellow, himself, but be able to dress his woman in fineries of the American fashion. He’d think that’d be funny. He’ll even join them on their quest to find ‘Brother Roswell,’ while in fact controlling things from backstage.

Mary Tree would, of course, know who he was, and be terrified out of her mind. He blames her for not giving him any heirs, but she knows that Coyote (Henri) is dying. His time has come to an end because the White Man’s Sun God is moving in. He’s calling all of his children to him, all of his natural born and his chosen, who will lead the attack against the White Man’s God.

My problem now is how to dramatize that.?

And more importantly, what am I supposed to type for the next… 241 words?

I’m exhausted. Whipped, really. But I have to get past that 1,000 word mark. I can’t even think straight right now. I’m about THIS close to just cutting and pasting “All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy,” out of The Shining. But I’m going to try to stand firm, if for no other reason that I’ve already copped out the day. I just want to crawl into bed, but I’m not going to resort to cutting and pasting or doing something cheap like that because, well, I’d like to consider that I have SOME standards for myself. So, instead, I’ll just ramble for the next 100 words or so (123 at this point, to be exact).

Or I could ramble on about another project I’d like to get started someday, called “Superman: Truth, Justice…” where good old Clark gets back to his Golden Age Roots and realizes that The American Way™ ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s about him rediscovering his role as an avenger, a righter of wrongs, and someone who will severely kick your ass and damn the justice system if they can’t get it right. That would be something I would buy, because there are so many writers who only see Superman as the pawn of The Man, the guy who enforces the Status Quo for Middle America.

Yeah, that’s something I’d like to read, but that’s nothing more than fan fiction, and right now I have a short story to finish and submit in the next few weeks.

But I’ll do that tomorrow, because THAT’S my 1,000 words for tonight. So there.

Note to Self:

Hungry-Man Jumbo Rigatoni with Meat Sauce, tastiest of the Hungry-Man family.

(And yet, not on the Swanson website. Maybe it’s being test-marketing right now.)

I dreamed last night…

I don’t normally dream, or at least I don’t remember my dreams, but this morning I woke with fragments from at least two dreams last night.

In the first, I was having a birthday dinner with a large group of friends and/or family, and I opened a birthday card with The Incredible Hulk on the front. It said, and I read aloud, “HULK WISH YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” I opened the card and it was a gatefold cover with paragraphs of text printed on it. “Hmm, and Hulk evidently very literate, too!” I said, which got a big laugh, and suddenly I realize this isn’t my family, it’s an audience at a comedy club.

I don’t recall anything else from that.

The second dream I know I’ve had at least one other time recently, although I may not have remembered it at the time. I’m either in the far, post-apocolyptic future or some sort of sword-and-sorcery fantasy setting. There’s a runaway donkey and cart that I have to stop. I know it’s the third one I have to stop, although I don’t remember stopping the first two. If I don’t stop it before it gets to town, the town will blow up. One the side of the cart are three symbols. I can’t see the first two now, but I know the third is the symbol for radioactivity, the thing that looks like a spider. This whole second dream feels very “PS2″ ish to me upon reflection.

Now, I’m not one to look for deeper meanings in dreams, but there are a couple things worth noting:

1. My birthday is coming up. Less than two weeks now, in fact.
2. Both of these dreams dealt with radioactivity in some fashion.

Make of that what you will.