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.