“Sick, Sick, Sick,” or “Why I haven’t written dick-all in a week”

I’m home today, sitting in the library with a kitty on my lap, and the lap dog taking up the majority of the floor.

Mrs. Wesley had been out of commission Tuesday and Wednesday with the Crud, and now I’ve got it. Coughing, hacking, sniffles. The whole nine. And I’ve completely lost my voice. Like, the only sound I can get to come out above a whisper is when I’m wheezing or hacking up a furball.

I would have written my 1,000 words Tuesday, but Mrs. Wesley needed to be cuddled, and therefore we watched the remainder of LOST Season 2 on DVD.

I would have written my 1,000 words yesterday, but, quite honestly, I was already sickipoo and vegged in front of the TV while Mrs. Wesley needed to use the computer anyway. I think I went to bed at 9PM.

Ironically, I may very well write my 1,000 words today, when I’m sick as a dog. There are some things I really want to get down in response to the book I read (and mostly completed) this weekend: a collection of Max Brand’s (mostly) non-western short stories. Like how most of them are built around just five scenes, or how strong his female characters are. I mean, almost all of the stories I read were from 1934-1936, and they were GOOD. Well-plotted, well-paced… well-written stories with well-drawn characters.

It’s a shame that Mr. Faust hated them so much. He may not have been a great poet, but he was a fine writer.

Truer Words Have Never Been Spoken

“Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it, but don’t swallow it.”

- Hank Ketcham (taken from ¡Journalista!)

Life, post-9/11

Back in 1998-99 or so, the singles group I was in at church had an event downtown, “Where’s Wesley.” Me and a friend, Bill dressed up as Waldo and the Wizard and wandered around a downtown mall and the statehouse as teams of 5 hunted us down and followed clues we had hidden. It was all very hush-hush. No permitions from either the mall or the statehouse. We even hid little pictures of me all over the statehouse–taped to statues and under displays and such.

And this all took place on a Saturday afternoon. About 75 folks rushing around the statehouse shouting and causing no end of commotion, not to mention two freaks dressed as children’s literature characters–and the state troopers didn’t even blink.

Can’t do that today. Today, the statehouse has exactly one entrance available to the public, and NOBODY gets past the lobby without permission.

I know it’s rather inconsequential in light of some of the real changes since the September 11 attacks, but in a small way, it is representative of the freedoms we’ve lost since, in the name of security. I no longer have the right to just careen around government offices creating pandemonium (as long as I’m not disturbing the peace). I have to check in and get approval first.

Sigh.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Starting out with just a little under three hundred words to begin with, so there’s that. Don’t know if I’m going to hit my target for today regardless. I mean, I will, there’s no doubt about that, I’m just not sure any of it’s going to have anything to do with the story.

See, Mrs. Wesley and I had another chat tonight, about how I’ve shirked my responsibilities with LCT this year, because I haven’t listened to the music—which I haven’t—and haven’t gotten in touch with the others on the team I’m supposed to be leading—which I haven’t.

It wasn’t so much a discussion as her telling me what she thinks I need to do, and me understanding it, even if she sees it differently. Unfortunately nothing is ever easy. Instead of her saying her piece and letting it go—which, admittedly, she’s done several times in the past. But each time I was ready to leave, she would ask, “so what are you going to do about this… tomorrow?” That turned a five minute lecture into a 45 minute cold war. She asks questions that demand answers, and I just don’t have them in formats that I can express or that she can understand.

Even as I write this, I’ve had to stand up and pace around and vent at least three times, wasting maybe 15 minutes because I can’t concentrate.

Okay, four times now.

That’s part of the problem with how I write. I have to clear my head before I can get into the story. I’ve got to put everything in my head down on paper. And everything in my head right now is my frustration with the wife and how I feel about the whole LCT thing.

Here’s the fact of the matter. I don’t really want to do LCT anymore. It takes up too much of my energy year after year. I enjoy being a part of it… sometimes. But the truth is I don’t often enjoy being there. That’s not true. In the past, when I was a cast member, I had often thought about dropping out, and there were years I did bail out completely, or nearly so. I just wasn’t having fun in rehearsals or performances very often.

Now, I’m in charge of them. I think I can really bring something new to the process. Hopefully, at least. But now it takes up even more of my energy, and I’m not really up for it this year. I mean, I have a couple of ideas to take the burden off my shoulders. An internship program where I would pick a few people to follow me around and learn a little bit about what goes on in the making of these programs. And then I’m going to ask the high school seniors to take charge of the younger kids.

750 words and counting. I’m tired and frustrated and scared and upset.

How am I supposed to enjoy myself this weekend now? We might as well not go, because I’m not going to be able to concentrate on anything except LCT now, am I? Right now I’m thinking about how that CD with all the music on it for the program is sitting on top of my CPU, and I’m here writing about how I don’t have the time to do anything with it, because I need to get my thousand words in.

But here’s the thing: LCT doesn’t do me any good for my writing. If I’m supposed to be a writer, if I’m supposed to be writing, then any time I spend working on something other than my writing is not time spent efficiently. Therefore, any time I spend fussing about LCT is really just wasted writing time.

I’m thinking right now that I should just can this weekend and devote it to storyboarding for LCT. That would be the rational decision. I’m not going to have any fun this weekend now.

I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to write. The only thing I’ve done for the past two nights is watch old episodes of LOST that aren’t even that good, when I should be doing something else.

…and that, dear reader, is how to finish my 1,000 words on a low, low note.

Note to Self:

My job as a father (when I become one) is not to make sure my kids have it better off than I did, but to make sure they’re better people than I am.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

I’m going to try to get this cranked out while at work today. I probably should have started an hour or more ago, when I got back from lunch and everyone else was out. Now people are starting to come back, and I’ll have to get back to work shortly. So I may have to pound this one out as quickly as possible.

Still working on the Coyotes of Silver Moon. I’ve still got the germ of the idea: three outlaws discover a belt that turns the wearer into a coyote. I’ve still got the US Marshal and his posse tracking them down. But I don’t have much more than that.

I want the outlaws to be genuinely afraid of the Marshal, but I don’t know if I want the Marshal to be a bad guy. It would be so easy to make the marshal a corrupt cop stereotype, but that would make him a stereotype, wouldn’t it?

Wait, I may have just had an epiphany. What if I took a page from O Brother, Where Art Thou? That movie was about three convicts on the lam, followed by a Marshal who was truly frightening. Even though he had no ulterior motive, just the fact that he was always there, just a step or two behind them, and his presence was so ominous that the three convicts often escaped by the dumbest of luck. Of course, that was a part of the charm of the movie. But I think I want that kind of relationship between my characters. Once the outlaws discover who’s after them, they’ll be jumping over each other to get away.

But I still don’t know what to do with the belt. Which is just kinda important to the whole story, don’t you think?

I think I need to go to the bathroom and stretch my legs (and hips) for a moment. That’s what I think.

620 words to go.

But I’ll get to the belt in a little bit. Let’s take a look at the outlaws. I know I want at least one of them to be severely injured, probably dying, wounded in the shootout resulting from the botched robbery.

Gutshot. Something that produces a lot of internal bleeding, but won’t allow the person to die for several days. Like, in the kidneys or something.

But why not just leave him behind? Maybe he’s someone’s kid brother?

Okay, I’m getting a real vision of Déjà vu here, and I don’t know why. Is it something about the kid brother that’s setting this off? I don’t know.

What other reason would two of these outlaws have for not abandoning the gutshot outlaw? Younger brother… what else? Maybe he’s the leader of the group, and they’re loyal to him. Maybe he’s holding a secret of his own, like a stash of gold he’s been hoarding for years… or something else. But my gut tells me that the kid brother idea is the winner. I like the idea that one of the outlaws is trying to save his brother—maybe not even a kid brother as much as his TWIN brother… hmmm…

They’re all going to be young. In their 20s, at the oldest. I don’t know that any gunfighter outside of the famous lawmen like Wyatt Earp really lasted past their 30th birthday.

The other two outlaws… I don’t think either one of them should be the ‘leader’ of the gang, the mastermind. One may outrank the other because of his familiarity with the gang leader, but, hey, if the boss gets shot and killed or captured, I think it’s perfectly reasonable that the foot soldiers start fighting amongst themselves.

Sorry about that. Got distracted trying to come up with names and ended up looking at county maps for California. Such is life.

The twins will be August and Alexanander Luther. Well, crap. I just realized—Alexander Luther—Lex Luthor. Can’t use that, can I? Or can I? Well, why not. As long as I –

Hold on, just realized something. I changed my mind. They’r—Alex and August—aren’t going to be the Luther boys, they’re going to be the McHenry boys.

Okay, how about this for a little bit of conflict. Luther Slope, the third of the outlaws, was maybe second in command of the gang, or maybe one of the ranking lieutenants, while August and Alex were a bit younger and hotter tempered. August was looking to make a name for himself and his brother—the McHenry Boys, and he wanted to start up his own gang. So it was something August did that caused the robbery to go south, and yet he gets away. I like that. Lots of conflict. The McHenrys boys, August specifically, were causing trouble within the ranks, disagreeing with the way things worked. Maybe they were more educated than the others, graduated high school. That’d be fun. The McHenry boys are more schooled than the rest of the gang, and August flaunts this as much as possible, challenging decisions and plans and such.

And Luther Slope was an older, high ranking officer.

Scratch Alexander—How about Julius? Julius and August McHenry. Okay, THAT sounds like a couple of city slickers brothers who get in over their head. I like that a lot. Julius and August.

And they were all members of the Rollie Pierce gang. Julius and August McHenry, Luther Slope and Rollie Pierce. I like that a lot.

Now, what actually happens in this story? How do they find out about this shaman? And more importantly, what do they do with this belt—and maybe most importantly, and what will define this story, will they get out of it alive?

I know I DON’T want to show the actual robbery going bad. That’s beyond the point of this story. I want to start with them on the run, being chased by the Marshals.

NOTE TO SELF: I really need to pick up (again) The Writers Guide to Life in the 1800s (or the Old West—I forget which).

I may work on this more tonight, just fleshing out some ideas. But as of here, I’ve got my 1,000 words.

1,000 Words: The Coyotes of Silver Moon

Okay, a couple of things before we get started for my 1,000 words today.

1) I really don’t want to do this right now. I realize that not wanting to do it and doing it anyway is one of my rules, but still. I came home from work early because I wasn’t feeling well. I’m still not. When Carrie calls and asks what I’m doing, I tell her I’m reading, and she asks why I’m not writing. I tell her I’m not up for it and she gets all huffy. I wanted to write later on tonight, because that’s what I’m good at. But she’s getting the second season of Lost on DVD tonight and has already gotten that set in her head, so here I am, clacking away, when I’d rather be reading or playing poker (which, by the way, I was doing for a while when I got home—cleared 4,000 points, which ain’t bad).

2) I’ve missed my goal of 1,000 words by approximately… 1,000 words since last Thursday or Friday (I’d have to check to make sure, and maybe I’ll do that later, but I want to get these words out right now). Been busy around here. I figured out the math earlier today, and since Friday Mrs. Wesley and I have had 8 people and 4 dogs at one time or another during the weekend. Plus we were working on the barn all day Saturday AND Sunday, which almost never happens. But, Mrs. Wesley reminded me that even when we don’t ‘work’ on Sundays, she still has a lot to do and doesn’t get a day off, which she really wanted. The ultimate point is that the barn is finally clean and clear of almost all debris. The stuff that’s left needs to be kept there as late as possible because it’s either machinery, shelving, or something else that wouldn’t do well in wet, rainy weather.

3) Finally, I have given up on the original idea of Coyotes of the Silver Moon entirely. I liked the idea of the Fultons and the Coyote Trickster God, and was going to go back to the drawing board with the characters intact, but with a different way they’d interact, or a twist. But that didn’t come. What did come was something else entirely, something that is much closer to the original ‘pulpy’ feel I was going for. Hopefully I’ll get back to the Fultons in some other form, because, even in the rough outline form I had them, I thought they made for some nice interactions that I never got around to writing. In the meantime, the following idea came to me pretty much whole (up to a point), and I spent a little time jotting down notes that I want to dig into in a bit.

NOTES:
Three outlaws, one of them badly injured and dying, are making a getaway from a robbery gone wrong when they come across an old Indian hermit shaman with a belt and coat that can turn the person wearing it into a coyote. They kill the shaman, and then try to use the belt to get the upper hand on the Federal Marshal and posse that are chasing them down.

DIALOGUE:
“I thought it was supposed to heal you are something.”

“Where on earth did you get that idea?”

“I don’t know. It’s magic, ain’t it?”

Okay, maybe it isn’t much, but that’s what I have so far, and I think I like it. Stay away from the deeper elements or discovery, and keep it a straight adventure story with lots of suspense. That’s built in with the idea of the Federal Marshal chasing them down. I think it was Alfred Hitchcock who said something to the extent of: Suspense is putting a ticking timebomb at the feet of the characters, and having the audience (or reader, in this case) know it’s there, but not letting the characters themselves know it’s there. If I do this right, I could have them realize the Marshal is closing in on them, but not know how close. Or something, I don’t know. At first, I was thinking I don’t want to break up the viewpoint or split it between the outlaws and the Marshal, but now I’m not so sure. I think if I keep the Marshal’s scenes quick and purposeful, they could be very good.

Okay, the outlaws, and the robbery. What kind of robberies are there in the Old West? Train robberies, sure. Bank robberies. Stage coach robberies, home burglaries, what else? They could try to rob a US Fort. They could rob a riverboat. That’d be different, and pretty fun on it’s own, I mean as a story on it’s own. That might be something I want to keep in my hip pocket until later. They could try to rob a gold mine—that’d be different, too. Or silver mine. Copper, whatever.

The Marshal… he’s got to be 300 pounds of pure mean. Somebody that the outlaws DON’T want to tangle with, at least, not most of them. The kind of guy Terry Benedict was in Ocean’s Eleven. They kind of guy who’ll “kill you, and then go to work on you.” And if these guys steal something that belongs to him (or he believes belongs to him) he will stop at nothing to get it back.

A whorehouse robbery? Again, that’s something that’s pretty fun in it’s own right. I may keep that for something else.

What would the Marshal think is his enough to go after these guys… well, it’d be his job regardless, but they steal something he wants so badly that he’s willing to REALLY go after them, in a mean way. And is that even necessary to get the story rolling. All you have to know is that he’s a bastard and they’re scared of him. That’s what’s important, so it could be nothing more than a payroll check. A bill of claim on a mine—a plot of land or something, maybe he discovered gold on a tiny plot of land—but why would the paperwork have to travel by train or coach, when there was probably a small surveyor’s office nearby? Well, maybe he had to send an application off to a territorial office somewhere else.

Meh, I’m not liking it.

Okay, how about this? He could be dirty. I’m not sure I want him to be dirty, but there you go. He could be dirty and he’s got his own gang within the Army. He’s got a train scouted out that he wants to rob for his own purposes, but this other gang gets to the train first and makes away with whatever it is he wanted. Of course the three outlaws are the only survivors of the ensuing battle at the train.

I’m not sure. I don’t know how sympathetic I want these outlaws. They are outlaws, after all. I don’t know that I want the US military to be the bad guys here, that’s so overdone right now, especially in reference to the American West.

I have to think about this some more. Luckily, I have that opportunity because, hey, that’s my 1,000 words for the day!

Dream: Me & Christina

I’ve been holding onto this one for a few days now, at least since Friday, so my recollection may be a little off.

I’m living with my parents with a house that has played the part of my parents’ home before, but I don’t recognize during waking hours.

Christina Aguilera–whom I’ve grown up with and is my best friend and object of unrequited love–has just returned to visit her parents after a successful tour, and I try to convince her to let me go on tour with her. She gently but firmly tells me no and breaks my heart.

Now, the fact that I’m ten years older than Christina doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that I’m married and terribly in love with my wife, but Mrs. Wesley is nowhere to be found in this dream.

Fact is, I’m pretty sure I know where this dream came from and what it means, but I’m not telling. So there.

One thing I do want to bring up is something that I saw in almost an ‘establishing shot’ sort of way: my parents were using little robot bees to water their flowers. They looked like toys, maybe 9 inches tall, made of brightly colored plastic. There were maybe a half-dozen or so, all different characters, each with a watering pail, who would hover over a large barrel (or fountain, I forget), fill their pails, then fly off to different flowers or hanging plants. They had no moving parts or hinges from what I could tell (including their wings), and they moved in the slightly drunken hover that TV shows and movies used to make things “fly.” They buzzed/spoke quietly to each other in some sort of digital language only they could understand.

Had nothing to do with the dream as a whole, but the image was so striking I wanted to make sure I put it down somewhere.