James S.A. Corey's Blog, page 15

Daniel’s First Clarkesworld Article: Reading as Performance

So I’ve scored a bi-monthly column with your friends and mine at Hugo-winning semiprozine Clarkesworld under the title Another Word.  The first one has gone live.

I came to the same conclusion that all authors reach: the reviewers who liked me are intelligent, deep-souled bastions of wisdom, and the ones who didn’t are a bunch of weak-brained punks. Mystery solved.

But here’s the thing. Once the initial emotional rush plays out and my amygdala calms back down to its natural state, I start to think that maybe something else is going on here. That maybe I’ve misunderstood what reading is.

If you’re of a mind, take a look.  And if you’d like to weigh in, please consider commenting there so my new bosses can see what folks are thinking.

Daniel's First Clarkesworld Article: Reading as Performance

So I've scored a bi-monthly column with your friends and mine at Hugo-winning semiprozine Clarkesworld under the title Another Word.  The first one has gone live.

I came to the same conclusion that all authors reach: the reviewers who liked me are intelligent, deep-souled bastions of wisdom, and the ones who didn't are a bunch of weak-brained punks. Mystery solved.

But here's the thing. Once the initial emotional rush plays out and my amygdala calms back down to its natural state, I start to think that maybe something else is going on here. That maybe I've misunderstood what reading is.

If you're of a mind, take a look.  And if you'd like to weigh in, please consider commenting there so my new bosses can see what folks are thinking.

Some Big News About The Expanse

Coming soon to a shelf, or possibly e-reader, near you.

Worldcon last year was, y'all may recall, in Reno.  So not long after Ty turned to me and asked which of us had thought driving from Albuquerque to Reno would be a good idea, we got on to the final outline of the third book, then called Dandelion Sky, now retitled Abaddon's Gate (not related to Warhammer 40,000, but thanks for asking).  And the big question was this:  is this it?  Is the whole show over?  It was weirdly melancholy to have Leviathan Wakes just out, Caliban's War edited and turned in, and be looking at the end of the project.

Well, funny thing about that…

Your friends and mine at Orbit have signed on for the three more Expanse books that we'd hoped they'd take and surprised us by asking for five novellas (!!) in the same universe to go along with them.  So the big arc story that we only hoped to tell when we started Leviathan Wakes is going to get told.

And a couple weeks ago, Ty came up with the last line of the last book.  I can't tell y'all how much I'm looking forward to reading this.

With thanks to Ben Rosenbaum

who pointed me toward it.

 

 

The Dogs Project: The First Couple Critiques

What is the Dogs Project?

First drafts are supposed to suck.  Seriously, it's their job.  Trying to make everything that comes out the first time perfect is the way to writer's block, frustration, and madness (as, it turns out, is trying to get any freaking work done in the waiting room at Carmax, but that's another story).  If y'all have been following this, you've seen how the first draft came out.  Now, we're going to talk about the actual *important* part:  planning the rewrite.

I'm very lucky in that I have some really brilliant people who are willing on occasion to do me favors.  I've put the story out to four or five folks.  I've got a couple reviews already back.

Our first reviewer asked to have the serial numbers filed off, so you may speculate now at will.  The second is Ian Tregillis, author of the The Milkweed Tryptich.  I will note that Reviewer X has been following things on the blog here and Ian hasn't.  I've read both of these letters several times, and I want to make it very clear before anyone else puts eyes to them that I am deeply grateful to both of these folks for thier time and attention, and I think the level of critique I'm getting here is really, really top-notch.

I'm going to post these notes here, along with the next couple three that come through, and then talk a little about what I'm taking away from them and my to-do list on the rewrite.

Critique letter #1:

This is a story about violation, fear, the loss of innocence and trust, rejection… It's dark and gripping, and I was left with an ugly taste in my mouth at the end, which, to me, is the sign of a good horror story.

So, yeah, you're writing a story about rape. No question about it. However, in a sense it's oddly uneven. You do a terrific job of exploring the primary emotions that occur in the aftermath of a brutal attack, but right now you've written a story about a mauling, and put in page thirty to be the HELLO, THIS WHOLE THING IS A METAPHOR FOR RAPE! announcement. That particular scene between Charlie and Adam fell very flat for me, simply because it was quite heavy-handed–especially with the part about how everyone knows someone who's been victimized like this. Plus, I couldn't fathom why Adam hadn't said something sooner about also being the victim of a mauling (like, say, around page 14.) Yeah, yeah, a rape victim possibly wouldn't immediately say something, but the fact that Adam didn't say something about a dog mauling made me see how you-the-writer were trying to manipulate me-the-reader into the overall rape metaphor. Again, too heavy-handed, and by that point I was starting to kinda hate Charlie. I wanted to see him make some sort of progress, even a tiny conquering of his fear–or so he tells himself, which could add more impact to the last scene when he knows the fear will always be there. Anyway, I think that scene needs to be rethought. (And yes, I'm addressing issues completely out of order.)

While you've captured the fear, loss of trust, PTSD etc extremely well, there seems to be very little re the feelings of failure and shame (from self and others) that go hand in hand with this sort of trauma. For example, when his dog leaves, Charlie knows he won't go looking for him, but then doesn't seem to suffer any grief or loss or shame that he didn't try harder or do something different, even while he's feeling the relief that the dog is leaving (which was very good.) You tell us he felt guilty… but that was about it. I kept wondering why he didn't try and get someone else to walk Dickens or take care of him. So.. why was that? Was Charlie determined to prove to himself that he could do this, prove that he could be perfectly fine and normal with his own pet dog? And then, of course, when he can't, that gives him a nice extra helping of Failure. Even if he simply thinks later that he could have found Dickens a new home or someone to walk him, he'd feel like a jerk and a failure for not thinking of it, shame for being so broken that he couldn't make it work, and didn't even try to make it work. That whole scene is IMO The Pivotal Scene in the story, it's where we see the impact this event has had on his personal life, and I think there's much more depth to be had with it.

I confess, I wanted to see someone say, "Don't you know what to do if a dog attacks? Why didn't you curl into a ball? Why didn't you yell for help?" Or even a burly guy telling the story about how a dog tried to attack him once and he punched it out cold, 'cause he's a REAL man y'know.

Little thing: how far away is work that a cab ride would cost him an entire day's pay? And why didn't he transition to a cab to the busstop? (Perhaps even feel like an idiot for doing so, with people at the busstop eyeing him like a freak for getting out of a taxi at a busstop, etc, compounding his own feelings of being Not Right.)

He never considers carrying pepper spray? Or feels dumb and naive for not carrying it in the first place?

Finally, the only glimpse we have of the More Innocent Time is memories of time spent at the dog park with Dickens. Part of me wants to see a bit more contrast between Before-Mauling-Charlie and Broken-Charlie, but YMMV and it's certainly not a dealbreaker as far as the story goes for me.

But, overall, yes, tough story to read. Great ending. Nicely done.

 Critique Letter #2 (Ian):

Well, I didn't get this in by the end of the weekend as I'd  sort of intimated, but if you saw how long it takes me to do whole-novel crits, you wouldn't be surprised. Anyway, here you go– one of my characteristically discursive and rambling critiques. Hope you find something useful here.

This manages a rather creepy undertone that I like quite a bit.  Pieces of this had me squirming on the bus this morning, and not just the flashback to Charlie's assault.  It's uncomfortable to watch somebody so badly broken and depressed.  But even more uncomfortable, to me, is seeing how he's become incapable of meeting even halfway the unrequited love from his own dog, Dickens.  That cuts, man.

But I hit a slight disconnect between where the story is going and where I'm engaging.  My first instinct was to look at the shape of Charlie's emotional give and take with the story — I think there's something off there, *but*, at the same time, if I'm reading this correctly, conveying his mental state is anything but straightforward. I mean, he's fucking Humpty Dumpty, isn't he? As would be anybody in his position.Basically, on the one hand, as a reader, I want to have a stronger emotional engagement with Charlie.  On the other hand, I think you're being faithful to his trauma, which means he's incapable, or unwilling, to engage with his *own*emotions in an honest fashion.  Tricky situation.  So I had to think about this more on the ride home tonight, in order to revise my first impression, which was a little off the mark.That reaction was to think we're missing important emotional cues from Charlie early in the story.  Such as on page 3, when Adam smuggles Dickens into his hospital room.  We've just been teased that Charlie was horrifically mauled by a pack of dogs, and then here, in this safe place, there's suddenly another dog in his very vulnerable personal space.  And yet there's almost zero emotional reaction — it's very muted.  Without careful thought to the shape of Charlie's trauma (or a more perceptive reader) that feels like an oversight. I got it later, but only with careful attention to what the story is trying to convey.

Likewise, page 7– the mention of taking Dickens on a quick walk around the block.  There I found myself searching for a hint of how Charlie feels about being outside and unprotected (and with a dog, no less).  We do get a sense that he's postponing the day when he has to walk past the scene of his assault, and that's good- I like that sense of dread and apprehension.  But it comes and goes quickly, and meanwhile I'm still looking for some guideposts to tell me how Charlie feels about Dickens now; about leaving his apartment; about the fact that he had 800 unread emails berating him for piled-up work and, apparently, not a single one welcoming him back, or apologizing, or wishing him well after his ordeal.

Around page 8 I started to grok that Charlie is basically turned off. And I have no problem buying that.  Still, if he's feeling the need to suppress so strongly even at work, I feel the need to see some contrast in situations where maintaining that emotional numbness is more challenging — at home, with the dog, walking around the block, whatever.  Some modulation.  Shades of gray.  At first I thought there's a missed opportunity in the lead-up to Sunday, and the ordeal at the dog park.  But, on the other hand again, Charlie is barely functioning, and we shouldn't expect him to be thinking ahead effectively.

So you're portraying somebody who has almost completely shut down. Including, or especially, his emotions.  Which is another thing that happens to people in cases of severe trauma.  (Charlie's qualifies.) As a reader, I'm grasping for signs of emotional trauma where Charlie probably isn't capable of expressing them.   I mean, I see the outward signs of how he's not functioning, but I want to get inside that more deeply.  Except his PTSD leaves him unable to access his own emotions reliably.  So what to do?

The clues are there.  Such as in Charlie's difficulty with work tasks that ought to be, and used to be, straightforward for him. Maybe a more perceptive reader would run with those clues.  But they're subtle.  Once the full shape and extent of his PTSD does come across, the story gets deeply unsettling.  That's it's strength.

Having thought about this a bit, I have one suggestion, and not one I'm particularly happy with.  This feels like a cheat, but, perhaps if there were a stronger component of self-awareness to Charlie's numbness…  Does that make sense?  If, on some level, he's aware of  what he's doing, even if it's just to the extent that he consciously swerves away from the first tremors of an honest emotional reaction, then I think I'd slide through the story more easily.  As I say, that's perhaps a little dishonest, as the dissociation might be very deep.  But if I see him struggling to achieve that distance, I'll have a better hook into what's going on with him.  And then I'll sympathize with  him just as much as Dickens when he sends the dog out, never to be seen again.  Right now I sympathize more with the dog than with Charlie.

Otherwise, of course, the prose is fine and the ambiguous ending seems appropriate.  It leaves me in a state of apprehension that might mirror in some small way what Charlie is experiencing.

Daniel Abraham

 

Not me, but another fella who seems to be having a fine time with the name.

The Dogs Project: Part Ten

What is the Dogs Project?

Living without a dog felt strange.  It felt wrong.  It felt better than living with one.  Maybe later, Charlie told himself, it would get easier.  But days passed and flesh knitted.  The last stitches came out, and the low, grey skies of winter settled in.  Thanksgiving came and went, and Christmas began its low, flat descent.  He had nightmares sometimes, but less.  He had moments of profound and crippling fear that came like bad weather and then moved on.  His doctor put him on antidepressants, and they seemed to help some.

The morning he didn't call a taxi was a Wednesday.  He'd been online the night before, looking at his bank balance, and when he woke up, he just didn't make the call.  He drank his coffee.  He ate his eggs.  He walked out into the cold, biting air with a scarf wrapped around his neck.  The dog park was empty, the grass brown and dead, the trees leafless.  Walking across the parking lot where it had happened was like going back to an old elementary school; the place was so much smaller than he remembered it.  It was like someone had come and taken the old place away, bringing in a scale model.  The fear he'd expected didn't overwhelm him.  It was just asphalt and sidewalk.  It didn't mean anything.  Or maybe everything it meant he carried with him anyway, so the location added nothing.  He reached the bus stop with its green roof and advertising poster walls for the first time, pleased with the accomplishment, and spent the whole day at work exhausted an unable to concentrate.  He wound up staying late to finish things he should have had done before his afternoon coffee break.

The streets were dim and empty, the daytime world of the downtown already closed down.  A dull red between the skyscrapers to the west marked where the sun had been.  The shopfront displays glittered and shone for nobody.  Charlie pushed his hands in his pockets and scurried toward the bus stop, his mind already skipping ahead to a cup of hot chocolate liberally spiked with rum and an early bed.  At the stop, he sat on the formed plastic bench and pressed his hands between his thighs.  The city had put a programmable sign marking the time until the next bus, and he watched it count down to nothing and reset without any actual bus arriving.  A few cars hissed by.

The dog came out from an alley to his left, its claws clicking on the pavement.  The blackness of coat seemed to defy the light.  It trotted down the street toward, moving in his direction with a distracted air.  A mastiff.  A Rottweiler crossed with something huge.  No fat cushioned its skin, and the muscles working under the fur were as large as a man's.  Its breath steamed past stained teeth.  Charlie pressed himself against the back of the bench, heart racing and the metal taste of fear in his mouth.

The dog angled toward him.  The clicking of its claws was unnaturally loud, drowning out the sounds of traffic.  At the curb, it sat, looking into the street as if it was waiting for the bus too.  It turned to look at Charlie, its black eyes expressionless.  For a single, horrible moment, Charlie imagined he saw blood on its muzzle.  The dog chuffed once and bent down to lick itself, the unselfconscious intimacy threatening and obscene.  Charlie could already feel its teeth on his neck, smell its piss in his face, even though it hadn't so much as growled at him.  It wasn't the dog's fault that it was there, that it was large, that its teeth were like a rough knife blade rising from blood-dark gums.  It might not be a predator.  Most weren't.  Four out of five, Adam said.  Only two in ten ever bit anyone.  Ever mauled anyone.

Charlie glanced down the street.  Lights glowed white and red and green in the growing dark.  Any moment now, the well-lit bus wold lumber around the corner.  Safety would come.  The lights changed and cars moved past, hurrying away on their own errands, oblivious and uncaring as birds.  The dog stopped its obscene licking and looked up at him again.  It's probably a good dog, Charlie thought.  It's probably fine.  The dog's broad head  bent forward a degree.  The bus didn't come.  The dog grunted, not a bark, not a growl, just a sound low in its throat, and Charlie smiled at it, trying to act like he wasn't scared, trying to imagine what someone who wasn't scared would be.  The seconds stretched out into years.

"Good doggie," he said, his voice weak and thin as a wire.  "Good doggie good doggie good doggie . . ."

——————————————————–

Daniel here.

And that, as they said, is that.  There are a couple of things I'm particularly pleased with in this one.  The "seconds stretched into years" line that's second to last reaches toward exactly the point Adam made last scene — Charlie's world never getting better.  That's the horror that the story's based on.  We have the cars hissing past "oblivious and uncaring as birds", which is a call back to the assault scene.

The dog here is also the closest thing to a supernatural presence we have in the story.  I like the way its very dog-like licking its own crotch becomes a little bit sexual and repulsive.  Also, I got to specifically say its muscles were the size of a man's , since dog as man is the metaphor that was underlying it.

So now it's all done except that, of coure, it isn't.  The job of the first draft is to suck and be fixed.  The question is how to do that, and I don't have any perspective on that yet. So now it's put the thing aside for a little bit, maybe get some fresh eyes on it.  I've got requests out to a few folks who I might be able to hit up for a favor.  Hopefully a couple of them will have a hole in their schedule that allows for a quick critique.

At this stage of the game, I've got no idea whether the story's any good, or if the one I started off to tell was a good idea in the first place.  It may be that I've started off with one concept and that I'll need to ditch it in order to make a story that actually works.  Or maybe I nailed it and it's perfect as it stands, though that would be kind of a surprise.  So as an exercise for the students at home, read over the story, think about what works and what doesn't, and how you'd fix it.  As soon as I have the comments back, I'll show 'em to you.  (I've already had one person say she's up for casting eyes on it, so I'm pretty sure I'll have *something* to share when the time comes.)

The Dogs Project: Part Nine

What is the Dogs Project?

He didn't hear Adam's footsteps, only his sigh.  Charlie looked up.  Adam was in the doorway, a handful of pale green printer paper in his hand, a grim expression on his face.  Charlie tried to smile.  Tried to wave hello.  His body wouldn't comply.

"Rough day," Adam said.  It wasn't a question.

Charlie felt a tear on his cheek.  He hadn't realized he was weeping.

"I can't do this," he said.  His voice was weak.  Adam squatted down next to him, carefully not touching.

"Do what?"

"Any of it."

Adam nodded.

"Feels like that some times, doesn't it?"

"How am, how am, how am I supposed to just ignore it?  How am I supposed to pretend it didn't happen?"

"Or that it won't happen again," Adam agreed.  "That was the worst part for me."

Charlie looked into Adam's waiting eyes.  The other man's smile was sorrowful.  Adam put down the handful of paper, pale green spreading on the floor, leaned forward, and took the bottom of his shirt in his hands, pulling the cloth up until the bare skin of his belly and side were exposed.  The scars were white and ropey, and they pulled at the healthy skin around them, puckering it.  Charlie couldn't imagine the wounds that had created them, and then, for a second, he could.

"I was a kid," Adam said.  "Ten years old.  We had a Rottweiler-cross who had honest to God never given any signs until one night, I was brushing my teeth before bed."

"What happened?"

"Same thing that always does," Adam said.  "It's just the details that change, right?"

"Right," Charlie said.  "Right."

"It's not just us, either.  The guy that delivers the bottled water?  Him.  The new receptionist?  The one with the big necklace?  Her.  Start asking around, and everyone knows someone who's been mauled.  We don't talk about it, because what's the point?  You can't fix it, and if you talk about it too much people start thinking you're weird or shrill or something.  But it's everywhere."

Adam let the hem of his shirt fall.  In the silence, the distant sounds of the office — voices, the hum of the air conditioner, the groan of a printer — could have come from a different world.  Adam shifted the fallen pages with his toe, the paper scraping against the floor with a sound like dry leaves rattling down a gutter.  The smell of overbrewed coffee slipped in from the breakroom, familiar and foreign at the same time.

"I was thinking," Charlie said tentatively "about taking a class.  Karate or something."

"It's a good idea.  Get back some confidence in your body.  Some exercise."

"But?"

"But dogs are always going to be faster than us.  They're always going to bite harder, have sharper teeth.  And they hunt in packs which, y'know, poses problems."  Adam's shrug hardly moved a millimeter.  "I carried a gun for a while."

"Really?"

"Sure.  But I don't do that anymore.  I couldn't go to restaurants or go get my kid from school.  Couldn't ride the bus.  Go to the movies.  Eventually, it just got to be too much of hassle."

"I miss Dickens," Charlie said. Saying it felt like confession.  "He was a good dog."

"He was," Adam said.  "But he was someone else's.  He was the old Charlie's dog.  Things change, and the old stuff just doesn't fit anymore.  No one's to blame.  Not really."

"It doesn't feel right, coming home and there's no dog there.  But I tried to, and I can't.  I can't get one.  I don't think I could sleep, because what if I got a bad one.  I know most dogs are good, but what if I got a bad one and I didn't know it until it was too late?"

"Preaching to the choir here," Adam said.

"So how'd you do it?  How did you get to where you aren't scared all the freaking time?"

Adam's smile drooped a little, tired with the effort.

"I didn't," he said.  "I just got used to being scared.  I get up in the morning, I do the things I need to do, I go to bed at night.  Most of the the time, it doesn't even cross my mind, and then some days are bad.  I used to be angry at the fear, you know?  Angry that I was scared in the first place.  Like it was some kind of emotional problem."

"Isn't it?"

"No, man.  It's being aware of the risks.  And hang in there.  It'll get easier."

"Just not better," Charlie said.

"Just not better."

—————————————

Daniel here.

So on the one hand, I hate it when there's a big break working on a project like this because I can lose focus and momentum.  The thing where it's really cooking along really is the fun part.  On the other hand, I've got a lot of stuff going right now, and scheduling happens.

I'm 99% sure that Adam's going to be Audrina in the next pass.  Seriously, every scene those two are in together looks better when it's mixed gender.  If this were a sermon instead of a story — and really a lot of the best stories are sermons — this would be the wrap-up where all the previous bits came together.  It gets easier, but the situation doesn't change.  Some dogs are still predators.  The dangers are still real and ever-present.  Live with the fear, because what else are you going to do?  Die?  That's why it's a horror story.

Walter Jon Williams told me one time that haunted house stories are all about the sense of enclosure.  This is kind of  a haunted world story.  I want Charlie feeling trapped in it.

The thing I'm worried about at this point is that I'm being generally too preachy, and that the whole thing comes across as too on-the-nose.  But oh boy is there no way to tell whether that's accurate or my own paranoia talking at this stage.  For one thing, *I* know what all the parallels are supposed to be (and you do too since you're hanging out here), but a new reader may genuinely just not see it.  Or not so clearly that they're sure.  Or, hell, they may think it's all about vote fraud.  Some readers are odd.

So this is it.  Only one scene left, and we're at what another good friend of mine, Carrie Vaughn, calls the Zeroth Draft.

Speaking of Carrie, if any of y'all happen to be in Portales, New Mexico on the 29th and 30th, Carrie and I will be the guests of honor at the annual Williamson Lectureship, named after and before his passing universally attended by Jack Williamson.

Our new robot overlords form a band

 

This is deeply cool, and — in an age of automated predator drones — also kind of creepy.

 

The Dogs Project: Part Eight

What is the Dogs Project?

The downtown streets were thick with bodies, each one moving through its own peculiar path, its own life.  Charlie hunched down into his clothes, hands in his pockets, and head bowed trying to seem like one of them.  Trying to seem normal.  And maybe he was.  Maybe the thick-bellied man with the navy blue suit and gold tie was just as worried about seeming strange.  Maybe the woman driving past in her minivan had the same sense of almost dream-like dislocation.  The kid bent over the bicycle weaving through stopped cars at the intersection might be riding hard and fast so that no one would see the tears in his eyes or ask him to explain them.  How would Charlie know?  There weren't any signs around their necks to say I'm frightened or I don't want to go home if no one else is there or I'm broken and I'm afraid I will never be right.  Even if there had been, people would have taken the signs off.  Charlie would have.

A bus huffed by, throwing out a stinking wind of exhaust.  The cars started moving again, following the autonomic signals of the stoplight.  Charlie paused at the corner, waiting his own turn to cross.  Across the street, the glowing red hand meant he had to wait.  A little crowd gathered around him — an older man with skin the color of mahogany and close-cut hair the color and texture of snow clinging to stone, a woman in a tan business suit with the empty stare of boredom, a man Charlie's age tapping at his smartphone and glancing up occasionally to make sure the world was still there.

A dog barked.  The sound of pure threat.

Charlie's heart raced.  He turned his head.  A white sedan idled at the curb, waiting for the same light to change.  The woman behind the wheel had straight-cut hair and makeup that was starting to wear thin.  In the back seat, the dog stood, teeth bared at the window.  Its gaze was on Charlie, and with every bark, every snap of its jaw, it lunged toward the thin sheet of glass a little.  Flecks of saliva dripped from its raw, wet lips, and its tail wagged with pleasure at the threat and anticipation of violence.  There was an empty child's car seat behind it, a clawed hind paw digging into the cloth upholstery.  Charlie glanced away.  The others were ignoring the dog; the older man looking out at the traffic light, the young one at his phone.  The woman saw Charlie looking at her and pointedly didn't look back.  They were in some other world.  Some different reality where a predator wasn't an arm's length from them, where the air wasn't thick with menace.  Charlie looked away, kept his head down.  Dogs didn't jump through car windows.  They didn't attack people on the street.  They waited until you were alone.

The red didn't turn.  And it didn't turn.  And it didn't turn.  The dog shouted at him, wordless and unmistakable.  It wasn't just barking.  It was barking at him.  It knew him, knew his scent.  It wanted him.  The motion at the corner of Charlie's vision drew him back.  The car's back window was smeared with something clear and viscous.  The teeth snapped white, tearing at the air.  Ripping it.

The light changed.  The red palm became a pale walking figure, the light went green, and the sedan pulled away, dog still barking as it went.  Charlie walked into the street, carried by the flow of bodies more than any impulse of his own.  By the time he reached the far corner, the sedan vanished, woman and dog and booster seat.  The thought came with a strange detachment: A child probably rode in that seat every day, to school and back from it, with that dog sitting at the far window.  He wondered what the woman at the wheel would do if the kid ever started screaming.

But it was normal, wasn't it?  People put dogs and kid into cars.  People walked dogs.  People visited the dog park the way he had for years, and never thought twice about it.  That was what normal looked like.

In the office, he sat at his desk, his glazed eyes on the monitor.  There were words, projects, windows open that held all the information that was supposed to be his life.  All he could see were teeth.  After an hour, he got up and went to the back storage room where he could sit on a box of printer paper and wait for the dread to pass.

—————————-

Daniel here.

Well, I'm in the home stretch here.  The way I'd originally imagined this scene, it was kind of like a woman getting catcalls as she walks down the street and it probably works for that.  The next scene is the last conversation with Adam where we run through all the ways Charlie can work on lowering his anxiety and what all the burdens and trade-offs are, then the last scene at the bus stop, and we're out.  Right now, we're at 6500 words, more or less, and we've got a little over 1500 to go, which drops the first draft in right at 9k, which is about where I wanted it.

I have lost all sense of what the story will read like when it's not cracked into bits like this.  Seriously, not a clue.  It may build gracefully on itself, it may feel repetitious and dull, it may fall utterly flat.  Who knows?

I do like some of the imagery here, though.  The dog-marks on the car window particularly amuse me, because I've seen them so often and they're so totally not an occasion of fear and dread that making them into that in this context feels like what I was aiming for.

It also occurs to me that I'm writing a story about PTSD.  That's right up against what I was intending, though it wasn't explicitly in my mind until now.

I feel like I should have something smart or witty to say about this scene in particular and how it fits into the larger structure, but I don't.  This is the scene that seems to come naturally after the last bit and before the next one.  I don't think I'll have any idea about how or if it works or how to change it so it does until the thing's finished and I've had some time to step back from it.

It is probably past time to start lining up my first readers, though.  I should have done that already, but I've been a little scattered.  I'll send out a few polite requests tonight or tomorrow…