The clay takes a while to dry

Ah, yes. That's what summers in Houston are supposed to be like. Air so humid that it feels like you're wading through wet cement when you go outside, and temperatures so high that after a few minutes you look like someone has dumped a bucket of water over your head. How could I have ever forgotten?

We've had a bit of respite from the heat these past few weeks. Lots of wind and rain, coming once every two or three days, kept things from being too bad. It was almost bearable.

All that's over and done with. I can get up at eight o'clock to take the dog out for a walk and be sweating before we make it to the gate. At work I have a fan blowing on me, a cup of ice water within reach, and find a reason to step into the air-conditioned part of the building every thirty minutes or so, and I can still feel sweat running down the backs of my legs where no cool air reaches them. It's hot.

I'm making what will hopefully be the last or next-to-last run through In The Dark. Getting the brackets cleaned out and making sure I don't have our hero sneering at someone at the beginning of a paragraph and they're best friends at the end of it. When you have to change what people say throughout a story because you've altered a small part of the plot, it can happen. In fact, I can't remember a story that I've written where it didn't happen. This is why it's so important to have a new set of eyes look something over before you send it out into the world in the hope that it will convince people to support your writing habit. Which brings me to my main point.

I still have an idea of how In The Dark was supposed to run. Way back at the beginning I thought I had a nice, clear plot all made up that would grip the reader and pull them in at the very first page. That perfect plot lasted right up until I had to put it down on paper. (well, a screen that's made to look like paper) Anything that only exists in your head may or may not be able to stand on its own two feet after being born. I've had one or two short stories that could do it, but nothing longer than a few pages. Ideas are little dreams that you have when you're awake, and as anyone who has ever tried to live them has found out, reality is very unfriendly to dreams.

In this reality a lot of characters that I never even thought of have come to life, wearing faces of people that I used to know. The place where they live is a little bigger, and no longer reminds me of my old high school. Little details, like knowing the color of the sky, and picturing parts of the world that none of the characters will ever see, bring it into sharper focus. Those details make it real.

I was able to change it because it hasn't been all that long since I first typed in the last words of the last sentence of the last paragraph of the first draft. (and I have to tell you, typing those words felt damn good) Of all the conflicting versions and explored possibilities that I've written down and erased, no one story has shoved the others out of the nest and let them die. Time or inactivity will do that, and both together will do it faster than you think. Form the clay into a shape that nudges your imagination, but your first result probably won't match what you pictured. So reshape it. Step away from it for a little while, to give the first image and what your hands have made a chance to merge into one entity. But don't wait too long. Picking up something you once smiled at and finding it shriveled into a dead, lifeless lump will kill something inside you. You'll feel it die.

That's why you'll probably never read any of the first stories I wrote. I remember the shivers that came when I was gathering my clay, going over bits of the stories just in my head, usually when I couldn't sleep. But that first time I finished a story and really read it with as much detachment as I'll ever have, it was a hell of a shock to get that sour taste in my mouth that comes whenever I read something that should have been quietly smothered at birth. I didn't walk away, I ran. I started other things, but I never came back to those first attempts. See my entry about crap if you think you want to read them anyway.

Now here's where I hedge my bet. I did say probably. Letting those stories die still gnaws at me, and I'm possessive enough that I will never let anyone take the seeds of those stories and write their own versions of them. We'll meet with drawn swords on some moonlit beach before that happens. Could I hook those withered things up to a taser and shock them back to life? That's a scary thought.

But not as scary as not writing.