A week of no wind. We had been at sea for more than a month, fleeing the burning hull of Italy, or civil war and famine, hoping for new lives in Hither Spain. We were all refugees of one sort or another, and many of us were criminals. Not I; I was wealthy and would be secure wherever we landed. The ship was manned by my own personal slaves.

I was sitting at the fore of the ship, carving a figure in wood, when Marcus came to me.

“There is a problem,” he said, “with one of the passengers on board.” I ignored him. I kept my head down.

“Titus.”

I grunted in acknowledgement. “What is it, Marcus?”

“The senator.” So we called him. He had begged passage as we were casting off. He wore the toga praetexta though he had not been surrounded by clients nor slaves. After we agreed to take him on, he demanded that we wait long enough for him to finish an epistle, which he then handed to a nearby runner before boarding. We noticed no property of his other than a stylus and tablets and silver coins. We were all fleeing from something, and I never asked him why he wished passage.

In the following weeks I had not gotten to know him well. He spent most of his time, alone, in the hold of the ship, talking to himself. I doubted he was a genuine senator or even a true Roman. He spoke with an Eastern accent; he did not seem to have carried his penates with him. I offered him the use of my shrine on the ship, but he refused.

“What of the senator? Have you discovered he has enemies?”

“He is practicing.”

I knew what Marcus meant but I didn’t want to respond. I didn’t want to deal with this right now. The sky was so crisp today.

“Syphax!” The slave shuffled to me. I noticed a bright golden bulla round his neck. It was not an appropriate thing for a slave to wear.

“Wine,” I barked. I continued whittling while I waited, avoiding Marcus. I wanted to finish shaping the arms before the end of the day. A votive for Neptune.

“Syphax is a good slave, Marcus. I think I may free him in Gades.”

“Titus, you must not ignore the issue.”

I nodded. “Syphax was the only one of my household slaves who stayed with me.” A seagull swooped down onto the deck and waddled to and fro.”I won’t ignore it. We need wind soon. But now I will drink some wine.”

Syphax’s shuffling feet approached and I set the wood on the bench beside me to accept the cup of wine.

“Come closer, Syphax.” He stood very close to me, bowing slightly. Our eyes met for a moment before he looked down at his feet. “Tell me why you are wearing this necklace,” I said, and tapped it with the blade of my knife. “Who gave you it?” I took a deep sip of the wine as I awaited a response. Syphax shifted his weight and scratched his nose. He cleared his throat. But he said nothing.

I put the cup down and stood. “No slave of mine wears gold on his chest while I am unadorned!” I snatched the bulla and yanked it, pulling Syphax down, and I cut it from his neck. “Tell me who gave it to you.” He looked back along the length of the ship, as if expecting someone.

“I am afraid,” he whispered. I looked up at Marcus and nodded.

“Come, then. Let’s visit him.” I tossed the bulla over the side of the ship and it fell into the water with a faint splash. I poked Syphax with my knife to get him moving. They do need prodding, just like cattle. Marcus followed me but I knew he was afraid. He had always been suspicious about the Evil Eye and amulets, as are many fine Romans who had spent too much time in Antioch. The ship swayed gently on the endlessly rolling billows of ocean.

We climbed down the tight steps to the hull of the ship and walked back to the rear. There the senator sat on a bench, rocking back and forth. He had removed his toga and left it crumpled and torn on the floor. His tunic was damp with sweat, marked with the grime of our journey. He muttered monotonously in Greek, as though chanting from memory, eyes fixed on a medallion in his lap. Marcus held back as I strode forward and nudged the senator with my foot.

He looked up. His gaze passed through me and past me, fixating instead on Syphax.

“Senator,” I said, “This has gone on long enough. We’ve been becalmed for over a week, and everyone thinks that you are responsible.”

“Responsible?” he snapped. “Syphax, what happened to the bulla I gave you?” Syphax lowered his head.

“I took it from him. You should know not to shower gifts on my slaves. We have had enough of you. Syphax, take this man and throw him overboard.”

Syphax didn’t budge. “Syphax!” I belted out. Still he refused to move, but instead raised his head and looked me straight in the eye. Marcus stepped back out of the way as several other slaves approached, fists clenched. The senator let out a deep cackle as Syphax began to rain blows upon my neck.

Now I measure my hours in strokes, down in the hold of this ship as a rower in chains. Now am I a slave, of one whom I had enslaved.

When I was nineteen, after having dropped out of high school, I did some hitchhiking with a friend of mine. We hopped a few freight trains as well.

I’m thinking of pulling a story out of this. I don’t want to write about the entire experience (Kerouac has covered this ground before), and I don’t even want to write about how the experience affected me. When I was hitchhiking I was surprised again and again at how much people, total strangers, would open up to us, and the window we’d get into their lives. There’s one incident in particular I’d like to ficionalise, which I wrote about a few months after the fact in my journal. Here’s what I wrote:

“After Judson and I walked for hours around Albert Lea Lake, finally hopping a fence and sitting near the water, after a lot of Rambo-ing through tall grasses & marshes & forests we sat sown, took a long draught of water, and Judson said to me, “Damn, water is so good. Man, we take water for granted too much.”

And I: “Na, man, we don’t take it for granted enough!”
—-
Bummed, hanging out in front of a gas station, it’s closed, it must be midnight…scrounging around the drink machines, looking for change, ‘cuz damn could I go for something to drink. It’s that joint that did it, had to be. Even though we smoked hours ago and since walked our buzz off and rested and ate fish over an open campfire. And we’ve still got 1.9 miles to go to get to a gas station, some sort of civilization. We’re still starving when we get there; so we cook some of the hot dogs Julie gave us in the microwave and use the buns and condiments they have there, the woman is really nice, and anyway I wonder if she really notices us, she’s talking to some guy that’s been in here the whole time. I’m surprises to see there is a sub shop inside the place, the woman working is making some subs, then she takes off her gloves and darts quickly over to the register to ring it up.

Now here’s the guy talking to us. Later we find his name to be John Navarro. He says that’s his ex-wife over there, working. We talk a bit and he offers to let us stay at his place. We’re over here gorging ourselves on hot dogs, we just ate fish sandwiches, we’re bums, street hoodlums with like ten bucks between the both of us, and we’re getting high and feasting like kings, and here’s this guy hanging out with his ex and he’s gonna hook us up with mattresses and pillows and all the works!!!

The broken couple get along beautifully. They seem to still have a deep connection, they talk as if they were still married.

John Navarro is a recovering alcoholic. The doc made him stop drinking, he was probably going to die before long if he didn’t. He shows us the can of the last beer he drank, two and a half weeks ago. he is due in for a wedding at one (not his). He is already late. I will never forget the look on his face when he tells me this, that there “will be a lot of drinking going on there, so it’ll be hard.” He doesn’t want to go. he needed someone to talk to. His karma, he hopes, will be with him, the gods must help him out, he helped us out. We shower. he drives us back to the highway. Good bye, John Navarro, good luck.”

This guy was one of the most memorable people I met on my trip, and I want to write a story about him.

I’ve stumbled across a problem in a story I’m writing: I’ve come to the end.

No, I don’t mean I’ve finished it. And I didn’t get to the same end of the piece which I’d originally plotted for it. I thought I had quite a while to go–my outline has twenty major points on it, and I was at sixteen–when suddenly I realise that this story is about to end.

The characters, the environment, the story itself, demanded that it be over.

So I’ve got a problem. I think I’m okay with ending things here, but that means that I’m going to have to go back and make sure everything is in place for this ending, an ending other than that which I’d previously conceived. It’ll all wash out I think. But I don’t know for sure. I may still want to go on and write out the rest of what I intended to write originally.

It is an interesting problem.

I like to make things fun for myself. To try turning life into a game. Well, how’s this? Turn “being a writer” into an RPG! I devised an “experience point” progression based on how many words I write per day. This is a good motivator to keep writing everyday because I get to level up!

Rules:
1. The words written per day can’t be journal entries or scribbles. They must represent writing towards a particular piece: a story, an essay, whatever. They cannot be idle ramblings.
1.1 However, if you are working on more than one project, you may split your word count among them. Yes, this means that a beginning writer may write one word a day for each of three hundred pieces, but that would be ridiculous.

2. In order to level up, you must write the number of Words Per Day listed on the chart, every single day. After having written said number for the listed number of Consecutive days, you level up.

3. You are not allowed to write more than the Words Per Day. If you want to write more, then keep at it! Writing must be a daily habit!

I’ve let this blog languish; and I’ve become reticent to post my writing here. The reasons are twofold:

I had intended to publish things as I write them, to publish raw first drafts. However, I make a point of not reading back over anything I write while writing a story. I fear that if I were to re-read while still in the midst of the writing process that I’d agonize so much over it, every word and clause and scene, that I’d never finish anything. This means, also, that I will not have read over anything I post. That doesn’t seem appropriate. It is probably best to know what I’m posting!

My other concern is over what it means to post writing online, even polished work. You see, it is something of a dream of mine to make a living writing. I have no desire to be rich or famous, but I would like to make enough to live and write. Would posting my work online help or hinder that goal? Right now I don’t really know.

So for now I think I’ll limit myself to writing about writing and perhaps writing exercises. Then later I may begin posting polished, second-draft work.

Recently whilst walking home I thought to myself that my reserved observer style personality is one of my great strengths as a writer; it is one of my assets. For too long have I shamed myself over this, for too long have I wished I could be more sociable. But last night I realised that plunging too headlong into the rivers of experience is a threat to any writer–it is necessary to detach, to hold a part of oneself back in order to evaluate and make sense of life and establish a narrative to the world. For this is the task of the writer.

Last night I finished Gardner’s The Art of Fiction.  The following passage, from the last chapter on plot, set my creative intellect aflame:

I have said that a writer may also plot a piece of fiction by working his way forward from an initial situation. Say he gets the slightly lunatic idea of a young Chinese teacher of high-school English in San Francisco who is kidnapped by Chinese thugs because they want him to write their story, of which they’re inordinately proud.

Gardner goes on to flesh out more possibilities, but this is enough of a situation for me: my love of nested stories urges me to write something like this. That is, I would both write the tale itself, the tale of the captive, the bard, but also the tale written by the bard. What are his filters, as opposed to mine, in stitching together a narrative? How would he tell the story, organize the events, and so on? And I can already think of my subject matter: Alexander the Great. We know that he carried along an official historian, along with poets and such. And there exists the Alexandrian Romance, in many versions…I would have numerous models to write from, but also I would be obliged to read a great deal in preparation. I would want to read Xenophon for background, all of the Iliad in Greek to steep myself in it (since Alexander was a lover of Homer), &c, &c.

I am very excited about the possibility of writing something like this!

Sometimes revolutions begin with a bang, a furious outburst of peasantry urged on by hunger; other times they occur furtively, unnoticed by the living but discovered centuries later by historians. And sometimes there are no revolutions but only possibles, revolutions stillborn, aborted revolutions, revolutions exposed to die on infertile cliffs. This might be a story of this third sort of revolution; but if there had been a revolution I wouldn’t have written about it. I will tell you a story not of revolution and not of a failed revolution but of a failure.

The failure occurred in the kingdom of Rossina. The kingdom of Rossina was grand and it was orderly. Everyone in the larger cities had impeccable taste; the royal family set a standard of dress carefully followed by the populace. Folk strode along the carefully manicured avenues with martial precision, as if the end of the workday signaled a changing of the guard. And of course everyone held themselves to the highest and most up-to-date standards of hygiene.
The Kingdom had not always been this way. Scarcely fifteen years had passed since the Smedlevs had come into power and worked to transform the country, from one populated by foul-smelling barbarians to a nation on the frontiers of the newest sciences. His Highness Smedlev Bakton was particularly interested in the relationship, postulated by the most unorthodox and cutting-edge new wave of doctors, between regular washings and happiness. Bakton had once been a medical student himself; however, the demands of a political career which involved committee meetings late into the night necessitated his early withdrawal.

Not that he would have made a particularly good doctor.

“You’re too kind,” Arevny Mordekof, head instructor of the Institute for More Advanced Studies in Human Biology and Textual Criticism, once said to him, “You have too much concern for the person and too little for the symptom, the disease. You mustn’t confuse the two!”

“But, Herr Mordekof, am I not treating people? Is not the curing of disease merely a mediary goal, our final being to help the person?”

The professor clucked his tongue. “Yes, but we are students of medicine, not religion. Whatever you do; medicine, or politics, or bread making, you must focus your energies on that one thing and do well at it. Medicine is not always sweet and if you put too much store in the comfort of others, and in being kind, then never will you do any good.”

“Must I force them then, or let them be happy?”

“You must force them. You must force a better condition on them, if they refuse.”

Bakton continued to fail at medicine. But he did not forget that he must force them.

–

After his accession he renounced religion and shaved his beard. He threw aside the mores of the old court in favour of new science which was then flourishing in the northern countries. In spite of his inability to read, he leaned as much as he could–men of wisdom flocked to his court as he handed out large prizes to those who could solve the problems and riddles he posed to the world. 

And no longer would there be shanties but oak-lined palisades; no longer would there be brick layers but sculptors; no longer would there be haggard old men ever seen in the cities. Everyone would be neat and trim and Rossina would profit mightily from an improved reputation among other kingdoms, since the diplomats would now behave themselves, and they would above all be clean. His regime was not without its dark underbelly however. There were cities and then there were not-cities. And the unkempt were cast out of the cities.

“This baby has a clefted chin,” they would say. “It can’t be seen, send it to work!” And the child would be boarded on train twelve or eighteen, which went only East, on which no one rode back to the cities, not even the engineers. And train twelve would snake itself under cliffs near dried out oceans, and tunnel itself through Mount Argishtiouna, and wind through the soft undulating plains of Nagrev until it might have arrived at a dusty makeshift station by a little brook where ugly children were collecting stones.

One such station was miles from any habitation or farmlands, but the children would go there nevertheless, everyday, to escape the scorching heat of the wide fields and the lash of drunken fathers. At the sun’s reddening they’d drag their feet homeward towards Shim, to meet their weeping mothers in doorways bearing lemongrass tea, trading it for stories of who climbed the tallest tree today or who came off the train.

But invariably they’d pass by Boodaloo’s house, right on the edge of the makeshift hamlet they’d set up here–whose house pressed eagerly against the old rickety fence Hermer had built back before the Smedlevs were even anybody at all.

And on this particular evening the first boy didn’t throw his rock. Instead he raised his hand, signaling to the others and cocked his head. He had heard a noise from the house, a woman’s voice, sounding agitated as if protesting or pushing away.

“Shh, they’ll hear,” said a second boy but not after the first had already begun to climb the richety fence. Together (for the others stayed behind or went on home, dropping their stones to the ground)–together they made their way around to the side of the house, the side facing away from the village, whence a little amber light shone. From their vantage point amid weeds they peeked gingerly between eyebrows and windowsill at the most hideous and alien of sights they’d yet seen in their tender lives.

Boodaloo was there, amidst a panoply of shiny implements and porcelain basins, wearing an apron they’d never seen. His eyes were ablaze with a keen light which reflected itself off a pendant worn by the obese woman seated in the centre of the room, whose jaws were agape and who was just then speaking.

“Son, I can’t let you do this to me–can’t you find a replacement?” Boodaloo only grinned, his lips tight as he rifled through the things on the table.

“You’re acting like a Smedlev, you know. I can’t understand why on earth you insist on this. God what did I do? I did not raise you to act like this, and the–the downright gall to even ask me, I just can’t believe it.”

“Mother,” Boodaloo turned, “I simply must practice. Father has left us, and the alpacas too.” He paused. “I think I may be good at something. Don’t you want that?”

The woman nodded. She looked terrified and slowly opened her mouth. Boodaloo plucked a bowl and a few thin oblong tools and stepped forward.

The two boys left after viewing the spectacle. They piled their rocks by Boodaloo’s front gate and each promised themselves, never to hurl stones at the house again.

Two men, beaten by sand, stood at the crest of a hill overlooking a modest castle. Or some might call it less than a castle.

“Best be on our way.” The taciturn one nodded. The two suns were nearly at their meeting point–the heat was unbearable–or it would have been, to lesser men.

They proceeded down the dune cautiously. The nobler man gazed up into the sky, catching sight of a vulture or some such bird spinning lazily in the breeze. The man wondered whose death the bird foresaw when in that very instant a brute of a man, well-built and forceful stood forth from a thicket of brush, sword in hand.

“Hold!”

There was only the sound of the light wind as the two travelers halted.

“You two must pay a toll–and I encourage donations of your blood!”  He spoke with a snarl, his breath whistling through broken teeth.

“Your blood, your blood,” he muttered, moving twixt and twain but never forward.

“Is this the one?” asked the nobler one as he cast aside his velvet robe and gingerly set his hand upon his sword.

The taciturn one nodded and withdrew a pale thin dagger nestled under is tunic belt, “Be on your way, foul one. We haven’t time for this!” He gestured upwards at the sky.

“Yes, we do not! And so you will render your blood unto me, will you not?”

“We shall do no such thing, wretch. Before you, wretch, lies the choice of two paths, either of which you may now walk. Either allow us passage to that stronghold which lies not a great distance ahead, or else walk the road of sorrow, being shamed that you, warrior-prince of the desert, were bested by two fairer men as us.”

The Foul One did not seem impressed in the least; instead he was infuriated, as he rushed forward against that taciturn one who had delivered such a flamboyant speech. He knew that diction, that tone, those mannerisms!

The taciturn one deftly stepped out of the way and smacked the Foul One across the cheek with the flat of his blade. The other one, the one clad in purple and seeming more noble, reached into a pouch at his belt and, finding in it an egg, threw it into the Foul One’s face. Immediately the egg began to cook and he began to scream in agony.

“The suns!” shouted the taciturn one. The two of them dashed past the Foul One, making haste. It was a rare man indeed who could survive the heat of the suns. They were not safe here.

The stronghold lay a short way ahead of them. They were expected, for the gate was open, and three old men clad in sheer robes stood at the threshold, bearing each of them a tall pitcher of water drawn from the clear springs of underearth. And the two men, the nobler and the taciturn, dagger sheathed, arrived there and received the refreshment given to them. They were taken by their arms and ushered in and the gates shut; and not a moment too soon for the Foul One had pursued them.

There was a dull thud against the gate, followed by a roar. The Foul One outside let it be known that he wished entry and protection from the heat.

“It is best that we not,” said the taciturn one. “He would kill us, or betray us, or at the least inconvenience us.”

The tallest of the three robed men gazed at him from under his snowy eyebrows. He cleared his throat and all eyes turned to him.

“You are right, it may be dangerous to you to bid us open the gate. But it has ever been our sacred habit to yield to complaints lodged against the suns here at our gates, and even foes have been granted haven. Unfair it is to let a man or a woman die in such circumstances, and so we three bear the bowls at every turn. We cannot command you and I will not bar your way, but let this be known.”

And he paused before turning to lead them down into the cool recesses of the underearth portions of the castle. Yet the nobler one halted. “We ought not let a man die. If he wishes to fight us still then it will be so; but even in this event we are likely in no great danger, being five of us here. I would not let a man die dishonourably at my own fault, no, but I would kill him easily in a fight, however unfair. And a death to the suns is no honourable thing.”

The taciturn one nodded though in his heart he disagreed. “You know him. You recall what I told you of him, how he is accursed. It was on the windy cliff of Albania, when you disclosed your resolve to me to take this path, that I made you aware of our hazards, of which he is one. So let us do this, you being aware.” And then again one of the silk-clad men spoke:

“Do you see gleaming swords swinging on our belts? You do not. You must not ask us to fight, for we cannot, being old and unfit, and not having that fire within us. But we will not oppose you, king. We will open the doors, but take care that you clap him in chains! Let him not roam our stalls and ramparts and cool deep halls unhindered. It is to this we obey you.”

The king replied: “In all things I regard all of you my equals, even though I am also the greater. And so I assent to both of you. But I find myself as a king having no vassals. This is contrary to nature. Open the gate!”

The Foul One had never stopped pounding at the door, but now as the gate began to creak he fell silent. They all looked upon him. He seemed a beaten man, brow and body covered in sweat, exhausted, weak. The robed men rapidly chained him. In spite of his apparent strength, the Foul One was unable to resist–his limbs were limp as they fell into the hated shackles. The eldest of the robed men gestured and three men emerged from the interior of the castle. They each were dressed in identical brown leathers, sleeveless. Round each man’s waist was a broad black belt clasped by a round iron buckle the size of a good man’s palm. On each was imprinted a shape: a triangle, a square, a pentagon. Together they hoisted the man aloft, with delicate ease and slowly conveyed him out of sight, into a well-lit chamber of the first floor.

The king stood still, resting his mind for a moment. The taciturn one touched his elbow. “Come, king, let us leave this courtyard and seek the refuge offered to us. The suns have not yet reached their zenith, yet the heat, it is more than I can bear.” The king nodded and followed the robed men, being led by the taciturn one, past a threshold of aged, cracked wood. The doors themselves were long lost.

Their passage took a sharp turn after only a few steps, and then down at a quick angle. Presently the king could feel a cool draft on his face. After several minutes of walking the passage opened up to a larger room, lit not by torches but an unnatural light which glimmered from the crystals of ice along the walls. The king thought he had found the fabled realm, but immediately stifled the thought. He could not have arrived so soon–they were only a few days out of his own country, and the legends claimed that the Realm was unreachably distant.

“Come, chambers have been prepared for each of you. Rest now, and a meeting will be called tomorrow.” The men spoke no more that night, but rested.

I think I’ll begin writing in this blog with some regularity. I don’t know that I’ll ever gain any readership, and in fact I have no idea how one goes about gaining a readership, but I’ve resolved to proceed nonetheless.

This will be a blog about my attempts at writing. There are two major goals for this project. First, I’d like to “publish” things I actually write. I hereby resolve to publish my fiction writing on Sundays. For now, I’m not going to give myself a word count goal per week. The goal is just to write something. Any writing at all is an accomplishment for me right now, given the demands of my job: I’m usually too exhausted to eke out more than a few sentences. But writing in a public arena such as a blog will motivate me to get something done. At the very least I will be shamed if I fail to post fiction on a Sunday.

The second focus of the blog is to write about writing. Not only to write notes about my progess, but also to jot down ideas, thoughts about the writing process, and about the sorts of things I want to write. These sorts of posts will be as-they-come, but I will aim at posting at least on Thursdays for this sort of thing.

I’ve been working on a story of indefinite length, and figured I’d start this blog after I had a large body of work, refining it in rough chunks week-by-week for publication on Sundays. See, if I had, say, four posts worth of work, then I could refine post one while writing post five throughout the week. I figured my week would involve editing with fresh writing on the weekends.

As it stands, I’ve got lots of ideas, plus about one and a half posts worth of writing (well, a little more than that, given that I’m working on two stories at once, probably a bad idea). I realised that I’m waiting and not doing. The thing needs doing.

In my next post, I’ll introduce the sort of fiction I’m interested in writing and also detail some of my ideas about the art.