…It’s not really topical, I just liked the alliteration.
I have a bunch of ideas of things that I want to post about after having not posted in so long, but the problem is I keep thinking of them while I’m not at the computer, or my phone, or even somewhere with a pen-and-paper. I’m going to try to do a bit of a brainstorm at lunchtime today to address that, but for now, today, you get rambles 😛
I shall make it up to you though by posting a small snippet of the book I’m working on at the end. Because yes, I’M WORKING ON A BOOK AGAIN omg you guys this is the most exciting.
Remember last week, when I was all, “Hey, I could NaNoWriMo this month and have a book done“?
Yeah. Remember the bit in the same post also where I was all, “Maybe I should be sensible and try to just aim for one writing sprint a day while I get going again”?
Mmm, yeah, turns out even when I’m trying to be sensible I still overestimate what I can do, WHO WOULD EVER HAVE THOUGHT THAT, I definitely am not known for trying to do much in any given timeframe ever at all nooo why would you think that.
*ahem*
HOWEVER. I *did* in fact finally breach the dam on Friday and spend a gigantic SIX MINUTES writing (lol) (though I did write 200 words, so you know) and then I did another proper 15 min sprint on Saturday night (or was it Sunday? I don’t recall, time is hazy, day are just constructs anyway) and THEN last night even though it was past 11pm and thus my Third Late Night In A Row (which is not a Thing my body tolerates these days, or more accurately, not a Thing My Mental Health Can Deal With these days) I still wrote for another mini six-minute sprint and the long and the short of it is that I’ve coloured in another two of my lil fifteen-minute writing boxes in the back of my diary and finished a new chapter in Define Good 🙂 🙂 🙂
Needless to say, I am a) very happy about this generally and b) relieved to have broken through the dam of Doing Something I Haven’t Done In Five Months and c) pleased to discover that, for now, 5-6 minute sprints might actually be a more feasible way back into this.
If you’d told me a few years back that I would get my best writing done in 5-minute burst, I’d have laughed you out of the room. HOW CAN YOU GET INTO A STORY IN FIVE MINUTES??? HOW CAN YOU ESTABLISH ANY SENSE OF FLOW OR FLUENCY????
And yet, with my poor darling brain still very much recovering from prolonged burnout, exhaustion and poor mental health (not to mention food intolerances and having lost like a thousand percent of my muscle mass due to sheer inactivity :P), 5 – 6 mins is actually the perfect attention span :’D
…It’s no wonder I’m still struggling to get back into reading books.
Anyway, here’s a nice lil chunk of story for you to read.* Enjoy <3
* It’s a draft, there are probably typos, things may change in edits, etc etc, disclaimer disclaimer disclaimer.
The water geysering out of the broken water pipe showed no signs of slowing, despite the team of plumbers and council workers scurrying ant-like around it. It arced into the air, five or maybe seven metres right in the middle of the broad street like it was one of the street trees, pumping out water fast enough that the cobbles had been reduced to a fishpond. A few water lilies, throw in some koi, and the whole thing might have been very aesthetic, the scent of wet stone filling the air and drowning out the usual hints of oil and random rotted debris from the inside the various shops.
Reth, however, remained highly unimpressed. Aesthetic it may be, but the flood was lapping closer to the shopfronts with every passing moment, and despite the frantic scurrying, no one seemed to be making any progress.
He swiped the back of his hand up his forehead, catching the most recent splash of town water, and grabbed at a worker who tried to duck past. “Oy,” Reth said, catching the man by the collar of his high-vis work shirt. “What seems to be the problem.”
The man, short, stocky, blinked moleishly. “Pipe’s bust.”
Reth sighed heavily. “Yes, thank you, I gathered that. But do we know why? Are we any closer to stopping it?”
“Pipe’s bust.” The man shrugged. “Got to wait for new pipe.”
Reth pressed his eyes closed and counted to five without relaxing his grip on the man’s collar, which was highly unheroic of him, but he was only human after all and sometimes that just had to be forgiven.
The water shushed out of the pipe, the splashing just a little to loud to be meditative.
Reth hauled his eyes open and calm onto his face. “How long will that take, and can we turn the water off?”
“Trying,” the man said. “Dial’s stuck.”
Stuck. Right. Okay, that was something he could maybe help with at least. “Show me.”
He followed the man a little way down the street, ducking into a tight alleyway between a shoe shop and a cakery right behind him.
Reth’s nose curled at the unappealing combination of wet leather and fondant fugging up the small space where the walls were covered with pipes and mould. He’d been so hoping that they could open up the street today, allow the shop owners in to start clearing out the smaller messes inside the stores themselves…
He sighed heavily and stared at the big red wheel the worker was showing him, inside a don’t-see-me-green box that two other workers had unlocked and were standing around, scratching heads under yellow safety helmets and muttering.
“What seems to be the problem?” Reth said, defaulting to Power Pose #3 again with his hands fisted on his hips. Solid pose. Conveyed authority without being overly fussy. Good for all occasions.
“Wheel’s stuck,” the closer of the two workers said, shuffling over to make space for the mole-like fellow who’d brought Reth.
Reth sighed heavily. “Let me try.”
The workers did another dutiful shuffle.
“What was that?” Reth eyed them sharply, pausing in the act of reaching for the wheel as one of them made a muttered comment under his breath.
“Nothing,” the burly man said.
Reth shifted an eyebrow into Heroic Face #12.
The man rolled his own eyes in return, but said, “Mate, if I can’t shift it, you won’t, heroism be damned.”
Reth snorted. Oh. So he was one of those fellows, was he? Well. What a good thing Reth was here to set him—
Reth lost his train of thought as the wheel, moulded steel that had been over painted with bright red enamel, refused to budge. He shifted his stance, adjusted his grip, and heeeeaved…
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
Still nothing.
“Well what’s the diagnosis then?” he said, swallowing back the desire to pant a little and rubbing his hands together.
“Told you,” said the first man, with more than a hint of satisfaction. “’S stuck.”
“Bailey’s gone to turn the mains off further up the network,” the burly man added as a concession, no doubt seeing that Reth was about to become distinctly unheroic in his attitude.
Reth took a long breath and nodded. So maybe the man didn’t believe in heroes; Reth could still appreciate him helping to defuse the situation. “Right,” he said. “I’ll just…” What? Head further up the network to ensure that Bailey was turning the pipes off? Was there any point to that?
Fate, he’d been up for way too many hours so far today. And had nothing to show for it.
Well. Not nothing, but he definitely wasn’t a mere handful of hours away from declaring the street open to business residents.
He sighed and adopted Pose #36, the classic pose of temporarily defeated heroes everywhere, telegraphing vulnerability underpinned by a sense of optimism and wholehearted belief in the temporary nature of whatever the current setback may be.
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