Mermaids Need Other Mermaids

Short fiction, not short enough. “It’s your turn to tell a story, Bee,” Josephine whispered. Her bed was near enough to Bianca’s that the sisters could reach their hands across and press them flat against each other, palm to palm.

“It isn’t.” Bianca’s eyes were glazed by moonlight. She lay flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, her body slim as a board beneath a blanket.

“It is so.”

Josephine considered leaping across the small gap between their beds. She lay still, though, in the knowledge that she wouldn’t have to make her sister talk. She never had to. Bianca couldn’t keep secrets. There was a particular drawing of breath that Josephine knew marked the moment before Bianca would speak, and when she heard it, she was not surprised.

“Alright, fine. Listen.

“Two sisters share a room and burn up all the batteries in the house keeping each other up at night. They used to be afraid of the dark, that is to say, one of them was afraid and the other pretended to be so she wouldn’t feel alone. They used to make animals in the light they cast on the wall with the flashlight, but now they are grown up and give each other the finger, the gesture big and rude and beautiful, silhouetted from ceiling to floor. Fucking is about the best shape to make in the dark.

“They share a closet, too, but they close it before they go to bed each night. They prefer to be kept awake by their own whispers than the gossip of their clothes. There are secrets in their sweaters and uniform skirts. For one of the sisters it’s the boys she’s kissed. For the other it’s the boys she won’t let kiss her.”

“Bullshit,” Josephine muttered. Bianca took no notice and continued.

“When their clothes aren’t gossiping together they’re practicing sailing knots. The cardigans and the scarves and the silk belts are the best. Arms are meant for delicate work and so are the things made for arms. Everything is wrinkled in the morning and each sister will blame the other for having left the laundry crumpled in a basket or on the floor. They don’t care how they look, and probably never will, but the creases don’t sit right. The lines in their sleeves are like maps to place they’ll never visit, or places they’ve been that were very boring. They can’t help but squirm.

“The prettier sister, we’ll call her Bianca, is very daring and so she strips off her wrinkled sweater and stuffs it into her locker at school, and then she crawls in after it. The cheap steel is cold against her skin. She presses all the way back, flat against the places where she’s posted a class schedule she doesn’t follow and photographs of friends she’ll want to avoid when she graduates in three years. She slips through a rusted seam and into the walls. She’s creeping like Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s worst fucking nightmare. She listens to the secrets of the teachers in the teachers’ lounge. She listens to the secrets of the principal in his office. She listens to the secrets in the locker room and watches the dressing and undressing bodies like she doesn’t know any better, but she does. In the girls’ locker room, their hasty stripping allows her to imagine for a moment they’re ready to dive behind the cement and plaster and join her.”

Josephine sighed. “You know you’re the only lesbian at school.”

“Not for long. Now shut up and listen.

“Bianca climbs out of the wall after band practice, and steps carefully between abandoned brass instruments and big kettle drums. She recovers her sweater, which is even more wrinkled than before. She does not join her sister on the bus to go home but hurries instead down to the parking lot where the juniors and seniors are smoking and flirting. Bianca leans a hip against the ’92 Ford Taurus that belongs to Pauleen Vine. Her skirt lifts enough to show a sliver of white flesh between knee sock and tartan pleat because it’s been trying and failing the rolling hitch every night.

“‘Where you going, Red?’ Bianca likes to think of Pauleen as titian because it’s something from Nancy Drew she’s always remembered. She’d happily be the moonstone mystery unraveled by Pauleen, the haunted library gutted, the pendulum in the old grandfather clock stilled in one slim, dry hand.

“Pauleen’s glance is flirtatious, her tone leading. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know, Bessette?’

“She loves that Pauleen avoids saying her first name, loves her surname in that mouth, the quick syllables, the slight enunciation of the last vowel. She doesn’t want to be seduced, though. She wants to do the seducing.

‘Why don’t you take me with you?’

“Bianca settles against the hood, crossing her arms. Plastic bracelets knot at her wrists. Her stomach jumps when Pauleen climbs into the driver’s seat, leans to push open the passenger side door. Their eyes meet. She could be full of sand or water she seems so slow, she can’t move fast enough to get into the car. The upholstery sweats and she does, too. When Pauleen starts the engine loud music pours into the interior of the car, and Bianca jumps at this, too. She reaches instinctively to turn down the volume, blushing when her hand brushes Pauleen’s doing just the same.

“‘My boyfriend’s.’ When she speaks, Pauleen’s smile is apologetic.

“‘Not much for conversation, I guess,’ Bianca hazards, her eyes following the crumpled gum wrappers, empty soda bottles, and tissue weight magazines that roll with the momentum of the car as Pauleen pulls out of the parking lot. She can’t look at Pauleen now, she can only dart glances at her browned thighs beneath the steering wheel, the play of light passing through the windshield to touch against flesh.

“‘No, not really,’ Pauleen seems to have no trouble in eyeing her driving companion. Bianca wonders if Pauleen looks at her boyfriend in just this way, and she smiles extra wide in hopes that Pauleen won’t spare a thought for him.”

“He’s her boyfriend, Bianca. She’s always thinking about him,” Josephine interrupted, sitting up in bed. She flashed the light against Bianca’s pillow. “Didn’t you think about that?”

Bianca snorted. “If you had a boyfriend maybe that’s what you’d do. Not Pauleen, though.”

“Yes, Pauleen!” Josephine’s whisper was sharp, and Bianca waved a hand to hush her so they wouldn’t wake their mother. “You can’t pretend everything.”

“Shut up, Jez. This is my story.

“Pauleen’s house is in the part of town where the garages are bigger than the whole apartment where Bianca lives with her sister and mother. Her lawn is as green as Oz and Bianca knows that there is no, no, no place quite unlike home. She flushes from nose to toe as she follows Pauleen up the carpeted stairs to a private bathroom. Pauleen’s parents are not at home.

“‘They work late,’ Pauleen offers with a smile, ‘it really sucked when I was a kid, but I guess it’s paying off now.’

“Bianca considers a moment the luxury of maybe switching places with Pauleen instead of seducing her, wearing the coordinating bra and panty sets underneath of her school uniform, the ballerina flats in shades to match; she imagines a cup size more generous, long legs, singing first soprano.

“When Pauleen runs a bath with foam high enough to disguise her bared breasts and shoulders, Bianca strips quickly and settles in across from her. She can only focus on one thing at a time, and she’s committed to seduction, not life swapping. The tub jets tickle and burn. Pauleen stretches experimentally and Bianca is sure their toes could meet under the water.

“‘You’re cute, Bessette.’ Pauleen doesn’t close the space between them but inclines forward, hair dragging foam. ‘Everybody thinks so.’

“Bianca’s fingers travel terrible distances under the water; her belly, her knees, all foreign places now. She doesn’t want to see herself like Pauleen must see her, young and stupid, young and stupid and cute. Her heart hammers distress and it radiates like waves across the tub. There are a half dozen expensive soaps lined up on the rim of the tub, towels embroidered with various sets of initials that Bianca assumes must belong to Pauleen’s parents. She isn’t at all sure now why she’s here, what she intended. She wants to tell Pauleen all of the secrets she learned today before she forgets them, she wants to keep talking so she doesn’t have to do anything else.

“Leaning and leaning and somehow never getting an inch closer to Bianca, Pauleen’s neck strains like a swan’s above the foam. ‘Do you like me?’

“Bianca thinks about the Spanish teacher who cried in the lounge because she’d had to flush her daughter’s goldfish down the toilet. She thinks about another girl in her year who’s shaved herself bare. She thinks about Pauleen Vine’s boyfriend, nuzzling the neck of a freshman when they both should’ve been in class. She can’t tell Pauleen anything, because if she does she won’t have anything left to tell.

“Bianca nods deep, her chin grazing foam.

“‘How much?’”

“Look, Bianca,” Josephine tries to soften her voice even though it’s just a whisper. She scoots to the edge of her bed, throws her feet over. “I know what happened. I heard Mom talking to Pauleen’s parents on the phone.”

Bianca did not respond. Josephine clicked off the flashlight and took the few steps between her own bed and her sister’s. She sat down on the edge.

“I know he was there.” Her whisper was at its lowest. “They wanted you to watch but you ran away. It’s alright, Bee.” Josephine waited for Bianca to cry because crying would make sense. Bianca did not cry.

“That’s not what happened.” Her sister’s voice was stony. “Not this time.”

“This time Bianca slides across the slick tub bottom right into Pauleen’s lap. She kisses her, but it’s not just kissing. She’s teaching Pauleen to breathe underwater, because now they’re pulled straight down, slim as hairs slipping down the drain. They kiss for as long as it takes to reach the sea. Their legs have changed and they could breathe free of each other if they wished, but they don’t. Their eyes spike like urchins in the glow beneath the waves.

“When Pauleen speaks she’s better than the girl she’s been. So much better.

“‘The mermaid and the sailor can never live happily ever after. Someone always ends up drowning.’”

“Bianca.” Josephine is insistent now. She’s given up whispering.

“Yeah?”

“Pauleen’s a bitch.”

Josephine held her breath. Bianca filled the silence with a sigh. After a moment, she spoke.

“I know.”

Their fingers found each other’s in the dark. Bianca’s grip was tight, and Josephine could feel the grooves of chipped polish on her nails.

“Maybe I should tell the story next time.”

“Tell the story now.”

Josephine drew her knees up and kept her hold on Bianca’s hand. She knew she could tell the story they both needed to hear.

“What happens next is more real and more important than what happened before. What happens next is a plane crash, a ship wreck, a hurricane.

“Pauleen tries to split open her legs because she doesn’t understand how to love someone without them. It hurts, and her shrieks are choked by water. Bianca sees the bubbles and wants to catch them in her mouth, to swallow Pauleen’s cries. Vessels rupture in Pauleen’s skin, she thrashes and dives, she wants to go deep where she can’t see what she is anymore. She isn’t ready for any of the secrets. She doesn’t know how to keep them.

“Bianca can’t stop her. She’s being pulled up as Pauleen struggles down, caught in a fishing net. When she breaks the surface there is enough of her human still that she can manage short, shallow breaths. Tangled on the deck of a narrow ship, she is a prize. The net loosens and everything in it spills forward, including Bianca. She’s face to wooden foot with a woman twice as tall as any man, dressed lavish in a snow white surcoat whose folds contrast a highly polished wooden leg. Bianca loves the coat and the leg immediately. The woman’s face, when she bends to examine her haul, is soft and pleasant. It is a wonder someone can stay so clean and nice at sea.

“‘I’m the captain of this vessel.’

“Bianca wants to bury her face in the snow white coat and scratch her nails against the leg. Her tail twitches and slaps against the deck. ‘And I’m the captain of this one,’ Bianca says, because she is a feminist, and because she’s only going to get the chance to say something like that once.

“She dines with the captain that evening but neither of them touches a thing, nearly overturning the table in their haste to be near each other. They don’t bother with proclamations of love. Bianca learns a thing or two about her tail. The captain shows her how best she likes to be pleasured with her leg.”

“And there’s a tropical parrot named Josephine who likes to watch,” Bianca whispered in the dark, and Josephine knew she was smiling. Josephine smiled, too.

“Is not.

“In the morning Bianca is more mermaid than girl. The captain wants her to stay.

“‘We can live on my island. I’ll build a new home on the beach that moves with the tide.’

“‘It will wash away.’

“‘Then I’ll build a sea and you can live inside it.’

“‘It will be too small.’

“‘Then I’ll become a mermaid, too.’

“Bianca does not remember Pauleen, but she knows this will mean only disaster for the pirate. She does not remember, really, that she was Bianca. She wants to see the glimmer and murk of her home; she feels too heavy on the ship, like she might sink right through the planks and the hull. She reaches for the captain’s coat to touch the woman just once more, but when she opens the white folds she does not find a body, instead it’s dark and rough, like a shadow, like a forgotten thing, like a crumpled sweater.

“She pulls and she pulls and she pulls the sweater out of the bottom of her locker and puts it back on. She shakes the salt out of her hair and keeps a promise she made to meet her sister, to take the bus home, to tell stories in the dark.”

Bianca wasn’t crying but her shoulders were shaking. Josephine could feel it travel across the mattress. When they speak it sounds like a lot of things that it isn’t, but mostly it sounds like thank you.

“Goodnight, Bee.”

“Goodnight.”

Burying Blooms

All of the editing I've undertaken lately means I've been avoiding editing as much as actually editing, which translates into reading a lot about what I ought to be doing as a writer (read: am not doing yet), how brutal the publishing industry is (read: no-fucking-duh) and how I really ought to give up and pour my energy into making babies instead of books. My rising hormone levels and capacity to whine are tempered by the fact that none of this matters. I'm going to write anyway. My degree of comfort with self-promotion, whether or not I believe Jonathan Franzen has anything to say worth hearing, if I'm bound to query away my youth or self-publish, I repeat: I'm going to write anyway. I'm going to wallow in the mud of mixed metaphors and later trim them as savagely as I did my own hair when I was nine-years-old.

I might, as I did then, still apologize to my mother.

Before Twitter and Tumblr and the blogosphere, what did writers do? They wrote. They talked about writing without all of the self-congratulatory bullshit. So I'm gonna write, too.

The Key of Hearts

Only a folktale tonight. Charrum was a seeker of treasures, in dungeons and in the deep, though the greatest treasure of his heart was Felea, the daughter of the wealthiest merchant in his village. Her hand in marriage was promised to the man who could deliver to her father the most unique, most priceless, most coveted object in the world. The trouble was that such an artifact could not exist because Felea’s father’s wants changed with the rising and setting of the sun. He did not know what it was he most wanted, and so it did not matter what Felea wanted most, which was to wed Charrum and leave her father’s house forever.

In his twentieth year, Charrum rose to a challenge laid by the local bandit king for a great treasure, perhaps the very greatest of treasures, and one that he felt would surely appease even Felea’s father. To enter the bandit king’s service Charrum had first to pass a test of spirit, and he made his camp that night in a circle of standing stones that were said to be haunted. Charrum laid himself down beneath the stars without a fire, shivering in the cold glare of the night as he waited for whatever was supposed to appear to appear.

As Charrum slept, three ghosts set upon him, pinning his arms and legs to the earth with their rotting limbs. The first ghost pried open his eyes, the second tugged at his ears, and the third caught hold of his tongue.

‘What is like a man but is not a man, has room enough for one but one is sometimes too many, and is desired by men and babes alike?’

The ghost with his hand in Charrum’s mouth only let go long enough for the young man to utter his reply.

‘A woman,’ Charrum said, his tongue released like a clapper in a bell. The ghosts vanished as quickly as they had come, and when Charrum looked about him now he saw not standing stones but many doors, each carved with a sigil. This frightened him no more than the ghosts had, and when he stood to examine them he recognized the symbols for water and blood, earth and flesh, screeching and song.

Drawing his knife, Charrum stalked out of the circle to a nearby wood, and trapped there a small creature foraging. He returned with it to the circle, crooning before the sigil for singing before turning his knife upon the creature. Only when it had cried did he deliver death swiftly, his whispered apology to the animal abrupt and tuneless compared with his song.

Before another sigil he spit, and another he mixed the blood of the creature with his own when he cut into his palm, dripping the mingled blood upon the door that had been a stone. For flesh he bit into his cheek, and put his hands into mud to print on the door of earth.

When Charrum had done all of this all six of the doors opened, each seeming to lead to rooms of greater treasure than the last. He knew even as he looked upon rubies and emeralds, gold and silver, upon a banquet table set with the finest foods, that the bandit king would take only the man who would take for himself what was of greatest value. And so, when faced with unimaginable riches, none of which Charrum felt could be real, Charrum settled himself down again and built a fire, roasting over it the thin carcass of the animal he had killed. He did not even take from one of the rooms a jeweled chalice for water to wash down his sparse meal, but cupped his hands together in a nearby stream.

Because it seemed only natural to do so, Charrum laid down to sleep after his meal. He dreamed and in his dream the bandit king visited him with a fourth and final challenge.

The bandit king was pleased with Charrum’s performance, and he promised him that the treasure would be his. It was, however, currently in the possession of another, and if Charrum wished to claim it, he would have to steal it. Because it was often the way of challenges such as these, Charrum was not surprised to learn that the treasure belonged to Felea’s father. That he should take it only to trade it back again for the hand of his bride was only fitting.

He waited until very late the next night to go to Felea’s father’s house. He was stealthy as the shadows themselves, slipping from garden to cold hearth to halls that were lit well in daylight but were dark as pitch on a cloudless night. Many tools he had to avoid detection: stones that would erupt in smoke if thrown, mirrors to reflect the light away should he be surprised. At every door he paused and pressed a little horn against the wood, listening.

Charrum dispatched several guards in near silence, clapping a hand over a mouth here, a sharp strike to the neck there. His skills were to incapacitate and not to kill, and when he dragged the bodies to deeper shadows, Charrum felt confident that the morning sun would wake them with throbbing heads, bruised egos, and nothing else.

There were traps and snares, too, that he could not have anticipated, set cleverly in the stones of the floor and into the walls. With keen eyes and quick feet, Charrum avoided them all. Because he knew where he would keep so great a treasure if it were his, Charrum stole quietly into Felea’s fathers chambers, grateful for the bear-loud snores of the man to ensure that he slept on while Charrum searched. The bandit king had not even told Charrum what to expect, only that he would know the treasure when he saw it. He picked the locks on several chests before finding the one that he wanted, empty but for a plain, ornate key. Taking it without thinking, for he did indeed know without knowing, Charrum left Felea’s father’s room.

Over confident, Charrum decided to risk looking in upon Felea as she slept. The lock on Felea’s door was no barrier to him, though he was challenged by her curtained bed, for he could make out only a little the figure that slumbered within. With hands more deft even than those that could make a man sleep without killing him, that could bind a woman to him with only a promise, he parted the curtain.

Where there had been no moonlight now moonlight fell upon her cheek, her gold-lashed eyes, lips parted in dreaming. Charrum made to brush his fingers across her cheek, but in that moment shouts were heard, and Charrum knew he had been found out. In the same instant Felea woke and began to shriek, her cries fading to puzzlement when she recognized Charrum. There was no time to explain or to touch, for in an instant there were guards upon him, and Felea’s father himself to confront.

Despite the guards that restrained him, Charrum thrust the key forward. ‘I have stolen this, and you shall not have it back again unless you promise me your daughter.’ Before the guards could act, he put the key in his mouth and swallowed it.

At this, Felea’s father fell to his knees, but it was gratitude that he expressed.

‘You have taken a great burden from me, and for this I will allow you to choose. I think you will find you no longer want my daughter, if indeed you ever did.’

When Charrum swallowed the key, he had relieved Felea’s father of wanting for anything, because the key itself was a thing of want. It drove men and women to desire what they could not have, what could not be, what had never been and would never be. Felea’s father had acquired great riches while driven by the key, but he had never been satisfied. The key was a powerful object, however, and could not be given away, only taken, and now Charrum had taken it.

As the young thief looked from the key to his would-be bride, he was consumed with desire, though not for her. He would have to be a man as wealthy as her father, wealthier, before he could deserve such a woman. In Felea’s room that night he might have joined her in her bed, but now he could only say goodbye. The key had seen into his heart, and showed him for what he was.

Resolutions & Premonitions

I'd planned for my New Year's resolution to clean the litter box everyday, but that one is right out. A sadness that is magnified by crumpled fleeces mistaken for slumbering forms and the little house sounds that were her subtle comings and goings has all but replaced the crippling grief of the first few days. M and I have little wakes before bed and over coffee and in the car, remembering what we loved best - everything but her every-door-must-be-an-open-door policy - and what we miss the most - everything else. I'm resolving instead to make the very best of what remains, the love and comfort of friends. I am often and regrettably guilty of shutting myself up in the house, what social outings I do indulge most often including dinners at home and knitting companionably while watching Doctor Who. Among about a hundred other things, I could be a better friend, and more, I would like to be. I should see someone besides workmates and my husband at least once a week - their unrivaled excellence not withstanding - and the laundry and my writing won't suffer for it.

Besides, if I'd like to start querying in the spring, I'll want at least twelve shoulders to cry on.

The Prince and the Snail

How about a fairy story? Excerpted from the novel I'm revising, whose protagonist is a storyteller. Massoud was the son of the king and a prince, but he could not have been less the sort of son his family wanted. While he was as happy fighting and riding as other boys his age, he did not go anywhere without a little snail that had been his companion since he toddled on two legs. When he took meals, the creature squatted beside his plate. During his lessons, the snail perched on his shoulder. When sparring, Massoud put the snail inside a little case he had made to protect her and keep her close, hanging around his neck.

What neither Massoud nor his parents knew was that the snail was not a snail at all but the goddess Alyona, who is known to prefer an animal shape to any other and is found more often in the company of mortals than others of her kind. Alyona delighted in mortals, and so thoroughly in Massoud that in his eighteenth year she decided that she would marry him.

Alyona knew the hearts of mortals well, however, and did not think that Massoud would take well to the ruse that had been her shape as long as she had known him. One night, while he was asleep, she slithered near his ear and whispered that he must take her as a snail for his bride. When he had done so, she would be transformed to a beautiful woman.

Massoud met with great resistance from his family, who claimed they would forsake him if he insisted upon such a marriage. His brothers would not speak to him and everyone in the court began to whisper that their prince had been driven mad. Still, Massoud would marry his companion and had two rings fashioned from fine metals, one for himself and one for his snail bride.

No one in the kingdom would perform the ceremony, so Massoud placed Alyona in the little case around his neck and traveled to the next kingdom, and when denied there, the next and the next until he came to a land so far away that no one had before heard his name or would even have known to worship the creature he carried. Married at last, Massoud slipped the ring around Alyona's shell, though once he had done so she was unable to transform to a shape that would please him, bound by the ceremony and his love.

Alyona had not known her man as well as she imagined, for he did not want her to change. Massoud settled quietly in the village where they were married, making a small and honest living and whispering his secrets to her as he had always done. For thirty years they lived this way; the whole of Massoud’s life they shared. As he lay upon his deathbed Alyona slithered to his ear and whispered the truth of what she was. Massoud replied that he had always known, but he could love her as an equal only when she occupied such a form, and so he had done and did not regret it.

When he died, Alyona was freed from her snail form and brought his body to her sister, Dsimah, whose province is sowing and harvesting and who is known to bring life to any soil, no matter how infertile. Alyona begged Dsimah to bring life to Massoud again, for if any god could do so, it would be she.

Dsimah could not, however, do what Alyona asked. From Massoud’s body she grew a great, flowering tree, and when Alyona swallowed a fruit from the tree, she bore a child that was cradled in its roots and raised dancing beneath its heavy boughs. So Alyona and her daughter, Massoud’s daughter, can be found still, sheltered beneath her husband’s arms.

Zombies Eat Babies Eat Baby Trees

I got a little drunk last night and admitted to my husband that what I really want to do with my life is work on my writing and spend my days playing and teaching and being terrorized by the children we don't have yet. I remember his smile now with relief, and hope that I didn't through a film of inebriation channel terror into tolerance. I don't know when I became the sort of person who wants to serve baby trees instead of broccoli, and while I'm not sure I have the patience to bake bread with a preschooler, I don't think that will stop me from trying. I imagined myself as any number of things when I was growing up, but a mother was never one of them. I liked to play college with my Barbies - admittedly, they spent most of their time hanging out in the dormitories I built for them, and not so much in class - and while the collegiate adventures of Courtney and Skipper were not even in the smallest way realized when I was an undergraduate, it was still a sort of inevitable dream for me, acquiring a degree. That I'd claw the eyes out of anyone who tried to keep me from getting my education, including my own when laziness or poorly distributed schedules threatened, didn't make it any less of a dream. It was what I'd always wanted.

When I graduated, though, I remember one of the things I thought was that at least then if I were to become accidentally pregnant, my life wouldn't be over. I feared more having a child and having to give up the pursuit of my degree more than anything, including the zombie apocalypse. That I'm not afraid anymore, or at least not as afraid,  would've seemed to me as unlikely as needing to take out the stairs in Collins Hall and defend myself with my acoustic guitar (I hadn't read Max Brooks yet). But I was, and now I'm not (as much).

My husband's response to me was, following the smile, that I'd start writing childrens' books if we had children, to which I informed him that I can't indulge in page upon page of sexual tension in childrens' books or carve out hearts or curse, so.

Covens and Covetousness

Reprised from the Delta quadrant. Welcome to Federation space. I've spent a great deal of time in the past few days thinking about The Craft, which sadly includes neither Fairuza Balk nor Robin Tunney, but does give me the power to render my enemies hairless should I become bored and vengeful. The molotov cocktail that was The World Fantasy Convention and today the start of my very first NaNoWriMo has my brains boiling with possibility. I've realized how utterly unaccountable I've been with my first novel and the revision I'm currently mired in - sure, I'm working, but how much? - and while I realize I'm only saying this now, how very little 2K is a day when you're not thinking terribly hard about it, which is exactly what I was(n't) doing when I was writing my current draft. The process was about as organic as holding my face under the belly of a cow for milk, which is to say, fucking messy.

But I'm still learning. School didn't teach me how to be a daily writer, or a publishable one. I learned how to get drafts in on time by writing them in a mad dash two days before they were due and how to take criticism, so much criticism, with grace that lasted long enough for me to escape the classroom and kvetch with my girlfriends. But, I can craft a damn fine sentence (on the third try) and I've got a lot of ideas. It's a start, which is more than I had in high school when we were chanting light as a feather, stiff as a board at drama club overnights and I was still writing poetry about boys and God.