I am trying to extend a 1200 word story into a 7000 word story for a writing contest. I’ve written 300 words so far; so I only have to do this 22 more times.
I tend to like short, concise writing, even in novels. I wonder if it’s because I’m relatively impatient, or whether I have a short attention span, or whether I really really can get everything I want done in fewer words. I’ve been told the latter by my dev editor, who doesn’t want me to lengthen things. On the other hand, I have a short story that an editor would like to see as a novel. He’s absolutely right, and it would make a great prequel to Prodigies, but I would have to immerse myself in Poland for a couple weeks to get the feel for it.
So, back to the story. The story is Kami, and it’s about death and afterlife. It also features Jeanne and Josh Beaumont-Young, one of my favorite couples. Jeanne at this point is 80 and has just lost her 55-year-old husband of 27 years. I like the couple because they defyour common notions of love and attraction, and because they have a chemistry despite their bookishness.
I need to take a deep breath and set myself a writing goal, and just write, then edit. Luckily I have a vacation to do it.
Tag: Kami
When your characters aren’t people
I’m more than 2/3 of the way through the revision and it’s been surprisingly fun. This next part will be challenging and not as fun, although I get to write a scene I’ve always wanted to write — an interaction between two people who dislike each other, both eccentric, a little arrogant, and a little — different.
This story is all about people who are different, however. However, not all the characters are people. (Explained earlier in the book: Gaia is our “Mother Earth” or, more scientifically, the gestalt of all natural systems. Kami are spirits from the Shinto religion.)
The four arrived at the greenhouse to a shrieking alarm. Its fluorescent lights glared in the dusk. A beat-up sports car of indeterminate age and color sat close to the greenhouse. Eric looked into the car and announced, “Nobody in there.”
“The door’s open,” Jeanne shouted, and ran toward her greenhouse. The others followed.
Jeanne couldn’t detect any damage in the prep room. “You guys see if you can find our burglar, and I’ll check carefully to see if any damage is done. I’ll be in the lab in a minute.” The others moved past her and into the room where her experiments were kept.
As she was about to walk into her lab room, Eric’s bass voice broke the silence. “Jeanne, I think you’re going to want to see this.”
Jeanne strode into her lab, and glanced at her experiments — all were untouched, with no signs of sabotage. Jeanne breathed a sigh of relief.
Then she looked across the brightly-lit lab to find Josh, Eric, and Annie staring at JB from a safe distance.
“What — “ Jeanne asked, and then froze. Within the thick foliage and stems of her pet specimen, she saw a beefy blond man trapped. Vines wound across him, obscuring much of his body and much of his face. What she saw of his face was scratched, as if he had tried to escape and failed.
“Tell me why you’re here,” Jeanne stepped forward, almost nose-to-nose with the miscreant, “and if you’re lucky, I don’t call the cops. I doubt you’re here looking for a bathroom.”
“God, I don’t know why I signed up to do this,” the interloper mumbled through leaves. Jeanne glanced back to see Annie’s wide eyes and Josh’s smirk.
“Signed up?” Eric asked in a voice that oozed menace.
“Extra credit for class,” the beefy young man said, then tried to backpedal. “Uh, we were supposed to — umm —explore a — “
“Excuse me. What’s your name?” Jeanne squinted.
“My name’s Billy, Billy Wisnewski,” the man mumbled.
“What class? Who teaches it?” Jeanne asked sharply.
“Fire and Pesticide Certification. Burkheiser over in Ag.”
“Ok, what did Burkheiser send you to do here? Jeanne wheedled.
“Just case the place.” Billy Wisniewski gasped as vines tightened ever so slightly. “He wants to pay one of us to poison your experiments,” the man admitted.
“Did you poison any plants, or use herbicides on any of them?” Jeanne asked with her teeth clenched.
“No, honestly, I wasn’t supposed to do that yet.” The vine relaxed slightly.
“Josh, he’s not lucky. Call the cops.” Jeanne turned her back to the trapped man.
“Please, call the cops!” Wisniewski gasped. “Just get me away from this damned monster!”
“Jeanne, we can’t call the cops,” Josh shook his head.
“Why not? This — idiot — broke into my greenhouse!”
“Jeanne,” Josh said slowly. “How are you going to explain JB to a cop? Billy here is going to rat you out, and your greenhouse is right here to check out.”
Oh, God, Jeanne thought. My talent has changed my life more than I thought. “Ok, then. Don’t call the cops.”
“Can’t you let me out of here?” Wisniewski wailed.
“Did you poison anything?” Eric’s hand on the man’s shoulder tightened just enough to send a message. So did JB’s tendril, because the trapped man gasped again.
“No, man,” Billy Wisniewski stammered.
“I have one more question. Could you forego the extra credit points and not return any information to Dr. Burkheiser?”
“I ain’t going back to Burkheiser. Honest.” Eric nodded his head.
“JB?” Jeanne asked sweetly. “Could you let the gentleman go?”
The vine forcefully propelled Bobby Wisniewski into a lab table, which he clung onto, panting. “What the hell is that thing?” he shrieked.
“My watchdog, apparently,” Jeanne said grimly.
JB94 nodded.
On the way home, Jeanne fretted. “What if he goes and tells Burkheiser? Or his frat buddies?”
“I don’t think he will,” Josh stated. “Think about it. If he starts blathering about a sentient vine to all who will listen, they’ll tell him that plants aren’t sentient. And they’d be right — JB, although a worthy specimen, is probably a yorimashi — “
“Possessed by kami, right?” Eric pondered.
“Or maybe Gaia,” Annie interjected.
“Or maybe Gaia sends the kami over,” Josh added.
“You really like those kami,” Jeanne countered. “But it occurs to me that we all see things through our filters — I prefer Gaia, while you prefer kami —“
“And I prefer a world that operates by scientific laws, but somehow I seem to have found myself in the twilight zone,” Eric grumbled.
“Science is still a framework by which we understand things. There’s all those subatomic particles out there — what if some of them are — well, Gaia particles?” Annie sighed happily.
“Or kami particles?” Josh quipped. “At any rate, if Wisniewski tells Burkheiser, or anyone else, they’ll say ‘No way, you’re crazy.’ And thus JB, and our garden at Barn Swallows’ Dance, can hide in plain sight.”
Utopia Moments
I never thought I would get old. (Yes, I know — consider the alternative.) Society treats aging for women as a liability, throwing in words like “faded”, “hag” — honestly, though, it’s not that bad. If one doesn’t read mass media or the screeds of militant meninists, the reality is that people think I’m too skinny (absolutely not true), more men hold doors for me, and people ask about my grandchildren (no kids, no grandkids — would you like to meet my grandkitties?) In a culture that worships youth and beauty, I’m finally off the hook.
Sometimes, as a writer, I use struggles to write a moment of utopia. I think it’s a natural urge to give my messy reality a happy ending. Utopias are never perfect,however, because that would be boring. In fact, the imperfection of utopias makes for good drama (several Star Trek reruns use that principle to good effect.) But at the same time, reading one’s written utopia makes for a satisfying sigh and a feeling of being wrapped in a security blanket, if only for a moment.
For example, the short story below. It takes place at the setting for a few of my books, an ecocollective named Barn Swallows’ Dance. The main characters are a May-December couple who have been married for about 30 years, Josh Young (age 53) and Jeanne Beaumont-Young (age 83). The Kami mentioned in the story are spirits in Shinto. Enjoy!
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That day, as she had every day for the six months since her husband died, Jeanne Beaumont- Young sat in the back yard of her cottage in the circle of cottages waiting for him.
Her daily help thought she was morbid, maybe even senile, but they allowed that her relationship with her husband had been something of a fairy tale. He had been an author — not a paperback author, but an author that The New York Times and the like lauded as important. He had credited Jeanne, a much older botany professor, with much of his inspiration. The age difference had been considered controversial, but no one could argue that they hadn’t loved each other.
The back yard, like the front, sported a lush collection of trees, vines, and plants, all edible. She had planted them all years ago when they had moved there. Others took care of them now.
She sat in the wooden lawn chair for hours a day, a wizened woman with a fall of thick white hair. Waiting.
Jeanne wished she could see visions. Gaia had not given that gift to her. Jeanne could talk to kami, or nature spirits, encourage them to grow big, strong plants. But she could not see them, or even see metaphors of their presence.
That had been her husband’s gift, and she desperately missed him.
That’s why she sat in the yard, in her permaculture guild, a planting of trees and perennial food plants, day after day. Josh had told her once that Shinto religion believed that the most exemplary of humans would reincarnate as kami. Josh had believed in Shinto, and she believed he was exemplary. She believed he was out there, as a kami, waiting for her.
She could not have told anyone about this, and no one would have believed her anyhow. But she sat. And waited.
A mist rose up from the depths of the woods. One patch of mist grew more defined, more opaque, and did not burn off as the sun rose. “I?” the patch thought to itself as it coalesced, taking form, although no more solid.
It clutched toward sentience. “I … am?” It looked around at the trees surrounding it. “Purpose?” It knew it had a purpose, and its purpose had to do with the sun slanting down through the branches, and the cool green, and the muddy scent of the nearby lake. A fragment of sound, more staccato than birdsong with odd pauses, crossed its mind: “Sometimes, the most exemplary of humans …” In the jumble it heard its name, knew what it was: kami. Protector spirit.
The kami floated toward the lake and slid inside a tree trunk to see how it felt inside. The tree, which it recognized as willow, felt good, right. But – It felt a lack of something, a piece of itself gone. It strained to remember – remember? What was that? Didn’t it always live there? Remember …
Somewhen, it had been something else, dying in a place of stones and earth, its life pouring out of it. Remembered birdsong: “My willow, I’ve called for help, but I’m afraid you won’t make it.” It – he — recognized his last words: “I told you you’d outlive me.”
He was a willow? That made no sense: He was inside a willow, but he was not a willow. Another word: metaphor. Someone, the old woman with the husky voice, called him a willow. That realization jogged another memory, a robust woman who stood next to him in white, and a voice like wind whistling through a log which he surmised was his voice: “you are my brook, and I would die without you.”
He was looking for a brook? No, he was looking for the woman; this was metaphor again. He vaguely remembered his past life was based on metaphor; now he was stripped to his essence and had no need to speak obliquely, or even to speak. He moved now, like a cloud blown by wind, looking for the woman.
He didn’t travel far. He felt her presence, bracing and quicksilver, and floated down to a clay-walled cottage where a frail, white-haired woman sat at the edge of a circular grove of trees. He knew these trees – had planted them with this woman in his past life. Jeanne! he realized, and his sense of detachment crumbled. “It makes no difference what I am now, I am as much hers as I am Gaia’s.”
First sunset in the grove: He stood in the sunlight in front of the clearing, showing himself to her. She squinted into the clearing, wrinkling her brow, but she did not see him. He felt an ache in his center that he remembered in his previous form – his heart. He tried to call her voice, but he spoke only wind. He stayed there, watching a tear run down her cheek. When all was dark, she walked inside the cottage.
Second sunset in the grove: She wouldn’t recognize his current form, because it did not look human as she was, as he once had been. He tried to remember what “human’ looked like – upright, two legs, two arms. He tried to remember what he looked like as a human – this was much harder. He remembered being small, mouselike – not mouselike in actuality; that was another metaphor. Dark hair, almond-shaped eyes…
It took many sunsets for him to remember what he had looked like. He had to walk in the woman’s dreams as they floated over the forest. The ephemeral world dismissed the tiny silk fluffs of cottonwood as seed parachutes, but they carried the dreams of humans to the places where they would grow. He became as tiny as dust, walking through the rainbows reflected on each tiny strand of fluff. One night he came across her dreams, smelling of watercress. He saw himself from a distance, a young man who gazed at the woman she once was. The woman was soft and formidable in a sweater and jeans, her dark hair tied back –
“No!” He admonished himself. “Look at yourself. Study every detail.” Black thick hair touching his collar and falling in his eyes. Large, almond-shaped, luminous brown eyes – he never would have guessed. A slight smile, sulky lower lip. Long but not prominent nose. Slight body, like a willow sapling.
“Josh?” he asked his younger self, his ephemeral self, but got no answer. This was just a dream, not a life.
He – Josh – floated back to Jeanne’s grove. He stood in the grove in a patch of sunlight., standing right in front of the now-old Jeanne; the white-haired woman seemed agitated in her chair but did not see him. Josh felt rain on his cheek that matched her tears. Then, a flash of memory, tinged with a feeling that tasted like flower nectar, which he now knew as love–
Jeanne could actually hear kami!
He knew what to do, now that he remembered speech.
Hours passed. The light hit the guild in a certain way, spotlighting a patch of grass in the ring of trees and shrubs. She heard a voice, light and dry, a hallucination, her Josh: “I remember you don’t see things, but you do hear. Step into the light.” So she did. Within the circle, Josh stood as she first knew him — a black-haired, ethereal, mercurial young man rather than the calm, greying, near-sighted older man she remembered from their later years.
He kissed her, as he always had, like he was slaking his thirst. “You are my brook, and I couldn’t live long without you.”
“You are my tree, my willow, and I would have grown dry without you.” These words were their secret, their wedding vows. Nobody else had ever heard them.
“You know there are birds to feed. Come along.”
“What do I look like now?” she whispered
“A goddess of summer, as you always have to me.”
They stepped into the apple tree, as they had no bodies to burden them anymore.
Words Like Me 