The Rhythm is Gonna Get You

The Rhythm is Gonna Get You

In haste, because I’m actually still trying to write – it’s been a very odd day – and I have my Greek and Latin mid terms tomorrow, for which I’m somewhat less than prepared. (By which you should understand I’m flying by a prayer AND the seat of my pants.)

A brief exchange with my husband – who came in to find me playing Mika and rolled his eyes :D – reminds me that I had meant to write briefly about music to write by.

I don’t know if other writers have it. I know a few who do. I also know at least one who writes in front of the tv or movies. (I confess the only time I have written in front of the TV was my third Shakespeare book which was written in its entirety in about the month after 9/11. I didn’t feel I could take my eyes off what the world was up to just then. And writing only happened when sitting in front of the news.)

Now, as I believe I mentioned sometime before, when I’m asked if I’m a plotter or a pantser I always have to say "both." Because I write lovingly intricate plots, ahead of time. Then I sit down to write and ten chapters in I find the characters are not who I thought they were, or everything has gone strangely awry. Which forces me to sit down, unpick my plot and rethread it in a way that makes sense for where I am now. This happens every ten chapters or every fifty pages, whichever comes first.

 

Clearly there is something else at work beyond my intellectual concept for the novel – something that is not entirely of the brain. (I’ve found it’s pure h*ll to write while sick, even with an ailment that should not affect the mind.) Diana Wynne Jones, in Deep Secret, visits this briefly. She is talking from the pov of one of her magids, and he says that if something special doesn’t happen – where everything seems to be rushing together and making a new kind of sense – while doing a working, then the working won’t be any good.

Writing is like this – at least it is to me – to a great extent. First there is the intellectual concept and starting to set up the world, as a set of dominos that will go over at the precipitating event. This is purely intellectual work, laying the deep-foreshadowing that will help the reader become acquainted with the world. Even when it’s our own world, it’s often markedly different. Then I reach a point where I look at it and I see that it is good (G) – or at least good enough to go on with. I usually go back and change and tweak halfway through and then again when the book is done. Then comes the fighting phase. The fighting phase is very odd, because in a way I’m fighting against something I WANT to happen. However, in a way I think it’s instinctive self-defense, fighting against what feels remarkably like going insane – fighting against surrendering rational control.

Let me explain. Once I have everything lined up and the subconscious has had time to disgest it, the story itself creeps up from the depths and tries to take over my brain and unroll itself to me. It’s as though – at some level – there is a proper form of the story that exists independently of the human mind and my initial work was attuning to it, causing it to then tell itself. It’s not like that, of course, and no, I’m not completely insane – weirdly, Joe Haldeman and I discussed this on a panel and were very relieved to find the other had the same experience. Because it does feel like you’re going insane.

Think about it. All our lives, we’re trained to be rational and keep control of our thoughts. The other way lies madness. But for a story to come to life – again, this is just for me – it requires that we let our subconscious work and put in those details, those things that our conscious would never think of, but which make the story real for everyone else. (And yes, yes, many of you never experience this. I suspect that there are more of us who do than not, though, if only we’d admit it. :D)

So for me there is this time of complete – what my friend Dave Freer calls – "ratbaggish" fighting with the story as it’s trying to take over. Sometimes I manage a paragraph a day, and it’s very much like having an impacted tooth. It hurts – though at the non physical level – and I’m upset with myself for stopping it, and I yell at the kids and glare at the neighbors and throw things at the TV and generally behave like the cranky old woman I’ll eventually become. This is the time at which my husband gives me a wide berth, the cats hide and my house becomes either very clean or utterly filthy. The very clean is if I give in to displacement activity and start scrubbing and polishing. The filthy is if I realize it’s displacement activity and refuse to do it. Or anything. I just stoically sit at the keyboard and glare at the monitor.

Sometimes I find something even crazier to do, like draw or make crochet curtains. Or take a course in Latin and one in ancient Greek. When I had the membership to the Y, this was when I’d go down and run for four hours at a time. At one point, about eight years ago, during this phase of the writing … er… process, I painted my nails at least a dozen times, in succession, removing the varnish as soon as I put it on. White and transparent and bright red and pink and purple and… Those of you who’ve seen my "as short as they go" nails know how insane that activity was.

This type of activity, btw, is called "rotating the cat" because it’s something not only utterly useless but counterproductive to do.

And then there is a breakthrough. The floodgates open. The conscious and the subconscious and the something else that makes a good writer – the gut or the dream or the imagination or whatever you want to call it – take over. It’s as though… picture the Sistine chapel ceiling, if you will. G-d just formed man as a lovely and soulless statue. And I just formed this novel which, even when it’s not all type in, is all in my mind, perfect and complete. And dead.

And then, and then, G-d extends his finger and touches it. Breathes the breath of life into it. Sorry to those of you who don’t believe in anything beyond the physical. This is my process and I’ll describe it in the terms that make sense to me. My novels never acquire life from the convenient assemblage of ingredients. Something else has to happen, something that I can neither control nor keep from happening, something I have to eventually surrender to.

Perhaps because hearing is one of the more primitive senses, music is one of the things that can speed the onset of the … for lack of a better term "breath of G-d" phase. And when life starts flowing into the novel, it becomes unstoppable, and it is GOOD. The typos get horrendous, but the writing gets MUCH better and the story lives.

The disturbing thing is that I can’t control what music brings out the story. And sometimes wanting the right music is like craving a food that you’re not sure you’ve ever had.

I’ve writen stories to Kansas, I’ve written stories to Leonard Cohen and Jacques Brel. I’ve written to Billy Joel and Billie Holiday. I’ve written to classical music. Of course, Dipped, Stripped and Dead is coming out to Mika.

Recently, after a long period of "craving" something for a specific, still unsold novel, I realized it wanted – nay, needed – White Mansions a country album I haven’t heard in more than twenty years. I got it and it worked. Though that novel will have to wait till the current ones under contract are delivered.

Another novel that will have to wait demands Gregorian chants. It’s unsold. And my agent – hi, Lucienne! – will probably kill me when it lands on her desk. I’d have finished it in may, but then I got sick.

Anyway, as a teaser, and in case you wonder what a novel that demands Gregorian chants is like, here’s a micro-teaser. It’s called "Sword and Blood" and this is the tag line to it "In another world, history changes, but heros remain heros" and this is the first chapter (The prologue gives the tone of the story, but it’s not for here.  Let’s just say the story’s code-name is "Sexicle"):

Ruins and Fallen Angels

 

His grief had carried D’Artagnan to Paris, like a tidal wave, swelling from shock to anger.

As it receded, it left him sitting on an ornate chair, in the private office of Monsieur de Treville, Captain of the Musketeers.

"I don’t know what you heard, in the provinces," the Captain said. He was a small man, a Gascon, like D’Artagnan. Even though silver threads mingled with his straight, dark hair, he didn’t look old. No wrinkles marred his mobile olive-skinned face. And he stood, instead of sitting in the great armchair that faced D’Artagnan’s.

As he spoke, he walked behind the chair and his long thin fingers clasped the frame tightly, dark against the white-painted wood and the threadbare blue-grey velvet of the cushions. "But France is not England. We are not at war with the vampires. Our king and the Cardinal have achieved a truce between them. His Eminence might have been turned, but he still wants what’s best for France. Neither the king, nor the Cardinal – nor I, myself – want to experience here the slaughter and mayhem that engulfs the other side of the canal."

All energy drained from D’Artagnan’s body, leaving his arms listless and his legs feeling as though they lacked the strength to support his body. He’d run to Paris to fight the vampires. To stand for king and queen. To support the forces of the light. To avenge his parents, unwillingly turned and dead by their own choice before they ever fed as vampires.

"My father said," he heard his own voice echo back to him, aged and flat-sounding. "That I should come and offer my sword to you. That whoever else had surrendered to the vampires, you never would. That you knew evil when you saw it."

"Your father." For just a moment, there was a flash of something in Monsieur de Treville’s eyes. What it was, D’Artagnan couldn’t tell. It was just a glimmer, appearing and then vanishing. In a changed voice, the captain said, "Your father and I fought side by side twenty five years ago, when the first vampires came into France from Spain." He sighed deeply. "Other times, my boy, other times. Now there’s a treaty in place, and daylighters are not to hunt vampires and vampires are not supposed to turn the unwilling. And those turned register promptly and become subjects of the Cardinal, subject to his laws. Only undeclared vampires, the ones in hiding, could be a danger, and we don’t have those." He opened his hands. "Other times demand– "

Behind D’Artagnan the door opened, slowly, and a voice said, "I’m sorry to interrupt you captain, but… You said you wanted to know when the inseparables came in?"

Turning, D’Artagnan saw a thin man, in threadbare livery that seemed too big for him. Just like the rest of Parisians he looked starved, ill-dressed and not so much nervous as jumpy. Ready to run at a sound. Like a hare at a convocation of wolves. D’Artagnan realized that no one living in Paris could take the truce or the treaty seriously. And Monsieur de Treville didn’t look stupid.

In fact he didn’t look stupid at all, as his fingers released their death grip on the back of the chair, and his eyes filled with an eager curiosity, tinged by hope and fear. His voice trembling with what appeared to be maniacal relief, he said, "All three? Athos, Porthos, Aramis?"

The servant shook his head, and looked away as he spoke, as if afraid of seeing the reaction to his words. "Porthos and Aramis, only, sire. Should I send them away?"

Monsieur de Treville’s expression tightened, the skin taut on the frame of his cranium – as though he’d aged a hundred years in that moment and only will power kept him alive. His tongue came out, nervously, to touch his lips. "The two?" Then his expression closed, his eyes becoming unreadable. He drew his lips into a single, straight line and he crossed his arms at his chest. "Send them in, Gervase."

But the gentlemen had apparently been waiting just outside the door, because as Gervase opened it, they came in.

They were splendid. There was no other word for them. D’Artagnan, who had waited in the captain’s antechamber, had seen the rest of the musketeers as something very akin to immortal gods. He’d listened to them jest about how many vampires they had killed, and taunt each other with the latest court gossip. He’d heard them — fearless and unabashed – calling evil by its name and its name was vampire. Yet, admirable though they were, they admired others. They too had idols they looked up to.

All through their chatter, like a touch-stone, a prayer, he’d heard the names of the inseparables: Athos, Porthos, Aramis.

They were, according to their own comrades, the best and the bravest. It was said that in one night the three of them had killed a hundred vampires, single handed. It was whispered that if France still had a human king, if the throne of France still belonged to the living, it was to the credit of none but three noblemen who hid under the appellations of Porthos, Athos and Aramis.

D’Artagnan, a Gascon and therefore inclined by nature to discount half of what he heard as exaggeration and the other half as social talk, now felt his mouth drop open in wonder, and thought that, if anything, the rumors had been an understatement.

To begin with, though their clothes looked as worn, and their bodies as thin as those of others in Paris, the two inseparables were so muscular and broad shouldered, and stood with such pride that they lent their humble tunics and worn cloaks an air of distinction. They behaved with pride one would have thought departed from amid mortals since the vampires had arrived and taken control.

The smaller one of the two – just taller than D’Artagnan, had dark-golden hair and the flexible build of a dancer – or an expert sword fighter. His features were so exactingly drawn that they could have graced a not-ill-favored woman. However old his clothes might be, they looked well matched and better fitted, with no mended patches visible. The ringlets of his hair fell over his shoulders, disposed in the most graceful of ways, a longer love-lock caught up on the side of his head by a small but perfect diamond pin. Other than that pin, he wore no jewelry save for a plain, flat silver cross on a silver chain around his neck, and an antique-looking signet ring on his left hand.

The taller of the two stood at least a head taller than any man D’Artagnan had ever seen. His chestnut brown hair was shoulder long, his beard and moustaches luxuriant, and the bare patches on his tunic had been sewn with an expert hand and covered in what looked like gold thread embroidery. D’Artagnan only noticed they were rents and skillfully covered up, because there was no other explanation for the haphazard nature of the embroidery, which meandered over his well muscled torso with the abandon of a gypsy caravan. He wore a ring on the finger of each hand – most of them ornamented with stones too large to be anything but paste or glass – a thick gold chain, and a cross composed all of rubies and garnets – or their counterfeits – in dazzling splendor.

This would be Porthos, D’Artagnan surmised as he had heard the man was a giant. And indeed, he had arms like tree trunks, legs like logs, and the most terrified grey eyes that D’Artagnan had ever seen.

His gaze darted around the room, in skittish anxiety and, alighting on D’Artagnan, caused D’Artagnan to wish to make his excuses and leave. Except that the musketeers were blocking the path to the door. And Porthos’ gaze moved on, immediately, to stare in abject fear at his captain, whom he outweighed by at least half again as much.

Though looking at Monsieur de Treville, D’Artagnan could understand at least part of the fear. The captain’s face had hardened, and his gaze looked as though it would bore holes in the two of them, if it could. It turned to Porthos, then seemed to dismiss him, focusing instead on Aramis, who bowed correctly.

"Aramis," Monsieur de Treville said. "Where is Athos?"

Aramis smiled, as if he’d expected this question all along. "He’s indisposed, sire. It’s nothing serious."

"Nothing serious," the Captain said. He turned his back on them and stared out of his window, through which one could just glimpse the broken cross atop the Cathedral. "Nothing serious," he said again, his voice heavy, like the closing of a tomb. "The Cardinal bragged at his card game with the king, last night. He said that Athos had been turned. That Athos was now one of them. The rumor is all over Paris."

"It is… not so serious," Aramis said, but he hesitated before the word, and the look he gave Porthos betrayed fear.

"Not so serious," the captain turned around. "So he is only half turned? You men and your careless ways. How many times have I told you not to wander the streets at night, after your guard shift? Never to go into dark alleys lightly? And if you must go into them, to guard yourselves carefully? Do you have any idea what can result of Athos as a vampire? Do you know your own friend well enough to know what a disaster this is?" His voice boomed and echoed, and doubtless every word he said was being eagerly drank by the ears of those in the antechamber.

The musketeers bit their lips, shifted their feet and looked down, and let their hands stray to their sword pommels. It was obvious that had anyone but their captain given them such a sermon, he would have paid for it dearly.

Porthos, who had been squirming like a child in need of the privy, blurted out, "It’s just… that… sire! He has the chicken pox!"

"The chicken pox?" The Captain asked, with withering sarcasm, even as Aramis gave his friend a baneful, reproachful glance and a minimal headshake. "The chicken pox, has Athos, who is over thirty years of age? Do you take me for a child, Porthos?" His voice made even D’Artagnan, over whom he had, as yet, no power, back away and attempt to disappear against a wall-hung tapestry which represented the coronation of Henri IV. "I’ve given the three of you too much freedom because I thought you’d at least defend each other. How can you have allowed Athos to be taken? From now on, I am making sure that none of my musketeers goes anywhere, except in a group. Not after dark. And if I hear of any of you starting a fight with a vamp–"

He stopped mid word, as steps were heard, rushing, outside, followed by a man’s voice, calling out, "I’m here."

A blond man burst through the door. He was taller than Aramis, almost as tall as Porthos, though of a different build. He looked solid-boned, as if nature had designed him to be almost as massive as his larger friend, but as if flesh had never sufficiently covered the sudden growth of adolescence. Though D’Artagnan imagined this was Athos and that he was therefore over thirty, he looked like a young man who’s just finished growing and put on some muscle, but whose hands, feet and every place where the bone showed — from cheek to knees – seemed to have been grafted from a larger, more solid person.

Like most of the other musketeers, he was casual about wearing a uniform. Instead, he wore the fashion of at least ten years before – a black doublet with ballooning sleeves and laced tightly, in the Spanish fashion, and black knee breeches, beneath which a sliver of carefully mended stockings showed, disappearing into the top of his old but carefully polished riding boots.

However, it was his face that attracted and arrested one’s gaze, as he threw back his head and the golden curtain of his hair with it and said. "I heard you were asking for me, Captain, and I came, as you see, in answer to your call."

He looked like the angel at the entrance to a ruined Cathedral, beautiful, noble and hopeless. The mass of hair tumbled down his back might as well have been spun out of gold and his flesh resembled the marble out of which such a statue’s features might be chiseled: The noble brow, the heavy-lidded eyes, the high, straight nose, the pronounced cheekbones and square chin, and the lips — full and sensuous, as if hinting at forbidden earthly desires. All of it was too exquisite, too exact, the perfection that no human, born of woman is entitled to.

He also looked cold, unreachable and lost — and except for still standing on his feet and moving — as if he’d died waiting for a miracle that had never come.