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National Personal Novel Notebook Writing Month I'm actually doing it! Not counting words. My goal is just to fill up the notebook. No story, really, just thoughts. If I'm lucky, it'll turn into something readably coherent.
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This is a poem for Easter by Les Visible. I Do Believe In that essential stillness... that quiet endless hour preceding every dawn of every day... God breathes into the world of sleep whatever power might be taken to reach that waking moment in the warm falling rain of his grace... In every year, whenever the wheel has turned into the place where it must turn again or stop... for want of hope or lack of faith... God breathes once again into the greater whole... this soft malleable whiteness this stone... he blesses this unformed essence of extraordinary love, not yet fashioned with object or desire... it awaits our cleansed and contrite heart. awaits our innocence returned awaits our renewing hope and certain will and impetus that we might approach closer to the mark... We have fallen back upon the dying leaves... upon the sidewalks of shouting cities into the guttering run; where flows the secret mind of our hidden deeds, more times than we can through mercy recall.... Every breath every morsel of food every chance of redemption every possibility of hope; rests upon the bleeding power that has bought and paid for every coming minute of the age... Every twisted ugly thing Every kindness unseen every gentle thought every whip hand falling or whatever we may have turned it to... all paid for by the living vision of the one who dies who is crucified in the simultaneous instant of every act.... everything is permitted and fed that we might, through the gift of this unspeakably great thing come to see how we might be.... and the certain possibility of that... for every one of us no matter how dark the way how far afield... is the 'ceaseless' intent of the one left bleeding.... what freedom is what love is what peace is we have no clue only the yearning and the road that leads us there... Many have filled this void with words Many heroes come and seeming villains to meet them in their time all sleeping now in places deep and waiting... but this one does not sleep Is born anew in every breath shines from each shining eye cannot and will not forget carries us past the trouble and regret. In tongues forgotten he has come to every race in every time dressed as everyone always unknown and alone and waiting... this immeasurable gift unappreciated not understood remains... lays on the common ground is tossed aside as worthless is unseen among the items in the cart feeds us grants us life where there would be none... endless granted, giving life... full and safe and perfect I do believe.... ~
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Novelist Juha Seppälä From an interview in the latest Suomen Kuvalehti, translated by me. How's that for Finnish melancholy? Lord, what a downer. But words of truth nonetheless. <o> <o>
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[ Chapter One: A Most Disturbing Announcement ] The Palace of A’dmyn shone in the light of a new sun, tall, white, and perfectly smooth. A few Gukko birds meandered through the sky, calling songs of praise to the morning, and crashing into the palace because they were blinded by its sheer whiteness. In the highest room of the palace, Hapori Tohu, the Great Protector, was getting ready for his traditional breakfast of protodermic toast and marmalade. However, just as he was about to tuck in his napkin, one of his guards came running in, quite out of breath. “Your Haporiness, there is terrible trouble afoot!” he yelled at the top of his voice, causing several fat, particularly dazed Gukko birds to fall out of the sky in alarm. Nobody cared what happened to them, which was a great shame, because they were actually found by a passing Matoran, who discovered their rare ability to recite the entire works of Charles Dickens whilst simultaneously gargling water to the tune of Gravity Hurts. The Matoran went on to exhibit the birds at Toa Helryx’s Travelling Circus, and became so rich that he bought a solid gold pencil sharpener and most of Spain. “Alas,” said Hapori Tohu, staring with considerable distress at the empty marmalade jar. “Forsooth! Gadzooks! Etcetera! There is no more marmalade!” “Yes, your Haporiness,” said the guard. “Yet, there is other terrible trouble afoot!” “Is there indeed,” replied Tohu, turning the jar upside down and peering hopefully inside. A globule of marmalade residue fell into his eye. Blinking constantly, and trying to ignore the unbearable burning sensation in his eye, he waved an impatient hand at the guard, who took it as a sign to continue. “Word has reached the city that The Shadowed One wants to overthrow you, and turn the Metru a land of evil!” the guard shouted, waving his arms energetically, as though he was trying to dislodge a particularly stubborn fly. “Well,” said Tohu, eating his dry toast and wishing he had ordered bacon and eggs instead, “will a land of evil have large supplies of marmalade?” “No, your Haporiness!” bawled the guard. “It shall be a land of evil! There will be fire, death, and destruction! Metru will crumble as ruins to the shadows! Skies shall be scorched deepest magenta! Oceans shall boil, and the fish will…get all hot.” Tohu stroked his chin thoughtfully, smearing toast crumbs all over it. “It all sounds rather…unnecessary…to me,” he said. “I mean, what is in it for him?” “I don’t know,” replied the guard, a puzzled expression oozing its way onto his mask. “Maybe he was subjected to cruel and unusual circumstances in his early years, and now he wants to wreak revenge on the world?” “Maybe,” said Tohu. “What was the fellow’s name again?” “The Shadowed One.” “How fitting.” “He had it legally changed last Naming Day.” “What was he called originally?” “Colin.” Tohu picked up an enormous mug of protodermic tea, and began to stir it with a little spoon. “What do you suggest we do?” he asked. “I don’t know, your Haporiness,” yelled the guard. Tohu promptly dropped the spoon into the mug, where it sank profusely into the dark brown depths. “You could ask one of your Toa to help, your Haporiness,” suggested the guard. “Which one?” asked Tohu, trying to fish the spoon out with his paper napkin. “Well,” pondered the guard, “you need somebody with ridiculous amounts of courage.” “I would prefer somebody with ridiculous amounts of marmalade,” Tohu muttered, turning his mug upside down to drain out the tea; it glooped across the whole table, and the spoon fell onto the floor. He reached down to pick it up, but it slid between his fingers like a buttered eel and stuck itself firmly inside a narrow crack in the stone floor. “What about Toa Connor, your Haporiness?” asked the guard, loudly. “What about him?” “What about sending him to battle The Shadowed One?” Tohu selected a roll from a platter and started munching on it. “Do we have to settle this with a battle?” he wondered aloud, between chews. He was a simple being; thinking and eating were far too difficult when combined. “We seem to settle everything with battles. Why, only yesterday an old Matoran duelled to the death with an Ussal crab.” “Whatever for?” the guard shouted in amazement. “Oh, no reason,” Tohu said airily. “She was just bored, I believe.” “It’s settled, then?” asked the guard. “We’ll send Toa Connor to battle The Shadowed One?” “Hmm…” said Tohu. “I do not like the sound of this The Shadowed One bloke too much. We had better send someone to spy on him for a while first.” “An excellent idea, your Haporiness. To discover his weaknesses?” “Oh no,” said Tohu, idly eating a slice of lemon he had found on the floor. “To fill out the plot a little bit.” [ Chapter Two – The Sad and Pretty Obvious Truth ] Hapori Tohu collapsed on his nice golden throne and winced in pain. The throne’s designer had thoughtfully sculpted a few gears onto the back, which worked very well artistically, but not to so well practically. Indeed, they had to be replaced very often, as the designer had been short on materials and thus had made the gears from crocodile teeth, stuck onto a circular saw and painted yellow. Tohu rubbed his shoulders and turned his thoughts to the more pressing matter of the Metru’s distinct and worrying lack of marmalade. He wanted some marmalade, and he wanted it very soon. This Colin fellow would have to wait. Tohu stood up very suddenly, and tripped on his cape. He stumbled forwards and crashed onto the floor, just as the door to his throne room flung itself open and a Matoran dashed inside. “Your Haporiness, there’s a message for you…” the Matoran said vaguely, before falling over quite unexpectedly and sending his Hau spinning across the floor. Tohu scrambled to his feet and hurried forwards, thinking that, as the Great Protector, he should probably do something. “I say, are you alright?” he asked, prodding the lifeless Matoran with his staff. It was a nice staff, with a good sharp bit on the end that was particularly good for prodding things. When the Matoran failed to respond, Tohu decided that he must be dead; the arrow sticking out of his back was a pretty good clue as well. “I didn’t give you permission to die!” Tohu said angrily. He didn’t like his loyal subjects dying in front of him – they tended to make a mess on the floor. And the Po-Matoran smelled a bit funny after they’d been dead for a few hours as well. Hapori Tohu suddenly noticed a note attached to the arrow. Ignoring the basic rules of the universe stating that there was no real paper in the Bionicle world, merely carvings and the like, he unrolled the note and began to read. If Tohu had eyebrows, they would have contracted in annoyance at this point. He often felt that people misunderstood his facial expressions, due to his head unfortunately having a permanently angry look. He threw the note onto the floor and hurried to the window. Sure enough, just as the note had foretold in the previous three seconds, the Metru was under attack. Thousands of spidery Rahi things were running everywhere, drooling acidic drool and spinning spinney sort of teeth. Enormous suits of black and red armour were crashing through walls and Matoran alike, shooting technologically inaccurate electro-blaster whatsits and slashing at everything in sight with big extending claws. Tohu climbed onto the windowsill, readied his staff, and leapt into the chaos. As he fell, his cape billowing out behind him like a spasmodic Infernavika, the non-pointy end of his staff opened into a jet engine, and the staff levelled out. Tohu clambered on, looking like some strange red and white witch on a rocket-propelled broomstick, albeit one with a pointy end. He soared downwards, performing a few twists and a loop-the-loop just in case anyone important was watching, then skidded to a halt in front of a Visorak. “Would you mind not destroying this Metru,” Tohu asked in a decent semblance of politeness. “We only redecorated it last week, and you’re getting rather a lot of drool everywhere.” Tohu looked around, and noted the large webs now glistening in the morning light, strung between towers and filled with strangely Toa-shaped shapes. This wasn’t looking so good. Neither was the Visorak; it lunged forwards, and Tohu smacked on the nose with the pointed bit of his staff. “Bad Rahi-beast!” He said, quite forcefully, in his own inflated opinion. “No lunging! I’m trying-” A large chunk of Metru and several Matoran went sailing over him, narrowly missing his head. “-I’m trying to conduct a civilised conversation here!” he continued, his non-existant eyebrows contracting in frustration. “Really, you come in here all slimy and horrid, break things apart, then expect…” Tohu trailed off, staring at the giant tower descending on his head. This really was not a good day. Chapter Three – The Passing of Great Power Kopakalaka wiped the dirt from his mask and pushed himself into a seated position, coughing on the thick cloud of dust that filled the air. He stared around in horror, taking in the terrible sight of the ruined city. Visorak and Exo Toa (he wondered briefly if the latter should be hyphenated) swarmed across every surface. Well, almost every surface. And the Exo Toa weren’t so much swarming as walking around very, very slowly, but still, they looked quite evil anyway. It’s amazing what a lick of red paint will do, Kopakalaka thought. He grabbed a piece of rock that was conveniently jutting out level with his hands, and pulled himself to his feet. He stepped forwards uncertainly, trying to work out exactly where he was. He appeared to be standing in a corridor, crudely decorated with bits of jagged metal and strangely shiny globules of green stuff. He noted the roughness of the walls, and the lack of any sense in the architecture, and concluded that he was, in fact, standing in the middle of an enormous pile of rubble. Not the best place to be standing on a Tuesday evening, or indeed, any evening. He began walking towards one of the shinier pieces of metal, and picked it up. The entire structure of loose stone wobbled for the longest second he had ever known, then gave up and crashed down around him. “Mmmf,” he said, struggling against the torrent of rock and annoyingly sharp metal. Suddenly, a hand, a strong, heroic-seeming hand, seized his flailing arm and pulled him out of the rubble. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!” he yelled, as the metal fragments tore past his armour and slashed at places that shouldn’t be slashed at. “I say, do be quiet,” said Hapori Tohu, dumping Kopakalaka unceremoniously on the ground and clasping a hand over his mouth. “The Vissiewhatsits haven’t found us yet.” At that precise moment, a particularly angry Visorak poked its ugly head over the edge of the surrounding ruins and spat at them. “Oh,” said Hapori Tohu. He reached into nowhere behind him and pulled out a small package wrapped in parchment stuff and a handful of lime green balloons. “Here, take these and run,” he commanded, thrusting them at Kopakalaka. The Matoran hesitated for a fraction of a second, but Tohu’s permanently angry, eyebrowless face put the fear of The Makuta into his soul. Or something like that. He turned and ran in the direction Tohu pointed, looking back only once in case Tohu changed his mind. He hoped it wasn’t a dead end. In another, equally destroyed, part of the city, Distorted was standing on a rock. He raised a hand to his eyes and peered through the mist. Through the light of a thousand fires and an air filled with screams, he made out a vaguely white, caped shape falling over as it attempted to prod a Visorak on the nose with a pointed staff. “He’s not doing too well, Seran.” Distorted turned to the Matoran standing on the ground next to him. “And he’s supposed to be our Great Protector.” Seranikai clambered up onto the rock, and tried brushing the dirt and Visorak drool from his gunmetal armour. “I’ve got dirt and Visorak drool all over my armour,” he complained, “and I’ve hurt my foot as well.” “Oh dear,” Distorted said vaguely, turning his gaze back to Tohu. He watched as their Protector jumped at the spider and missed, falling into a fire and then running around in pain. “We should do something, this is embarrassing to watch.” Distorted chanced a glance sideways. “What?” Seranikai shook his head. “No way. I’ve hurt my foot.” “Who cares about your foot?!” “I do.” “We ought to do something to help.” “Yes, we ought to.” Seranikai nodded seriously. “We certainly ought to, but we won’t. That Exo Toa is making its way straight for us, you know. And I have a bad relationship with those things. I suggest we run away.” Distorted shrugged. Tohu picked up a piece of rock and threw it at the Visorak; it bounced of its leg and rebounded straight back at him, hitting him cleanly on the nose. “He really is useless,” Distorted winced. “Oh, fine,” Seranikai muttered. He leapt down from the rock and began striding in Tohu’s general direction, taking care to limp on his bad foot. Distorted grinned and ran after him. They passed yet more piles of rock and small fires, and even some dripping webs filled with strangely contorted shapes. Luckily for them, and for this story, the Visorak were all converging on the other side of the city, and the evil Exo Toa were taking a break. It was quite something to see a group of Exo Toa sitting down and eating tuna sandwiches. Eventually, the two Matoran found Tohu, who was jabbing repeatedly at the Visorak with his staff, which was emitting sparks and making worrying popping noises. “Get back, foul creature!” Tohu shouted. “One more step, and I’ll…oh.” He watched as Seranikai gave the Visorak a good sharp kick; it gave a loud screechy sort of sound and ran away. “Now my foot really hurts,” Seranikai announced to the world in general, limping over to Tohu and looking him up and down. “That red really doesn’t go with that blue, you know,” he critiqued. “And that staff needs more custom.”
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Scroll down below the annoying Lillipütties content block. That's the BCii Reading List. It's pretty empty as yet, with just three stories, but I do intend to fill it out with more. If you'd like to help, just send me a PM linking to the story/stories you think should be included. Just a note: a story that gets selected will most likely break from convention in some way, and do it exceptionally well. No run-of-the-mill Bionicle fan fiction need apply. I'm on the lookout for gems! -BC
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If You Only Read One Bzp Library Epic In Your Life, Read This One. I Mean It.
BCii posted a blog entry in blogs_blog_153
I knew this latest Epics contest was going to turn out some gems, but I never expected anything on the level of Tolkien's entry, Unknowledge. READ IT OR REGRET NOT READING IT FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. So there. -BC -
Firstly, I've added a nice little profile just on the left there. Now... Bad Seran. Naughty Seran. From my first book: I checked my character database, and he's only meant to have one wing, the other being mechanical. Now I've got to go through the entire first book and change every mention of his wings. The vaguely ironic thing - I remember the first draft mentioned that he only had one wing, but for some reason I changed it to two. Every description after that says two. Bad Seran. Naughty Seran. -Seran
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Well done Bundalings, here's your 'prize'...
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I feel pretty good today...I've written loads for my latest novel in the last few days...a personal record. Now, I would like to give you all a nice little quote to celebrate...but why not make it interactive? You can choose where the quote comes from! The first person to post here can ask for a quote from any chapter of any of the three books. Yay for interaction! Book I - Chapters 1 - 18 Book II - Chapters 1 - 27 Book III (unfinished) Chapters 1 - 8 -Seran
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I'm off from school today, 'cos I've got a sore throat. So, I decided to make the most of things, and started planning some things for my epic., City of Dreams. Namely time travel. The problem arises like this. In most stories, someone does something wrong, so they go back in time to correct it. This can't happen, as the event has now been corrected, so it never went wrong in the first place. Still with me? This means that you have to be incredibly careful with time travel. It can be done, and still make sense. The trick is to confuse the characters - they think the event is wrong, so they go back to correct it, but it's actually been right all along, due to their correction. My head hurts. -Seran
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I was looking through the hundreds of sheets of sketches and extracts from my novels, and found something quite interesting. Amidst my beloved Book of Silver, containing loads of ideas for my second novel, I found a passage I'd written that hadn't made it to the book, because I forgot it was there. This would've been written three years ago. I was pretty surprised when I read it, so I thought I'd post it here. It is quite interesting, you see. -Seran
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I wrote a poem. Aren't you surprised? The Deep Weightless, motionless, Bright waves racing overhead. Timeless, endless, The surface I ever must tread. I think I am dreaming. I am weary of the waves, Their froth and their fury. I let myself relax. Every bone and nerve, relax. The light deepens Through green, And blue, And darker blue. I have attained the depths! My flesh is cool, immobile. Oh, less than that: It's hardly even there. I see the bumpy, ragged, Stumpy, jagged creatures Of tail and jaw, tooth and maw. In spite of my disgust, I let them be. I speak to the sea, To the secret currents, The hidden powers, And they hear my voice. Let every stagnant hole And stinking grave, And every shadowed hulk, Forsake its filthy dead. No longer shall they fall And lie there, piling up As banquets for the tailed mouths That haunt these waters, multiplying. A new, relentless wind arises. It gathers up these horrors all And carries them, up, up, away, Until they reach the light of day. While I, a tiny bubble now Float where the currents go. Yet all the while, I rise, Approach the top and grow. I think I have been dreaming. I dreamed I made a change. But what was I: The swimmer or the sea? Or just the merest bubble? -BC
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Yep, chapter 2 of my epic, City of Dreams, is now up. I might even add some maps and stuff tomorrow. -Seran
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I've now posted Chapter 1 of my epic, City of Dreams, in case you can't tell from the title. And there's the first guest appearance - but who is it? You'll have to read it to find out. Shameless advertising. You've got to love it. -Seran
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So I spent another mostly-solitary Saturday at the residence. Started building a Bionicle epic in my mind. Far-future clashes between Matoran factions, Toa vs. Toa across the solar system, fate of everything in the balance, deep world-view issues, yadda yadda. I amuse myself in strange ways. I also sketched a Matoran of my own design. Showed it to my manga-hating dorm-mate whose main interests are parties and movies, he was genuinely impressed. Apparently, I can draw. Wait, does this entry have a point? Upon reflection, it does. But I'll let the matter rest, as it's rather depressing. This blog is getting to feel like an obligation. Maybe I should lay off for a while. -BC
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(The reason I don't update on weekends = dependence on school computer lab. The world is a cold, cruel place. Pray for me.) Saturday night. I've been suffering through a lonely day at the dorm, some degree of lethargy evident. Grandma calls, we chat about random current stuff, say goodbye. My meandering train of thought wanders into a nasty old tunnel. I start remembering a painful event about five years ago. Not the terrorist attacks in the U.S.A. They did come as a shock, but the level of personal pain I felt was minimal, nothing compared to the deep sorrow, rage, confusion, and loss I felt one week into the new year of 2002, when two of my cousins committed suicide. They say truth trumps fiction as a subject for writing. This is a truism in the book market, where sales of non-fiction far surpass the market share of fiction. But then, from the point of view of an unpublished writer such as myself, the subject of writing is determined solely by what they have to say, regardless of the reception it receives. I decided to write the story of my cousins' suicide, because there is so much I want to say about it and because I have so many questions related to it and because I feel so very strongly about it. I've finally found a real reason to write. (Rereading the first non-parenthetical paragraph here, I notice I inadvertently used a metaphor directly relevant to my subject. The method they used was suicide by freight train.) So I sit down at the table and get a page written, single-spaced, in my notebook. I notice one of the items on the table is a pack of cards. At that moment, I become conscious of a terrible association playing cards have had in my subconscious ever since: my cousins' suicide note was left on a coffee table in the midst of a deck of cards. It read: "In this game, life itself was at stake." This is as deep as I'm going to go on the subject in my blog. The details are too terrible to share publicly. I don't know if I'll ever write Bionicle fan fiction again. -BC
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If anyone's ever wondered why I've published so little fanfiction, the answer is that I'm very lazy and writing is such hard work. Other factors also come into play, like my hard drive dying and taking all my work to data heaven with it, finished and unfinished alike. Mostly unfinished. I only ever had one epic that I was truly serious about. I was really inspired to plug away at it. It was originally called Legend of Lhii, and told the story of the inventor of Ignalu (lava surfing). I was about 20,000 words in. GaliGee was the only one who ever saw my work in progress, and she was a great source of encouragement. Then I quit, because somehow the whole thing seemed too immature and too ambitious at the same time. It's hard to explain. I lost the spark; it was no longer the type of story I was interested in telling. I still wanted to tell the story of Lhii, though - just a different kind of story. So I started over and called the new incarnation The Book of Lhii. I was still working on it until I lost it in a separate data disaster involving evil floppy disks. It might have been a great story, but it's gone. No matter; it's all water under the bridge. The important thing is what I do now, and what I will do in the future. I have lost nothing, in the sense that everything I have written is still with me inside, part of my experience as a writer. Not to mention the pleasure it gave me as I was writing it. My present situation is rather inconducive to writing, so that's my excuse now. "There's too much noise in the dorms," I tell myself. "I don't have my own computer." But it's all a lie. If writing is important enough to me, then I will make a way to do it. If. -BC
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I reread Beliwa: Toa of Demons' Crossroads epic today, up to chapter 7, which is as far as it had gotten when I printed it out some months ago. It's a curious mix of Terry Pratchett, gothic vampire lit, and BZ-Koro madness. It's apparently been a smash hit, so with mass appeal and my personal plug, it is an official must-read. As for what I've been writing lately, I've divided my time between rewriting my S&T contest entry from scratch and realizing a story idea I first had way back in 2004. My Voya Nui story (click the banner above) achieved 3rd place in its category, a surprising success. Still, I became dissatisfied with it after reading Lady Kopaka's winning entry, Hope. I decided I could make a "better" story out of my radical entry by toning down the jaded, aloof narrative voice that I had tried out and fallen for as I wrote it, and going for a more sensitive, human approach. I'm stuck, though: it's become nearly impossible to leave the plot of the original untouched without becoming guilty of literary fraud, i.e. forcing events. I'll have to see how it all plays out. Good luck, me. The other story in progress is a dramatic, first-person-view exploration of Vhisola's and Nokama's fascinating, dysfunctional relationship. My original attempt at it crashed and burned ages ago, but I feel ready to resurrect the idea and maybe even make it work. It's my first time writing a female-centric story. Could be risky. Scratch could be, it is. But as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I just hope I can make it believable and powerful while staying true to my values. On the other hand, I think the majority of my works have been pretty poor reflections of my values. What can I say? I value honesty, but sometimes the truth just hurts. On the RL front, I'm preparing to move to student residence at the polytechnic where I'm starting my four-year program of studies in Forestry. The northern summer has been the driest in a century; even the local swimming hole, a defunct rock quarry, has been shut down. Feeling the heat... -BC
