Esker’s Point

The wind hit the windows hard, rattling them with a fury borne of a thousand miles of fetch across the cold waters of the North Atlantic. Cold, grey waves crashed into the rocks below the hut, trying to tear the cliff down before it was razed by glaciers at the beginning of the next ice age.

The door opened, and a figure stepped out, quickly pulling the door shut behind him. He had a stocking cap pulled tightly over his ears, and his coat was wrapped tightly around him, long tails wildly flapping in the wind. The bucket he carried held a thermos of coffee, and two rapidly cooling sandwiches.

He made his way carefully to the path on the edge of the cliff, winding his way to the observation post carved into the side of the cliff. Jutting out below, the barrels of two cannon interrupted the straight face of granite tumbling into the sea below. Pulling open the blast door with a grunt, he let himself into the gun emplacement.

Sixty years later, I let myself out of the same shack with a bottle of scotch and ice in the bucket, and made my way down a crumbling path to the same bunker. The massive steel door was permanently jammed open, salt and rust winning the battle against paint and preservation as they always must. My laptop was charged and slung over my shoulder, and I was set to write the Great American novel.

It was going to be an instant classic – hubris, pathos, and resolution all rolled up into one. There were metaphors capable of making the most jaded feel empathy, and characters so lifelike you would sit up all night waiting for them to stroll into the local pub, sweep you off your feet, and take you home. I had already struck a deal with a town in the south of France that was going to remake itself – physically and historically – into the book’s settings, and the travel site I’d struck a deal with had already begun taking reservations based on draft descriptions out of the novel-to-be. There was a six-month waiting list for a room in the shack where the main characters would have their big fight, and their passionate recovery.

In short, I was on the verge of becoming a legend.

The problem, however, was that I had diddly squat.

Oh, there were a few paragraphs here, and some moving vigniettes there, but, despite creating a wildly successful marketing plan, and landing the largest advance ever for a first novel, I had bupkus.

So, this was it, I told myself. Get rich or die trying. I figured there was enough material on the hard drive I’d left in the cabin that a talented editor could cobble together something that’d pacify the newspaper critics and get me at least enough time on the bestseller lists for the publisher to recoup the advance. It’d be popular, but if people went back for a second read, they’d realize there was nothing there. I’d be remembered as a case study in Marketing programs for a decade or so, rather than living on in the canon forever. Though I might get a few years in the Literary Studies departments as the oversold potential found tragically floating in the cold waters of the North Atlantic below an unfinished masterpiece.

The plan was simple – camp out at the edge of the world and write. There was plenty of gas for the generator and a solid supply of scotch, cheese, hard sausage, and crackers. There was a still-functioning spring on the property, and i was far enough from civilization that it’d be nigh-unto-impossible to indulge in wine, women, and song.

The wind whipped with less fury inside the bunker. It whipped more with disdain than fury, kind of like the scolding a third grade teacher would deliver after catching a student eating paste for the 20th time. I’d prepositioned a stash of firewood, and I got the kindling to start smoking on the third match. A little bit of effort, and a tidy fire was going with the smoke whipping out of the gun ports, continuing to blacken to the overhead.

I checked to see that there were batteries in my satchel, and fired up the laptop. All right – good stuff. Text editor was opened, and…

The cursor blinked there, expensive green blinking against a deep black screen. Distraction free. Just right for an outpouring of creativity.

The cursor continued to blink.

A little tipple ought to set me right, right? I pulled out the scotch, poured a generous two fingers into the coffee mug i’d poached from my last job, and leaned back against the cold concrete wall.

The cursor continued to blink.

Noticing that my glass was empty, I refilled it, and walked over to the gun port to contemplate the ocean. In my mind, I was beginning to tie together the basics of the story, all coming back to the sea endlessly lapping on the shores, and the tides, powerful yet silent, changing yet constant. Art, boys, I was here to create Art!

The cursor continued to blink.

On the cheap plastic wall clock, the big hand was pointing to 12, and the little hand was pointing to 6.

Once again, five o’clock had come and gone, and I was still sitting at my desk working up numbers for yet another data call. A quick prairie-dog over the top of the cubicle showed no-one else still at their desks, so I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk and slipped out the bottle of Johnnie Walker Black I kept handy for such an occasion. Made a mental note that it’s about time to pick up a new bottle.

I slugged down the last gulp of cold coffee, did another quick look over my shoulder, and poured a finger into the coffee cup. Sniff, sip, and swallow – the familiar warmth in the throat and twinge in the back of the nose. Leaning back, I closed my eyes and stretched.

She’d snuck up while I was in a moment of reverie. “Woman, don’t you knock?” I asked.

Susan tossed her hair over her shoulder with a smile. “Don’t you know it’s against policy to have booze in this office?” She had her coat and keys in her hand and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder.

So, I’ve been flying a bunch again lately, and at times I’m struck with the state of suspension that is a plane in the air. Yeah, statistics and all show that we’re safer flying than driving, blah, blah, blah. But I came across footage of a DC-10 crash back in the 80s. The plane had a turbine explode in-flight, severing the rudder controls and bleeding the hydraulic system dry. The pilots did a yeoman’s job, driving the plane with control from the two engines on the wings only, and actually flying an approach that way. Amazing.

Still, though, the couple of hundred folks on that flight were in a superposition from the time the plane left the gate until the time the plane suffered massive structural failure induced by ground impact, just like the rest of us are from the time the door goes closed and cell phone traffic ceases until the time we jostle with the jerk in the seats across the aisle who just stands there and farts.

Certainly, there’s distraction there, ipods and whatnot, but there’s a little something in the pit of my stomach every time I get on a plane. What I wouldn’t give for an honest-to-god Transporter, where it’s a bunch of digitized sound, and you’re either where you’re heading, turned inside-out due to a software glitch, or in a bad ’80s movie with your DNA merged with that of a fly.

Still, the view from the air can be stunning.

Proved to be too much for me. Not quite sure why, but my writing has been really suffering lately.

Work’s been great though, so could it be just a change of priorities?

Proved to be too much for me. Not quite sure why, but my writing has been really suffering lately.

Work’s been great though, so could it be just a change of priorities?

“Say it.”

“It.”

“No, c’mon. It’s not so tough: three little words…”

“Three little words.”

She snorted, flipping her short brown hair off of her cheek and over her ear. The smallest hint of a smile played at the corner of her eyes. He continued to walk towards dinner, hands in his pockets, her arm hooked in his right elbow.

So, I took a week off. After two whole days of writing.

But, the basement’s clean, and my running mileage is where it should be. Nothing to be ashamed of.

There are arguments which will end up in mutual reconciliation, arguments in which end with one party groveling, and some arguments for which there are no words applicable.

In the final case, the arguments fall into two polar cases. In the better of the two cases, there is one party who, in hindsight, was completely and totally correct, but, for the sake of the relationship, no apology is given, and none is expected.

The worse alternative is the case in which no actions, words, or sentiment that can possibly be expressed by human emotion will be able to bridge the gap in the relationship.

It was the final case into which Tom had fallen, and as he heaved his bag into his beaten Civic, he knew that he couldn’t stay around, even for goodbye.

The swell broke over the heaving deck of the submarine. Reaching behind him, Seaman Martin took the five inch round from the feeder, cradling it in his left hand and steering it with his right, into the waiting breech of the cannon.

“Loaded” he called out over the reports from the small arms in the conning tower. He pulled his hands back quickly, as Petty Officer Third Class Beck slammed the breech shut, yelling “Locked. Gun Ready!”

The gun director, Lieutenant, Junior Grade Moretti, took one last look at the trajectory corrections he’d dialed in since the last round, and looked at the gunner. As the bow of the boat reached the top of the swell again, and paused for a moment before beginning to go down again, he slapped the gunner on the back, yelling “Fire!”

The five inch gun went off with a report that momentarily robbed the breath from everyone topside of the submarine. Heading away from the ship, the shell ripped through the air, sounding fainter. Seaman Beck jerked the breech open and the spent casing, now smoking, clanged to the deckplates and bounced overboard.

Three thousand yards downrange, the shell tore through the teak deck of the Kobyashi Maru, penetrating through the cargo hold and into the boiler room before detonating. As the shell exploded, it pierced the boiler of the now-doomed freighter, venting 1,200 PSI steam into the engine room.

So, let’s expand on this a little more.

What’s my goal? My goal for this year is to successfully complete NaNoWriMo after last year’s miserable failure. After a little bit of soul searching, I determined that my failure was mostly based on the fact that I do not now, nor have ever, actually written fiction.

So, much like with running, I think that I need to start with “low mileage” and ramp up to marathon distance. NaNoWriMo is 50K words, or a schwackton per day (on the order of 1,000 words per day)

Here’s the general plan:
1. Start Small
2. Work Up
3. ???
4. Profit!

So, I’m trying to get through January at 100 words of fiction per day.

February, I’ll begin to ramp up quantity.

Sometime in the summer, I’ll start working on plot.

And by November, I’ll be ready to go.

How ’bout you?