I had a poem...

...but I misplaced it. Really. I have no clue where it went.

I feel awful for neglecting this space, but frankly, I haven't been writing much of late. Between the stress of preparing to move and malware infections from the depths of the internet hells and life in general, I've kind of had all the creative goodness sucked out of me. Admittedly, a fair portion of my creativeness has been taking a detour through fanfiction, but even that has been difficult to do over the past month--month!--since I posted last. I've slowed to a crawl on all my writing projects.

This is, as it turns out, a stupid thing to do. After a full day yesterday of packing boxes and cleaning, the writing bug bit me. Hard. At two in the morning. (Granted, I was sitting in bed trying to ease into sleepytime, but still. I was reading a bedtime story and was just getting toward the end of it.) This is why I keep a pen and notebook by my bed. In fact, I've been cultivating the habit of always wearing clothing with pockets so that I can carry tiny pads of paper and pens at all times. I was a bit put out, though, because all I wanted to do was finish reading and go to sleep. I was hijacked. I was compelled to scribble out a page-ish of dialogue and possible-prelude-to-porn before I could relax.

Now, to come back around, I'm fairly convinced that because I have been bottling up my writing, it comes spewing out at terrible, random, useless times. However! It's not like I can be doing my usual four/six/eight/ten/twelve hours a day right now. I just can't. (Yes, I often do write for eight or twelve hours a day. Not all at once, but in three/four hour chunks.)

I'm not having much luck finding a middle ground. I'm just going around exhausted from everything else I have to do, and so when I do sit down to write, when I make time for it...nothing happens. I just sit there, dumb, and nothing comes, even when I try. I know I probably shouldn't be taking this so hard, but I know that I've got this terrible fear in the back of my mind that maybe, just maybe, this lack of writing isn't situational. Maybe the words have left me entirely...again. That scares the crap out of me.

I've been trying, desperately, to lay the foundations for good writing habits and consistency and all that. I can be honest: I am a lazy, undisciplined writer. I have been so all of my writing life, and I've been trying to change that so that I have a decent flow of work most of the time. There have been periods of months, even years, where I don't write a single sentence. And I don't think I can take another dry spell. These days, where I've been so phenomenally productive, I'm always looking ahead and dreading that it could come to an end. So I keep pushing myself.

I'm coming up empty today. There's a project I'm stalled on, and another that's perilously close to that edge. I want to be able to move beyond the sticky parts and just do what I want to do.

Argh. I wandered off and lost my train of thought. I suppose I should just put in that I'm more or less on hiatus for the next couple weeks.

~Later

Art Blogs

I've been reading a lot of other peoples' blogs lately, and I have to say, this foray has resonated with me. Specifically, I've been dipping into the wealth of blogs written by working artists. (And by working artists, I mean both A. artists who work really hard most of the time at their crafts, and B. artists who then make money off of said art...but mostly I mean type A.)

Even though I am, by and large, not a visual artist--drawings, paintings, sculpture, etc.--many of the artists I've been reading are. And I am amazed at how similar their working lives are to mine. I am also always amazed at how much more awesome their chronicles of their works are, compared to mine (and not just because they post pictures of their stuff!) It's kind of weird to phrase it like this, but I feel like I'm cut off from my work, like I can identify so much more with the struggles other people are going through.

Sometimes--well, okay, most of the time--I feel like my work is just so boring. I've been experiencing an abundance of creativity lately, which is really excellent, because I'm excited about writing again. And not just a little excited. I'm so full of ideas and snippets and just general excitement that my sleep is getting interrupted. The littlest thing will get me worked up so fast that (seriously) I feel ill with the strength of it. I'm frequently burning the candle at both ends, kept awake with the need to write and waking up early because I just can't lay in bed with words burning their way through me.

Yesterday, for example, I found I could not in good conscience retire to the bedroom for the night until I wrote a ballad. And so I struggled through it. I'm pretty in love with it today, but yesterday I just wanted to be able to stop. I took a couple breaks while writing it, yes, but I could not allow myself to quit before it was finished. (And even then, after that, I sat in my bed until two in the morning and scribbled frantically to capture a scene for a story before I was too exhausted to hold the pen any more.)

I'm also putting my hand in trying to create an art quilt. It's going fairly well, though I'm only in the planning stage. I'm using a couple of different traditional blocks in addition to the fancy parts. (I hate that quilting requires so much precise math! I'm terrible at figuring out how big I have to make certain pieces if I want them to come out a certain size.)


Doing so much all at once is really very tiring. But...I have found that reading about other people's works restores me. It makes me really happy to be creating things. It gets me excited about all kinds of art again. Now, if only I can control myself a little and stop missing/burning meals because I get distracted by writing.

~Later

Stretched Thin...

I feel pretty exhausted, truth be told. I managed to get myself started on another (potentially) fanfic-o-doom, this time for Saiyuki. This past weekend was hectic, because I was editing Entropy and drafting the as-yet-unnamed fic...at the same time. The new fic was hammering hard, demanding to be written, and yet I had promised myself that I would get another Entropy chapter ready for posting. I persevered and finished the editing.

I have good-ish news, I suppose. Today, I edited and posted a short piece for a Saiyuki challenge community on Livejournal. Did I mention I've gotten myself an LJ for the exclusive purpose of fanfic? Well, I did. I will probably end up crossposting all the things that go up on AFF on the LJ, mostly because I want to offer alternatives to viewing sites. (Read: posting on LJ gives a thin veneer of classiness to my tasteless writings, hahaha.)

Also today, I finished drafting part two of a two-parted fanfic/writing experiment. I say experiment, because it's one of those flip-side things, where you get one writing style and perspective in one half and another radically different style and different perspective in the other half. (And both halves cover the same events.) I need to figure out a real title for it, too. I hope to polish it off tomorrow.

I worked a short while on the unnamed fic, too. It kind of rickrolled me, really, because I was focusing on that two-parter (which is a vastly, vastly different kettle of fish) and the other story was all...BAM! Write this scene, since you're sitting right there! I don't care if you don't want to, you have no choice! Do it!

Let's see...I want to edit another chapter of Entropy over the next couple days, too. (It might be a good idea to draft more of that, while I'm at it. I'm running low on pre-written, just-needs-editing chapters for that.) I have a pretty good handle on where the story is going. It's just a question of connecting the dots with a combination of plot and character development. I haven't exactly lost interest in the story, but I am getting tired of grinding away. I suppose it's more accurate to say that other stories are getting my attention more than this one. (I shall do my best to persevere and get more done, though!)

Must go, words will eat me...

~Later

Updates and Odds and Ends

Here's the deal. I've temporarily down-ranked the Entropy index. I'm doing this partly because I don't want any crossover traffic to be getting confused about what's what with Entropy. I'm going through and revising things in order to post them elsewhere, and I don't want people to think that what they've read of it here is the be-all-end-all. It's not. The story is constantly evolving, changing, growing. Some changes are minor, but there are going to be some big revisions, too. I'm working hard to better mesh the older and newer material. It's hard to keep such a sprawling body of work consistent. So anyway, that's why the Entropy index is currently moved down a bit. It can still be found in the tags under "Entropy chapter index."

That aside, I have been working on new chapters for it in addition to polishing the old ones. At this very moment, I have three chapter thirteens. Or wait. No. I have four chapter thirteens and a general sketchy outline of what chapter thirteen is supposed to cover. Working from that outline has produced three chapter thirteens in addition to the fourth, original thirteen. Obviously, once they're all nice and ready for posting, they will no longer be 13a, 13b, and 13c. They'll be thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen...and depending on how the original thirteen looks after all that new stuff, there'll be a sixteen, too. (And all of that will trigger the domino effect, considering I already have a chapter 14, 15, and 16.) I swear, every time I turn around Entropy gets bigger. Maybe I should have called it Inertia. (I'm joking. ^_^)

Besides Entropy, I've recently done up a one-shot, also Naruto and also Kakashi/Sasuke-centric. I'm still on the fence about posting it here, because it definitely requires some sort of adult content warning. Is it possible to be graphic and tasteful at the same time? I definitely shot for intimate and delicate (versus raunchy and porntastic) but I didn't really skimp on the details...In fact, I sort of wallowed in the details.

I have a few other bits and pieces from various fandoms floating around, but nothing is too serious at this point. I've been consumed by the big projects recently.

As for non-fandom things...I haven't done too much. I drafted a poem recently but haven't touched it since. Really, I have two poems on the back burner. I also have been picking at a fiction piece, but I've been derelict in pushing forward with it. That particular one is tricky: I've written some for it before and it was quite serious. Doing bits for it now, I find myself dipping into the humorous and almost farcical. It's tough to balance the different moods and styles, and I'm not convinced I'm doing it successfully. I suspect it's going to be one of those stories where the different styles interrupt the main story every so often. (I consider the serious parts to be the real meat of this story.)

I've had a real yen for discussions of writing craft lately. I've been re-reading pieces of writing manuals and style guides. I've been reading about reading too, and have just encountered a rather interesting-looking book on the subject, entitled "The Crafty Reader." Part of the premise of it seems to be about reading as a multi-faceted discipline. the thing that grabbed me about it was that A. the dust jacket promised a good discussion on the craft and tools of critical reading, and B. it kind of promised to debunk and demean the New Critical theory. (I despise New Critical.)

Still, my search for shop-talk isn't turning up a lot of results. I want discussion, not a "Thou shalt write this way and this way only" sort of thing, of which so many books on writing are. I suppose I'd do better looking for essays on writing, really, but it's kind of the same problem there, with the added distinction that a lot of the "good" essays are either by or about authors I don't read, and the works they may discuss are, for lack of a better term, dated. If I wanted to delve more into the socio-historical aspects of writing craft, I would...but I don't. I think part of the problem is that I can't clearly define what I want; I am only able to look through and say that this or that is what I don't want.

Ugh. This was a singularly unproductive post, wasn't it?

~Later

Clearing up Confusion

I have been really busy over the past few days. Really, really busy...like working eight or nine hours every day writing and editing. What is it I am working toward? I suppose I'm preparing to transfer my fanfics (what few there are) over to a designated account (with another host) just for fanfics. I'm looking at a timeline of a few weeks to complete this process.

As I prepare for the move, I'm going through the chapters of Entropy posted here. I'm giving them an extra edit and polish before posting over at the new spot. This means that what is posted here for Entropy is growing increasingly obsolete. Should I bother posting the newest versions of chapters here?

I have not yet decided if I'm going to remove the fanfics from here entirely or not. I am somewhat concerned with someone out there somewhere accusing me of plagarism, despite my carefulness to keep everything I do linked together through various means. Perhaps I will make a redirect index to replace the current chapter index?

Of course, this also brings up the question of new Entropy chapters. I have two more that currently have no internet home. Should I continue posting here and then there? Or should I only post over there? I don't want to exclude anyone...

Ah, administration. How I loathe you.

In addition to the fanfics, I've been grinding away at some original fiction. Also, I woke up this morning and did a rough draft of a poem. I was up ridiculously early today and managed to start off on a good writing foot (though I did have a nap this morning as well, after a few hours of working.) I did something like ten or eleven hours' worth of writing stuff today. If only I were this productive every day! Also, I wish I wouldn't feel so wiped from doing all that work.

I have not been doing well on the daily freewrite and weekly book review goals I set myself. If I even get a freewrite in, it always ends up being something I don't want to share...which is frustrating because part of doing the dailies is to share! As for the book reviews, again, it's a matter of not feeling that what I've read is fit for public consumption. I mean honestly. I read no less than two books a week, and sometimes upwards of one book a day. There's no excuse!

Argh. My brain is fried and I have the attention span of a cracked-out hamster.

~Later

A priest, a rabbi, and an atheist walk into a bar...

...but you already know that old chestnut.

Here's another old chestnut: I have not been posting lately. I am incredibly remiss and derelict in my self-proposed writing goals, and I feel pretty awful about it. I feel hopeless and helpless, which is never a good combination.

I've been grinding away at the same poem for almost a week now. Looking at it swamps me with misery, which is half the problem why it isn't done--I almost can't bear to look it over. The other half is, of course, that I am not yet satisfied. It's definitely missing something and I have no clue how to fix it. Today I separated it into stanzas (of a fashion) to see if I could spot the problem. Is it the order? Have I said too much? Not enough? I have a sinking feeling that I may have accidentally jammed two separate poems into one, and now they're having awkward hookup sex, and really both of them would rather be alone, but they're too polite to go their separate ways.

Entropy is going nowhere fast. I'm overwhelmed with the scope of what I hope to orchestrate in the next chapter. Knowing it's going to be something of a montage showing the development of the main characters' friendship does not help. It's still a lot to do.

I have been unable to work on any old original stuff or start any fresh. I think it's fair to say I don't have my heart in it right now, because every time I squeeze a sentence out it looks bad and I toss it in the garbage. A rookie mistake and all the more discouraging for that.

And yet, I keep trying, am driven to try.

~ciao

Apologies and Salutations

It's been a while since I've posted on here, hasn't it? I can't believe it's been nearly six weeks! I'm trying not to feel that I've been neglectful or derelict. While it is true I haven't done much work on Entropy, I have been starting other projects. I haven't put anything up here because I have nothing to share yet. I haven't made much headway into anything, and I certainly don't have anything polished enough to go on here.

I haven't been feeling up to much lately, either. Winter (and I find 'winter' tends to encompass November as well) is a hard time of year around here. I've been pushing myself very hard in some areas--too hard, really--and not enough in others. I haven't done enough writing to suit me, so I am making two different efforts to help change that, and I shall be posting them here.

One: I am going to attempt a weekly book review. Believe it or not, one of the best things a writer can do is to read a lot. I have been reading many books lately, and I want to continue to read. Sometimes I go through periods where I don't read a book for weeks, and I really don't like that. I hope that doing the reviews will encourage me to finally get around to reading all those books I've been intending to read.

Two: A daily free-write. Instead of a timed free-write, though, I'm going for writing as long as it takes me to get to a natural stopping point. (I guess that would mean I'd be writing a scene's worth of material or so.) Maybe it's better to say that I'd be working in miniature? It drives me nuts that I have all sorts of ideas for really long stories that I never finish. I'm trying to look at this free-write exercise as permission to go ahead and do something really short that will never become part of a larger story. I hope that, in accruing this body of disconnected scenes, I will be then inspired to work more on something else, maybe something that is long and needing a lot more attention than I've paid it before. Maybe I'll just end up with a pile of great ideas.

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what time I'd be posting these scribblings, but I am kind of fond of posting shortly before I go to bed. It makes me feel accomplished, somehow. Still, it's something to look forward to in these rather dark and chilly times.

~Later

In The Works

I realize I've been quiet on here lately. I promise I've been writing and not slacking off, though. As proof, I offer this list which may or may not be full of hot air and lies.

In the works:
*Chapter 12 of Entropy
*an unrelated K/S oneshot (which is close to having a finished rough draft! Yay!)
*A random and vague start of a Supernatural oneshot
*Some original science fiction-y stuff

See? Four entire items! I hope to actually post something soon that will substantiate their existences.

Later!

Prologue Complete

Yes, at some point in the near future, this will become relevant to the present story. I wish I'd put it up sooner...but it kind of didn't exist too long ago. Regardless, I hope you enjoy!


Prologue
-------

It had taken Sasuke nine years to get this far. Nine years of hating and growing and training. Nine years to shape himself, nine years of failure and doubt and killing off everything in himself that stood in the way. Nine years to hunt his brother down for the final fight. And now here he was, laying next to his brother’s still-warm body. He was exhausted. He was numb. Itachi’s corpse was still bleeding and he felt the need to get away from it, but he couldn‘t move. He lay there and the blood seeped into his clothing.

And then Madara came and snatched Sasuke’s proof of victory away. Sasuke made to chase, but he too collapsed in an abortive attempt to stand. He woke in a cave, prostrate on a makeshift bed. Madara explained everything and Sasuke’s world broke apart again. He twisted around to see the curse seal on his shoulder. It was still there, but it had changed. Sasuke touched it, and it was like live electricity tearing through him. His vision swam. He fainted.


When he woke for the second time in the cave, Madara was dead. His corpse continued to burn with the Amaterasu’s black flames. It seemed even he could not escape the attack, however instinctive its origins were. Sasuke struggled up off the pallet on the floor. He drew his sword and cut off Madara’s head. That face, nearly untouched by the fire, looked eerily similar to Itachi’s. Sasuke’s left eye opened wider and wider. Fire leapt from it. Madara’s head burned itself out and Sasuke dripped tears of blood.

He staggered down passageways, leaving smears of blood where he rested against the walls. Eventually, Sasuke came to a huge chamber with an seven-eyed statue. No, wait. It had nine eyes, but only seven of them were open. And then he saw his brother’s body at its foot and he didn’t care about the statue‘s eyes anymore.

Sasuke sat beside it--the body (his brother)-- for an indeterminate amount of time. He couldn’t make himself look at it. At him. At what he had been. He began to prepare for the disposal of Itachi.


The smoke and ash bit into his eyes. He breathed his brother in, held his breath until his lungs burned before he exhaled. Sasuke looked upward, watched the smoke spiral around the top of the cave. For the second time, he noticed the statue. This time, though, he realized what it was. He could see that it was beginning to destabilize. Sasuke hadn’t planned for this, didn’t think he’d ever have the misfortune. His options were simple: let it fall apart and be blown up by proximity when the bijuu escaped, or find a way to fix it, at least long enough to get away. What Sasuke really needed was more time. He wanted time to rest and think, but if he didn’t do something now, didn’t start to repair the damage now, it would be too late and he would be dead. The stress of the work still might kill him, but inaction definitely would. Sasuke took a deep breath with his eyes closed. He opened them, Sharingan swirling. He began.


Nine days later, it was done. Sasuke had re-structured the statue and its dangerous contents. When Sasuke finally looked up from his work, he saw that there were four people--no, seven--in the room with him. Karin, Suigetsu, and Juugo made a rough triangle around him. Protecting? Watching over? Sasuke wasn’t sure why they were doing it. But they stood between him and the other four. The others all wore Akatsuki cloaks.

Sasuke’s muscles screamed when he tried to stand. He batted away Karin’s manicured hand, instead allowing Juugo to pull him to his feet. Karin handed him a handkerchief. He gave her a look and she pointed to his nose. He wiped. The cloth came away bloody.

“Nice work,” said one of the cloaked figures.

Sasuke recognized him. It was his brother’s partner. Sasuke wracked his brains, trying to come up with a name. The thinking made his head pound. Or made it worse. He wasn’t really sure, at this point.

“Kisame,” said Suigetsu. “So nice to see you again.”

He bared his teeth in imitation of a smile. Kisame ignored him.


“You missed a spot,” said Kisame.

He pointed to Sasuke’s neck. Sasuke looked. His entire chest was streaked with red and brown. He scrubbed at it halfheartedly and it flaked off a bit at a time. His white shirt was a gory mess at the collar.

After the introductions were over, Sasuke explained that what he wanted was to destroy Konoha. Wipe it off the map. Why should the Akatsuki follow him? Well, aside from killing Itachi and Madara, Sasuke had fixed the statue, permanently. They were blocked from their ultimate goal, more or less for forever. And hadn’t it been Madara’s fondest wish to destroy the Leaf as well? Of course, he was in no position to force them to follow him. And, in fact, aside from what was bound to be a good fight, he had little to offer them. Zetsu tried to decline and Sasuke cut off one of his leaves in the blink of an eye. The next person to say no would lose a limb.

Pein and Sasuke actually got along well, their ideas of total destruction running along the same lines. Konan followed Pein without question. Zetsu was distinctly unhappy, but he could afford to wait for revenge. And Kisame…Well, Kisame was somewhat indifferent. He admitted, with a toothy grin, that he was curious to see what his former partner’s brother could really do. As nice as Sasuke’s work on the statue was, he wanted to see some fireworks.

And so they set out to destroy Konoha, eight against an entire village. They all knew it was a suicidal plan, but they just didn’t care, either from actual indifference or a lack of belief in their own mortality and fallibility.


The battle took nine hours. The village was almost completely destroyed. Sasuke’s forces were gone, and he himself was unconscious now, surrounded by a diminished group of former classmates and colleagues. Blood leaked out from underneath his eyelids. They watched him draw breath. They discussed what to do with him with hand signals, lest they wake him by speaking. They did not turn their backs on him. Night swept over the valley and stars blinked into the sky.


Nine minutes into Kakashi’s birthday, nine minutes into the night following Sasuke‘s return, Sasuke was unceremoniously dumped into Kakashi’s arms. Kakashi looked over the group. Tension knotted and strangled any possible conversation. He nodded and left them in the rubble of Konoha. He took Sasuke to Sakura for healing. A tent city sprawled outward from the hospital, and he wandered through, finally catching sight of her pink hair above the crowd. She treated Sasuke silently, her mouth held tight. Kakashi felt her eyes on his back as he carried his burden to ANBU headquarters. He felt nothing as he turned Sasuke over to Ibiki. All through this, Sasuke didn’t once stir.

-------------

Well! Wasn't that fun? I hope it wasn't too much like boring expository narrative. (I hope it was at least interesting expository narrative!) Just to be clear, this is the only chapter that's even close to being from Sasuke's perspective. Maybe that's because this was the only part of the story that was really his alone? I'm not really sure.

Anyway, I'll be slaving over chapter twelve for the foreseeable future and keeping the prologue-derived plot on the back burner. Kakashi and Sasuke need to work on their interpersonal issues, hahahahaha.

Later!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. All rights remain with its original creator, Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit from writing these stories.

Chapter 11 is done!

Well, okay. It's probably not completely finished, but it's a heck of a lot better and I feel somewhat confident in its lack of suckitude. If I do any more on it, I'm going to get confused and start taking out the good parts.

Chapter 11
------

Even though the house wasn’t very big, Kakashi and Sasuke still rattled around for a few weeks, tried to find places for things and for themselves. They each had a bedroom, and they shared the living room, bathroom, and kitchen. During the construction phase, Sasuke had argued for a week about which bedroom would be his: the one in the northeast corner. But, upon moving in, he decided that Kakashi’s was better and he took it over--when Kakashi had poked his head in, Sasuke had staked his claim with packs of gear on the bed. Kakashi merely sighed and kept unloading crates from the borrowed cart.

For a while, the boxes went round and round on an endless parade through the house as Kakashi or Sasuke changed his mind about what should go where. But everything found a place eventually, and Kakashi and Sasuke now faced the task of carving out niches for themselves.

Sasuke spent almost all of his time in his room. When he wasn’t eating or showering, he was sitting on his bed--or the roof above it--staring into the perpetually dark forest. Kakashi was frequently in the living room, lounging across the couch and thumbing through the same books he‘d been re-reading for years. When he tired of that, he went into the small cleared area in front of the house and made plans to develop a training yard there. The churned up dirt, left over from construction, acquired grass and flowers and plants Kakashi didn’t care to identify.

Sasuke took to yanking up the plants. When Kakashi asked, Sasuke gave him the “you’re an idiot” look. They were weeds, and yards don’t grow weeds. Kakashi questioned the logic in this, seeing as most of the yard was in fact forest. Sasuke refused to stop pulling weeds, and Kakashi decided this vigilante-ism was a tolerable character flaw. Besides, it was ultimately helping his goal of a training yard. Those plants would all get plowed under anyway. Not that Kakashi was in any hurry. He relished the planning.

Creating a training yard required nearly as much thought as that of planning a house. There were so many little details to think on. Kakashi wanted it to be as naturalized as possible; in his travels, he’d seen indoor and outdoor facilities with varying levels of sophistication. He found the obviously artificial ones distasteful. What was the point of training in a space that would never, ever occur in the field? Kakashi wanted a visceral setting, one that punched him in the gut and said “this is real.” He wanted the scents and sounds of nature around him, preferred the roughness of tree bark to the smoothness of a man-made climbing wall and sunlight to the incandescent floodlights of indoor arenas.

This was not to say that he wanted the training ground to resemble solely the forests of Fire country. Kakashi envisioned bits and pieces of foreign landscapes; the sand and rocky scarps of Wind country; the plains bordering Earth country with their six-foot-high grasses and deceptive horizons. He knew there was no way he could replicate the mountains in Snow country, but he gave himself better than fair chances of success with the coastal marshes that led to the Water country archipelago. He also had vague notions of water features--slippery rocks to climb and leap across, water to walk on. The thought alone made his heart pound harder with anticipated excitement. Kakashi wondered briefly if Sasuke had a favorite terrain.

These plans were time and energy consuming, which was, as far as Kakashi was concerned good. There were plenty of other thing he didn’t want to think too hard about, not the least of which was the distinct lack of training he’d been doing lately.

Kakashi was approaching ninja middle-age. Despite no lingering injuries or permanent damage, the hard life he’d lived for nearly three decades was taking its toll. He woke up with stiff joints and odd twinges. These faded away after stretching and working out for a short while, but they kept coming back. Rainy days, much closer together this far into the forest, left Kakashi feeling like he’d completed a particularly challenging mission not long ago.

His body missed the lack of constant exercise training provided. Kakashi told himself it was just readjustment to a lack of adrenaline coursing through him. He felt like he was walking underwater half the time, moving too slowly toward a future he couldn‘t see, even with his Sharingan flaring and wild and calling to the scattering of Uchiha blood in his veins.

Kakashi’s left eye had started hurting again, like back in the early post-transplant days, when he had struggled to integrate it. The eye burned in the socket, seared into his skull and left him much weaker-feeling than he’d like to admit. He tried, very hard, to ignore the un-ignorable parts of his life.

Kakashi felt a certain amount of guilt while trying to keep his head in the sand--just as he hadn’t been training, he hadn’t gotten within throwing distance of the memorial since Sasuke had come to live with him. He hadn’t had time. Or energy. Or something else necessary to do what he had to do, what he felt driven to do. He was recovering whatever it was that had been missing before. The guilt was becoming relentless and the urge to sit atop the memorial stones unremitting. Kakashi was half-surprised at the guilt he’d accrued over the past months, how heavily it weighed on him. It made him sloppy. It was distasteful and oddly disgraceful.

He could have been killed, literally killed, dozens of times over through that carelessness--by slipping up with Sasuke; by hostile nin while he remained only half-aware in his fugue of self-recrimination; or even in accidents that, under ordinary circumstances, would have been preventable. As much as it pained him to admit it, Kakashi couldn’t keep ignoring his dereliction. He needed to go to the monument again.

--------

I know it's not a very active chapter, but I just couldn't get to where I wanted to go without all this almost-extremely-boring narrative. I suppose it's a transitional chapter. The worst part of re-working this was, quite honestly, telling myself it was okay to chuck out the parts that weren't fitting. I get stuck with that all the time.

I cringe at setting aside what I've already written, but the idea of the story keeps changing. (Seriously. I've got at least three different plots that I could implement at this point...and more if I go back and change things from the beginning.) The heart of this story isn't static, and it's damnably hard to pin down and elucidate what, for now, is only a sort of vague instinct about how things are going to play out--despite me already knowing the plot and knowing what is going to happen, all roads leading to Rome and all that. Even the littlest changes now will affect the main plot points in future.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. Who the heck knows when chapter twelve will be done? I may skip right ahead to thirteen, if twelve proves inconsequential.

Later!

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. All rights remain with its original creator, Masashi Kishimoto. I make no profit from writing these stories.

Chapter 11

Okay. I can't remember what I may or may not have promised about chapter eleven, time-wise. I'm discovering that it needs a lot of work, way more work than most of the chapters I've edited so far. Unfortunately, it is one of those chapters that needs a lot of boring expository narrative to be consumed by interesting scenes with dialogue. It also needs, I think, to be split into two chapters. It's trying to cover two distinctly different topics. (And it's not giving either of them the attention they deserve.) I think that, by splitting the chapter, it will help give meaning to the material.

I read through the original chapter eleven,and I said to myself "What's the point of this chapter?" That is a bad sign. I'm a firm believer in each chapter or scene helping propel the overall story forward. There is currently no momentum in chapter eleven. It just kind of sits there and rambles for a bit before stopping uneventfully after six double-spaced pages. Really, there's fabulous potential. I just have to dig it out.

I started my edit/read through while I was at the laundromat. I'm beginning to enjoy a certain satisfaction knowing that the material I'm working on in public will someday lead to scenes that would be scandalous to work on in public. (And it makes me even happier to know that I'll be working those ones over in public too, most likely.)

Also on the plus side of public editing? There is no pesky cat trying to distract me.

Later!

p.s. The spellcheck function here sucks. It marked three words in this post as wrong, and then proceeded to suggest the exact same word--spelling, capitalization and all--as a correction. Maybe it's just being overly cautious, but when I spell "satisfaction" I mean "satisfaction." Don't mark things wrong that aren't spelled wrong!

Keep your fingers crossed for formatting!

It's poetry time! I only hope the formatting publishes correctly. Read it aloud, slowly, for the best reading. Enjoy!

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Every year I ask
why    why    why
A bee droning by
A nectarless flower

Seven years
bzzz    bzzz    bzzz
unflagging pain
from the un-healed wound

Still I ask
why him?    why me?    why any of us?
questions without answers
the bitter stinging never stops

The bee keeps flying
bzzz    bzzz    bzzz
no relief for tired wings
no pollen    no nectar    no honeycomb hive

No blossom smells sweet
why    why    why
seven starving years
have made the flowers vanish

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Okay, so not a happy poem. It is also a title-less poem. I've got it marked in my files as "me as a bee" but, while somewhat accurate, that doesn't really convey the right tone...

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I didn't start out having to trim a lot of excess, but I still shaped it a lot from its first draft. I had a lot of fun messing with formatting, too, figuring out how much space I needed to make the right amount of emphasis. I'm always tempted to edit a piece to death, especially when it comes to poetry, but I didn't find that this piece needed a lot of big changes. It needed tiny changes instead.

I like that sort of finicky, precise detailed work, partly because it is challenging to make each word count, and partly because it doesn't let me lose my focus--I don't drown myself in a flood of words and ideas like I tend to do when writing fiction.

Some other time, I'm going to have a monologue on my ideas about poetry, fiction, and writing in general...

Later!

Chapter Six: coming soon!

Okay. Chapter six is kind of sort of out of control. To begin with, it was the umbrella for several smaller-but-necessary scenes that were made entirely of dry summary-type narrative. I've been fleshing out the boring parts and it's gotten long enough that I've had to split chapter six into two separate chapters now (which means I've had to re-number the tentative chapters I'd already numbered.)

The good news is that I'm coming to the end of the "new" chapter six. (And by coming to the end of, I mean I'm almost done writing the new parts of it. Chapter six is probably going to be between two and three pages single-spaced. Originally, this part of the story was a scant two paragraphs. -___- )

The bad news is that I'm going to have to edit it some more. Editing is a laborious process. I end up going over the same sentence six times in a row until I'm happy with it. This isn't to say I haven't been spot editing all along. I just haven't done a thorough all-over job of it.

But fear not! I have a goal! I'm wanting to post it by bedtime...which generally means before/around midnight. (If I can manage to not get distracted, I know I can do it. ^_^ )

Later!

Updates and General Blather

Well. After several days of weather-induced horrible swelling and whatnot, my hands are fit for typing again! (It was pathetic. I couldn't hold onto a glass of water, let alone a pencil/poke keys on the keyboard.) At least, I'm ready for a little typing. It's still raining and I can feel the pain creeping up again. I'll be brief.

Romance novel: is still in the works. I'm naming characters and coming up with witty possible titles.

Fanfic O'Doom: I'm going to edit chapter four very soon. Maybe tomorrow I'll have it done and posted?

And now, for your enjoyment, a rough draft of a poem. I'm going to not look at it for a few days and then come back and edit the crap out of it. ^_^

---

Naming the Dead

one by one
people I've not met
people I've never seen
I frame up the pictures.

A visitor points one out:
"Why do you have Teddy Grindel?"
and I have to look past the glass to know.
"This man is dead." Or so I'm told.

Walking down a snowy street
he looks backward, over his shoulder at
something I can't see.
A dark-haired girl walks beside him.
She's facing the wrong way; her hair cascades down her back.

his lips are parted
stopped
in the middle of a word he never gets to say.
His eyes are arresting.

I am waiting for him to speak.

---

Well? I definitely feel it's unfinished, but it has potential for goodness, I think.

Teaser time!

This is just a little blurb from the recent past. It comes from the exciting random ideas pile. I didn't get past more than a page or two, plus a vague outline of plot. However, it has...potential for awesome! ^_^ It has no title to speak of. I have done no editing, save spellcheck and exchanging some instances of pronouns for the character's name.

(Really, I'm just putting it up because it's kind of silly.) Enjoy!

_____________

The trouble had begun, Paul supposed, when he had started school. Before then, his parents hadn’t bothered trying to get him to do math. But once he started to learn numbers, things had gone terribly awry, and no one could explain it. You see, any math equation or use of a ruler led Paul to the inevitable, single conclusion of three-eighths. One plus one? By the time he was done, it equaled three-eighths. The length of the school desk, in centimeters, meters, or acres? Three-eighths. If Suzie has three apples and gives away one each to both Jim and Andrea, she would, indisputably, have three-eighths of an apple left when Paul solved the problem.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know that one plus one equals two, or that the desk measured to eighty-seven centimeters. He was simply, completely incapable of writing or speaking the answer. He tried. He really, really tried. It was an inexplicable and probably magical compulsion to put down, shout out, whisper, or scrawl across the blackboard three-eighths. The teachers all saw him struggle. If Paul tried to write anything other than three-eighths, he scribbled wildly, trying to force out other numbers. Eventually, the lines that might have been the beginning of a four or a one devolved into a convoluted mess and came out the other side as three-eighths. The same thing happened if he tried to say it: a hopelessly garbled noise at the start and an emphatic “Three-eighths!” at the end.

Math was exhausting, and so, from nearly the start of school, he sailed through math on a pass-fail basis, determined by his attentiveness in the lecture parts. His school records had a somewhat cryptic note to this effect. Occasionally, stubborn or puzzled teachers tried to get him to answer a problem. One particularly odious fellow had had him caned every day for a week before finally giving up on “exorcising that willful boyishness” from him via a bamboo switch to his buttocks. Paul failed that year’s math class, but the headmaster overturned the grading decision once Paul’s parents got wind of the whole affair.
_______________________

Tada! It interests me to think where I could go with Paul at the helm.