Part 4: A Body at Rest
by
Joseph Devon
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(Please note: This story is the fourth part of a series of stories beginning with, “Part 1: Second Choice,” and while it is designed to stand alone it does draw heavily on the foundation of characters and events that were created in “Part 1: Second Choice,” and continued through Parts 2 and 3. Basically, I have to highly recommend that you start at “Part 1: Second Choice” and continue on in order.)
Matthew stood at the top of the steps and looked down at Bethesda Fountain. A crowd was gathering in the early winter morning. He watched as much of the crowd arrived at the fountain by walking across the boat pond to the north, and a few appeared next to the fountain, their bodies wavering and misty until they took shape and looked around, saw a friend, started talking.
There were a few members of the crowd who were oblivious to all of this. Two young lovers, huddling against each other, bundled in heavy winter gear, were standing by the northern benches and quite a few of the water-walkers continued on their way by walking right through them.
A family taking a photo on the near side of the fountain was equally oblivious. Smiling for the camera, they did not notice the constant stream of people who were wavering into existence all around them.
“It’s kind of creepy,” Matthew said. Continue reading ‘Part 4: A Body at Rest’
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Things are moving along at a rather crazy pace over on the Word document containing this story. I’m taking a little break now but I’ve got plenty more to do and I absolutely have to finish a first draft by tonight. I don’t have tons of time tomorrow and what I do have I want to use for rewriting.
I’m dying to take an hour break and watch some Wire but I think I just need to shut up and stagger my way to “The End” now rather than risk trying to reenter this story.
So…really I have nothing much to say.
For entertainment go here and test your geography.
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I’m taking on some rather large characters in this story. Researching them correctly is turning out to be problem number one. But in the end I’m pretty sure what I’ll end up doing is getting a nice relaxed grip on things and then running like hell for daylight ignoring any and all discrepancies between my story and reality. It’s always worked in the past.
The second problem, and one that has caused me to bang my forehead on my desk any number of times so far, is that this is mostly one long flashback, and that flashback spans sixty years or so and I’m not coming up with any very good way of moving forward through those years. I don’t want to just put a section break in and then start the first sentance of the next section, “It was twenty years later and…” but really I’m not real sure what else to do. I get the feeling that it would be very easy to go overboard with cleverness to solve this problem.
I think simpler is probably better here.
I looked up “overloaded” and got the header photo. Get it? Now that’s clever.
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Things are chugging along. I’ve been chained to my desk all day and I’ve punched out about 4,000 words. I didn’t get anything done yesterday, I’d be much happier if I were further along but then again I’m further along than I was yesterday. One plays strange mind games while writing.
I’m far enough along that I felt comfortable catching a showing of Old School on TBS. Granted, maybe I was in denial and should have been forcing myself to write more, but, whatever. I watched Old School. I haven’t seen this movie in a few years. I was rather stunned by how amazing it is. I remember liking it but I think it was so surrounded by hype that by the time I saw it it was hard to seperate out what I thought. It’s pretty clear now. Even on TBS with commercials and while IMing and e-mailing in the background this movie is one of the best things to come out of Hollywood in the past decade.
Also The Wire Season 4 comes up on HBO On Demand at midnight tonight. I’m so staying up to watch at least one episode.
The header is one of the pictures that came up when I searched for progress. I don’t get it.
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Not only am I so on top of next week’s story that I’m actually worried, but I’ve even got my title picked out. Pretty sure I’ve got it, anyway. It’s got a nice ring and has some degree of double meaning to it, which I’m always a fan of.
This is nice since I was never crazy about “Second Choice” as a title and “Three Lessons” I kind of got saddled with in a rather crazy attempt to have sequential numbers in the titles of the Matthew and Epp stories. “Sunrise Over the Dakota” I liked but I was very very lacking in the sleep department when it came time to title that one and I think I could have done better.
So really this is the first title in these stories that I like.
It’s about time.
Now I just need to write the thing.
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The problem with having my story already is that I think I have my story already. I’ve got most of the basic structure worked out, which is good, except that it’s also meaningless. Nothing but nothing but nothing can take the place of sitting down and typing 5,000 words. I mean, I could have my story completely fleshed out, have an outline (I don’t do that often but occasionally I will) and all sorts of notes, but things will always change rather significantly between all that and the actual written word.
Sometimes you kind of get the feeling that the notes and fleshing out and thinking is all sort of a waste since you’re just going to make up a bunch of crap when you start typing anyway.
Right.
Point is I’m being my usual procrastinating self and have it in my head that since so much of this story is worked out I don’t need to start writing it yet. Yes. Because why would I ever want to get a head start on one of these stories? Oh, Future-Joe is going to be mighty angry with Past-Joe in a few days.
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Matthew and Epp are back. Although this time it’s going to be more Epp heavy. Epp and Kyo to be precise. At least I think that’s where I’m heading. Pretty sure I’ve got my basic story but I may be biting off more than I can chew.
Anyway, my main point here is that with this story that’ll be four Matthew and Epp stories and I think I’m safe committing to the fact that by the end of this whole project there will be a string of Matthew and Epp stories that will make up an entire book. I’ve been hesitant to set that in stone because it means a lot of strange things as far as this project goes and it makes each successive story harder, and I need to make sure I’ve got my overall story worked out while also making each story stand on its own, and blah blah blah. Whatever. I’m officially going to give it a shot.
You hear that, internet? I’m writing a book in serial form because of you. 150 years and we’re right back to Dickens.
So if you haven’t done so yet, go ahead and start with Second Choice and work your way through Part 2 and Part 3. We’re on to Part 4 in a little over a week.
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Five days in the Bahamas at a wedding has done strange things to my mind. Granted, it was a fantastic wedding and an amazing time. I was right in the meaty part of the wedding curve. I always figure that the closer you are to the center of things at a wedding the better. You’re friends or family with a higher percentage of people there and you get to meet and greet with the total strangers at the rehearsal dinner before the big party so you have more familiar faces when the actual day shows up. Too far, though, and things become too hot and you’re too centered.
Basically, being a groomsman is about the best. A nice central role, everyone knows you’re close to the wedding party, but you have no responsibilities whatsoever. I was a little past that in the role of best man. Best man’s got to give a speech, and that changed things a bit. It’s still nice, though. At least I wasn’t the actual groom.
I’m not married so I can’t verify this, but on the whole I get the feeling that the bride and groom are the two people at the wedding who get to enjoy it the least. There’s a little too much responsibility, a little too much required socializing, a little too much stress. There are exceptions, of course, and by the end of the night, once the speeches are over, and there’s no need to worry about the caterer, and there’s nothing left to do but enjoy the band, then everybody certainly gets to have fun. But I’m pretty sure that the groomsmen get to have the most fun for the longest period of time.
Anyway, it was a great weekend and it was nice to unplug for real for the first time since I started this project.
Plugging back in is going a little rough. I think I’m still on Island Time. But I’ll figure it out…manana.
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