Bluejo's Journal

2:34pm: Sundown -- it's a dramatic presentation!
nineweaving noticed that as Sundown is a 2 hour play, it's actually a long form dramatic presentation and hence eligible for Hugo nomination in that category. And as they're performing it again in San Antonio (I can't wait to see it) and it'll be a DVD, it's not impossible that enough nominators might see it. Dramatic presentation doesn't have to be movies. It could be an awesome musical play.

Speaking of which here's a fan made trailer and here's another link to the Kickstarter, which ends tomorrow and has just broken $15,000.

7:00pm: Galatia
As we are heirs of all they did so far,
so we are living in the dawn of time.
We are posterity they dreamed of, and we are
the shells and tide-wrack that a child
called castles and left for the sea to claim.
We're all and nothing, in this eye-blink now,
a thousand years in both directions, names,
and all that lives can mean, the single time
you spoke, and spoke intact, with all your breath,
then telescoped, remembered, made to stand.
at last forgotten in its consequences, death,
dust with the other moments,
then from some future looking back to read
that burning urgent note, five hundred years,
before it's noticed, otherwise, indeed,
it might become proverbial, both at once,
the only way to live or speak or write.
The thing is, I think T.S. Eliot's wrong
and right at once, the burnt-rose ash, he's right,
contains significance, but so do names,
and actions, and the active dreams we dare,
you can't say Rousseau didn't change the world
or that his mother did, she did her share,
we all do, we all always do, the world
is here because we do, the castle built
and washed away each day, all built on sand
but it still matters, every tear that's spilt.
They copied every character by hand
across two thousand years, so we have heard
Euripides, and Plato, Sophocles,
and though we have lacunae, we have words
to fill the space between, and we don't know,
we never know, or can, significance,
or what things may survive, we have to act
as if it's destiny, as if it's chance,
here in this fleeting only time we have
to act and speak and make what mark we may
out of the flotsam on the edge of sea
time creeping ever onward day by day,
they've been a long time dead, and so will we.

12:21pm: Destiny
There's a thing I often find productive when I'm writing fantasy that I don't hear people talk about much.

People often talk about looking at real historical magic, and I find that generally useless and especially when you're talking about Europe. Genuine historical magic is people groping towards science, and there's nothing less numinous than magic that works like science. Genuine superstitions are a lot more useful for fantasy.

But the thing I've found useful is thinking about different cultures' different perceptions of destiny.

The Celts had this concept of geas, the destined thing that was going to get you, and everyone had a different one and some of them were very weird and you might or might not know yours. If you know you're going to be killed by a green boar with no ears, then you know you're safe in battle -- but if you tell your best friend, then when you steal his wife he might go out there with a barrel of dye looking for a boar. It's an interesting worldview.

The Norse believes in wyrd. Wyrd is odd -- you start off with free will, but everything you do constrains everything you can do, so that in the end everything is absolutely inevitable. (Writing novels is like this. The first word can be anything, but the last word has all the weight of what has come before pressing down to make it what it has to be.)

Classical Greece has Moira -- moira is the line drawn around the possibilities of your fate. You can't overstep the line -- that's hubris and it'll get you. But you should try to fill in as much as you can of your potential within the line. Of course, you can't see the line...

Christianity has providence -- everything happening for the best, everything meant to happen.

I have not encountered any human cultures that don't have a belief in some kind of destiny. What I've found useful in writing fantasy is to look at these kinds of ideas and then put two of them up against each other and see what I get.

11:50am: Sundown: $14,000!
Amazingly, the Sassafrass Kickstarter has reached $14,000, which I never really thought it would. There's going to be a live performance of Sundown in Worldcon in San Antonio, which means I will get to see it live. This makes me really happy.

Any more money they raise will go towards being able to organize more live performances at future cons. And there's a new $15,000 stretch goal of a teaching version of "My Brother, My Enemy". 3 more days to go.

Reaching $14,000 also means that my Loki poem, "Mountain Doors" has been posted as an update for backers. This poem is a companion piece to the Odin poem I posted here. It starts:

Ice and fire, ice and fire
gold and blue flames dancing into
ice and fire, ice and fire
crystal caverns reaching into
ice and fire, hollow glacier,
swirling stone and twirling lava,
shades of ice and shapes of fire
leaping licking ash and orange
save your breath to cool your porridge

7:58pm: Thessaly: Done


I started it on April 23rd, and by my calculations I have worked on it for 29 days -- missed some when my mother-in-law was here, and a week for Wiscon, and for copyedit of What Makes This Book So Great and for fixing MRC.

Who wants to read it? Volunteer in comments.

6:06pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 3857
Total words: 90535
Files: 5
Tea: Pu erh
Music: Orchestral suites 1&2
Reason for stopping: done

Done. Through draft. I need to go through and fix things, which I will do now.

There can be a sequel but there doesn't have to be.

1:05am: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2576
Total words: 86599
Files: 4
Tea: Still raspberry and peach
Music: Orchestral Suites 1 & 2
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

One more chapter to go, and I hope I can make it work.

10:47pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2138
Total words: 84020
Files: 4
Tea: Raspberry and Peach
Music: Orchestral Suites 1 & 2
Reason for stopping: stopped to make dinner, and have now finished chapter.

Sensible thing to do might be to leave the next chapter for tomorrow. I need to look something up, and by chance I have the right book.

Two chapters left, one of them long and challenging.

5:45pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2384
Total words: 81852
Files: 4
Tea: Green Earl Grey
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of bit

And if I'm right, that's the last Maia chapter. 3 chapters to go. The problem with this structure is that if I'm wrong and I can't get it all in, it needs another 6 chapters after that, as it comes in units of six, I can't have one extra or something. Oh well, it'll work out either way. I hope.

7:34pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2421
Total words: 79194
Files: 5
Tea: Pu erh
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of bit.

I'm a bit slow and sleepy today and it's going slowly. But getting there.

1:22am: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2423
Total words: 76455
Files: 5
Tea: I forgot. I made some and left it by the kettle. Oh well, I'll drink it now, but it's kind of cold.
Music: Brandenburg Concertos.
Reason for stopping: end of chapter. Also, bedtime.

So I have pretty much resolved one plot thread.

I am slightly worried that Simmea is too good to be true.

Also, this really isn't something anyone else would write. People don't write about gods much, and especially not from this perspective.

4:38pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2546
Total words: 73916
Files: 4
Tea: Green tea with ginseng
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of this bit

The interesting question of whether robots have souls.

11:07am: Sundown Kickstarter: Ask to Embla
The Sassafrass Kickstarter has passed $13,000, and another one of my poems has been posted as an update for backers only.

This is "Ask to Embla". In Norse mythology, the first humans are made by the gods out of an ash tree ("Ask") and an elm tree ("Embla"). Ask is the first man, and Embla the first woman. This is described in the song "Gift of Life", but it moves on immediately to their children, whereas I wondered how they'd get to that point. What would two people who had recently been trees say to each other? Also, of course, A.S. Byatt uses this bit of mythology in Possession where the Victorian poet Randolph Henry Ash writes a poem called "Ask to Embla" -- and we don't ever see that poem in the book. This is my imagination of that scene. And it's long. Here's the first verse:

When we stood mute, rooted,
We grew side by side
Shared storms and seasons
Drank from deep waters,
Flowered and fruited,
Washed by the same tides
Swayed for the same winds
knowing no reasons.

for the rest, support the Kickstarter -- the updates are visible even to people who only donate $1 and every little helps get towards the Loki poem, and the hope of future live performances in other cons.

8:04pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2983
Total words: 71319
Files: 4
Tea: Gaba dragon
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of chapter.

That's the other half of yesterday's chapter and a new chapter.

I believe there are 7 chapters left.

8:16pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 1944
Total words: 68323
Files: 4
Tea: Green Earl Grey
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: No idea how to write the next bit

I had to go back and tweak an earlier bit and some of those words are from that -- cut lots, but also added lots. It's all smoother now.

2:09pm: Machiavelli and Prospero
Letter 267

"Piero Soderini to Niccoli Machiavelli, 13 April 1521

My very dear Niccolo. Because the affair at Ragusa was not satisfactory to you, since Lord Prospero has asked me to recommend a man capable of managing his affairs and I know your trustworthiness and your ability, I proposed you to him. ..."

From: Machiavelli and his Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, trans and ed by James B. Atkinson and David Sices. p334

The Swiss. The French. His Holiness. The King of Spain.
And now this bookish Duke back to Milan
Just where he was before? Antonio was twice the man.
He followed his advantage, his own gain.

And Soderini thinks I'd work for him? That I'd enfold
My fortunes with that duke tossed in a boat
a scarecrow, broken staff and tattered coat,
And I to run his state, simply for gold?

What if it's true there's magic, that somehow
He summons spirits from the earth and sky?
And maybe he would teach those arts to me?

Well, nothing. Let him manage now
And I'll stay here and write, and ponder why,
And each of us stay in our library.

11:54pm: New Poem for Sundown Backers
The Sassafrass Kickstarter has passed $12,000, so another one of my poems will be going out soon, exclusively to backers.

This one is a poem, not a song. It's called "The Love and the Oath" which title comes from the song My Brother My Enemy. It's not quite set within the Sundown universe, but it's very much the version of Odin and Loki from Sundown. I wanted to write about them before they were enemies, to share a moment when they were happy together.

The poem starts:

Summer afternoon, and every rook in the city
Is crowded into one elm tree
Disputing possession.

The only way to get the rest of it is to subscribe to the Kickstarter -- you know you want to! If they get to $13,000 they'll share my "Ask to Embla" poem, and at $14,000 my Loki song. Eventually I will probably put these poems in a collection, but as I just did a collection at Wiscon, another one is a long way off. See them now for as little as $10.

9:14pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2227
Total words: 66379
Files: 5
Tea: White Tea with Elderflower and Apricot
Music: 1st and 2nd Orchestral Suites
Reason for stopping: end of bit.

Coming along.

9:36pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2101
Total words: 63794
Files: 4
Tea: Noir et Rouge
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: end of bit

I've been revising My Real Children all weekend, but it is now done and I can get on with this.

3:23pm: Thud: Thessaly
Words: 2494
Total words: 61651
Files: 4
Tea: Noir et Rouge
Music: Brandenburg Concertos
Reason for stopping: End of chapter

I haven't forgotten how to do it with being away.

I know it's silly, but I do always worry.

I love writing. I don't know why I ever do anything else, except for my hands I suppose. The balance of everything in this book is such fun. And on the train I thought I could write a sequel, which would mean I wouldn't have to stop writing about these people when I finish this book. If I did that this would have to have a different title and "Thessaly" be the series title. In which case this one is _The Just City_ and the sequel would be _The Philosopher Kings_.

I read bits of it at Wiscon, incidentally, and everyone was really enthusiastic.

11:44am: Five Things
1) The King's Peace, The King's Name and The Prize in the Game are 99p daily deals at Amazon UK so if you are in the UK and you want them, this would seem like a good time.

2) There's a post by Patrick on Tor.com about my forthcoming collection of Tor.com pieces What Makes This Book So Great.

3) Ha'Penny is out in the new trade paperback edition with the nice cover. It's actually been out for a couple of weeks, but I forgot to tell you. Half a Crown will be out in a matching edition in the autumn. This will be the first paperback of any kind. (And before you start -- I prefer A format "mass market" sized paperbacks too, but you and I do not constitute sufficient of a market to make them economically viable any more, except for bestsellers.)

4) Tentative release date for My Real Children of "next summer". That's summer 2014. So that's good.

5) Sassafrass have met the $11,000 goal, so my second "Odin on the Tree" poem will be going out to backers today. It's in modern old lore metre with caesuras. If they crack $12,000 they'll be sending the Odin and Loki one (which I really like and which will have a proper title by then), at $13,000 "Ask to Embla" (now written), and at $14,000 the (technically singable) Loki poem that I wrote on the train, "Mountain Doors". You can get this one and get everyone closer to getting all the others by contributing as little as $10. (Also, their music is amazing.)

11:24pm: Characters, Complicity and Caring: My Wiscon Speech
I've been thinking recently about the way readers come to be in sympathy with characters in a story. This is something that isn't talked about much, and when it is it seems to be in terms of how to manipulate the reader. Indeed, I stopped reading Orson Scott Card for a different reason than the reason everyone else stopped reading him -- long ago he said in a book on how to write that you get reader sympathy by taking a sympathetic character, preferably a child, and doing something terrible to them, like for instance torturing them. Once I knew he was doing this on purpose it was like "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain", I couldn't enjoy reading because I felt manipulated. Also, torturing children? Really? That's the only way to make me care? I don't think so.

Yet... we do care about characters when we read books. And the writer is doing something to make us care. There's something going on there, and it doesn't have to be a cynical thing. Indeed, the main failure mode of fiction for me is if I don't care about the characters. If you ever see me nitpicking worldbuilding and pointing out plot holes they're either really egregious or else the real problem is that I didn't care about the characters and I was poking at other things. Go to somebody else to hear about what's wrong with the windmills in _Red Mars_ or the carnivorous aliens in _The Sparrow_, my problem with both books is with characters not acting like people. If I care about the characters I'll overlook or forgive almost anything else. So what makes me care about the characters? Why do I care so much about Therem Harth rem i'r Estraven that I was prepared to fight a duel for his honour the other day, while I find the protagonist of The Sparrow ludicrous? It definitely isn't how much they suffer. Nobody suffers more than that Jesuit priest in The Sparrow -- what was his name again? (That's another bad sign, if I can't remember their names.)

What Le Guin does with Estraven is actually interestingly Platonic -- she shows us a truly admirable character from inside and outside and makes us wish to emulate him, or at least be his friend. Estraven has been the top person on my list of "fictional characters I'd invite to a dinner party" for decades. (Throwing gender balance right out of the window...) But Estraven takes a long time to get to know, especially for Genly Ai, our Earth-human "normal" character in _The Left Hand of Darkness_. There's a long ramp up to caring, but I really do care. I think this is an unusual approach, and it resembles my spear-point theory -- the writer can build the spear for a long time and when they eventually drive it home so that a little bit of point goes in a long way. But you have to keep reading while that spear is getting built, you don't have any reason to care the first second, the first word. Estraven doesnm't start of especially sympathetic, from Genly's point of view. But as Genly comes to know Estraven so do we, so that by the end we really care.

There's another technique people talk about, which I touched on with Genly being the "normal" character. They say you should have everyperson characters so that readers can see themselves as them. I've been rolling my eyes at that since I was a child -- how limited do those people really think I am? Maybe some people like this, but I'm much more likely to be interested by a weird character, an unusual voice. Indeed, that's a much better way of getting me -- strange and fascinating will always grab me, whatever it is. Offer me "The king was pregnant" and I want to know more. I am intrigued. This is a way of getting me to read on -- get me to have questions I want answered. There's another whole technique there, where the writer gets the reader to have lots of questions and ratchets them up, answering some of them but always leading on with more. This works really well the first time I read something, but there has to be something more for me to come back to a book, because on the second read I know the answers, and I still need to care. There are also writers who are much better with questions than answers, so you read on wondering and then find the answers relatively unsatisfying. Those are books I won't pick up again. Tepper's early work is like that for me. I love her questions, but not her answers.

There's another standard technique which I call jeopardy. The writer shows the character in danger, threatened, with something at stake. The reader doesn't have any reason to care yet, but the idea is that the stakes on their own will make the reader sympathetic. The spaceship is going to fall into the sun! The barbarians are coming, duck! This can work, but it can also backfire badly. If you show me characters in a situation of high excitement in the first paragraph before I have any reason to know them or care about them, I will yawn. Barbarians, huh? So what? The danger itself isn't enough, the spearpoint without the spear doesn't go through. And actually even when I do care about the characters constantly putting them on a knife edge when they always pull through will start to bore me if I don't really believe in the jeopardy. Actually killing off a major character isn't something most writers do lightly, and killing off the redshirt characters while the major characters survive makes things worse, not better. Of course, you can get away with this a lot more if you do kill off characters that nobody would expect to die, characters the reader likes and cares about. There's another problem with making people care with jeopardy though -- if that's all you have, you have to keep upping the stakes, and it can become ludicrous. Jeopardy is a good servant but a bad master.

A really good example of jeopardy done well is Butler's Dawn -- it begins with a human female rescued from a disastrous war on Earth alone on a spaceship with aliens. But it actually starts "Alive! Still alive. Alive... again." That's good writing -- way to grab me in five words, three of them the same one repeated!

Then there's complicity. I recently saw the original UK version of "House of Cards", and then soon after the US version. This clarified something for me. The US version didn't mess up any of the things I thought it would... it messed up different things. The UK version doesn't waste a second, it's about as tight as something can be, and the US version sprawls all over the place. But the huge difference is that Ian Richardson's Francis Urquhart is charming, he seduces the viewer into going along with him. Kevin Spacey's Frank Underwood in the US version is a jerk. I would never have said I'd found Urquhart loveable if I hadn't seen Underwood and realised that the real difference is how my sympathies are being placed. Urquhart addresses the viewer directly in Richard III style, but unlike Richard III as usually played, Urquhart confides in us, he flatters us, he smiles at us and we want him to succeed. He makes us complicit in what he is doing right up to the point at the end when we have gone along way too far with him and then he turns on us. It's a remarkably powerful piece of art and I recommend it.

This issue of reader complicity is interesting to me because it's not the usual way of getting sympathy so it's a new angle at looking at it. It made me think of unlikeable characters that we like anyway -- Humbert Humbert in Lolita in first person addressing us directly and weaving webs of words. Robert Graves's Claudius, Gene Wolfe's Severian. Most of my examples are first person, or theatrically addressing us across the footlights. In first person it's easy to reach out directly to the reader. George R.R. Martin does it in third -- very close third, admittedly, but still in third. One of the great things in A Song of Ice and Fire is how Martin gives us characters that are unlikeable and then puts us in their heads and makes us sympathise. Sometimes he does it by making them different from inside than the way they looked from outside. Other times he does it with new information about their motivation. But in A Dance With Dragons he made me sympathise again with a character I'd really come to hate. And how did he do this? By torturing him! I can't believe we're back to that! Martin did it by showing us from inside what it means to be broken and try to come back from that. But it's the same technique.

Then I thought about Heinlein. Heinlein had a very interesting writing technique which really can be considered the prose equivalent of Urquhart looking down through the bannistairs and raising an eyebrow at us. Heinlein often wrote as if he was letting the readers into the secret. It doesn't matter what the secret is, the important thing is the tone of voice that's sharing it. Heinlein doesn't patronize, doesn't impart the information from on high, he lets us in on it. He makes the reader feel included -- let in on how things really work, and with an implicitly excluded set of others who don't know. There are a lot of things wrong with Heinlein, but I find him insanely readable, and it's this tone that does it. Whether he's writing in first or third he opens the text up and lets the reader in. When I've talked about Heinlein on Tor.com I've called this a "confiding" tone. Heinlein confides in the reader, he doesn't inform us of the way his worlds work. He confides it to us. And then he talks about the imagined science fictional aspects of his world from the point of view of characters who take it all for granted and expects us to be clever enough to work it out -- as we are. And we are flattered that we are.

And I'm back to writers manipulating readers, aren't I?

But what's wrong with it?

I mean if it's cold and calculated it sounds revolting, but really if it's to the benefit of art then what's wrong with it? Writers do want readers to care about their characters, their stories, their worlds. Having techniques for doing that isn't any different from having techniques for anything else. It just sounds so awful.

The way I think about this when I'm writing it's as if I'm shaping a bas relief from the inside -- the reader's going to be looking at it from the outside, and from a little distance away. There's clear space between the outside of the bas relief and the reader, and all I can control is how far and where the bas relief goes out. So it's useful to me to know where the reader is likely to be standing, and what kinds of angles they're likely to be viewing it from.

In shaping the bas relief from the inside I'm not trying to do anything to the reader. I'm reaching out into the space between us. They're standing on their side. Reading is a participatory experience. They bring who they are. Nothing is going to work for everyone. I'm writing it inside me and they're reading it inside them, I'm doing what I'm doing and they're experiencing what they're experiencing, but the art is happening in that space between. That clear space is the space where the reader and I are collaborating. There's a whole lot I can't control -- I can't control anything but the inside of the bas relief. I can't control the previous life of the reader and how that's going to interact with how the reader sees the story. I can't select my reader -- well, I *could*, but it would be a bit limiting. When I'm writing I'm generally trying to write things that are going to work for a broad spectrum of people. But I don't try to write for everyone. When Among Others came out people kept asking me if it worked for non-genre readers, and I was absolutely flummoxed. Nobody ever asked me that before, about my other books. It was a fantasy novel. I never thought of it being read as anything else, being read by people who would think the magic wasn't real within the context of the story. Why would they think it should be? They weren't in my spectrum of imagined readers. Fortunately it kind of worked for them anyway. Mostly.

We've probably all had the experience of giving a great genre book to a non-genre reader and having them completely fail to understand it because they were lacking the set of genre reading protocols. When I think of where the reader will be standing I think of a reader who has those protocols, who won't try to think that everything is a metaphor. I think of a reader who is prepared to think about what's going on, an intelligent reader who pays attention. And I imagine a reader of this time and from this culture. I don't think very much about how to shape the story for somebody from the futrure, or somebody from a compltely different culture. I'd make very different choices if I was thinking about them -- I'd have to explain different things. They'd take different things for granted. This isn't to say somebody from the future or another culture can't get anything out of my bas relief, the same as the readers not expecting fantasy got something, but not what I expected. They'll be looking at it from a different angle than I expect. It might not look at alll the way I expected it to look from there. They'd either have to do some work to read it from where I expect the reader to be, the same way I have to when I read a book from another culture that has no idea what looks weird to me.

But I expect a mostly US reader, even though I'm not American. This is because until recently I've only been published in the US. But I was being interviewed when _Among Others_ came out in Britain and they asked where I was from, and I started to say "The South Wales mining Valleys" and I realised that for a UK context I could just say "The Valleys" and the rest was implicit. For a US context I'd say it all, because I wouldn't expect the reader to know. That's the kind of thing I mean.

I first had this thought about bas reliefs and where the reader is standing during a flamewar on a Trollope mailing list. It had divided violently on the question of footnotes. Some of the participants loved them and others hated them. I myself tend to hate them in fiction, they interrupt the flow, and all they ever give you are worldbuilding spoilers. But reading what other people were saying I figured out that they wanted them because they were providing them with a kind of scaffolding to stand on that brought them nearer to where the original readers would have been. I hate it when I read "Mary got into the carriage(1)" and I stop and turn to the note and it says "A horse drawn conveyance". But if you really didn't know? The original reader would have known -- Trollope's implied reader. And those people wanted the footnotes to be in that position -- not reading it as a text from an alien world the way I do, but getting as close to the original reader's position as they could. I then played with this difference of where the reader is a lot when I was writing Tooth and Claw. I had a perfectly good idea that the real reader was going to approve of cooked meat and disapprove of cannibalism but the narrator was of course assuming the opposite, so that was fun.

When I think about this whole thing I'm conflicted. As a reader, I certainly want to care about the characters. And as I writer I want my readers to care about them. But I don't want to feel manipulated, and I don't want to feel that I am manipulating people -- and mostly I don't feel that as a writer, even when I am thinking about these things. The bas relief metaphor works for me, but it's a metaphor. I've been thinking about these techniques and how they work because that's useful. I hope this is useful and interesting to you too, and I'd be happy to talk to anyone about any of this later -- but especially about complicity and how Estraven is awesome.

1:01pm: Odin on the Tree
Sassafrass have made their $10,000 stretch goal, and as promised, here is the Odin poem. If they make $11,000 there will be another Odin poem (already written), sent to backers only, at $12,000 one about Odin and Loki (already written), at $13,000 I shall write Ask to Embla, and at $14,000 a Loki poem (already written) as already mentioned. All these will only be sent to backers, but I will mention them here -- and you can be a backer for as little as $1.

Light flick, leaf flash
words well, wonder...

Light flick, leaf flash,
words well, wonder...

I wonder what wisdom I came here to gain
in this flicker of light, on this tree, in this pain,
as my sacrifice made to myself in my pride,
hung here and given whole.

Light fails, blood price
death, war, fire, ice.

Here is memory's price, that I killed and I lied
and I pondered death's price as I lived, I denied
the dominion of death for the races I shaped
and gave my breath to draw them through the dark.

Throne, price, hang tree,
fire, ice, you, me

(Mystery, mystery, teach us our history)

So the visions I see are the price of a throne
where I hang from this gallows and always alone,
with the runes I can read and my worlds lying free
with no more mystery.

Ash tree, world fruit,
leaf, light, well root.

And the sight that I gain is the price of an eye
as the wind shakes the branches and passes me by
and the raven-swift rustlings of thought and desire
become the price of all that I require.

Times branch, winds blow
words well, you know.

I am I as I hang in the heart of this tree
and there are no directions in all I can see
and I bind myself fast to the duty I owe
with all my mastery.

Suns rise, wind shakes
dream sons, hope wakes.

No up and no down and no start and no end
and the worlds are all mine, with no equal, no friend,
just the dream of a father that sons may surpass
and the hope to guide them forward, through the dark.

Nine worlds, ice, sire,
best worlds, desire

I shaped the nine worlds from the wreck of the war
and the fragments of all that had stood there before
and I stood as the father of all I had made
alone as I have stayed.

Light comes, wind near,
words well, dreams fear.

With my strength and my cunning and all I can lend
and the wisdom of runes that no price can amend
and the choice that I made when I bound myself here
they all lie bare before me, free and clear.

Fire, ice, wait breath
wind knows, life, death
wonder, I wonder, I wonder...

For nine nights open-eyed with the Norns and the tree
in the wind, until everything's speaking to me
and the future lies open, with my mystery
but bound by prophecy.
So I dream of a fire to make me feel warm
and a friend who would stand by my side in the storm
and a son who could teach me a new way to be,
as my wonders keep revolving, through the dark.

(built such wonders, and lost them again to the dark)

12:34pm: Haiku Ear Ring Poem
Not so good without the ear-rings, but anyway. The way this works is that elisem makes a pile of ear-rings and people pick out a pair they like and then Elise gives them a title and they write a haiku and get to keep the ear-rings.

Morag's Machine

Symmetrical? Yes.
But time flows both ways and we
Always find the spring.

12:09am: Thud: Thessaly, and off to Wiscon
Words: 2241
Total words: 58949
Files: 4
Tea: Peppermint.
Music: Orchestral Suites 1&2
Reason for stopping: People stop? People stop when they're writing about Socrates trying to have a dialogue with robots? No, wait, people do totally stop and go to bed and then go to Wiscon in the morning.

I'm off to Wiscon in the morning! I am packed. I'm going by train to Chicago and then I have a ride from there with ashnistrike. I'll be reading in Madison on Thursday, and there for the con, and not home again until Wednesday night next week. I did think seriously about taking the DOS laptop with me so I could write on the train, but I decided the DOS laptop is too precious to risk. Normal thuds will be resumed as soon as possible.