Those That Make Me Make Them UpI will admit: I am bad at talking about process. I come from a people and place with a strong line of "Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do - hey, this looks interesting," so one of the reasons I have difficulty with talking about process is that I have some amount of trouble with the thing itself. At the moment I am afforded the luxury of messing around with words as play. I very much need to play more.
I will admit, too, that in my experience where the words end up coming from is a total mystery more half the time. There are times, true, when there is work to be done, and plots to advance, and characters desperately in need of something to do, and the only thing to do is press ahead, give them halting steps, and leave weaponry scattered around the drawing room. It is much more fun when they take matters into their own hands and teach me what happens next.
They do not need to be even shadows to do this. Just this evening a gentleman walked briskly into my text editor: I know he is a man, neither elderly nor a boy. I do not know what he looks like, smells like, or (largely) what he does with his time. As way of introduction, he said this:
"I do enjoy these buttered toasts."
...and from that there was an afternoon of warm sun in a garden slightly shabby, words uttered at a cast metal table and chairs coated too many times with white enamel, perhaps under some tree. Those at the table recline from the day, which has not been too long or unkind: they lean back a bit in their chairs to take leisure as a luxury, more so because it is not deserved. Someone there has, of course, done something unspeakable. They will likely pay.
Eventually, I may know his name. It usually takes a dozen tries. I am bad at that.
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