FICTION FRIDAY OR ELSE!

Ok.

We here at Consider Your Ass Kicked! have to explain a few things to you people about how writing fiction is done around here. I recognize I've fallen down on the job these past few Fiction Fridays. I'm not going to list the mitigating circumstances, I'm just going to point out a few things and then I am going to give you the good news that TODAY, by hock or by crock, you WILL get a Fiction Friday installment.

But first: a word. A word on my methods.

I refuse to rush a few of the ongoing stories I'm pulling along at their own pace, or close enough to it. I was just saying the other day, you can't just push through to the end, on a story. If you do, you'll never see how it really ends! The end that would have come. You'll just blaze over what really happened in that little world you created, you will lose the true story by superimposing your own forced, crafted ending and I'm telling you, it is going to feel fake. Maybe only just a little fake! But it's going to ring just that slight bit off.

See, I believe this is why God doesn't write our stories for us, despite what some pussies believe on that score. No offense to the theologians out there!

I'm pretty serious about my fiction, as you can see by the terms and comparisons I use. Actually I should note: I have no problem with your fiction. However you want to do it. If how I do is not how you do, that's cool by me. Mine is not a judgmental stance! Nothing could be more personal, more individualized, than the ins and outs of anybody's creative process. So if you write your stories differently - as far as I'm concerned, it's fine with me however you write yours! If you like to just force on through, pushing right past significant obstacles and indicators to some fake ending and say, "yeah, that's good enough for me," well, who am I to criticize you?

Hi. My name's Joe. Pleased to meet you.

But the point is. Just speaking for me, myself - as a personal choice and a personal standard - I can't settle for that kind of a trash, garbage work style. I write the story and I am just as interested in how it turns out as anybody. Maybe I can see certain future events looming, sticking out of the mist, but it's not because I dropped a plot mountain down in my path in advance. It's because a mountain is a damn large object. Most times, big enough to see well in advance of when you get to it, and so you kind of know some of the general shape of the events you're walking towards. But when the path just ends...ends in midair, the mist clears and all there appears to be is a chasm...

Well, sorry. I'm not going to force a path through that rings false. I will lower myself down humbly and sit, buddha-fashion, before the chasm. Humbly, says I! With humility! I will contemplate the path that must be, until the way opens to me. I will not put fingers to lips in a shrill whistle, summoning up a busy brigade of my imagination's Army Corps of Engineers to jimmy-jack some contrived, ugly-ass bridge over that chasm for me. No! I want to wait for a way to appear that feels true. That feels natural and believable and inevitable. That feels real. And if I sit patiently, waiting, open to the true, real, naturalistic resolution or continuation of that story's path, then eventually my patience will be rewarded and suddenly in one moment, the mist will clear and there it will be: I will raise my eyes up see it, riding down the wind with mane streaming, swooping in gloriously on iridescent dove's wings, unicorn horn shining like mother-of-pearl, landing in front of me with a clack and a clatter of gleaming golden hooves and tossing its proud head as its dark, beguiling tourmaline eyes beckon me to leap to my feet with a shout and jump on bareback, for a thrilling ride to the other side of that chasm.

But see, you have to wait. You have to have patience. Because if you just force that continuation, what you end up with is not going to be realistic!

So there's that. What I'm saying here is, while I can't just cobble up another chapter for you of Some say a stranger..., or Poor Bee Stories, or any of my other ongoing sagas, what I can do is monkey up some damn half-assed brand-new thing for you from scratch, for today's edition of Fiction Friday, and that's exactly what I'm going to do. A little later on.

Beginnings are always easier.