Just jumped back down and read what I had to say on May 31. And...wow. I don't like to consider myself prophetic, but...that was exactly what my June 1 and 2 self needed to hear. God is awe inspiring, and His hand of preparation is sometimes impossible to miss.

May 31 is a day that makes me smile. Not because it was the last day I paid any attention to the blog-world (and any of you out there who might be reading what I have to say), but because it's the day before everything in my life changed. My world in April and May of this year, was very literary. I read so many books...was writing a couple times a week (which is really often, for me)...having trouble making time to be dragged out of my little tower-room for real-life interaction.

And then June 1 happened.

Not very many people want to walk through life barefoot. It's easy, if you're not used to being barefoot, to pick up thorns or stumble into something dirty that you're likely to carry with you for a while. It's not a risk most people are willing to take. Women prance through life in heels so tall they aren't even touching the ground. Men stomp through in heavy boots, oblivious of what they might be crushing or run through in athletic shoes specially designed to keep them from feeling the ground when they do touch it. Other people shuffle through in ragged Wal-Mart shoes, doing the best they can to just stay upright.

When you're barefoot, you notice shoes. And you notice when someone is wearing them awkwardly. Because sometimes, people wear shoes just because they've never been told they could take them off.

June 1 of this year, I had a conversation with someone from another life. Someone I knew and loved once long, long ago. I hadn't learned to take my shoes off, back then, and I didn't know enough to recognize that he was wearing his just to stay upright. All I knew, then, was that if we tried to walk very far together, we'd trip over each other and both end up with bloodied knees. He was sure if I held his hand we wouldn't fall, but I knew better and said so often enough that he eventually turned and walked away.

Life is funny, so they say. True love will not be denied and all that. I'm not so convinced that's true and I've always scoffed at the Ever After idea that we are all meant to find the one for us. Yet, here I am, living a story as beautiful as any a fantasy author could have devised. Because, after we'd walked apart for long enough...after I'd learned the beauty of living barefoot in intimate connection with the living, breathing world...after he'd changed his shoes a couple times and still not found a pair that felt right...we walked back into each other's lives.

It's been a beautiful summer. A summer full of flowing rivers and sunlight through oak leaves and long talks under the stars. Tents and moss and friends and family, tea at sunrise atop a rock to the roar of the highway while all the hotel guests watch us from behind the glass of their CNN-filled dining room and wonder why we're crazy. Kisses in the rain, tears at the remembrance of harder times, countless hours in the car learning each other through conversations that we hope will never stop.

And, once he knew he could, my Love took his shoes off.

He still puts them back on, some days. When he needs a little extra security or he's not quite sure where we're going to be walking next. But most days we walk barefoot, in and out of the lives of those we love, hands clasped, fingers entwined.

Sometimes, when you walk barefoot and the world thinks you're crazy and you're tired of looking for someone to walk barefoot with you, you figure it must be easier and better to do it alone.

But sometimes your Creator reminds you that you don't know quite as much as you think you do and steps into your life to teach you something beautifully new. Today, for me, that means walking barefoot with someone: pointing out the bits of ground to avoid stepping on, apologizing when I tread on his toes, reminding him that I don't mind when he steps on mine and smiling bigger than I ever have before when he pulls me into his arms and shows me how to dance.

My Love and I will be married next summer. Barefoot.

Because this is what I was reading today, and I found it to be amazing. I find myself enchanted by cycles and rhythms of all kinds, and the sea is one of the most compelling there is. Everything, I find, turns in a rhythm. Call it a cycle, or the Wheel of Time, or whatever you like; what is, has been before, what is past will come again. The question is--will you fight it? Or embrace the beauty of it?

"So beautiful is the still hour of the sea's withdrawal, as beautiful as the sea's return when encroaching waves pound up the beach, pressing to reach those dark rumpled chains of seaweed which mark the last high tide.


"We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanence, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity -- in freedom, in the sense that dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hopng even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now."

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea


Posted by Tesi

Yet another re-write I'm pretty proud of. This morning, this is how the paragraph read:

Sabas didn't disappoint. He lifted gently, rising above the trees, moving toward the circling sarkan, ready to return. A touch and a word from Devyn turned him and sent him back to the wreck of the camp. It reeked of drying blood, but Sabas didn't hesitate as he dropped into the space between the trees. Carefully, as if he knew the need, he wrapped his great talons around the men and lifted them with him to the sky. The weight was awkward, slowing him, but he took his place at the front and the others fell into line behind him, flying into the darkest part of the night.

And now:




The clearing was a shrine to carnage. It reeked of fresh blood, putrifying as it soaked into the thirsty dirt. Twisted bodies lay where they had fallen, pieces torn away and thrown aside or missing entirely. Devyn wanted to close his eyes, to pull Sabas away and return without seeing. On raids, he was always one of the first to call his sarkan back--back to the emptiness of the sky. The men thought it was so he could keep watch.


His empty stomach turned and he tasted the acid of sickness in his throat. This is your fault. Your fault. Your fault. It was no longer his father's voice, in his head. Now, in the dead darkness, it was his own.
Swallowing down the burning in his throat, Devyn gently guided Sabas lower, until he was close enough for his voice to carry to the ground.


"Go back to your sarkan! Stay clear of the trees!" Shadowy movement within the copse told him he'd been heard and he let Sabas swing away and pull up again, circling. The other sarkan were high above them; Devyn thought he could feel their riders' eyes on his back, watching. Waiting. Hoping they weren't about to see their companions slaughtered.


The men had moved into the clearing, the corpse of their sarkan a wall between them and the dead. Devyn shifted Sabas' reins to his left hand and leaned forward as far as he could, his hand running gently along Sabas' neck. It was still tacky with blood.


"We need to bring them home, Sabas." Did the sarkan cock his head back to listen? Or was it Devyn's imagination? "Will you help me bring them home?"


A light touch on the reins drew Sabas into the drop. Wings open to slow his fall, he drifted toward the men with a cautiousness Devyn had never seen him use. Carefully, as if he knew the need, he wrapped his great talons around the men and lifted them with him to the sky. The weight was awkward, throwing him off balance, but he compensated quickly and was more than ready when Devyn signaled their return home.


Of course, it's longer now, but...I'm pretty sure it's worth it. :-)


Copyright 2011, by Tesi

So, I'm in the re-write stage of my WIP. Some days this is just frustrating, because what I really want to be doing is making new story, but I'm stuck making an "old" story better. Other days, I find myself relieved to get to fix bad writing. It's sort of like sweeping my carpeted stairs. I hate doing it, I put it off for weeks, but when I do it--when they're clean, I wonder why I didn't realize earlier what a difference it would make to clean them up. 


(I would use mopping my floors as an analogy here, but I'm currently in the midst of a frustrating can't-find-soap-that-doesn't-leave-a-film-on-my-wood-floor experience, so the analogy would just fail miserably.)


But as a taste, here's two paragraphs--before and after. I'd be interested to know what you think of the difference three re-writes make. 

Before:

Devyn's band left with the moonrise, dropping into the darkness below the plateau before lifting far above the camp. Sabas met the sky with eagerness as they turned toward the moon, swollen and red with its own new life. His wings cut through the air in heavy strokes, the deep whump of their motion reverberating through Devyn's bones. Reaching up, he adjusted the leather goggles Captain had brought back from a recent trip to the market. Devyn wasn't sure if he liked the goggles, but fiddling with them served as a distraction from the voice in his head. It was a familiar voice, one he attributed to his father, though he wasn't sure any more if that was true or just a story that gave him comfort.

"Red moon," it said, quietly. "Blood will be shed this night. Blood will be shed."

After:

The moon hovered above the black horizon, swollen and red with new life against the ash grey sky. Sabas rose into the sky eagerly, his muscles tight with anticipation. His wings cut through the hot air in heavy strokes, their beat pulsing through Devyn like a heartbeat. Devyn closed his eyes and let the rush of air run fingers through his hair and over his body, wishing it could pull away the voice in his mind, too. His father's voice, he had always thought, though he wasn't sure, anymore, if it or he just wanted it to be. Either way, he didn't like what it was saying tonight.

"Red moon," it was whispering, over and over. "Blood will be shed this night. Blood will be shed."

I find it interesting that, frequently, re-writing consists greatly of removing words. Trimming the fat, I guess--saying more with less. I think I managed that here but, as I said, I'd be interested in your thoughts. Meanwhile, I'm going to bed. 

After I finish sweeping my stairs.

So, I've been reading this week. Voraciously, in fact, and it feels SO NICE. It's been a really long time since I've been lost in a novel, and the experience is reminding me why it is that I like to write. Want to write. Need to write.

Yes, I hear your question. The answer is, Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare. Young Adult Fantasy novel, if you're unfamiliar with Clare. Angel is the first of her Infernal Devices series. She became successful with her Mortal Instruments series, which I haven't read. True to my habit, I picked up the first of the prequel series, rather than the first of the series that's completed. (Or was completed--Mortal Instruments was a trilogy, but I understand the fourth book was just published...which makes it not a trilogy any more, of course.) The reason for this is that Devices is set in 1878 London, whereas Instruments is set in 2007 New York. If you don't know why this is an important distinction for me, you don't know enough about my literary interests. (We can fix that...)

Anyway...Clockwork Angel was...amazing. Utterly fantastic. Cassandra Clare manages to write a strongly character-driven book, while simultaneously doing an excellent job of producing an engrossing plot. And, of course, absolutely gorgeously bloody fight scenes. Mmmm. The last time I felt this way about a book was The Wizard Hunters by Martha Wells. Ironically, both are steam-punk/fantasy books, but I don't think the steam-punk element has anything to do with how much I like them. Or maybe it does, and I haven't figure it out yet. I'll have to think about that.

Either way, Reading Angel has taught me several things about myself, which I am shortly going to scuttle off to apply.

1-I really, really, really like character driven books. (This is not new news.)

2-I love books where two young men play off each other well. This especially works when one of the guys has a sarcastic, or ironic sense of humor, and the other finds him a little ridiculous but is completely capable of matching him wit for wit, when necessary.

3-I like books with a touch of romance. (Also not exactly new news...but the trick is that I really don't like books where the romance drives the plot. I like its use as an undercurrent stressor.)

4-Black leather, swords and blood-soaked long hair are awesome. And I need to be less careful of the blood in my writing. It's there, it belongs, I need to let the reader see it.

5-The books I'm writing are YA Fantasy. This is a revelation to me. Last year, when I pitched my book to an agent (who was very interested in the premise), she asked me what my target audience was, and I didn't know how to answer. I almost said YA Fantasy, but then I thought about the content in some of it, and wasn't sure. I'm still not 100% sure if that will push it into the adult category, but I think YA really is what I'm writing for...and that's just fine. I like YA Fantasy, a lot. I like how it tends to be less pretentious than Adult Fantasy, how it tends to be a little more fun. I like how the worlds are a little easier to enter, often times, and the battles end up being a little more personal and a little less epic. I like how it's read, and enjoyed, by people from 10-40. (Obviously, none of that's true of all YA or all Adult, but I think in general it seems to be true.)

Also, I like writing--and reading--about 16-25 year olds, especially the ones who've lived a lot of life before getting to their age. There's something intriguing about the age when one is crossing from childhood to adulthood; something magical about coming alive and becoming; something entrancing about the vitality and enthusiasm--the lack of self-preservation instinct, if you will--that runs high at that age. And something particularly tragic about a 17 year old who believes they've irreparably destroyed their life.

And so, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to write more blood. I'm going to figure out a way to infuse humor, and play Devyn and Obram off one another better. I'm going to be at peace with the romantic tension between Devyn and Tahira (like the blood, it's there and it belongs, and I need to let the readers see it). And I'm going to work on the intensity of my plot.

So...bye! Off I go!

Copyright 2011, by Tesi

Been holding onto this picture for three months, trying to figure out how to write it. Realized yesterday that it's supposed to be a poem. Not sure how it works (poetry isn't my forté), but here it is for your enjoyment. Comments welcome.

Airport Music

Walking with my head down,
carpet tiles rush toward me,
then disappear behind.
People part around me.
I am alone
with myself
not speaking.

The music twines through them
past my invisible barrier
inviting itself in
without asking
it touches me
then dances away
unseen.

I look up to see
only nameless
people
walking
with their heads down
too.

The music reaches out
again
lifting my head
with teasing fingers.
It’s the soundtrack
of a beautiful European movie
where something
magical happens.

I want it to be real.
More than I’ve wanted
anything
in days.

I’m walking with my head up
looking for the magician
who could make such beautiful music,
afraid I’ll walk past a certain point
and the music will retreat
and I’ll will know it was electronic,
piped in and fake
all along.

The people part like curtains
and the magician is revealed
(dressed in black
like all good magicians)
sitting on a stool
with a violin.

I gave him money.
For bringing magic
to my world.

He winked at me.

Portland, Oregon January 2011
Copyright March 19, 2011
by Tesi