Lara Edged Awkwardly

  • k-avatargiant sticky bun
  • unsubstantiated
  • considerable
  • Ludwig Neitzche’s illness

Lara edged awkwardly through the narrow passage, moving crabwise with both an armload of philosophy and a giant sticky bun to pay attention to. She nibbled at the pastry as she moved to the appropriate location in the stacks to deposit the pretentious tomes that burdened her right arm.

Not dropping anything as she placed the heap of books on a nearby carrel took considerable dexterity. Then she had to work one-handed because her glazed left hand had more important things to worry about than — she glanced at the cover of the next volume — Ludwig Nietzche’s Illness.

She hoped to have time for a smoke break before that so-called reporter showed up. The cute one. Lara took a larger bite of the sweet, gooey treat, reminding herself that the rumors of this chick’s heterosexuality were as of yet unsubstantiated.

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It Wasn’t Long Before Bernard Fell Under Suspicion

  • by jenmass
  • punishments
  • suspicion

It wasn’t long before Bernard fell under suspicion. He attended mass with Father Mulcahey on the Sunday in question. He had a criminal past. His boots were found in the garbage can, caked with mud.

Bernard maintained his innocence, claiming the Father was just a good friend from way back. And as for his record, well he’d taken his punishments, paid his fees!

He couldn’t explain the boots though, and was quickly lynched by the angry mob.

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Tentative Steps

r-avatarAs we mentioned a few weeks ago, we’ve been distracted from our fiction by an unrelated project. That project is finally in its death throes — finally! — and we will soon turn our eyes and brains back to writing.

As the title of this post suggests, we’ve taken a few hesitant steps back into our imaginary world already. On our walks, we’ve started to talk about the characters again. It feels like we’ve been away from them forever, and I suspect that it’s going to be a little tricky to get back into the flow. We plan to finish kicking the side-project’s ass, then take a little break to watch the new season of Arrested Development (our carrot through this whole process). Kent has a week off, so the timing is excellent.

Once the Bluth family is done with us, we’ll recommit to the fiction. We’ll start by rereading the unfinished novel, to get our sea legs back, and then we’ll push through and write the rest of it.

A writing partner can make it easier to get back on track with a project, because you are responsible to someone besides yourself.

The right partner can also take on the majority of the work when you have other obligations, thereby minimizing downtime. Just be sure to return the favor when your partner’s life gets hectic.

In the Rune Skelley case, being married means that this intrusion impacted us both equally, and derailed the entire novel. Maybe we need to hire an intern to take up the slack.

Blood Jets Up To The Ceiling

  • k-avataremptied
  • jets
  • nameplate
  • within the system

Blood jets up to the ceiling from Daggart’s neck-stump, swamping the desk blotter and sweeping the nameplate to the floor, and then, emptied at last, his torso slumps back in the swivel chair as if wearied of exsanguination.

“Well,” thinks Maurice as he wipes his blade, “so much for working within the system.”

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Beautiful Music

r-avatarAs collaborators, you and your writing partner should strive to make beautiful music together, or least beautiful prose. But what happens when you can’t decide on what music to play in the work room?

Jen and Kent have a lot of overlap in musical tastes, most importantly agreeing on what sort of music should never, under any circumstances, be played. That’s a nice, solid base to build on. There are bands that we both enjoy, and that make pretty successful seeds for Pandora stations (although all Pandora roads seem to lead to the Strokes, who are not a favorite of either of us).

We eschew headphones in the writing cave, because we like to be able to talk to each other easily. The problems arise when Kent wants to get his prog on, or when Jen falls a little too far down the Jack White rabbit hole. When your background music becomes a distraction for your coauthor, a change must be made.

Here at Skelley Co we’ve found that The Beatles’ Love, or classical music makes a good compromise.

That or we just wait ten minutes until our son starts practicing his drums. He effectively drowns out the world. Problem solved.

Claudia Thanked the Semiskilled Employee

  • k-avatarthirty-sixth
  • thanked
  • semiskilled
  • avenged

Claudia thanked the semiskilled employee as her thirty-sixth and final item traversed the scanner and made its way down to the steel-clad staging area for conveyance into a sack, her choice of wood-pulp or petrochemical composition, and surrendered the necessary currency to atone for all these items’ removal from the shelves, and wondered if her inner smile showed at all as she produced also that instrument of rebate, a coupon rare and wondrous that would regain her all the money and more from this accursed edifice, this store that had hardened her soul and rounded her back. Yes, at last she would be avenged.

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Niggling Doubts Plagued the Countess

  • by jenoperator
  • unremitting
  • attitudes
  • niggling

Niggling doubts plagued the Countess as she waited, gold-plated telephone pressed to her dainty, shell-like ear, and mussing her elaborate coiffure in much the same way Dirk had done during their one night of hedonistic abandon all those weeks ago, for the operator to place the call that would forever change her life, and the attitudes of all the women in her social circle who were so unremitting in their pessimism.

Bonus points for using all the prompts in a single sentence!

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Creative Drought

r-avatarWe’ve reached the point in the lifecycle of every Rune Skelley project where we have to put the manuscript aside and do other things. Through our years writing together we’ve identified this as our main weak spot, and we’ve developed a system for dealing with it without losing all forward momentum.

I imagine that every writer encounters problems of the same ilk, where you’ve written all you can and there is no more creative spark. A coauthor can often help cover for minor bouts of writer’s block, as we talked about before. But sometimes you both deplete your compositional resources at the same time. When we first started writing, this led to us walking away from the project for months at a time while our batteries recharged. These days we have several novels that are in various stages of being finished, and we try to shuffle between them as needed. If we can’t write anything new on Project 4, well Project 3 needs to reread and edited.

This time is a little different though. We hadn’t quite hit the wall when we decided to put the novel aside. The excuses were creeping in, and the output on any particular evening was waning, but we were both still chugging along, noses to the grindstone. Life intervened, tossing us a huge project that requires a lot of time and focus. Apart from attending our weekly critique group and updating this blog, we haven’t done anything writing related for nearly a month. It’s a very unusual position to find ourselves in.

The outside project is starting to wind down. We’re not ready to set quill to paper again just yet, but hope to get back to it in another week or two. And we hope that having a partner will ease the transition back to the writing life.

Bernice, Steely Eyes Inscrutable

  • k-avatarunmeaning
  • book!
  • trigger
  • preaching

Bernice, steely eyes inscrutable and finger tense upon the trigger, thinking of the words Leopold so aptly chose to illuminate unmeaning, and thinking also of her wanton youth in Shanghai, but not listening to the inane preaching of the tent-revival charlatan, lastly thought, “Please shut up so I can read my book!“

Bonus points for using all the prompts in a single sentence!

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