Month: May 2012

Letting It Go

~ Bon Steele ~ 3 Comments

Wow.

I’ve been so writer-lazy this last week.
I haven’t written on any of the stories currently on percolate in my head. I haven’t sat down and pondered what the best way to extricate and/or implicate my heroes and villains. No character sketches, no gazing at maps, thinking. No outlines of plot. My blog has suffered, too. I haven’t really written for it. Nor have I read and commented on the other blogs that I follow.

Nothing.

On the one hand, I am saddened by this. I literally have scads of time – and I am puttering around my house, doing laundry and scrubbing toilets.

 

 

 

 

What’s WRONG with me?

Well, nothing. I have spent the last few weeks writing pretty intensely for school. My brain is tired. I am tired. I just don’t want to sit at my desk and write. Writing is a lot of work and I have other things to do, right now. Even if those priorities are things that I would normally avoid like a horde of  mutated zombie pigs.

On fire.

And you know what?
That is OK.

I think that I am coming to find out – gee whiz, only taken me 30 years or so – that my creativity seems to run best when I don’t fuck with it.

Just a little bit ago, this break in the words would have freaked me out. I’d have been all “oh noes! my writing ability has left me! woe! woe!”   *EYE ROLL*

But a good book, given by a wonderful person has helped me to get, to grok on a truly fundamental level that even when I am not pounding the keyboards like a maniacal monkey, I am still awesome. I still write. I still create.

So.
I am taking the cues from the gray Jell-O between my ears and the advice of friends and loved ones.

Beating myself up, flagellating myself with emotional whips, wearing guilt shirts? Does NOTHING for me.

But apparently cleaning toilets does and huffing my laundry does.

As I was scrubbing yesterday, I realized why a character of mine is so angry at her beloved, and what she is going to do about it.

Sweet!

War and the Healer

~ Bon Steele ~ Leave a comment

Bit of a piece I’ve been desultorily working on. Hope y’all like.

Originally posted at
My Dreamwdith account. I also post on my site, The Process 

 Comments welcome. :)

War and the Healer

~ Bon Steele ~ 2 Comments

Bit of a piece I’ve been desultorily working on.  Hope y’all like.  🙂

 

 

She yanked the arrow from the lad, whispering a quick Healing pact to dull his pain.  Brief agony flared along her flank but subsided in a moment allowing her to finish her ministrations.  She finished the transaction quickly, clamping down on blood vessels and intestines.   The boy gasped in pain then subsided.  He would live.   She continued her delicate work, clamping off bleeders and stopping infection before it had a chance to take hold.

As she worked, the soldier’s face relaxed.  He had dropped into the trance common to all trauma patients. She motioned a medico over to finish his treatment and stood, exhaling sharply.  A cacophony of wails – felt, if not truly heard – greeted her.   There was so many this time!  How she hated these little wars.  So many lost!  And for what?   A few more goats?  Pah.  It sickened her.

“Ma’am?”  a voice swam out of rancid dark.  “So sorry ma’am but, there’s trouble with one the new ones…”   the slave’s thick monotone trailed off.

Igraine reached forward and felt for the youngster’s scarred hands.  She guided them to her mouth, so he would be sure to hear and understand.  “I hear.  Where?”

She could feel blood collecting in her shoes but knew that it would be a matter of moments before the outside wounds closed. She would just have to move carefully until the interior wounds caught up.

The slave listened to her response against his fingers and then beckoned her forward.  His bare back glistened in the smoky light.  Humped scars crossed his skin, crisscrossing one another down past the brief clout he wore.  One foot ended in a mangled twist of flesh, causing him to lurch along.  Not a problem here in the monastery, thought Igraine.  But, outside?  Dead within a week, if he was lucky.

The boy moving ahead of her was all of sixteen. He wasn’t a victim of a raiding party.  No.  Those scars on his body were caused by his own tribe.  He had been born with a defect of hearing.  Of course, it hadn’t been noticed until he was older- — about four or so.  Those ignorant savages had assumed a demon had possessed the boy.  They tried to beat it out of him, brand it out of him.

From what she could understand his hearing wasn’t totally gone.  Everything simply sounded as if it was coming from far away.  It was better if he could see you – lip reading.  But in absence of light, he could “read” your words on your lips.  Igraine’s own sister had taught him that.

Sometimes, she felt that only by eradicating all humans would the world truly know peace.