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Is It Timelyly or Timily?

I’ll be traveling tonight and tomorrow and then again on Sunday and Monday. After thirty days of daily writing I hope my habit stands steadfast. I expect the entries won’t shine among my other gems and they may not get posted timelyly, but I promise they’ll get done and down.

Charming ran Out down Upper East Gang—before The Kink. Past Michael’s engine shop, River Bog (her backup coffee spot)—where Mona already sat playing dominoes with Slippi, Qhinka-tuii’s, and two Blue-n-whites. Upper East Gang before the Kink took her maybe 20 meters out of the way, but she knew how to dodge and when to duck and where to jump. She’d beat the old Lander monk back to her stall with enough time to catch her breath. He’d never suspect her spying.

Lander touri’s stayed out of the Upper of Benhá this early in the morning so Charming only contended with Bennies on the gang. Someone abandoned a hand-truck stacked with red roof panels crossways in the gang; Charming leapt it like a dolphin. A pair of fisherman and their wives pulled a net taut on the far side; she dropped to her knee then shoulder and log-rolled under it while the four jerked the skein up and out of the way. That kinda hurt but Charming felt like a red blood cell coursing through a living body.

Big Rhonda caught her eye and stepped out from her shadowed post, obviously expecting Charming to come to a halt. She didn’t. Never slowing, Charming threw up a not-right-now finger.

The Kink lay ahead.

270 words on day 531

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Looking for Stakes

I’m missing some stakes.

Short of avoiding personal harm I’ve not given Charming anything to overcome. The faceless evil trope tempts me. I like reading it when done well, but I prefer not to write it. I like my villains to have reasons—good reasons.

…

Brain back from unrecorded flights.

Finding her parents pops its head up as a thing, but never gains much traction in my thoughts. I’m not keen on making the dermatographia the crux either. Or I’ve not figured out how to make it the crux. Hard to tell which.

Back from a minor break.

I found a twist that might work to make Charming’s dermatographia much more interesting: time travel. If dermatographia could be used to communicate with people in the past that might be a fun way to raise the stakes. Charming now has a power worth controlling or guarding or developing.

Some of my immediate thoughts—Charming’s desire to reform Roundmartin—might lead to a raft of paradox challenges. Challenges that don’t seem fun to manage. But that’s what spreadsheets are for I suppose.

Need to think this new thought over some.

195 words on day 530

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Three-minute Drill Inception

The one-minute drills worked well last night. I’m tempted to try them again this morning in lieu of trying to hard. Or to count something as writing that really isn’t.

Let’s try a variation on the 0ne-minute drill. Let’s take the time up to three minutes. Enough time that I cannot be saved by the bell exactly.

Robert stepped into the drug store. Crider Family Drug never bussled with activity. On Wednesday afternoons when the school down the street let out ten minutes early it could be said to be busy. But it was never a loud place. Today, now, it was uneasily quiet. Robert drew his weapon and loosed the saftey.

Spring water damped the soil and wetted the moss. It rose through the fissures of granite from an underground stream. It dripped and ran to a bowl and collected to a clear clean sink of the iciest water you might imagine. When the volume crested the downhill…

Dogs barked everywhere. They barked in my dreams. They barked in the apartment over. They barked in the apartment across the hall. They barked in the alley below. Everywhere. Something oily slipped over the edge of the roof and ran like slime down the brick and in through the open window. I watch it bubble over the sill and into my room.

Gail settled her hand onto Greg’s knee like the final leaf fallen from a winter tree. She had already done anything she could do. She had covered for him when it first came. She had helped him to the bathroom as it grew more obvious. She had fed him, bathed him, and clothed him in the middle. She had made arrangements for a nurse to help in the end. Now the time lay past the end. All she could…

The fence ran from the log house down the meadow and back up into the treeline again. You couldn’t make out the entirety of the thing, but an occasional break int he trees showed that it drove back the direction the sun set in Spring. On the line that paralleled the back wall of the log house it was lost entirely, but it was still out there, built by hand, built alone. It saw-toothed back and forth because wood was too precious to waste on a post and the ground to stiff to dig without a metal…

Cicadas fucking ruined the evening air. One or two in the distance and a third near up might be fine, but John sat in the center of what must be the Thursday night cicada nexus. There were so many around him and so close he could actually see two of them shivering like fire alarms ringing.

462 words on day 529