The Mimosa Effect 2

When the clock strikes infinity you know it’s time to go; fair weather is always a sign that something’s coming.

I bite my lip and think of how salt tastes, when salt is red and thick and runs down your chin like honey.

When his eyes were blue, you loved him; when his face was white you mourned him; when his bones turned to dust you forgot him; when the tree grew up from his shadow you remembered.

But that wasn’t really how it went, was it? There weren’t really any other people there. You were alone, in bare feet, because you’d lost your shoes. Your nails were caked with earth that was red as as playdoh, thick as tar. You were standing in a field of dirt, where grass used to grow but didn’t any more. Your hair was matted and your cheeks were dirty in that way they get when you’ve been crying, and there isn’t any grown-up around to wipe your cheeks or thumb the sandman’s sand from the corners of your eyes. You were holding the ragged edge blanket , the one you didn’t call your blankie any more but still slept with under your pillow. You talked to your toys not because you really believed they were listening, but because you didn’t have anyone else to talk to. There was no apocalypse, no plague, no war or famine, only you. Kids aren’t supposed to spend all their time alone with their thoughts; it’s just not natural. Kids aren’t supposed to sit quietly, especially not of their own volition. Where did the silence come from, when it was always so loud inside your head? When everything was song and sound and screaming. When colours made you ache and beauty made you cry and fear made you sick in a way no fever ever had. Remember when you thought you were horses, running, and everything felt wrong and hot and the bed was hard and remember, the horses, and how you knew you weren’t really there, but you were. You were in your own body and yet you weren’t, as if pi equalled 3 and the speed of light was a variable not a constant.

Then one day you woke up walking, some familiar route you knew by heart, some place you hadn’t lived in for years, feeling the cold air on your skin.

Now bitter tannin stains my lips, dry leaves crackle under my tongue, whispering poems of dead and dying things, morning grass wet with dew, leaves scarred by a pall of frost. This is where regrets find us, glancing casually backwards, over our shoulder, as an echo of what we were catches our eye, scurrying out of sight before we can name it.

- For Saturday Scribes, and Sunday Scribblings “Regrets”

Advice tidbit of the day:

“On shelves, position books with spines facing inward.
Then reading becomes a true search for enlightenment.”

- from The Little Book of Wrong Shui, by Rohan Candappa

I must, with great chagrine, announce my membership in the L.A.M.E. club (which includes such august members as Laini Taylor, from whom I snagged the “official” club seal, below).

In fact, I am so dedicated to my new club, that I am misapplying my energy right now by writing this, especially since I have yet to work on my novel today (leaving my poor characters stuck right in the middle of a climactic supernatural fight scene, of all things). I am hoping to shirk my club duties later this weekend by (gasp) actually writing novel bits, but for now, I must hang my head and bemoan the heinous crime of having let all the day’s coffee energy go to waste.

To see more seals (Laini has some for artists too! also monkeys, and procrastinating zombie hunters), go here, or you can make your own by going here.

Granted, I haven’t read very many statistics this year, and I’m sure there are some that are far worse (number of innocent children killed as a result of warfare, number of people who count ABBA among their favourite bands, that kind of thing). But this one just floored me (and made me want to go whimper in a corner, while whispering to my nearly-finished novel that it’s all going to be all right, really….)

From the blog of a literary agent, amongst her other 2008 stats:

2
number of new clients [yes, that's for the entire year]

35,000
estimated number of queries read and responded to

88
full manuscripts requested [out of the 35k queries]

[click]

Sorry, that was just me re-hinging my jaw. What was that again, about how all I need to do to get published is (a) finish the damned book, and (b) find myself a literary agent? I think I might just wander down to the convenience store and buy a lottery ticket instead. Favourite lucky numbers, anyone?