[UPDATE] When you plant the right seed... · 12:08am Dec 19th, 2021
...you get exactly the fruit you need.
So I'm pausing for a brief break of 5-15 minutes or so as I write chapter 9 of Empire, and I'm having to do this a lot for this particular scene.
Minor spoilers ahead, and I talk about dark subjects, you've been warned.
So this entire fic has been an exercise in catharsis for me. Coming to grips with being a mother instead of a father, recovering from being homeless (which is always a traumatic experience), and healing from a severe injury. Some of what I'm writing for Sunset's character arc is lifted almost directly from my own life and experiences.
There's a scene where Sunset's motorcycle catastrophically fails. The coolant system blows, injuring her arm. Her wrist and hand get lanced with heated metal and liquid and she gets covered in engine fluids. This happens while she's homeless, which means she doesn't have anyone around to help her.
With a different vehicle and only slightly less catastrophic failure, this is what happened to me in the summer of 2019. I didn't get any metal in my arm, but I did get severe burns and you can still see the injury even though I've fully healed up.
If I hadn't had my girlfriend with me, I would have had an appointment with the morgue that evening and there would have been a traffic snarl backed up for miles while the EMTs and cops had to retrieve my body from the freeway.
As I'm writing this scene, I'm feeling phantom pains in my arm.
So as I've explained before, part of my writing process is to find music that puts me in a "mode" for a particular scene or chapter, and when it's longer form I usually will put it on loop or use it as a "seed" for an algorithmically generated station.
The above-mentioned scene was already in the process of being written when this came on.
In station mode, Amazon music doesn't allow for looping a track, so I've rewound to the start of this song several times, 'cause it's perfectly dark.
Just a head's up for y'all (and you probably saw this coming):
Chapter 9 is going to be long. You're getting the short version and it's going to be over 10k words at least. I've already split the narrative arc into two chapters (Ch. 9 & 10 were originally a single chapter) and there's no good way to break this narrative up.
Please do not complain in the comments about how it's super long, I know it is.
I honestly don't care if it's long. Hell, I wouldn't have cared if you HADN'T broken up Chapter 9 into 2 chapters.
If it's worth reading, then the length is irrelevant.
Uhh, Chrystal? Joanna called, she wants her codename back.
(Inb4 I'm the only one who gets it)
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Perfect Dark. Not surprised you don't know it, it was pretty obscure.
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Just looked it up...yeah, that title kinda got lost in the History(tm) that happened at the time.