Technical Difficulties

ROSENCRANTZ: Boring!
GUILDENSTERN: I beg your pardon?
ROSENCRANTZ: You're boring!
GUILDENSTERN: I beg your pardon.
ROSENCRANTZ: You're boring, I'm boring, the entire world is boring boring boring.
GUILDENSTERN: Waiting for the edit letter?
ROSENCRANTZ: YES.

[first published on Storytellers Unplugged, April 29, 2008; thank you to the Wayback Machine for helping me rescue it]

( click! )

So between the insomnia and the anxiety dreams (all clothing related, for some bizarre reason I wot not of), I think we can conclude that I'm stressed about something. No, don't ask me what. I DON'T KNOW. But it means that my thought processes have gotten simultaneously weirder and slower, so I can sort of watch my brain work. Like the Glass Cat's.

So, as I have been for several years now, I am thinking about getting a tattoo. I almost got one at Fourth Street, but bailed on account of the tattoo artist not seeming to understand what I wanted. But I have a birthday coming up (my thirty-fifth, which seems sort of pseudo-significant), and I'm thinking about it again. (Parenthetically, if anyone in the Madison area has recommendations about tattoo artists, please please please comment or email or something.) One of the designs I have been considering, on and off, is Dyson Cieslewisc's rabbit (the left-hand rabbit), from "Dexterity," my episode of Shadow Unit. Different reasons than Dice, but, well. And the thought crossed my mind again this morning, for reasons I can no longer reconstruct. Which is where we join the stream of consciousness in progress:

Int.
GUILDENSTERN: It is a very cool rabbit.
ROSENCRANTZ: But it's wrong. Year of the Tiger, not Year of the Rabbit.
GUILDENSTERN: Tigers are cool, too. A tiger tattoo could be pretty awesome.
ROSENCRANTZ: Wait a second. That's the Chinese Zodiac. That's cultural appropriation.
GUILDENSTERN: Shit, that's right. We'll have to--
[crackle of static]
THE RADIO: "It's the eye of the tiger / It's the thrill of the fight"
ROSENCRANTZ: [moans] Oh no, no, no, no, no.
THE RADIO: "Standing up to the challenge of our rivals"

Ext.
[Truepenny comes into the study from the kitchen]
[Mirrorthaw takes off his headphones]
TRUEPENNY: My brain is cursed.
MIRRORTHAW: Cursed?
TRUEPENNY: I have the acoustic cover of "Eye of the Tiger"* stuck in my head, and if that isn't a curse, I don't know what is.
MIRRORTHAW: Can I change the station?
TRUEPENNY: I don't know how!
[Truepenny exits back to kitchen, singing "It's the eye of the tiger / it's the thrill of the fight"]
[Mirrorthaw resumes his headphones]

Int.
GUILDENSTERN: Turn it off!
ROSENCRANTZ: Where's the off-switch?
GUILDENSTERN: There is no fucking off-switch!
ROSENCRANTZ: [shouting at ceiling] STOP IT THIS INSTANT! STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT!
THE RADIO: [triumphantly] "EYEEEEEEEEEE ... of the tiger"
[pause]
[Rosencrantz & Guildenstern look around warily]
THE RADIO: "Won't you ease on down, ease on down the road?"
ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN: [simultaneous facepalms]

Ext.
[enter Truepenny to the study again]
[Mirrorthaw takes off his headphones and waits]
TRUEPENNY: I have proof that I was IRRETRIEVABLY WARPED by junior high school chorus.
MIRRORTHAW: [looks alarmed]
TRUEPENNY: In my head, "Eye of the Tiger" segues immutably into "Ease On Down the Road." Because we did medleys. "Eye of the Tiger," "Ease On Down the Road."
MIRRORTHAW: Are you sure I can't change the channel? Where's the remote? Everything comes with a remote these days.
TRUEPENNY: Ah, but I was made before 1980.
MIRRORTHAW: Oh god that's right. There is no remote.
TRUEPENNY: Not even one with a cord.
MIRRORTHAW: Just push-buttons.
TRUEPENNY: Maybe some dials.
MIRRORTHAW: And I don't know where they are!

Int.
ROSENCRANTZ: [timidly] The rabbit's from a netsuke. Does that mean it's no good, either?
GUILDENSTERN: Dunno. There's always the labyrinth idea. Or the octopus. Or get somebody to design a sort of catfish-dragon thing.
ROSENCRANTZ: [ponders]
GUILDENSTERN: [ponders]
THE RADIO: "It's the eye of the tiger ..."


---
*Mirrothaw found it somewhere, because The Internet Is Full Of Things.

(GUILDENSTERN: Ahem.
ROSENCRANTZ: I don't know how the next scene starts! Shut up!)

---

peake posted yesterday about this attempt to define a "slipstream canon." Or possibly I mean a "slipstream" "canon." Or, well, here. Have some quotation marks--""""""""--and punctuate as seems best to you.

( for them as cares, click with the clickyness )

---

(ROSENCRANTZ: There! See? I'm writing. Satisfied now?
GUILDENSTERN: [reading over ROSENCRANTZ's shoulder] No.)

So, amongst the many problems confronting me in my persona as Mr Earbrass (with pen, ink, scissors, paste, a decanter of sherry, and a vast reluctance ...), my editor pointed out, very kindly, that The Mirador's structure is not so much a structure as a dog's breakfast.

Now, partly, this is due to a lack of signage (which is a not uncommon problem in my works), and that can be fixed.

Partly, it's due to the fact that I was and am trying to do something difficult and contrary, i.e., write a secondary world fantasy novel without a quest to structure it.

This is harder than you might think, especially if none of your characters are farmboys-who-are-sekritly-kings.

But this too can be dealt with by better signage, and, well, now that I've done it, I know what I'm doing, and can therefore do it better. (Learn by doing.)

But partly, it's due to the fact that two of the three major plot strands do not make sense unless, like the White Queen, you consider it a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.

Between my editor, matociquala, mirrorthaw, and me, I've figured out that much of what I need to do is rearrange the order in which certain events happen. (Pen, ink, scissors, paste, decanter of sherry, vast reluctance, check.) However--and here's the sticky bit--I cannot now and never have been able to hold all of this book in my head at once. So I'm rearranging structural elements of a structure I can't see. I can't even think of a metaphor to explain how much this makes my brain hurt.

So if I'm more than usually Eeyorish for the month of October, y'all will know why.

---

[GUILDENSTERN consults his watch.]
ROS: [without looking around] Shut up.
GUIL: I didn't say anything.
ROS: You have a sigh Leon Trotsky's icepick would envy.
GUIL: It's not like you don't know we have a deadline.
ROS: I'm working.
GUIL: Point of order: you are dungeon-crawling.
ROS: I'm thinking! It's like working.
GUIL: Only without the part where you actually get anything done. [beat] But don't mind me. I'm sure you have a master plan you just haven't bothered to tell me about.
ROS: Shut. Up.
[GUILDENSTERN consults his watch.]

ROS: I'm stuck.
GUIL: No, you're not.
ROS: Yes, I am, I tell you.
GUIL: No. You're not. Look here.
ROS: Oh.
[ten minutes later]
ROS: I'm stuck.
GUIL: Oh for the love of Christ.
ROS: No, I mean it this time. I'm stuck.
GUIL: Look. You can't be stuck. Our deadline's less than two months away. This is no time to screw the pooch.
ROS: All right, all right.
[ten minutes later]
ROS: I'm stuck.
GUIL: For the last fucking time, YOU ARE NOT STUCK.
ROS: Okay, I'm not stuck.
GUIL: Good.
[beat]
ROS: I'm bored.
[GUIL chases ROS offstage with a Swingline stapler]

---

The Mirador, Chapter Four: 8,606 words

Half of Chapter Four is now Chapter Five, because more than 70 ms pages is just ridiculously long for a chapter. Chapter Five is 8,727 words and growing.