What do I have in me today? Alan Rickman died. Now I recall the old “they come in threes” and wait for the other shoe to drop. I suppose it might be Lemmy, but a part of me feels as if they’d have to be within a few days of each other or the magic of it breaks. Which is mad, of course; why am I making up rules for this superstition? It’s another little tale to spin. It doesn’t stop the faint sense of apprehension. I must stop and look and breathe; here we are with the pure truth of it: another dead artist to break our bones.
Alan Rickman was a delight. He and Bowie were both 69. Cancer cancer cancer.
It’s a word – cancer – I’ve never looked at before, just as it is. It’s too loaded with its meaning. And it has had its meaning a long time; since some ancient Greeks decided crabs looked a bit like malignant tumors. I know everyone dies of something, but I hate cancer no less for that fact.
Alan Rickman died. What do I have in me?
Not enough, today. Resigned fatalism takes over nooks and crannies, and that is why I am here, typing this out, instead of just posting a chapter of New York Sour as I had planned. I’ll post that later – tomorrow, maybe, unless somebody else dies in which case I might crawl under my desk and cry instead. Today I’m doing my duty and blogging to get my mind working, my fingers working, the words flowing. I want to start the novel-that-was-meant-to-be-and-turned-into-something-else today. I have a short story to finish. I don’t know how it’s going to end. I like the conceit, but I’m not sure it goes anywhere. It will end up on here shortly, if I can find the ending.
Ksenia Anske asked, on twitter, that we share how we write a book. The first thing to come to mind was the King of Hearts: “Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end, and then stop”. It might be true in every facet, but it’s not particularly helpful to a neophyte. I cast about for a moment for a way to distill things into 140 characters. Given the brief, I think I did not too bad a job of it.
@kseniaanske @trip_hawkins You take a person, add another person, put them in a place with something to push against, and write what they do
— Sophie Alice Acton (@prosateuse) January 14, 2016
The world turns, and we carry on. Carry on, loves, carry on.