Eight Ways to Procrastinate from World Building

I’ve been blog tagged – as you do, by Annie who has asked: “What are the 8 things you do to avoid writing?” Today was set aside as ‘World Building’ day for Annie and I, in anticipation of NaNo, so I have chosen to write the eight things you can do to avoid world building.” Sadly – this post is in fact not fiction.

1 Call it world building
In doing so it sensitises all those ‘world building’ antennae that then fire off into all the synaptics connections that will set up the path of most resistance to actually begin this exercise.

2 Go around to a friend’s house
In doing so you are deluding yourself to the fact that you are actually going out to do ‘said task’ and removing yourself from all possible modes of procrastination at home – such as cleaning the toilet, doing dusting and folding Mt Washmore down to the carpet.

3 Go out for coffee
Quite honestly this should not have been an issue, after all I am meant to be coffee free (see just look at my perfectly still hands and how they don’t shake and tic!) so discovering there was no coffee in Annie’s freezer should in reality have just moved us on to the next cupboard, along with the question “Which tea would you like.” But no! Out I went for Rainforest Organic coffee (only the best!) which meant also browsing through the bakery section, the gourmet cheese section, the chocolate and confectionary isle and stopping by the fresh flowers on the way out, consumed with the indecision of whether flowers would assist in the process. I obviously made the wrong decision and should have bought the marked down flowers.

4 Beg visitors to stay – in a subtle and non pathetic way
When I got home from the supermarket, sans flowers but laden down with coffee (how special is it to arrive back from the shops with the actual item you went out to get?), savoury biscuits for the kids and some chocolate Annie was entertaining a friend who had dropped in quickly, to drop something off. Some how we all ended up at the table, coffee in hand, strudel cut up and conversations floating about as to what we had all been doing. An hour later …. it was definitely time to start world building again. At which point, Annie went out to find the hand out we’d given at Sonny Whitelaw’s workshop back in June … because we were getting organised about NaNo back then and world building.

5 Check your stats
This did not include getting out the tape measure to see if my bust was bigger and my butt and waist smaller. This is my favourite means of procrastination, so while Annie was finding the handouts, I dropped by Reclaim Sex After Birth to see what the click through rate is, how many people are on the website, what pages are attracting the most traffic. Just paranoid stuff like that. It wasn’t really meant to be a diversion, as we’d been sitting around talking about the Reclaim project. I off handedly asked Annie about the traffic arriving at one of her other sites Birth Orgasmically and she had no idea where the stats package was on cpanel. Not missing an opportunity to learn something, it was off to cpanel to explain the intricacies of AwStats, what they mean and how you can use them to create changes in your website … and keep yourself safely distanced from world building.

6 Get involved with a good cause
I didn’t have to look far. With cpanel open and Annie composing an email to a friend about Orgasmic Birth we started on discussions, which ultimately led me to sit and write an extensive email to the film maker Debra Pascali-Bonaro about some thoughts I had to do with marketing and protecting the branding integrity. Because suddenly I am an expert on this topic. An hour later …..

7 Search the internet for a good name for a new planet
Annie having completed her email and having foofed around on the internet a bit decided it was time to get the kids into the car, pick up her fruit and veggies and her eldest son. This was going to give me time to begin world building. “I’ll put you to shame,” I called out and she reversed out the drive way. I did put her to shame … I typed one question and put the word “Earth” below it. I realised that before I could continue to describe the familiarity of my planets, I had to actually name the other planet. I knew what I was looking for – something to do with bees, hymen, melissae (spurred on the Dr Who reference in the final episodes). Searching for anything on the internet invariably leads you away from where you started, on all sorts of tangents …

8 Download a big persons colouring in book of ancient Greek Muses
Yes this was the tangent that I ended up on. I sadly am a huge fan of colouring in (because as a kid I guess I substituted great colouring-in for a perceived lack of creative talent)

It seems regardless of how far you try to run or hide from you Muse … all roads lead back to her. I don’t imagine she’s got the Mother-style hands on the hips and the tut-tut going on .. I imagine a cheeky smile on her face, perhaps a little charged from far too much caffine, a half eaten packet of Rollo’s in her creased white linen pants and an optimistic desire to do it all over again tomorrow.

PS: as an aside – writing this blog post rates as the 9th way of avoiding World Building – but I guess I didn’t need to tell you that.

PS: I can tick the following items from Annie’s list of ways to avoid writing

• I created a new folder called world building (sadly this took about one second)
• I tried to do research – and landed at the colouring book site
• Worried about the amount of traffic but did stay away from Facebook!
• I did go out to the shops – though my family wont stave off starving with the coffee that was bought
• As for pantries, bathrooms, shop etc … Annie did that yesterday :)
  

Picture of the Collaged 8's from Claudecf on Flickr

Knowing Your Style

Over at Write Anything a new writing meme has been posted, and Janie has asked for readers to respond on their own blogs, and post a link back. The meme itself was started by Becca at Write on Wednesday. What a wonderful way for me to break my five day writing drought ....

1. Do you write fiction or non-fiction? Or both?

Both! My first love is fiction, because your characters invite you to share in their world. It was also the first sort of writing I ever did. Non fiction writing is a little soul destroying I’ve decided after completing the reclaim sex after birth project. When you write non fiction, there is research often to sift through and synthesise, no one whispers secrets into your ear, or gives you the next plot development, it’s all up to you to bring it all together. Unless you write about something you know really well, or you’re incredibly passionate about, non fiction writing can be a little bland when stood next to fiction writing. I remain committed to writing non fiction though, to try and address the imbalance in the information that is available to women on a range of topics, and I guess to indulge that part of me that likes to educate and fuse ideas with information. It’s also a good balance for fiction writing.

2. Do you keep a journal or a writing notebook?
I keep a little note book with me to scribble ideas in (which I’ve normally left behind on my desk or on Annie’s table when I make the commitment to put it in the book) I try and file my ideas away in my head, hoping they will be there when I need them. I write morning pages, as per Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, every morning (well almost every morning) which doubles as a creative and personal purge point, as well as a personal marker of events.

My blog also tends, as Paul said, to function as a journal. I look back and can see the definite trends in what I’ve written and the subjects. I gifted myself a new blog for the last eclipse phase – but have yet to really give it a work out. I’m hoping it will be more of a creative journal.


3. If you write fiction, do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing? Do you find books on plotting useful or harmful?
I’ve never read a book on plotting – it seems like would be a rather mechanical and contrived thing for me to do. I believe that some goals, motivations and conflicts are revealed to you in the beginning (after all you have to start with something) and that as you go along other bits and pieces come into your consciousness.

For example: when I wrote Evie I had always intended for Sarah-Jane’s mother to be the villain, after all, she’s a woman who contrives to go and steal another woman’s baby. I knew what her motivations where to bring her to that point, the conflicts in her life. What I didn’t count on however was Sarah-Jane’s attitude to it all, and how one young woman’s words could transform the act of stealing a child into something almost any woman could empathise with. The definitely came from left of centre.

Another example is the Captain Juan epic. All I ever knew was the Ruby wanted to steal something from her husband and be free of him. I never thought in a million years I could begin to weave the plot lines of others into a semi coherent form in my head. While we do occasionally have a little plot setting succession of emails, just to make sure everyone is vaguely on the same page – anything can happen, and generally does. I imagine the Captain Juan, like any other story, would suffer from being plotted to death.

4. Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?
Lately I have been giving in to the itch to write. I used writing to procrastinate from cleaning my house. This was definitely the case last week when I re-wrote Evie. I think rather than being a procrastinator, I’m a bit of a time thief, in the sense that I don’t budget and use my time very well … and in doing so I don’t cut out sections of time to write, and as a consequence my writing is suffering at the moment. You can only plot so far in your head before you need to sit down and have a good purge.

I remember poignantly the very first day that Dylan had a whole day at kindy this year – the house was quiet, my desk was tidy, the house was clean and when I opened up my laptop, I went blank! The perfect setting, and I couldn’t write. It’s a good thing that most of my life is made up with imperfect moments.


5. Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?
I guess I’ve had to learn to be a short bursts writer – as motherhood only affords you soundbites of time and you have to make the best of them. When I am deep in a story, I could write for hours and hours – NaNo last year attested to that. While I would ideally like to be able to do that, you have to function as a writer in the real world, and for me that means continual interruptions, less than salubrious environs for writing and often writing when I’m very tired (either from having woken early or trying to write late at night)


6. Are you a morning or afternoon writer?
My body clock is so screwed at now that I don’t know if I’m a morning person, an afternoon person or a night person. I would say that I used to be a night person, and I guess I still do lots of writing at night, but I’m not sure if I am my most productive then (even if its quiet and there generally are no interruptions) I think I have to concede defeat now and say that I write best in the late morning and early afternoon … which only works five days a fortnight!!

I’ve come to learn that any time is a good time to write … being precious about the perfect everything when it comes to writing, is the death knoll of writing anything.

7. Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?
I love to write to music – especially if I am trying to evoke a certain feeling or atmosphere in my writing. My most poignant memory of this is writing a short story called ‘Hail Mary’ where I had the soundtrack of ‘In the Name of the Father’, as my story was set at the same time as the movie, and involved an IRA sympathiser. It also helps to drown out the noise around me.

But yes, I can write with the sound of children ‘playing’ in the background or in the café. Without harping on the same theme over and over again – I’ve learnt to make do. At the moment I’m writing with Tarzan in the background, but my favourite music is Snow Patrol and I’ve been dabbling back in a little Cat Empire and Mia Dyson which were the soundtracks to NaNo last year.

8. Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)
Computer! I’m attached at the hip to my laptop. I find it difficult to keep up long hand with my run away mind. Though I do remember in the early 90’s when I was crossing over from long hand and into typing that I really struggled to make the creative connection. Thankfully now I am able to type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts … and well the conversations of my characters.

9. Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One? Or do you let the story evolve as you write?
When I began NaNo last year, Chapter One was actually the first part of the final chapter. I wasn’t sure where to start, as opposed to where to end, so I opened the book with an interview. I knew who my character was going to end up with by novels end (and of course never actually go there) but I had no idea what was going to happen between.

When it comes to short stories, I have a general idea I guess, but there’s always twists and turns that you don’t expect. When I do definitively know how it I going to end, there’s always a concern in me that the story comes across stilted. This was my worry when I wrote 24.

10. Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?
No – not really. I find that what I am reading at the time often influences the way I write, or at the very least the way I think about writing. I don’t think that I’ve read anything on the current bestseller list for years (if ever?)

I get annoyed and often a little spiteful about the market influence towards established authors or the endless succession of biographies of sports persons and celebrities .. and the fact that first time writers very rarely get a see in because of this trend.

11. Editing/Revision - love it or hate it?
Had I answered this question last week – I would have said dread it, hate it, absolutely in mortal fear of it – telling myself that you can live without it!

I was an editor for three years so I guess in some respects I do love the editing aspect, but the editorial love is usually reserved for the work of others. I’ve been living with this delusion that I can churn out the perfect story with next to no revisions or alterations. Last week taught me an important lesson about that. A good story can become a great story, even a brilliant story when the author approaches their work with a detached tenacity and a lack of preciousness when they come back to revise. You learn that you are able to you sift through the bits that are good and make them great, and jettison the bits that are just hanging on. Editing is best done in the cold – that is, once the story has cooled and you can look at it objectively.

Having said that, every writer (and especially us bloggers) need to maintain the practise of giving our work a basic perusal for minor spelling and grammatical mistakes before we hit publish.

Editing/revision far more time consuming, and in some respects less rewarding in the short term, than writing. But I believe it’s an aspect of writing that you’ve got to embrace, even begrudgingly. And like everyone – you do need a good third party editor. All writers need someone who can look dispassionately at a piece of writing and point out what works, what doesn’t work and give you some suggestions for making it work. And I do believe, that taking the time to critique and edit the work of others, does improve your writing and your own skills for self editing.

Can you be both an editor and a writer? I’ll get back to you on that!

Review: The Chasers Age of Terror Variety Hour

In a new writing meme 'Review This' Annie Evett challenges us to review and write about something new every week.


This week's challenge: " Go to a live show - be it your childs play, a comedy show, a theatrical production, a dance or mime. Get out of your comfort zone and go to something you might never usually see. Support a local theatre group or go and see a huge production - be creative!Write a review on the show as if you were submitting it to your regional/city daily newspaper for the Saturdays Arts Edition. You can find more reviews here

Ever wanted to know if Osama discusses occupational health and safety when he gathers his top men together? Is it possible that anyone could out segué Anna Coren? And just how far will the nightly news go to fill its thirty minute quota of stories? All is answered when the boys from the Chaser tread the boards in the all singing, all dancing, all laughing Chasers Age of Terror Variety Hour.

The line up is a little different to what fans of The Chasers War on Everything will be used to. Joining Julian Morrow, Chas Licardello, Craig Reucassel and Andrew Hansen is Dominic Knight. Absent is Chris Taylor, though his satirical genius lives on in his continued musical collaboration with Andrew Hansen.

With ninety minutes to play with, the boys go all out to entertain with extended slots that the confines of a half hour weekly show just don’t allow for. Chas walks us through internet dating, Julian combines PowerPoint and Shakespeare, Andrew sings us through Hillbilly love, Dominic woos the audience with his body hair and finally there is Craig’s taut butt. Enough said!

The show opens with a song and dance number … as Julian and Chas clamber through the front rows on their way to the stage. And that’s not the last we see of the Uni Review-esque performances. The boys take us through the eight days of Frank Ford’s prime ministership, Broadway style. But the highlight is Chas hip hopping his little Sicilian heart out in a gold quilted lamé, wide legged and hooded tracksuit. His dance moves, including the caterpillar are worth the entry fee alone.

There are the usual political references and pokes, though with the Howard Government gone, much of the steam has gone out of what we’ve come to love and expect from The Chaser’s political satire. Making full use of the huge screen behind the stage and the audience, the Chaser combines the best of live theatre, stand up comedy and television in a visual and comic feast.

The Chaser’s Age of Terror Variety Hour is a rollicking ninety minutes that passes so quickly that it’s hard to believe that it is over when the final song is announced, and you wish you had a ticket for the next show. The boys show that their talent is as good, if not better, live. And the ending is just what we’ve come to expect – totally irreverent.

The Chasers Age of Terror Variety Hour scores five grinning Osamas.

.... and in case your wondering what a real journo had to say, here is the Sydney Morning Herald interview with Julian Morrow and Dominic Knight on the eve of their first performance earlier on this year.

Musical Musings new home

Musical Musings has a new home www.mondaymusicalmusings

The link box for today is up already ... please pop over and post your story there.

Musical Musings #4

Musical Musings is a weekly music based writing meme to inspire and support writers of short fiction. Each Tuesday a prompt will be posted and you will have a week to create something (see the guidelines below). Reading others' work and commenting in a critical but constructive manner is part of the writing process and our growth as writers. All participants are encouraged to actively be a part of this each week.

This week's prompt
Is California Dreamin' made famous by the Mammas and the Pappas (but has been covered innumerable times - just check out Wiki). It was released in 1965, but it took until 1966 for it to reach #4 in the US and stayed in the charts for 17 weeks. It was voted #89 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. Use the song in any way you see fit to inspire your writing this week.




How to be part of the writing adventure:

1. Check each Tuesday for a new musical prompt – a link to the post will appear at the top right hand of the blog to help you navigate.
2. Write between 1000-2000 words of short fiction in any genre.
3. Editing is welcome and encouraged.
4. On Monday, post your story to your blog.
5. Return here to link your post and leave a comment.
6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.

Musical Musings #3 Monday 9th June

Musical Musings is a weekly music based writing meme to inspire and support writers of short fiction. Each Tuesday a prompt will be posted and you will have a week to create something (see the guidelines below). Reading others' work and commenting in a critical but constructive manner is part of the writing process and our growth as writers. All participants are encouraged to actively be a part of this each week.

This week's prompt

Combine the elements of Voodoo and Cowboy to create your short fiction. Inspired by the Cat Empire's "Voodoo Cowboy" from their 2007 So Many Nights album.

How to be part of the writing adventure:

1. Check each Tuesday for a new musical prompt – a link to the post will appear at the top right hand of the blog to help you navigate.
2. Write between 1000-2000 words of short fiction in any genre.
3. Editing is welcome and encouraged.
4. On Monday, post your story to your blog.
5. Return here to link your post and leave a comment.
6. Visit other’s posts and leave constructive comments.

Musical Musings #3: Voodoo Cowboy

This week's prompt is to combine the elements of voodoo with cowboy - a la Cat Empire. Here's my first draft and please feel free to offer up your thoughts and criticisms (on elements other than first draft spelling mistakes, grammar and I think the odd time incongruity!)




It’s a good day to die. This is my morning mantra, as I roll my swag and kick away the ring that’s protected this small patch of earth while I slept. It is habit that compels me to cast the salt and to wear the St Christopher medal around my neck, rather than a need to cheat death. We’re all going to die - sooner rather than later now. Everyone else feels the same urgency towards death that I’ve carried with me my entire life. I’m just treading the water of time between dawn and dust, waiting for the inevitable. I don’t know what they are doing.

Patience nuzzles my cheek and I smile. She never questions the erratic nature of our journey. Her quiet faith in me is buoyancy in this sea of nothingness, the endless expanse of red dirt, mirages playing deceptively on the horizon. The long black snake of the deserted highway runs along in front of us.

“Off to town,” I say out loud, in faux festivity, and I swear she nods and smiles.
I haul the heavy jacket over my shoulders and push my arms down into the sleeves, pull up the heavy duty zip. The battered hat covers my bald head and shields my face. I’ve had my thick dark sunglasses on since I first opened my eyes.

The map says 10 kilometres, but I’m not really sure how far we came yesterday after the last little green road sign. As we step onto the decaying tarmac, I pull the small GPS unit from my pocket, as I’ve done every morning for the past two months. The screen is empty. I tap the LED screen and it remains blank. The phone went down first, then the GPS – all powered up but useless. This is my final dislocation from civilisation – what there was left of it when I fled the mayhem of the city. Now it’s just Patience and I out here making our way to The Farm, just as I promised Mama before the typhoid took her.

The sun is high in the sky when we arrive in town. Patience and I head for the tiny row of shops that have sprung up haphazardly on the side service road that connects the highway to the township. The shopping centres are obsolete. Electricity is too precious to waste on powering indoor climate control – even if there was anything to sell. Consumerism and instant communication have both suffered a fatal blow.

I tell Patience to wait outside, not bothering to tie her up. She’ll bite anyone who tries to steal her. Better than any car alarm.

The bar is quiet this early on in the day. There’s a couple of blokes, shift workers by their clothes, sipping beer, talking in hushed tones as they deal hand after hand of poker. I wonder if there is a wager and what they would possibly use.

“A lettuce juice,” I order, sitting down on the bar stool, trying to decide whether to take my hat off or not.
“Pardon,” the young girl queries. Her hair is braided into two neat plats, coiled behind her ears and she’s far too young to be in a bar, let alone in charge of it.
“You have juicer?”
“Yea – somewhere out the back, I guess’em.”
“You have power?”
She nods
“I’d like a lettuce juice then please. I can pay.”

The girl disappears and a few minutes later an older woman appears looking defensive – like I tried to touch up the girl, rather than just ask for juice.
“You wantin’ lettuce juice then Joe?” she asks, her eyes piercing me.
I nod, trying not to make a scene.

I lean a little over the bar and slide the dark sunglasses down my nose, just far enough so she can see my eyes. The recoil is physical – she stumbles back a few steps, stopped by the shelves of liquor behind her, which clink as she hits them.
“I’d like a glass now and a bottle to take with me.”

She agrees with a sharp downwards jerk of her head.
“You’ll find what you need out the back,” she mutters, crosses herself and scurries out the back.

The shift workers regard me with guarded scepticism and I can appreciate that. I’ve had that effect on people all my life. In these clothes I look like a gun for hire and that disturbs them. I imagine that not too many people put the bar owner in her place – she’s rougher than those she serves. But I come with an aura of fear now, not the freakdom of my previous life. I like it, the warped sense of respect, because no one’s ever given me that before.

There is a small lean-too out the back of the bar. I find an old and twisted star picket, a sledge hammer and a piece of rope. I quickly tie together a harness to carry the hammer and the steel dropper, so both my hands will be free. I close my eyes and begin to walk, feeling the vibrations beneath me. The energy crackles in staccato pulses as I walk, my arms held at a 45 degree angle to my body and the palms outstretched parallel to the scarred earth. I follow the pull until the staccato subsides and segues into a gentle legato. This is the spot. I hammer the star picket into the hard ground with slow and exact swings. A year ago I wouldn’t have been able to lift the hammer, let alone swing it with the preciseness I’m now proud of. The sweat pours off me, but I don’t risk removing either my hat or coat.

Back in the bar the glass of lettuce juice awaits me on the bar – there’s even a couple of ice cubes in it. I ask the young girl for a large glass of water to quench my first before I drink the lettuce. She watches me with open curiosity and I smile at her.

It has been almost a week since I’ve had the juice. My sleep has become a distorted mess of insomnia and paranoid dreams. It means I don’t think so good and I’m prone to make stupid mistakes. There is a bustle from out the back and the older woman comes through the dirty curtain that sections off the bar from the living quarters.

“So?” the older woman asks, holding an old brown tall-necked bottle full of lettuce juice in one hand.
I nod and she passes me the bottle.
“There’s a star picket driven into the spot. It’s deep down, perhaps 100 metres of more and a lot of rock.”
She snorts and goes back out the back.

I take the bottle and leave. The lie sits like quick sand in the base of my stomach, ready to devour me from the inside out. I tell myself it was justified. It always is.

The water is dead - poisoned. The town will be gone before a rig could even be found to drill her well. She’ll have the hope of water to tide her over in her last days and I will have given her that. Hallelujah. She’ll won’t ever find out I didn’t tell her the whole truth.

The Farm is another 20kms further out to the west, up into the hills and the wind corridor. I’m in no hurry to get there, so I walk beside Patience. The bitumen road has become a gravel road. It wondered if it was once sealed – if this was the way all the machinery and men came? Or maybe at it another way.

We walk until I’m exhausted. It doesn’t take much in the heat and sun, and the lettuce juice has made me sleepy. It has the effect on me – but leaves me feeling sharp and refreshed in the morning. I swig from the bottle as we make camp in a small thatch of trees by the side of the road. We’re at the foot of the hills here and marginally safe. I know that I have to sleep well, dream deeply, before I can get to The Farm. I’d go further but I’m tired and I don’t want to risk Patience in the bush just yet. She’s as ferocious as a dog if provoked.

As I lie on my swag watching the sun go down and Patience cropping at the short tough grass I long for my music. To wish I could be here, with my ear phones on and ? assaulting my delicate ear drums. “You’ll go deaf,” Mama would holler. “You’ll be drug fucked, you’ll never amount to anything you stupid shit.”

Well Mama, I’m not deaf, I’m not drug fucked and I’m going to make it to The Farm - just like you asked me to. And this goes round and around in my head as I succumb to sleep.

I’m staring down into the water … sometimes it is a river, a slow moving line of water, and other times it is a well. The water is an illusion, but I reach out and touch it. And it’s wet. It’s not an illusion. There is a woman in the water …. With long dark tendrils of hair crowning her face. Her skin is pale, like mine, but her eyes are green. I hear her in my head, calling my name, over and over – she feels my loneliness, she feeds on it. It makes her powerful and I struggle to resist her seduction. “Come ….” She reaches her hand up to mine. Her voice is hypnotic and I stretch my hand out, into the water. And she has me in her grasp… her hair travels up through the water and wraps around my wrist. Her hair is pulling me down. I scream … it is not my time. I’m not ready to die. “Oh yes you are” she screeches from the depths and I’m covered in her hair, being dragged into the water …..

I lash out and my hand strikes a rock. I bolt up right in pain, my knuckles skinned and bleeding. Patience snickers and brushes her large nose against me.
“It’s OK,” I say, for my sake not hers. The sound of my voice settles her.

The sun has sunk below the horizon and the sky is aglow – violent tangerines and vivid scarlets in the polluted and overheated atmosphere. It is the same colours every night and morning – a delight at night that I’ve made it through another day, and warning in the morning that it could be my last day. It reminds me of the bush fires when I was a kid … and the sunsets that came with the smoke suffocated air. That seems like an eon ago.

Patience and I walk through the night, sometimes on the gravel road and other times, when I think I’ve heard something, a few metres in from the road through the bush. Both of us are spooked and I’m not sure what it is. I’ve faced down all matter of scum who are prowling along the highway, preying on the refugees moving from town to town. And I’ve held my own against superstitious townfolk. There’s something about this place, the ancestors are unsettled and angry here. I don’t understand?

I come upon The Farm at dawn. There are rows of massive wind turbines as far as I can see through my binoculars. The massive sails, that look like giant propeller blades turn lazily in the gentle breeze that blows across the plateau and into the wind corridor. I know, from the information I’ve gathered along the way and Mama’s ramblings that the residential compound and gardens are over the ridge to the west and the sequestration farm to the North. There they mine the carbon dioxide from the air, and sink it back into the ground. This is the oldest and largest Wind Power and Sequestration operation in the Southern Hemisphere. Why on earth has she sent me here? ... to be continued (sorry!)
© Jodi Cleghorn 2008