Reflections

I have won, I have written 52,300 words in thirty days. However, that war drags on and I can't stop the damn' thing. My boy was up all night last night, then there was the day-job and tonight I am still dead despite being desperate to finish the blasted war.

It wouldn't be so bad but I can't end it as quickly as I would likme. These men deserve better, I know, and they will be denied individual death scenes, as war is wont to do, and will instead die as men in war do. Alone, unmourned and without any real rhyme or reason to it. There is no heroism in death, no romance in it and certainly no celebration of the sacrifice that they make. Sure, they knew it could happen, it doesn't make it worthwhile.

It is a horrible scene to write. I love these guys. I know these guys. I want to save them. But I can't. War has come and now it has its own immutable logic and path. William will survive. He has to. He has to become a Sergeant and be regarded as a loner. Meet the cowards and traitors around him, those that survived when his family has not, and reach his own conclusions. He'd almost redeemed himself, you know, almost become sympathetic. It's almost too sad.

Almost.

I will try to keep going. No more word count updates, but I have enjoyed this experience so much and made some really wonderful new friends. I am addicted to this lovely feeling and I hope I keep contact.

I win?

Well, I just hit 50k. Just over it. I finally reached what was supposed to be the final scene in the war too, but now find that it is just not happening.  I thought I was going to use the Eyes Open schtick that I have on this blog to power through but find it doesn't really fit the characters I have drawn, nor the arc that brought them to this point. For one thing, Batemann, the original sergeant, ended up being badly beaten by William when he attacked a civilian (Batemann, not William). Though William did end up as the de facto leader of his little band by accident - something I was certain wasn't going to happen.

I think I 'get' why William likes the war now, as well, and why he will be sad when it finally does end. In this scene everyone around him will die or be horribly wounded and die later. Batemann will die in hospital. William will end up wounded, return as a Sergeant himself but distance himself from those around him. A loner and a bit peculiar as veterans go, with the charge of cowardise hanging over him due to how he shall be found surrounded by the dead and dying of his own platoon.  Those Bilankrish will have a lot to answer for!

So, the war may not actually end by Christmas after all. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Love scene with a difference

You need to play the song as you read this.  I hope I've captured it.  Eventually I want all the stuff in <..> to be in proper French. I want the reader to feel as out of place as does William in this.  However, I don't know any French.  This took a few hours.  I wanted to get it right. I didn't want to rush it and I didn't want it to be anything other than realistic. I fear that it is not. I fear that it is very much a scene with cardboard cut-outs rather than real people.

       “So.” Batemann had been the first to leave the table, ably supported by Claudette, and it had been very obvious what they were going to do. There had been giggling and squeaking from the room since they left ever since. Then Pablo had simply nodded to the elder woman and they had left together in silence, descending the stairs. Whatever they were up to made little noise that could be heard in the upstairs kitchen but the embarrassed smile of Eponine told William that it would be little different to the activities ongoing in the nearby bedroom. “I don’t speak any Aixlenean.”

       “<Have you eaten enough too?>”

       William stared for a moment at the girl’s hopeful face. “I don’t know what Pablo was saying either. But I have eaten rather well.” He reached over to his jacket and dislodged the letter that Pablo had given him. Both of them watched it fall, it landed close to Eponine’s foot.

       “<Your letter, sir, I…>” Picking it up from the floor, with William’s steadfast gaze fixed on her, she paused and then, with a quick look at his face, she opened it. “<I can read Merkavian a little, sir. With your permission…?>”

       Failing to snatch it back, and catching her hopeful tone, William shrugged and sat back heavily. “It’s not like you can understand a word of it. I’d sooner you were doing something like that rather than… well, whatever else we’re supposed to get up to.” As she bent her head to look at it more closely, William shifted uncomfortably and looked anywhere but at her, as if by not seeing her do the deed he could ignore the breaking of Pablo’s trust.

       Something about delivering food for a night of sex seemed rather tawdry and not a little unfair. Unbidden, he remembered his mother and sisters, and shuddered at the thought of any of them being so hungry and alone that they would agree to such an exchange. Whatever romance there had been vanished from the room and he just felt cold and wet and tired, huddled in a towel with illicit food roiling in his stomach. Battles had been fought with less concern and worry. She was still studying the letter, who knew what she was scrying, and he watched her expression grow shocked, a hand over her mouth, and then enormously sad. Most likely she had read into the unfamiliar language whatever she wanted to find, whatever would make the situation most palatable.

       Presently she looked at him again with concern in her eyes and the look of something else that William couldn’t quite place. She put the folded letter carefully back on the table and, without meeting her eyes, William snatched it back. Too late, he knew, but simply leaving it there seemed worse than doing nothing.

       Throughout the night he had caught her looking at him, as a young girl would look at passing soldiers, with a mix of wonder and awe; so that, he felt, if he so much as bared his teeth she would either laugh at the gaiety or else take fright and fall dead on the spot. Now that look of awe had changed but he would be hard-pressed to offer any guesses as to what it had become.

       “<You have known loss on all sides.>” She spoke very slowly, enunciating clearly, trying desperately to make him understand something, “<I think that you are different from the others. I think that, if there was no war and we had met I would like to get to know you better. And now, sir, I do not know what to do next for you. For we shall not meet again, however much I wish it.>”

       Her hand grasped his and held it, softly and warmly, while she fixed him with her eyes. William did not know how to respond, nor could he understand what was being said, but it sounded important enough to keep listening.

       “<I… Should I undress? Would that make it easier for you, Willy?>”

       The way she said his name alerted him to something else going on, he still couldn’t place it, but he found himself responding physically. This was like nothing he had ever felt, even with Jerry, and his heart began to race with the prospect of the unknown and dangerous. It reminded him of the moments before being called to attack in the trenches but without the certainty of leaving things to fate and trusting in his own place in things; this was worse. “Call me William.”

       “<Will-yam,>” repeated Eponine with a giggle, “<It is better than Willy, Will-yam,>” standing, but not letting go of his hand, she pointed to a room at the opposite end of the room in which they had been eating, “<Shall we?>”

       Wordlessly, he stood and followed after her, something had occurred and he wasn’t sure what it was but the beating of his heart propelled him forward. As she stepped across the threshold she turned to face him and took both of his hands. Awkwardly he took them, letting the towel fall from his shoulders. His mouth was dry and he could feel the cold sweat beginning, everything in him was screaming to flee but, at the same time, he was simply transfixed. “How… How old are you?” he tried, “Age? Years?”

       A frown before realisation dawned on a face now lit only by the dim moon through the window. He had to admit that it was a lovely face. “<Twenty-nine,>” she answered, then, seeing that he had no idea what she had just said, held up both hands with fingers outstretched twice, then just one hand. She smiled. “Et tu?”

       Jerkily, and keenly aware that he was only wearing his underwear, William signalled that he was thirty. “Twenty-three,” he added, as if by adding it he could shrug off the obvious lie. It was not her face or body that had him drawing breath though, but whatever it was remained tantalisingly out of reach, like the one thing that one forgets to check before going into battle.

       Slowly, she backed away, her face flushing and her movements more spasmodic than seductive. She was trying too hard to impress him, part of him supplied, she was trying to move like he had seen far more practiced women doing in the dingier parts of Alnwix on the way to the show. Whereas they had been slinky and even quite adept she was uncomfortable and very much out of her depth. All at once she caught sight of his expression, “<This does not excite you?>” There was no mistaking the twin themes of disappointment and relief in her voice.

       “Just…” Breathe, you idiot, breathe, “Just stop. Eponine. I… Eponine.”

       Moonlight filled the space between them, there was a bed in the corner, everything seemed black and white now that the door was closed. In the distance there was the rumble of the war as far away from them as was the moon herself. If anything, space seemed nearer, blazing with starlight and pregnant with promise. And he found it difficult to breathe.

       “Will-yam?”

       Moving to the bed, but keeping his distance, he sat down heavily. “Eponine.”

       “<You seem… delicate,>” she chose her words carefully, but kept undressing: functionally rather than trying to make anything of it at all. “<A flower, no?>” She smiled sympathetically at him. Stood in her underwear by the window she did look beautiful. Forbidden. Out of reach. “<I think…>”

       She was delicate, but strong, like a rose growing on a garden wall turned to the sun. The white rose that grew in the father’s flowerbeds, tough and wiry, flowers delicate like spider web but with thorns that would cut and tear flesh. There would be no rough treatment of this woman and no arguing with her if she got an idea in her head. He needed to say something. “Thank you,” and he meant it, “I have known few who would do for me what you have done. But it is not needed,” he shook his head, “It is not needed.”

       “C’est la guerre?” As she sat down next to him he fought the urge to jump away, it would not have been polite, she caught his expression. “C’est la guerre.”

       A wan smile met her remark, William had heard similar sentiments in Aixlenean before, enough to know what they meant. A nod. “It is hard.” There was nothing else to be said.

       Her arm snaked round his shoulders and he did not mind, merely closed his eyes and let her do it as her free hand took is chin and rubbed along its smooth surface. For once he was glad that he shaved every day. “<You would look better in a dress, my friend, you were not born for war.>”

       Grunted assent. He would have agreed with anything at that moment.

       Looking at him, she seemed to grow in confidence, and he returned her look as best he could, lost in the feelings that ambushed him and beat him down with the flat of their spades. No shots were fired, no artillery barrage was required, he surrendered freely to a superior foe without ever knowing quite why he was doing so. Fate decreed that he do so and he had yet to argue with fate.

       Pecking him on the cheek tenderly, she placed a finger over his lips and drew back, a smile greeting his confusion. She stood, placing the same finger on her own lips to cover the playfulness there, and walked back to where she had undressed, looking at him all the while as an artist would at a subject to be painted. There was a confidence in her that she had previously lacked, it oozed from her, and he could feel his own response to that awareness, to that aura of assuredness.

       “Mon petite fleur,” her whisper was so low he had to strain his ears to hear her properly, “<My beautiful, delicate, little flower.>” She picked up her dress deliberately, let it fall from her hands whilst holding the shoulders and fussed with it until it fell straight and clean. “<Would you wear this for me?>”

       Unable to understand her words, but following that something had been asked of him, something pure and deep that could not be denied, William nodded dumbly. He was rewarded with a broad shining of the sun from her face, bringing colour back to her body that was robbed by the silvery light from the window in his mind’s eye if not in reality.

       She walked back to him deliberately, one foot in front of the other placed with precision and care on the wooden floorboards, not a sound seemed to be made. She bade him stand with her eyes, and he did so, then rolled the dress and indicated that he should raise his arms. Now William was simply unable to speak, unable to discern how it was he knew her instructions, unable to register anything beyond the room or Eponine. It didn’t exist.

       Material at his fingertips. Passing. A breeze across all of him and the skirts fell about the floor. It shouldn’t have fit, but Eponine was already working at ties and buttons so that it seemed to expand to take him in, falling easily to the floor. Unbidden, his arms returned to his side as she walked behind him and pulled at various laces and clasps. He felt the bodice tighten around his chest and waist, hugging him tightly in a way that made him feel more relaxed and safe than he could remember feeling before.

       He was home.

       This was right.

       Darkness was ending in light. Movement below.

       Stillness behind, Eponine had finished her work. He felt, rather than saw or heard, her move back to inspect her handiwork. She said something, he did not catch anything, but twirled to face her, causing the skirts and petticoats of the dress to flare up and brush against his legs. An electric feeling.

       Instinctively he looked down as he faced her, hands catching the flare of the dress and holding it from the floor. His mouth opened but no words came out.

       “<The flower is opened. You are beautiful.>” Her hands were clasped in front of her and her smile was as a mother to a child. “Mon petite fleur.” A short, but only semi-mirthful, laugh. “Fleur, oui, <it is better than Will-yam,> Fleur <it is>.”

       “William,” he corrected her instinctively.

       She shushed him with a finger again, “Non,” she said, playfully but firmly, “Tu,” she pointed at him, “Fleur, oui?”

       Pointing to himself, “Fleur?”

       Nodding, “Oui, Fleur.”

       He tried to shrug, but his body would not obey, instead he simply bent his knees and lifted the dress a little with his hands, that had re-clasped the dress. “Fleur.”

       “Tres bien,” she clapped softly, without making any noise, “<Now, repeat after me:> je suis Fleur.”

       “Zhe swee Fleur.”

       “Bon!” She took one of his hands and kissed the back of it, “Je suis Eponine. Enchante. Je suis, por tu, madame. Oui? Madame.”

       “Oui, madame.”

       And that was when the screaming started.

And the beat goes on

Still at it. Still in the war. Now writing in French for a scene. French!  I don't know any French. I also, when I have seen this scene in my head before now, have only really looked at it in flashback. That is, it only really takes place in amongst another scene.

Why am I writing it as it happens? Why?

I blame William.

Favourite line so far of the novel, though, which is:

“Madmorsels!” Batemann’s command of Aixlenean was shocking, “Noose ‘ave ey mongy!”

It'll be over by Christmas

That's what they said at the time, but they were wrong. I'm beginning to feel the same at this project too. I've read too much about experiences of men during that time, too much raw emotion and carefully hidden experience. I can't just write a few anecdotes and finish. I find I have to draw the characters realistically, have each man in the tale take his own full role and situation. I now know that they all have to die, or at least never see the MC again, and I even know how that has to happen. But I must also make sure that the reader knows these men, trusts these men, so that they can share and understand the grief and shock and sorrow of the MC when it happens.

So the war drags on. Two battles to go before the last one and another scene in reserve before we have the dalliance with Aixlenean girls. Tonight brought an unofficial truce and the handing out of helmets and a rat killing session. I just hope I've not made it so long and boring that people stop reading when the character of the novel changes.

Also, I'm not sure whether I sympathise more with William or Badger in the argument I just transcribed them having. Given where William is heading and Badger's role as mentor I'm hoping that means I have more realistic characters.

Extract follows:

In amongst shared meals and baths the two groups of soldiers became firm friends, parting with the agreement that they would continue the unofficial truce wherever they were stationed next. The Aixlenean unit, from the centre of Aixlene with its guttural accent and rolling farmland, were the first to leave, giving way to a unit from the more mountainous north of the country. They took a while to convince of the intentions of the invaders but, by the fifth and final day, they too had been won over.

“Looks like its Shiremen from the Home Counties coming in here next,” said Badger gruffly to one of the Aixleneans as they shared some salted beef in a shell crater left over from the beginning of the war. “I don’t care about you making a truce with them. Give ‘em Hell, the pompous bastards.”

The tallest Aixlenean, they’d nicknamed him ‘The Bear’, laughed with genuine mirth. “If you meet any of us from the coast, return the favour. I think our men of artillery need some practice here. Give us starlight to signal and we wait an hour.”

“Oh, you are terrific gents.” For the first time William looked on Badger differently, “I shall see to it!”

Despite his confusion, William said nothing. Salted beef was eaten; Aixlenean wine was quaffed and songs were sung before both groups retired, warm and tipsy, to their respective trenches and the evening roll-call. “Enjoy your jaunt, chaps?” asked Sergeant Batemann by way of greeting, “Hope you brought back some of that-”

Redbar cut him off by handing over two full bottles of red wine. “Like we’d forget you, Sarge,” he grinned and then tottered off in the direction of the rest of his section who had pulled sentry duty for the evening. They had all agreed that it simply wouldn’t do to have a surprise inspection find out just how peaceful this sector was.

“Aren’t we all brothers?” asked William of Badger when he was sure he wouldn’t be overheard.

“Us and the Aixleneans?” a hiccough, “Only so far as this bastard war I think. And not everywhere. Anything else would be Socialism.”

“No, I mean Merkavians.” Frowning was beginning to hurt his forehead. “You told them to give our brothers Hell.”

Badger looked at him for a long moment. “Think of it as a way of keeping this sector from getting too much attention. Burst of activity from the Aixlenean side’ll do it all the world of good.” Lighting a cigarette he took a quick drag.

And, in that moment, William hated smoking.

Mutiny!

Yes, I have a full-blown character mutiny here tonight.

I got no writing done last night due to pressures from the day job taking my first world issues by the horns and wandering off on their own to do work like things. My plan to hit 35k was dead in the water, as was a plan to drink some beer for company, which was sad. Instead I watched the daily target hit 31,667 whilst I was still at 30,400. Tonight, the plan was to get William through an attack viewed at a distance to more boredom behind lines where we could find out what each of the characters wants to do when the war is over - here we'd learn that William has no idea and quite likes the war itself for being, well, something to do - and then an actual harrowing experience after which he will have an awkward moment or two with a local girl.

No. Instead the whole of the 15th battalion mutinied on me and joined battle with the enemy in the village. William has killed a man, his first directly, and has now taken part in a genuine hand-to-hand struggle with bayonets. Damn him. Damn the 15th. Just stay put out of range you damnable contemptible buggers!  This is a character novel, not a war novel!

I can't complain. I've hit 35,200.

We're at war

Yep, they've had a battle.  William Caston has annoyed his peers and won a medal for bravery by getting them all in danger and putting his men in the firing line. However, it was early days in the war and so he managed to do it without firing a shot and without taking a casualty.

Of course, the battle itself had to end another way and so we have the 'Slaughter of Innocents' which is not a rip off of the Kindermord von Ypren at all, nooo, as if I would steal the basic narrative of the war from the First World War.  Ahem.  I'm about to rip off the battle of Neuve Chapel, well hidden as the battle of Neeuwekerque (see what I did there?) as well.

I think the novel is changing - we have a war novel now. I hope I can get through the whole thing before the month is up, I don't really want to write a war novel because I don't know enough to make it authentic. Still, I do hope to have my MC have a dalliance with a nice young Aixlenean lady and face tanks, did I mention tanks? I think I did. Then he can go home and start his politicisation.

On the plus side, despite writing war, I have yet to be surprised by any horrible stuff that William has done or had to write any scenes involving harrowing death and destruction. I suppose the latter will come later.

My novel is, like, really despressing.