![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeMore messing around with other people's work instead of doing my own...
This was supposed to be somebody writing a 'passive' passage to indicate that the character was feeling helpless, which ended up sounding thoroughly artificial as a result -- generally the case where people are trying to apply a fixed set of rules they don't really understand. I can't say that I really understood where passivity came into it, but I took a few guesses at what was probably supposed to be happening and tried to achieve helplessness by other means (plus fixing the actual errors, and making a few random executive decisions because it seemed to sound better...)
Grabbing onto the rusty steel girder above her head, she wedged one foot onto a warehouse shelf and kicked off frantically with the other, trying to hook her leg over the beam. But the trailing pants that were now far too large for her caught and snagged on a rusty bolt, and she fell back, still clutching on desperately as her foot slipped and she started to dangle.
"No! Help!" She could feel her fingers losing their grip. "Mandy!"
The floor hit her hard as she crashed to the ground, enveloped in a shower of grit, and for a moment she couldn't even move. She lay on her back, weeping, and finally managed to roll over, leaving behind a blurred outline in the black dust.
"I can't." It came out of her as a sob. "I'm so weak. I can't."
Above her the window was empty. Pushing herself up onto her knees, she stared at it, scrubbing her eyes. There was nothing to be seen but sky.
"Mandy! No! Don't leave me!"
If only it were as easy to 'fix' my own! I'm still just about struggling on with Chapter 2 and have finally *almost* reached the scheduled confrontation that was originally the whole point of the chapter -- which is going to end up as an exchange of a couple of lines at most, I think -- but I'm really starting to feel that I've cursed this story by over-promising and publishing in advance, and/or that I shouldn't have started it, and/or that, given my record over the last few years, I've just burned out on writing altogether. It's like pushing through treacle. It really is. And it's so long since there was really any joy in it (but I still think that there are massive patches of Arctic Raoul that are *good* despite everything, which just makes me feel guiltier about not even attempting to do the work on it... among the many, many other things that I feel guilty about not doing).
And I don't know if this constant moral exhaustion is depression, or simple dietary deficiency (my face is really bad at the moment, covered in swollen spots and scabs) or lack of sunlight, or physical exhaustion from disordered sleeping hours and general shortage of sleep, or the side-effects of months of strain and stigmatisation and worry about shortages, or the lack of mental discipline to which I instinctively assign it -- because I jolly well do things when people *make* me do them, or when force of circumstances constrains it. Perhaps I really am inadequate to the task of living alone 365 days in a year (even in the absence of laws enforcing it). Because there is no-one to pick me up when I fall down, or to take up the strain when I'm tired, or even to be annoyed if I leave the washing-up for the next morning or stay up until the small hours and then fail to appear in time for lunch.
(I always did say that I basically needed a good wife...)
The trouble is that most of the things I worry about are things that I'm not even *supposed* to need to worry about, which means that I basically don't qualify for any sympathy for them, and that I can't even mention them without being either criminal and/or deranged (even being stuck on writing fan-fiction about someone's else's characters that you can't publish and shouldn't legally be doing at all isn't a thing you can really explain). And I don't have the luxury of a reassuring echo-chamber either online or offline to repeat back and reinforce my own self-defined identity, or to march around waving libertarian flags of one colour or another and getting worked up over righteous grievances. I can't afford to show any signs of distress at all; I spend my life in a state of pre-emptive defence.
Doing anything at all takes so much effort. I'm just tired -- so tired. And it keeps repeating in my mind; usually when I get haunted by a phrase I can exorcise it by working it into a story ("half a hundred" is still floating around out there somewhere, and "loyal and true"), but this one doesn't offer a lot of possibilities. (Oh, thinking about it I suppose I probably could...)
This was supposed to be somebody writing a 'passive' passage to indicate that the character was feeling helpless, which ended up sounding thoroughly artificial as a result -- generally the case where people are trying to apply a fixed set of rules they don't really understand. I can't say that I really understood where passivity came into it, but I took a few guesses at what was probably supposed to be happening and tried to achieve helplessness by other means (plus fixing the actual errors, and making a few random executive decisions because it seemed to sound better...)
The black haired girl below grabbed a rusty steel beam above her head, pushed her foot on a warehouse shelf, and kicked her leg up. Pants, that were now four sizes too large, snagged on a rusty bolt. Her foot slid and she started to dangle. She cried out, "No! Help!" as fingers above her loosened. "Mandy!" she cried, as the beam left her hands and she slammed onto the floor, enveloped in a shower of grit. She laid on her back, weeping, and finally rolled over, leaving a sweaty outline in the black dust. She pushed up, onto her knees, scrubbed her eyes, and sobbed, "I can't. I'm so weak." She stared up at the empty window, and cried out, "Mandy! No! Don't leave me!"
Grabbing onto the rusty steel girder above her head, she wedged one foot onto a warehouse shelf and kicked off frantically with the other, trying to hook her leg over the beam. But the trailing pants that were now far too large for her caught and snagged on a rusty bolt, and she fell back, still clutching on desperately as her foot slipped and she started to dangle.
"No! Help!" She could feel her fingers losing their grip. "Mandy!"
The floor hit her hard as she crashed to the ground, enveloped in a shower of grit, and for a moment she couldn't even move. She lay on her back, weeping, and finally managed to roll over, leaving behind a blurred outline in the black dust.
"I can't." It came out of her as a sob. "I'm so weak. I can't."
Above her the window was empty. Pushing herself up onto her knees, she stared at it, scrubbing her eyes. There was nothing to be seen but sky.
"Mandy! No! Don't leave me!"
If only it were as easy to 'fix' my own! I'm still just about struggling on with Chapter 2 and have finally *almost* reached the scheduled confrontation that was originally the whole point of the chapter -- which is going to end up as an exchange of a couple of lines at most, I think -- but I'm really starting to feel that I've cursed this story by over-promising and publishing in advance, and/or that I shouldn't have started it, and/or that, given my record over the last few years, I've just burned out on writing altogether. It's like pushing through treacle. It really is. And it's so long since there was really any joy in it (but I still think that there are massive patches of Arctic Raoul that are *good* despite everything, which just makes me feel guiltier about not even attempting to do the work on it... among the many, many other things that I feel guilty about not doing).
And I don't know if this constant moral exhaustion is depression, or simple dietary deficiency (my face is really bad at the moment, covered in swollen spots and scabs) or lack of sunlight, or physical exhaustion from disordered sleeping hours and general shortage of sleep, or the side-effects of months of strain and stigmatisation and worry about shortages, or the lack of mental discipline to which I instinctively assign it -- because I jolly well do things when people *make* me do them, or when force of circumstances constrains it. Perhaps I really am inadequate to the task of living alone 365 days in a year (even in the absence of laws enforcing it). Because there is no-one to pick me up when I fall down, or to take up the strain when I'm tired, or even to be annoyed if I leave the washing-up for the next morning or stay up until the small hours and then fail to appear in time for lunch.
(I always did say that I basically needed a good wife...)
The trouble is that most of the things I worry about are things that I'm not even *supposed* to need to worry about, which means that I basically don't qualify for any sympathy for them, and that I can't even mention them without being either criminal and/or deranged (even being stuck on writing fan-fiction about someone's else's characters that you can't publish and shouldn't legally be doing at all isn't a thing you can really explain). And I don't have the luxury of a reassuring echo-chamber either online or offline to repeat back and reinforce my own self-defined identity, or to march around waving libertarian flags of one colour or another and getting worked up over righteous grievances. I can't afford to show any signs of distress at all; I spend my life in a state of pre-emptive defence.
Doing anything at all takes so much effort. I'm just tired -- so tired. And it keeps repeating in my mind; usually when I get haunted by a phrase I can exorcise it by working it into a story ("half a hundred" is still floating around out there somewhere, and "loyal and true"), but this one doesn't offer a lot of possibilities. (Oh, thinking about it I suppose I probably could...)
