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The dog kicked the door open and howled. A small German family blinked, and stared, astonished. The wife was the first to react. She reacted poorly. The dog re-reacted poorly. Frankly, everybody could have handled it a lot better.

These duels to the death aren’t uncommon in 22nd Century Germany. The rise of Kaiser Trumplebottom shook the country out of what had been a long, prosperous and (some may claim), decidedly ethical post-War slumber. But tides turn (thrice daily now, due to Moon II), leaders fall, and the zeitgeist conveniently fades from one form to the next.

The Russian Method returned to the scientific world. Shipments of bells, pet food and assorted canines flooded into New Berlin. The Academy De Genetic hummed in the dark, wet nights, trucks rumbling in and out. Police files show complaints from neighbours about howls and growls, snuffles and scratches. As the reports decrease, a new trend appears - complaints of men shouting, men with deep, guttural voices. Men speaking a language that nobody could identify. Men roaring into the night. And then the alarms sounded.

I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year! National Novel Writing Month is a thing we (and by we I mean one hundred thousand people from around the world) do to get motivated, get productive and get a draft of a novel completed. There's no skill level required, there's an amazing community of people who are happy to share ideas, help clarify things for research purposes, give tips on improving your writing craft and generally encourage you to reach the goal of all participants: to write 50,000 words between November the 1st and November the 31st! It sounds hard, but if you do a bit a day it's a bit less hard. It is always worth giving it a go.

https://nanowrimo.org/

Here's a bit from what I'm writing at the moment. I remember old cartoon movies we used to have that were cheaply made versions of Disney cartoons. We had a Beauty and the Beast one, and the art was pretty simple and minimalistic. The landscapes felt really unnatural and haunting, and gave me a feeling I can't really explain. It's a similar feeling to the one I get when I see the grimy and dirty places behind stores, places that aren't inherently unsafe or contaminated but that are still lonely. Places that show the hand of humanity but don't show any humans. Like the plaster-walled rear side of the bathhouse in Spirited Away. Places that still have a strange sort of lonely beauty, despite everything. That's what I was going for here, I think:

The desert was bone white under the full moon. Stars glittered in the darkness, and the desert twinkled back. To Jim it looked like a huge bowl of salt.

He rode in the trailer behind Tom’s bike, wrapped in layers of jackets to keep his heat in. There was no wind, and the journey was slow enough that the air didn’t bite, but still the chill enveloped the world. He wore one of the wide rope strips that secured the containers like a seatbelt, and rested his head on a bundle of the gifted leather.

*                         *                       * "Mercy?" he sighed, "Mercy... Oh, alright." The Captain turned to his grew and grinned, "what's the point ov bein' captin if you can't 'ave a little mercy, eh?"

The balding prisoner gasped and slumped with relief, "oh, thank you, sir! Thank you!"

The Captain strode forward, drew his cutlass and slapped the man across the face with the broad side. "Only jokin' mate, only jokin'!"

The crowded crew parted to create narrow alley, a straight line to the edge of the ship.

"Now," the Captain hauled the first prisoner forwards by his collar, "Off the plank with ye, before I find a more gruesome way to take your lives from you and lock them in the cage that is my conscience."

Crew and prisoners alike stood still in a shocked silence. The Captain cast his gaze around, evidently confused. 

"I-is everything okay, Captain?" The First Mate shuffled forward, wringing his fingers, "it was very i-impressive, your words, sir, it's just we've never heard you speak like that before..."

"Stole it from a poet, didn't I?" the Captain eyed up the nearest pirate, his stare daring the man to disagree.

A cautious spark shone in the First Mate's eye. He cautiously pulled out a notebook and pencil, "d-did you get the poet's name, Captain?"

"Course I bloody didn't!" the Captain roared, "Killed 'im for bein' a bloody pansy, didn't I? Real men ain't got time for writin' down words that ain't sayin 'this is 'ow much money I got and 'ow much people I killed to get it', right?"

Once upon a time...

a star was exploding. And I was sitting, across thousands of lightyears of space and significantly more time, in the living room, at my Grandfather's feet.

It may have been fate, or destiny. It may have been the careful hands of Gods moving each of us into place. Or it may have been plain old, everyday coincidence; we may never know. 

But as we sat there by the fire, the flames warming our skin and our minds turning over, one thought at a time, I found myself asking; 'What are stars made of?'

He was silent for a moment. And then in that comforting way that all Grandfathers eventually speak, as they brush shoulders with the ghosts of years gone by and a weary, gentle wisdom grows in their souls, he barked, 'What boy?! I 'ent got me ear-whatsits in.'

I said again, more loudly this time. 'What are stars made of, Grandfather?'

He sat back, his old armchair squeaking. 'Hmm, stars, eh? Stars...' 

I was only eight at the time, but I remember exactly what he told me next. Tiny particles that make up every single thing that we can see and touch; every tree, ever person, every empty field, and every star. Particles invisible to the naked eye that come together and burn with such a fiery passion and in such numbers that they squash in and like a thick, winter fog, we can see the shapes that they make. And they press in tighter still, and we can touch them and move them and mould them ourselves. Not one at a time, but as a group, as a family of particles as they mix together in infinitely complex patterns to create the world. To create the universe.

The star was exploding, far away and long ago. If I had looked out the window I might have seen it, a pin-prick of energy on the horizon, a final swan-song echoing to me from one million years ago. But I didn't look. 

The star was exploding. Hundreds of thousands of millions of particles, burning with passion, sailing out into the darkness; an infinity of adventure ahead. New worlds to see, to visit, to create.

We were them, and they were us. Everything looks the same, he said, when you get in really close, or get far enough away.

I asked Grandfather if that's why he stopped wearing his glasses, and he hit me over the head. A different hand from a different time.

So we sat there in silence for a while, as I pondered this. I looked out of the window now, at the dark and empty horizon, the signs of old death and new life and the bursting cosmic seed now faded from view. And as my mind turned over, one thought at a time, I found a new question.

I knew not to disturb my Grandfather now, or at least not until he had rested awhile. 

But the question was expanding, and I could feel a heat now, a pressure in my head. My mind turned over, faster and faster, and the warmth from the fireplace beside me was nothing; my mind was burning me with a heat unimaginable. I began to sweat and shake, and my heart trembled and stuttered, and the desire to know, simply to know, overcame me; I had to ask, now, before my curious soul tore from my body and asked for me.

And so I stood to face any wrath that might come, and trembling and shaking before this figure of wisdom and might, I knelt on one knee and bowed my head. I whispered, "Grandfather."

I heard his seat groan as he turned towards me, I heard a clink as he set down one of his brandy glasses, and I felt a heavy hand come to rest on my head.

"Yes, boy?"

I breathed deeply, and again, trying to humble myself. And I smiled through shaking skin as already I anticipated the relief and excitement of knowing, just knowing. And I finally asked, in a stuttering voice, the question that meant everything to me in that moment.

"Don't you think that we could start looking at serving the vegetarian market, dear?" She sat on a cold steel bench, hands clasped in her lap, shoulders shrinking away from the pink all around.

"I can't very well butcher carrots, my love," he called over his shoulder, swinging his arm again. Sweat glistened. "I take no pleasure in this, dancing amongst the corpses of bestial souls, but I must."

(They probably say that butchers can't be poets; they're wrong.)

"And besides," he continued, "the people must eat. We must eat. There is no money anywhere else."

"There is no money here," she shuffled uncomfortably, "The newspapers are calling this the Great Depression. If you got out of this shop for once you'd see that it's making people depressed. They're not buying our meat; they're not buying anything but the bare minimum to survive.

"The mortgage is falling apart, and while I love you with all my heart I will not live in a house of bones."

(Vegetarians can be poets, also.)

He turned now and winked, mopping his brow with a cleaver. "It's all in hand, my riblet. I've read the news and I've used my ears. The doctors tell me that to cure the symptoms you must cure the disease. Well I have the cure for this depression, and it's ready to be administered."

She was shocked at this, from the man who had only aspired to two things in his meaty life, neither of which had been to marry her. Shocked, and apprehensive. She knew her husband.

He went on, "The cure for depression is joy. It is happiness and love. It is laughter." He wiped his hands on a rag of dried jerky, "I have been practicing and training for this. I will be this town's first butcher comedian. And I will fix this; for you."

"Um," she said.

"Don't worry, my love, my darling, my crisp shepherd's pie!" he took her hands in his, eyes twinkling, "This will save us, you'll see. In fact, I steak my life on it." He grinned enthusiastically.

I sat with the world through the long night

and in the morning my heart beat

and my soul sang

and the world awoke

to greet the sun

and I lay down my head

and slept

Eventually he was invited to Britain to bring the Good News to the heathen: proof positive that what goes around comes around. He quite liked the English. They tended to say sorry a lot, which was quite understandable given their heritage and the crimes of their ancestors. And for some reason the Archbishop of Canterbury sent him to a rural parish that was so white it glared. Perhaps the Archbishop had a sense of humour, or wanted to make a point, or possibly she just wanted to see what would happen.

This wasn't the United Kingdom that his mother had talked about when he was young, that was certain. Now, with her long dead, he walked through a London that contained a great multi-hued population. You hardly saw a news bulletin that wasn't delivered by a reader whose recent ancestors had walked under African stars. Hell, there were even black men and women to tell you when it was going to rain on the cradle of democracy. This despite the eeriness of an emptying country, a capital city being abandoned suburb by suburb.

He said as much to the retiring incumbent of St John on the Water, the Reverend David Blessed, a man who clearly supported the theory of nominative determinism. And who said, when he saw Nelson Azikiwe for the first time, 'My son, you won't be short of a dinner invitation for the next six months at least!' That turned out to be a successful prophecy on the part of the Reverend Blessed who, with the help of some family money, was retiring early to his own cottage, so that, in his own words, he could 'watch the fun when you take your first service'.

If you like sentient A.I. airships, alternate universes, universe-hopping, great prose and greater imagination and you still haven't read The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter I swear to god I will come to your house and break your favourite egg-cup.

Paul Auster, Staring Down the Challenges of Writing on The Big Think

Failure as part of the routine of writing

She lived in a cottage on the edge of a forest.

Well, it wasn't really the edge. The forest tended to fade away slowly; trees giving way to smaller trees, smaller trees giving way to shrubs and shrubs giving way to dandilions and the occasional clothes-peg. To find the absolute edge would take more skill and experience than any local could possibly muster.

It wasn't really a cottage, come to that. No thatched roof, no grubby windows, no mildly toxic plants clinging to the equally grubby outside walls. It didn't even have a crooked chimney. Frankly she wasn't making much of an effort and didn't really have any right to call it a cottage in the first place.

She lived in a little old house what had some trees near it. And she was damn well grateful.

She stepped out one rainy Autumn evening under a blue umbrella. Golden-orange light glittered warmly through the downpour from a faraway break in the clouds as she made her way down garden path. The hedgerows of the lane ahead shifted and rustled gently in the breeze, and sparrows darted back and forth, hurrying home to their families and their warm, dry nests. She trod in a dog poo.

The road to the village was always quiet. The moors weren't very well lived-on (or lived in by any magical fantasy creatures. Frankly if you're expecting any whimsical rubbish like that you must close this book at once; this is a serious piece of literature and I expect you to treat it as such) with only one or two small farmhouses besides her own. The soft moorland spread out on either side, old fence-posts the only sign of civilisation. Far away ahead of her, the blue smoke of fireplaces hung like a beacon.

You heard the village before you saw it. And you smelled it before you heard it. The villagers always said that it smelled like life, which confused a lot of visitors. They thought it smelled like shit.

We fell down. We all fell down; the bridges and houses and buildings. Hope fell with us, but even as we clutched and grabbed and cried for it, it fell further and faster and deeper. We lost it in the darkness, that most precious thing.  We didn't have the tools to make another.