A Case of Writerlust: Paying the Iron Price

I am a clumsy person.

Today:

Knocked elbows with my coworker literally 15 times.
Bumped into another about 4.
Spilled coffee all over my hand
Opened the door into someone else.
Toppled out of the car at Barnes and Noble in front of an old man who thought it was hilarious and made me feel like an idiot. (though to be fair, my laptop bag is heavy enough to send me off kilter.)

This is today. Today has been a bit graceful to me.

This transfers into my writing. I think, interestingly enough, I accidentally poured all my negative traits into Rena in a desperate attempt to make her not the token insert protagonist that so often happens in fiction. She has (almost) always literally fallen into Fyorea. She gets bumps, she gets scrapes. She gets sick. I can remember the first lasting wound I gave her...right across her upper arm, a direwolf bite she received right outside the capitol gates, back when the story was less about her growing up and more about...I don't know, I was getting to it eventually. That point, that first permanent, lasting scar, that would always show up in my seventeen-year-old self's "let me hit you over the head with a note saying 'do you get it?' stapled to a brick" style of writing whenever I needed to remind the reader that RENA COULD TOTALLY GET KILLED, YOU GUYS. I'M A DANGGGGERRROUUUSSSS WRITER! LOOK OUT FOR ME!

It's not that my writing's changed (it probably largely hasn't) but it's more that I've started to understand that the more interesting scars might not be the ones you see on the outside.

Ebb has a scar on his right shoulder blade from where he fell as a little kid. It's small and white and looks like a star and you almost wouldn't notice it unless you were looking for it. That's his scar, his only one, and that's impressive for a fighter.

But it's a scar that he got when he was ten, when he was caught trying to fly off the deck in his back yard, about to break the number one rule of living on Earth - you don't tell the locals.

Every time he looks in the mirror, his head twisted around to get a better look of the puncture wound the little wire garden fence had given him as it had torn through his skin, he remembers this. He remembers that he had come close, so close to telling Rena exactly where he came from, exactly what he was, because he was too little to hold such a big thing inside his tiny frame.

Rena doesn't know this, and will never know this, because to her it would have been largely irrelevant. She doesn't know why Ebb is on Earth - that his father was killed in action, his stepmother died in winter, and his brother thrown from aunt to uncle to aunt until one day he made the mistake of wandering outside the gates. When they closed behind him, no one would hear from him again for six years.

However, this isn't Evan's story.

This is Ebb's little anecdote, about his scar, the scar that almost sent him to the hospital, that could have unraveled centuries of well-kept secrets in one literal swoop, because he was a lonely little boy who missed his family. Because the little blonde girl sitting below him was the closest he would have to a family for many, many years.

And the important part - the part that makes this scar important, the part he sees when he looks in the mirror - is that he didn't do it. He didn't change, he didn't spread his wings. He fell, like a normal human boy, eight feet into his new foster mother's vegetable garden. Because at 10 years old, Eberion Bluewing already knew the most important tenet of being a Ranger, taught to him from his father's knee on the rare instances he saw him at home before the courier had arrived with news of his death.

Duty first, no matter what.

In other news...

I finally tracked down everything I needed to modify my unworn tshirts! I'm really happy because high school meant I bought stock in Hot Topic and have a million and a half "I'm 23 years old and can't really wear this fedora bro clothing style" t-shirts lying in my closet even AFTER going through three years of wardrobe purging.

But I was searching around and stumbled across a blog that I really love, and zeroed in instantly on what I wanted to do to my first garment victim.

I present: the No Sew, Lattice, Stud Tshirt DIY .

She had me at "No Sew!" That meant no needles! That meant no accidental bloodletting! I was so excited for the past month and a half since I FOUND this tutorial to actually do this, and after multiple failed excursions into the wilds of Poughkeepsie to try and track down studs (and Hobby Lobby, I couldn't find Hobby Lobby) I finally found them! And Hobby Lobby! They were cheap too, cheaper then I expected. The internet sells them for like 9$ once shipping and handling is all said and done...they were on the shelves for $1.67 there. So even though everyone kept staring at me as I stomped through the place - I made the mistake of presenting everyone with the hilarious juxtaposition of my Oasap.com dress and the check-out line's selection of "Our God is a Great God!" CD's - I got metal studs, and got home.

Anyway, back to the T-shirt. No sew, no bloodletting, yada yada.

I got home from work yesterday afternoon all ready for my half hour DIY project and cute little post-project blog post I was going to do.

Four hours later, I was struggling and crying and cursing because apparently I am crafts-impaired and can't work a pair of pliers to save my life. This was a mistake, I kept telling myself, and repeatedly threw the shirt down in a mixture of disgust and frustration. A minute later I would pick it up and return to hunching over the dumb shirt, pliers in hand, trying to get my huge Amazonian fingers to work on this surprisingly tiny metal stud.

But slowly, I did it. I got to the final steps of the shirt and decided to just cut the collar off altogether because turning it into a REAL V-neck would require actual sewing and I am not a fan of that enough. So I grabbed my scissors and went at the collar, tongue sticking out, forehead scrunched.

Snip, snip, snip...

I would be done, and I would try it on a take a cute picture, and I would post it on my blog and people would know that I am STILL ALIVE and still WRITING THIS BLOG.

Snip, snip, snip...

And I would wear this tshirt tomorrow to my writing group and look super cute and everyone will love it and say, "Hey Sam! I love your shirt, where'd you get it?" And I'd twirl and give them a small, self-satisfied smile and go, "Thanks, I made it myself," and then walk away leaving their jaws slack.

snip, snip...

Maybe I'd even change into my clothes at work even though I didn't have to be across the river until four hours after my shift ended JUST so everyone at work could see the sick clothes I wear. It would be awesome and I'd make them all jealous.

snip...

I was concentrating so hard on getting around the collar without cutting into the shirt, while something blared on the television and my family went about their business around me. I narrowed my eyes, adjusted the angle on the scissors, and went forward another short clip...

"Ow!" I yelped, a sound like my dog makes when the spooky spooks get her for no apparent reason. I bit my lip and frowned and tried to hold back tears and go forward with the cutting.

"Did you cut yourself?" I think my mom said, but I was too busy finishing up the collar to notice. I nodded and glanced at my finger, staring at the little tiny bubble of blood. Wait. Not-so-tiny bubble of blood. I swallowed and tensed, staring at it a little, wondering if it was worth it to get a bandaid or just reach over a tissue... "...blood everywhere," is all I heard, and I turned my hand over. Bright crimson streaks were running down my hand.

I stared at my hand, uncomprehending. Something, deep down inside me, was telling me very calmly, "you just cut into your hand, you dipshit. Don't get it on the 3DS."

I didn't really react. I think I was crying. I was told to get into the bathroom and run it under cold water, and I did...and washed what was actually a giant bubble of blood away.

I gazed down upon my newly shorn digit.