God, Deb, that would rock.

That would make for one seriously useful blurb, deb! Wow.

Congrats on the very fine dollars, Gus.

Damn - Shaffer can't. The Letterman schedule is 15-hours a day.

Ah well. On to Rowling.

Warning: I'm about to kill the thread. Sorry in advance.

This is on Teppy's topic, but not a drabble. More like a brain or soul dump. It's the opposite of all-access.

Relicts

I'm told someone's writing a biography of you.

He won't be asking me about you. How can he? He doesn't know I exist. I chose that road, long ago: stay invisible.

There were a lot of reasons for that. I could tell him wondrous stories, moments of intimacy, laughter, power, music, magic. I would kill to have your reputation be my right, in my keeping; lord knows, I'm as fiercely protective of you dead as I ever was when you were alive. But he won't ask me. My name's not on that guest list.

He'll ask your widow, of course, the woman you were married to those last few years of your life. She's the executrix, the keeper of the keys of your memorabilia, your stage wardrobe, your sheet music. She can give him all sorts of things for his literary scrapbook. It's possible that somewhere in her goodie bag, carefully doled out for posterity, there are things she can't identify, things that predate her. I wonder if one of those is a sterling silver man's ring, made from parts of ebony and ivory piano keys? I wonder if she found that, after you died. I wonder if a chill went down her back.

He'll ask your first wife, naturally, the woman who had everything I wanted, and kept it for all the wrong reasons. She was there for the money and fame years, Mrs. Rock Star. She can tell him all about how you two adored each other, how you kept coming back to her, how she was the great love of your life. She's probably right. Who am I to say?

I won't be asked. The golden circle will be incomplete - I made sure of that. If the book mentions me at all, it will be as the faceless unidentified girl he had an off-again, on-again relationship with during the 1970s. It must not have mattered very much, though, surely? Since he was still married?

When history gives you your due, they'll be there, those two women. I'll be shut out, excluded, barred, outside looking in.

Because in the inner circle of the women who apparently mattered to you, two had rings, and neither of them was me.

It seems odd to say something like this, because he was such a big part of your life, and I mean no offense... but I'm so blown away by the way you say what you need to. You're one of the few people I've ever come in contact with that has the ability to not only say exactly what they want, and what they need, but to say it so well. Your stories about him always hit me right in the heart.

Thanks.

The truth is, I'm good at bleeding - and since the language is all I have left, I'm damned grateful I can bleed for what I feel, and do it in a way that says what my heart wants to say.

Your talent just blows me away; and since you were expressing something so fundamental I was afraid that complimenting your writing would beside the point. Also, would it be out of line to offer you a cyberhug? Sometimes that seems such at empty gesture, but at this distance it's all I've got.

Dude, cyberhugs are pretty much the only ones I'll take; there's been a really funny discussion of hug vresus non-hug, over in F2F.

But thanks - and I'm totally in agreement about fundamental stuff being the keystone in this kind of work, no matter who's doing it.

I asked an open question in my livejournal a few months back, a rare public post, asking the writers out there - all writers, published or unpublished, that doesn't define a writer - what one line advice they would give a newbie sitting at their feet.

My advice was "Tell me a story", meaning, basically, paint me the world and the people and make me care, because that's what "once upon a time" is all about. A majority of the professional writers - this amused me - offered up some variant of "butt. in. chair."

But my friend Laura Anne Gilman said, very simply, "Be true."

Basically, I think the point in these, the ones that deal with the one particular man, are less about the polish or the talent or the whatever, and more about the true. As in, true to me, so let it bleed.

Not just true, Deb, but fearless with it. I see you jump so often, without a net, that I nearly have heart attacks waiting for you to fall. But it never seems like you do. Or, if you do, you're like the Bionic Man: better, faster, stronger for it. It's amazing to watch and I thank you for sharing so much of that with us.

That said, I'ma bleed a little myself.

The Winner

We’d been meeting there for almost a week, now. The first time it was just as a lark. Something to while away a few hours with others rather than home, alone. As usual.

By the fourth night it was starting to feel like a regular “thing.” The bartender even ran our tabs together; it was taken for granted.

We watched the screen together and the scores started diverging. The excuses fell from my lips. “It was just luck, process of elimination, it’s what being stationed in Spain did for me.” It wasn’t bragging.

“Will you, for God’s sake, SHUT UP?”

My advice was "Tell me a story", meaning, basically, paint me the world and the people and make me care, because that's what "once upon a time" is all about. A majority of the professional writers - this amused me - offered up some variant of "butt. in. chair."

But my friend Laura Anne Gilman said, very simply, "Be true."

Yup. More broadly, if you have something in you that wants to be let out, then let it out, in whatever form it takes. Writing, painting, acting, dancing -- whatever. I guess that combines both "tell me a story" and "be true."

ION, Deb -- did you know that Tad Williams is writing a 6-issue comic series for DC? It's called "The Next," and is due out in July.