Changeling - or - Chapter 16: Borrowing (Excerpted from An Illustrated Primer on Identity)

Begin with three or four pieces of information - a photograph that captures your target in the background will be sufficient, as long as it isn't too blurry. Note the date and location. Note the clothing, or lack thereof. Do a deep search. Extend from there.

Remember where the subject was instead of where you were at that time. If they were kissing, or eating, or shouting, all the better. Hold that thought as you swallow the chip.* Think it down. Sleep.

You'll have 24-48 hours. Report back as soon as possible, once you remember that you aren't where you are supposed to be.

• While the bitterness of the chip is off-putting to some, be aware that several decades ago, making do with invisible identity cultivation was the only resource available. Today's methodologies are much more rewarding to those willing to work hard. The company takes no responsibility for any loss of limb, life, or actual born-identity during the timespan of the chip's ingestion.

Sox, that is really cool! Do you write scifi/fantasy novels? If not, you should.

thank you very much Sail! ::blushes::

Right now, I write things for other people, and I write code. (I'm trying to find a writers' group here, but my latest wasn't super - the organizer spent the entire meeting talking about how she couldn't sell a script. I nearly sporked her.). Drabbles has been the most creative outlet I've been near in a long time. Seeing everyone's work here, and talking about writing, and having an assignment - I can't tell you how much it is keeping me hopeful.

These are great. Quite the fertile topic!

I had a hard time getting down to 100 words, but, as usual, the more I pared the better it got.

He only had one rule, her beautiful bridegroom: don’t open this door.

So she didn’t. She just peeked. And saw her husband become a swan and fly away.

All night she leaned there, peering into the empty room and thinking.

When he returned, she broke through the door, threw the shed swan skin on the fire.

He poured out sad explanations - a curse, conditions almost fulfilled but spoiled by her rash act, consequences - and he was gone.

She would find him, save him again, but she could not regret breaking his rule. Forbidden doors had no place in a marriage.

I haven't drabbled in years, but this topic inspired me to think of the moments of transformation I'm planning for characters in my WIP. Not sure how well they'll stand alone, but I'm trying to make these moments come to life outside the saga they belong in.

If This Be Treason

An island castle in a mountain-ringed lake. The land where her ancestors’ bones rest, the hearthside where she learned of Gordon courage and loyalty.

Now her loyalties divide her. Stay and be true to family and heritage, but betray the war-leader who trusts her, the queen to whom she pledged fealty, and the friend she loves more than a brother.

If she leaves this valley now she can never return.

He’s watching her—her friend the Sassenach soldier. She can see he’ll understand, and forgive her, if she stays.

“Hurry,” she says. “If we ride fast, we can warn them.”

Wow! All the drabbles have been good, but that you can make an extract from a novel into a meaningful and self-contained drabble says something. I'm going to make a guess: if you have any unresolved issues with plot or character development, they are not really unresolved. Anything that seem unsettled you've already decided, and just have not let yourself know yet.

[edit] Just to be clear, while I think it was a great drabble, I'm not comparing to the other drabbles which were also great. I'm just pointing out that it says something about your command of the world and characters you have created for the novel you are writing.

Thanks, TB! Believe it or not, that's a scene I'm planning for toward the end of Book Two, but it features the characters I see most clearly.

By Love

There was much to forgive on both sides.

They would have to forgive her secrets, her lies, the way she shut them out and shunned their advice. There had been missing money, missing pills, missing jewelry, but most of all, trust was missing. She’d obscured herself with deception and guile.

She would have to forgive their condemnation, their pettiness, their assumed moral rectitude. There had been no support, no love, no trust in her that she could make the right decision. They hid behind platitudes and hypocrisy.

They all cried when she opened the last present, a penguin-shaped cookie jar.

Susan, this is just a question, not a criticism or a suggestion. I'm just curious about your process. Do you ever write little things that have nothing to do with your current project? Just as a change of pace, or a way to loosen up, use your writing muscles in different patterns, blow some different-colored balloons through the headspace?

You always seem so tight-focused on whatever your current project is. I realize people work differently, so again, not a criticism, just an observation, and you could be doing headstands and just not telling us about them.

Purely from my standpoint, I have to shake off characters and situations that are riding me, periodically, and do something different. Something silly, or ponderous, whimsical or schmoopy, just to blast the stale air out of my brane. I tend to over-focus, and when I do I get grim. So I have to program in some diversion-writing time.

How about the rest of you? Do you concentrate on a single project at a time? Make one thing your primary focus but work on others as they call to you? In that case, how do you draw the line between refreshing diversion and avoidance and procrastination?

'Cause I'm a champion procrastinator, me. C'mon, fess up. NosyInquiring minds wanna know.

Oh man, Sail, you're not ending your saga there, are you? You've barely begun.

I suggest you print all your vignettes out and rearrange them on the floor till they have a narrative flow. After you write a couple dozen more of them.