Dude, where's my spark?

[vulgarweed]

The wintry Wisconsin weekend taught me how to breathe slowly and deeply again (the things you forget!). Lately my jobs have been reminding me that work actually goes better when you're not so tense you can barely move. Just show up. (physically or mentally). That's more than half the battle. You don't have to be justifying your existence every moment.

So where's the writing, though?

I have two GO WsIP that I'm very fond of, conceptually, and they're not abandoned by any stretch, and yet they're in a frustrating place. I add a few hundred words here and there. Been a while since I had the energy to sit down and really fly, which is when the good stuff happens. Been feeling a little fandom-isolated, and I'm sure that's a factor, but I've also been in grim hunker-down-and-work-on-real-world-stuff mode too, and that doesn't help either.

Suggestions? I need to get that lightness of being back, somehow.

Comments

Here ya go!

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Not a proper drabble, I can't be bothered with keeping track of word count....

***

It has a particular distinctive scent that has not changed significantly for millennia, despite variations in tanning and polishing techniques.

Crowley had known it for a long time. Creaking, oiled and stained armour, the bodies of leaky boats, hides of cow and horse and deer hanging by the camps. Saddles worn smooth. Tents. The soft fuzz and deep voice of goatskin drums in the old firelight rites.

The first feel of high, soft boots from Spain.

The first time he wore snakeskin he felt like a sort of cannibal, but there was nothing for it. His own sheddings were too dry and brittle to make much of, after all.

The first time he stretched himself out naked across the back seat of the Bentley (and he would sooner eat second helpings of Gabriel's overrated Eucharist soufflé than admit there's been more than one time) he couldn't tell where his own skin began and the soft leather ended.

It wasn't until Europe finally, belatedly mastered bookmaking that Aziraphale had begun to smell of it. Slightly. Subtly. Constantly. An undertone stronger than the scent's basic root of dust and paper and wool.

What did he do with those books when no one was looking?

Crowley had never really been one for presents, but he couldn't stop eyeing it in the charity shop. A distressed old brown airman's jacket of the sort a stuffy chap stuck forever in the 50s might think to be dashing, when he got in a mood to try to be once again. (Never mind that he never had been in the first place.) Crowley thought it was unspeakably ugly, which was a promising sign. But it wasn't the way it looked that mattered to him; it was all about scent, and just maybe, if they both worked up the nerve, texture.

If it hadn't been the right size for Aziraphale before, it surely was now.

Re: Here ya go!

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

YOu see, you've still got that magic. Oh yes.

~sniffs the leather~

Re: Here ya go!

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Ya know, when I worked a vendor's booth at the International Mr. Leather fest last summer, I got myself a little bottle of leather-scented perfume oil. I think I will go put some on. :D

Re: Here ya go!

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

I had one of those jackets, and thought I was the bee's knees in it.