Day: March 25, 2018

Choice of Direction

As I take up the next chapter, I’m faced with sudden choices. I thought the path was clearly defined when the chapter was begun, yet, when I wrote it, it took unexpected twists and ended up somewhere else. Once there, I saw two new options — and then a third, and a fourth. That forces the writing phase that I call “sitting at a computer with a cup of coffee and staring out a window thinking.”

I know I won’t be able to decide in this session. In a way, it’s like a chess match, where multiple future moves are considered. No, I’ll probably finish the coffee and get up without writing another word, and then I’ll go walk for a while and continue to think. I probably won’t decide while I’m walking, either. I’ll continue to think about the options and moves until I return to write like crazy tomorrow. Then, without making a conscious choice, I’ll begin writing, and let it take me.

That’s the process: realize, and think, letting it brew and simmer, and then write by letting the words take me. When I’m in these moments, I’m reminded of the scenes in Stranger than Fiction when Emma Thompson, as the author, Karen Eiffel, smokes cigarettes and wanders around, considering ways to kill her main character.

I so enjoy those scenes.

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The Winding Road

As the current sub-plot and story line of my work in progress winds along like a leisurely country drive, I curb impatience to be done. If I had to describe myself, impatient is a word I’d consistently employ. I’m continuously monitoring and struggling with my impatient urges to be done, to move on, to get there, to get finished, etc.

Today, motoring through the scenes I planned to write, I realized that I wasn’t as close to being finished with the work in progress that I’d hoped and believed. I’m enjoying writing it. It’s weird to say that it’s a leisurely write, because I write several thousand words a day (knock on wood – don’t want to scare off the muses), and edit it every day. Yes, I’m a writer that edits as I go, because my writing is an organic garden in progress, and requires constant attention. I usually edit the volume in progress (number four), but sometimes jump back and edit the others. They’re all beta, and will require more work when they’re done before they’re finished.

I want this series done so I can go on to other books that I’ve begun or planned. One is from a story idea a fan sent me. “What can you do with this concept?” she asked. Answering her, I ended up writing about forty pages. I stumbled across it last night, and enjoyed what I read, and remembered what else was planned, and I feel like I owe her to finish it.

The second project that I want to continue is the third novel in my Life Lessons mystery series. Readers of the first two books have asked several times, “When is the third one coming out?” Soon, I promise, as soon as I finish this work in progress. I’d written five chapters of it before getting distracted by the current concept, and read some of that last night, and remembered, “Oh, yes, there’s so much to write here.” I had several more sequels planned in the series and had a broad outline of that developed. And, as I write this fourth volume of the current WIP, a fifth volume keeps tugging on my sleeve.

Not enough time, you know? Those are just a few of the dozen items in the writing bucket. But, c’est le vie, this is the writing life.

Now time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

This song streamed into my head while I was shaving this morning. There’s no evidence for why this song emerged from my mind’s general morning chaos. The song came out when I was eight years old, but it’s a ubiquitous melody with an easy, harmonic hook. The Beach Boys were known for those harmonies.

 

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The Men At The March

I was at the March for Our Lives event in Medford, Oregon, with about a thousand others yesterday, when I spied a Pittsburgh Steelers hat on a tall individual. It was a crowded space, but eventually, finding him beside me, I said, “Hey, a Steelers fan,” because so am I. Laughing, he pointed at my USAF Retired hat. “And you’re retired from the Air Force,” he said. “Like my Dad.”

His father had retired from the Air Force and moved back to Pittsburgh, PA. We chatted and uncovered that we’d lived in the same Pittsburgh neighborhoods decades ago. He was fifteen years younger than me, but we’d attended the same schools, including Turner Elementary School on Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg. Like me, he’d followed a convoluted path to reach Oregon. My last stop before Oregon was Half Moon Bay, California, and his last stop was Madison, Wisconsin. He’d only been in Oregon three years. As a military brat, he was familiar with the places where I’d been assigned, and I knew his locations.

Besides politics, we talked about the changes back in the Pittsburgh area, and the Google location there, which we’d both visited. Six degrees of separation, small world, et cetera.  He was like a familiar face in the crowd, to finish the cliche trifecta.

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Floofphasic Sleep

Floofphasic Sleep (catfinition) – a pattern of slumber habits directed or influenced by feline activity.

In use: “Floofphasic sleep became his norm as he rose at midnight to bring the cats into the house, three to let the scamperfloof out of the house, and again at four to let them back in.”

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