Infloofuence (floofinition) – a housepet’s ability to have an impact on another pet or a human’s thinking, choices, or behavior.
In use: “Cats often infloofuence Michael’s theme music for the day.”
Wednesday’s Bumper Sticker
Seen on a car in Ashland, OR.
Another John Said
A & P was a grocery store chain. My stepfather worked at it, I thought, although he never spoke much about work. It was a well-known chain and abundant around the Pittsburgh suburbs where I lived from four years old until I was fifteen.
When I read John Updike’s short story, “A & P”, in English class in 1972, it struck me how vividly and accurately he’d portrayed the average store and its customers and employees. I had no plans to be a writer then. I just enjoyed reading. I preferred science fiction and adventure until then but then I read Catch 22, Catcher in the Rye, Pornoy’s Complaint, and Herzog, and my interests shifted.
A & P are gone now, only known through literature, entertainment, and memories.
Tuesday’s Theme Music
I enjoyed good mouth organ, harmonica, and French harp playing. My favorites are Little Walter, Charles Musselwhite, Sonny Boy Williamson, Stevie Wonder, and John Popper. When I first heard Culture Club’s “Church of the Poisoned Mind”, I thought that must be Stevie Wonder playing the harmonica. I was wrong. It turned out to be Judd Lander. Since hearing him with Culture Club, I’ve listened for him, and have found him playing with numerous others.
Those guys have a style I enjoy, but I don’t have much knowledge about the players, instrument, or their relative abilities. Like other instruments, styles vary by genre. I like these guys as much because I’ve been exposed to their skills, and remember.
Do you have a favorite on this instrument? Think about it while listening to “The Church of the Poison Mind” (1983).
Book Three
“Deep breath,” I told myself, and scoff, mocking myself with, “Why?” Editing and revising the first two books in the Incomplete States series had gone well. The weeks of editing and revising had flown past. This is fun and rewarding. Yes, there are challenges, but no deep breaths are required, just time, space, and coffee. Fortunately, I have all three.
Word can tell a lot about a document. In this instance, Word tells me that I began this novel on March 3, 2017. I edited it for sixteen hundred twenty-two minutes. It’s two hundred fifty-five KB. At seventy-two thousand, nine hundred seventy-nine words, it’s over twenty-five thousand words smaller than each of the first two books in the series, Four On Kyrios and Entangled LEREs. The series’ final book, An Undying Quest, is largest at one hundred fifty thousand words.
The third book’s working title is Six (with Seven). I’m ambivalent about that title. I’m not certain that’s this is the final title. I’ll find out while I’m editing it.
Doubt about the series still assails me. Have I told enough for it to make sense, or did I tell too much and bog it down? Is it too chaotic for people, becoming too challenging for them to read? The reader in me felt it read well, but I won’t have a better sense of it all until I finish all four books. That stream of thought amuses me because readers all bring and find their own meanings. Even as I’m doubtful, I’m also optimistic. I think that if readers find the series, they’ll enjoy it. I’m reminded, too, of people I know who read the first book of a series, enjoy and recommend it, but never read another book of the series.
Thinking about the four books, I’ve come across several places where I recall thinking while I was editing, there’s another book there. It seems like another book is always possible.
Meanwhile, the muses are becoming pensive. Novel ideas are erupting. Besides these new ideas, old concepts exist that I want to pursue. Part of this is because, while I’m not writing but focused on editing and revising this series, I’m reading several books a week, which fires up the muses.
While walking yesterday, I thought, this series is a science-fiction infused fictionalized history of the future. That gave me a good laugh.
Okay, time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
The Revelations Dream
Once again, dreams thundered in like tornadoes, leaving much to contemplate in their wake. The most prominent dream was about unknown talents and changes, in my mind.
- I could see things that others couldn’t see, including the future.
- While I was demonstrating this to a friend, I used a wrinkled, old Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog to show her.
Many people were present in my dream. Most were strangers, but friends and family were present. We seemed to be in a large room in the upper floors of a tall building. Windows were on the two outer walls. This vantage let us look out across a cityscape. Crisscrossing white cement roads connect business parks surrounded by manicured green spaces reminiscent of places that I worked at in San Mateo, Palo Alto, and Foster City, California.
Inside, we were looking at long gray counters located under the windows. Strolling along, we were looking at these. To me, they looked blank. I don’t know what others saw, but looking at the gray counters absorbed them. Seeing an orange button on the table, I pushed it. Silver metal boxes arose at regular intervals on the counters. They had controls on top. Feeling bold, I examined the controls of one. They seemed simple. Although I didn’t know what they did, I pushed one.
The light changed, revealing other objects around us. Turning to another box, I pressed another button and exposed another aspect of our hidden reality. My thought was, these machines help us see the world. I was excited and wanted to talk to others, but when I did, I discovered that they didn’t see the boxes or their influence.
Taking my mother by her shoulder, I pointed to where the boxes were. When I did that, the boxes became visible to her. Likewise, when I guided her to the two boxes that I’d used and pointed out their influence, she could now see them. Understanding that I seemed to be a connection, I went to others and showed them. Excited conversation spread as more and more people were engaged. I pressed more buttons. The lights shifted into something dark that revealed bright strips of existence and threads running from the people to the sky. I couldn’t see where the threads ended, but I thought that the strings went to stars.
My friend came in. A college professor who teaches network security and cyber-forensics, I told her what had happened. She was astonished. As I told her about this, I realized that since I’d been exposed to the machines’ influence, I could now see these things without the machines.
To prove that to her, I found an old Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog. Using it, I told her, I can see the future. Then I knew, it’s not the machines or the catalog, but using them encouraged me to see.
I was astounded. Even as understanding seeped into me and epiphanies bloomed, I grasped that if I touched some of the exposed objects, I could peel away more limitations. Touching the closest thread, which was connected to my friend, I saw her future flash into existence like a giant movie screen. Gazing up into it with amazement, she and I said, “Wow.”
The dream ended.
Today’s Theme Music
My stream is back-flashing to high school. I remember talking with my buddy, Bob, about a new Moody Blues song, “Nights In White Satin”. I already knew the song and was puzzling about how I knew this song so well already. I told Bob that I was certain it was an old song. Later, on the radio, they mentioned that the song had been originally released in 1967, but didn’t chart well in the U.S., but had been released again in 1972, the year Bob and I were talking. I felt absurdly validated and pleased that I’d accurately remembered the song had come out several years before.
Floofscape
Floofscape (floofinition) – the landscape (or roomscape), as seen by a housepet.
In use: “To the typical housefloof, three factors determine how the floofscape is seen. One, I can sleep there, there, there, there (and that one is especially good when the sun is coming in through a window in the winter). Two, that space is mine, that space is mine, that space is theirs (or so they claim). Three, they keep telling me to get off that space, but I shall persevere.”
Suddenly —
Suddenly, it seems, I’ve completed editing and revising the second book, Entangled States. Suddenly, it’s time to begin editing and revising the third book of the Incomplete States series, Six (with Seven).
You’d think it wouldn’t seem sudden. I work in MS Word. I have the navigation panel open. I always knew what chapter and page I was on, and how much remained. It all seems sudden because I was underwater in the process. Finding no more to edit and revise, I surface and suddenly, there I am, done with another, ready to begin the next.
It’s an amazing feeling of joy and satisfaction. Suddenly, the sunshine seems brighter, the sky is bluer, and the future seems brighter.
Time to end another day of writing editing like crazy.
Findings
Editing and revising the second book, Entangled LEREs, is about ninety percent completed. I’ve come to a challenging chicane where the disparate stories and characters are brought together to race into a new direction, which is where the third book, Six (with Seven) begins.
I find that as I edit the beta draft, creating the first draft — something other humans can read and comprehend, rather than streaks of coherency marred by stretches of babble — that I refine my quest about what I want from the story. In the beginning was a concept. Characters jumped out. Ideas jumped in. Arcs were spun. Lives and plots were developed and explored.
Now I’ve sharpened my understanding of what I wrote from the morass of thoughts, energy, and application that we call fiction writing, and I crystallize goals about what I’m exploring, and think, this is what I want to do with this book, and this is what I want to do with this series. As I’m just reaching the series midpoint, that might change again. Unlike other times that I thought things about the series and books and documented them in Epiphany.doc to help me understand, I understand enough that I’m not impelled to write this up. Incomplete States is moving from imagination-ware to a concrete state. Its becoming tangible. Recording isn’t required.
Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 