Author: Michael Seidel

Science fiction, fantasy, and mystery writer. Singer (sorry, no shows) & nudist (in my home). Beer, cat, cheese, coffee, pie and wine friend. Left IBM and Silicon Valley for the southern Oregon life but I miss the ocean. We're too far inland. Gotta move.

Sunday’s Theme Music

I heard this song on Sirius XM this morning. It didn’t suit my mood so I switched to FM. For a moment, I thought the radio wasn’t working because the same song was playing, in almost the same point of the song. I switched to another FM station.

Guess what song was playing?

I thought, that song must be destined to be today’s theme music. Not sure why. It’s all about relationships. Of course, it might be heard on three stations at the same time because it’s a popular song, and we end up being saturated with its playing.

Listen to some Post Malone and “Better Now” (2018).

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Crystallizing

I can certainly tell that Entangled LEREs was the first book written in the Incomplete States series. (Back then, the working title was The Long Summer.) I’m a third of the way through it in the initial editing and revising process, and I’ve deleted four chapters. Those chapters, written while I was exploring and developing the novel’s concept, no longer fit the overall story arc. To keep them in would be indulging myself.

So, off they went. The muse(s) didn’t argue at all, so I must have made the right decisions. Still, I saved each chapter intact as a file, with a note about where they came from, and updated the Editing Checklist to show what I did, and why.

The chapters were fascinating remnants of the genesis of the initial concept and the finalized concept. I remembered struggling daily as I wrote, trying to decide, what is this novel about? As the finalized concept crystallized, one novel became two novels, and then burgeoned into a series. Characters and their tales, plot twists and settings all arose. I didn’t include everything; sometimes I knew that what I was writing was writing to think, exercises to help me understand what I was learning and where I was going. They were saved, too, just in case I later veered.

In point of fact, the largest document of the twenty-five documents (including the four books) I created while developing this series is the document called “Circle (working doc)”. At five hundred pages, it’s one hundred ten thousand words and seventy-nine chapters. Some of the chapters made their way into the beta version of the four books. Many have notes about my intentions when they were written about where they should be in the narrative. Several of the chapters were written as snapshots of action, outcomes, or discussions between characters to help me understand the story arc but included information that I felt shouldn’t be ‘given’ to the reader.

They might still end up in the final first draft of the four books. I don’t know, and won’t know until I’ve completed this phase of editing and revision.

That’s what it’s all about.

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Tick

It seemed like a tick. It’d been Monday and now it was Saturday. May was beginning but now September was being celebrated. He’d just turned sixteen, and now he was sixty-two. 1968 became 1978, and 1998 became 2018.

Just a tick. He’d been beginning, and now he considered the ending.

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Floopy

Floopy (floofinition) – a pet who acts silly.

In use: “Meep was floopy today, galloping into the house from the patio, sliding to a stop on the hardwood dining room floor, and then spinning around and galloping back out.”

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The Lesson

His backpack seems light. Walking along, he thinks, what did he forget? In a flash, he concludes, OMG, I forgot the power brick. As he walks, he considers options and decides, just stay off the net, edit, and work as long as possible before the power is gone.

It’s a downer because he was looking forward to the work session. Now it was all changed.

But unpacking, everything is there. He’d forgotten nothing. It would be business as usual.

Sipping his coffee, he thinks, I put all that energy into worrying about a possibility that didn’t come to be, a possibility based on a false perception.

There must be a lesson there, he decides, and then goes to work.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song, “Nowhere Man,” by the Beatles, came out in 1965. I vividly remember carrying a small transistor radio (with a nine volt battery) and listening to this song early one summer afternoon, singing along with it as I walked along Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg, Pa. The lyrics were simple but seemed powerful to me.

It must have been in 1966, and I was ten when I was doing that. Fifty-two years later, I’m walking along A Street in Ashland, Or., singing it to myself in an early late summer morning. It still seems like simple but powerful song.

 

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The Sneeze

It was an expulsion from his mouth and nose, a rejection of foreign bodies irritating his systems,

And a trigger for the cat to leap up from deep sleep and scurry from the noisy monster (who is usually quiet and friendly, especially when he has food or treats) into another room’s safety,

And a cue for the dog to say, “Hello!” (woof),

And a signal for annoyance to fly through his wife’s expression as she says, “That’s one.”

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Guidelines for A Relationship with Your Muse(s)

I’ve been coping with my muse(s) for years. I’m not certain how many I have. I may have one muse with shape-shifting skills and multiple personalities, or a horde with very distinct skill sets and ideas. I suspect my muses are both of these ideas.

Muse(s) can be fickle. Having employed some mechanisms that helped me get along with my muse(s), I thought I’d compile some brief, general guidelines. These are recorded to help me in the future, but since I’m typing them up, I thought sharing them might help others when they’re dealing with their muse(s).

  1. Shelter your muse(s) like kittens, puppies, kits, and fledglings. They’re cute, tender, and impressionable, and need to be fed, protected, and nurtured. They depend on you for everything.
  2. It helps to act like you’re handling a fourteenth-century Ming dynasty vase when you’re conversing with your muse(s). They’re rare, fragile, and irreplaceable.
  3. Regard your muse(s) like they’re famous geniuses such as William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Stephen Hawking, Jackson Pollock, Maya Angelou, or Frank Lloyd Wright. They have a lot to offer, and you should pay attention.
  4. Behave with your muse(s) as you would with family that you enjoy having around, and respect and interact with your muse(s) as you do with family that you must love because they’re family, but you have no idea why they do the things that they do.
  5. Follow your muse(s) like they’re a famous performer, like Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Beyonce, or Kanye West, or a movie star like Jimmy Stewart, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Dwight Johnson, Jerry Lewis, Casey Affleck, or Bruce Campbell.
  6. Care for your muse(s) like a favorite elderly pet who seems to be fading.
  7. Obey your muse(s) like you’re a child and they’re your parent(s).
  8. Nurture, protect, and teach your muse(s) like you’re their parent(s) and they’re your child, perhaps a two-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old. They could be both from moment to moment. Part of the fun is understanding which one they are.
  9. Interact with your muse(s) like they’ve been convicted of being a serial killer who escaped from prison and is standing in your bedroom.
  10. React to your muse(s) like they’re the monsters under your bed. You’re not sure if they’re real, but you keep hearing noises, and it’s really, really dark.
  11. Embrace your muse(s) like a bolt of lightning during a thunderstorm. It can be painful and illuminating, but rewarding, if you survive.
  12. Finally, have fun with your muse(s). Pretend that you’re all celebrating graduating high-school and becoming an adult by getting drunk.

Employing these simple strategies have rewarded me with the same sort of wonderful relationship that I have with a stranger that I bump into at a parade. With a little observation and effort, you can have the same kind of relationship.

Good luck!

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