After the Revelations

This is not how I thought writing would go.

I had a romanticized, glamorized vision about the writing process and a novelist’s life. I thought I would be dictating the story, making it up and writing it down. Instead, here we go again. Philea finishes her wide-ranging tale and brings it back to the moment where it split away, and joins two other paths. One path was forged by Pram when he told his part of this story, and the other path was forged by the six primary characters on the Wrinkle.

I’ve been waiting for this re-connecting. I’d seen and heard, experienced, if you will, what they were going to say and do once they came back together. Honestly, Philea’s side-trip astonished me. She went into a life that I didn’t know existed. It’s also surprising that it startled her as much as it startled me.

But, at last her side-trip is done. It’s time for those long-awaited next scenes. But before I go into writing those scenes, I need to soak in what Philea and the other characters experienced. She and Pram shared more examples of parallel life-experience-reality-existences — a LERE, their shorthand for other Now events that that lived (or are living) and share with the rest trapped in this cycle.

They’re trying to understand what will happen to them. They’re attempting to take a piece of information and fit it in with other pieces of information to create a substantive, believable cause and effect tale for what they’re enduring. That’s human nature, to fill in the gaps, color them with some form of logic or explanation, and make it all whole.

I feel for them, pitying them, because I know that’s not their nature. That’s not what they’re living. Even as they draw closer to the truth, sometimes even stating it in incredulous terms as a possibility, the six don’t always agree on the verbiage or logic. The logic argues against their standard expectations about reality, existence, and the arrows of time. Besides, not all of their experiences will support the truth, in their minds, because they don’t remember everything that they experience. Remembering more answers less by introducing more complexity and gaps. At this point, I think all readers will understand that.

So listening to — hah, typing — my characters’ struggle to resolve these new fragments of information, I really feel for them. The passages of their thoughts and dialogue that I’ve typed leave me oddly reflective.

That’s a first, raw, impression. On greater thought, it’s not leaving me oddly reflective. Instead, I’m taking what I learned through my characters’ learning, and applying it to my existence, here in the real world.

We’re all pieces. We see ourselves as pieces that comprise a whole. Yet, few of us ever fit fully, completely, and comfortably. And when one of us goes, we struggle to see the new whole, because we remember the whole that we knew, and lament its changes. We search for answers and rarely find closure and resolution. We remain wondering.

With these notes softly echoing in my mind, I sip the final dregs of cold coffee and end my day of writing like crazy.

May 5, 2018 4

Saturday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music comes to me from Pink, 2001. I woke up streaming it. I’d paraphrased the words, though. I was singing, “I’m getting up, so you better get the coffee started, I’m getting up.”

Here is “Get the Party Started”. I enjoy the beat and lyrics, and her activities as she’s getting ready, like sniffing her pits. LOL.

May 5, 2018 0

The Rhythm Method

“I’m trying to cut back on my coffee,” she said.

He said, “I use the rhythm method. I allow myself coffee on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursdays, I permit myself a few cups of coffee. Then, on weekends and holidays, I’m entitled to a few more cups of coffee.”

“You’re drinking coffee every day.”

“Yes, it keeps my rhythm synchronized.”

April 25, 2018 2

The List

“I love hot showers,” he said. “They’re my second most favorite thing, right behind pizza, cold beer, hot coffee, lemon meringue pie, watermelon, grilled steak, the beach, and the fourth of July.”

His wife said, “Where am I on that list?”

He said, “I’ll get back to you.”

April 21, 2018 1

One Of Those Nights

It was one of those nights. My muse didn’t recognize my need for sleep and refused to issue permission to shut down my brain and close my eyes.

Such times are productive, even though I feel like shit in the morning. I’m exaggerating for effect, of course; I really don’t know how shit feels. I feel guilty, implying that shit feels terrible. For all I know, shit feels great.

Sorry for the shitty detour. I know, terrible humor. Hey, I just confided that I had a rough night. Grant me some latitude.

Back to the muses’ nocturnal gallop through my mind. I’d just been complimenting my muse (or muses – I think there’s a congress of muses within me) about the pleasant week of systematic writing established and reflecting on the progress made. When last I left off writing yesterday, I had a damn good idea of where I was next going.

I’m still going there, but the dark silence of night brought out the muses like they were in heat. Instead of allowing me to sleep, wake up today, and go walk and write to work out details, the muses began shotgunning details into me. The people look like these. These are their names. They’re all women, and —

It’s not polite to ignore your muse, and it’s rude to tell them to shut up. I obliged them by listening. When I thought they’d finished, I attempted to use one of my honored processes to engage sleep. I thought it worked, too, but then, the muses thundered out anew.

When sleep and I finally met, quicksilver dreams rushed in, flashing kaleidoscopes of scenes and words. Awakening, I had a lot to think about between dreams and night writing, and a desire for about four more hours of sleep.

Got a big ol’ cup of dark, unadulterated caffeine loaded coffee steaming in a mug to my right. Time to write like crazy and get all this stuff down, at least one more time.

April 9, 2018 0

Virtually

I thought about having a cup of virtual coffee today, but I wasn’t sure that the virtual caffeine would give me the virtual lift I needed. On the plus side, I could think of virtually no health risks to virtual coffee. It came out to be a virtual tie with drinking real coffee, until it came to the taste. Virtual coffee has virtually no flavor.

March 31, 2018 0

Tweaking My Amygdala

After reading about how doing exercises in imagining positive outcomes can affect the influence of right amygdala and reduce your fear, anxiety, and worry, I decided to do such an exercise while walking today in preparation for my writing session.

In the exercise that I read and remember most sharply, people were asked to imagine that they were Superman. Bullets bounced off them. They could fall off cliffs and not be harmed, which made sense, as they could also fly.

So often, it’s my own doubt and lack of confidence that undermines me and my writing efforts. Like many folks, the impostor syndrome shadows my life, with the attendant fears that I have no talent, intelligence, or ability (sound familiar, writers?), and that exposure as a fraud is imminent. I wanted to counter those effects with positive visualization. Of course, I don’t know how I’ll measure the impact of what I did. I awoke feeling pretty damn confident, optimistic, and hopeful (I know – I exist with a complex dichotomy of feelings and thoughts), and I write almost every day, regardless of my mood. What I really need is a team to test me, check on my amygdala, and give me updates. Barring that happening, I’ll assume it’s working and drink my coffee.

Coffee always helps.

Almost always.

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

March 27, 2018 2

Coffee Apocalypse

I don’t like this story today, about Tully’s Coffee shops in Seattle closing because they don’t have coffee. They’re a coffee business, with the inside path to procuring coffee. You know how the old expression goes: “First the businesses run out of coffee, and then you run out of coffee.”

Makes me shudder. Imagine if this coffee shortage spreads, and all these coffee drinkers suddenly lack their daily fixes. (Talk about zombies.) Once this news spreads, there’ll probably be a run on other coffee shops.

Better go stockpile.

March 9, 2018 0

The Writing Processes

I enjoy reading about other writers and their processes. I’m primarily reading for ideas that I can incorporate or adapt into my processes, but I’m also curious about others’ takes on their creative processes. I’m often amused when people insist that writers must outline, or something like that. I tried outlining; it didn’t work for me. I felt that outlining drained the fun and creativity from my writing processes.

I was thinking about this today because I reached a pivot point. Writing organically, I’m journeying without a map. I like journeying without a map. I feel like an explorer crossing a new continent. Explorers decide, “There’s the sun; we’re following this river and heading that way for now. Let’s see where it goes.” I adapt that as, “There’s the ending; we’re following this path heading that way for now. Let’s see where it goes.”

Sometimes, as accounts of explorers will tell you, wrong turns are taken. Blind paths that lead to nowhere are followed. Yet, it’s not a loss, because they’ve expanded their body of knowledge.

That happens with me and my characters, too. They take a turn none of us expected. I don’t just follow then, though. I stop and ask, “Wait a moment. Where is this going? Are we sure we want to follow this path?”

As I’m also a non-linear writer, I’ll sometimes take a few days to write about other aspects while I think over the new potential path. By non-linear, I mean that I don’t write the novel in the order that the story is told, nor in the order of its final finish. I’m usually filling in expository bridges between action scenes during these periods. Action scenes, being sharper and more intense, come quickly, like a flash flood. In fact, I call it flash writing. A sudden inspiration strikes. It follows the general sense already created, so I let the flood happen. Other flash floods often occur in sequence as these major points are seen and grasped. After writing down their essentials, I edit and polish them, add details, and make changes for coherency and consistency.

By that point, they’re raw pearls. I want a necklace. Bridge scenes help me strand them together.

Sometimes, I make huge leaps. There’s an epiphany, and I spring forward to write it before I lose it. This is when I most feel like the novel already exists, and I’m just taking dictation.

Meanwhile, I write posts like this to help me understand what I think. As I thought about this little post and wrote it, my subconscious mind thought over the new piece and offered me some tent poles.

That caused a short interlude here as I explored the tent poles. I came to see how this new piece wasn’t all that new, but a latent piece I’d previously ignored. Indeed, I’d made a small reference to it once, back in the first volume’s first quarter. I’d flash-written some scenes without thinking about how to strand them together, but subconsciously, pieces were being put together. I just needed to remain persistent, let my mind work, accept what it gave me, and go for it. That, I think, sums up the whole writing like crazy philosophy.

I’ve got my coffee. Its smell helps me focus, its caffeine stimulates my creative energies, and it’s a component of my writing session routine. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.