Category: writing

The Goal Problem

Goals are great. I establish them to help create a direction for me, motivate me to keep going, and to keep on track. They help me measure progress, providing a tangible foundation for examining how I’m doing.

My problem with goals I’ve found is that I think of them as the destination. Then, I reach the goal and discover it was just a milestone to somewhere else.

That doesn’t reduce their effectiveness, but it is a reminder for me that I don’t always appreciate the larger situation. That works out, though, because setting goals that are small enough to achieve are great in helping me gain confidence and traction.

What I’ve realized is that goals are not the end, but I tool toward reaching for the end.

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A Summit of Positive Energy

I awoke early, but stayed in bed. The muses were already up, and were in a dictating mood.

They were working on the next novel in the Incomplete States series. The Final Time is the sixth book in the series, which is about five more than I’d planned.

Apparently, while I’d been sleeping, I’d been thinking over the novel’s concept challenges. While doing that, my muses engaged with my subconscious. Net results were that they’d figure out the issues and objections bugging me yesterday, and had created action and dialogue.

After staying in bed, I heard the muses out, and then got up, went into my office, a.k.a. the snug, powered up and typed. It wasn’t a lot, ten free-flowing pages, about eighteen hundred words that must now be edited, but that manner of spontaneous writing inspires me. It’s the best kind of writing, because it seems like it’s a writing zone. The book seems powerfully tangible. The process leaves me breathless and energized with excitement.

There’s always a caveat to this. Just as I have a few days in a dark trough roughly once a month, I also crest a summit of positive energy once a month. I endure the dark trough. It ain’t fun. During that time, I feel bitter. Drenched with self-pity, I despise myself and the world. Sometimes, when it’s really dark, I wonder WTF do I ever write? What is the point of this crap? Why do I put myself through it? Surely it’d be easier not to be a struggling writer, but someone who lives the retired life, traveling, puttering around the house, going to the gym three mornings a week, taking in movies, and so on. That appears to be what my retired friends do. It sounds appealing when I’m sunk in the dark trough.

But this summit? Man, it’s a joy. I accept it and run with it. Sometimes, though, that positive energy gets carried away, and the promises that I make during this time are difficult to fulfill when I crash into the trough. And again, that’s my life.

The trick with the mood extremes is to write no matter what I’m feeling or experienced, and accept that what I write may be great or terrible in either state, but it must be edited later.

Okay, got my coffee. Time to edit and write like crazy, you know, at least one more time.

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Sick, Compromised, Logical, and Wrong

I confess, I’m not a good person to have as your driver on vacation. Yes, I’m safe, aware, and involved, but I’m also goal oriented. I’m driving for that destination. Stop to look at the view? That’ll slow us down. Eat? What? You have to pee? Are you kidding me?

Yes, once I put a goal into place, it’s hard to abandon. It’s true with my driving and my writing. What is a strength is also a problem.

I’m debating about a sixth book in the Incomplete States series. (The working title, The Final Time, came to me as soon as part of the brainstorm that inundated me last night.) It’s a logical decision to me, as though I’m in control of the whole thing. Yes, and no, of course.

First, I acknowledge, I’m a little sick of working on the series, sick in the sense that I need a time-out. Sick, as in the sense that I was eager to work on something different. I have a goal in mind, and I’m almost there. I don’t want to turn away from that goal. I see and understand that about myself.

I thought that maybe I could compromise with myself and my muses. I will write some on the side, maybe, maybe not, we’ll see (he said, hedging his commitment), and continue editing full-time. Yes, that sounds like a good compromise.

Yes, I’m pretty stupid at times, thinking that it’s all about logic, control, and goals.

That’s not it at all.

I forgot that I write for myself. I write for myself in the sense that I am my number one fan, and my number one reader. I write for myself because I want to know what I think. I want to know the story. To now think of the story and try to apply the brakes is ridiculous. I want to explore it; I want to know.

That means I must write it.

That might all fizzle out, of course. Perhaps as I begin exploring it, the story will peter out. I’ll conclude, there’s not anything more to write and learn here. I might write some and realize, well, this is really just part of the last book.

I don’t know. It’s foolish to waste time contemplating what might happen or whether I have a decision to make. I’m a writer, and must write, and then I’ll decide what to do with it.

My coffee is at hand. Time to write and edit like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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Killing Time

It was an excellent day of editing, with little re-writing or revising required. Five chapters were edited. Although I kept part of myself separate as an objective measure to ensure continuity and clarity, reading my work was a reader’s delight. This was the sort of book I enjoy, and I was pleased with myself for what had come of my efforts of drinking coffee, staring out windows, talking to myself, dreaming, thinking, and typing. So, congrats to me.

Meanwhile, this evening, I had spare time to kill. It happens often when the daylight hours grow shorter. It suddenly seems like, hello, it feels like eight at night but it’s four P.M. I have energy but the darkness discourages activities.

So I’m reading. I’m usually reading several books. To pass time this evening, I resumed reading Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order of Time. 

His book is a slow read for me. I typically read a few pages a week. Sometimes I don’t read it for a week or two. His book gives me a lot to think about. As I read, ideas stir in me like mice creeping out in search of food. I begin pacing, hunting for the handle about what I’m thinking.

And suddenly, I realize, there is a potential sixth book in the Incomplete States series. There is something else that can happen, that can be done. It seems like it should be done.

Drawing out a notebook that I kept for scribbling about ideas, I confirmed that I’d formed the basis for this final book back in March, 2017. There it was, in the musings about Chi-particle states as they decay and transition from being imaginary and traveling faster than light to gaining mass and energy as they slow to less than FTL, to interacting with a wave-function collapse to establish arrows of time. In those fourteen pages of thoughts, written over three days, was the answer that could be the basis for the final book.

I’m astonished that I overlooked something that I think is sort of obvious, now that I see it.

Naturally, a muse leaps out to take charge. Words flow like lava from an erupting super-volcano. Opening a new doc, I type. As I do, ideas accelerate. Scenes expand. Dialogue rushes in. Plot points follow. Pages are typed.

Of course, I was writing at home. That’s fraught with interruptions as my wife laughs aloud at things she sees and reads on the Internet, plays videos, and talks to me about the news. The cats come in to see why I’m making that noise with my fingers and whether it’s something that they can eat, and if it’s not, can I give them something to eat?

All this puts me on edge. I’m frustrated with the interruptions, excited about the ideas, and pensive about writing another book in the series. Knowing me, one book can easily become two, or three. I’m almost finished with editing book four, A Sense of Time. Do I really want to pursue a sixth?

It’s anguishing. It feels like, I’ve envisioned the framework for the book so I’m now compelled to write it.

I didn’t know how to finish this post. I write to help me understand what I think. I write to channel my thoughts and enthusiasm. I write to wonder…

I returned to the new document to read what I wrote. More ideas and arcs are squeezed out of me. I’m reluctant to agree to the muse and write a sixth book but the writing fever has me, again begging the question, who is in charge here? Is there a master?

I’ll see what I think tomorrow, when it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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