Category: writing

Funny to Think

Next month will mark the end of the second year of working on the Incomplete States quadrilogy. I hope to finish writing the fourth book in the series soon. At least, I sense the end feels near. Then I’ll have a beta version of all four books in the series.

Then the work begins, yeah, the real work. The creative writing part, hell, that’s fun and easy. Just turn your mind lose, and then tidy it up so it resembles correct written English and aligns with everything else written until then – to the best of my memory. I know from previous novels that I’ve finished that, in two years of writing these four books, I’ve forgotten a lot of what I’ve written. In fact, novel writing often feels like I’m a channel, a conduit through which the words and ideas flow. I write without remembering large swaths. That’s why the work begins after the beta versions are completed. Hidden in these four books are dead-ends and roundabouts, wandering paths and cliffs. Motivations have been established, shifted, and challenged. Facts must be checked and confirmed.

So on completing four books and about a million words in two years, it’s staggering and funny to realize, the work is just beginning to take the books from beta to first drafts to final drafts to publication. 

Once I finish the fourth book’s beta version – I call them beta because they tie in so completely with one another, they’re not truly a draft until the ties are cleaned up, so they have all the major features, but they’re not complete — I’ll probably take a break and write something simpler. Fans have been asking, where is the next book in Life Lessons with Savanna mystery series. Those books are usually less than one hundred thousand words, and a lot easier to write and finish.

Another day of writing like crazy has to be stopped to attend to real life. I love the tension of this moment, stopping while writing, when so much remains to be written. Makes me eager to jump back into it.

4

Speed

I bought a science-fiction novel on Tuesday afternoon and began reading it that night. I cut out time from other things each day to read it. It had five hundred seventeen pages. I finished reading it Friday afternoon.

I wish I could write as fast as I read. That’d be something.

For the record, the novel was The Exodus Towers, the second novel in Jason Hough’s “Dire Earth” series.

0

The Cat Dream

Seems inevitable that I’d have a dream about cats. Four cats deign to let me live in the house with them. All were strays or left another house by their choice to come live with me. Besides them, Pepper from next door stays on our porch and wants me to feed her (which I do), and two other neighbor cats seek me for hand-outs. I’m a soft touch.

But when I started writing about the cat dream, I concluded the dream wasn’t about cats. They were symbols being used. The words I chose to explain what was happening indicated the dream was about other things.

It was another dream of chaos (like, straight out of the courts). So much was going on, and my dream started in the middle of it. I was carrying a cat (not one that I have, nor have ever had) from one end of a busy, hectic place, to another. People kept calling me over to come and see or do something, or help them out. I ended up multi-tasking, and ending up losing the cat.

Now the dream became a story about a flooftective. Calling the cat, asking others if they’d seen her, I walked around shaking a kibble box, my agenda re-arranged. Thinking I’d heard it back by my place, I went there.

The dream gets weird. My place didn’t have walls, but was framed for walls. Doors and windows had been installed, but there wasn’t a ceiling. There was a fireplace, and a wall-less bathroom. Instead of using it, I chose to go up the hill to a public restaurant, clean, but not convenient.

My place was also unbelievably disorganized, with boxes strewn about, including empty cracker boxes. Anyone who knows me will recognize how different that is from my real life.

Without walls, people walked in and out of my place at will, exasperating me. I became stern about stopping people as they did that. A cat fight erupted, distracting me again. As I hunted down those involved, I discovered a cat that wasn’t mine as at the fight’s center. He looked like my current cat, Tucker, with thick, black and white fur and a bushy tail. As I was talking to this cat, asking, “Who are you?” in a calm voice, I heard a woman calling for Harold. While I called over to her, asking if her cat was black and white, the black and white cat left. I decided it was probably Harold.

The dream, or my memory of it, ended.

***

Writing about the dream, I found myself using expressions like ‘multi-tasking’.  I ended up applying it to my writing efforts.

Other clues were there, like being side-tracked, the missing walls, and the sense of chaos and disorganization. See, while writing this series this week, I became diverted into a fifth book in it. I soon recognized it would be a stand-alone novel that shared the concept and setting, much like the relationship between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Then, I realize how much I enjoy the creative side of writing. I dislike the rest of it. I don’t mind editing and revising – that’s like solving puzzles – but the business side is anathema to me. So, if I don’t finish, I’m working on a series, but there’s no pressure to finish and publish.

Cunning, aren’t I?

So, after thinking of the dream and situation, I knew that I had to stop working on the new, fifth novel, and finish the original series as envisioned. I can later go back to the fifth novel, if I want.

Right?

Right.

0

Carlos Said

Some days, I think I’m genetically pre-disposed to working hard to make myself miserable by imagining all the things that might…go…wrong. But it’s the same mechanism that enables me to imagine stories and others’ lives, so I co-exist with it as a strength and weakness. It’s always a matter of finding that balance and riding it.

1

All Along the Spectrum

I’m bouncing along the spectrum this week, sliding from hopeless negativity into enthusiastic, boundless optimism. 

I know there’s a sweet spot there. Just can’t seem to find that balance.

That’s not overly surprising, and I don’t knowingly let myself fixate on it. ‘Knowingly’ is key, because my mind has created traps that I fall into without realizing, following worn paths that I should avoid, except they’re so damn easy to follow. Do you write fiction or pursue goals and dreams? If so, you might understand what I mean when I refer to these dark, weary paths.

I don’t know all the nuances that trigger my spectrum slides. I have ideas and insights into that process. When I win writing battles, my spirits soar toward the positive end. Good food, a good time, and a surprising compliment can take me there, too. Struggling with writing decisions, events that seem beyond my control, and simple frustration can drag me down into sour, doleful depths.

I know those things. Unseen health issues affect me with sneak attacks. Or, are they health issues? Maybe they’re not. I note, I feel off, and ask myself, what’s going on? Is it too little sleep, something I ate, part of the aging process, the first symptoms of a disease, or intellectual activities affecting my emotional activities affecting my physical activities affecting my spiritual activities affecting my intellectual activities?

Yes, that circle exists. It’s more complex than those few arcs described. That’s the spectrum. It’s not an orderly, linear line, but a circle, perhaps even a mobius. I think of it as a spectrum on a circle. Abstract visualization is one of my strengths, so I turn to it to help me think through things.

Being aware of the circle’s existence, like the monster in the dark, is helpful. Dreams can sometimes help, but last night’s dreams about aliens and seeking understanding seemed to highlight my morass rather than illuminating a way through it. Bummer. Fortunately, finding a satisfying resolution to whatever artistic-writing-intellectual problem is challenging me helps as well.

Today, after dwelling on the dreams during my morning coffee, I did find a satisfying approach to resolving the problem (which, yes, was of a writing nature), feeding my positive energy. It came while I dawdled, putting aside my normal routine to read some fiction and goof off, rather than to go out to walk and write. After just a few pages of distracting my brain with another’s fiction, my sub-conscious announced, aha, and an idea was floated. The solution isn’t fully formed, but has enough substance that I can grasp and shape it into something more and move myself forward.

Knowing this minutiae about myself is helpful to coping with its repercussions and trying to contain it. It’s easy to let these things eat me up, starting a more self-destructive circle. I encountered those when I was younger, when I didn’t know how to sort myself, when the territory that is me was darker and more unknown. I did a lot of destruction to myself and my life in those days. Fortunately, others helped me with patience, kindness, and insights. When I think back on some of the craziness, I gulp with amazement that I’m alive, intact, and not incarcerated.

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

3

William Said

We don’t know what the writer is trying to pull off in Faulkner’s reference. I think, though, sometimes the writer DOES pull it off. Winning that energy from trying and succeeding is what keeps us going, and keeps us believing, “I can pull it off, if I just keep trying.”

At least, that’s why I keep writing like crazy. I think I can pull it out of my ass one more time.

2

Ray Said

I take Ray’s statement to heart, but sometimes where my intuition is taking me scares the crap out of me. I feel like I’m hanging waaayyy out on a thin branch, and the noise I hear sounds like wood splintering.

2

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