Category: writing

Reasonable Questions

Do they honestly expect a writer to sit and read books, stories and essays without being given time to write? Don’t they understand how days without writing curdles our souls, impoverishes our moods, and devastates our spirits, especially when they’ve given us books to read? “Here,” they whisper. “I loved this book. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

They’re right, but the pain. You hunger to rush away and find time alone with your muse. At least, freed, a flood words are released one more time. You pleasure to a little temporary relief but you know, it’s gonna happen again.

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Five Chapters

I’m starting five chapters today:

Virus

Everything

Nothing

Ice Cream Headache

The Others

With each, I’ll put up the chapter title as a place holder. I’ll add the date beneath it in parentheses, and then a summary of what the chapter is about. I’ll highlight this in yellow and add <TK at the beginning, to help me remove it later. I know what I see and hear as the opening lines for each chapter, and I’ll add those lines. They will probably not be the first lines to the chapter but they’re a nugget around which to build the rest. After that process, one of those chapters will more sharply call, so I’ll take it up.

I always use <TK as an editing tool. Sometimes it’s a placeholder to insert some piece of necessary information, or to clarify or rewrite a passage. Sometimes I know the nugget, the critical piece that I want to immediately write, but know that I need a bridge to the rest of the novel, so I’ll insert <TK and explain what’s required.

I started and wrote five chapters in parallel before. Why five? I’m not certain. It’s not anything magical nor planned. Ideas are germinating. These all sprouted at the same time. I want to cultivate them so I can press on.

I suspect eight or nine chapters remain to be written in ‘Long Summer’. That includes the five I’m starting today.  I suspect that means I’ll write about thirty thousand more words. I won’t bet on whether I’m right but the beginning of the end of the first draft is cresting the horizon.

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

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Embrace

Embrace the cold to feel alive.

Embrace your uncertainty to work harder.

Embrace your fears to find your courage.

Embrace your doubts to push onward.

Embrace your successes to do more.

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The Cards

He was awake before I was, feeding thoughts of the novel into me.

“Ready?” DeeMichael shuffled the deck.

“No,” I answered.

DeeMichael proferred the cards. “Draw three cards.”

“I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Just draw three cards.”

“Why three?”

“Because I have three in mind.” DeeMichael shuffled and then he cut the deck. “Three is a lucky number, always in threes, all that crap.”

“Can’t it wait until after I’ve peed, drank some water and made coffee?”

“Jesus H, you could have been done already. Will you pick three cards? You’re ruining the mood.”

I cursed him a dozen ways that I’d picked up as a senior NCO and selected three from the fanned out offering.

“Let’s see them,” he said, putting his hand out.

Sulking and dispirited, I replied, “You know what they are.”

DeeMichael beamed. “You’re right, I do.”

I didn’t want to ask but felt the tableau wouldn’t end until I did. “What are they?”

“We’ll finished the card started yesterday, and then — ”

“The one called ‘You’?”

“Did we start another one? Fuck, no. So it has to be that one, right?”

“You say so.”

“Then we’ll work on ‘Untrue’.”

I knew he was excited about ‘Untrue’. Bleedover between the writing and real world had informed me about what was going on. “What’s the third one?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s about the Monad, but that’s all I know. Come on, get up, get dressed and take Tucker to the vet so we can start writing like crazy. Hurry, you’re burning energy.”

Sighing, I nodded. “Right. Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.”

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Playing With A Full Deck

I’m riding on last week’s epiphany. To explain, only now exists. How now takes place and the scenes associated with it can be treated as a deck of cards. This has empowered my writing imagination. The principle isn’t mentioned in the novel, except one person notices it and treats it like a metaphor, but for me, understanding that each scene is another card permits more intelligent thinking and treatment.

The characters’ and their traits also open up. Pram’s decisions surprised him. He always thought he would put his team first. That it’s a challenge for him to do it opened up a window onto himself that he didn’t know was there. From this, he discovers weaknesses that he hid from himself but also grasps the observations others made about him. It’s a struggle to be stronger and more idealistic. He admires his team members even as he ponders betraying them. Exploring the scenes and permutations, I play with the frequency in which decisions are not value based or driven by logic or principles. Emotions, whims, weariness and frustration color and shadow choices. Sometimes our nature is stronger than ourselves. The battles with ourselves can be deep and endless.

None of the characters are inherently evil or good. Each seek to make the best choices they can, sometimes demonstrating callousness about others’ welfare, but justifying it through logical and philosophical acrobatics. Things happen fast. They make mistakes, and as now collapses on them, what’s going on isn’t always clear for them. Brett, in the center of this, is more removed from these debates and decisions. Being in the center puts him in a bubble where he can rarely see past the impacts on him and his existence.

Handley has been great fun to write. She surprises me. Her role grew. Her metamorphosis and the development process drove her into new territories. New skills were discovered, as was greater strength and determination. In all of this, I ended up asking and pondering, do we have one core person who dictates our behavior? One true being? 

Back to the Wrinkle, River Styx, Avalon, Lucky Gypsy and Mo Faux. Back to Handley, Pram, Brett, Richard, Forus Ker, and Philea. Back to the Travail, Humans, Sabard and Monad. Back to space.

Back to writing like crazy, at least one more time.

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Personal Levels

Eva Lesko Natiello, author of ‘The Memory Box’ questioned, “Do readers need to like the protagonist?” in a Huffpost essay.

I thought, no. I think a reader needs to care about what will happen, given the situation, morality and ambiguity but I changed my wording from care about to need to know what will happen to the character.

Deciding I needed more input, I asked my wife, the reader, what she thought of the question. “No, readers don’t need to like any of the characters.” She offered as an example, ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’, by Lionel Shriver. “That book was beautifully written. The story seemed so real that some people were confused as to whether it was true or fiction. I enjoyed the book, but I didn’t like any of the characters.”

Spoiler Alert Warning.

She continued, “The mother was cold and seemed emotionally distant. Her son was a screwed-up killer, who killed his father and his sister.” She didn’t like the father/husband at all. The daughter was a minor character who didn’t really play into her feelings.

Ms Natiello’s question prompted further thoughts. First, not all readers will bring or take the same aspect from novels. Considering readers’ reactions to books become fascinating. As Ms Natiello mentioned, she read a book review where a book was given one star. The comment was, “Hated the main character.”

Eva goes on about the things I’d thought. Some readers seem to think that it’s their duty to like the main character and base their reaction to the book on how they feel about the main character. It’s critical to one friend. A voracious reader, if she can’t like the main character, she can’t get into the book and won’t read it. Likewise, even if she reads the book, if she can’t relate to it on a personal level, she doesn’t like the book. Relating to the book on a personal level means that something she read in the book triggers a memory of a like experience. It’s a position that appalls me because it narrows the narrow aperture into which new experiences through books can enter.

Considering Eva’s question is a reminder of how personal books are to people, as readers or writers. I struggle with the idea of characters a reader will like or hate. My characters tend to be unreliable as narrators, betrayed by memory, expectations, emotions and intentions. It fascinates me to encounter people who believe they’re telling the truth but what they describe is completely contrary to what I witnessed. They’re not deliberately lying, but are viewing it through their own prism.

Likewise, because I will relate something different, it doesn’t mean that I’m correct, either. I can be just as flawed in what I witness and how I describe it.

Natiello’s post is an inviting read into these complexities. She concludes it as I would, “Most characters are not black and white. Personally, I love deeply flawed good guys and bad guys who elicit empathy. Other people like it when characters are strictly one or the other. Of course, I support anyone’s criteria for the books they choose to read. It’s a very personal decision, and it should be. I just don’t believe a book is bad because its characters may be.”

There you go. It’s an intriguing subject, and, like her, I wonder how other writers think about it.

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Time Suck

What does space travel, laundry, and cats have in common?

Why, they’re all time sucks, of course.

My wife shared information from an article about time savings and modern American life. Most households, particularly women, have seen a dramatic decrease in how long it takes to prepare meals. It used to require about two hours per meal. Of course, breakfast was rarer in those days.

On the other hand, laundry is an area where people don’t save time. The reasons derive from our attitudes toward hygiene, washing clothes, the increasing specialization in clothing, and fashion. We have and wear more clothes, and change them for more uses, whereas we used to accept being a little dirtier. The increased quantity and specialization equals more time doing laundry.

My time sucks today were more prosaic and had less to do with modern living. One involved a clogged toilet in one bathroom, a clogged sink in another bathroom, and a vomiting cat.

I’d just finished bathing and dealing with the clogged sink when Quinn puked. I was whining to myself about the sink and my hairiness. I’m sure that’s what caused it. The master bath has two sinks, and it was my sink that was clogged. He bugged me for food. He’s a small critter with a high anxiety level that causes him to leap up and race out of a room, so I’m always trying to fatten him up and encourage him to eat more. I fed him, per his request.

Then it was time for some morning business. All was successful, until the flush. Water rose and nothing went down. As I swore about that, I heard puking in the other room. I raced out in time to witness Quinn heaved a hair ball and his meal.

His deed was done on the hardwood floor. That means clean it up ASAP. I grabbed toilet paper and did the task. It was still warm, of course. Some dribbled onto my hand. I gagged reflexively, not a lot, and not as much as I would have in the past. Still, I wonder what it is about warm puke that causes me to gag.

Then it was back to the toilet. I’m not usually religious but facing a clogged toilet usually coaxes a prayer out of me. “Come on, flush,” I said, flushing. Then I corrected myself, “Come on, go down.” My prayers were answered, restoring my uncertainty about God’s existence.

Back in the office, I encountered another time suck. The story in my novel in progress requires Handley to take a shuttle. She enters the airlock but then what does she do? What’s the Avalon‘s layout? To address that, I needed to make a cup of coffee. Coffee helps me think.

Then I sketched the shuttle’s layout with pencil and paper. I should have been satisfied, but my secret geek required me to go to the computer and Illustrator and do it properly. That led to demanding details about the shuttle’s space capabilities, intended purposes, crew requirements, cargo capability, blah, blah, blah….

Done at last, ninety minutes later. By now, I was staring at the rear end of ten thirty. Gadzooks, time had been sucked up.

Of course, I need to point out that space travel wasn’t really the time suck; it was the creative process of writing about it. Does that count as a time suck? Maybe not. I suppose that I didn’t need to go into such detail to create the shuttle, but that’s my nature.

I reckon that’s a confession. It’s really my nature that’s the time suck.

 

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Between the Cracks

It may be the time,

the energy,

or the intentions,

or the hope.

It might just be the words or the dreams.

But you notice it slipping away,

through the cracks in the space of your life.

It’s the little things, at first.

Then you notice that much of it that you took for granted as yours has gone.

You never noticed the cracks.

You saw that it was two thousand.

Then it was twenty ten, twenty eleven.

Now it’s twenty seventeen.

It was January. Now it’s April.

Today, you order yourself, searching for the words and motivations in the cracks.

Today!

Before more is lost to the cracks,

today, you will write with abandonment.

Today, you will write like crazy.

At least one more time.

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This Now

I read the epiphany once again. A separate, small document, fifty-three words, it has become my North Star, guiding me through the novel’s climatic seas of life, space and time. Since writing it five days ago, I open it every day. I’ve made one change to it since its creation.

This Now comes together. Now appeared to be a single playing card but when I grasped it in thought, Now revealed itself to be a deck of cards. I fan them out, seeing and understanding how this Now forms and exists. Beautiful. I think of the Chronicles of Amber and the Trumps of Doom, and smile. This is not the same, but thank you, Roger Zelazny, for your amazing imagination.

A thumb’s fingernail travels along the index finger’s nail on the opposite hand. I do this often as I sit and think when the words are marshaling in my mind. It comforts and balances me. I think of the tell in Inception. I remember the words, “Touch has its own memory.” That’s a key aspect of today’s approach. I remember looking at photographs of myself and seeing how differently I see myself in them from what I see in the mirror. It’s another aspect of today’s approach. I think of the lies we tell ourselves and others to survive, to succeed and thrive, and the truths that finally bend us to face a crises. It’s another aspect of today’s approach.

The quad-shot mocha is hot, sweet with chocolate and bitter with espresso, conflicting, complementing currents, perfect for writing about Now.

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

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