Category: writing

Slippage

Yesterday, forced to curtail writing to do other things and – gads, socialize – I was distant with others. The writing didn’t leave off and the writer didn’t stop, so a secret fog shrouded me from engaging with others. I felt like a few beats off.

Today, sensing the story’s climax and denouement, looking forward to completing the novel, forced new introspection. I can’t hurry this. Why am I trying to hurry it? More correctly, why am I trying to rush the story and curtail activities?

Realizations continue to emerge about what’s transpired and what needs to happen to reach the end without shorting the characters, situations or reader. The concept editor stirred from his fortress of judgement to deliver some withering insights about continuity, logic and my made-up background physics and quantum mechanics. Utilizing an unctuous and belittling tone, he became a bit of an asshole in the process, demanding more information about how chi-particles interact with organic entities and the arrows of time.

“Let’s think about the permutations,” he said at one point. I groaned. Already sulking about what he perceived as an assault on his creative and intellectual processes, the writer didn’t react.

The concept editor pressed us on all sorts of issues. “If there is one now, what are the characters remembering?”

“They’re not remembering anything, they’re experiencing a sense of belief that they’re remembering because they’re experiencing shareover of similar nows that are slightly ahead or behind of their moments of now,” the writer answered with elaborate patience.

It seemed like the concept editor hid a sneer in response. “But if the creatures, like Humans, don’t come to be until a chi-particle inhabits them, they why would they all be experiencing nows now?”

That agitated the writer. “No, no, that’s not how it works. Yes, they came to be when a chi-particle granted them a spark of self-awareness – ”

“Self-awareness that the chi-particles don’t have?”

“Yes, yes.” The writer was almost frothing. “The chi-particles don’t have awareness. They’re driven by their nature and their properties.”

“The same properties and nature that drives the organisms they inhabit.”

“No, no. Take a flea.”

“A flea.”

“If a flea bites you, you react.”

“So the chi-particles are like fleas?”

“For that simile, yes, for the purpose of illustration and clarification, yes. The flea’s nature, properties and behavior causes it to bite and suck, with collateral effects on its hosts. Its hosts don’t respond in like manner, but by itching and scratching, by developing sores and other issues.”

The concept editor appeared doubtful.

“Do you see?” the writer asked.

“I see,” the editor replied. “I’m not convinced, but I see. Finish the novel, and they’ll we’ll see.”

The writer glowered at him. “If you’ll let me.”

An uneasy accordance to continue with the writing was accepted. I tell you, the two of them will be the death of me.

Time to stop writing like crazy, at least for today.

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Fooled Again

Ah, the writer did it to me again.

Riding the thrill of yesterday’s progress, I jumped into it today with a razor of doubt hanging over me. What if yesterday was a mirage? What if what I’d written makes no sense, or that I can’t connect and continue? 

My head ached with fear about what might go wrong. Asking myself, where was I, I resumed typing. Within a few lines, the writer sprang another twist on me. Damn, I should have seen it coming.

Exuberant understanding burst upon me. Holy hell, this was the deeper truth behind the concept. Wide-eyed, I laughed at the astonishing epiphany. I’d conceptualized the novel and had started writing but had not taken the concept to its summit. Now, in writing, that’s what the writer within me finished doing.

Implications and realizations bubbled through me. A new light flashed on everything written in that novel to that point. Surreal, abstract and stunning, I considered my running joke, that a writer resided in me who actually came out and wrote, and wondered if that was the truth. At this point, it really seems to me like there is someone else in me who is the writer. He understands the novel. He has organized, outlined and plotted it, but only shares with me what I need to know when it’s being written. I’m just the poor, earthen vessel struggling to hang onto the moment.

Even now, done with my daily writing session, I struggle to fully comprehend and cope with what’s been proposed. It stuns and amazes me.

Seriously, maybe I am insane.

Maybe it’s just a side-effect of writing like crazy.

Is there a difference?

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Celebration

Taut, breathing fast and shallowly, I type, trying to keep up with the words.

The words shoot out of my mind into scenes. They fire as fast as a railgun.

The scenes explode and splash, forming for me to momentarily glimpse before racing into the next scene. I hear voices, feel the characters’ emotions, and experience their shifts.

Hunched in concentration, I type and type. My back knots. Tension stresses my neck.

I don’t want to stop. This isn’t what I planned to type. Again, imagination and the writer have conspired to create something I didn’t expect. I type as fast as I can to capture the essence, making errors in my haste, correcting them as I can because I can’t help myself. This is my nature.

When, finally, like a fading tornado, the storm of words end and I can probably breath, I stretch and look around. The day’s sunshine ambushes me. I don’t know what music is playing or how long it’s been on. I know it’s been on but it was so far away from where I was, I noticed it like a distant sound.

My eyes itch, my neck hurts, my butt is asleep, my stomach is rumbling in hunger, and I think I need to pee. The coffee is long gone. It was an intense day of writing like crazy. The story spun itself. It was just up to me to keep up. I missed some of it. Those pools of moments and details will come to me tomorrow when I review and edit what I’ve written.

I didn’t expect that direction, not at all, but I didn’t stop to question it. I just raced to keep up.

Now I’m supposed to walk but I feel so spent and happy. Walking seems so pedestrian – sorry – that it doesn’t seem worthy. I want to celebrate the words and experience.

And this is where it’s painful to be a writer. Because when you’ve teared up with the emotion of your writing and your pulse speeds with action and your body aches with tension and you sit up, pleased with what’s come of out you, there’s no one to celebrate with you.

It was a damn fine day of writing like crazy.

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Hairy Now

It became a little hairy with my thinking today as I coped with chi-particles and now while writing the novel, ‘Long Summer’. 

I was dealing with the side-effect suffered by intelligent, organic creatures when a now is forced into existence. I simply wanted to vet and standardize for myself what that side-effect meant. That vector of thought shot me back toward the chi-particle structure, earlier rudimentary chi-particle thinking about how it evolves and devolves, and the relationships established with Hawking’s three arrows of time.

So, weirdly, the chi-particle has imaginary mass and energy and gains real mass and energy as it slows down. Dropping to the speed of light, the chi-particles gain mass and energy and releases other wave/particles/energies that develop into the chemical elements of the known universes, but also deliver time and gravity, time occurring to create a now associated with a wave function collapse. When the collapse happens, then reality is formed through an intersection of the box with the three arrows of time – psychological, thermodynamic, and cosmological.

But – this is where it becomes hairy – I recognized that the chi-particle not only exists in a state of imaginary mass and energy, but also imaginary time. It seems like an ‘of course’sort of concept, but I struggle to keep it pinned in place in conjunction with the novel being written.

I’ve been trying to further understanding of how the chi-particle interacts with the known theories of relativity and matter. I’ve always (ha – I came up with this about nine months ago) theorized in this imaginary existence of this imaginary particle that travels faster than light that isotopes and variants exist. Chi-particles exist in everything in the a half state. Once they’ve achieved real mass and energy, they continue decaying. As they decay, they shift from real properties to negative imaginary properties. I haven’t evolved any theories about what this would mean to the box of now created during the wave function collapse at the intersection with the arrows of time.

But further, for there to be an awareness of now when the wave function collapses at the intersection with the arrows of time, a sufficient aggregation of chi-particles for a particle species – such as Humans, for example – must exist for them to have an awareness and knowledge of their own existence. It’s at that point, when the ‘Human’ chi-particles aggregate, that Humans can reach the point of, “I think, therefore, I am.” Yet, it’s fleeting. Humans can’t understand beyond these moments of time (with the associated arrows) because once the chi-particles decay to the point of negative imaginary mass, energy and time, Humans cease to be.

Meanwhile, playing with the periodical table of elements to establish how this all fits together, I realized that the table becomes a multi-dimensional matrix in order to accommodate the chi-particles.

I needed to write all this out to think it out, stabilize it and make it ‘real’ to me. I’ll tell you, I’ll be happy when I finish writing this novel. I look forward to returning to simpler thoughts and plots.

Now I’m done writing like crazy for today. It sure was crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Today’s Agenda

Between making oatmeal for breakfast and turning on the shower water, I asked the writer, “What are you going to write today?”

The editor joined us. The writer recapped where we were as I washed my hair. The editor reminded him that we need to go back to further revise and add to some previously created chapters because of other events later introduced.

“Yes, I remember that,” the writer answered with affable equanimity. “I will, don’t worry. There needs to be three of these chapters where we’re at now.”

That was the first I was hearing of it. Before I could say that, the writer continued, “That first chapter of this trio is titled ‘Miasma’.”

“It is?” I said. “That’s the first I — ”

“Yes. I don’t know what the other two are named yet. It’ll come to me.”

“Okay, but what’s to happen now? Forus Ker — ”

“The Englis and Exnila.”

“What about them?”

“Do you remember them?”

“Yes, of course, but — ”

“They’re going to show up.”

“They are?”

“Yes, yes.”

“How? And why?”

“Because remember, all the nows.”

“Umm….”

“We’ve only focused on some of the nows. Other nows are happening. We’re going to inroduce them. Oh, yeah. That’s the name of the second chapter. ‘In Other Nows.'”

“Isn’t that a little too cute?”

“No, it’s perfect. Trust me.”

I turned off the water and stood there dripping. “Okay, I’ll trust you. But how do the Englis and Exnila arrive? I don’t see it.”

“I do. It’s coming. It’s developing. You’ll see. Trust me.”

The writer says trust me often. “Okay.” I don’t see that I have another choice than to trust him. If I don’t trust him, we get nothing done. I began drying off.

“Hurry up,” he said. “It’s time to go write like crazy.”

I nodded. “At least one more time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hey, Writers – Ten Ways of Getting the Writing Groove Back

Find yourself not able to write or otherwise blocked, de-motivated or listless? Here are five healthy tips for getting the creative juices going.

  1. Have sex. Sex is one of the few matters humans tend to focus on while they’re doing it. If you’re thinking about sex because you’re doing it, you’ll free your mind from thinking about how you’re not writing because you’re not doing it.
  2. Eat some chocolate. I hear chocolate is good for everything. I like dark chocolate, myself, about seventy-two percent.
  3. Likewise, light up a doobie. If you’re fortunate, you live in a state where recreational marijuana is available. The fabulous state of Oregon where I reside is one of them.  If you don’t want to light up, have an edible or a tea.
  4. Drink wine, beer, coffee. These work for me.

More seriously, trying to write when you feel blocked is exasperating and frustrating, a feeling like popcorn caught between your teeth or your toe stuck in a hole that’s developed since you put the sock on – and you just bought the damn things. Really, the quality of goods sound these days…grumble, grumble.

I’m usually over-thinking it, over-analyzing where I’ve been and where I want to go. Fortunately, I’ve evolved my writing practices. I’m rarely afflicted to the point I can’t write these days. Hope to hell I didn’t just jinx myself.

Part of that is that I don’t write linearly. I let spray the words and write like crazy. I don’t worry about anything of punctuation, grammar, spelling or story details. All that can and will be cleaned up. Just write like crazy, damn it.

The second part is that I learned it was my inner reader daunting me, mocking my efforts by comparing me to Pulitzer Prize, Nobel Prize and other winners in literature. I learned how to tell that damn piker to take a hike. They’ll have their time later, after the first draft is finished.

Finally, I learned that I’m writing to entertain myself. That really freed my thinking. I’m a simple fellow with low standards; surely I can write something silly to make myself smile, a horror scene to make myself shudder, or describe a person with such loathing that I grimace with disgust.

But back when I struggled, I had several work-arounds that stimulated my flow. (Now it sounds like I might be lactating.)

  1. Type a favorite passage from someone else’s novel or short story.
  2. Go for a walk or do tedious chores like yardwork or the dishes. These activities don’t require much thinking, freeing the mind up to wander. Hopefully it’ll wander in a writing direction. Besides chores and walking, consider activities like fishing or bowling. They seem pretty mindless, too.
  3. Edit and revise what you’ve already written of the piece you’re working on. That always stimulates my writing energies.
  4. Brainstorm about what you’re writing and where you’re stuck. What does Penelope do now? Brainstorm it. What else is happening in the story? Brainstorm it. How did the murder weapon come to hand? Brainstorm it. Remember, brainstorming is about generating ideas. Don’t self-censor; put it all down.
  5. Draw about the story or character. Instead of working in words, visualize on paper where you’re going or even where you’ve been. Let the details flow. If the murder takes place in town, walk around. If you’re in a starship, look around and see that starship. Describe it to yourself. Make it real. Look at the battle scene; hear it; smell it; see it.

If you’re read this far, you probably realize this is’t a list of ten. Sorry; I just put that in the title because I read somewhere that numbered blog posts are more often read. Actually, I believe I made that up just now.

It’s just part of writing.

 

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Writing & Creativity

Thinking about dreams, writing, creativity, food and sleep, I sought some outside input. Drifting into TED Talks, I found a presentation from 2009. Elizabeth Gilbert talks about creative minds and the different prevailing perception of creative people and their work. Part of this is are the dangerous assumptions that confront writers and other artists, and our anxieties and unmanageable expectations.

 

 

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So Far Beyond

Today, I believe, is the twelfth day of March, 2017. I hope my calendar is correct but sometimes I lose track of time out here. Days are full of possiblies, or possibilities. Are we going the right way? Are we lost? Will we survive? Will anyone ever know what happened to us? Will anyone care?

Possibly.

Possibly yes, possibly no. We don’t spend much time discussing these, at least not with vocal voices. I spend time discussing this in my head as I slowly cover new terrain. I think, no one else has probably been here before, before correcting myself, no, others have been here. They just left without a mark.

I correct that, too. They left a mark. I can’t see their mark. I don’t know where to look. I may have just stepped over it, a realization that makes me pause to take in the surroundings.

It remains unstable underfoot, made worse from overnight dew slicking down every surface. Frost and ice hides in some shadows. At least sunshine is showing early today, promising us the chance of warmth and light, and a day without slogging through rain.

I feel alone out here. Given the right place and moment, I can look back and see how far I’ve come. Other times, I’m just lost in the landscape’s details.

Sometimes my thoughts distract me. Songs of my youth entertain me and become backdrop to meandering questions about where I’d lived and who I’ve known. Corollary questions emerge about what happened to those people and what they became like after they grew up, assuming they reached adulthood, maturity, and aren’t dead. So many things can kill us. We are fragile. A few degrees warmer or colder can be dangerous for food, water and air. Then, others will kill us with guns, knives and other means to address their woes, fears and angers. Yes, we’re fragile. I wonder, too, what they thought of me, and if they ever look me up or try to find me. I’ve tried to find a few of them. From that I’ve learned, we are a large population and many of us share the same names. To find more information, someone always wants paid.

Sometimes the sounds of others out here like me impinge upon my awareness. We’re all out in space that’s new to us but others have often already been here. It’s tricky, messy and confusing. Shambolic. Yeah, I’ve already walked around those tracks. Time to move on.

Move on from what and to what are constant nags.

I took up this life. This is on me. There are no others to blame except those who encouraged me. “You can do it,” they told me. Maybe they were wrong. It’s time like this that I wonder if perhaps there are millions of Fates up there, spinning out the lines of our lives as we respond to their threads and wait for them to cut us free.

Enough of this. Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time. That’s the only way I’ll ever get out of here.

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A Pick-Me-Up

It’s an odd expression, a pick-me-up. Slang, it’s an expression for anything that raises our spirits. It used to be that it was about tonics or drinks but it’s moved beyond that.

For me, a pick-me-up can be an inspirational story, its use today. While going through the inbox and surfing blogs last night, I encountered a 2016 article about famous rejections.

I love famous rejections. Like many struggling writers, I look for those tales of famous writers and novels being rejected only to find publication and vindication. This post featured five famous that I already knew. Still, it was fun reading and a nice pick-me-up. After those five, a list of fifty more famous, successful rejected novels was posted.

Need a pick-me-up for your writing day? Check out Michael David Wilson’s column, ‘5 Famous Bestsellers That were Rejected (And 50 More).

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The Writing Bucket

I’ve been receiving a number of queries about when the next novel is coming out. So – updates.

  1. Alas, I’m not working on the next mystery in the Lessons with Savanna series. That would be the third novel in the set, ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’. Continuing the story begun in ‘Life Lessons with Savanna’ and extended in ‘Road Lessons with Savanna’, Studs is being framed for murder in Texas. I promise to update the Facebook page this week. Thanks for being fans.
  2. I’m looking forward to working on ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’. Between recovering memories, coping with creeping insanity and being framed for murder, so much is going on with Studs. It’s the sort of developing character and story that excites writers. A third of the novel was completed before the great computer breakdown of 2016 forced me to send the Envy back to HP for repairs, living without my machine for three weeks.
  3. Work continues on ‘Long Summer’. I’ve been  writing the first draft for eight months. I’m not certain when it will be done. I’m hopeful it’ll be soon but, I’m a writer. As a writer, I’m always hopeful, optimistic, pessimistic, doubtful, depressed and exuberant. It’s a fun soup to dwell in.
  4. ‘Long Summer’  is very challenging to think through and write. While involving time shifting via a modified Alcubierre Drive (which involves, as well, exotic new materials and a whole other set of theories), it’s about the concept of now. Keeping that in mind as the parallel story lines twine together via the major characters and their alt existences causes me to pause and probe, asking myself, “Wait, which of the alts is this?” It’s imperative that each alt’s story is kept true and coherent. As I’m not a very coherent writer, you can imagine the babble in my head.
  5. All of that time shifting involves just the Humans, the ones known as Earth Humans, with the ones known only as Humans (from Aition) far less directly involved. Besides them, though, are the other intelligent life forms and their customs and civilizations. The story centers around a few of the Sabard and Travail, but the Monad’s plots and intentions drive much of the surface tension and action – or so it appears….
  6. ‘Long Summer’ has become so big as a Word manuscript that Word turned off several functions, like spell check and auto-correct. To counter that, I broke the novel up into its parts as manuscripts. It reduces my ability to move back and forth through scenes, parts and chapters, and demands that more documents be opened simultaneously, but I’ve recovered those Word functions. Overall, I consider that a win.
  7. I want to finish ‘Long Summer’ not only so that I can move on with writing ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’, but because I need ‘Everything In Black And White’  copy-edited and published, along with ‘Spider City’, ‘Fix Everything’, and ‘Peerless’.  Besides them, new ideas have filled the writing bucket. There’s still that coffee shop musical percolating in my mind. I still want to do more with the Stellar Queen and the Magellan.
  8. Besides all this writing, my personal reading keeps falling behind. A friend dropped me an email yesterday. He finished reading the third novel in the Ferrante’s Neapolitan series and raved about it. Having read the first two, I want to read the third. Dozens of books besides it reside on my bookcases, night stand and other places, waiting for my attention.
  9. Meanwhile, I’m moving forward with paperback publication of the four published novels, so those of you bugging and encouraging me to do this, you win. I will do it. Soon. Really. I promise. I’m not crossing my fingers, either.
  10. But, I decided as well to have the covers for the Lessons with Savanna series redone. Time, energy and focus is necessary for that to happen, so bear with me.

Okay, with that out of the way, time to write like crazy, at least one more time. Back to the Wrinkle, Brett and Philea.

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