Category: writing

Opening Doors

“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.”
― Pablo Picasso

This quote was on Ed Lehming’s blog post, ‘The Breach’, today. The quote’s truth stormed me about other endeavors besides painting. I’d been thinking about this last night without Picasso’s quote, so I love the serendipity. I’d been thinking about how I will have been working on something, struggling to learn, understand or achieve, and then suddenly, everything lines up like a solved Rubik’s Cube. I’d done it many times in my life, facing the need to learn something and then struggling until it happens.

rubix_cube

Writing fiction is probably the greatest stretch for me. This struggle to learn happens with different elements with fiction writing. Writing is thought of as simple by many. What’s there to do but write words and tell a story?

Writers, editors and good readers understand that’s a simplistic summary. Fiction writing requires learning multiple pieces that are often taken for granted because most people only see the finished work. We know better. Sometimes the lessons learned about pacing, characters, story-telling, voice and everything else needs learned anew when writing the next project. Contemplating that, I believe that each novel or story in progress has a moment when a door opens, and the scene being worked becomes a stepping stone to other things.

It doesn’t come easily. The challenge remains to muster the focus, apply the time and energy, and accept the patience needed for me to reach the door, find and open it. These elements of focus, time, energy and acceptance are typically thought of on a conscious level. I think they work better on a subconscious level. I let the needs seep down in. Walk away. Do other things.

Eventually, the focus, time, and energy finds the path to the door. That’s a glorious exciting epiphany when the door is suddenly there. Another challenge arises then to open it and see what’s on the other side.

Within this process is the beauty of acceptance, of letting it work, of being strong and bold enough to believe it will work. It takes time. This time and patience is invaluable coin. When it works and the door opens and I step through, I create a positive loop of knowing I can face problems and challenges, and overcome them. That feeds me confidence to try again, and again and again, and to keep going. More, though, my journey becomes richer, more joyful and satisfying.

It really is a beautiful process, these exercises in imagination and creativity called writing.

Yes, I know, it’s a messy post, all over the place. I’m exploring territory. Writing helps me map the terrain.

To all, have a good writing day.

5

Writing Like Crazy

It all worked like it’s supposed to work today, that is, how it’s supposed to synchronize and develop when I sit down to write fiction. I threw off worries and seized the chapter that began stewing in me when I finished yesterday’s session. Just let it flow, tune out myself, tune out the world and write, write, write. 

Forty-five minutes, more or less, as far as I could discern, I’d typed twelve hundred new words in the novel. I can look at it as, not a great amount but I’m still moving forward, or I can look at it as, woo-hoo, twelve hundred more words! Most floods begin with small drops coming together, pooling and flowing, I told myself, seeking to be the optimist.

After writing that chapter – for that’s what this is, the skeleton of the next chapter – I edited and revised it, correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and sometimes making a pacing change or clarifying.

Then, as I read the final lines written, I cackled with quiet delight about what I’d written, because it was just so much fun. The chapter brought everything together as I’d hoped, expected, planned and tried to achieve, but those final lines, they came from somewhere more devious.

Good day of writing like crazy. I hope you all have the same.

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Hey Writers

Strip away the ego.

Shred your fears and doubts.

Subdue your self-loathing, and write, write, write.

Write deeply and fully. Write like nobody but you will ever read it, like nobody but you will ever judge it.

Write, write, write.

Do you hear?

It feels like I’m talking to myself.

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Craving

Beginning to write and suddenly, I have a craving.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I was reading some of yesterday’s work to begin today. Yesterday, I wrote:

Pram was hungry.

He almost laughed before considering his hunger more pragmatically. Thinking back to his last meal, he remembered that big-ass double cheeseburger he’d enjoyed from the compiler before this fiasco began.

Last meal was an ugly phrase selection, given the situation. Perhaps his mind had deliberately, slyly inserted it. His mind often seemed to sabotage him. That would be a perfect last meal – a double cheeseburger with sharp Cheddar cheese, a toasted sesame seed bun, onions, pickles, Russian dressing, ketchup and spicy yellow mustard. Add a vanilla milkshake and fried onion rings, hot and salted, and he’d enjoy his perfect last meal.

You’d think, then, that my craving would center around Pram’s meal. But no, I wanted pie. If not pie – blueberry or cheery – a turnover would do. But then, no! Crashing through my window of desire came a DOUGHNUT.

Oh, yeah, a doughnut, like a maple log, like the ones we used to buy at the Krispy Kreme on Leghorn in Mountain View. Yes, and that makes sense, because this FEELS LIKE FRIDAY.

Military or civilian, we always had doughnuts on Friday when I worked in California. I feel like I should honor that tradition.

Even if today is Thursday.

Now, though, I’m remembering the hot fried onion rings we used to buy in Osan City outside of Osan Air Base in Korea. Hot, salted onion rings and a cold beer.

Oh, boy. I need help.

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“Here we go, beast.”

Writing a novel is often an exploration for me, a visit to new, uncharted realms. Sometimes I get a little lost.

I completed three chapters yesterday. They’d been written in parallel. One of them was part of the five chapters being written in parallel.

That’s how it is. The novel in progress reminds me of math involving nonlinear equations that I once briefly encountered. They involved solving simultaneous equations and polynomials. I don’t remember much more except it struck me as a fascinating way to encounter and express relationships and awareness.

Besides being nonlinear, the novel is asynchronous, part of the idea of asynchronous epiphanies that evolve throughout the novel, something borrowed from asynchronous learning and asynchronous computer functions. This sometimes gives me a headache. The novel is and is not chronological, an apparent paradox that adds a challenge to writing it, because it may appear chronological, and I naturally revert to thinking about it in terms of a chronological approach. (I imagine readers reading it, and asking themselves, “What?” And I laugh….)

All of this was born out of the ideas that something is possible until it’s proven impossible, the alienation and isolation that develops with technology and how it affects our personalities and thinking, colonization of other planets, and how often our thinking mirrors computer operations (or is it the converse?) and work on asynchronous levels. That gave a rise to thinking about how reality works, and the creation of the chi-particles. Chi-particles have imaginary energy and mass and travel faster than light. I also throw in some soap opera, just to keep it interesting.

Along the way with all of this, I keep playing with the ideas behind reality, as to whether we create it, or it creates us, or if it’s a symbiotic process that depends upon one another. Symbiotic may not be the right term. That’s supposed to apply to biological entities, but then I think, can reality as we experience actually be a biological creature, but then that diverts me back into notions of God and creative intelligence.

Anyway, finishing those three chapters brought me back up to a specific intersection of storylines that required me to bring other chapters and storylines up to date so all may proceed. That necessitated delving back into what has been written to re-calibrate and orientate myself and my characters. I needed to read what had already been written in specific areas and review notes.

Reading what was written turned out to be a surprising and rewarding journey. My writing and its characters, setting, and stories surprised me. They distracted me from my main task of figuring out what happens next, yes, but it was enjoyable to read material written months ago and find out that it’s decent writing. Of course, it’s my child; what else would I think?

Here I am now, re-calibrated and re-oriented, quad shot mocha in hand. “Here we go, beast,” I tell my computer. “Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.”

Five hundred pages done; how many more remain?

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A Random Stream

‘Hey Ya’ is playing in my head but otherwise, thoughts are normalized streams of randomness.

  • Eva Lesko Natiello posted a blog about not quitting. I was happy to read it and read it again today because her words summarizes my writing process. Here’s one paragraph.
    • “Yesterday my manuscript was torturing me. I couldn’t move forward. Stuck in my puzzle. I was having trouble with the order of disclosure and who’s POV it should be. Should the dialogue contradict what the character was really thinking? Maybe she wasn’t thinking that at all. What was she thinking? Maybe it wasn’t her place to reveal it. Perhaps we should find out some other way.”
    • I like how she captured this process. Later, she mentions that she becomes frustrated and pushes herself to sit it in her chair and squirm it out. I don’t squirm; I close my eyes and bow my head. But’s it’s the same thing.
  • Earlier in February, Barbara Froman published an interview she conducted with Dr. Harrison Solow in 2013. I read it again this week. I recommend it. I like what Harrison said in this paragraph:
    • “And someone has had the great good sense to leave this book alone. Or if altered, respectfully tuned to perfect pitch by an invisible hand, so that each word has the unmistakable ring of authenticity. The reader perceives nothing enharmonic. A true book and a beautiful one. But although there is no false note, neither is the entire composition a universal symphony. There is vision here — intensely personal, internally arranged.”
    • There is the difficulty, finding the notes so no false notes are played in the novel.
  • Gray, cold air cups the buildings and trees this morning. Walking past a row of apartments, I smell…laundry detergents and fabric softeners being vented out. Nostalgia strikes a chime. This is a day like my Pittsburgh childhood. Smells often transport me.
  • Striding past the cemetery, I acknowledge, again, I like cemeteries but I don’ t like them. The history they represent touches me and prompts questions about the lives beneath the headstones. But I think the land where cemeteries reside could be better used for other things. I’ve never had the interest in visiting them to talk to people who passed on; I just speak to them in my head. But it matters much to others. I guess I’m an unsentimental jerk.
  • Watched  ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ on Friday night. Wasn’t impressed. It seems like, as my wife called it, a movie war, dated and hackneyed. Others obviously think differently, as they nominated it for the Best Picture. Again, it must be me. I do admire Desmond Doss, the conscientious objector (cooperator, he calls himself) at the story’s center. I thought Garfield did a good job, but overall, Mel Gibson as a director seemed heavy handed. I found Hollywood vs History’s details about the differences between the movie and the facts very interesting.
  • Many smart houses, with their smart thermostats, are actually connected to apps that allow you to call it from your phone and change the temperature or turn the lights on or off. That’s not a smart house, but a remote control. A smart house, to me, is one that I don’t have to program and set reminders other than to provide it with some basic operating instructions. For instance, my system is programmed for fifty-eight degrees at night. But if the temperature is dropping into the mid twenties Fahrenheit, like this week, I turn it up to sixty-four at night. Part of this is because the house design; the furnace is mounted on its side in the attic space. It’s not insulated, and the drip line runs through it and down inside a garage wall that also isn’t insulated. That sometimes allows the drip line to freeze. It’s a shortcoming that I’m working on to fix, but meanwhile, a smarter house would be helpful.
  • ‘Nocturnal Animals’ was last night’s household viewing feature. Well done and everything, but not my style of movie.
    • During the movie, my wife turned to me and asked, “Have you ever killed me in a novel?” No, I haven’t.
    • Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Tony Hastings, is a writer. During a conversation, he states, “All writers write about themselves.” I kind of agree; I am the baseline from which I begin, but then it changes according to the character and story’s needs and expectations. Often, though, I model a character on another person and use how I would expect them to behave as my guide.
    • My wife also wondered what I thought of Tony’s revenge. While it’s not something that I would have done, I can see how a writer can end up going there.
    • If you don’t know what I’m writing about, sorry. I don’t mean to be obtuse but didn’t want to reveal too much of the plot.
  • Now time to dip myself back in the imaginary world of an imaginary future, technology and people. In other words, I’m going to write like crazy, at least one more time. I’ll probably do a little squirming, too.
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Of Plans and Reminders

Charles French had a post on Arrowhead Publishing a few weeks ago. Its subject was creating business plans for books. I’d come to a similar conclusion to his ideas on my own a few years ago as part of my quest for greater organization, but his ideas had greater depth than mine. It’s always good to find something like that and learn more.

But after reading his post, I continued along thinking I’d begun weeks ago about the need for larger involvement in the business side of my self-publishing efforts. And after reading French’s post, I realized that I’d conceived many of the needs and ideas required but had failed to execute.

I had the dream. I had an action plan. I wasn’t acting.

After considering that realization with irritation and annoyance with myself that ended with a stern lecture, I answered myself, with some plaintiveness, as the business persona of my being, I’m not given much time or energy for taking care of business. The writer gets the most attention and indulgence. That’s followed by the husband, friend and son. Then the human gets attention (for things like time off, socializing, partying and exercising beyond the daily ritual of decompressing), and the editor, leaving crumbs to the business person.

I agree, I answered. Part of this is because I don’t to do the business side. But accept it: it must be done.

Okay. What can we do about it?

Well, like writing in the beginning and everything else, it’s about allocating time. I’d planned to give these matters attention – that’s why I was annoyed – but permitted my resources to be diverted into other things, important things like killing time by playing computer games, reading books, or playing with cats. Just as I do for everything else, I need to structure recurring time in my life for the business side of publishing.

And it is a recurring need. Publishing and selling books is as dynamic as any marketplace. As an unknown with no name recognition trying to learn the business, I need to work harder, as hard as an athlete trying to make a team, or a writer writing a book. As I wrote in a post when I began thinking about this, I Will Do Better, my efforts are meager and weak. It’s shocking to realize that I wrote that in the middle of January.

Once again, I remind myself, intentions aren’t sufficient. Just as writing in the first place, exercising, or acquiring and degrees, focus and application are needed. I can’t accept that, oh, I did this, and now I’m done. No, this is very much trail and error. It should all be considered as a first draft. Sometimes the blurb written and used isn’t working. New venues for publishing, distributing, advertising and selling are always springing up. If I want to expand my sales, I need to expand my efforts.

Okay, but I already knew all of this. I wasn’t acting on them. This was a case of out of sight, out of mind. Just as I need structure to pursue writing my fiction, I need structure for selling it. Moving the business guy up in the order of priorities isn’t necessarily needed, either. Rather, I realized that I needed to remind myself that the business side needs to be attended.

So I jumped into my Google calendar and set up reminders. Do this, do that. Check this, check that. And I set aside time via reminders to research and read about the business aspect of publishing and selling my own work.

Writing, publishing and selling isn’t a destination. Just like life and living, it’s a journey to be embraced and taken every day. Recognize what must be done but recognize it doesn’t need to all be done at once.

But recognize, it must be done and keep going.

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Another Volunteer

My mental writing garden is such a messy place. I’m a gardener way behind his duties. Books need advertising and publishing in other venues. Finished drafts that have resided in drawers for years require editing, covers, publishing. More books are planned, others in progress. I feel like I never write enough nor do enough. There’s always more.

But into this blow the volunteers, ideas that land and begin sprouting. I already have dozens of those sprouting as potential products. From a conversation last night came another.

We were at dinner at Pie + Vine (I had the pomodoro with chicken – excellent – with a glass of Chianti).  A blizzard was blanketing the Ashland evening. We thought we were done with that winter mess but it started raining – snowing – blowing between dazzling displays of sunshine earlier in the day. Now the snow had resolved to be serious. The temperature dropped and the white stuff stuck.

Another couple was with us. They were just back from Hawaii. The plan was to have dinner and catch up and then attend a preview presentation of the OSF production of ‘Shakespeare in Love’.  They were talking about properties in Hawaii and asking if we were interested in becoming a fractional owner in one. Then they began speaking about ‘the January tenants’.

OMG, ‘The January Tenants’. Doesn’t that seem like a natural title for a movie or novel? It could be black comedy, mystery, thriller, or a combination of all. How about a YA zombie combination of the rest? Such possibilities were exploding. My writer leaped forward to begin writing up a concept.

“Shhh, shhh, not now,” I told him. “I’m at dinner. I’m socializing. Besides, there are so many other projects ahead of you – get in the queue.”

He wasn’t happy.

Bugger him. Writers are rarely happy, in my experience. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Today’s Theme Music

“I like to dream….”

Yeah, I like to dream. Sometimes I’m bothered that I experience so many nocturnal dreams, often three to five per night that I remember. But many of the dreams are positive and uplifting.

Likewise, I like to dream and write in my head, spinning stories to myself that are written too fast and fluidly to ever find its place in reality for others to enjoy. I work at writing and publishing fiction but it is work. Besides wanting stories that keep their attention, people want correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. They want consistency and explanation. Many are also interested in ‘facts’.

Facts, bah. I’m a fiction writer.

No matter, they retort.

Bah. They’re such sticklers.

This spin of thoughts spun me back into one of my favorite early albums, Steppenwolf Live’. I wore the vinyl off that mutha. I have several favorite songs from it but went with one that resonates best with me as a dream: Magic Carpet Ride.

Ride with me as the ‘wolf performs it in Santa Monica back in 1970.

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One, Two, Three

Of the three dreams remembered from last night, the third was the most striking.

The first was of the usual military variety. Back on active duty, I’m to attend a planned changing of the guard ceremony, except I don’t have my ribbons and medals, and my uniform isn’t pressed. They specifically told us three days before that our uniforms needed to be pressed. Why didn’t I go out right away and have that done, I kept asking myself. There were others in the same situation. They asked the same question. Meanwhile, many people were rallying around us, trying to help us.

But I was distracted. There had been a death of someone close to me the Friday before. I don’t often dream of death, and my dream being struggled to cope with it.

The second dream was of the usual visual gibberish involving rising water. Streams, lakes, rivers, everywhere I went, I encountered rising brown water. While the images remind me this week of the scenes from I-5 flooding in Redding, the Oroville Dam situation, and other flood scenes in the news, the dream events didn’t disturb me. I always ‘knew’ I was protected but I worried about others. This is a variation of a regular dream that I’ve had for decades. I used some of the dream memories in ‘Everything in Black & White,’ a novel I wrote a few years ago but haven’t published. The hero encountered flooding and ended up encountering, fighting and saving other survivors. These were the first people he’d seen since the Great Collapse.

The third dream was something new and different for me. I was busy writing. Writing, writing, writing. I was writing on everything I could find. I was possessed to write.

The neighborhood residents were all helping me. They knew I was a writer and knew I was writing, but didn’t know what I was writing. But individuals would come to me with more scraps of paper, pens and notebooks to use so I could write. They fed me so I could write, and kept unobtrusively trying to keep me comfortable as I wrote. I lived in a large apartment with my family. We had several cats. A canal was outside of my apartment. People lived across the way, including a family from India. They were most watchful and helpful to me although I sensed they were poor and struggling.

They had two cats who had been injured. I took the cats in, fixed them up with robot exo-skeletons and nursed them to good health. One cat immediately rushed back to its people. I could see them receive it. The two children were very happy, and the mother knew I’d helped. A whole confused segment followed about their yard and improvements they made along the bank. My wife and I would stroll each day, see the changes, and discuss doing something similar.

But the second cat had disappeared. I was busy writing but found the cat living in my house. He’d grown to a very large size and had mastered walking upright. He rushed out of the house. I worried about where he was going and what would happen to him, so I followed.

All this time, I’m writing. I’m writing as I do everything. I stroll and write. I find a piece of paper and write. I follow the cat and write. I see the cat has made it home yet I feel compelled to go over and tell the people that the cat had been with me and safe. Before I can do that, the husband visits me. Young, he’s barefoot and very intelligent. His aura of calm intelligence awes me.

I’m sitting at a table writing. He gets on the table top to speak with me. He’s wearing gray sweat pants and a white tee shirt. It’s all so clean, it looks new. Lying on his side, he curls up and talks to me, smiling as he does. He challenges me with questions and challenges my answers with questions and observations. I don’t remember those details but as we’re talking, I’m writing. We talk for a while as I write but something happens and interrupts our visit. He leaves for his house across the canal.

After some thought, I decide to follow. The canal water has become much higher. It’s a narrow canal. I think about leaping it. I have new shoes on, though. A female friend present said, “I hope you’re not thinking about jumping that canal,” which is exactly what I’m thinking. She then keeps trying to convince me not to make the jump.

I don’t attempt the jump but instead attempt to cross via rocks. I misjudge the distances and end up in deeper water with my new shoes. But it’s all good.

I enter the people’s home. They’re busy in the back with the returned cat. I can hear that the children are very pleased. I’m an intruder and prepare to leave without fulfilling my mission of telling them what had happened with the cat. But I’m writing. And there is a typewriter. It’s  an old manual portable. I sit down and begin typing on it. I can’t help myself.

The young mother comes out. I apologize for using her typewriter and being there without permission. She dismisses my apology. I begin explaining who I am and why I’m there. She dismisses my explanation, telling me with a gentle smile, she knows who I am, and it’s fine. She offers food. I decline and state that I must leave. But she has made up the guest bed for me with soft downy blankets and sheets. No, I insist on leaving. “Then I must put the bedding back away,” she replies in a flirtatious manner, “after all this work that I’ve done.” “I’ll help,” I answer. She tells me that it’s not necessary but I pick up and fold a blanket.

But then I must write. Sitting down at the typewriter, I start typing.

The end.

 

 

 

 

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