Category: writing

Dream-Peat

I dreamed three dreams last night. There were repeats of dreams I’ve dreamed before. Like watching a movie more often, more details have developed, or are noticed and retained.

The dreams involve me to different degrees. I’m heavily involved in the first dream, less involved in the second one, and I’m almost phased out wholly by the third. The third dream is mostly about black women getting on an aircraft. The aircraft is a C-5 Galaxy. They’re happy and excited about a journey they’re about to take. I’m happy and excited for them, too, but most of my involvement is listening to them and seeing close-up shots of all those happy people going on a journey.

The first one, that so involved me, was mostly adventure. About me and a group escaping, and then exploring, the dream begins after the escape. I don’t know what we’re escaping. The group is small. We find a cold, icy place to stay until we’re rescued. Once we’re in that place, we discover there are items left behind, and that we’re in what was once a military post. Then we learn the post isn’t entirely abandoned. Little by little, we slip in and integrate, making use of things we see the military using. The military isn’t malicious or anything; they’re simply there, going about their business as it’s been on so many military bases I visited.

No family was in the dream. So it goes. I never feel threatened or frightened in the dream. I’m a little wary initially but that changes quickly as I relax and gain confidence. By the end, when I’m using the military’s stuff, part of them but not one of them, I’m a confident leader.

The second dream is a lame sequel to the first, almost like a set-up to the third. There’s abstract discussions about what happened – “We survived, we found this place, now we can help others” – and sort of a montage of things like that being done. Then, it’s on to the third dream.

I write about the dreams to understand them. Frankly, I don’t. They seem hopeful but beyond that, I can sketch any number of meanings to them. All those meetings would have strength, weakness, logic and flaws to my interpretations. I sometimes think I should devote more time to understanding them but I see that as a major investment in time. I like to guard my time and routines.

Which brings me around to my conclusion. Do my dreams need to have significance, meanings, or portends to other matters? Perhaps it’s sufficient to accept, I dreamed. My mind has cleared some clutter from my thinking. Maybe it’s like organizing the attic; “Oh, here we have some leftover stuff. Where should we put it?” “Stick it in a dream.” “Oh, okay.”

It’s odder and a little more intriguing that I have repeat dreams. Do I have some frozen synapses causing the same images, sounds, ideas and stories to circulate through my mind? Such thoughts trigger comparisons to similarities in my writing. I often address time, memory, reality, technology and alienation in my fiction writing, whether it’s the mystery series or the science-fiction novels.

This leads to insights and suspicions. Perhaps I need more outside input and stimulus. I’m in ruts of living and writing, constrained by others’ health issues, concerns and worries, and have been for some time. Perhaps my dreams are a reflection of my ‘real’ situation, and that’s why they’re repeating, and why I’m so little involved. I’m often a spectator within my own life, another rider on the train.

Not too long ago, I read an article about a woman who often fantasizes during the day. Her pattern of thought developed when she was a child but she realized she continued them as an adult, and that they were connected to regular activities. She recognized that when she does certain activities, she likewise engages in fantasies, and they’re often the same or similar fantasies.

Becoming more interested in what she was doing and why, she searched for evidence that others were doing something like this, and found she wasn’t alone in this habit.

Well, I could have told her that; I also do this.

At first, this behavior was helpful in falling asleep. I engage it and knew it as a way to shut off my brain so I could sleep and rest. Later, I extended it and began engaging to turn off my brain from other issues. I’ve always recognized it as a coping practice to de-stress, but they’re also a way to engage my subconscious mind to think, develop solutions and ideas. These fantasies are harmless, about designing survival places, trains or ships, but I can see parallels to my dreams, and to my fiction writing practices.

In a curious way, I begin to view myself as a pie. Then we can slice me up into my various activities and realms – writing, sleeping and dreaming, walking and living, interacting with others. When I begin doing that, I can see how the whole fits together in a larger pattern. I can see my limitations and frustrations, and how they manifest themselves through fiction writing, daytime activity fantasies, and yes, nocturnal dreams. I can see how other dreams were wish-fulfillment that I matter more than I do, that I have a starring role in something, somewhere, that I am not just another blink of consciousness among the trillions of blinks on Earth.

For better or worse, the dreams are part of the whole necessary to complete me. That isn’t a permanent or complete answer, nor even a deep insight. It’s just another glimpse of an entity and a life.

It just happens to be a very personal view.

 

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The Flight

I often have a very good general idea of what I’m about to write when I sit down to write it. That’s due to process; I typically write in my head before I sit down and visualize the piece. I do this with more than just fiction, but with almost everything that I write.

But, with fiction writing, I notice that sometimes I’ve written so much in my head that I’m a little disappointed with needing to physically write it. I also become a little lost, because, hey, it’s written in my head. Therefore, it already exists in some form.

In those instances when this happens, I drift on the eddies of my thinking and writing, just flowing along. I’m not on a stream of water but a stream of air, a kite on the breeze, wings extended, looking over the terrain. Then, seeing something, it circles back and dives.

I feel like that bird. Circling, the place where I want to begin writing is my target. If I don’t try thinking about it but instead let it return to me yesterday, then it often arrives with a powerful rush. Then, like a kite, I dive in on my target.

So it was today. Four hundred fifty pages are done. Six chapters, six of the first seven chapters of Part III, are being written in parallel. The seventh was written about six weeks ago. As the story comes on more fully realized in my thinking, I jump back into other scenes to correct details, add set-up exposition, or nuance something to foreshadow events. I’d written so much of these six chapters yesterday in my mind, though, because there were there even after I stopped for the day. They stories go on even though I’ve stopped writing. Then, I added and edited later in my head, making mental notes to myself about revisions.

That’s how it happens when I’m writing with the flow. The story is so real that I feel like I can turn and walk through a door and be in the place, or turn on the television and see it, or even pick up the book, open it, and begin reading.

Sometimes I become a little disconcerted with this. Confusion sets in as to whether I already wrote it or someone else wrote it and I’m just remembering their work.

Nevertheless, I love this organic style of writing, jumping back and forth through the stories and novel as it’s all played in my mind. It’s sweetly beautiful and amazing to visualize, hear and known. It’s something that others struggle to do. I’m sure engineers, physicists, mathematicians and software coders do something similar, along with writers, artists and musicians. Others, though, I know from conversations, are awed that it happens, that all these details can be imagined and experienced as real and then put onto something tangible that can be shared with others. It is, as our POTUS would say, a great, great, beautiful thing.

The skill, or ability, didn’t come overnight, though, which amuses me. I’ve worked on this like a batter hitting a fastball, an artist learning how to observe and interpret, a student musician, or physicists and philosophers contemplating existence. I’m always working on it but I fail as a writer to convey the fun and satisfaction of seeing, creating and meeting the challenge of realizing fiction.

Done writing for now. It was a great day of writing like crazy. Now I must go clean the shower.

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Pushing

It’s good to push sometimes. For me, that’s especially true for physical activities.

Feel that burn, baby. Feel the muscles demanding, cease and desist already. Meanwhile, you make promises. “Come on, just five more.” You count them down and your muscles and joints respond. Then you urge, “Five more!”

“No,” they shout back, but still they try, damn it, and you go on like this with the sweat beading, streaming and dripping, stinging your eyes and flavoring your lips with a salty essence as your heart attempts to free itself through your sternum and your pulse thunders in your temples, until the end is reached and you are spent, and you sit, limp, breathing hard, but smiling.

I used to do this, too, with projects in the military and with my various employers. One more hour, I’d promise myself, my wife, my friends as the work day ended and darkness fell, but I’d need to keep working, keep going, chugging coffee, concentrating, head down and all in, until, fini. All would be amazed, asking, “You did that in one day?”

Yeah. I was ‘ate up’ as we liked to say in the military.

I don’t do that with fiction writing. Yesterday was a beautiful, glorious writing day. Finishing and editing one chapter, I saw the sources for five chapters – this is where they begin. I saw the chapter titles and the essence of their chapters and how the five flowed to form the confluence of the novel’s climax. So I wrote notes to capture the gist. As I did, specifics for the chapters came into my head, so I wrote random paragraphs for each, capturing scenes, dialogue exchanges, and sharp special moments. This went on and on. It seemed like an endless stream. I thought, “If I push this, I can write these five chapters today.”

But no; I don’t do this with my writing. After debating it and accepting the decision, I wondered why. I knew the why but I wanted something more tangible for me to understand. As I walked après-writing, I concluded creative energy is different from physical, mental and emotional energy (or time energy, but that would be a huge other post). I can only address it from my point of view, but I have my writing history, along with my drawing and painting history, to see how I approach creative activities differently than other activities. Yes, in my employed life, I often used this creative approach to decide how to tackle issues and situations, but once engaged, the creative energy was no longer required.

Perhaps it’s only me; we’re all different. Even though the end results, words in some media, look the same, we came to it in unique, individual ways. For me, the creative energy is deeper and more taxing to draw out, even when it starts gushing. I’ve come to understand, accept and respect that.

But this is a new day. Fortunately, I can draw fresh creative energy almost every day. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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A Day Off

I took the day off from novel writing yesterday. OMG, I hated doing so.

I hated taking time off from work back in the days when I worked or was in the military. Even when off, I checked in, kept in touch, monitored things and was ready to take care of problems. I was never really off.

The same goes on with my writing efforts. I frequently write in my head and love sitting down and writing a few hours every day. Writing provides me with intense joy and satisfaction. That’s great, I love that I receive emotional and intellectual rewards for my efforts. But, I’ve conditioned myself to write every day. I love that structure.

I cling to that structure.

I knew all that.

I hated knowing because knowing means I could either be willfully ignorant and act in bad faith, or I could ‘do the right thing’.

A Resist Trump march going on in Medford was the wedge issue. My wife wanted to attend and felt it important to attend. I wanted to attend but I wanted to write. I’d put off a lifelong desire to write and pursue my dreams to provide us security and help her pursue her career. Surely I deserve to pursue my dream.

Besides that, Michael, I told myself. You’ll be in a crowd, with all that this means. I’m not a social person. People are energy sucks for me. I’d be waaay out of my comfort zone.

Being out of my comfort zone is supposed to be good for me. Supposed to help me grow.

Yeah, but I don’t wanna grow. Can’t I just stay as I am? Can’t I just be selfish? Damn it, no.

Damn it.

The other aspect of this was working around the march period. We were meeting up at 11:40 AM. The location was thirty minutes away by car. The march itself was to be from noon to 1:30. Basically, I consider that the meat of the day. I could push, get up early, wiggle in some writing time beforehand. I considered the logistics and issues with this, knowing the Boulevard opens early enough, but is busy early and very full. Chances of finding a table were low.

I could write afterward. If I was truly dedicated, I would, but here is where my crutches were employed, things like my energy levels and writing preferences.

I could try writing at home.

Yes, I’ve tried that multiple times. It’s hugely disappointing and frustrating, partially because its silence highlights the interruptions, and the interruptions are of a personal nature.

That left me with not writing.

This so bothered me that I didn’t sleep Monday night. According to Fitbit, I achieved a little over three hours.

I understand myself, and I don’t understand myself. I can control myself and I can’t control myself. I’m such a conflicted person.

Worse, and not surprising, was that since I didn’t write, my writer wasn’t happy and kept pushing words and scenes into front center stage during the march. Apparently nobody notified him that I was taking the day off.

As if he’d care. He and the muse have independent contracts. The contracts stipulate they’re required to use my mind and body to do my writing, but they don’t always accept the limitations incumbent in that arrangement.

TG I’m back here today, coffee at hand, free and ready to write like crazy again, at least one more time.

Here I go. Three…two…one….

Blast-off.

 

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Aftermath

I arrived at the coffee shop. Only two tables were available. I grabbed one. An outlet wasn’t available but that would be okay. I could type until my battery cried uncle and then plug in or pack up.

Meanwhile, I launched into writing and editing. It was like working a loom, adding sentences, going back and changing some, back and forth, back and forth. Then, yes, boom – I checked and confirmed, the battery was getting low. As I noted the low level and wondered why I hadn’t been notified, the computer issued its low battery warning.

A dilemma loomed. Stop for the day or keep going? I’d completed sixteen hundred words, a decent day when including the editing aspect. But I felt there was more in me. I didn’t want to push but I did’t want to let it go.

So I scoped the cafe. Tables with outlets were available. I made the move and continued.

Glad I did. I didn’t expect the changes in the story arcs that took place. The characters again understand the story better than me. I thought the road through the forest I followed was clear about its path but somewhere amidst the turns, I ended up taking a sharp right that delivered me onto a new path. I ended up where I didn’t expect, yet, it completely and perfectly fit into what was supposed to be happening with the story.

It was like mental sleight of hand. “How…?” I asked myself.

I didn’t know; it’s not where I expected to be. Yet the character hadn’t jacked the novel; I was still going toward the same climax, but on a different path.

Then I worried. If I took what the characters clearly saw as the correct path, was it too damn predictable? Would readers be disappointed?

I don’t know. I think I’m too deep into the forest of words and activity to assess and understand. Just go with the flow and finish the novel.

And now, time to stop. It turned out to be one of those finest kinds of writing sessions, when you’re not an outsider typing up dictation, but a participant hiding out with the characters, furtively looking over their shoulders and listening, and writing like mad.

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Sunshine Blogger Award

I love winning something out of the blue, especially when it comes from someone admiring or appreciating what you’re putting out there. Thank you, Mel Hopkins! I enjoy her blog, and the attitude she exhibits through her words. Please check her out.

This sort of thing takes me out of my comfort zone, so it’s taken me a few days to respond. I prefer not to have attention. I know, it’s odd for someone who writes and posts things on the net to also like privacy and anonymity. It’s all as clear as mud mixed with sand and oil to me. Disclaimer aside, here we.

Here are the rules:

·         Post the award on your blog

·         Thank the person who nominated you

·         Answer the 11 questions they sent you

·         Pick another 11 bloggers (and let them know they are nominated!)

·         Give them 11 questions

I have to admit, when dealing with eleven questions, I kept flashing back to ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ and the Bridge of Death.

 

Mel presented us with eleven questions about travel. Here are the questions she posed, and my answers.

  1. How many countries have you visited in this lifetime?

Twenty-two.

  1. What is your favorite country? Why?

I can’t choose a favorite country any more than I can select a favorite book, food or piece of music. My desire for each and appreciation for them shift with my moods. I’d need to visit each a few more times to gather more information. If I had to say today, I would say, Wales, because I’ve never been there.

  1. What is your favorite travel haunt?

Such a difficult question. I lived in Half Moon Bay and remain partial to it, with the amazing food opportunities, its delightful downtown and great ocean scenes, so I will declare Kelly Beach in Half Moon Bay, with a good book, a San Benito House deli sandwich, and cookies from HMB bakery.

  1. In your travels, what is the oddest tourist attraction you’ve seen?

Well…that would be the Dick Bar.

Yes, we were crass but we were military and this was around 1989. This was a bar high on a mountain in Sicily. It was a gorgeous location, with views of Roman amphitheater and fort ruins, Mount Etna, and the tip of Italy’s boot.

We called it the Dick Bar because phallic systems were everywhere – walls, as décor on tables, for sale in glass cases…did I mention the walls? The phallic symbols were made of stone, granite, wood, marzipan. Walking up the steps was a challenge because an erect phallic symbol stuck out from the wall on each step. The steps, with a high riser and narrow tread, would’ve been a sufficient challenge without worrying about getting a pecker in the ear.

It was a great place. We sat out on the roof drinking Italian red vino for several hours, until the owner cut us off for fear of one of us falling down the steps.

  1. How many states, (or provinces, territories) have you visited in your home country?

Thirty-three, that I can remember. To be fair, I traveled by car often, so some of these were merely rest stops or visits to scenic overlooks.

  1. What was your favorite travel destination in 2016?

The ocean, whatever ocean I can find, wherever I find it.

  1. Where will you travel to in 2017?

Plans are on hold due to personal issues. We want to take a train from Vancouver, BC, to Quebec City. Our fingers are crossed that we’ll be able to pursue this, or take one of the tours offered by Roads Scholars.

  1. What’s your favorite transportation mode of travel?  Planes, trains, automobiles, bikes, motor home, cruise ships?

Car. Traveling by car has a romance and freedom I experienced when driving with my parents across the country.

  1. Do you prefer physical adventure travel such as hiking, camping, mountain climbing or relaxing by the pool or beach?

I like reading by the beach, preferably with a glass of wine or a pint of beer.

  1. Hot or cold weather travels?

Give me warm weather, please.

  1. How far have you traveled from your home base?

Well, my home base shifted around the United States and the world throughout my life. The longest travel done in one day was from southern West Virginia to St Louis, MO, and on to Okinawa, Japan, by way of Alaska, via car and aircraft.

Now, I must nominate eleven bloggers and notify them. 

Hmmmm…. This is the toughest part of the entire exercise. So many deserving bloggers out there. I also tried eliminating previous winners.

Thomas Weaver at North of Andover

JR Handley

Elizabeth Rose

Ed Lehming at Ed Lehming Photography

Marcus at Survivor Road

Daniel Kay at This is Youth

Gigi at Rethinking Life

Kecia at Muninn’s Memories

Kent Wayne at Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha

Jenn Moss at Rough and Ready Fiction

And now…their questions:

  1. If there is one food you can eat every day, what would it be?
  1. What’s your favorite libation?
  1. What’s your secret favorite all-time movie, that you could watch over and over?
  1. Is there a song that makes you cry?
  1. What is the best book you think you ever read?
  1. Is there a year that you considered the most wonderful year of your life? Why?
  1. Where would you like to spend more time in 2017?
  1. What actor/actress in any forum, medium or era do you think is greatly unappreciated?
  1. Please name us one fictional location you’d like to visit, and tell us why.
  1. Skittles, Milk Duds, M&Ms or Junior Mints?
  1. If you could be a professional athlete, what sport would you choose?

If you’ve already received this award, congratulations! Carry on, regardless.

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A Year

It’s been a year since I collected my last IBM paycheck.

I expected a lot of changes in that year. I’ve been disappointed.

One bitter reason for wanting to leave IBM was my unhappiness of how callously we were treated as individuals. That’s my perception. Others may not share it. The work had become routine and boring. I was rarely engaged, and my circle of involvement seemed to be shrinking. So, I was receiving less validation that I was worthwhile to the company or that anyone there appreciated my work or efforts. Hence, I wanted to leave. When they offered me the choice, I took it.

Yet, being freed from employment didn’t do anything to enhance my sense of validation. If anything, the solitary habits I employ and my social awkwardness remain, so I’m just as out there on my own now as I was when I was employed, and experience even less evaluation. It’s tested my strength and determination.

I thought my writing career would take off. It hasn’t. I didn’t appreciate the hard work required to not just prepare a book to publish but also to market. I naively thought, “If I write it, they will come.”

My year of being unemployed, the first since I was seventeen, taught me how much I require structure, goals and a vision to keep me moving forward. I’ve been forced to re-evaluate what I’d established in the past that helped me succeed, and create new structures, goals and a vision. That’s all still in progress. I also needed to educate myself more about the writing business, something also underway. Frankly, it’s wearying.

In thinking about all of this, I resolved, “I will do better.” It’s a big poster in my mind, glowing at me all the time. “I will do better.”

Today’s writing session is finished. I only wrote about fifteen hundred words and edited some. The novel is becoming hugely busy. I reached the point that I felt like a puppet master getting entangled in his puppets’ strings. Pacing across the coffee shop with impatience and frustration, I gazed out the window and recognized, I need to stop today. Regroup and marshal my energies and intentions to proceed. It’s a complex novel, with complicated plots and societies, set in the future, with unique words, and yada, yada, yada.

Those of you who write will totally understand.

 

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Protocol Three

Pram has declared Protocol Three. You know what that means: the sierra is encountering the rotating blades.

Meanwhile, Handley and company have found their target. Fermenting in my brain cells for several weeks, I’m looking forward to writing these scenes; their plans are going disastrously awry, and they’re ignorant of what is about to happen. Love writing my characters into disasters and confrontations. Some, like Tang’s confrontation with Pram, I never see coming. Such surprising encounters are engaging, especially when they organically develop from just letting the characters carry the scene and be themselves. And then, what happened next astonished me but made absolute sense from the characters’ POV. Very cool.

After this is written, it’s back to Forus Ker, Seth Nor and the Humans, where they’ve been killing Brett, and Philea and the Wrinkle, where she’s meeting Forus Ker and Seth Nor. I can see and hear these scenes so clearly, I’m impatient to write them, but I don’t want to be hasty. Relax, I order myself; they’ll be written.

The common rule of thumb for movies is that one page equals one minute of screen time. That’s what I learned but The Working Screenwriter says, “Not so,” and gives specifics of movie scripts and running times. Anyway, I’ve noticed that scenes and dialogue take place in my head very quickly. I’ll visualize and realize them in thirty to ninety seconds.

Great, right? So they all pile on, scene after scene after scene. But writing these thirty to ninety second one bites takes a few days of writing and editing, and typically require two or three days. One, I’ll often write to capture the essence. Then I return to pad it with relevant details. In parallel, I’m editing and revising for pacing, grammar, sentence structure, et cetera. Then, I also find that something realized during the writing of such scenes trigger an impact on another scene. Sometimes that scene is already written and needs revision to add the tidbit.

The other scenes then must be held in my head or scribbled onto a notebook page, or have a brief entry typed up in a doc. All those paths fortunately work for me. Sometimes one of them stumbles but I find that with a little work, they start making sense again.

So much to write, so little time. Three…two…one. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Mom’s Fault

It’s pouring rain. Soaked dark, my coat dribbled rivulets across the floor as I walked across the coffee shop.

“Did you walk?” the coffee shop owner asked. “I know you like to walk. I’ve seen you walking all over town.”

“No, I just walked a mile,” I answered. “I wanted to feel the rain and wind.”

“You like to walk, don’t you?” the owner said.

“Yes.”

Yes, I like to walk. It’s Mom’s fault. In my young life’s dawn, I’d want to go somewhere and requested Mom drive me. “You have two legs, you can walk,” she’d reply. Stories about her walking when she was a child followed. She walked to school miles in both direction, no matter what the weather was, digging trails and tunnels through the Iowa snowstorms, if necessary, fording rivers and forging trails, dodging wild animals while picking berries or nuts on the way home to use in baking, and stopping to milk the cows. If she walked in those conditions, I could walk.

I might have exaggerated about what she claimed to do.

So I walked. I walked everywhere. I didn’t have a car in high school for several years, so I walked the miles home from school after sports activities and play practices. I walked to my girlfriend’s house, miles more, and back again. Sometimes I was given rides. Sometimes, people attempted to molest me.

Once in the military, my wife and I didn’t have much income, so we walked. Over in the Philippines on duty, I didn’t have a car and had plenty of time, so I walked around the base and the town. In Germany, walking was organized into Volksmarching and celebrated with drink and food. Terrific!

By the time I began writing, walking was ingrained as part of my thinking process. I was pleased to discover that studies validated my impressions about walking. Walking ten minutes a day made most people happy besides providing exercise. Walking also enhances the creative process for most.

I was sure of that latter. Deciding I needed to put myself and my goals and dreams first, I started taking an hour out of the work day to write. Bosses, co-workers and team mates didn’t care as long as I did my share. As part of that, I observed that walking helped me shift from work Michael to writing Michael. As I walked to write, I would ask the eternal writing questions, “Where the hell am I? Where does the story go next? What do I need to write next? What did I write yesterday?” Asking these questions and thinking about it prepped me to sit down, ready to type.

Likewise, after leaving, I’d often continue working out characters, scenes and plots as I walked back to work. Then, walking to write the next day, I would recall the previous day and resume writing with little effort.

I was surprised that studies didn’t demonstrate a link to improved focused thinking, as well, and problem solving. Perhaps I’d trained myself to solve problems by walking, but I always felt leaving work for a short work, changing the scenery and releasing my brain from the work environment, was hugely instrumental in being able to see answers and develop solutions. Perhaps, though, that was still the creative brainstorming that writing seems to encourage.

My walking continued once I started working from home. I walked to take breaks and enjoy fresh air and sunshine. Then, walking to the coffee shop to write, I walked to reduce my carbon footprint and help save money and the environment.

Now, I have the Fitbit to encourage me to walk. If I haven’t walked in an hour, it buzzes me to get up and walk. So I leave the coffee shop and hustle down the steps and around the block and back. That’s enormously reduced my writer’s ass, which is when your ass goes to sleep after being almost stationary while typing or writing at a desk or table. When I’m at home, my wife and I jump up and start running around. Sometimes, we chase the cats, but they’re not into it, so we don’t do that much.

But, like many things I do and enjoy, my walking started with Mom.

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