Category: writing

Happy December, Writers

You can’t learn to walk without a few trips, stumbles and falls. Bike lessons typically involve an accident, too, when something goes astray. You lose your balance and fall, or forget how to brake and crash. The point there, as I’m so cleverly hiding it and I should make it clearer, is that to learn and succeed, you must take risks. With risks can come pain and failure. How you handle it all is where some of your best learning can arise.

With that in mind, I salute all those who attempted NaNoWriMo, no matter their result. More power to you for putting in on the line and trying. Fantastic, if you succeeded; I hope you keep going. Fantastic, if you failed; I hope you keep going, because you tried, brothers and sisters.

Now it’s Monday in some parts of the world. Morning, in a few neighborhoods. December is blooming everywhere. Summer and winter are rising, depending upon where you live. I hope you all have a December that you look back upon with fondness and satisfaction, that it’s a month when you think back upon and say, “It all started that year, 2016, in December. That’s the month when it all really came together and I knew.” Substitute whatever words you want in there for your moment, path and vision.

For me, it’s time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.

9

Where Do They Live?

Just as I had to address “What do they wear?”, I’m now addressing, “Where do they live?”

My Travail and other intelligent species have evolved far beyond my initial glances. I can liken it to glancing at a cat and thinking, “Oh, look, a cat.”

What’s the cat’s sex? Male.

Does the cat have a name? Yes, we’re calling him Meep.

What color is Meep? Um…Meep is a ginger, a blotched tabby ginger with broad swirls on his side, white whiskers, amber eyes, pink nose.

Good. What’s Meep doing when we first see him? He’s sitting on the fence. He’s displaced a half foot of snow from the fence top. No other snow is disturbed so he must have jumped up there from the other side of the fence. Flurries swirl around him but he’s not forlorn looking. He looks relaxed and in command. His attention is fixed on something in the pines, something that I can’t see or hear.

Does he get along with the other cats? Meep doesn’t trust other cats and goes on instant alert, ready to warn, fight or flee, when another cat approaches. He prefers to warn them away. If they attack, he will fight back. Fleeing is the third choice. He considers it the smart choice but knows from practice that fleeing is better as a theory because other cats will chase him. So he stands his ground until the situation is dire.

I’m going through this with the Monad, Sabards, Milennial, Humans and Travail, especially the Travail. Part of that is because I already did a great deal of this with the Humans, but also one main character is a Travail, and their part of the story and activity is told through his point of view. This has forced me to delve into the Travail history, social structure, architecture, behavior, agendas, sex…everything known about Humans on Earth is required to be known about the Travail.

They have a complex structure. Their names end up reminding me of Russian naming conventions out of Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. But I didn’t want to just slap some Human expressions — or cats or other animals — onto my other civilizations. I wanted them to be unique.

They’ve responded to the challenge. I argue with myself about changing the naming convention and simplifying them for the reader.No; the book, the characters and the writer in me all resist this. Screw the readers. I think it was James Tiptree, Jr (Alice Sheldon) who said, “Let them catch up, if they can.” Okay.

Another big challenge was how and why did this species develop the technology to advance into space? Why did they want to go into space? That forced a deep dive into their history, as well as the history and development of other races.

It’s all challenging, daunting, and intriguing. It all builds the novel far beyond my first glimpses of it. That’s how it often goes. When you pursue a destination, details, paths, choices and accidents emerge that you never anticipated. Thinking it through enervates me as brain cells cry for mercy but afterwards, I sit in pleased satisfaction with what’s been developed and written. Each plot arc has its own beauty that touches me.

But now, yeah, my butt’s numbness informs me that time has passed. Mocha remains but it’s cold, cold, cold, with a skim of clotted chocolate like small clouds dotting its surface.

It’s been an excellent day of writing like crazy. Time to chug the mocha, take a walk and prepare for the next session. The words are already bubbling up. Were it not for my numb rear-end, I would pursue them.

But the words will keep until tomorrow, and another day of writing like crazy.

0

Part One

I completed Part One of ‘Long Summer’ today and reflected on that. It is the first draft.

Part One. Three hundred pages. Seventy-seven thousand words.

I began it July 9th, 2016. A down computer interrupted my work on it. I was without the computer for several weeks while it was sent back to HP for repairs and returned to me. Then it took a few weeks to find the groove again. I basically lost the end of July and most of August.

Still, in thinking about this novel as it evolves and expands, I believe this novel could have three parts. More parts are conceivable as I learn more about these other worlds and civilizations, and the multiple, complicated plots develop. I don’t want to release or publish any of it until the entire novel is completed. As large as Part One is, I’ll probably release each novel as a part, but again, I don’t want to do so until they’re all done.

This could be a very long haul.

2

The Mojo Exceptions

I’m pursuing the opposite strategy. This is embracing and doing the opposite of your normal choices. The thinking is, if what you’re doing hasn’t been working, then the opposite of what you’re doing should be successful.

This approach was successfully employed by George Costanza, played by Jason Alexander on ‘Seinfeld’ in the television series’ eighty-sixth episode, during its fifth season in 1994. Jerry Seinfeld’s character articulated the idea although George began it by deciding to order something other than his usual.

True, Costanza is a fictional character. We  don’t want to start modeling our lives on fiction, do we? But some real value to this method could exist because it’ll take you out of your usual ruts. In a sense, this can help you face your fears.

But —

There are always ‘buts’.

But, I went to write yesterday after several opposite choices and the buts started flowing in. One, I don’t want to mess with my writing mojo. I got my writing mojo working. So I needed the Mojo Exceptions to the opposites.

  1. I can continue to go to the coffee shop and write. Otherwise, taking the opposite path, I would stay home and write. Although, by Costanza’s Rule, that’s exactly what I should do. In my feeble defense, I used to stay home and write. It wasn’t working. I decided to do the opposite, and go out and write. See how nicely I’m trying to rationalize that?
  2. I can continue drinking my quad shot mocha. The Costanza Rule decrees that I’ll have something else, like tea. Again, I began drink the mocha to embrace the opposites because I used to drink black coffee without cream or sugar.
  3. I can still write like crazy. The opposite of that would be to write with restraint. I used to try that and abandoned it to write like crazy.

Expressing the Mojo Exceptions make me appear to be a coward. I write to learn what I think, and I learned why I wanted the exceptions. I see how fear from change is really behind not wanting to mess with the writing process. I see how comfortable I am in it. And yet, I can convince myself that I was already doing the opposite with that aspect of writing, and that’s why it works.

I see inconsistencies about following the opposite strategy that trouble me. I think, ‘Don’t post that post,’ because I’ll be exposing my cowardice and inconsistencies. That, of course, would be the usual. I have to do the opposite, except for the Mojo Exceptions so I post this entry. I figure the Mojo Exceptions define the one area that works really well and can be excluded. But Mojo Exceptions are not unlimited. After wrestling with this aspect, I agree with myself that three is acceptable, but no more than three.

After all, you don’t want to mess with your mojo. Of course, it can be argued that your mojo isn’t working if you’re pursuing the opposite strategy because it’s purpose is to take you out of your comfort zones by doing the opposites.

I’m getting a headache.

2

The Wall

Ever do distance running?

The race begins and after a brief interlude of finding your pace, you enter your zone where your legs and arms are moving with orchestrated pace and you are where you want to be and where you expected to be. Interior dialogue begins to help focus. Time and distance pass and you feel good, even great as your body feels its power and responds.

And then, without warning, here is the wall.

The wall is many impressions at once. It feels like you’re running in sludge. Where your feet were lifting and dropping with relative ease and precision, you suddenly feel wobbly and your feet are heavy. Your legs feel heavy. An undertow has sucked all your energy out to sea. You just want to completely stop, sag and breath.

But you know that this will pass if you can keep your arms and legs moving. That’s why you’ve trained, to learn how to keep your arms and legs moving, how to properly breath, how to find the oxygen in your lungs and get it to your heart, into your blood and to your muscles. You’ve trained to know what to do when it happens and take the pieces of broken focus and put them back together so you can keep going.

Well, I’ve hit the writing wall this morning. My body is sagging despite my stretching and yawning, and my mind is screaming, “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna.” It’s cold, gray and wet outside. My eyes are tired. My morning coffee is cold and it doesn’t taste good. It’s Sunday, come on, aren’t you supposed to take Sunday off to sit and chill? You deserve a day off from dealing with the Penta Majur.

And I know some of this wall comes from unique places within. Emotional demands have eaten into the writing reserves. I’ve learned that a friend and family member by marriage had open-heart surgery a few weeks ago without telling anyone. Only his wife knew. And you wonder, why wouldn’t they tell anyone this? He didn’t have insurance and her insurance is a miserable and greedy company which is barely covering any of the bill. She’s well employed and a hard worker, with an impressive job title and salary, but this has drained their finances.

I know some of this wall is holiday related as I pause to consider what was and what now isn’t. I understand my nostalgic nature even if I can’t control it.

And I know some of this wall comes from dealing with news and protests and murders and deaths and hatred and racism and bigotry and –

And there is the wall.

My dreams reflected this last night, too, putting me through the paces of trying to sell a car, a sports car which I owned for twenty years but traded in for a new SUV, a car that reflected some of the pleasure I felt with what I’d achieved, where I was and where I was going, a car that then became a reminder of where I’d been and what I’d achieved and that I was no longer going anywhere, car that reminded me that time had passed. And yet a car that I missed because I’d enjoyed considerable pleasure driving that car on trips, and it was associated with the validation found in work and promotions.

I saw all that in the dream as the dream masters chastised me for not following proper procedures while selling my car, ordering me back into line, and confusing me with demands that I need to write my requirements in white on black socks, which totally befuddled me because that makes no sense. And then, there is the waking reflections on what makes sense and does not, with gentle chiding amusement over the expectations that everything is to make sense. That’s the interesting thing about writing: that you must always make sense in a world that doesn’t make sense.

The writer within is demonstrating remarkable patience. He wants to write but he’s telling me, you’re just a little tired. It’s understandable, that’s okay. Take some time to sit in quiet, relax, drink some more coffee, read, surf the net, look out the window, watch the trees, the birds, the clouds and rain, and the passing pedestrians. Observe life. Let your energy build.

The wall is there but you’ll break through. Be patient and persevere.

1

Son of A Gun

My normal coffee writing consumption is the Michael – four shots of espresso in a non-fat mocha, in a twelve ounce cup. One barista always charged me less than the others, putting me into an OCD tizzy. She explained that the sixteen ounce is actually less expensive because it already includes four shots. So she would charge me for a sixteen ounce and put it into a twelve ounce cup.

I was duly awed by her thinking. I was due a free mocha today as part of the customer loyalty program so I went for a sixteen ounce mocha.

“You want extra shots?” Shannon asked. “It comes with four but we can bump it up to six.”

Six? Dare I?

Hell, yeah, I’m sixty years old.

Just call me a six shooter, an old son of a gun, a word slinger.

“I’m a cowboy. On a laptop, I write. I’m wanted, dead or alive.”

Sorry, Bon Jovi, but my words make as much sense as your lyrics.

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

2

Novel Sculpting

I read a post the other day with insight into Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ writing styles over on The Writer’s Path in an article by Andrea Lundgren. C.S. Lewis was a planner. Tolkien was a pantser. Best was the comment Lewis made about Tolkien’s style:

Diana Pavlac Glyer adds, “Lewis’s writing process was quite different from Tolkien’s. While Tolkien wrote things out in order to discover what he wanted to say, Lewis tended to mull things over before committing anything to paper. While Tolkien produced draft after draft, Lewis completed his work rapidly once he had settled on a clear idea and the right form to express it. And while Tolkien reconsidered every word on every page, when Lewis finished a story, he was restless to move on.”

That summarizes my writing approach: I’m writing to discover what I want to say. I’d not known this about myself in such an explicit manner.

Further reading on process came about from Jenn Moss’ Meta Monday post about her process. She referred to another process, The Snowflake Method. I enjoyed the fractal snowflake reference enormously and considered it pretty apt to Lorenz’s thinking and the Butterfly Effect. Randy Ingermanson writes about how to design a novel by starting small and enlarging, using triangles and stars and ten steps.

From all this came a better grasp of my process. I like to write to understand what I want to say, as Tolkien did. I usually start small and writing like mad, I create a block of words. That result is typically dense, with poor punctuation and spelling, and ‘<TK>’ with notes where I need more reference or clarification. Although I’ve become more mindful about pacing, voice and the rest through exposure to writing and editing, I don’t want those aspects to slow me down; I’m out to capture the essence of the story at that stage. This is fiction writing at its stream-of-consciousness rawest.

I then begin shaping the finished scene or chapter. Like a wood carver or sculptor studying a block of material, I do the same and begin carving, to see what’s in there, what should remain and what should be removed but added to somewhere else.

The carving process is involved. I’m working on plotting, connectivity with the rest of the novel, flow, spelling and grammar, voice, point of view and character development. It is much like sculpting and carving, taking pieces here and there and stepping back to see what I’ve wrought and what remains to be fixed. I think of it as chipping because I’m sculpting but I’m adding words and changing them as well. That’s where the analogy falls apart, but, oh well. I consider the entire active editing and revising, but it doesn’t replace the editing and revising that takes place after the entire draft is finished.

This is fun and rewarding. Watching that piece being shaped and refined is greatly satisfying. Beyond that, the carving process and active editing and revising provides me clarity about the novel. I especially learn about the characters at that point when I’m doing this, actively questioning how they would react to words, activities and new information.

All accumulated in a herd of new dreams thundering through me last night. I won’t recite them today, as people out there who read me are probably rolling their eyes and saying, “More dreams?”

Reflecting them on this morning took me into fractal thinking, and back into my novel writing process. I ruminated about how our brains are often creatively fractal, something I actively encourage my brain to be: I want new ways to look at old ideas and new ideas to present. To do that, I need to take the variables and spin them into a new direction. Like the butterfly’s flutter, you never know how one small input or variable will produce a new direction, if you can leave yourself open to it.

I call that writing like crazy, to which I owe Natalie Goldberg. Now four shots of espresso blended with chocolate and steamed milk is at hand. It’s time to do it again, at least one more time.

 

6

The Novel Progresses

It’s like writing a history of the second world war. Politics, economics and personalities whirl around galactic and planetary fronts as technology causes surprises shifts and skews expectations. It can be overwhelming on some mornings, sorting out the players. Each time that the action shifts via a new twist or expands on an established twist, research and thought is demanded to understand the people, cultures and civilizations involved.

It’s hard work, and it’s fun. It’s fiction writing. It progresses, pleasing and exciting me. Yes, some boulders of frustrations are encountered, and a block ensues. I hunt around it until I find a way to carry on.

Which, if you read my posts with regularity, takes me to the doorstep of last night’s dreams.

Of course dreams are involved. I seem to be able to do little without my dreams becoming approaching the stage to provide their impressions. I accept their participation with little hesitation because the dreams tend toward the positive.

In last night’s feature, the first of a double-header, I was living under water. Not literally; this is a dream. It was an impression of living underwater. Sounds were murky and distorted, colors were diluted and glazed with an faint olive green hue. I lived as I would on land, walking about, but with the impression I was underwater. The sensation of being under intense pressure all around drove that sense.

And I was tired of it. I didn’t want to live underwater and under pressure. So I took up flying. It was that simple in the dream world, which, when I awoke and thought about it, made me long to live in a dream world.

The flying was pretty terrific. I was up and out of the water without thought (and without any splashing). Everything was sharp and clear. Visibility seemed like infinity. As I perceived the changes in the dream, I gasped and said, “I’m flying.” And a voice answered, “Of course you are.”

“But I don’t have wings,” I replied.

The unseen other laughed. While they sounded like they were located by my shoulder, I saw nothing of them. Their voice, while pleasant, intimate, soft and friendly, didn’t betray a sex. “Why would you need wings? You’re not a bird.”

I laughed on hearing that. No, I’m not a bird, but a human, flying above the world, going to wherever I selected. As dream impressions go, it was empowering cubed. In an aside, I noticed I looked like a younger version of myself and was dressed in jeans with a belt, polo shirt and shoes. Although it was all fully colorized, I barely remember those details except to know I noticed what I was wearing when I looked for my wings. I had no wings, no engines or contraptions attached to me, and was without strings. I was flying on my own.

After that, the other dream, about my home and decisions to make changes, and being overrun by animals from the neighbors amidst efforts of organizing and directing others (some took some of my FedEx delivery envelopes for their use from my big binders of organization, but I had them to spare), seemed as bland as reality, except the good mood from the main feature carried over.

As it’s carrying over now. Ready to write and excited with expectations, just the way I like it.

0

The Novel Bible

I started thinking about my novels’ bibles while reading Whitney Carter’s WorldBuilding Post today. Some good suggestions were in there and I’ve found and incorporated most of them on my own.

The one thing about naming and history conventions for me is to keep track of them. Not just what they’re named, but sometimes, why they’re so named. I keep a separate document for that, and usually have it opened and update it as I’m writing, or at the session’s end. The bible for ‘Long Summer’, sequel to ‘Returnee’, is over 7,000 words. That’s not really big; James Michener used to have binders of information.

More interesting to me is that I’ve learned that I do more research to develop and build the world than I do to write the story. While I will write from forty-five to ninety minutes on an average day (and end up with word counts from one thousand to three thousand words in a session), I spend several hours researching and developing the worlds, characters, settings and situations. This is true not just in science fiction, which is my preferred genre, but in mystery, which I also write.

For example, if someone was born in America in 1975 and the novel takes place in 2015, they’re forty years old. That’s easy. But what music did they listen to while growing up in America? Did they watch television, and what did they watch when they did? What significant historic events happened in their lifetime, and it were they affected? Technology is part of this, something that I remember from a comment my mother made. While she’d traveled across the United States during her lifetime, I flew on a commercial jet when I was eighteen, and she didn’t do so for almost twenty years after my first flight. As we work and live, it’s easy to forget that ubiquitous devices like computers and cell phones are relatively new to human existence. Our civilization and societies are rich with laws, technology and permanent solutions that no longer apply. It’s important for the novel’s honesty and integrity to bear these matters in mind to develop coherent characters and stories.

I like substantial verisimilitude to novels that I read, and I include it in the novels that I write. Some people would say that I put too much in but I love tangent explanations. It’s largely because I think people are complicated. Little is black and white to many. They may state that it’s black and white, and they may act like it’s black and white, but most are offering a sketch insight to their true beliefs. Some of this is driven by people being politically or emotionally sensitive (or the opposite, attempting to be deliberately rude and crude), acting out, or displacement. More often, people struggle to untangle the skeins of history, thinking and emotions. There is also a large contingency of lazy people, and people who are just too tired, worn out, or impatient to figure out what they think, so they take the easiest courses of thoughts and actions.

All of this is recorded, in shorthand, in the novel’s bible. In ‘Long Summer’, as in ‘Returnee’, it’s easy when addressing future Human development. Corporations dominate, so corporate structure and thinking dominate. These are calcified, turgid organizations driven by reducing overhead and increasing profit, crying out, “We are a team,” or, “We are a family,” when they need to encourage hard work and cooperation, shrugging and noting, “We are a business,” when they cut jobs. They’re governed by wealthy people living in bubbles. However, factions who oppose corporations do exist. They cite multiple issues with corporations for their existence as individuals and groups. They’re more challenging to develop.

Even more challenging are the other intelligent races that emerge in ‘Long Summer’. Six races, including another branch of Humanity (seven, if you include Humans that have spread out from Earth), dominate the known and settled galaxies. One of these races is a long gone race. Traces of them are found everywhere but there isn’t any evidence of where they went or why. Such vacuums aren’t acceptable; naturally, theories abound about what happened to them.

All of this is recorded in the novel’s bible. Brief entries are made about the order in which these races encountered one another and their relationships with one another. Two of these races (besides Humans) dominate but the others are written into the script in various manners. All of this is organized and recorded. My bible itself is an organic record, growing and changing shape. It began, as they always do, with a few bullet lists. I always go with what I need for the moment to move forward. As more information and understanding was demanded, I developed a more complex structure to impose order so I can easily find information (what colors was his/her eyes/skin/hair again?) without exploding with frustration.

It’s an odd confession to make as a pantser. Pantser is the term often applied to writers who don’t plan and outline their novels in advance. I prefer the expression ‘organic’ writing, in that you plant the seeds and let it grow. Others call it writing in the dark. That works, too, as your mind’s lights find and illuminate the way.

In a way, I think of this novel writing approach in the same way that journalism works. A story happens: scandal, an explosion, an attack, an arrest. We have the big picture. Details are needed. Motivation and other questions about what, how and why happen arise to be answered. Reporters rush to the scene. Interviews are conducted. Research is accomplished. Investigation are launched, and layers are peeled back.

That’s how I like it. I tried to be a planner. Frankly, I lacked the discipline. My ideas and characters excited me. Scenes and dialogue bloomed, and I was urged to rush right in. And I did.

Whatever works, is my motto. There is the perfect way, the classic way, the artistic way. Mine is an imperfect way, and I’m continually addressing it. Each of must survey and inventory ourselves as writers to learn our strengths and weaknesses and develop our preferences for how we write. And after we write, we learn to edit, revise, polish. Writing is a tangled endeavor.

Now, a quad shot mocha is at hand. Time to write like crazy, one more time. Tauren just encountered the Travail Avresti for the first time. This is an historic moment, the first time that Humans from Earth are facing another intelligent civilization.

I want to know what happens.

2

How It Works

Car appointment today, 12:30, in Medford, down the asphalt river seventeen miles. Wife asks, “Are you going to go do your writing first?” Because this is the standard, this is the norm, this is the way it works. Whatever else, go write. Michael must write. Not writing makes Michael a cranky man.

“Yes,” I answer, “but I need to have some coffee first.” Because this is the standard, the norm, this is the way it works. I must have a cup of coffee to go have my coffee and write.

What were once indulgences are now habits. But come on, that first cup, black and hot, French roast, untainted by milk, cream, sugar or anything else, is awesome. Yeah, it would seem like there’s a chasm between drinking strong, unadulterated black coffee and then indulging in a mocha with four shots of espresso. But I believe – and belief is important – that the coffee pleases my muse, and that helps my writing. Gotta keep the muse happy.

That’s the way it works.

0

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