Category: writing

Fourteen Reasons Why Writing Sucks and You Shouldn’t Do It

A high percentage of people think there’s a book in them. Many think there’s a novel, or a memoir or autobiography. They think they can and should write a book, but they never do.

Then there are idiots like me. We write books. We gleefully leap forward with pens and paper, typewriters, laptops and keyboards, issuing a battle cry, “A novel in a month! Ten thousand words a day! I can do it. I shall do it. Give me a cup of coffee and stand back.”

There are reasons you shouldn’t.

  1. Writing is solitary. Writing is solitary. WRITING IS SOLITARY.
  2. Writing requires a soldier’s discipline and courage, but there’s no one coaxing you to go on. Few will do much to encourage you. Sometimes they’ll ask, “Oh, are you still writing that book? What’s it about again?”
  3. There’s not much reward in writing. Yes, sometimes a word, sentence, paragraph or chapter will launch you beyond the stratosphere with its sheer brilliance. You’re so far off the ground when you’re walking that you’re looking down on others’ balding crowns. You don’t need crosswalks because you’re above it all.
  4. But the next day, that brilliant diamond has become a turgid stool. Taking your head in your hands, you rub your chin, jaw, cheeks, temples, forehead, trying to erase it from your mind and thinking, “That sucks.” Nobody argues with you because YOU ARE ALONE.
  5. Money in writing? Yes, I received my royalty payments this week. Should I buy a cup of coffee or a candy bar?
  6. Writing is hard on your body. You need to stick your ass into a seat and hold it pressed there for hours as your buttocks slowly numb. Don’t think about what it’s doing to your circulation and muscle tone. Your hands cramp from clutching a pen and scribbling, or from moving a mouse and clicking as you copy and paste or highlight and delete. Or carpal tunnel syndrome inflames your hands, but you push on, writing, typing, whatever.
  7. The pursuit of writing can destroy your psyche and social life. Every spoken word heard, sights seen, glances exchanged, sulks, stumbles, confessions, cries and hugs trigger a sentence, scene, insight. The writer within you sucks you out of the moment and into their space. Others’ joys, triumphs, tragedies, deformities, abnormalities, accomplishment, history, hopes and betrayals burrow into your writing mind and festers with a new story arc, plot twist or character.
  8. Perhaps the worst aspect of writing is how addictive it is. Exploring lives, stories, tales, situations, and scenes infuse powerful highs. It’s mesmerizing to wonder who, what, how, why, when, and piece letters into words into sentences into paragraphs into moments into stories into novels.
  9. Writing requires unending segments of deep thought to consider all the things going into your work in progress. That thinking never ends, distracting you from life enveloping you. You awaken in surprise to discover the yard needs work, you need a haircut, it’s September, three fourths of the year gone, a new season upon us, the tsunami of the holiday season and year’s end climbing over you.
  10. It’s hard to quit.

These only apply to me, of course. Other writers don’t have these problems. Their thoughts are light as they type, and when they’re finished for the day, they stand and stretch, and go out hiking, dancing, singing, gardening, whatever. They have a solid, engaging life beyond the typing page.

I listed fourteen as the title because it sounded good, but I only have ten, the ten that count for me, the ten that really don’t matter at all. If you’re a writer, you can probably come up with four more. I would, but I need to go write.

6

What’s Expected

So you’re back. What do you expect me to do? Smile, and pretend you weren’t away? It hurts my face to turn my lips into a smile.

You never told me you were leaving. Never told me good-bye. I had no idea of where you were. No idea when you’d return.

Again.

Your absence left me hurting. I sat at tables alone, sipping coffee, beer, or wine, whatever beverage answered the moment’s call. I hoped with each of them, you’d be back, and I waited, hopeful as a child waiting for a gift, but you didn’t come. You didn’t show. You know it tore me apart.

Again.

So you’re back. What do you expect now? How am I to trust you after what you’ve done?

You’ve made me afraid, and I don’t like it when someone does that to me. That reminds me of the person I swore I wouldn’t be, the person I fight not to be, after others did that to me. You made me afraid, lonely, desperate and bitter. You made me worry that you’d never come back, and then what would I do? What would happen to my plans and dreams? Was I expected to just let them go? What would I be, when you’re so integral to me? I worried so much, I was sick. Food was uncomfortable in my stomach, and hostile to me tongue. I hated you because you’d betrayed me. You’d left.

Again.

So you’re back. And here we are. And what am I to do? I know what you are to me, and that I’m nothing to you. You made that clear.

Again.

So what am I to do but welcome you back, my muse? I’m relieved you’ve come back – oh, God, relieved? I’m fucking joyous. Ecstatic. And for now, I’ll hide from the plague of what-if scenarios you forced me to confront when you were gone. They’re no longer true, and no longer matter. Although, for a time, I thought —

But you’re here now, aren’t you?

Again.

Yes, I hate you, and, yes, I love you.

Again.

I don’t know how long you’ll be here. You never say. But here you are, so we know what I’m expected to do, damn you. I don’t have a choice. You’re always in control.

Yeah, so here you are, and here I am, which means, time to fucking write like fucking crazy, at least one more fucking time.

Maybe that’ll appease you enough that you’ll stay a little longer. I have hope.

Again.

6

Wonky Surface Tension

While surface tension chatter is usually about fluids or materials, thinking about personal surface tension emerged from my meditations today. I blame James Blish.

Blish was a terrific science fiction and fantasy writer. I admired his imagination. Flying cities, anti-aging drugs, he offered up so many neat and original ideas, but always managed to do so with solidly convincing style. He was one of those I put up on a pedestal with the hard science fiction Big Three of Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein.

I’m in one of those places where my writing ideas are generating natural highs. I’v been working on cosmological entanglements (which are a similar idea to quantum entanglements) and tachyon time travel telepathy, and their impacts on the story arcs – who goes where, how and why – constructing the final puzzle from the pieces, and making up the pieces on the fly. (For these ideas, please blame Timothy Ferris and his books, especially ‘The Whole Shebang’.) This, for me, naturally demands deep thinking, thinking that stills me with focus and concentration. Then, epiphanies burst free from of the morass of cogitation. Aha, and eureka!

Now I understand my pretend science and construct it with the flimsiest of physics. And now comes the story-telling. How do I weave all this into the novel without sounding like a science book? This is especially a challenge as several disparate threads are weaving around this central idea, creating a loose fabric that’s gradually becoming tauter.

To veer into other metaphors, scenes then explode in my head. I glimpse some shrapnel of what they’re about, but I become excited. The scenes spread faster and faster. Watching and focusing, I try hard to capture the gist of each, get it down, get it down, so I may build around these kernels (splintering into yet more metaphors), create the scenes and string them together.

Like surface tensions in fluids, I need the correct coherent forces to hold it all together. Frankly, this stage of writing always intimidates and frightens me. And I heed what those old masters like Blish did, creating a story that at least has sufficient scientific integrity that people will give me a grudging pass. Meanwhile, I admire certain writers outside of the science fiction realm and prefer their writing styles, people like Erdrich, Chabon, Frantzen, and Ferranti, and yes, Irving, Updike, and Roth, and even folks like Tana French and Kate Atkinson. My style continues to emerge into something like their styles, and that is very deliberate.

It all makes my surface tension wonky, caused by the differences in what I am, where I am, where I want to be, and who I dream of being. Perhaps contributing to the wonky surface tension, if I pause and squint into the far future’s dim tunnels, I can see this gem of a novel glittering and spinning, there for my taking. I fear my reach will fall short.

But rare exhilaration can be enjoyed even when reaching and failing. No need to remind myself of that (even though I did, didn’t I?), because that’s not the impelling force pushing my writing efforts. Writing, and attempting to visualize and capture these stories and their ideas, is just fun. The process also provides an escape. Writing is like an opiate that helps me cope with my life.

So here I am, once again, writing instrument at hand (a computer), along with a quad shot mocha, time, and solitude. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

4

The Pirates

I’m at a point in the novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) where the pirates are about to enter.

Yes, this is science fiction. Yes, these are space pirates (cue dramatic music). Or cue a Monty Python moment.

I always like ‘fly in the ointment’ tales. That’s the pirates’ role in Long Summer. They’re naturally a plot trigger to cause the stories to bank sharply into another direction, bringing the three disparate story lines into contact with one another at last, thirty-five thousand words into the novel. Creating  the pirates enabled me to embark on my favorite fiction writing activity: making things up. In this case, I was given permission to make up the pirate ship and crew. Who are they, why are the pirates, where did they come from and how did they come to have this ship?

The ship is the CSC Narwhal. CSC is Castle Corp Security, a spin-off from the original Castle Corporation that dominates the Returnee series as one a major part of the setting. (The corporation is constantly restructuring, re-organizing, acquiring and divesting.) As Castle Corporation was originally an Anglo-American effort when they first formed on Earth (with roots in 3D printing, with specific focus on home security devices…from there to space), the company sometimes invokes its heritage when naming ships. This was strongly evidenced in the naming of the security ships (the preferred nomenclature over warship). I’d remembered Narwhal from my history lessons, so I looked up Narwhal and confirmed its role in England’s maritime history, confirming it was part of the Arctic Fleet. Two Brit submarines were then named the same, along with a US sub. So, sweet, that worked out.

(I had to refer back to my Returnee notes a little as I worked out that naming, confirming corporations and financial consortiums led the way into space. Governments had little to do with it.)

I then needed to further define my new vessel’s manning, which is complementary to its role. As a security vessel, Narwhal is small, with three squadrons of droid fighters. Why droid fighters? I started with manned weaponry and realized that robots dominate my future. It would be weird to have manned fighters. But humans maintain control….

Essentially, I evolved the Droid Commander. Droid Commanders remotely oversee the flying of four droid fighters simultaneously from pods on the Narwhal. Yes, we have the sophisticated technology to do that in my future. Likewise, Droid Techs remotely manage maintenance/software/hardware, keeping the fighters armed and flying, repairing them via nano-bots, droids and automation.

Each Narwhal squadron has three Droid Commanders, each flying four droid fighters. So each squadron is twelve fighters. Three squadrons, thirty-six fighters, nine each Droid Commanders and techs. A squadron commander coordinates their activities with the ship and mission briefs.

Narwhal is structured to run silent, fast, launching quick strikes and then bailing. Their defensive systems are lightweight and automated. They’re not going to bombard a planet or take on a battleship. They’re more likely to run escort and interdiction missions.

Once I had those things in place, what did I need for manning for the actual ship, the Narwhal? Well, again, it’s automated, and lightly manned. I ended up with three defensive coordinators. Commander, DO, pilots to fly it (in the event of worst case situations), navigator (overseeing the droids and systems), intel officer, techs to treat it.

Shuttles? Escape pods? Logistics? Medical? All done by droids, except I decided the three shuttles would have human pilots. Ten techs oversee droids that do the repairs.

So there it was, forty-seven humans crewing the Narwhal and its squadrons.

Since it’s going head to head with River Styx, the stasis pod ship, I went through the  same exercise for the Styx (which has only light defensive systems). Then I mentally plotted the sequence of events as I walked over here to write today. The twists arose on their own, pleasing and exciting me, further evolving my sketchy plot.

(Quite deliberately, because the pirates are out to disrupt corporate domination of space and human activities, Castle Corporation also owns the River Styx. The pirates love the irony of a ship they appropriated from the Castle Corporation, stretching the truth, as the Castle Corp had spun off the division that owns and operates Narwhal,  attacking another Castle Corp vessel.)

This summarizes my basic writing approach. I begin with a concept or a character. In this case, three ideas came together. That gives me a bare structure. As an analogy, if my novel is a car trip, I’m getting in and pointing the vehicle in the general direction of a horizon I see, with the vaguest idea of what’s over that horizon, and what’s between here and there. That works for each chapter, story line and character arc.

Reflecting on all of this today, I recognize how much my writing approach parallels my other methodologies. As a senior NCO in the USAF, I was always imposing and maintaining order and discipline, but also loved instilling vision in my people about how to improve ourselves and our operations. To do that, I’d simply seize a direction and go for it, correcting as I went. Likewise, in my last position as a data scientist with IBM, when given a challenge, I mentally played with it until something formed, and then I launched myself into it. And in my youth, when I was taking art classes, painting and drawing, sudden inspirations would seize and carry me.

The confrontation between River Styx and Narwhal awaits. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

Pounding the Rock

I’m pounding the rock, you know?

Maintainin’.

Chillin’.

Keeping it real. Staying cool.

Tuning out distractions.

Focusing.

Staying the course.

That’s what’s needed sometimes. Sometimes it’s not a piece of cake, a day at the office, easy come, easy go. Sometimes the words are cold iron on the anvil. It’s like rowing up stream. Pushing a boulder up a mountain. One step forward, two steps back.

But I’m going the distance. The whole nine yards.

The whole shebang.

Playing for keeps.

I got my eye set on the prize. I’m ready to seize the brass ring.

I’m not just making promises. I’m here for the long haul.

All this comes, not from reading sports and political news, but from getting beached in a chapter. My head screams, “You’ve lost the plot,” but my tail shouts, “Stay the course.” I’m at a point where I need to go or get off the pot, know what I’m saying? I need to make the opportunities count.

So, after drifting through a QSM and an one point five hours of writing time, and editing, revising and polishing the chapter in progress to the point where I’m trapped, a decision is finally accepted.

It ain’t happening today.

Accepted, with a deep breath. The breath is not of relief nor regret, but simple acceptance that I want to move forward and I need some way around this obstacle.

So —

I write a note at the break: <TK: Bridge required.> That’s highlighted in yellow so I don’t overlook it. I use the <TK> format for convenience for anything that needs addressing. I write like crazy. In essence, that means that while I’m mildly mindful, I’m more interested in capturing lightning in a bottle and writing down the bones. I basically don’t want to be slowed down at that point, so I’ll set it up to be done later. Sometimes it’s research, or the scene needs to be cleaned up for clarification, pacing or continuity. Once in a while, I can’t remember a minor character’s name or someone’s hair color, or other small detail that I think I want to include. I put a note beginning with <TK and explain why it’s there. I also date these entries. Then, when the first draft is finished, I search for <TK, find them and fix them. I’ve usually fixed them before the first draft is completed because I hunt back and forth through the manuscript as I work, tearing out cliches and passive writing, looking for sharper and crisper descriptions, expanding on and subtracting from passages to better fit the narrative that has emerged and to accommodate the characters’ arcs. That’s necessary because my vision of the narrative changes as the story clarifies and evolves. As Bob Muslim noted in his post, “Edit Mode, Anyone?”, “As I write and the story comes alive, things change.” Right on.

This point today is a weird misery for me. A failure. It’s not the first time it’s happened but it’s not common. I don’t care if it happens to everyone, either. It’s personal.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to dial up a scene’s framework, sit down and beginning hammering it out, then shaping and re-shaping it later. It’s not always been that way, but this is what comes from establishing a discipline of writing, writing, writing, writing. Naturally, that’s what I attempted to do today — and yesterday, actually.

Some of this obstacle today is from impatience. I know how other scenes and action spreads out. They excite me, and I’m eager to get to it because that’s the fun part of fiction writing. This writing slowdown is also caused by real life bleedover. Personal matters, issues and problems arose that absorbed time, energy and thought, leaving the writer a little depleted in those areas. Hence the mock pep talk of cliches that began this post.

The thing about these moments is to not let them consume me. Andrea Lundgren had a post, “Do You Write Chronologically?” over on Ryan Lanz’s site, “A Writer’s Path” (which I highly recommend). Overall, I’m comfortable with jumping out of chronological sequence (especially in this novel, which has a, ahem, interesting chronological pattern). I think of it like other projects, like painting a room. The order that I write is only important as part of completing the entire project to my satisfaction.

Yet, yet, it’s not easy to decide, sometimes, to jump out of order. And this is because this scene is not quite coming to me, not in its entirety. And that vexes me.

So, let it go, for now. Let it go. Come back to it later. Maybe later, by the time the entire novel is completed, this scene will be overcome by events and therefore unnecessary. Maybe, even now, I know that, but I’m too intimate with it to say good-bye.

Whatever. When you’re given lemons, you make lemonade.

Or so I’ve been told.

 

 

 

0

Sat Down to Write

I sat down to write today after a pleasing session yesterday. The baristas had gifted me an extra espresso sized serving mocha in addition to my standard QSM. I sipped it down, delighting in the melange of mingling flavors, and I remembered —

A new character’s name is Ckyl. Came to me last night.

A scene I wrote in my head about the starship, River Styx, and its occupants and description.

And more details about tachyon syndrome.

Changes to Chor. I’d focused on sex and sexual preferences and choosing or accepting sexual identities, but I’d not considered some of the other matters available to my future people. So I’d overlooked that Chor is a cat person.

And Pram wonders why becoming a cat person is a popular choice. People don’t want to be dog or bird people, although he’d encountered some of them. He knew of a few who went the centaur route (with one also managing to incorporate a unicorn appearance). A small society of humans had transgened themselves into dinosaurs, and another group into dragons, and there are small knots of gnome, fairy, demon, and leprechaun peoples, but cat people were far the most popular and most frequently encountered. He was pleased, though, because he remained unique. There were a few Titans out there, and a cyclops, and a couple of Hercules pretenders, Minotaurs, Hulks, and Avatars, and super-heroes from ancient comic books, but he was the only Colossus, even after all these years.

Pram had not asked Chor about why she was a furry human Siamese with diamond blue eyes and a lazy, busy tail. Asking people about their choices is impolite.

Okay, now that I remember those things, my imagination is fired up. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

5

The Hip Bone Is Connected to the Tachyon

I’m having fun with science fictional physics, conceiving way out ideas for ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. Part of this is playing with the chip. What’s a chip, you say? This is actually a chi particle. 

The chi particle is the essence of life energy, the spark that brings inanimate matter to life. In my grand theories, there is a formula of balance that I’m still working out involving the need for the universe to maintain an equilibrium between the chi energy and all of the rest. Most importantly for the entire balance of understanding, the chi particle begins in the realms of dark matter.

Additional characteristics for my grand particle begins with the hypothetical and unproven particle, the tachyon. Like the tachyon, the chip travels faster than light, traveling even faster than the tachyon. Its imaginary mass attracts tachyons. Tachyons become knotted with the chips. As knotting happens, the tachyon draws energy from the chip, slowing both the tachyon and chip. But the chip’s mass is not a direct proportion of the tachyon’s mass, but compounds the tachyon’s mass, adding to the knotted chip’s mass. As the chip-tachyon knot slows toward the speed of light, the tachyon gains more energy, slows more and degrades, giving up its mass to the chip. The chip, acquiring actual mass, begins a transition from dark matter to matter and acquires gravitons. The chi knot seeks the proper stew of atoms and conditions to develop and begins evolving as a life form.

This all is pretty preliminary. It has no math underpinnings, and no doubt many people will tell me either, you’re drinking too much coffee, or you’re fucking nuts. They’ll also grimace, appalled by my display of ignorance, but it’s fun for me, and provides further structure for developing my plot and writing the novel. I mean, this is why we call it science fiction.

Sometime, when I’ve advanced my thinking about it more, I’ll post a snapshot of tachyon telepathy. Remember, as Brett learns (eventually), what happens in stasis, doesn’t always stay in stasis.

I’m twenty-six thousand words into ‘Long Summer’. The summer’s computer issues threw me out of my writing – conceiving – imaging rhythm, and it humbled me. I gleaned how much I take for granted the ability and opportunity to sit down and write.

Got my mocha. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

9

Knots, Life Particles & Tachyons and FT…what?

So in thinking about ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to the science fiction novel, ‘Returnee’, much reading about theories of relativity and unified theories, tachyons, chronons and parity symmetry is being indulged. Fascinating that tachyons would lose speed as they gain energy…hmmm, which was a worthwhile direction for thought.And they travel faster than light, with their slowest speed being the speed of light. Hmmm…yes….

Meanwhile, watching the final final final ‘Inspector Lewis’ (and I enjoyed the ending, with its gentle knotting of different directions and issues), knots became key to me. I’d been thinking about matters in terms of valance and atomic structure, but there’s no reason for that, is there? Not when knots also exist out there as part of the interaction of existence….

It’s all coming together, stirring up that exciting stew of writing creativity. Of course, on the negative side – because, in this physical universe, we mostly live in a parity symmetrical existence, especially when dealing with social relationships (and marriage) – the positives and negatives directly affect one another and a balance is sought – I’m listing too far into the writing side, growing quieter and quieter, more distant to others as the stories unfold in the universe of my mind(s?). Greater attention and energy is needed to untangle the knots so I understand them, and then tangle them back up to make an interesting story.

Over on the sequel side of the Lessons with Savanna mystery series, things are getting darker. That’s giving me pause; do I embrace that darkness and run with it? My instincts urge me to go for it, and I usually give into them. That will make ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’ a much darker novel than ‘Life Lessons with Savanna’ and ‘Road Lessons with Savanna’. Yet, that’s where the roads are taking me, so here I go. As I conceptualize it, the fourth novel in that series acquires greater structure, too.

Other tasks remain on the todo list. ‘Everything in Black & White’ is awaiting its publishing process. Love to get it out before the year’s end, and a dozen other books require editing/revising while more clamor in my head to be written. I’ve not really touched ‘Fix Everything’ since I finished writing it, what, one, two years ago? Poor ‘Peerless’ and ‘Spider City’ have been out there longer, awaiting editing and revising. There’s the whole advertising thing for all that’s already published, too, but bleah, and people asking, what’s going on with Lessons? When is the next book coming out?

Socially, in the real world, my walking is curtailed by smoke drifting in from the Gap fire down by Happy Camp, in California. The smoke is keeping the air temperature cooler, and gifting us with glowing red sunsets. I wish all the people and animals safe passage.

Visitors are coming, and the end of summer picnic is coming up with bullet train speed. Cats are sick, with some sort of flu like problem passing among them, Meep being the latest victim. Each have endured it by not eating and sleeping long hours, but it’s so worrisome when they go off eating. This smoke is affecting Tucker, too, and he’s very snotty yesterday and today.

I must also clean this laptop screen. Apparently I sneezed while eating or something, from the evidence.

Minor problems, fortunately, knock on wood, which I do. Life is so very knotty.

 

2

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