Category: writing

Thrive in the Mud

Hello.

I am the middle person.

The average dude.

Ah, to clarify, the white, late fifties middle income liberal average guy. Black guys, young guys, white guys, females, Libertarians, Conservatives, Jews, et cetera, are all also average guys, the middle person, a consumer, partner/spouse/atheist.

Whoever I am, I’m stuck in the middle of the mud. Facts are being sucked into a heavy, gluey, clinging muddiness that traps light and squeezes out air. For example, search for results about the recent Board of Trustees annual report about the state of Medicare and Social Security in the United States. Refine your search to determine how solvent the system is, and even what is meant by the system. It’s surprising how the report’s points are spun.

Muddiness exists around any subject where facts can be distorted, dis-proven or disregarded. Politics are catalysts to create hyper states of distortion and disregard. It’s a sweet place for writing because this is where creativity ferments. Too often, I try to logically explain a fictional situation, or characters’ positions and actions, trying to establish that they do this because of this, ergo, they will do this next. That’s essentially how I think. I keep trying to break out of that for myself; I over-analyze information. Vacuums are the worse, generating a need to create information that makes sense in the vacuum, and then over-analyzing that information that I created.

But I want characters who are different from me, and different from most, characters (and situations) with a WTF aura that entices readers to press on turning pages. Sometimes that means abandoning ‘my’ logic while establishing ‘their’ logic. To me, their logic is frequently mired in emotions, how they feel about matters, rather than what they think about it.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t have emotions about things, but that I temper, stifle and throttle those emotions (most times) so that I can react intelligently and rationally (all the while reminding myself not to over-intellectualize and compartmentalize). But yes, I have angry, frustrated and bitter WTF!? reactions to too, too many issues and items. Some of them, like other drivers, are enormously petty. I call this ‘drivism’, the tendency to look down upon other drivers because they don’t drive like me, which automatically means they’re not as good as drivers.

This is exactly where such logic lies. Brexit, Trumpism, even racism, sexism and about a dozen categories of other -isms are reminders that sometimes, to create a character’s narrative, I need to step out of my zone. First, think about what I would do. Next, think about what the normal person and the average person would do. These may all be the same, or not. Then decide to have the character do something perhaps by doing the opposite, and then explore those results. It can be head-spinning but it may also be liberating. After a time, I become sufficiently immersed in the character and situation that less and less of these exercises are required.

Okay, that was the fruit of my meditating and walking today. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

Let’s take it from the top.

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Homage to the Stellar Queen

Two miles and 43 minutes, the coffee shop walk allows a surfeit of thinking. Today, with summer starting in the northern hemisphere, I thought of the Stellar Queen.

She’s old. I haven’t thought of her in a while. She’s so ancient in my relative life, that her original Word Perfect, PowerPoint and Paint files reside on five and a quarter floppy disks. They were transferred to three and a half inch disks, and then to a hard drive when I bought a tower Dell, in 1999.

The Stellar Queen was my first foray into science fiction. Orson Scott Card told how he liked drawing maps to stimulate his creativity. I designed cars as a child and planned to be an architect (or a rock star) so I took up designing the Stellar Queen on computer.

She was originally built by a patron of the arts who traveled the galaxies. The Lady (never named, and very mysterious) lives in an estate along the edge between the Central Plain and the Northern Mountains. A bio-dome hybrid class ship, the Queen’s bio portion is sixty-seven miles long by fourteen miles wide. Thinking in threes, she had three cities, three towns and three villages, three major climate zones (with many micro climes), and three rivers that flowed down into the Starry Sea, on the ship’s ‘northwestern’ side. One small town, Half Moon Bay, came to be on the Starry Sea, was based upon Half Moon Bay, California, where I resided for a while. The Queen featured a sun that rose in the ship’s east and set in the west, over the sea. It wasn’t a big sea, just large enough for waves, pleasure craft and some fishing. Just big enough for romance.

Three centers, for government & ship operations, markets, and education, were established, along with three wineries, three breweries, three ranches…et cetera. I began many stories about her. Murder on the Stellar Queen, Death Boards the Stellar Queen, Treason on the Stellar Queen, and so on. None were finished nor submitted. I still have them, though, in notebooks, in boxes, in the garage.

I still smile, thinking about the Stellar Queen, and I easily board her. Half Moon Bay on the Queen is a pleasant place to be, to sip wine or beer and contemplate the ocean and sunshine, marvel about traveling the galaxies, and think about the first day of summer in another year.

Time to go write like crazy.

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Sour Grapes, Writing Ed.

Yeah, it’s like, bleah. Like work. Ugh.

Published Road Lessons with Savanna this week. It acquired the attention an elephant bestows on an ant. Anxiety and conflicts arise. Depression. Acceptance, the need to be patient, the requirement to market the book. It takes time, I tell myself, and scream back, “Time? Time?” Because time, you know, stirs fear, impatience, anxieties, as I await time’s passage. Time can be a right cruel bully.

That’s my background moodiness as I return to copy-editing Everything Not Known today. A quarter million words, seven hundred plus pages. I have completed editing on seven chapters. 21,000 words.

Oh, boy. This is going to take forever.

Forever? Could you be exaggerating?

Trying to encourage myself, I say, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

“Shut up, you moron,” I answer. “Keep your platitudes to yourself.”

I enjoy the novel, which is good, happy news, even, as it was written with me in mind as the audience. That’s the only audience I understand, so I kowtow to me and my taste. I’ve tried writing and editing to others’ preferences but their guidance, feedback, and input, is confusing and conflicting. So, responding with great insight and maturity, I replied, “Whatever,” and write for myself.

The snarky corner of me notes with withering contempt, “Who do you expect to read your book if you write if for yourself, you marketing moron?”

Ready for that query, I tell myself, “Good to hell.” So there.

Enjoying the novel does help copy-editing it, but this isn’t my favorite pastime, so I chaff, complain and offer childish whines about what I’m doing and most do. Intellectually, I know, yeah, this must be done, and this, too, shall pass, and other pithy, worn encouraging sentiments. Intellectually, I can see into myself and see all the nuances of living and existing irritating me and the ridiculousness of my complaints.Intellectually, I know enough of myself to know it’s part of my cycles of spirit, attitudes and emotions to drift into the dark side. I know I’ll emerge from it in a few days.

Intellectually, I know it’s all human nature.

Intellectually, I still tell myself to go to hell. Then I drink the coffee, take a deep breath, and play a game.

Then I go to work.

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The Iceberg

Friends this week asked about my writing, or, actually, about my book, or books. Writing and the many projects are so much like icebergs, revealing a little topside but mostly submerged from sight and awareness. Limited progress and activities are exposed on this blog and FB posts but there is generally so much more.

I have two books out. Another is in the publishing machine. That’s the iceberg’s tip. Another book is completed and in editing and formatting. We’ll designate that the water line. I sort of track those more in depth on Booklife but even that is just the water line and above. Below that, another ten books are written. Some have been edited and revised. All need copy editing and formatting. A spreadsheet has their progress.

But at greater depths are the many novels in progress on computer, in notebooks, folders, and realms of paper. Many, many more exist as notes on concepts, ideas and characters. Some of the notes are written. I’d say thirty percent are written notes. The other notes are sticky pages in my mind. There are short stories, plays and screenplays, musicals, novels and series. There are always many things to write.

I used to spread myself out and work on several pieces in parallel. Now I focus on one and write like crazy. Then I revise, edit and polish one. And then I publish one.

Not as much fun in many ways as plunging into creativity’s cauldron and letting all these ideas flame into being. But the trudging, one at a time process, results in more tangible progress.

Whichever way, it’s always about writing for me, and writing like crazy. Time for that, once more.

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The Interlude

One movement has ended. Another is to begin.

I pause here to consider the movement that’s finished, reviewing the highlights. There are many. Look for flaws and shortcomings. Relieved to find nothing niggles. Worry that I’m blind to the faults. Sigh and dismiss it. Hope I’m wrong.

I sit in the space between the movements, looking back, looking forward. Back draws me with pleasure. It’s a job done, a project accomplished, an achievement – a novel written, revised, edited, polished – and I felt fulfilled while working on it. No matter whether others read and enjoy it, I have read and enjoyed it. More, I’m always amazed by the process of turning over points, asking what if and why, and planning a move.

But writing a novel, like many things, twists in unexpected ways. Characters take over and lead down surprising paths. Reaching the end, asking now what, I ask what if and why, plan the next move, and something happens and the writing train speeds on.

I’m bemused sometimes when people tell me they’ve attempted to write a novel and reached a point where they weren’t sure what to do next. Don’t know what the characters will do. So they’ve stopped.

Well, of course. That happens all the time to me, probably once a week. That kind of road block must be navigated. I do so in multiple ways. Read, edit and revise what’s already written. Think about the ending and what’s been unresolved, what’s blossoming. Walk and consider my life and how the character(s) would behave if my life was their life. Put myself into their life (in the novel) and consider what I would do, if I were them, and why that’s not what they would do. I read other books. Something recommended to me by others. Or mind candy, a page turner without much depth. Or an award winner. Or a new finding by a favorite author. Or blogs and articles. I walk, eat, think, sleep. Whatever. What I don’t do is worry about being paused. That’s all the roadblock is, a pause. If I think of it like taking a road trip, this is heavy traffic, or construction, just something that must take place and be passed before the trip resumes.

Ahead, after this interlude, I see the challenge of re-engaging the next book, because this is the editing phase for it (although it’s been edited, revised and polished before), and the insecurities and worries that always accompany re-visiting my writing, that the visit will reveal all the flaws and shortcomings, that the characters will be flat, the settings empty, the story silly and the novel will be a mess. That’s not how I remember it, but I was reading the other day that memories aren’t actually that efficient, that small details are recalled and we build the rest into something that works for us.

Funny to read and reflect on that item about memory. The book to be edited is all about memory (and, naturally, perceptions, and competing, conflicting perceptions, and how reality  is constructed and maintained). Most of my books are about these things. Memories inform characters and readers, shaping experiences and expectations. My characters are like me, flawed and searching, struggling to grasp what happened and what’s going on, trying to forge a way forward. Their odds against them are always much larger than my odds, and their risks are greater – life, death, reality….

So I’ll go as usual to my writing place, the physical one first, the coffee shop. Find a table and get my drink. Then I’ll go to my writing place, the mental one, and move into the editing department. Then I’ll open the manuscript on my computer.

Then I’ll play games. Surf the net. Post to FB. Read the news. Think about other things. Twenty, thirty minutes will pass. Then I’ll say, okay. Enough. Let’s go. Get to work. Do what needs to be done.

And then I’ll begin.

But right now, I’m just going to sit in the moment.

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So, Fini

I finished editing Road Lessons with Savanna, a mystery, the second in the series. Nothing jumped out to trigger anxiety and panic. I enjoyed the read, finding some typos, some grammatical errors, some minor pacing issues.

Done, and I’m pleased. I enjoyed the final page, laughing to myself here in the coffee shop, thinking of others reading it and wondering, “What?” Makes me laugh just to type that sentence.

Once upon a time, I finished writing a novel and was ecstatic that I’d completed it. But now, it’s just another novel done, the end of an enjoyable project. Of course, as I read it, the next novel in the series continued its organic growth in me. But I want to publish this one and go on to Everything Not Known, the science fiction epic. It’s been written but requires editing. Then I’ll pick up the third novel so that initial trilogy will be complete. Other novels in the Lessons with Savanna series are circling my cerebral cortex, but there are other projects that are already engaged and in progress, and I want to go on with them.

And so it goes, a fun, satisfying moment in my life, good-bye and hello.

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Good Omens

A restful night’s sleep.

(With interesting dreams.)

Happy cats.

(Fed, contented, and not fighting.)

The window sills painted.

(They look great.)

(And I am pleased.)

Blue sky and sunshine.

(No clouds at all!)

Warm weather.

(68 now but due to reach 84.)

Soft breeze.

(Cool with spring’s fading influence.)

(And fresh with blooms’ sweet fragrances.)

No redlights!

(This might be a first.)

The perfect table, in the perfect location.

(Quiet solitude to edit.)

An awesome quad shot 12 oz mocha.

(Non-fat.)

(And delicious.)

All signs are trending up.

(It’ll be a good session.)

Time to write like crazy.

(One more time.)

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Expectations for the Brain

This week, I enjoyed discovering and re-discovering reading regarding the brain and how it works, how we can change its workings, memory, and meditation’s effects on the brain. This all seems to be about practice, expectation, and changing expectations.

DelanceyPlace.com is a website that publishes excerpts from fascinating non-fiction. Back in 2015, they published an excerpt from a 2014 book. By Matthieu Ricard, Antoine Lutz and Richard J. Davidson, the book, Mind of the Meditator, is about how mastering a task transforms the brain’s pathways.

“The discovery of meditation‘s benefits coincides with recent neuroscientific findings showing that the adult brain can still be deeply transformed through experience. These studies show that when we learn how to juggle or play a musical instrument, the brain undergoes changes through a process called neuroplasticity. A brain region that controls the movement of a violinist’s fingers becomes progressively larger with mastery of the instrument. A similar process appears to happen when we meditate. Nothing changes in the surrounding environment, but the meditator regulates mental states to achieve a form of inner enrichment, an experience that affects brain functioning and its physical structure. The evidence amassed from this research has begun to show that meditation can rewire brain circuits to produce salutary effects not just on the mind and the brain but on the entire body. …”

Addressing how ‘the adult brain be still be be transformed through experience’, HuffPost had a related story this week, To Increase Your Well-being, Train Your Brain. Mimi O’Connor wrote, “Dr. Richard Davidson, neuroscientist and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, believes that practice is the key element in changing our brains for the better. He is well known for his pioneering study with Buddhist monks. In that study he hooked the monks up to fMRI machines and observed their brains as they meditated. The monks produced gamma waves, indicating intensely focused thought, which were 30 times as strong as the control groups.’ Additionally, large areas of the meditator’s brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions. This study showed that conscious effort can change the neural structure, activity and function of the brain.” Dr. Richard Davidson was one of the other book’s authors, of course.

“Similar to the inspiring theme of the film Field of Dreams, “Build it and they will come,” Davidson’s motto seems to be, “Exercise them (neural pathways) and they will strengthen.”

Offering another point of view that affirms the same was Sophie McBain in Head in the Cloud. Her article addressed human memory and studies regarding the impact of computers and digital systems on our ability to remember. What becomes clear from her intriguing article is that, part of what affects our ability to remember, is our expectation of a need to remember. Here, in essence, we’re seeing the opposite impact of the other articles, where people who have computers to help them remember, don’t practice remembering, thereby weakening their ability to remember.

They’re all ripple effects, aren’t they, a sort of Doom Loop on the one hand, of expecting less and trying less, and so spiraling into achieving less, or conversely, a Halo Loop, of expecting more and trying harder.

Of course, I need to tie this back to writing. Practice writing, pursue it, try to master it, and the pathways and areas of the brain used for writing can be strengthened and transformed. Instead of believing you can’t, believe you can, and try. Being human, it’s rarely that simple, and people like Judith Sherven, PhD, can inject insights and ideas for re-working the subconscious programming behind the Doom Loop.

I’d also like to tie all of this back to time, reality and the nature of existence, but that’s for another post. Instead, I need to go off and write like crazy, at least one more time.

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The Writing Like Crazy Process

The writing like crazy is structured and unstructured, crazy and sane. Really, it just is. Such tautalogy is extremely helpful, isn’t it?

But it is what it is (there’s that help again). Originally structured to shift me from the real world’s insanity to the pleasurable world of writing and editing fiction, the process was all about release. Let me go, job, wife, cats, house, bills, stress, frustration, whatever. Take me away, writing.

The early days began as an after work period. Go somewhere in the house and write. That didn’t work too well, and I blame me. I couldn’t stop myself from falling into normal home routines and thoughts. I initiated a program to go somewhere else and write. Armed with a Z4 pen (my preference) and black and white marble composition notebooks (I was always alert for notebook sales), I usually ended up in a coffee shop, where I would have coffee. Coffee shops were tested like bath water until the ones that worked just right emerged. I was traveling for business often in those years, so I would often write in airplanes and airports.

But my hours and routine were iffy. When home, I often ended up writing only on weekends (at Printers Inc), by getting up early. That wasn’t enough, so the program was expanded to an extended lunch hour at work. Testing the process, I discovered that walking improved my writing mood, so I parked about a mile from the coffee shop and walked. In 1999-2000,  I could be spotted in San Mateo, California, walking to a Starbucks. As my company moved its office to Shoreline in Mountain View, I drove to downtown Mountain View and used that Starbucks. Meanwhile, I lived in Half Moon Bay and walked each Saturday and Sunday morning to La Di Da. After moving to Ashland, Oregon, in 2005, I began walking the town to coffee shops. The marble composition books were replaced by laptops.

In those days, I set a word count target, and I tracked it meticulously. There was no pay it forward, no credits and debits. 1,000 words needed to be reached each day, every day. Even if I did 2,000 one day, 1,000 was required the next day. I never let myself off that hook.

With each refinement, I learned more about myself and my writing process. I discovered I was an organic writer, writing with scant mapping or outlining. I found that writing like crazy was critical. Writing like crazy meant that I shoved aside thoughts of grammar, facts, punctuation, and sometimes even point of view and character, and just rode a wave of words rushing into my mind. Then I’d go back and fix it all. When I stalled, I learned to create snapshots to find direction. Snapshots were just exploratory summaries to help me find understanding of the character(s), setting(s), plot, concept, story line, whatever. They were generally not meant for reader consumption, except for my reading.

Learning and evolving fortunately continued. I learned to ask, why, why, why did this character do this or that, or this or that happened, along with the corollary matters of when, what and how.  I saw how I told and then showed the same thing, how I tended toward passive writing, how I enjoyed run on sentences and became more mindful of them – when editing – but how, becoming aware of them, fixing them were folded into my writing like crazy process. I learned what I really enjoyed reading by critiquing others, good and bad, for my own enjoyment, and then shaping my voice to be what I most enjoyed in those books, and I threw the reading doors open to all genres and authors.

I’ve always ‘written in my head’, phantom writing, where I see or hear a scene or the developing story. I found how to harvest the essence of those moments and pick them up and put them into the story. I taught myself to be unafraid to revise and edit as I wrote, discovering that fiction writing was much more like creating a painting then it was like writing an essay. And I encouraged myself to have fun.

I no longer have a daily word count. They’re not needed and I often find myself writing several thousand words. The shift to writing mind is much easier now. I can pick up the story line and where I was quickly in my mind and typically pick up where I was with just a few moments of thought.

I’ve written a number of novels, but haven’t published but two. They’re both recent after wearying myself with the agent/publisher route. Each agent had different requirements, and that tedious process drained my joy and optimism, as well as savaging my writing time. So, fuck it, I’ve gone the ebook self-publishing route. I don’t have great expectations, but I won’t be a fraud and claim it doesn’t matter; it does. But, just as with the writing process, and most of everything else I’ve done in life, I’ll keep trying, keep working on it, and I’m confident, I’ll continue progressing.

Now…time to write like crazy, one more time.

 

 

 

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I Don’t Wanna

I don’t want to edit my novel.

Not because I don’t love my novel.

My novel is like a brightly shining star.

That can be taken many ways. If it’s a star, its light must travel great distances. That takes a long time. If the novel’s words are the light, its light will not reach people for a while. So what’s another day or two?

If the novel is a star, it’s unique and alike, like snowflakes, beers, cats and people — and novels. It’s remote and unattainable, but inspiring and bright, a thing of beauty and mystery, something to be parsed, studied, watched. Something for wonder.

I don’t want to edit my novel.

And my brain is very happy with that. Come, let us write other stories, my brain says. It’s a beautiful day to start a new story, or to continue one you set aside. Remember that novel about the bookmarker? You want to write it, don’t you, I know you do.

Yes, I want to tear into that novel like it’s a fresh, warm piece of blueberry pie with a scoop of ice cream.

But I am strong, and I resist!

What about that other novel, the one about the woman and equations? You really want to write that novel, don’t you?

Yes, I want to write that novel like it’s a mug of cold ale on a molten lava day.

But I am strong, and I resist!

What about that other novel you’ve been thinking about, you know, the one about the weapon system that impairs people’s memories so people end up with other people’s incomplete memories, and try to live others’ lives? If you don’t want to do that one, you can work on the next novel in the Lessons with Savanna series, Personal Lessons with Savanna. You were writing a chapter in your head this morning while you were weed whacking. There is also the novel about when time fractured —

Enough, brain, enough. I am strong, and I resist! I will edit.

I will edit, I will edit, I will edit.

Oh, but to sample a new novel, to dip myself into those places and characters and let their chi flow through me.

I will edit, I will edit, I will edit.

I will edit.

Really, I will edit.

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