Category: writing

One, Two, Three

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The end.

 

 

 

 

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Smarter Than Me

I was back with Philea in ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. Her part in the novel and her situation are complicated and unique, and I struggled to write the most recent chapter featuring her. I tracked the problem back to several causes.

  1. Philea is a woman. I’m not.
  2. She resides several hundred years in the future.
  3. She’s been time-traveling.
  4. Her intelligence is higher than mine, and she’s educated. She’s the only Human (on the Earth side of the split) that has the grayware to dismiss needs for external augmented memory.

Contributing to my problem is that, complicated as the story’s part is for her, I’d not written about her and her parts recently. The situation straddled my strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: imagination and analyzing abilities. Weaknesses: inability to recall what I’ve written and over-thinking matters. The last paralyzes me.

The complications inherent in her story arc forced me to re-acquaint myself with those arcs for continuity. That took some time to do. Then, once caught up, I thought, now what happens with her? What does she do?

Fortunately, the character knew what to do. No doubt she resides in some sub-conscious cubicle in me. My strengths and weaknesses were constraining her. She couldn’t get out of the cubicle and onto the page. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to write, wondering, what’s going on?

She finally made it to the page yesterday afternoon. Boom, once she was there, she carried the scenes forward. Out of her cube, she kept going later in the day, pointing out changes needed to progress.

So, yea, rollin’ again. Once again, I’ve concluded I need to get out my way and let it happen. As the writer, I’m the least important part of this process. I hesitate to confess this realization, but I’m…just a tool.

Now it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

1

Chi-mind

Time for some pseudo-scientific bullshit. There’s your preamble.

All substance, no matter its state, has chi-particles.

Chi-p have imaginary mass and energy and travel faster than light. As they slow, they gain real mass and energy. Slowing chi-p begin aggregating and develop into the ‘strings’  of string theory, M-theory, etc.

Chi-particles ignite ‘life’ and inspire consciousness. Multiple types of chi-p exist. The chi-p embedded in the majority of Humans is one type of chi-p; other types of animate organic matter have different chi-p embedded. There are still other types of chi-p for ‘inanimate’ matter, energy, and dark matter.

The chi-mind is the confluence of chi-receivers, -processors and -transmitters within entities. In some inanimate matter, like granite, these are hive minds. Each chi-mind is depended on the other chi-minds for full appreciation of the fabric of awareness the chi-p convergence creates.

The question that arises to me about the chi-mind is, what is its structure of existence? Why, it’s chi-matter, of course, with imaginary mass and structure. LOL.

Animated, organic entities have a more sophisticated chi-mind structure. While the chi-mind works below the subconscious and conscious levels, the chi-minds interact to establish a shared sense of time and reality that’s often lacking in the inanimate chi-mind. Humans (along with the other intelligent, civilized life-forms, such as the Travail, Sabard and Monad) have a more developed chi-mind than other creatures. As the chi-mind and SoNS develop sympathy through increased and prolonged interaction, abilities to grasp chi-p takes root among some individuals. But, their ability to cope with their chi-mind perceptions are often taken as symptoms of insanity or developmental issues.

There are natural reasons for that interpretation of those people. They’re seeing, hearing and experiencing things that others can’t. Some of it frightens or excites the people interacting with the chi-p, which frighten those around them. Sometimes, they’re so entangled with the chi-mind perceptions that they act out. They believe they’re in another time or reality.

Brett is blessed (cursed?) with a chi-p isotope. It exhibits different properties and mutates others’ chi-p, bastardizing how their chi-mind interprets reality and time. This impacts how memory is affected. Under chi-string theory, only ‘now’ exists as a commonly agreed construct predicated on synchronized chi-mind perceptions, transmissions and receptions. Un-synchronized chi-mind activity can create conflicting impressions and understanding of reality, affecting all underpinnings, actions, perceptions and behavior related to these conflicts.

Whew. Needed that.

I find that I need to write to think sometimes outside of the novel’s construction to understand what I’m conceiving, elaborate and clarify, and shift the thoughts from being abstract concepts into more specific terms. Going to the blog versus a word document seems to engage and promote a thinking shift for me.

Yes; I see and understand that now. Writing in a more public forum requires me to focus more intelligently on what words I use to explain what I’m thinking. It inspires focus and concentration. Then I’m left with deciding, leave it as a draft or post it.

I needed to do this now for this novel because the characters and their disparate story lines are beginning to weave together. I needed to better understand my high-concept’s tangible impact on their situations and actions.

After writing something like this, I sit and drum my fingers in debate for a few minutes about what to do with it. Most often, I leave these as drafts, or copy them and add them to a Word doc called Blog Drafts because they are rough thoughts. Even though I write to understand, and that’s been accomplished, I can’t delete them or not save them. They must be saved so I can return to them, to mitigate forgetting what I conceived, thought and developed. After all, they’re thinking aids.

At the bottom of this are my fears. I worry about being exposed as an idiot. As often done, I’ll flip a coin.

Heads, I publish.

2

The Scene

I reached my car yesterday after walking a few miles. As I settled in and started the vehicle, I spied a truck dart through the light traffic from the right lane to the left and then to the curb. What the hell is going on there, I wondered. It had been abrupt and erratic.

There wasn’t any traffic. I pulled my vehicle out and kept a watch on the other vehicle. The vehicle was parked illegally. I wondered if they were having car trouble. Maybe they were taking a call. Perhaps the driver and a passenger had started arguing. Maybe…well, I write fiction. I can get pretty creative with a scene with a few seconds of speculation.

A woman got out of the passenger side. Something was in her hand. She walked back the way the car had come. I watched for understanding. She went to the bus stop. I was closer and could see better.

It all clicked. A person was asleep on a bench in the bus shelter. The woman was carrying a plastic clam-shell container of food. She put it carefully on the cement beside the sleeping person and walked away.

As I passed, I remarked to myself how wonderful and thoughtful some people can be of others. Of all the things I imagined happening, what I’d witnessed wasn’t one of them.

With that, it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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On the Other Hand

The question rattling around during my walk was, “Do you need to understand love to understand hate?”

It was strictly a writing question but properly prompted by St. Valentine’s Day posts. I’d reach my own satisfying answer but desired another’s input.

Shannon was the barista working at the coffee shop. A bubbling avowed Christian, her dress today startled me, partially because she wore a crown of roses in her hair. “Hello, flower girl,” I greeted her.

Shannon bubbled as she does. “I love Valentine’s Day. It’s my favorite holiday.”

“You like all holidays, don’t you? I know you love Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. I love love. I don’t have a boyfriend so I bought flowers and gifts for my room mates to celebrate.”

“So…do you need to understand hate in order to understand love?”

Shannon considered the question. “I grew up in a very loving, Christian family. I didn’t really encounter hate until I was a little older. Then…it helped me…appreciate love more. I don’t think you need to understand hate to understand love but encountering hate makes you appreciate love more.”

I thanked her, understanding her take. It’s like loving life more and appreciating it more after near-death experiences or personal losses, or being thankful for what you have after having nothing or almost nothing.

Not all will react the same, of course. I know some people who avow they’re thankful for what they have because they had nothing. But they’re so angry and bitter that they once had nothing, that in many ways, they strike me as still having nothing, because they can’t let go of how they once lived.

There’s always the one hand, and the other, on how these things can affect us. That’s what I go through with my characters, thinking through and feeling their reactions in response to their past and present, understanding where they’re at and why, and then telling their story.

 

Note: my conversation with Shannon is presented in abridged form here. She spoke, and I listened. I hope I correctly portrayed her point.

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During the Movie

Young Saroo ran.

“Eleven,” the writer said.

“What?” I answered.

“Saroo,” Noor called.

“Eleven dimensions,” the writer replied. “Think about what eleven dimensions mean. Add it to your research list.”

Ah, time for a back up to an explanation.

My wife and I saw ‘Lion’ at the theater yesterday. The movie began at 12:40 PM. With logistics and travel, we needed to leave for the movie at 12:10. That then, was my target time. To reach it, I needed to leave the coffee shop by 11:55 for the walk to my car and the drive home. Two hours of writing required me to be in my seat with my drink by 9:55. To do that, I needed to reach the coffee shop by 9:45 to set up and order. That meant I needed to leave the house by 9:35, if I didn’t get a pre-writing walk in, 9:25 if I limit my walk to ten minutes, etc.

The ten minute walk was a compromise but acceptable. Regardless, when it was time to pack up and head home to go to the movies, I was still writing. Just when of those days when the faucet is turned on and scenes and words pour out. Cool. I enjoy that.

But the bottom line of it is that the writing day was truncated. That happens. Except, in this case, the writer kept talking to me during the movie.

“Eleven dimensions is not key to the story but do some research for how it might fit into it.”

“Okay. Noted.”

Dev Patel made his appearance as Saroo.

“The key is chi accumulation,” the writer said. “Think chi less as energy and more as particles in this application. It’s like ice, in a manner. An accumulation is what causes a sense of ‘now’. A past and present doesn’t exist; there is only now. The greater the accumulation of chi, the more intense and certain it becomes that now exists.”

“Okay.”

“You need to remember that.”

Saroo began his class in Melbourne.

“Don’t you mean we need to remember that?” I asked my writer.

“Sure, sure, quit splitting pubic hairs. Also, everything has a chi particle variant.”

“Right.”

“But Brett’s chi is like an isotope.”

“Uh huh.”

Saroo is later considering colorful pushpins in a map. He’s frustrated. The pushpins are presented in various perspectives.

“The phenasper,” the writer said. “He needs to see the colors to understand it. Seeing the colors allows him to be an empath but not a telepath. He develops the skill sufficiently to be a hyper-empath and see the saikis but to be a true telepath, he must see through the colors.”

“Ohhhhh.”

“When he can see through the colors, he becomes telepathic. The colors are emotions and sensory outputs as experienced and filtered by others.”

“Right, right.”

“But also, as he develops, he cultures an affinity for the electronic communication spectrum.”

“Right, right.”

“And the energy the machines put out.”

“Right.” Forgetting the movie for a second, I pursued that. “Of course. The machines and their chi help create the now. And they have their own memories.”

“Yes.”

That satisfied the writer’s need for the day. I finished watching the movie without any further interruptions. This morning, then, I had to wake him up as I was walking to write. “Hey. Writer.”

“Hmmm?”

“Wake up. Time to get up. We’re going to go write. I need you to remind me what you were telling me during the movie yesterday.”

“What was I telling you?”

“About the eleven dimensions, chi as ice creating now, and, um, the phenasper and becoming telepathic?”

“Right, right.” The writer awoke.

Got my mocha. The writer is fully engaged.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Downstreams

Some mental activity racing along my axons today.

  • Love that first slurp of my quad shot mocha at the Boulevard. The baristas know my preferences and do a great job of blending everything and then topping my coffee drink with with a skim of dark chocolate powder. I love the contrasts of flavors in that first tasting. Sensational.
  • It’s National White Shirt Day! This day recognizes the end of a 1937 UAW strike at GM for better working conditions. I have my white tee shirt on, under my natural wool sweater.
  • I don’t recall any dreams from last night. That’s unusual. Wonder why. Sleeping period, six and a half hours, seems about normal.
  • I’ve been reading a series of articles on sleep and whether we’re evolving from being biphasic. The latest article was on Van Winkle and provided a brief summary of the last eight thousand years of sleep.
  • I realized Part I of my  science-fiction novel in progress requires some serious editing and revising. I first realized that about a week ago and tried rejecting it. My writer within was willing to overlook changing it; the resident interior editor was reluctantly accepting of it. However, the reader in residence said, “Oh, no. That needs work.” Trust the reader. After we argued a few days, the writer and editor agreed with the reader’s points. However, the writer came up with some interesting ideas to explore in parallel.
  • The editor, though, urged us all not to make any changes until it’s all done. He pointed out that Part I is the way it is because the stories and concepts were still being explored. True; I write to understand myself, to order and structure and expand my thoughts. He pointed out that since I’m still writing the other parts, I can save myself some potential work by fully completing an entire draft before making major revisions. I accept his contention and put it on hold until the first draft is completed.
  • The novel in progress is ‘Long Summer’. Science-fiction, it’s not quite a sequel but is collateral to ‘Returnee’, as it stars Brett and Castle Corporation, and continues with many of the same themes of technological alienation and isolation, and socializing with yourself via virtual beings you develop to help people cope with life as they live far longer.
  • Talking with the barista today. “Fun plans?” she asked. Because, it’s Saturday; in her working and school world has meaning that has left my writing world. I don’t segregate the days into weeks and weekends any longer. I barely notice the date. “Movies,” I answered her. “We’re going to see ‘Lion’.” She wasn’t familiar with it. I mentioned Dev Patel and a few of his movies. Yes, she remembered ‘Slumdog Millionaires’. It didn’t occur to me until later that she was eight years old when Slumdog was released.
  • That conversation pointed me onto new vectors of changes and the differences in my values, perceptions and experiences as a sexagenarian and the same in her as a young adult. It’s the same conversation I had as a young adult with those forty to fifty years older than me. I was twenty in 1976. Those who were sixty in 1976 had been born just after World War I ended. They fought in World War II and remembered the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Grandparents had been part of the American Civil War. The Soviet Union was founded during their lifetime and the Cold War dominated world politics.
  • It’s interesting to put into perspective. What I think of as ‘normal’ isn’t the same as the previous generation or the next generation. Besides when we were born forming us, so do our education levels. More strongly and interesting, we saw how where we live and our education and economic situations affect national politics during the 2016 presidential election. Now, this article on FiveThirtyEight tells about how where we live affects our deaths. It’s a telling insight to me.

Cheers

1

Today’s Theme Music

I am not a Justin Timberlake fan. Nothing against him; he’s not my cuppa.

That doesn’t stop his music from entering my neural stream and getting jammed into my brain. In some net surfing this morning, I discovered a 2014 NPR story on the Harmony Project. I liked this quote:

“I feel like music really connects with education,” she says. “It helps you concentrate more.”

The speaker was tenth grader Monica Miranda, who was in her third year of the Harmony Project. Her statement struck me as an interesting insight. When I walk, I often mentally write or problem solve. I wonder if I’ve developed a habit of remembering music when I walk and think to help me concentrate more? It may have been a subconscious practice I developed that became reinforced with success. It’s something for further research for me.

Anyway, ‘Can’t Stop The Feeling’ from 2016 is running on the mental loop today. Maybe if I unleash it on you, it’ll escape my mind (or I’ll escape it). The song, I mean.

Not my mind.

Or maybe that is what I meant.

Now I’m all confused.

On to the music.

0

The Fuel

I’m mostly a self-driven vehicle, writing out of need to imagine and tell stories, and entertaining myself. Mostly, I energize via reading what I’ve written, editing and revising it and pressing on. Mostly, I write from practice and habit, walking to awaken the muse, giving her a mocha to encourage her engagement, and then shutting off everyone in me except the writer.

Mostly.

But that’s all about the writing side. The damn business side is depressing. The need for accepting rejection, considering advertising campaigns, hunting for copy-editors, beta readers, cover designers, publishing venues, publishers and agents are all depressing.

I’m not nuanced in demographics and specific costs structures, operating margins, etc., of the publishing industry, but I do understand that it’s an involved, expensive business on the traditional side, and it’s a crowded field in the self-publishing and digital publishing arenas. I understand on emotional, physical, intellectual and financial levels about the difficulties with finding representations, publishers, sales and readers.

That doesn’t make me feel any better.

I read fiction and non-fiction to study and absorb others’ ways with ideas, stories, characters, plots, words, settings, beginnings, middles and ends. I read them because I enjoy them. I want to be entertained and I want to escape.

But I read other writers ‘like me’ for true incentive about writing, dealing with rejection, and why it’s difficult to solve the writing, publishing, sales and marketing puzzles. Writers are my tribe; we write because we often feel we must, or we’re addicted to the dream or the process, or we’re using it to therapy to cope with who and what we seem to be.

Several families co-exist in that tribe. One family consists of the writers who have made it – King, Rowling, Chabon, Frantzen, Erdrich, Collins, Lee, Green – how many need be named? We each have our writing heroes.

My family is that other one, the family of writers who write each day, wonder how much writing is enough writing, publish short stories online, the writers who are struggling not to write, but to live and exist as a successfully published writer. I spent much time with their words and blogs online. I take comfort in our shared misery of struggling. It allows me to say, “See, it’s not just me. It’s not just Michael Seidel.”

And that’s a relief. I often think it is just Michael Seidel. I often feel like I’m right on the cusp of making a breakthrough and then the moment is gone. It’s exasperating and debilitating. Yet, I sense other writers live in that same zone by the words they write online.

From them, I get my fuel. Because sometimes, I want to stop. Sometimes the muse asks, “Excuse me, but are we wasting our time here?” Sometimes the internal writer agrees, “Yeah, shouldn’t we just go wash and wax the car and have a beer, or volunteer for some charities, or go find a job? Wouldn’t any one of those things be more productive than the daily rituals we follow?”

But my family of writers and I all answer, “No.” I can elaborate, “You’re not correctly measuring what it means to be productive, that being creative and imaginative is more worthwhile to me than those tasks you ask me to undertake instead.”

We know this. Commercial and critical success is a matter of validation and pride. It’s driven in part by family and friends asking us, “How is the book coming along? When will I be able to read it?” They do not understand the difficulties not just in writing, but in getting published and noticed, of making sales.

Usually, we don’t bother to explain the intricacies their question deserves. Nodding, we just tell them, “It’s coming along.”

Then we add the exchange to our fuel.

3

After

After resting, after thinking, after dreaming, rising and eating;

after reading, after meditating, after wondering and sometimes, a little praying;

after driving, after walking, after ordering my coffee and sitting;

after yesterday, after childhood, after last week and last year;

after contemplation of who I am and what I want,

and after reflecting on what I’m doing,

it’s time to write like crazy,

at least one more time.

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