Category: writing

The Progressions

I awaken, and experience a progression of guilt.

I called Mom last week. Reaching her answering machine, I left a message that I would call again later in the week.

I didn’t call, hence the guilt. I haven’t spoken to her in several weeks. The exact date is progressing into the unremembered past.

But I’m in the writing zone. I’ve caught the big wave. Big waves are rare. I jealously guard the ride, not wanting to do anything to upset the balance. Sorry, Mom. I’ll call when the ride is over. She’ll understand.

Marking the sunshine’s progression through the blinds, I gather it’s time to leave bed. Feeding the cats take me through the next progression. I fill their bowls, and watch their behavior and motion, and then return to their bowls when they’ve walked away, to see how much they’ve consumed. Nothing triggers a worry watch.

Going through the morning’s progression of eating, cleaning up and dressing, I peruse a mental list of items. It’s a copy of a list my wife and I made the other day. We began a process of cleaning, organizing and simplifying last July, and listed what remains during breakfast last Friday. I compare the list with the weather forecast and other chores to decide what I’ll do this day.

The bathroom mirror takes me through a progression of assessments about my hair, weight, skin and body tone. I progress through disappointment and dismay to rueful chuckling acceptance.

The morning’s walk to the coffee shop takes me through more progressions. Regardless of what I saw in the mirror, I feel young, energetic and happy as I walk. Autumn has arrived and the air is progressively cooler each day, as the days are progressively shorter, with night arriving progressively earlier. The trees are proceeding through their own progressions, with the leaves changing color but not yet beginning to fall.

All the town’s schools are in session. Encountering university students, who just began classes this week, I judge from their expressions that they’re progressing from starting classes to being dazed or numb to their new adventure. High school has been in session for a month already. Their marquee announces the Homecoming Ball next month. That, and cigarette smoke clinging to other pedestrians, transport me to youthful memories of high school and smoking co-workers and friends. I progress to wondering where those friends might be now and what became of them.

Last night’s dreams return to me. I dreamed I was asked by others to drive their dilapidated bus. Their request amuses me. They seemed to think it was very important and challenging, while I took it quite lightly. I easily agreed. The subsequent drive was a dream’s blink between beginning and ending, with some short vignettes of visits with passengers asking me more about my background. Nothing untoward had happened. Being grateful for my service, they’ve prepared a gift basket and present it to me when we’re off the bus. The gift basket is a plastic storage container with a bow. Fun size candy bars have been collected and put into plastic baggies, along with other food stuffs, such as cookies, muffins and brownies, including red and green peppermint cheese pizza. I’m never had it before. There is also electronic junk and toys in the storage box. I’m touched because all of this means much to them. Telling them it’s too much, I ask them to take whatever they want. They close in and take many items. One man asks for the peppermint pizza. He explains, he has a sore throat, and the peppermint soothes it.

We then enter a city square of faded, low brick buildings. The community is poor and the town is sparsely populated. I join others at one cafe. Its decor amounts to an eclectic assortment of bare tables and chairs and robin’s egg blue walls. They’re eager to please me. Their eagerness and obsequiousness embarrasses me. I work hard to make us all feel at ease. A small but pleasant party begins as we relax. They pour ale into a jar for me. There is nothing more I remember from that dream.

My progress is tracked through landmarks. I’ve passed the one mile mark. One mile remains until I reach the coffee shop. My thoughts progress through my writing plans of where I was, what I dislike and like, and what I need to change and how I might change it. I progress from that back to other plans. Friends are meeting for beers at 4:30. It’s downtown, a two and a half mile walk from my house. I calculate what time I’d need to leave, and how much time I have for yard work after walking home after my writing session. The timing will be compressed but it is doable, if I’m disciplined.

I reflect upon the differences in energy requirements between having a beer with friends and chatting with my mother. It’s like accounting and budgeting, in that these energies come from different buckets. I begin writing this post in my mind.

I progress to an acceptance of being disciplined about the timing, and then I’ve arrived at the coffee shop. Business is light. Madi saw me coming down the street so she has my quad shot mocha prepared. We chat about her college classes. She’s majoring in poli-sci and history, and plans to be a lawyer and prosecutor. Naturally, we discuss the presidential debates.

Then I’m at my table, at my laptop, with my coffee, opening the document, embracing the moment. I compose this post. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

I’m making progress.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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