Category: writing

Mysterious Writing

Writing sometimes seems like such a mysterious process. It used to deeply mystify me as I would apply the questions, the who/what/why/how/when melange that flavors fiction and struggle forward.

Not so today, this week. I sit down, open up, read a bit of what’s written and resume. I guess I’ve trained and ordered my mind to ‘think like a writer’ and create fiction. But this book is coming along so seamlessly, I worry that perhaps it’ll be thin and bland. I wonder, if it’s easy writing, is it poor story telling? If it’s easy, is it too predictable, too simplistic? Yet, I enjoy it.

It might be that I’ve been reading wonderful fiction, having just finished The Signature of All Things and now progressed two thirds through My Brilliant Friend. I’ll often end up editing books because they’re written in passive voice, or they tell and then show, or the reverse, at any rate, displaying a need for editing. Not so with Gilbert and Ferrante’s books. Ferrante especially creates such a sense of people and place that I’m inspired.

So maybe this is just a zone contrived from writing the third book in a series (which gives me intimacy with the characters) and reading writers I enjoy. After thinking about the matter, I’ll not worry myself about it. Take it for what it is, a blessing, a luxury. Perhaps it’ll end in a day, an hour, a minute. Just write like crazy and see where I end up when I’m done.

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A History of Writing

The Atlantic provides a perspective of writing software. It fascinates me because of my personal history. I began with WordStar on a CPM 86 machine with a small green screen, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. WordStar worked well for me but bundled software forced me to a switch to WordPro. WordPro was set up on a Zenith 150 with a 20 meg hard drive and two 5 1/4 floppy drives and an EGA 16 color screen. The colors didn’t matter but the resolution still wasn’t great. Switching to a VGA screen with 256 colors enhanced the experience. I still wrote in tablets and notebooks with a pen and then typed it all up.

Having a natural bent toward being a geek, I used to be really proficient with those programs, learning formatting, editing and saving secrets on my own. Friends and co-workers would come by or call me, asking for help about setting margins, centering, pagination, headers and other matters. People then wrote these insights up and made money off them by publishing books about these secrets, which never entered my mind to do.

Eventually, Microsoft became the Godzilla that wiped everything out, leaving me with Word. I adjusted to Word well in the early years. But modern improvements have made it less friendly. Word offer a gazillion templates when I use two. It’s odd how selecting File versus clicking on Open takes you down different paths. Adopting from version to version as the operating system changed has been a major irritant. I also eventually switched from a tower to laptops and notebooks, discarding the notebooks. I was sad to let them go. They, along with pens, were friends and companions, pets of sorts, for a struggling writer.

I honestly thought shifting to writing directly onto a computer instead of paper would be challenging. Perhaps using email and filling out computer forms over the years helped, but the change was easier than I expected. I even came to recognize the many advantages of using an electronic media to create.

I still read books in paper formats, though. Although I read and edit my own online, almost everyone else’s is printed out or purchased in a hard format. Yes, I have devices to read them, but that change is surprisingly taking me longer. I’ve seen articles about fonts and colors and the impact on reading on a computer but to me, it seems to be that I like shifting the book around for different angles, and that still doesn’t work well with the electronic devices.

Of course, it really doesn’t matter to me whether I’m reading a book online or a hard copy, as long as I’m reading. I guess that was the lesson for the transition from paper to computer, from WordStar to Word, it doesn’t matter, as long as I’m writing.

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And

And

Alone

In a coffee job

Sipping coffee

And

Thinking

And picking up the virtual pen

And opening computer files

And finding the threads of thought

That came out during the walk

And remembering

Where I left off

And calling out characters

And listening to their words

And writing their dialogue

And spinning scenes

And imagining the story

And organizing the flow

And conjuring plot arcs

And editing the words

And polishing the scenes

 

 

And falling into the book

And forgetting all other moments

And not hearing

Anything else

And not seeing

Anyone else

And reading

What I’ve written

And looking for

what comes next

Is the best part

And

There’s always more

 

 

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Liberated!

I’ve been mentally hemming and hawing, doing an aw shucks shuffle self-effacing, anxious shuffle off to one side, afraid of being in the spotlight, afraid of being ignored by the spotlight, and frightened that if the spotlight finds me, it will illuminate all my shortcomings, limitations and errors.

I’m a person of hypocrisies and conflicts, dreams, judgments, anxieties, hopes, optimism, and pessimism. I’m trying to let go, hang on, and move ahead. Ultimately, I have accepted myself as a failure. That’s important, and reassuring. And it’s a lie.

I don’t consider myself a failure (at the moment, although that can change in a moment). But without realizing it, that’s the crux of what’s bothering me the last few days. Publishing another book. Self-publishing, with all its baggage, an epub, with all of its connotations. Some of these perceptions are fossils I acquired in another era, and I know they’re not true on one level, but they’re hard to let go. But sometime yesterday, I literally said, “Fuck it.” I was speaking to myself, and allow myself to use such language with myself and around myself. So, “Fuck it,” I said. “Publish it. You’ve done your best. Will there be errors? Maybe. But maybe not. Will people like it? Maybe. But maybe not. But what will happen if you don’t publish? You will stew and fester and keep re-living the pro and cons of the possibilities. So, fuck it. Do it.”

I feel much better now.

At least, today.

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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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