Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Dealing with a bad muse today. Experienced with my buttons, she’s pushing them to get her way.
See, I should be editing and revising. It’s round number five on this novel in progress. It’s coming along well but it has a big appetite for my time. I hope, with another round or two, that I’ll have a finished tale that satisifes me. But that comes with a big sigh cuz I’m a little weighed down with the novel. Sixty pages of editing remain of a section which was expanded and shifted in the last two go-arounds. Complicated, they were sloppy and overwritten so I’m addressing what I see. It’s satisfying but tedious.
Bad Muse knows this. She knows that I’m addicted to the creativity experienced while writing a new novel. So Bad Muse is pushing buttons to continue with a new novel in progress. “It’s going well,” she croons, “and it’s fun. Time away from that other one will give you distance and you’ll find the editing is more easily done.”
I don’t know if her logic is right but I don’t like her tone when she says ‘that other one’. So disdainful. Not calling it a novel. Not even referencing it as a book or manuscript. Like she’s talking about another woman, a past girlfriend or wife or such. Oddly, that tone cements a decision that I’m going to edit ‘that other one’.
Take that, Bad Muse.
Mood: Exblueberant
Blue, blue, blue.
Today is January 23, 2024, and Tuesday. I awoke to a rich blue sky and booming morning sun. First time I’ve seen a rosy sunrise this year. The temperature was 39 F then but it’s already climbed to 52 F. Word is, 66 F might be reached. Super.
Tucker and I saw a hummingbird flitting around our bushes this morning when we went out onto the front porch. While I enjoy this stimulating clear, warm, weather, we need the snow on the mountains to survive the summer, so come on, nature. Give us snow in the mountains. Snow could become possible, my optimistic Neurons declared. Clouds are expected to steal in, and in fact can now be seen creeping over the southern mountains. So, rain can come, and cold temperatures can return, and snow can fall. Tick, tick, we’ll see.
Three pieces of political news struck me today. (Don’t worry, it wasn’t hard and didn’t bruise.) First up, Jamell Bouie’s simple observation in his NYTimes column.
DeSantis also refused to contest Trump’s election denialism, a choice that almost guaranteed his failure in the primaries. Can you seriously position yourself as a winner and Trump as a loser when the consensus of the voters you are seeking to win is that Trump didn’t lose?
So real; why do Republicans believe anything can change so long as they support Trump’s Big Lie? No evidence has been presented; it is simply his bombastic declaration it is so, and a legion of sycophants saying, “Yep, yep, yep, it’s true.” So bizarre, they are in that party, and getting more so.
Next, we had Rep. Pete Stauber (R). The government is financing a bridge to replace the Blatnick Bridge. Rep Stauber is crowing with pride for the bridge, these monies, and this plan, even though he voted against it. This is a common GOP tactic, and he got called out for his duplicity by many folk. Whether it’ll keep him from being re-elected is another matter; many voters have limited vision when it comes to their guy.
Finally, in this trifecta of info, the Doomsday Clock has been updated for 2024 and it’s still ninety seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight that it’s been since it was begun in June of 1947. The thinkers behind it point to threats posed by AI, climate change, and potential nuclear war. Don’t worry, though; we’re an intelligent, sophisticated species and are capable of thinking through these problems, arriving at effective solutions, and then implementing them. Yeah. Sure. (Yes, that is sarcasm.)
Enough of that stuff. To the music! I have the Rolling Stones’ song of 1966 in my morning mental music stream (Trademark doomed), “Mother’s Little Helper”. Reading and thinking about people’s health issues, I muttered something to myself about getting old. Les Neurons pounced. Although “Mother’s Little Helper” is about the drugs being prescribed to and abused by women in the 1960s, there’s a repeated line in the song, “What a drag it is getting old.” Yes, indeed, it can be a drag.
BTW, today marks the anniversary of the day in 1957 when the Pluto Platter inventor sold his product to Wham-o, who changed its name to Frisbee and began selling it.
Stay pos, be strong, lean way forward and vote for progress. My cells are already soaking in coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers
He was doing nothing. By that, he meant that he was playing a computer game. The television was on. Picard. A cat slept on the desk to his right.
His wife was in the recliner to his left, on her computer, playing a game, too, but also voicing disapproval about the television show’s plot.
Suddenly, they were there, more substantial than ghosts, surrounding him. Two seated their asses on the desk on either side of his laptop.
He looked at them. They crossed their arms and smiled. “What’s this about you’re not going to write for a few days?” one said, classic New York accent.
His muses. He wasn’t surprised. “I thought I’d take a few days off.”
The muses laughed. “Why? Stories are waiting. You’re eager to write them.”
“I’m a little tired.”
All laughed again. “Aw, he’s tired,” one behind him said in mocking sympathy.
“So?” the muse on the right asked.
“That’s okay,” another muse said behind him. “Let him go. If he doesn’t want to write, that’s his choice.”
He nodded. “That’s right. Just for few days. My eyes are tired. I feel like I need a break, you know?”
Muses leaned in. They began whispering scenes. He paused his game and watched television.
Or tried. Eager and resigned, he opened a new file.
He’d just write a little. See where it went.
The muses nodded. “That’s the spirit.”
Was it too late for coffee?
A patch to wake up
A patch to fall sleep
A patch to help you pay attention
A patch to take a drink.
A patch to kill your dreams
A patch to keep you sane
A patch to make you eat
A patch to dull your brain.
A patch to calm your nerves
A patch to stay alive
A patch to keep you breathing
And then a patch to die.
Floofdiction (floofinition) – a compulsive, A chronic, physiological, compulsive, or psychological need for being near or with an animal.
In use: “After acknowledging the limitations her floofdiction imposed on her travel, she established a hotel where each room could be provided a comfort animal from local fosters or shelters to help travelers missing their floofs.”
I was frothing with surprise and delight for a while today.
The morning’s email brought interest from three agents. They wanted to see more material from April Showers 1921, a surprise. I thought that all interest from the first round of submissions had died (accomplished in October, 2019). I was regrouping for another round of submissions.
I also thought how odd it was that these agent things happen in clumps. But then, I submit in clumps, and the agents describe similar processes and response times. It shouldn’t be a surprise when they respond in clumps.
What WAS a surprise was an agent expressing interest in Four on Kyrios, the first novel of the Incomplete States series (five books). I submitted to her in February, 2019, ten months ago.
(A pause to consider that I’d finished writing a five novel series last year (Incomplete States, 430,000 words), and then wrote a novel earlier this year (April Showers 1921, 180,000 words), and now I’m finishing a third book (To Begin, 73,000 words so far). And yes, that does please me. Plodding along at about five pages a day does start adding up. Especially when I remember that Incomplete States and all of its support documents (side stories, character, planet, and cultural histories, etc) added up to one million words.)
Although it’s exciting to receive the emails from the agents, after reflecting, I thought, well, I’ll do my writing session today, and then try to respond to these agents tonight. I wasn’t being contrary or sabotaging myself, but in thinking through where I was and who I am, I enjoy the writing process, I’m enjoying writing the current novel, and I have momentum. (The muses are being friendly and I don’t want to alienate them.) So, although my goal is to find publication for those previously written novels, writing the current novel entices me more.
It’s a curious sensation. Yeah, I seek publication beyond the self-publishing of the four novels that I’ve already done. The agent interest is validation, in one sense; someone is interested! In another sense, I shrug; I’ve always written for myself, creating mysteries and logic problems for me to solve, building and expanding worlds in my mind, and discovering characters who emerge as people to me.
I’m also a tinge jaded, reconciling myself, yeah, you’ve been shown interest by agents and editors before, and it’s come to naught. (Really, are you so cynical, Michael?)
Yes, I am. More than cynicism, in the course of writing novels and following a quest to be a better thinker, story-teller, and writer, I’ve fallen out of concern about what others think about my writing. I can argue that some of that is self-preservation (and perhaps a tincture of imposter syndrome). See, if I don’t get excited, then I’ll be less dejected if the agents decline my project. That’s the theory.
It’s also short-sighted; being in a bubble of my own thinking, reading, writing, and criticism means that I don’t receive feedback that could help me grow.
Yes, true.
So, being cynical, jaded, short-sighted, and dubious, writing, with all of its challenges and frustrations, is more immediately rewarding and satisfying. Solving these self-made issues generates a sweet dopamine infusion. Perhaps that’s the lesson — and warning — that I should really find in my response today: I’m a writing addict, looking for a quick fix.
Today’s news does want me to treat myself to a scone or muffin. Comfort food, I believe, to help cope; the potential for advancing also carries the angst and burden of failure. Have something to eat, right? It’s a humorous pattern.
Yet, again…there was that time when I came across a woman reading my novel at a Starbucks here in my town, a cool experience. I’ve received feedback from readers about how my they’ve enjoyed something I’ve written, which was a powerful jolt to the ego. Multiple those intangible rewards by the potential that being published on a larger scale could bring.
Also in passing, though, I do enjoy reading my own work. It’s fun to read what I’ve written, and it often surprises me. I understand what that says about my process and being in the tube. What was originally conceived and written (in my methodology) frequently evolves under editing, revising, refinement, and polishing. I write to know what I think, and I rewrite to clarify it and deal with loopholes in my thinking (and plotting and problem solving).
As a final piece, of course; this is me, today. Me, tomorrow, or yesterday — or even later today — might respond differently. Moods (and the hopes and expectations related to them) are dynamic. Hence, I needed to write all of this out just to think about it, a prelude, perhaps, to discovering how I feel.
Well, it’s all thinking fodder. Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Got to feed that addiction, you know?
Michael Seidel, writer 