What a night of dreams. Given scales of one to ten, where ten is the highest, these dreams were around eights on the vividness and intensity scales. They left me feeling emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted. Dreams of these types trigger speculation that I’m living in the dreams, and the dreams are the reality. So while I’ve been here, living with all of its entanglements and needs, I’ve actually been asleep there. Once I awaken there, I experience that life through my dreams.
Makes sense. In the dreams, I was bewildered about what was going on and expectations for me. Everyone liked me. Nobody was concerned about me. I was just there, part of the landscape. It was an incoherent landscape. Some others and I were in the back interior of a giant parked 1982 Camaro. It was so large, we were standing and moving around without being encumbered. Things were sometimes written on the car’s immense rear hatch window. But I knew I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing. Fueled by guilt, anxiety burned through me. I was going to be found out at any moment.
Leaving the Camaro, I raced around in a covert frenzy, attempting to cover my tracks and do what I was supposed to be doing all along. The office made no sense. Everything had been moved outside. Meanwhile, new instructions were being introduced. I struggled to stay abreast of the new ideas. I was supposed to be understanding this stuff, using it and explaining it to others. I had little idea of what was going on.
I sought out the people in charge and the files. The files were supposed to be locked up. I didn’t know the combination. One of those in charge confessed to me that the locks didn’t work. They were a facade. She laughed as she explained this. As I tried catching up on my tasks and correct everything, I began learning through intimate encounters with others, nobody else knew what was going on. It was chaos with a veneer of normalcy and knowledge. Nobody else was doing it correctly. Most barely understood what I talked about and laughed when I mentioned it. A series of giggling confessions were shared with me to that end.
Understanding that I wasn’t going to be discovered because I was an inept fraud, I began relaxing. My errors and shortcomings weren’t going to be discovered because everyone else had shortcomings and were making errors. None of them cared about it.
Writing about them, I chortle with insight. Ah, yes, the classic dreams of inadequacy and our latent, perpetual fears of being exposed as a fraud. Do writers ever experience anything like this? I suppose not. Most writers are powerhouses of security and self-confidence.
I should just move on. I would, but I feel too tired. I need to sleep to recover from my dreams.
“Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.” ― Pablo Picasso
This quote was on Ed Lehming’s blog post, ‘The Breach’, today. The quote’s truth stormed me about other endeavors besides painting. I’d been thinking about this last night without Picasso’s quote, so I love the serendipity. I’d been thinking about how I will have been working on something, struggling to learn, understand or achieve, and then suddenly, everything lines up like a solved Rubik’s Cube. I’d done it many times in my life, facing the need to learn something and then struggling until it happens.
Writing fiction is probably the greatest stretch for me. This struggle to learn happens with different elements with fiction writing. Writing is thought of as simple by many. What’s there to do but write words and tell a story?
Writers, editors and good readers understand that’s a simplistic summary. Fiction writing requires learning multiple pieces that are often taken for granted because most people only see the finished work. We know better. Sometimes the lessons learned about pacing, characters, story-telling, voice and everything else needs learned anew when writing the next project. Contemplating that, I believe that each novel or story in progress has a moment when a door opens, and the scene being worked becomes a stepping stone to other things.
It doesn’t come easily. The challenge remains to muster the focus, apply the time and energy, and accept the patience needed for me to reach the door, find and open it. These elements of focus, time, energy and acceptance are typically thought of on a conscious level. I think they work better on a subconscious level. I let the needs seep down in. Walk away. Do other things.
Eventually, the focus, time, and energy finds the path to the door. That’s a glorious exciting epiphany when the door is suddenly there. Another challenge arises then to open it and see what’s on the other side.
Within this process is the beauty of acceptance, of letting it work, of being strong and bold enough to believe it will work. It takes time. This time and patience is invaluable coin. When it works and the door opens and I step through, I create a positive loop of knowing I can face problems and challenges, and overcome them. That feeds me confidence to try again, and again and again, and to keep going. More, though, my journey becomes richer, more joyful and satisfying.
It really is a beautiful process, these exercises in imagination and creativity called writing.
Yes, I know, it’s a messy post, all over the place. I’m exploring territory. Writing helps me map the terrain.
Everyday has a feel. Lot of that feel is conditioned into us by work and school. It’s hard to shed the feel.
Today is Thursday but feels like Friday. I could blame it on my friends. Fifteen of us met last night and hoisted a few beers. I enjoyed the Caldera Brewing Pilot Rock Porter, a most excellent beverage. I had two point five points so I don’t believe that’s the problem with today.
I worked and exercised, of course. Walked six miles, which is about my average, so no great shakes there. Had roasted veggie pizza for dinner. I don’t think that’s the problem nor why today feels like Friday.
No, I believe my problem resides with less than sufficient sleep. The Fitbit reports I had less than six and a half hours. For that, I blame the cats.
The four of them seemed very very. I don’t know what – very very catish? They ate their food and wanted more. They were inside and wanted out. Then, OMG, it’s cold outside, LET ME IN! Hearing the others, they would present a need to go investigate to see what HE’s up to without knowing who HE is. The four are male cats, felines who wandered in from the streets and declared our house is their house. Each has one issue or another.
My wife claims a big problem is that they’re all males, full of themselves and territorial. “It would be different if one of them was a female. Cats are matriarchal. A female would create some order.”
She could be right but I’m not getting a fifth cat to prove it. There is a fifth, a female. Pepper lives next door but loves our front porch and hangs out there about twelve hours out of a twenty-four hour period. She doesn’t seem to be establishing any order. Her only thought to order is, “Hey, hey, hey, give me something to eat. Hey, hey.” And I do because cats have established mind control over me.
So it feels like Friday because I feel tired. I’m ready for the weekend even though the weekend has no concrete meaning for me. It’s just Saturday after Friday, and Sunday after Saturday, and the day before Monday. Other than the spelling of the days and the hours of some businesses, they’re all Anyday and Everyday.
Okay, rant over. Got my mocha. Tastes awesome. Another sip or two and I’ll be ready to write like crazy, at least one more time. I’ll see where the story takes me.
I just realized that in the space of my future, there are no days of the week. It’s all Anyday and Everyday.
Yesterday I awoke bitter, depressed, angry, and deeply enthralled with the dark side. Today, the pendulum has swung the other way. I’m optimistic, energetic, hopeful and happy.
I’m pleased this iteration of the dark period quickly ended. Perhaps the dream about cleaning, or the thinking about the dream, was a catalyst to regaining positive energy.
It’s been a year since I collected my last IBM paycheck.
I expected a lot of changes in that year. I’ve been disappointed.
One bitter reason for wanting to leave IBM was my unhappiness of how callously we were treated as individuals. That’s my perception. Others may not share it. The work had become routine and boring. I was rarely engaged, and my circle of involvement seemed to be shrinking. So, I was receiving less validation that I was worthwhile to the company or that anyone there appreciated my work or efforts. Hence, I wanted to leave. When they offered me the choice, I took it.
Yet, being freed from employment didn’t do anything to enhance my sense of validation. If anything, the solitary habits I employ and my social awkwardness remain, so I’m just as out there on my own now as I was when I was employed, and experience even less evaluation. It’s tested my strength and determination.
I thought my writing career would take off. It hasn’t. I didn’t appreciate the hard work required to not just prepare a book to publish but also to market. I naively thought, “If I write it, they will come.”
My year of being unemployed, the first since I was seventeen, taught me how much I require structure, goals and a vision to keep me moving forward. I’ve been forced to re-evaluate what I’d established in the past that helped me succeed, and create new structures, goals and a vision. That’s all still in progress. I also needed to educate myself more about the writing business, something also underway. Frankly, it’s wearying.
In thinking about all of this, I resolved, “I will do better.” It’s a big poster in my mind, glowing at me all the time. “I will do better.”
Today’s writing session is finished. I only wrote about fifteen hundred words and edited some. The novel is becoming hugely busy. I reached the point that I felt like a puppet master getting entangled in his puppets’ strings. Pacing across the coffee shop with impatience and frustration, I gazed out the window and recognized, I need to stop today. Regroup and marshal my energies and intentions to proceed. It’s a complex novel, with complicated plots and societies, set in the future, with unique words, and yada, yada, yada.
You leap up, eager to engage. Yeah, you got work, but so what? You’re fucking ready! Give me coffee, tea, whatever, and stand back, ’cause here I come.
Other days –
The movement to remove yourself from that lovely bed is proceeded by a long sigh, a bit of ceiling staring, and an argument. “Is it really worth it today to get out of bed?” you ask yourself. “Can’t I just stay here all day?” Thoughts of responsibilities, deadlines, appointments and engagement roll over you like waves. Damn, you realize, I have to get up.
You throw the covers back and shove yourself free. Look out world, you promise. You hit me, I’m going to hit you back. Hard.
But some days –
Oh, Jesus, you think. Another day. There’s no end to them. I’m in a tunnel but there’s no light. Nada. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. “I hate my life,” you whisper.
But, what must be done, must be done. So you get out of bed, a stoic embracing of your duties and trudge through the day, engaging as it must be done but trying not to use much of your energies. Not on days like this.
But other days –
Ha, ha, ha, you think, with a surreptitious glance at the clock and daylight, I don’t have to get up today. I can sleep in as long as I want. I can do whatever I want. And with that, you bound up, because this is your day. You can do whatever the fuck you want.
But some days –
You awake and arise. You don’t feel really rested but you don’t feel tired, either. You don’t know what you feel. There are things to be done but nothing is pressing on more than the immediate need to pee.
You think of the things that you need to do and what you might do. You might go some places. You might not.
Thoughts are accompanied by small mental shrugs of indifference. You’re not really happy. You’re not really sad.
You’re not really anything.
You and the day feel like an onion. Some peeling must be done before anything useful is found. You’re not even sure if you feel like peeling it, though. It’s not a question of energy or attitude. No, you don’t know what it is. To know that would require some peeling, and you don’t feel like peeling. Perhaps you will after having some coffee or tea, or being up a while, or maybe you’ll feel like it after getting cleaned up. Who knows?
Starting today with a visualizing exercise. WYSIWYG.
Visualize yourself writing. Completing the book.
See the finished book. See it on your desk, in your hand, and for sale online, and in book stores, on end cap displays, and tables. See it in the library.
Notice it in people’s hands as they go to their gates for flights. See it in others’ hands as they’re reading in the park and at the coffee shop. Hear it mentioned in conversations and discover it in reviews.
How far do you want to go with this? Detail your vision. Make it a rope that carries you through each session and day, through the months of processing and developing and into the sales and marketing arena. See it all the way through. Create it as your vision and feed your determination.
Close your eyes. Spread your eyes wide. Reach out and put your arms around a star.
Don’t let circumstances stop or distract you. Believe in yourself and keep going.
You can’t learn to walk without a few trips, stumbles and falls. Bike lessons typically involve an accident, too, when something goes astray. You lose your balance and fall, or forget how to brake and crash. The point there, as I’m so cleverly hiding it and I should make it clearer, is that to learn and succeed, you must take risks. With risks can come pain and failure. How you handle it all is where some of your best learning can arise.
With that in mind, I salute all those who attempted NaNoWriMo, no matter their result. More power to you for putting in on the line and trying. Fantastic, if you succeeded; I hope you keep going. Fantastic, if you failed; I hope you keep going, because you tried, brothers and sisters.
Now it’s Monday in some parts of the world. Morning, in a few neighborhoods. December is blooming everywhere. Summer and winter are rising, depending upon where you live. I hope you all have a December that you look back upon with fondness and satisfaction, that it’s a month when you think back upon and say, “It all started that year, 2016, in December. That’s the month when it all really came together and I knew.” Substitute whatever words you want in there for your moment, path and vision.
For me, it’s time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.
Last night’s dreams were a barrage of chaotic events and images. I vividly remember most of them (it?) because my left calf cramped. Pain shot me out of dreams into full wakefulness. Working the cramp, I remembered the dream.
I was travelling with my wife. We were hurrying through an airport. She was carrying all our baggage. It wasn’t much but included a brown paper shopping bag full of papers. “I can help,” I kept telling her. “Let me carry some of that.” I tried taking some. But no, she dismissed my urging and raced ahead. The airport was immaculate and wasn’t busy. We rushed through doors and across terminals and concourses.
Things were coming beginning to come out of the shopping back. “Here, wait, you’re losing things,” I told her, catching up. Slowing her, I tried re-organizing materials in the bag so they were more secure and suggested I take it, but she was too impatient and started off again.
And then we headed for an exit. I was bewildered. “But we didn’t go anywhere,” I said. “We didn’t fly anywhere.” Wordlessly, carrying the baggage, stopping to put papers back into the shopping bag, she prodded us to the exit.
Act two commenced. We were in a vehicle, I think. I never saw or heard it but we were on a divided white cement four lane highway. I couldn’t tell who was driving. Lightly traveled and free of potholes, the road followed curving green hills. The weather was pleasant. I could only see ahead of me and nothing of us or the car.
A bright orange car burst onto the highway ahead of us. Emitting blue smoke and loud noise out of its single large chrome exhaust pipe that came out the back, it looked like it was a home-made fiberglass creation on a shortened VW Beetle chassis. The car seemed barely under control. Accelerating to overtake one vehicle, it jumped lanes and almost hit another. Swerving back, it barely passed between two other vehicles.
We were commenting on the lack of control, what was going on in the driver’s head, and the vehicle’s construction and design, when they did lose control, spinning out as its engine gave up with a smoky, “BANG.”
We were on the scene instantly and then passing it, talking about stopping and helping – but then this crazy motorcyclist roared by. The rider was a young, well-groomed white man with short dark hair. He was driving insanely, cutting off a semi, causing it to crash, and then doing the same to another car.
This time, he wrecked. He got off his motorcycle, stared down at it a moment, and then started walking up the highway.
We were walking behind him. I could believe he was walking away from the mayhem he’d caused. His indifference appalled me. I raced up to him. Catching up, I began calling, “Hey, excuse me, hello,” before finally tapping his shoulder. Taller than me by at least eighteen inches, he was extremely skinny and white, and dressed in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves and a red neck tie that was loose around the collar. I began telling him, “Do you know what you did back there?” Unimpressed, he began leaving, but I held firm, holding onto him, taking him by his arm, and then his shoulder. I was amazed how muscular he was under his shirt.
I told him what he’d done. “So what?” he answered at last. “I’m working from home and McDonald’s has the right to send and receive faxes at my house. I can’t get any rest and I can’t get anything done.” Then the truck driver, a swarthy man a little shorter than me, caught up and entered into conversation with him.
My wife and I went on. We entered a terminal through a double metal door without any markings. Inside was messy and crowded with an old military base feel to it. Not much energy was put on decor. Food was available. We were hungry and perused the menu. Nothing was calling to us. We still wanted to order something but weren’t sure what we wanted to order, nor where to do it, but were beginning to grasp their system amidst the disorder.
Then it got chaotic. A disheveled greasy man appeared behind us. White, with stringy hair and a few days of beard, he was being disruptive. I didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He was just standing and grinning whenever I saw him. But I didn’t trust him. He was wearing sandals with no socks and baggy, dirty green pants.
Eventually something he did caused a commotion. He disappeared. Two police officers arrived. I could hear them talking about him but only heard fragments. They were attempting to find him. Slipping past them, I decided I could find him.
From here, the dream fractured into true incoherence. At this point, the point of view became external. I was watching myself and these scenes as though I watched a movie except I knew it was me and I wasn’t just sitting somewhere watching someone else. There was something about cutting our grass a certain manner and a bevy of strange rules being issued, rules that would undo what had succeeded. I was being urged to conform and obey. “They will ticket you if you don’t,” they told me. Everyone was worried about being ticketed.
“Enough of this,” I basically said. “I’m not doing that stuff.” I walked out, coming toward my watching vantage. My wife and others hurried behind me, talking to me, asking me to re-consider what I was doing but I was adamant. My dream’s last words were, “They’re just pieces of paper,” spoken by me.
I dreamed last night about the power of eight. That is literally and explicitly what the dream was about, no B.S. I remember all of this thanks to a cat.
I know that will surprise you.
In the dream, I was in a class with others but not a classroom. I don’t know who the others were. Someone unknown was explaining that the power of eight shapes everything. Basically in a ‘Matrix’ reveal, I was shown how streaming digits make up reality. Then we were told, “If you can find the power of eight in the numbers, you’ll unlock the power of creation.” Then, as we all talked and looked, I grasped that within the threads were sequences that added up to eight. As I realized the implications and began bubbling with the thrill of knowledge, I began showing them to the rest of the class and elaborating on the instructor’s explanation about how to see and capture the power of eight. As example, I explained, laughing, “Like this one.” I captured a sequence. “That’s eight hundred thousand dollars.”
At that point, whiskers, licking and kneading awakened me. Quinn the Black Paw was hungry. The food in the bowls didn’t suit his mood. It didn’t matter that it was oh dark A.M. Resigning myself the power of the cat, I fed him, and then used the opportunity to pee and ponder the dream.
I was pretty much at a loss about what it meant then. Like, what was I supposed to do? Take a pill and find an eight? Returning to bed, I resumed sleeping.
The lessons about the power of eight continued with further dreaming.They were explaining how the power of eight was part of a balance. But now, instead of being in a class room, I was standing atop stairs. Others, like my wife, accompanied me, but they were incidentals. Dark, dark, dark cheery red, these steps were worn smooth. Like contoured hillsides of rice paddies, they extended in either direction, leading down to something that I couldn’t see. In fact, the only other thing seen was a blue grey sky.
I knew I was to go down the stairs, and I did. This was a learning expedition, and I felt pretty good about the whole thing. My wife and a few others accompanied me. At the bottom was a land, and people who…well, they identified themselves as the common people. They explained I was to kill two of them.
That shocked me. It could not be right. But no, they were comfortable with my intentions. I’d done it before and others did it, too. They liked the way I killed them, demonstrating empathy and kindness when I did. Besides, they told me, I often gave others gifts. Which was true, I remembered then, as I absorbed it all. On the way down, I’d left and given packages as gifts.
Then, my instructions were to return to the top of the stairs and resume my lessons in the power of eight. I returned to the top of the stairs and awoke, confused.
What in the hell is the power of eight, and how am I supposed to harness any of that dream information in this real existence?
At that point, I wanted to return to dream with instructions to myself to provide further explanation. But sleep eluded me. Instead, I thought about my recent state of mind.
It’s been that time of month, when I’m coping with my darkness. Essentially, my darkness has a mission statement that I’m to feel so depressed and miserable that I question, why the hell am I even alive? Arriving in this depressed state, I become all, J’accuse: Thou art a shite writer writing shite fiction. Nobody wants to read the hot sloppy piles that you write, so why do you torture myself with this pursuit?
I know, intellectually, I’m coping with an emotional state that affect huge swaths of population. None of that really helps. I’d been reading to manage it. In the marvelous way that the world works, I’d come across a T.C. Boyle interview and a John Scalzi post. Both helped bolster my resistance to quit.
2. The .357 Magnum. The second tip goes (if you’ll forgive me) hand-in-hand with the first. In recognition of the fact that all writers are manic-depressives, alcoholics, drug-addicts and fixedly specialized degenerates, it’s always helpful to keep a loaded pistol on your desk, perhaps located conveniently beside the ballpeen hammer, depending, of course, on the size of the desk. This acts as an aide-memoire, a spur to creativity and, of course, the ultimate solution to writers’ block.
The other post, by John Scalzi, was Rejection. He closed:
In the meantime, I’ve already sent a query off to another agent. You can’t sit around moping after a rejection, you have to rush into the arms of the next rejection. Because who knows? It might not be a rejection at all.
Heartening words, the words that every writer embraces, the essence being, who knows when you’ll get your break? It’s a strange brew where writers reside. As other writers have written, we’ve developed good taste about what we like to read, and we’re attempting to envelope that good taste in what we write in a difficult and often lonely, and solitary endeavor. And I, being of low self-esteem and a person who eschews attention, struggle with writing and wanting attention for what I write against being a solitary creature who is pretty happy writing in his isolation. It’s a messed up, strange brew. And again: I know I’m not alone.
I told my wife about my dream this morning.She suggested I hunt down meanings for the power of eight. Doing a web search, I came across Christine DeLorey’s website, Creative Numerology. She’d specifically written about ‘The Power of Eight’.
Reading her post reinforced my understanding of the dream. Frankly, I was startled by having such a dream and then discovering such explanation on the web. I’d wondered if I’d read about the power of eight before, and had simply regurgitated previously required knowledge.
I don’t know. My wife’s book club met last night. Their book in discussion was ‘Ordinary Grace’. As always, they investigated the author, William Kent Krueger. They’d discovered some good interviews with him that she shared with me, where he discussed his frustrations with writing novels and trying to become published. I mentioned that’s what writers, including me, are always seeking, that perfect strange brew where the good taste that we’ve acquired through reading is blended with the good taste we infuse in our writing, but also with the good taste that civilization displays by finding and reading our work. It’s a very, very strange brew, and none of us are sure of the exact ingredients.
But my wife closed, “Well, you can’t stop writing. Writing is part of the Perfect M. Writing is your drug, and it keeps you balanced.”
M is my private nickname, BTW, to clarify. I began using that initial to sign things like a zillion plus years ago and she adopted it as her term for me. But she’s right. I write because I need to write. Everything else is just the strange brew of being.
And now, since it’s the song that I sang to myself while walking down to write, here’s another shot at today’s theme song: ‘Strange Brew’, by Cream, 1967.
Michael Seidel, writer 