Tag: fiction writing

A Storm of Scenes

The muse had warned me, “Set aside expectations.”

Of course. Muses are always telling me that. I readily agreed. She was the muse. Lead on. That’s how it works.

“I’m serious.”

I didn’t doubt that.

“You need to discard preconceived notions. Drop them like they’re too much clothing on a hot, sunny day.”

Um…okay.

“Can you give me some clues about we’re where going, what’s going on, and all of that?” I asked. I tried not to sound miffed; I don’t want to irritate the muse. I know my place, but… “I am the writer, you know. It’s supposed to be my work.”

“You’ll know when you need to know.”

She was pretty damn haughty.

She was right, though. I’ve always enjoyed writing my novels. I’ve had a lot of fun writing them. They entertain me. The muses do usually lead in unexpected directions.

This one, though, has been wildly different. The writing and story-telling pace are much, much faster than usual. And as she warned, the scenes, characters, and ideas introduced are constant shocks, little that I expected.

It’s a storm of scenes keeping up with her. Write, write, write, faster, faster. Then, after writing, update the bible to ensure everything’s been captured as far as details so I’m not slowed down by searching for some detail later.

It’s tense, exhausting, and exhilarating, leaving me on a natural high that life just can’t match. It’s a shame, then, to stop. But stopping is required, to go on to do other things and deal with the mundane of existence as a married white American male in 2019.

Once again, it’s been a great day of writing like crazy. I highly recommend it.

0

Catching Wind

I encountered a friend last night. “How’s your writing going?” he asked. I’m paraphrasing the conversation.

As I’d been socializing more, I’d created an elevator answer for that question. “Great. Finished writing a series of five books last year, and then I edited and revised them, completing that at the end of the year, wrote a synopsis of the first novel, and compiled a list of agents for submission. Meanwhile, I’ve started writing a new novel.”

“You’re already writing another book? Don’t you need to take a break?”

“No. Writing is a pleasure. I didn’t need a break. Starting a new novel is always energizing.”

“How do you come up with ideas?”

“There are always ideas. Ideas come on from watching animals, the weather, people’s voices, expressions, and stories, newspaper articles, new inventions, dreams, reading, watching television, movies, music. Deciding which one to pursue is the challenge.”

“How do you decide?”

“It’s really about which one catches the wind and takes off. I don’t make a conscious decision about what to work on so much as I start writing. Then it comes out.”

Thinking about that today as I finish my day of writing like crazy, I reflect on all the story, novel, play, and musical ideas locked up in my mind, wondering which will ever be realized. I think if I physically could, I’d be writing twenty-four hours a day to satisfy my imagination and muses, and that still might not be enough.

Ironically, I dislike socializing. Socializing is an energy thief. It requires that I carve time out, set it aside, and focus on being polite, friendly, and speaking with others. All that is exhausting. Yet, inconveniently, socializing stimulates my writing ideas. Listening to people, watching them, and breaking out of my routines fire new ideas. There’s always a catch, isn’t there?

Now, sadly, time to stop once again. Bummer.

4

Icebergs

I was dealing with an iceberg yesterday. The iceberg in this instance was a story twist; I could see the tip but not the vast majority of it.

That’s what causes writing to be fun and challenging for me. I like seeing the tip of teh story and the concept and then imagining and writing to find the hidden depths.

people and then imagining what’s unseen underneath, discovering bravery and cowardice, honesty and betrayal under that tip.

The same is true with those characters. I often see and begin with the tip. Writing the story reveals the rest of the character’s iceberg. While I begin with a general idea of the character’s traits and their role, more becomes revealed as the story’s icebergs are explored.

Walking yesterday, and watching drivers making errors, I thought about how much we as people are ice bergs. I saw drivers making bone-headed errors in judgement. I had to remind myself that that was just the tip, and it wasn’t a matter of awareness, intelligence, or ignorance, that broad labels that I often misapply. I don’t know what mental, physical, and emotional issues are attacking them, what problems that they’re dealing with through meds, thought, or by fleeing. They might be driving, but we don’t know what’s happening in their brains and bodies.

Most of us are the same kind of icebergs on the outside, a typical bi-ped. Despite commonalities between us, like a body, two eyes and ears, and a head, things are different inside. Inside that head is a brain, and in that body are organs. Lots of chemicals are being produced and are being employed via neurons and neuro-transmitters and receivers.

It all doesn’t work the same, right? Have you seen any of the studies about the right amygdala and its size and activity in people who tend toward being conservative in their political views? Their right amygdala is larger and often more active. They tend to be more fearful, and tend to dislike change.

That doesn’t mean they’re cowards. Being fearful and being a coward aren’t the same.

The study also found that the amygdala’s activity could be shifted, and that shift affected people’s outlook. It all began with the observation that the United States became more politically conservative after the attacks of 9/11. A Business Insider article by Hilary Brueck best states it:

“The hypothesis social scientists developed about this effect is perhaps best summed up in a 2003 review of research on the subject: “People embrace political conservatism (at least in part) because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety, and uncertainty; to avoid change, disruption, and ambiguity; and to explain, order, and justify inequality among groups and individuals,” it said.”

A Yale psychologist, John Bargh, wrote about it in a new book, Before We Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do. Bargh explores how our brain’s responses affect our political views, and how that can be changed. For example, in one experiment, after a baseline about political views was established, an exercise was conducted. In the exercise, everyone was told to imagine they were like Superman. Bullets bounced off them. Fire couldn’t hurt them. They’d survive falls off a cliff without injury, and they could fly.

That exercise caused a dramatic change among conservatives and their responses, but no change among liberals. The exercise enabled conservatives to feel safer and less fearful, which triggered more compassionate and optimistic responses in their political views. They became more open to change, and more hopeful.

It’s something that we should keep in mind as we drive around and encounter one another. It’s not always about facts and logic, intelligence and awareness. We’re all icebergs, and what we see is only the tip.

It’s also something to keep in mind as we write about our characters and their motivations and actions.

Time to write like crazy and explore my icebergs, at least one more time.

0

So It Goes

I ended up doing a little editing and a lot of reviewing during my writing session today. It was wholly unplanned. Part of it was that the stories drew me in. I wrote what I liked to read, and I enjoyed reading it.

That’s the best part of this writing life, that I can read these things that seem to flow into me from somewhere else, and enjoy them. They seem like they’re far superior to my thinking and skills. Weird, right?

Time to call it on another day of writing like crazy.

0

My Character & Me

It’s apparently spring in my novel, because I’m experiencing a revolt. No blood has yet spread across anything. I don’t think it will. We’re pretty civilized here. Civilized people don’t kill one another to get their way, except in fiction…right…?

The main character and I are wresting with what’s going on in the novel. He’s moving into this new direction. Heavily dependent on technology, he insists on exploring how the loss of personal technology influences his behavior. He has become mentally, physically, and emotionally weaker. Although he’s staying fit and slender, he’s aging, and his energy level is drooping. He does not have the level of control with which he’s accustomed to living.

But he’s not seeing that in his people. Without technology, individuality is sprouting. His people see and hear better than him. Many have higher energy levels. Some are becoming bullies. While bullying had been psychologically and socially influenced over the course of time from now until the future, and diminished through socializing, technology in their recent history, those safeguards and safeties were removed when their nanotechnologies were removed.

Other emerging trends among his force are disturbing him. Binge drinking is becoming a problem. Without their sexes and free of their technology, people are becoming sexually active. Promiscuity is flowering. That’s causing jealousies and attachments that can affect discipline, good order, and the chain of command.

These changes, and how this unit copes with it, is the story, he insists. That’s what he believes should be written. I disagree; I sought more of an adventure story. I add elements of adventure, threats, and conflicts to increase that sense of adventure, but he keeps dragging me into psycho-analysis.

I dreamed about this problem last night. In the dream I was a military member on shift again. I’d been lazy and hadn’t completed the shift checklist. Hell, I didn’t know where to find it. I hadn’t inventoried the COMSEC materials, read the log, closed out the last log for the Zulu day, nor started another one, and shift change was coming on fast.

Anxiety suffused me; WTF was I going to do? 

Well, I started scrambling to make it right. But I was quickly sidetracked with my environment. It was disorganized, and poorly planned. I was appalled. Although I knew I was running out of time, organizing that place developed into my primary priority. Of course, once I did that, I developed a focus. Having a focus revitalized my energy level and determination, and wiped out my anxiety.

Pondering the dream this morning, I developed understanding that it wasn’t about my life, but the novel in progress. That bifurcation I experienced was causing anxiety because I didn’t know what the character was coming up with next. And, I’d developed him as a strong individual. I didn’t like seeing him losing his way.

Ah, hah, I understood, oh, there we go. This is about writing the novel in progress. My conflict with my character  —

Let’s put this more correctly. The change of direction in the novel from my original intention bothers me. With that, I’ve lost focus and energy. Thinking about this – because I write to help me think – I think my character is correct.

I know from reading others that many writers wrestle with characters taking over. Some dismiss it; they’re the writer, they’re in control, and they decree what gets onto the pages. I live and work through my characters on the pages. We’re partners more than master and puppet. Perhaps it’s due to my organic writing style, which, on reflection, can look as complicated as layers of spider and cobwebs. And it’s not like I haven’t been down this path before. I often begin with an idea that grows into something else.

Although it makes me uncomfortable, I’ll probably write what the character wants. Then I’ll edit it down to find a compromise we can live with.

Characters; they can be the worse.

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

0

Cheeseburger and Beer Ice Cream

I’m working on the chapter, “Ice Cream Headache”, which is part of the science fiction novel, “Long Summer”. I’ve been writing about the cheeseburger and beer ice cream that Carla once made for Brett.

Unlike many things in their society, her concoction wasn’t compiled, but was handmade. As an expert in Earth culture with an emphasis on the twentieth and twenty-first century in America, she likes sampling ‘the real thing’. The cheeseburgers are one inch in diameter, with real cheddar, bacon, onion, mustard and pickle, as Brett likes them. After freezing them, she made ice cream with Venus Mon IPA, folding the frozen cheeseburgers into it, “Just like they did in state fairs,” she says.

She scoops it into a malt cone ‘that she made herself’. Brett restrains himself from his observations about her use of bots. She’s always using bots but claims she does things herself. In a flash into the future, he knows he eventually tells her this, causing a rift that can’t be mended.

Before letting him sample the ice cream, Carla asks if his taste buds are turned off. See, the sensory input from taste buds in the future can be controlled so you never taste anything foul by your standards. But she wants him to have the real experience, not something filtered by his taste buds and his preferences index. He lies, telling her, “Of course, it’s off,” while checking with his systems to turn it off. Then he samples the ice cream.

The sample is not the one I described, but another one, a moderately dark chocolate flavored with bourbon, with small chips of bittersweet chocolate, nuts, and marshmallows and swirls of salty caramel. This is one of the problems with being shuffled through moments of now. One thing is being experienced and then details change.

For some reason, after writing all of that, I now want a cheeseburger and beer, followed by some ice cream.

Time to go eat.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑