Tag: Incomplete States

Suddenly —

Suddenly, it seems, I’ve completed editing and revising the second book, Entangled States. Suddenly, it’s time to begin editing and revising the third book of the Incomplete States series, Six (with Seven). 

You’d think it wouldn’t seem sudden. I work in MS Word. I have the navigation panel open. I always knew what chapter and page I was on, and how much remained. It all seems sudden because I was underwater in the process. Finding no more to edit and revise, I surface and suddenly, there I am, done with another, ready to begin the next.

It’s an amazing feeling of joy and satisfaction. Suddenly, the sunshine seems brighter, the sky is bluer, and the future seems brighter.

Time to end another day of writing editing like crazy.

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Findings

Editing and revising the second book, Entangled LEREs, is about ninety percent completed. I’ve come to a challenging chicane where the disparate stories and characters are brought together to race into a new direction, which is where the third book, Six (with Seven) begins.

I find that as I edit the beta draft, creating the first draft — something other humans can read and comprehend, rather than streaks of coherency marred by stretches of babble — that I refine my quest about what I want from the story. In the beginning was a concept. Characters jumped out. Ideas jumped in. Arcs were spun. Lives and plots were developed and explored.

Now I’ve sharpened my understanding of what I wrote from the morass of thoughts, energy, and application that we call fiction writing, and I crystallize goals about what I’m exploring, and think, this is what I want to do with this book, and this is what I want to do with this series. As I’m just reaching the series midpoint, that might change again. Unlike other times that I thought things about the series and books and documented them in Epiphany.doc to help me understand, I understand enough that I’m not impelled to write this up. Incomplete States is moving from imagination-ware to a concrete state. Its becoming tangible. Recording isn’t required.

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

 

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Grounding Myself

Here we go, more self-indulgence. What’s new? This is a vanity blog with a primary purpose of understanding myself and my thinking through writing and coping with my writing efforts, with secondary purposes of entertaining myself and sharing ideas with others.

I struggled with how much to share today. I’m telling what the series, Incomplete States, is about. I decided that I typically don’t have many visitors, so I have little to worry about. I expect this post to get eight views and five likes, and perhaps two comments.

I was thinking about all of this in connection with where I stand with editing and revising the second novel, and by extension, the series. I felt a need to ground myself about where I’m at in the series, where it is, and where it goes.

To begin, consider three questions.

  1. Do you ever feel disconnected from your life, as though things have happened that you don’t remember or understand?
  2. Have you ever thought, didn’t I already do this?
  3. Is there ever a time that you feel like you’re a completely different person, resulting in a struggle to fit in? Perhaps you think, I was a male, and now I’m a female.

If you feel that you’ve experienced these things, it’s possible that you have an entangled LERE. A LERE is a Life-Experience-Reality-Existence. Entangled LEREs are caused by Chi-particle issues. Chi-particles are imaginary quantum particles that are lack mass and energy and travel faster than light. As they slow, they acquire mass and energy, becoming a fundamental quantum particle before devolving into some aspect of classic physics. Chi-particles exist as isotopes and variants just as elements often exist as isotopes and variants, which affect their behavior.

This is the situation that my characters experience in the four book series, Incomplete States.

I was exploring and thinking about the series as I walked this morning. Specifically, I thought, oh my God, what have I done? 

No, that’s not true. That was inserted for comedic effect. It’s sometimes true that I think this, but that wasn’t the case today.

Today brought a more rational review of the books and the story arc. I’d conceptualized, what if there is only now, no past, no future, and no cause and effect? What if the arrows of time are a convenient commodity we use to explain our existence (including our Universe) because it fits with our organic biology and creates a simple framework for being?

When I think about this, I’m forced to think about multi-verses, but also to challenge the ideas that our Universe is expanding. We believe we observe its expansion through light shifts because that cause and effect is the prevalent belief of our existence, along with the arrows of time that go from the past to the future, shooting through now. In my reality, E = mc2 is a fallacy that we cling to because it fortifies our foundations of being.

We hang onto the concepts of a greater being in the same way.

None of these things are easy to lose. Grappling with not accepting them and actively rejecting them is hard to keep in mind when you’re writing. I kept wanting to return to cause and effect and our universe’s foundations.

As I played with those concepts, I introduced characters who were undergoing the symptoms expressed in the opening questions. Unlike you, they often also remember what else happened. They remember other worlds and other lives that they lived and then come to a grudging grasp that they’re still living in these other worlds and lives.

All of this is told through their stories. Throughout, the things that happen to them cause gaps in logic, cause and effect, and expectations. They endure twisted memories and confused understanding, resulting in a knowledge vacuum.

Humans dislike vacuums. We always want to explain what’s going on via some mechanism. That mechanism can be via magic, religion, science, and technology. Those are the broad categories. People also suspect they live dream existences, but struggle to understand which part of their LERE is the dream existence, and which is the reality, coping with the possibilities that maybe both are dreams, or maybe both are realities. They struggle with plots to explain what’s happening to them, plots that involve governments, conspiracies, virtual realities, and other intelligent life forms.

The existences, experiences, and coping become a huge matrix, but the matrix is different for each of the six main characters. The delta between their matrices fluctuates.

That’s where the tension resides, evolving into wonder about which theory filling the vacuum is correct, and how the stories will resolve.

I had several writing rules I employed while writing these four books. Chapters were addressed as episodes. Cause and effect can be perceived, but readers can’t depend on it. Consistently inconsistent logic would be employed. Life — or reality — is a vacuum, and our search for understanding and explaining it all is a farce. What we interpret as life through our experiences forms a reality that’s a slice of existence that doesn’t linger.

I don’t treat my science as junk science. I treat it seriously in the novels. I don’t expect it to hold up to scientific reviews or validate string theory, loop quantum gravity, or the theory of everything. I offer no math to support my science, although I’ll point out that in my concept, anything anyone offers to support or tear down my science is wrong because of the inherent observer’s bias held by being in and part of this universe.

Yeah, it’s fun. It makes me laugh. That’s what writing’s all about, innit? Entertaining ourselves.

Hopefully, after reading the series, the typical reader will think, “I see.” And then they’ll wonder, “But what is it that I see?”

 

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Crystallizing

I can certainly tell that Entangled LEREs was the first book written in the Incomplete States series. (Back then, the working title was The Long Summer.) I’m a third of the way through it in the initial editing and revising process, and I’ve deleted four chapters. Those chapters, written while I was exploring and developing the novel’s concept, no longer fit the overall story arc. To keep them in would be indulging myself.

So, off they went. The muse(s) didn’t argue at all, so I must have made the right decisions. Still, I saved each chapter intact as a file, with a note about where they came from, and updated the Editing Checklist to show what I did, and why.

The chapters were fascinating remnants of the genesis of the initial concept and the finalized concept. I remembered struggling daily as I wrote, trying to decide, what is this novel about? As the finalized concept crystallized, one novel became two novels, and then burgeoned into a series. Characters and their tales, plot twists and settings all arose. I didn’t include everything; sometimes I knew that what I was writing was writing to think, exercises to help me understand what I was learning and where I was going. They were saved, too, just in case I later veered.

In point of fact, the largest document of the twenty-five documents (including the four books) I created while developing this series is the document called “Circle (working doc)”. At five hundred pages, it’s one hundred ten thousand words and seventy-nine chapters. Some of the chapters made their way into the beta version of the four books. Many have notes about my intentions when they were written about where they should be in the narrative. Several of the chapters were written as snapshots of action, outcomes, or discussions between characters to help me understand the story arc but included information that I felt shouldn’t be ‘given’ to the reader.

They might still end up in the final first draft of the four books. I don’t know, and won’t know until I’ve completed this phase of editing and revision.

That’s what it’s all about.

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Nerves

I’m nervous as I’m editing this second book in the Incomplete States series. The series’ first book, Four On Kyrios, was straightforward for the most part. This book, Entangled LEREs, is well-named, with entangled stories and characters. It reminds me of Slaughterhouse Five meets The Sound and the Fury, Cloud Atlas, and Lincoln in the Bardo. Editing becomes intense for me. I imagine readers asking themselves and the book, “What’s going on? I don’t understand.” Makes me want to revise it to make it clearer and more linear.

The muses push back against that impulse and insist that I don’t change anything. And there it goes, I’m cringing and sweating, thinking, what am I doing? “Trust us,” the muses urge. In response, I hold my head and rub my forehead and temples, and think, pitting desire to change things against the muses’ directives.

The muses remind me, “You’re in the middle of the series. Don’t make any major changes until you’ve gone through all four books.” Right, because the mud settles later, and it all becomes clearer. These are mysteries in mysteries, all part of the concept and story. Yes, I remember writing these chapters and battling the muses about it back then.

Man, it makes me nervous, though. My jaw hurts from gritting my teeth. Should a writer have such a love/hate relationship with their muses and the novel in progress? I remind myself that I was going all in, that, yes, I knew when I was writing it that it would be way out there. I remember those battles with myself from back then. I hope readers can get through it and find the effort rewarding. Even as I nurture that hope, I remind myself, I write for myself. I’m my only guaranteed audience.

I think it’s time to call it a day.

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Going On

Have you ever seen a movie or read a book about a prisoner who uses a spoon or other small implement to chip away their rock or cement prison and eventually escape? I was thinking about that the other day as I was editing Entangled LEREs and realized, that’s not how it feels editing the second book in the Incomplete States series.

It also doesn’t feel like I’m struggling to move the needle. Nor does it feel like I’m climbing a mountain or swimming an ocean.

It feels pretty damn good.

I miss writing like crazy each day, truly. I resent, too, that it’ll take sooooo looong before these novels will be published. By ‘sooooo looong’, I mean like months or more. Yes, I’m indulging in some hyperbole to expose my natural impatience.

I’m not good at this persistent, slow stuff. I eat fast, drive fast, think fast, and talk fast. I like doing things fast. I like being intense and immersed.

But, I’m enjoying this leisurely editing and revising. I’m reading other books as I edit, novels that are best sellers or prize winners, prizes like the Man Booker, Peabody, and Pulitzer, or books by authors who won a Nobel Prize for Literature. I used to avoid reading such lofty others while I’m writing or editing. Correcting myself, I used to avoid reading most published literature while I was reading and writing because I often felt that my writing could never achieve such heights, and it depressed and demoralized me.

I’m more confident about it now. While I still enjoy and admire the aforementioned sort of books, I’m not cringing from my efforts when I go back and forth between the two. More often, when I find something special by someone else that I’m reading, I pause to understand the passage’s impact on me and explore what the author did and how they did it, hoping that I can learn how to do it.

The process has helped. I can see improvement in my writing. I sometimes find beauty or insights in my work that startles me.

Like many writers, I’ve found that writing is a progression. With a little talent and heavy loads of persistence and determination, we can improve what we’re revealing and how it’s revealed as we tell the stories that flow through us. This progression shines in the editing process. Further away from the fiery crucible of creativity where the flow is so intense, I can apply the lessons that I perceive. I’m more mindful. While I’m doing this, my appreciation for the diverse processes of writing/creativity and writing/editing/revising increases. As with many facets of our existence, it’s a spectrum.

Of course, on the obverse of this coin, when I read portions of my earlier published works, I cringe. There’s a plan afoot to edit and revise some of that stuff stirring in my head. What’s that? Don’t look back? You might have a point.

Time to resume editing like crazy.

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“Four On Kyrios”

I’m feeling breathless, worried, and giddy today. You probably suspect that it’s the smoky air because I’ve been complaining about the wildfire smoke so often in July and August. Well, you’d be wrong, suckah. We have good air today.

I’m breathless and giddy because I completed the first draft of Four On Kyrios today. The novel has officially made the transition from beta to first draft. At the same time, I received feedback from two friends who volunteered to read the beta version as a second pair of eyes. They’d finished reading the manuscript and offered their comments. Both were enthusiastic and are ready to read the next book in the series. That pleases me, but I’m worried because, as a writer, I’m unique among writers, and worry whether others who read what I wrote will describe it as gilded garbage.

That was decent sarcasm, wasn’t it?

Four On Kyrios is the first book of the Incomplete States series. It didn’t take me long to read, edit, and revise it. I attribute that speed to several points.

One, it was the third book in the series to be written. That advantage means that a great deal of thinking about the concept, plot, background, and setting was already completed.

Two, I edit and revise as I write. My organic writing process drives this pattern. Writing what’s already written helps me connect with the muses and continue discovering and telling the story. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I fix grammar, punctuation, pacing, and continuity issues when they’re discovered. (Are you surprised?)

Three, Four On Kyrios is the smallest of the four novels in the Incomplete States series. MS Word clocks it at ninety thousand words and three hundred seventy-five pages.

Four, of the four novels, it has the simplest plot and the fewest characters. Those factors keep it easy to read and edit.

As this is the first novel in a series of four, it’ll stay in first draft status while I read, edit, and revise the others.  The four books were written to tell one larger tale, so they’re interconnected. I came out of the editing and revising process with one page of notes. Some are reminders, a few are continuity questions, and the rest were issues. All of the issues except two were resolved. They’ll remain open until I complete the other three books.

Most of the changes in the novel were more about expanding some scenes to slow down and let the characters breathe. I’ve been reading a lot since I finished the beta draft of the four books. Reading others’ published novels impact my ‘sense’ of the book. To me, this is the instinct we develop as writers because we read. It’s a feel for what seems right and correct about something we’re reading. It’s about flow and story-telling.

Just for the record, I’ve read Lincoln in the Bardo, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Godless, The Midnight Line, Time’s Eye, and Diary in the past few weeks after finishing the first three books of the Dire Earth Cycle. I’m now reading The Pagan Lord and The Order of Time and searching for The Triggerman’s Dance. I think La Rose might be up next on my reading, though. The Order of Time is a fascinating book about time, physics, and quantum mechanics by Carlos Rovelli. I don’t agree with all of his points, but it’s fun thinking about them.

Now, on to the next novel in the Incomplete States series, Entangled LEREs. I’ll begin editing and revising it tomorrow. Right now, though, my stomach is posting orders for something to eat.

I think I shall comply.

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Beta to First Draft

I miss writing like crazy every day. I’m editing and revising instead, trying to turn the beta iteration of the first novel in my Incomplete States series into the first draft. My imagination is chaffing. It doesn’t like being shut down.

To say ‘It’s going well’ is so sloppy to the thinking, writing, and creative process that I eschew using it. What those three words mean is that I haven’t encountered any “OMG WHAT IS THIS CRAP?” moments. I’m enjoying reading the novel. Not many changes have been required, although there are some notes on potential changes to make later, depending on what happens in the next three books in the series. They’re waiting their turn.

Writing like crazy is the fun, addictive part. That’s what I like about writing, spin up the imagination and release it on hyperdrive. Every day, my muses and writing addiction attempt to trick me with the “Let’s write something else today” game. But I know me. This part is necessary. I was thinking last night, I have ten other unpublished novels that I wrote and completed as a first draft that I never did any more with because I prefer the writing-like-crazy excitement over the “Let’s edit and revise this mother into something presentable” stage where I now dwell.

So, yeah, this must be done. And yeah, I remind myself, I need to attend the business end of advertising and so on for the other novels published because they will not sell themselves.

Covers are done for the four books. Yes, I know, why are the covers done if you don’t have a first draft completed? It’s a carrot thing. Having the covers help me visualize the completed novels as something tangible. And I wanted to have covers, so nah-nah-nah, I made some. Yes, I made them.

Changed the first novel’s title too. Kyrios wasn’t working for me in the completed visualization process so the title became Four on Kyrios. Who knows what it’ll end up being? That title feels right for now but it felt right with the last title, didn’t it?

Time to edit like crazy. Just doesn’t have the same feel to it, does it?

 

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As Always

Done writing like crazy for today. 

Done writing like crazy on Incomplete States. I finished the beta version of the series today when I wrote the last words of the chapter that bothered me.

I went through it today, and it didn’t bother me as much as I remembered. It worked better than I realized. So, okay, it’s acceptable for now. We’ll see once the first draft of the series is finished.

I began this series with a half-assed concept on July 16, 2016. It was just supposed to be one novel with a working title, The Long Summer. I didn’t expect to be working on it for over two years, but as I explored the concept and it grew, so did the novel. As I learned the story, I learned that there were a few more novels to it. I realized it was a series. And, as I wrote, I realized, as many writers do (as Thomas Weaver reminded me), I didn’t start at the beginning. That forced me to go find the beginning.

Now the four books and the series are completed, in a beta version. The fun part, the most exciting part, the creative part that lets me gulp down coffee and write like crazy, is completed. Now work is required. Revision and editing.

Revision and editing is fun in its own way. I know from editing and revising other novels, what I wrote will surprise me. Hopefully, that’ll be so this time, and the story will engross me.

Starting that will need to wait until tomorrow. I feel comfortable going back and reading the first book tomorrow because I began writing it last October and finished its beta version in January of this year. It’s been a few months, time enough for it to slip out of mind so that I can look at it with fresh eyes.

As always, as expected, I experience a spectrum of emotions with being done with this phase. I’m elated. Writing a novel or a series is challenging. It takes some fortitude, discipline, hope, and persistence. Finishing one is satisfying because I established a goal and achieved it. I also feel a little free, because a burden has been lifted. I’m anxious, too, because now I need to edit and revise it and put my baby out there.

As always, too, I feel sad. The fun part is over. That was amazing. The writing process often presented unexpected twists and turns in what I was writing. I feel privileged to enjoy such a creative process.

Now, too, as always, not having the series to write means changes to my daily routine. Change is always a challenge, so I need to work through that.

As always when writing that first effort, it’s been a ride.

Now, as always, my ass is in a little pain from sitting for so long. I’m hungry, too. The day has moved on without me, and I need to go out there and catch up. To use a favorite final line from a favorite author, novel, and series, “Good-bye and hello, as always.”

Later.

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Writer’s Strike

I was contemplating going on strike this morning. Why not? I can, can’t I? My muses and characters go on strike when they’re disenchanted with the story. Isn’t it fair that I also go on strike?

I do not like the chapter I’m working on. It’s almost finished. The characters and muses agree, yes, that’s the chapter. It’s perfect.

My reaction is, I respectfully think you’re fucking nuts.

I’m aware that I am the writer, that the characters and muses are imaginary constructs that exist as part of my writing process. (Well, I hope that’s the case.) It’s a subject that takes me into an existential hole. I’m the writer, and I think, therefore I write, but I always seem to be driven by the muses and characters’ preferences and decisions. When I stumble in my writing, it’s generally because the characters object to the story’s direction, or the characters’ development.

This, I think, is turnabout is fair play. I object to what they’re doing. I don’t like it. There isn’t a writer’s block involved. The characters gleefully push their words their my fingers, and we make great progress toward the conclusion. So, it’s not a block. It’s a disagreement.

Frankly, the situation has been developing for a few weeks. Just a few days ago, I was complaining about my characters’ tendency to talk things over. I wanted action. No, they needed to talk it out. Well, they’re the characters, right? I’m just the writer. Despite our artistic differences, I yielded to them.

I’m going to yield to them this time, too. Because, number one, I feel the urge to write like crazy. I don’t like what I’m writing, but I feel obligated to write it. This brings up a couple questions. One, is it totally insane that I feel obligated to write it? Two, do I need to like what I’m writing?

I answer the first question, yes, you’re fucking nuts, but that’s not a problem, per se, and I answer the second one, but if I’m writing for me, shouldn’t I like what I’m writing? This prompts some internal dialogue between me, myself, and I, and the suggestion that maybe I do secretly like it, but I’m worried about how readers might react.

Interesting.

I’ve not put on my reader’s persona to address the issue because it’s just too early. It makes no sense to read this as a reader when I haven’t completed it as a writer. It’s a work-in-progress.

I console myself that this is the beta draft, not even the first draft, dude. I also console myself that many writers think their first draft is crap. So, you know, write the crap that the characters and muses are pushing, and then revise and edit the hell out of it once it’s written. Despite my disagreement with my muses and characters, getting it written remains the key. That’s my function as the writer. The mantra is, get it written. The mantra is, you’re still learning the story. 

Okay, now that I’ve vented, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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