Tag: Incomplete States

Monthly Changeover

A new month has arrived. Hello? February, already? No way. Time continues to accelerate in an unseemly manner with months passing like weeks and hours flashing by like minutes.

I hypothesize that we each have time particles at a sub-atomic level in ourselves. Their interaction with others’ time particles and those embedded in other matter form how we perceive and use time, and how time treats us. We adhere to agreed standards for simplicity’s sake, but time is more personalized than realized. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it, at least for today. Someday, someone a lot smarter than me will figure all this out, and our thinking about time will undergo a monumental shift. For now, it’s one of those, we can’t make out the forest for the trees sort of perspective.

With the new month comes chores that rotate around the month’s arrival. Besides flipping over calendar pages, reviewing business plans, goals, and dreams, I also back up my writing work on something external that’s placed somewhere safe. While floppies of the five and a quarter and three and a half-inch varieties were used in the past, I moved on to zip drives, CDs, and now, flash drives.

Reviewing the month, I’m pleased with my writing progress, but I’m astonished that it’s taking so long to finish this quadrilogy, Incomplete States. I seem to be adding a new volume every few months; this week I was contemplating a fifth book in the series. Reining myself in, I sought ways to incorporate these new ideas into the fourth book being written. We’ll see how it goes. It’s not like the series is a raised garden bed, where everything must be contained. My motto is generally, write like crazy, and let the words go where they flow. I’m a trifled concerned; if I keep adding volumes like this, I’ll end up with something that rivals the Wheel of Time for the series’ length.

Now it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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POV

Writing from multiple personal points of view as I like to do is a fascinating exercise. Each character has a different interior voice and private agenda. Less than putting them on, I marinate in them.

It’s engaging to explore them as their personalities emerge and these voices and agendas become stronger. The longer I marinate (write from their POV), the move they develop.

I have broad strokes about each. Kanrin is quiet, patient, and thoughtful. He likes to wait for more information before saying anything, and is careful about what he says. Richard is verbal, veers toward narcissism, and often becomes petulant, childish, and jealous, characteristics that make him unpredictable. Pram has less complexity and is action oriented. Not being able to act drives irritation and anger in him, facets that the others know about him, which cause them to worry about Pram and distrust him. (He knows it, and that angers him more.) Handley is younger and more mellow, with simpler needs, and Brett is a weary, older human who just wants to have a beer, chill out, and let the universe pass by.

Then we have Philea.

Philea is a scientist. Today’s writing unexpectedly took me through Philea’s thinking about chi-particles, qubits, unitary transformation, and quantum superpositions. Philea, a character that I supposedly created, is far more intelligent than me. I struggle to follow her thinking and put it into words.

I say I supposedly created Philea because it’s possible that she exists elsewhere (in another time or dimension), and what I’m writing as fiction is being channeled from another life elsewhere. That’s one possibility; another is that I’m just crazy. A third is that I have created Philea, and trying to think like her forces me into deeper focus and thinking, which can be done for a short period, but is ultimately unsustainable for me.

I’m agnostic about which of these are the truth. Perhaps they all are, in that I created her, which actually generated another universe of existence (sound familiar?), which then evolved, and is now feeding my thinking from her through a channel from that universe. Pondering it is fun, challenging, and harrowing.

Philea’s thinking has worn me out. Enough writing like crazy for today.

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The Pacing

So here I am, forced to pace around the coffee shop again, because I can’t keep up with the speed of thinking and typing. Words are firing at me like a Gatling gun is at work.

I’m writing the third book of the Incomplete States trilogy, and I love its direction, but then my mind snaps back to book two, and I think, I need to add this, this, and this to book two.

That’s when I’m set into pacing in an effort to separate thinking about the two books, and organize thoughts and define changes to the plots and arcs. I catch glimpses. That’s sufficient for now, because I know that I can walk away, and let my brain work on it, and when I come back, it’ll provide answers and directions about what I need to do and how to go about it

Now, though, done. Spent. I want to keep writing, but I understand that I must balance that enjoyment and activity with the rest of living and being. So, time to stop writing like crazy.

For now.

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Arrows & Cut-ups

After writing and editing yesterday, I came across an article about the book, “The Naked Lunch”. It’d been decades since I read it, so I researched it to refresh my recollections. And I was curious about how the Beat Generation came to have that name, so I looked it up.

Before that, I’d been thinking about how my “Incomplete States” trilogy reminds me of “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant,” mostly on a reflection of the complexity and patience required to read through and develop the plot. Then, reading about Burroughs, I found descriptions of the “cut-up technique,” and that struck home with my trilogy’s structure. I don’t use a full cut-up technique of slicing two separate pages and combining them down the middle, but the vignettes – “routines,” as Burroughs called them when discussing “The Naked Lunch” – works as a beginning to explain my trilogy’s structure. My trilogy is a cut-up of lives and routines.

And of course, there’s a little bit of “The Chronicles of Amber” in here, too, and some “Foundation.”

After that thinking, as I wound down for the day, I played with my arrows of time again, creating and labeling new diagrams based on the original diagrams. That was a reassuring exercise, reminding me about time’s fluid nature, and the basic assumptions I used as the trilogy’s concept. The reassurance was needed because I’d veered toward panic about some decisions made when finishing the first novel. I want to be true to my vision, and not mislead readers, and I was afraid that I’d gone astray.

In the end, I felt satisfied that I hadn’t. Maybe I was just rationalizing that to myself. More likely, the stab of anxiety is a natural reflection of the challenge of coping with the trilogy’s complexity.

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

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Writing Weight

I have my coffee, and know my mission. I’m in position, and yet, I hesitate.

I know this neighborhood. Been here before.

It’s a big chapter I’m about to begin, a tipping point, the climax to this novel, and the setup to pivot to the next one. I’ve been thinking about this chapter and its scenes for weeks without writing anything, building all the bridges to it, and expanding and clarifying my vision of it. I hesitate to start it today because, it’s a big chapter, an important chapter. Looking into my magic writing mirror, I see a lot of hard work in it.

We have found the crux. I think of writing as fun and entertaining, a diversion from the mundane. The most mundane slice of life to me is the wedge we call work. Work is how I’ve come to see this chapter, so I’m avoiding it.

I’m also avoiding it because I expect so much of it for the rest of the novel. As written before this, I’ve burdened this chapter with a lot of weight. My ambitions, self-confidence, and determination all sag under that weight. That pesky question, can I do it, festers in my mind.

I think many writers go through this. I think this is where some crumble. This is like the big show because, hey, the novel’s end is in sight. Yowza. The end naturally carries greater significance and tension. This is the final exam, the championship game, the big moment. Everything else has led to this point. All these threads must be tied together. I began this manuscript in July of twenty sixteen. A lot of work, and energy went into creating this manuscript.

No, not true. I started this trilogy in July of twenty sixteen, and wrote the first novel, which is the second book in the series. That took from July of last year to September of twenty seventeen. I didn’t start the novel I’m finishing now until October of twenty-seventeen. That was less than three months ago, as I started it on October tenth. So, its three hundred-ninety pages and one hundred thousand words were quickly written.

As is often the case, I started writing in the middle of the tale I’m telling. I seized upon a concept, and visualized settings, characters, and action, and began. Then I approached the logic and the arcs. The answer to why appears a lot as I’m writing in that phase. In trying to answer the question, I figure out that I’ve started in the middle.

That doesn’t bother me. As long as I find a starting point and can create a beginning and an end to the novel or series, where I begin writing is immaterial. I suspect, too, that I’ll end up with several chapters from this one visualize. That’s the nature of my writing process.

And it’s funny. I’ve been through this before. Yeah, I know this neighborhood. I’ve written and finished nine, ten novels? Yet, I still experience this process. It’s fresh every time.

Okay, I’ve unburdened myself. Writing about my fears and doubts, and where I’m at, have again released them, carrying me to the point that I’m ready to write.

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

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Beautiful and Terrifying

In today’s writing metaphor, I’m weaving a trilogy.

I’ve been writing here in the coffee shop for two hours. I still have three-quarters of my drink remaining.

Sitting down to write, I opened a floodgate to the dam of words – sorry, another metaphor – and they gushed out. Again came an unanticipated scene, and a surprising pivot. With it came more tangible substance about the third novel, and what’s to happen in it. And with that, I began writing the third novel of the “Incomplete States” trilogy (previously known as “Long Summer”). Still have some to write with the first novel to complete the initial draft, though. I was reluctant to do it, and that’s when the weaving metaphor arrived.

Novel three didn’t have a working title. Creating the Word doc, I just called it Book Three. I didn’t want to slow down to think of a title. I just wanted to get those words into the computer. Between books one and three, I wrote one chapter in book one, and the kernal of a chapter in book three, about thirty-two hundred words total.

It’s been an excellent day of writing like crazy. It’s fucking exciting, even though it’s also sometimes beautiful but terrifying. I put it like that because I see and know the scenes and the arcs, but I don’t know the words and the details, and I worry that I’ll lose them before the trilogy is finished. It became such an intense experience that sometimes I needed to get up and walk around to vent enough energy to focus and type.

It’s fun and exciting, too, being in these stories with these characters, on vivid other worlds and starships. Sometimes, it feels like I’m there, experiencing it through them, and then returning to this life to record what happened. Crazy, right?

Yes. I guess that’s a side-effect of writing like crazy.

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Arrows of Time

I enjoyed this PBS article regarding the arrows of time. The article points (sorry, couldn’t resist) to conclusions I achieved on my thinking regarding the arrows of time formed when a wave-function collapses, back in March, 2017, when I filled twenty pages in my lab notebook with scribbling, after doing several days of research.

Of course, my writing is predicated on thinking and conclusions physicists developed through decades of thinking. I was just building on the backs of others. This article helps with confirmation that the thinking is sound.

My writing and thinking was part of the development of the Chi-particle. A Chi-particle has imaginary mass and energy, and travels faster-than-light, gaining real mass and energy as it slows. It’s also a necessary device for “Incomplete States,” my current trilogy in progress. Book One (“Kyrios) is nearing completion, while Book Two (“Moment”), featuring space-pirates, is almost finished. That just leaves Book Three!

Lots of fun to think and write about these things.

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How It Goes

I’m standing down from my writing session.

I was writing an intense scene. I had to build up to it. Kanrin and some of his team are down on Kyrios. He has one hundred team members. They’re divided into five platoons, which is the corporate standard. He doesn’t take them all down at the same time. No, he was taking three platoons, so he can rotate platoons in and out. They’re coping with not having their nanosystems and standard technology, which forces them to live in a primitive manner.

Getting to the point that I was ready to write this scene took a lot of set-up. I had to determine which three platoons were down there. Some members were sick; which? They’ve built a small fort with one main tower, and four perimeter towers. (They were built on the starship, Epitome, and then ferried down in sections and put together.) Each tower is manned with two people; I wanted to know who was in each one. Then came the details of what was happening, what happened to whom, and who said what.

Besides that, their resupply vessel, with the replacement platoon, is overdue. A storm strikes; some are killed. Who? What do they do with the bodies? It’s emotional for them, too. They’re accustomed to people dying and then being resurrected/resuscitated/regenerated, and back among them in less than a day. It’s a black scene that’s the beginning of a dark period. So much of it is visible to me, but I have to endure the tedious business of writing it, word by word, comma by comma, period by — well, you get it. Then, whatever happens to each character must be documented in the bible, so I can easily reference these facts and keep true and logical.

Twenty-five hundred words were written, a decent session, but I’m spent. My typing posture working on the coffee shop’s table was poor; I was hunkered over in concentration, and I feel it in my neck muscles.

Time to stop writing like crazy, at least for now, although the writer knows, I’m going to continue writing in my head. That’s just how it goes.

 

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A Pivotal Moment

Chapters finished, scenes drained out of me, I come to the next piece, the what happens next part of our show. This, for me, involves sipping coffee, reviewing notes, and staring fixedly at inanimate objects as I draw down the world, shut it out, and tune myself to the writers inside, waiting for one of them to clear their throat and begin telling me what happens next.

After review, I know where I stand, and where the novel stands, and where I’m next heading. I’m now pivoting to essentially part two of this section. This section begins with the genesis of this entire aspect of this volume. I’d created it August 4. I’d last modified it on August 8. It was a piece that came out of the darkness and rolled over me. As these things do, the piece created multiple questions about the setting, characters, plot, and situation.

To answer those questions, I began writing, and finished writing twenty-four chapters, one hundred eighty pages. Now, a little over two months later, I’m ready to pivot back to that first scene, and continue writing the story.

Of interest probably only to me, that first scene that I wrote has been deleted. It’s saved in another document. It was deleted because, within four days, I realized I was writing from the wrong character’s point of view. Another character had been created after that one, and they took over, demoting the original character to a minor role in the background. The original character didn’t put up a fight, but accepted the reduced role without a problem.

This is how I often work, not just in writing, but in almost every activity. My organization is strangely chaotic. Solutions and ideas leap at me, and I embrace them. But they usually reflect the end result desired, or some epiphany about what needs to happen within the project to enable the rest. Fortunately, generally, my mind works amazingly fast, especially when dealing with abstract matters. Yes, I’m being immodest, but it’s one of my favorite, and most dependable, traits. On the other end, it’s not unusual for people to write me off as a little crazy. I accept that, because I work with what I have, and what’s proven successful for me.

This is a pivotal moment. Action is moving the ship, the Epitome, and everything set up, down to the planet, Kyrios. The Kyrios action is grittier and darker. It’s complex. I’m intimidated with what’s planned for this section. As far as I know, it’s the second third of this volume. Parts of the end have already been written, serving as a light at the tunnel’s end.

Deep breath, and another gulp of coffee, and it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Today’s Theme Music

Do you have daily theme music, or music that highlights an activity?

My daily theme music is often a reflection of a momentary lapse of reason, or a thought in the nick of time. Themes vary through the day, though, mirroring moods and events. Sometimes I find myself with the themes from the television series “Mission Impossible” or “Sanford and Son” in my head.

The smoke levels dropped today. The A.Q.I. remains listed as unhealthy, but it seems much clearer and more comfortable. The air temp was a comfortable seventy-six F under partly cloudy skies. That allowed me to walk in comfort.

I wrote in my head as I walked around town (actually designing the Epitomy, the starship serving as base in “Black Dust”). Bonnie Tyler’s song, “Holding Out For A Hero,” accompanied my thoughts. The song was in a movie you might have seen, “Footloose,” in nineteen eighty-four, but it’s been used for multiple campaigns. Bonnie puts a lot into singing the song, which was written by the talented Dean Pritchford.

I could use a hero this year, not just in my novels, but in life. Maybe I just place an ad: “Wanted: principled individual to save the world.”

 

 

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