Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Bright sunshine storms the world outside the coffee shop window. Yes, it’s a sunstorm fronting a blue sky, a cruel thing. Exerts the kind of pull felt when he was a teenager and a girl asked him to come to her house to listen to music.
He’s here to write. Edit. Just thirteen months into the novel in progress. Third revision session. Halfway through. Must be done.
With a promise to the day, I’ll join you later, he opens the novel and resumes.
It’d been an eyeblink. He’d been writing like crazy. He swears that he felt like he just sat down and opened the docs, delving into the novel, picking up the pieces of where he is and where he was going.
Coffee remains in his cup, but it is cold. This is an icy day, and the cold coffee doesn’t entice him. His rear end resents the chair’s hard seat. He has no idea how much he wrote and revised. Three more chapters were added and edited, other sections put under the editing grinder and polished, ensuring these new pieces fit smoothly as possible for this draft.
Time to stand up, stretch, and breathe. Back to life.
Back to reality.
He smiled as The Neurons remembered that song and stuck in his music stream. Fortunately, coffee shop music flowed in and overpowered the Soul II Soul song.
He wondered, though, will it show up in tomorrow’s morning mental music stream?
Winds hissed and howled, moaned and whistled last night. Rain splattered against the night world. Our young cat, Papi, wanted out, back in quickly, back out – hey, let’s try the front – and back in, etc. The cat’s demand fractured my sleep. Some time was then spent on writing the end of the novel but sleep finally hit. With it came dreams.
My wife and I were younger looking but in our current life situation, otherwise known as retired people. We were at a new place. Many of the buildings were white and brand new. She and I walked about it like astonished tourists taking in world wonders. News came by spoons, this was a new city. Not huge but neither was it small, its focus was about solving world issues. The mix of ethnicities and sexes impressed me, convincing me that this was a united effort across many races and nations. Engineers, architects, artists, and military members were among the people we met and saw, along with farmers and ranchers, all identified to us by what we saw them doing or what was overheard mentioned. Then came congratulations to me because I was part of this, brought on to help organize it. Well, super, I was flattered as hell but doubtful that I belonged. Insistence that I did was pushed on me by multiple folks. Well, okay, I guess I belong.
Next, we were elsewhere, traveling before going to the new place. Part of that meant I was meeting with others. We met on a stage. They were going to exercise before the formal handoff meeting. Did we want to join?
I did, but my wife didn’t. She wandered off as our impromptu class stretched and warmed up, awaiting our instructor. My stretching astonished me. Balanced on one leg, I raised the other above my head with ease. Wow, was I impressed. I jumped up and down and found I needed to be careful or I would crack my skull on the ceiling. Somewhere within those actions, I decided to change and poof, was changed into form fitting light gray workout clothes with a white headband. The instructor arrived but too much time was passed. My wife arrived, informing me that we had to go on because we were meeting other people in another city.
Zip, we were in the new city at a semi-formal event. Senior military people were there in large numbers. The spouse and I experienced minor confusion about what was going on and why we were in attendance. Servers circulated with trays of drinks. We accepted wine and champagne. Sipping drinks, we milled, meeting others, getting introduced. One young colonel who was a bald black man mentioned the new city in conversation. I responded that we knew about it.
His eyes widened. “You know of it?” When I said yes, he questioned me in an easy manner, confirming that we spoke about the same place and that I really knew about it. I finished by telling him, “We’re going to live there. I’ve been asked to join the staff.”
A smile split his face. “Wow,” he said. “Congratulations.” He thrust his hand at me. I shook it, grinning. As I did, I looked left. A small white model of the new city was on display. My wife stood beside it. I thought, that’s pretty cool. That’s where we’re going, to a new city and a new beginning.
Two writing moments which he really enjoyed happened today. One was a stimulating story idea. It landed without any warning in his head, blowing his mind in multiple ways. Excited, he wrote it up. Something to do later. Ideas for novels and stories were always landing but this one felt really special. He didn’t want to forget it.
The second moment came as he wrote in the novel in progress. His character’s situation and the character’s thinking resulted in a sentence which made him laugh out loud at the coffee shop table.
Yes, it was a fun writing day. Cold and wet, with rain turning to snow and back again, but terrific fun. Coffee done, it was time to shut down the writing like crazy for the day.
He was enjoying himself. He was working and revising, either the third or fourth draft, although an incomplete draft. The ending was tentatively written but he needed to reach that point, had to bridge yet the first huge chunk — four hundred pages — He had an urge to rush it but there was a lot to still be told. Patience, he kept telling himself. Patience.
Yes, he was still learning the story. The story fascinated him, and he was having a good time learning it. Someday, maybe he’d know the whole.
Typed the final words to the novel in progress, The Constant, this morning. Was as satisfying as a cosmic orgasm or a cold beer on a blazing summer day.
For the record, this was the seventh draft. I started it in April of 2020. Just under one hundred five thousand words of speculative fiction. I wanted to finish it before 2022 but I was doubtful that would happen back around Thanksgiving. I shrugged off the hope and kept writing.
The elevator pitch goes, “This novel is about a television gunfighter in a dystopian civilization on another planet. Or maybe not.”
Feels odd to not need to write like crazy for the moment, though. Of course, other novel ideas are queueing up, eager for their computer screen time. Guess I’ll suck on some coffee and contemplate it all.
Cheers
With writing, I’m often stymied as I await the muses’ participation. These past two weeks, I’ve turned it around on them. Writing steadily, finding the path each morning, I keep the final destination in mind. Quiet and watchful, the muses gather around me. “Where you going with this?” they keep asking.
Chuckling, I tell them, “You’ll have to wait and see.”
It’s nice making them wait to see what happens next. I feel like the novel in progress in almost at an end (draft five). I edit and revise as I write, grinding down the story, molding and shaping it. Not to jinx anything, but I have a good rhythm formed for now, generally writing a bit, then going off, reading, doing housework or other things, then returning to write more, then editing. For now, I’m focused on finishing this draft. In the meanwhile, a solid grasp of what I’m going to do in the next editing stage has crystalized.
It’s been thirteen months since I began writing this one. Writing it required process changes driven by social distancing and coffee shop shutdowns. I used to leave the house, walk to get into the writing mode, then enter a coffee house, sit with my laptop, and do the deed. I’ve had to adjust. That was a surprising challenge. I’m pleased (but anxious) that I could adjust.
Pleased and anxious remains the watch words for writing this. I worry and fret, then tell myself not to worry and fret, just write, but yet, worry and fret, hunting through words, finding my way. It’s surprising to see that I’m at five hundred and ten Word pages, 145K words. I’ve already done some cutting but more is due once the ending is reached.
Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Oh, what a writing dream. It was a dark venue, inside somewhere. Lights were small and focused. I could see myself off to one side with a notebook and pen at a table. I was writing, but the book’s actions were playing out on a stage as I wrote. I appeared to be a giant beside it. What I wrote surprised. I’d been thinking about the novel in progress as I drifted to sleep and scenes that were to come. In the dream, though, things took a sharp turn. Little mischievous creatures took over. Pale white, short and squat, they were sexless, with no eyes and big smiles. Then I realized in the dream, “There are four of them?” I was trying to fit four into the scheme. Awakening, I thought about this, and then discovered I was dreaming about thinking about the dream, experiencing it as a dream in a dream, prompting thoughts of nesting dolls. Another voice announced with a chortle, “That’s the muses having fun.” Then I really awoke, wondering, WTH?
After writing yesterday and while preparing to write today, I was reflecting about why writing is so hard for me, and why it takes so long.
The other morning — Thursday, I think, not really important, though — a muse laid a scene out for me. It was a revelatory moment for the novel in progress.
Whoa. Excitement jumped me like Olympians taking the hurdles. Great scene. I saw it all.
First, though, I saw it with characters that didn’t exist yet. Of all the confounded characters who’d already arrived, this was a new batch, in a new setting. Okay, cool, no problem. I saw how the scene and characters (and their baggage) fit into the novel. I could deal.
I began writing. Well, new characters need some kind of understanding about their traits, principles, and back story. So I mulled that while writing. More details to the general novel were discovered. The bible was updated with these new characters and the setting. All of it was a stimulating exercise.
Meanwhile, I kept writing. Things the muse hadn’t shown me before were revealed. I dealt with those details and kept going, exploring this new territory. I’d write some, go off, do chores or take a walk, come back and write, eat, go off, etc., repeat.
This morning, I thought, alright, I’m almost in sight of the revelation. The original scene still hung like a jewel before me, beckoning on. As I approached it, though, I put it all on pause to look.
Damn, thirteen new characters (five of them fleshed out as more than minor characters), their relationships, and three new facets of perspective via history and organizations. Four chapters, five thousand words. That doesn’t include the bible stuff.
All that to get to one scene.
Which is how the whole fiction writing thing works for me. See something, invent something plausible to explain how it fits, wedge it in there, and begin connecting it to the other stuff.
But that it takes so long, and why writing is hard work for me.
Got a fresh cuppa coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 