Kim Said
This Phase
I began a new novel project at the beginning of the new year, April Showers 1921. I’m in the exploratory phase. While the character, story, and its cover popped up in a dream, and I can see it and hear the characters and story, sometimes ‘watching it’ like I’m seeing it on a television or movie screen. Then I’m scrambling to capture all the details, translate them to words, get the order right, and get it on paper.
It’s difficult. The pace is fast and relentless. My brain power lacks the capacity to absorb it. Stopping to do and enjoy other things is hard because novel scenes are always popping out. Details spring into mind in the middle of conversations with other people. When I’m in an actual writing session and everything is channeled into a coherent order, the inexorable flow quickens. The faucet is opened but I have no control over the volume that pours into me. Becoming intense and exciting, I fall behind again, forcing me to break off and pace to regain control, take a deep breath, and go at it again.
I also want to jump ahead to learn more about the villains. They intrigue me, but my muses are being coy about them. They offer tantalizing glimpses but won’t let me see the whole thing yet.
Yeah, weird, but it’s my process. If I could, I’d just stay here with this novel, hour after hour, watching, listening, shaping and writing. I’d probably deprive myself of sleep and exercise, but not coffee, water, and food – a man needs to know his limitations.
I remind myself of my basic writing approach.
- Discipline: write every day.
- Patience: it’ll all come. Just keep writing.
- Persist: stay with the story and keep moving it forward.
- Write like crazy: capture what I can as I can, and then edit, polish, revise, and re-order scenes and paragraphs as necessary.
- Finish. The goal isn’t just to write but to tell a story in a novel.
These sessions leave me spent, as you can probably understand. I vex others because most energy is being diverted into writing this novel while I submit my last finished work to agents in search of publication.
The coffee shop is closing, and they’re kicking us out. It’s their usual Sunday thing. Done writing like crazy, at least for now.
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.
#AWL
Time for a rant. Are you ready, boys and girls? Point of order, sir, but this is as much a whine as it is a rant.
Okay, point accepted. I’m full of complaints and do a lot of poor, poor, pity poor me first-world blues rants. This is another. That aside, let’s rant.
I’ve written fifteen novels.
People say, “Fifteen? Really?”
Yes, sure, but that’s a number. There’s a story behind the number. There’s an asterisk beside it.
The first novel, as with many writers, was five-star crap. In the crap world, five-stars means it’s the worse possible crap. There’s no crap that exceeds its crappiness. It was an experience, though, that helped me understand more about my writing process.
Knowing that it needed more attention and focus than I was willing to give it, I printed out the stack, along with editing notes, and put it on disks, and set it aside. Someday, I’ll return to you, I promised it.
“Point of order, sir, but, despite that quantity, maybe you’re not a very good writer.”
Thank you for pointing that out. You’re right. That might be the case. I’m trying to do the best that I can. I keep trying to improve.
“Another point, sir.”
What now?
“Isn’t this really about your laziness and unwillingness to learn?”
Excuse me, but who are you? How did you get in here? Out, out, damn you.
Being obstinate, I proceeded to write five more novels. They were probably three-star and four-star crap. I knew where they had problems and what needed to be fixed. I didn’t want to fix them, because I wanted to write more and I didn’t want to bother with editing and revising. I liked writing, not editing and revising. I promised, someday I’ll edit them, but I knew that model a novel and setting it aside for editing and revising at a date TBA was unsustainable.
The next novel that I wrote, I said, “I must edit and revise this one. I need to learn that discipline.”
So, I did it. Yea, me! Sure. I then sought agents. I followed all of their parameters for submitting to them in hopes of persuading them to represent me, find a publisher, and get the novel published.
After almost a year of dealing with that, going through five agents, I hated that process. Maybe, I convinced myself (without too much difficulty), self-publishing is the way to go.
So I did that.
It was another process to learn, with as many obstacles and challenges as Ninja Warrior. Yes, the book was published. Yes, I sold some copies, but not nearly as many as hoped. I knew that I would need to market the book.
Oh, boy, more to learn.
I wanted to write; I didn’t want to learn how to market myself and my wares.
I told myself, someday I will. Then I wrote and self-published three more books, with just as little notice and sales, reminding me again and again, you need to market these books.
But…but…but…
Yeah.
Here I am again, this time with a complete series of five novels. Here I am again at the crossroads. Find an agent? Self-publish? Screw it all and just keep writing?
Not wanting to, first, hunt down a cover designer, copy-editor, acquiring an agent drew me. That’s the original dream, to write a novel, find an agent, have the novel published. In a sense, I’m returning home by taking that route.
Yes, I was again easily persuaded because that self-publishing journey had been less than rewarding and satisfying. I’m hoping that this journey will be more so.
I began with the standard search process. Who is out there? What do they want?
Lo, Jane Friedman had a decent article about finding an agent, and pointed toward #MSWL – Manuscript Wish List. That’s helpful, I thought with new gleams of hope.
Hah.
I have such rose-colored glasses, they should be illegal so that we can all save time and energy.
#MSWL has a search engine. What genre do you want? Put it in. Here’s the results. Wow, pages of results. How exciting.
Not after reading a bit more.
I searched for science-fiction. #MSWL’s search results include whenever science-fiction is mentioned. This includes when agents say, “I don’t want to see any science-fiction.” Ah. That was certainly fucking useful.
I spent hours searching #MSWL and PublishersMarketPlace, seeking someone interested in someone like me. I found some promising folks.
Well, it’s the year’s end. Many of those agents aren’t accepting right now. Check back in a few days, weeks, or months, and then they’ll be happy to see your work.
What agents say they want on their website, in their Twitter blurts, in articles and interviews, and in #MSWL do not align. One will say that they’re looking for SFF or some science-fiction variant while the other locations won’t mention it. Yes, and I understand from my efforts that it’s hard updating everything and every place.
YA seems to remain the hot market, judging from the number of agents hunting for YA manuscripts.
Also clear is that most agents will reply to you if they’re interested. They’ll usually respond in two weeks. However, if they’re not interested, you’re not going to hear back from them. Do not, of course, submit multiple submissions or simultaneous submissions, or anything like that, because that’s not far to them, and please don’t follow-up to see what’s going on with your query. They’re busy, you know.
That was the stake through my heart last time, that one-sided dimension to this whole business. Sipping a glass of medicating wine last night, I reflected that I needed to start #AWL – Author’s Wish Lists. But hell, that’s a short list. We want an agent. We want published. We want a painless process. Who doesn’t? Well, I could stipulate that I want an agent who wants me, that I want an agent who will respond to me to tell me, no, thanks.
Yes, before anyone notifies me of the obvious, that this is a competitive business, and yes, I know how many struggling writers are out there trying to find agents and get published, and, yep, I’m aware that others have gone through this, and that agents have limited resources, so they’re very sorry, but that’s what the situation dictates.
Yes, I know.
My muses are awake. They want to write. Do you see how many stories are out there, waiting to be written?
Rant over. Back to whatever.
Rough Diamonds
I’d hoped to have finished editing An Undying Quest, the fifth novel in the Incomplete States series by yesterday. Only two chapters, forty pages remained three days ago.
Issues were encountered. The chapters suffered from being the last ones written. As the final chapters, they’d not been polished, edited, and revised as the others had. They were raw, beta chapters. They needed work.
Among the issues encountered were a brief POV change and a few matters of grammar and punctuation. Dialogue needed tidying, but most critically, details were needed.
I love reading details in novels. I think they often add immense value. That’s how I tend to write, then. Not in the beta draft, though.
In writing’s first rush, I capture scenes and action, coloring in broad, fast strokes. It’s an intense rush. They’re here, they’re there, they did this, and then that, which resulted in this, but unexpectedly —
The writing is bang, bang, bang, bang. Even when they’re action scenes, more is required after that first rush to help the scenes breath and flow together. Sometimes changes are required to adjust to the characters’ past, and sometimes continuity matters exist.
I instantly realized that I’d not polished the chapters. The difference was clear because the reading cadence was mildly askew. That realization tempered my approach. I read both chapters completely before doing anything except fixing the most basic errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar. Everything else was left untouched until I knew the entire picture. After reading them, I’d established strong ideas about what to addressed, and then began reading, revising, and editing the chapter again.
So, An Undying Quest isn’t fini yet. I’d hoped to complete it by Christmas, and then by the end of the year. That may still happen today. I won’t rush it. I don’t want to be hasty or lazy. Number one, I enjoy the process. Number two, I don’t want to sabotage myself for such a silly, random idea as a self-imposed deadline.
Time to edit and write like crazy, at least one more time in 2018.
Still Having A Ball
Forty pages remain to edit in the Incomplete States series’ fifth novel, An Undying Quest. I’m still grinning with enjoyment as I’m reading and editing.
Just forty pages, I think. I should finish tomorrow. Then I begin writing the sixth book, The Final Time, with full-time energy and focus. I’m looking forward to it, because as I’ve been working on it on the side while editing, new, exciting, interesting ideas occur to me. The series gains complexity and textures as novels one through five progress, and what’s shaping up in book six spins my head.
I look forward to people reading the series. I know several friends and fans who will absolutely love the series. I can imagine them reading them and laughing as they realize what’s going on. I can imagine the final pause of thought after they close the last book. That ending is gaining substance in my mind, but there’s so much to write to get there. Each of the first five books have their intense chapters, but what I feel rising in the sixth book is such an intensity that my body feels like it’s thrumming like a guy wire in the wind as I contemplate it.
I caution myself, well, you might just be crazy. True enough, but WTH, I’m happy in my craziness, at least for today. It might be different tomorrow.
Deep breath. The coffee is gone, the fog is gone, the sun is out, and I’m ravenous. Time to stop editing and writing like crazy, at least one more time.
The Limit
Sitting up, I looked around.
Rain and fog had subdued the sunshine outside. My butt was numb and my eyes were tired.
I’d just finished editing the sixth chapter today. Lifting my coffee cup, I discovered nothing but dried residue inside.
What the hell?
I hadn’t been working that long, guessing it was two hours, but it was focused and intense. I loved what I’d written. I remembered being in such a zone when I wrote those chapters. It was just last June, June 2018. I’d hesitated to begin them, working around them for a few days before telling myself, just write them. Just do it.
So I did, and they worked out well.
I want to go on, but I’ve hit some limits. Other things require my attention and presence, and why be greedy? It’s been an excellent day of editing like crazy.
There’ll be more tomorrow.
The Anxiety of Not Writing
TG Christmas has passed.
I appreciate that so many enjoy and celebrate Christmas. I do, too, in my way. It’s not actually Christmas that dismays me, but those places closed for the holiday. I don’t begrudge people that, but with the closed coffee shops, I miss my writing. More critically, I get anxious about it.
My anxiety when I don’t write is that what I’ve written is crap. Panic rises like Yule log smoke. It reminds me of a friend.
He’d been a football player, a wide receiver in high school and college who tried out for the pros and didn’t cut it. As a wide receiver, he was expected to be fast and to be able to run and run and run. So that’s what he did. Every day, he ran five miles.
He continued his habit after he didn’t make it as a player. He’d become a high school assistant coach by then. He moved on from football when he was thirty, going into serious business to make serious money.
Still, he ran five miles every day. He told me that he runs every day because he’s afraid that if he stops running, he’ll lose the ability.
Yeah, that’s not me with my writing, but I understand his thinking.
I thought about writing at home on Christmas day. Alone in the office in front of my laptop, I thought, I can write now. I’ve tried it before.
Picture this.
The cats troop in to see what I’m doing because I’m typing. Typing attracts the cats. Click click, click, they hear. What’s that, a mouse? Curious to see, they crowd around me.
These cats, all male rescues, don’t get along. Within seconds, they begin complaining about the others’ presence, locations, or existence. “What’s he doing here? I want that space.”
“I was here first. You better leave while you can, hairball.”
“Who are you calling hairball, hairball?”
“You both would be well-advised to get the hell out of here before I turn you into a fur coat.”
“Oh, you think you can?”
My wife will typically come in then, jumping onto her laptop to surf the net and play games, and read the news.
The news must be shared. “Did you read what happened?” “Did you read what so and so said?” “Did you see this video? I think you’ll like it.”
I can tell her that I’m writing, and she tries to respect that, but as writers know, writing often involves sitting silently, staring at nothing or studying your fingernails or looking at something else on the net while the muses get their sierra together. So she’ll then say, “Are you writing? Or can I ask you something?”
Of course, nothing can be done about the cats. I can send them outside, yes, but I’d pay for that later.
So, no, I decided not to write.
This left a void. Into that void crept my imposter fears, my insecurities, doubts, uncertainties, fears, and anxieties. It’s amazing how fast, persistent, and subtle they are, how they move in with little noise. Then, suddenly, my head is filled with their sound. They’re like a destructive, pessimistic flash mob.
All this isn’t why I began the practice of daily writing. I started writing every day to finish stories and novels. I write everyday to learn and improve my writing skills. I write everyday because the muses deliver scenes, dialogue, and concepts. Their deliveries excite me, and I want to pursue them. I want to write to understand what I think, and I enjoy writing, conceiving and imagining, story-telling and resolving, visiting these places and events that mushroom in my thoughts.
It’s all complicated, isn’t it? Better to just write than to consider it all. Hold your breath and jump in, and see how far it goes.
The coffee shop is open. I have my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Merry Christmas.
Ho, ho, ho.
A Reminder
I was down yesterday when I began my writing and editing session. I’m still editing Book Five in the Incomplete States series, An Undying Quest. Halfway through it, I was bummed about what I was reading. I thought, man, I have some work ahead of me to fix these issues.
I didn’t feel like addressing those issues, so I made notes, and continued editing, working on subsequent chapters. When I did, I discovered that those chapters addressed the holes and plot issues, and fixed them.
I was friggin’ astonished. Thinking back to then, I remembering writing and arranging the chapters. I hadn’t realized I’d done this. By that, I mean, I knew that the story went sideways at that point. I knew it as a deliberate choice. I didn’t appreciate how sideways it went. I do remember thinking hard about it, recalling Part One of The Sound and the Fury (Faulkner, 1929), a book that I strongly admire. Back when I first read that novel in sixth grade, I remember gritting my teeth and thinking, “WTF? This is crazy.” Finishing Part One was challenging. But everything is illuminated (sorry, Foer) with the subsequent parts. So I thought, be brave. Do it.
Now, after editing it, once I grit my teeth through the doubted chapters, the rest are magically explained. It comes together.
It’s not the first time I’ve done something like this. A friend, after reading one of my novels, said that he’d created a list of questions about things that bothered and confused him, then he said, “I was amazed because you brought it all together.” I loved that feedback.
So, I’m hanging with it as written. We’ll see if it makes publication, or what changes come about from outside feedback.
Meanwhile, it’s a powerful reminder that when editing, go through the whole damn manuscript before addressing any major changes. I specifically decided to edit the entire series before having any of them edited or read by another because the series is organic. Events opening in the first chapters of the first book are resumed in subsequent chapters and books. Changing one means hunting down and addressing those changes in other chapters and books. It has multiple points of views and storylines. It’s a complicated exploration. Events and decisions are rarely fully explained, as I like inviting readers to take the information and conceive the answers.
The series was originally conceived as a single, fat novel. I felt breaking it apart into eras of growing awareness and development lends itself to telling the story. I was also aware of my wife and her friends’ complaints about holding up large books to read, yes, even in this era of digital publishing.
Time to write and edit like crazy, at least one more time.
The Gophers Dream
Walking this morning and thinking about writing and music, I suddenly recalled last night’s gopher dream. OMG, how could I forget it?
It was so weird but so nothing. What dream about gophers isn’t weird? They are for me, because I don’t have memories about dreams with gophers.
Basically, the dream found me cooking. The house I was in wasn’t any that I live in, but I knew it as my house. I don’t know what I was cooking except that I was tending a pot on a white porcelain stove. To my left was a lawn area, but the lawn area was in my house. That took me a bit to put together as I was cooking, because the lawn’s surrounding walls were interior house walls.
As I cooked, stirring the pot and peering in at the contents, I realized something was moving in the lawn. A few newspaper sections were on the ground. Something had moved under one of them.
While I’m cooking and pondering this, a female friend entered and started chatting with me. Then she said, “Oh my God, I think I just saw an animal in your grass.”
“Yes,” I said, “I thought I saw something before.”
I stopped cooking to check it out. As I did, I found, yep, a hole under the newspaper section. I didn’t know what made it but while I was checking it out, a big gopher popped out of another hole and looked at me. Then it ducked back.
I had gophers in my lawn in my house, but I was till cooking, and returned to the stove. As I cooked, another large gopher popped up from a different hole. I realized I had more holes than I thought. There were more and new holes. Holy crap.
About that time, my wife entered. As the female friend explained what was happening, my wife went onto the lawn to look at the holes. Comically, she’d go by a hole, and the gopher would pop up behind her, but she would never see them. More newspaper sections were on the lawn, too.
My wife finally went to the corner. Pulling back sections of newspaper, she peered into an exposed hole with our female friend beside her. “M,” my wife said, “you should come and see this.”
“I know,” I answered. “We have holes. Gophers are causing it.” As I said that, several gophers popped out of holes. They were all looking at me. My wife, with her back turned to them as she studied the hole, never saw them.
End dream.
###
There is a post script.
Working on this section of novel, I’ve been dismayed. There are holes in the part I’m editing. Thinking about it, I realized there were holes in the proceeding chapters to these chapters. That’s where I think I need to put some energy and effort to improve it.
After I thought about that, remembered the gopher dream, and typed it up here, I realized the gopher dream was about the holes. I was cookin’, yer know? Writin’ and editin’, everything was copasetic. Doin’ good and feein’ fine. Then, suddenly….mmm…this isn’t working. Drat.
I decided that’s what the gopher dream was about. I’d missed holes. They’re paper over but if I look, their cause can be seen.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
Got my coffee. Time to start editing and writing like crazy, at least one more time in 2018.
Michael Seidel, writer 