Tag: organic writing

Novel Sculpting

I read a post the other day with insight into Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ writing styles over on The Writer’s Path in an article by Andrea Lundgren. C.S. Lewis was a planner. Tolkien was a pantser. Best was the comment Lewis made about Tolkien’s style:

Diana Pavlac Glyer adds, “Lewis’s writing process was quite different from Tolkien’s. While Tolkien wrote things out in order to discover what he wanted to say, Lewis tended to mull things over before committing anything to paper. While Tolkien produced draft after draft, Lewis completed his work rapidly once he had settled on a clear idea and the right form to express it. And while Tolkien reconsidered every word on every page, when Lewis finished a story, he was restless to move on.”

That summarizes my writing approach: I’m writing to discover what I want to say. I’d not known this about myself in such an explicit manner.

Further reading on process came about from Jenn Moss’ Meta Monday post about her process. She referred to another process, The Snowflake Method. I enjoyed the fractal snowflake reference enormously and considered it pretty apt to Lorenz’s thinking and the Butterfly Effect. Randy Ingermanson writes about how to design a novel by starting small and enlarging, using triangles and stars and ten steps.

From all this came a better grasp of my process. I like to write to understand what I want to say, as Tolkien did. I usually start small and writing like mad, I create a block of words. That result is typically dense, with poor punctuation and spelling, and ‘<TK>’ with notes where I need more reference or clarification. Although I’ve become more mindful about pacing, voice and the rest through exposure to writing and editing, I don’t want those aspects to slow me down; I’m out to capture the essence of the story at that stage. This is fiction writing at its stream-of-consciousness rawest.

I then begin shaping the finished scene or chapter. Like a wood carver or sculptor studying a block of material, I do the same and begin carving, to see what’s in there, what should remain and what should be removed but added to somewhere else.

The carving process is involved. I’m working on plotting, connectivity with the rest of the novel, flow, spelling and grammar, voice, point of view and character development. It is much like sculpting and carving, taking pieces here and there and stepping back to see what I’ve wrought and what remains to be fixed. I think of it as chipping because I’m sculpting but I’m adding words and changing them as well. That’s where the analogy falls apart, but, oh well. I consider the entire active editing and revising, but it doesn’t replace the editing and revising that takes place after the entire draft is finished.

This is fun and rewarding. Watching that piece being shaped and refined is greatly satisfying. Beyond that, the carving process and active editing and revising provides me clarity about the novel. I especially learn about the characters at that point when I’m doing this, actively questioning how they would react to words, activities and new information.

All accumulated in a herd of new dreams thundering through me last night. I won’t recite them today, as people out there who read me are probably rolling their eyes and saying, “More dreams?”

Reflecting them on this morning took me into fractal thinking, and back into my novel writing process. I ruminated about how our brains are often creatively fractal, something I actively encourage my brain to be: I want new ways to look at old ideas and new ideas to present. To do that, I need to take the variables and spin them into a new direction. Like the butterfly’s flutter, you never know how one small input or variable will produce a new direction, if you can leave yourself open to it.

I call that writing like crazy, to which I owe Natalie Goldberg. Now four shots of espresso blended with chocolate and steamed milk is at hand. It’s time to do it again, at least one more time.

 

6

The Novel Bible

I started thinking about my novels’ bibles while reading Whitney Carter’s WorldBuilding Post today. Some good suggestions were in there and I’ve found and incorporated most of them on my own.

The one thing about naming and history conventions for me is to keep track of them. Not just what they’re named, but sometimes, why they’re so named. I keep a separate document for that, and usually have it opened and update it as I’m writing, or at the session’s end. The bible for ‘Long Summer’, sequel to ‘Returnee’, is over 7,000 words. That’s not really big; James Michener used to have binders of information.

More interesting to me is that I’ve learned that I do more research to develop and build the world than I do to write the story. While I will write from forty-five to ninety minutes on an average day (and end up with word counts from one thousand to three thousand words in a session), I spend several hours researching and developing the worlds, characters, settings and situations. This is true not just in science fiction, which is my preferred genre, but in mystery, which I also write.

For example, if someone was born in America in 1975 and the novel takes place in 2015, they’re forty years old. That’s easy. But what music did they listen to while growing up in America? Did they watch television, and what did they watch when they did? What significant historic events happened in their lifetime, and it were they affected? Technology is part of this, something that I remember from a comment my mother made. While she’d traveled across the United States during her lifetime, I flew on a commercial jet when I was eighteen, and she didn’t do so for almost twenty years after my first flight. As we work and live, it’s easy to forget that ubiquitous devices like computers and cell phones are relatively new to human existence. Our civilization and societies are rich with laws, technology and permanent solutions that no longer apply. It’s important for the novel’s honesty and integrity to bear these matters in mind to develop coherent characters and stories.

I like substantial verisimilitude to novels that I read, and I include it in the novels that I write. Some people would say that I put too much in but I love tangent explanations. It’s largely because I think people are complicated. Little is black and white to many. They may state that it’s black and white, and they may act like it’s black and white, but most are offering a sketch insight to their true beliefs. Some of this is driven by people being politically or emotionally sensitive (or the opposite, attempting to be deliberately rude and crude), acting out, or displacement. More often, people struggle to untangle the skeins of history, thinking and emotions. There is also a large contingency of lazy people, and people who are just too tired, worn out, or impatient to figure out what they think, so they take the easiest courses of thoughts and actions.

All of this is recorded, in shorthand, in the novel’s bible. In ‘Long Summer’, as in ‘Returnee’, it’s easy when addressing future Human development. Corporations dominate, so corporate structure and thinking dominate. These are calcified, turgid organizations driven by reducing overhead and increasing profit, crying out, “We are a team,” or, “We are a family,” when they need to encourage hard work and cooperation, shrugging and noting, “We are a business,” when they cut jobs. They’re governed by wealthy people living in bubbles. However, factions who oppose corporations do exist. They cite multiple issues with corporations for their existence as individuals and groups. They’re more challenging to develop.

Even more challenging are the other intelligent races that emerge in ‘Long Summer’. Six races, including another branch of Humanity (seven, if you include Humans that have spread out from Earth), dominate the known and settled galaxies. One of these races is a long gone race. Traces of them are found everywhere but there isn’t any evidence of where they went or why. Such vacuums aren’t acceptable; naturally, theories abound about what happened to them.

All of this is recorded in the novel’s bible. Brief entries are made about the order in which these races encountered one another and their relationships with one another. Two of these races (besides Humans) dominate but the others are written into the script in various manners. All of this is organized and recorded. My bible itself is an organic record, growing and changing shape. It began, as they always do, with a few bullet lists. I always go with what I need for the moment to move forward. As more information and understanding was demanded, I developed a more complex structure to impose order so I can easily find information (what colors was his/her eyes/skin/hair again?) without exploding with frustration.

It’s an odd confession to make as a pantser. Pantser is the term often applied to writers who don’t plan and outline their novels in advance. I prefer the expression ‘organic’ writing, in that you plant the seeds and let it grow. Others call it writing in the dark. That works, too, as your mind’s lights find and illuminate the way.

In a way, I think of this novel writing approach in the same way that journalism works. A story happens: scandal, an explosion, an attack, an arrest. We have the big picture. Details are needed. Motivation and other questions about what, how and why happen arise to be answered. Reporters rush to the scene. Interviews are conducted. Research is accomplished. Investigation are launched, and layers are peeled back.

That’s how I like it. I tried to be a planner. Frankly, I lacked the discipline. My ideas and characters excited me. Scenes and dialogue bloomed, and I was urged to rush right in. And I did.

Whatever works, is my motto. There is the perfect way, the classic way, the artistic way. Mine is an imperfect way, and I’m continually addressing it. Each of must survey and inventory ourselves as writers to learn our strengths and weaknesses and develop our preferences for how we write. And after we write, we learn to edit, revise, polish. Writing is a tangled endeavor.

Now, a quad shot mocha is at hand. Time to write like crazy, one more time. Tauren just encountered the Travail Avresti for the first time. This is an historic moment, the first time that Humans from Earth are facing another intelligent civilization.

I want to know what happens.

2

The Fork

There is a book called ‘The World According to Garp’. 

It’s not an obscure novel so you might know it. Written by a guy named John Irving, who has written and published several pieces of interesting fiction. Some have even been made as movies. I think this one was made into a movie, and had several major actors star in it.

In the book I reference, the main character is TS Garp. TS Garp is an author. His mother, Jenny, a nurse, also becomes a writer. But her process irritates Garp (as I remember it) because she never seems to indulge in the silence of thinking and editing. She’s always hammering the typewriter.

I often think of that because I love that silence, when I drop a still bomb on my existence, cross my arms and stare out the window to think, where do I go today?

That summarizes my situation. I just finished a major piece of the pirates’ tale. Today, I’m thinking, do I continue writing the pirates’ arcs or do I turn to Pram and his team’s activities, or back to Brett and his role? Each have beginnings and middles to further develop in the push toward climax and denouement. The arcs all seem equally easy and difficult to write, that paradox of writing tension where you’re on a peak, trying to capture the lightning. But I’ve been spending so much time with Handley and her captain and crew, I’ve really enjoyed their company and know them so well. I wonder, how important is that? I know Brett very well, too, but he is a more complicated person, in a complex situation, and yet is the novel’s largest cog. But Pram’s POV offers a major twist and I’ve been sitting on the edge of that for several weeks, letting it brew.

So I sit in personal silence amid the coffee shop’s music and conversations, meditating to a degree about which story to take up. That’s actually a lame description of the process. I open the book in my mind and return to each arc’s place where I paused. Consideration of where they’re stopped and what’s to happen next is studied. From that process, one aspect gathers a stronger brightness, a sharper focus, a more immediate presence. My mind takes up its mental pen. I begin to see and hear words. Words become sentences. Scenes flower.

Then I know where to go, what to write, and I begin again, to write like crazy, at least one more time. Often it’s the middle of a scene. It may not even be ‘connected’ with what’s already written. I know I can write such bridges later. I’m interesting in writing down the bones. I’ll add verisimilitude and substance in the immediate edit. The immediate edit is the stage I conduct after completing a scene, just part of building continuity and managing pace and story.

In that marvelous way that brains can work, my thought processes are segregated and compartmentalized, and while I’ve been thinking about this post and my process and writing, I’ve been thinking about the novel and the aspects I’ve described. From these ruminations have arisen the next piece to write.

Here I go again. It is such a wonderful high, the sort of moments that you hope will never end….

2

The Writing High

I’ve been working hard on three separate chapters in ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. These chapters were all about the pirates.

It’s been stressful and challenging. Research and heavy thinking were demanded. I was putting together how the pirates interlock with the larger story. It was like trying to weave with spider webs sometimes.

The first chapter was exposition and interactions aboard the Narwhal as the new crew learned about one another. We were introduced to the main pirate character, Handley, her memory, Grutte Pier, and her parrot, JR. Handley’s background of being shaped by a reboot of ‘Serenity’ was included, and the ongoing debate among this loose confederation about being called pirates versus being called freedom fighters.

My use of ‘we’ in ‘we were introduced’ was deliberate in that last paragraph, as I met her and came to know her through the organic writing process. We’ve become pretty close.

The second chapter was about the pirate ship’s hunt for targets and increasing acrimony and dissatisfaction among the crew with the captain. None of them know him, and he’s a swearing doom and gloom machine. It seems like he’s always pissing on them.

The final chapter was the most satisfying to write and edit as the pirate ship Narwhal encountered the Intrepid and Missouri. Editing, revising, proofing and polishing led to that most glorious of experiences, a writing high. I sit back, so damned pleased with how the scenes were unfolded, meshed and finished. It’s one of hundreds of tasks required toward a finished novel, but it was a big one, and it feels awesome. This is absolutely why I write.

Now, though, wistfulness shrouds me. Half of my coffee remains and I think, what’s next? I’ve only been writing ninety minutes. My rear end isn’t even numb yet but I’ve emerged from the creating fog. Slowly the high drains behind the demands to continue. The novel isn’t finished.

Weeks, maybe months, of writing, editing, et al, remain. For now, I’ll enjoy the high, or more correctly, given my nature, try to enjoy it.

My coffee is cold anyway.

Cheers

3

The Pirates

I’m at a point in the novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) where the pirates are about to enter.

Yes, this is science fiction. Yes, these are space pirates (cue dramatic music). Or cue a Monty Python moment.

I always like ‘fly in the ointment’ tales. That’s the pirates’ role in Long Summer. They’re naturally a plot trigger to cause the stories to bank sharply into another direction, bringing the three disparate story lines into contact with one another at last, thirty-five thousand words into the novel. Creating  the pirates enabled me to embark on my favorite fiction writing activity: making things up. In this case, I was given permission to make up the pirate ship and crew. Who are they, why are the pirates, where did they come from and how did they come to have this ship?

The ship is the CSC Narwhal. CSC is Castle Corp Security, a spin-off from the original Castle Corporation that dominates the Returnee series as one a major part of the setting. (The corporation is constantly restructuring, re-organizing, acquiring and divesting.) As Castle Corporation was originally an Anglo-American effort when they first formed on Earth (with roots in 3D printing, with specific focus on home security devices…from there to space), the company sometimes invokes its heritage when naming ships. This was strongly evidenced in the naming of the security ships (the preferred nomenclature over warship). I’d remembered Narwhal from my history lessons, so I looked up Narwhal and confirmed its role in England’s maritime history, confirming it was part of the Arctic Fleet. Two Brit submarines were then named the same, along with a US sub. So, sweet, that worked out.

(I had to refer back to my Returnee notes a little as I worked out that naming, confirming corporations and financial consortiums led the way into space. Governments had little to do with it.)

I then needed to further define my new vessel’s manning, which is complementary to its role. As a security vessel, Narwhal is small, with three squadrons of droid fighters. Why droid fighters? I started with manned weaponry and realized that robots dominate my future. It would be weird to have manned fighters. But humans maintain control….

Essentially, I evolved the Droid Commander. Droid Commanders remotely oversee the flying of four droid fighters simultaneously from pods on the Narwhal. Yes, we have the sophisticated technology to do that in my future. Likewise, Droid Techs remotely manage maintenance/software/hardware, keeping the fighters armed and flying, repairing them via nano-bots, droids and automation.

Each Narwhal squadron has three Droid Commanders, each flying four droid fighters. So each squadron is twelve fighters. Three squadrons, thirty-six fighters, nine each Droid Commanders and techs. A squadron commander coordinates their activities with the ship and mission briefs.

Narwhal is structured to run silent, fast, launching quick strikes and then bailing. Their defensive systems are lightweight and automated. They’re not going to bombard a planet or take on a battleship. They’re more likely to run escort and interdiction missions.

Once I had those things in place, what did I need for manning for the actual ship, the Narwhal? Well, again, it’s automated, and lightly manned. I ended up with three defensive coordinators. Commander, DO, pilots to fly it (in the event of worst case situations), navigator (overseeing the droids and systems), intel officer, techs to treat it.

Shuttles? Escape pods? Logistics? Medical? All done by droids, except I decided the three shuttles would have human pilots. Ten techs oversee droids that do the repairs.

So there it was, forty-seven humans crewing the Narwhal and its squadrons.

Since it’s going head to head with River Styx, the stasis pod ship, I went through the  same exercise for the Styx (which has only light defensive systems). Then I mentally plotted the sequence of events as I walked over here to write today. The twists arose on their own, pleasing and exciting me, further evolving my sketchy plot.

(Quite deliberately, because the pirates are out to disrupt corporate domination of space and human activities, Castle Corporation also owns the River Styx. The pirates love the irony of a ship they appropriated from the Castle Corporation, stretching the truth, as the Castle Corp had spun off the division that owns and operates Narwhal,  attacking another Castle Corp vessel.)

This summarizes my basic writing approach. I begin with a concept or a character. In this case, three ideas came together. That gives me a bare structure. As an analogy, if my novel is a car trip, I’m getting in and pointing the vehicle in the general direction of a horizon I see, with the vaguest idea of what’s over that horizon, and what’s between here and there. That works for each chapter, story line and character arc.

Reflecting on all of this today, I recognize how much my writing approach parallels my other methodologies. As a senior NCO in the USAF, I was always imposing and maintaining order and discipline, but also loved instilling vision in my people about how to improve ourselves and our operations. To do that, I’d simply seize a direction and go for it, correcting as I went. Likewise, in my last position as a data scientist with IBM, when given a challenge, I mentally played with it until something formed, and then I launched myself into it. And in my youth, when I was taking art classes, painting and drawing, sudden inspirations would seize and carry me.

The confrontation between River Styx and Narwhal awaits. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

Pounding the Rock

I’m pounding the rock, you know?

Maintainin’.

Chillin’.

Keeping it real. Staying cool.

Tuning out distractions.

Focusing.

Staying the course.

That’s what’s needed sometimes. Sometimes it’s not a piece of cake, a day at the office, easy come, easy go. Sometimes the words are cold iron on the anvil. It’s like rowing up stream. Pushing a boulder up a mountain. One step forward, two steps back.

But I’m going the distance. The whole nine yards.

The whole shebang.

Playing for keeps.

I got my eye set on the prize. I’m ready to seize the brass ring.

I’m not just making promises. I’m here for the long haul.

All this comes, not from reading sports and political news, but from getting beached in a chapter. My head screams, “You’ve lost the plot,” but my tail shouts, “Stay the course.” I’m at a point where I need to go or get off the pot, know what I’m saying? I need to make the opportunities count.

So, after drifting through a QSM and an one point five hours of writing time, and editing, revising and polishing the chapter in progress to the point where I’m trapped, a decision is finally accepted.

It ain’t happening today.

Accepted, with a deep breath. The breath is not of relief nor regret, but simple acceptance that I want to move forward and I need some way around this obstacle.

So —

I write a note at the break: <TK: Bridge required.> That’s highlighted in yellow so I don’t overlook it. I use the <TK> format for convenience for anything that needs addressing. I write like crazy. In essence, that means that while I’m mildly mindful, I’m more interested in capturing lightning in a bottle and writing down the bones. I basically don’t want to be slowed down at that point, so I’ll set it up to be done later. Sometimes it’s research, or the scene needs to be cleaned up for clarification, pacing or continuity. Once in a while, I can’t remember a minor character’s name or someone’s hair color, or other small detail that I think I want to include. I put a note beginning with <TK and explain why it’s there. I also date these entries. Then, when the first draft is finished, I search for <TK, find them and fix them. I’ve usually fixed them before the first draft is completed because I hunt back and forth through the manuscript as I work, tearing out cliches and passive writing, looking for sharper and crisper descriptions, expanding on and subtracting from passages to better fit the narrative that has emerged and to accommodate the characters’ arcs. That’s necessary because my vision of the narrative changes as the story clarifies and evolves. As Bob Muslim noted in his post, “Edit Mode, Anyone?”, “As I write and the story comes alive, things change.” Right on.

This point today is a weird misery for me. A failure. It’s not the first time it’s happened but it’s not common. I don’t care if it happens to everyone, either. It’s personal.

I’ve been fortunate to be able to dial up a scene’s framework, sit down and beginning hammering it out, then shaping and re-shaping it later. It’s not always been that way, but this is what comes from establishing a discipline of writing, writing, writing, writing. Naturally, that’s what I attempted to do today — and yesterday, actually.

Some of this obstacle today is from impatience. I know how other scenes and action spreads out. They excite me, and I’m eager to get to it because that’s the fun part of fiction writing. This writing slowdown is also caused by real life bleedover. Personal matters, issues and problems arose that absorbed time, energy and thought, leaving the writer a little depleted in those areas. Hence the mock pep talk of cliches that began this post.

The thing about these moments is to not let them consume me. Andrea Lundgren had a post, “Do You Write Chronologically?” over on Ryan Lanz’s site, “A Writer’s Path” (which I highly recommend). Overall, I’m comfortable with jumping out of chronological sequence (especially in this novel, which has a, ahem, interesting chronological pattern). I think of it like other projects, like painting a room. The order that I write is only important as part of completing the entire project to my satisfaction.

Yet, yet, it’s not easy to decide, sometimes, to jump out of order. And this is because this scene is not quite coming to me, not in its entirety. And that vexes me.

So, let it go, for now. Let it go. Come back to it later. Maybe later, by the time the entire novel is completed, this scene will be overcome by events and therefore unnecessary. Maybe, even now, I know that, but I’m too intimate with it to say good-bye.

Whatever. When you’re given lemons, you make lemonade.

Or so I’ve been told.

 

 

 

0

Tying Lines Together

Again, so the lines follow the characters, or the characters follow the lines. First up is Pram, the Colossus, who is employed as a terraformer despite his wealth. That’s how he enjoys spending his time, turning uninhabitable planets into places where humans and animals can live and breed.

Brett has a separate story line, and we know how Pram and Brett’s paths cross. Now, we also know how Brett and Kimi originally interacted via virtual mail in ‘Returnee’, where Kimi explained their relationship to Brett as Brett coped with being shipwrecked on Earth, his lost memory and malfunctioning Backhand (who insisted on calling him Stephane, which actually made sense later). So that’s all understood. What must be sorted here and now (or sometime in the course of writing this mangled tangle) is what’s going on with Tauren and Kimi? (Keep in mind Tauren’s true identity, which Kimi suspects but can’t yet prove.) (Also keep in mind what Tauren did to Brett, although Brett doesn’t know that – yet, but that’s one of the things he’s to learn – need to define, refine and capture his learning process, too – do a snapshot.) What happens on Kimi’s mission on behalf of Tauren that takes him to Pram in search of Brett? (Oh, does he find out the truth? Interesting thought.)

Last, I must figure out the relationship between humanity’s increasing fear of death (even though they no longer die, because they’re continually resuscitated, thereby causing a proclamation that they’ve now conquered death and space (false and false)) and Tang, and his agenda.

(And what exactly did happen with Tauren? That must be clarified for myself. I need to write a Tauren snapshot. I see the need for several snapshots.)

And the next last is that other piece regarding Brett’s recovered knowledge (about the Willow Glen attack) and how that’s folded into the next sequel. (See, that’s another snapshot.)

What about the diamonds? Good question. Another snapshot is needed about them.

I think I’ll also create a snapshot of the terraforming process Pram follows so those details can be incorporated.

Okay, it’s all becoming clear-er-ish. Time to write like crazy, one more time, and see where these characters and their lines take me.

Giddy up.

3

Pram

Pram is my new character. He emerged out of nowhere while I writing “Long Summer”, a sequel to “Returnee”. 

I love Pram. This is a guy who used modern technology to make himself into a replica of the Colossus of Rhodes, because he was fulfilling his father’s encouragement to think big. Remember, this is science fiction.

But Pram and his evolving story didn’t fit into LS. LS itself was losing coherency and consistency. Floundering, I was looking for a life preserver but today’s rough waters kept throwing me about. I couldn’t find any orientation. Change was needed.

I decided to jettison LS. I would instead focus on Pram. But what was Pram’s story? I have a character I enjoy with nowhere to go.

Donning my writing gear, I headed out. The coffee shop is two miles away, my normal walk. I’d been eschewing it with the 100+ degree weather these past ten days but today is cooler. The night fell to 52F and the day is expected to rise only to 93F. It was 70F when I set out. Walking always helps my writing, and I was desperately in need of something now. Instead of taking the direct route to the coffee shop, I headed in another direction, guaranteeing I was adding another mile. I needed it.

“What is Pram’s story?” became my walking mantra. “What is Pram’s story?” I thought of what I’d already written about him, and what I’d written about LS, and my original intentions about LS and why they were no longer working. Then I went back to Pram’s background and what I’d established about him, again, and back to LS. I wove back and forth across a loom, looking for the yarn. Then,

Eureka.

With a mile remaining to the coffee shop, direction pierced my fog. Suddenly I knew, ah, this is what happened to Brett, and this is how Pram fits in, and here is the novel’s direction.

So it’s cool for today, thank the walking and writing gods. Back at the kb, drinking mocha, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

3

Jealous of Time

I’m so jealous of my time, possessive of it, reluctantly sharing it with others, and grumpy when I do. Call Mom to tell her I love her and thank her for reading my last book? But that takes times.

Takes time. Steals time. That time can’t be returned.

No, I’m not doing extraordinary things with my time. Changing kitty litter. Playing computer games. Reading. Working on the biz aspect of writing. And that is work. Not fun, trying to squeeze money out of my words. I prefer the – wait, let me look it up.

My wife’s book club’s latest reading was ‘Norwegian by Night’. I love her for the way in which she reads these offerings, makes them her own and seeks information about the writer and the book’s genesis. In this case, she was also puzzled by the book’s title. She never found a good answer.

‘Norwegian by Night’ was a debut novel and attracted the fame and fortune that I sometimes fantasize about (okay, I think about it the way I thought about sex in my teen years). Naturally, I hate its author, Derek Miller.

No, ha ha, kidding. Really.

But while she researched, my wife found an interview with him and said, “You’ll like this. Listen. ‘The easy part, by contrast, was the exuberant pleasure that came from having no rules, no masters, no demands for propriety, diplomacy, or even collaboration. And frankly no consequences.'”

Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the stuff. To go back, I prefer the exuberant pleasure that comes from having no rules and master, and no demands, rather than that icky business side.

That’s why I’m jealous of my time, of sharing it. They are demands. I’m being held hostage, forced to conform, socialize, speak coherently and be polite, watch out for zombies, and obey the masters of culture and values, and I resist.

My wife ‘understands’ it to some degree, that is, she accepts the logic of me desiring and wanting to write each day. I think she feels it’s owed to me as well. While in the second half of my military’s twenty year career, I spit frustration daily about having to endure that damn macho stilted, reactionary bureaucracy when I could be writing. But I stayed in to get the pension, which admittedly, now, is worthwhile to have. Then we stayed in the pricey Silicon Valley – SF Bay area, as she was starting a new career, putting off moving to somewhere cheap where I could use my pension to fund my writing. And I put twenty years into jobs there, paying off bills, acquiring useful material goods like computers, and accumulating a ‘retirement nest egg’. Okay, good.

But damn, I wanted to write, and still want to write, and look back on all the energy shunted into other things and wonder what might be different.

Don’t we all, though? Go back and think on something, and wonder what might be different?

I could be more intellectual about this, make up clever quotes, or find brilliant insights into the nature of time and humanity, and metaphors about time and the stages of life, and youth being wasted on the young, but —

That’s not really me. That would be a pretender. I’m bare bones, stream of consciousness, sorry, the filter is broken, sort of writer. I call it organic, but it’s really me being lazy.

Enough of this. I’m wasting time.  I need to go write like crazy. It’s really the only dam I have against insanity.

 

By the way, Book Chewing’s interview with Derek Miller is here. Go read it. You have the time.

3

Five Points

Getting ready to walk and write. Writing dominates my thoughts but other matters press in. Cats. Home improvement. Trips. Phone calls I owe people. Beer night this week, and whether to go or not.

But the walk and writing are the current play.

1. Pen; check. Ink is a little low. Take an extra pen. Notebook, check. Half full. Should be sufficient.
I’m still on paper, with my laptop returning to me tomorrow.

2. Naturally, zombies also worry me. Multiple species exist. I don’t know which zombies inhabit my region. What if I’m attacked during my walk? What will I do? They never addressed zombie attacks during my twenty years in the military.

I haven’t heard about any attacks. But the US POTUS election is underway. The Olympics are happening, and there are a million celebrities eating, drinking, farting and divorcing. Plus business news, and new movie releases. Zombie attacks might not make wide news coverage.

3. Received a royalties payment. Enough for a week of beer. That’s something. Haven’t done any advertising in July. Haven’t checked any sales reports. Awaiting the computer’s return.

Haven’t done anything with the website, either. It also awaits the computer’s second coming.

4. Five points is of major concern. I’m writing a short (5K) story to occupy me with writing until the computer returns. The short story is Merger. Science fiction. I’ve come to the point where I realize four different endings for Merger. (See, I’m on one path, and I’m coming to a point where the road splits into four directions – five points…in case you didn’t catch that.) By endings, I refer to the climax and denouement. Considering it today, I think, why not write all four endings? That would be fun.

5. The nature of my novel writing process prevents me from pursuing writing them. Two sequels are in progress. I’m eager for the laptop’s return so I can return to them.

And I also need to type up the short story.

Not having the laptop increases my awareness in the different types of writing and my approaches to each. Novel writing is a complex, organic process involving a lot of ongoing revision, like painting with oils. Short story writing is also complex but more like sketching with pencils. Emails are less complex and easy. Blog posts are generally barely edited stream of consciousness spewing. So I can do that on the iPad mini (with its keyboard cover). Not much movement and back and forth is needed for my blog posts, unlike the novel and short story writing.

6. Another novel concept’s topography is developing in my mind. I’m picturing a science fiction detective thriller, and it’s exciting to embrace it. Can’t wait to start writing it. There are always so many writing projects.

But for now, it’s pen to paper. I have my quad shot mocha. Time to write like crazy, one more time.

3

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑