Tag: organic writing

Learning to Write

Pram was melancholy about his choices. He was a colossus, becoming so because his father exhorted him to think big. His father, he knew, hadn’t meant that in the sense of his body, but Pram delighted in vexing his father by being literal.

That was Pram’s only choice about his life body that he made, eschewing being a female, remaining a heterosexual male, dismissing opportunities to become another race other than Indian, which alluded to his family’s far origins on the Indian sub-continent on Earth. None of them had been back to there since his grandparents left Earth. Relatives did remain on the planet. He often connected with them virtually.

So this was how he’d thought it had gone. This was how the author had written it. But then the writer had realized more of the concept and story. Pram had gone from being large by technological choice to amuse himself to being large as an advantage in combat.

Which, as a character, intrigued Pram. The writer had created a cause and effect paradox about his choice. He was large in one reality but that choice carried over to other reality due to entanglements. Pram understood; he wasn’t certain the writer fully understood it. That, though, was the writer’s problem. He was just a character.

Then the writer had started playing other games with him, introducing him to Chronos. Chronos! Where did this come from? He knew who Chronos was – actually, Chronos the Fourth, or something, although Chronos took pains to explain to him, “I don’t know how many of us actually exist. There are multiple universes in my story, just like in the novel he’s writing about you.” The point was that Chronos was from another novel. While all the characters from the different novels and short stories knew one another, they didn’t socialize, and there wasn’t any reason for the two of them to meet. Yet, here was the writer, amusing himself by introducing Pram to Chronos.

They were in a dark, chilly bar, watching a baseball game taking place on another planet. The game was being streamed in real D. They could more fully immerse themselves, like most of the bar’s patrons chose, but didn’t. Because of his size, Pram couldn’t fit anywhere comfortably. Chronos, inhaling shots of whiskey and beer chasers, noticed and wandered over to chat.

The ballgame became forgotten. They talked about the novels they were in, contrasting the stories and pondering the similarities. Lack of choices in life obsessed the writer. In several of his novels, humans just had no idea what was going on. They always thought they knew and thought they were in control, and made choices according to their body of desires and knowledge. This was because human nature to adjust perceived facts to fill and diminish vacuums of information. Imperfect, they often forgot, ignored or discarded vows, or rationalized an intellectual compromise about their behavior.

“Why are we doing this?” Pram asked.

Sinking a shot of Macallan, Chronos looked off toward the ball game as someone got a hit, triggering motion and cheers. Pram waited. He expected Chronos to know and answer, because Chronos was a demi-god, the offspring of the God of Time. As he thought that, though, Pram knew the answer for himself.

The writer was just practicing writing, playing with prompts in his head, readying himself to sit down and write again. He was learning to write by imagining situations and searching for the setting and details within himself, trying to understand how to resolve scenes and move the story further. Between writing novels, he’d made this scenario up as an intellectual exercise as a writing fix. As the writer said, he was always trying to learn how to write. He meant that he was trying to become a more expressive, insightful writer and story-teller, so he wrote every day, afraid that if he didn’t, he would lose the meager skills he’d acquired. The writer had been sick and unable to write for several days, although he’d tried. Now that he seemed well enough to actually write, he needed to write something. Otherwise, he might get stopped up.

The exercise calmed, relaxed and reassured the writer. Now, creative excess spent, he could begin editing and revising the novel’s first draft.

 

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The Rhythm Method

 

Recently traveling, socializing and visiting with family, I wasn’t able write as frequently as desired. I didn’t think that would be an issue. I’ve developed a source of pride about being able to sit down and write anywhere. I learned, yes, and no. After thinking more, I recognized that I follow the Rhythm Method.

There are a few easy steps to my process.

  1. Deep thinking.
  2. Realization and visualization.
  3. Writing in my head.
  4. Typing and editing.
  5. Editing, revising and expanding.
  6. Repeat

What I learned during these past few weeks is that if I’ve accomplished steps one and two, I can do three, four and five. Those first two steps are most critical to my entire process.

Deep thinking. This is all about connecting the dots by reviewing what I’ve written and what I expect to write, and discovering plot holes, new directions, and character issues. I usually do this while I’m walking or doing mundane chores, like yard-work or washing and waxing the car. It’s personal and private; others’ presence tends to mute it, although it will come alive while reading, or watching movies or television shows. Traveling with my significant other and visiting with family kept this repressed.

Realization and visualization. Deep thinking is significantly abstract. It can revolve around a setting, character’s appearance, plot twist or concept. Becoming a compilation of thoughts, ideas and insights, more concrete understanding emergences. From those come sentences, scenes, paragraphs and descriptions. I leap into the next step.

Writing in my head. Some people call this phantom writing, but writing in my head is my preferred expression. At this point, my understanding of what’s to come is so solid that I begin seeing it in a finished book. It’s a strange and eerie experience. My wife once read to me a quote from someone that said that everything that’s created already exists; we’re just creating it for this life experience. In this phase of the Rhythm Method, I can seriously believe and accept that.

Typing and editing. This is the easy stuff of ‘writing like crazy’. I just let it pour out, trying to faithfully capture what I glimpsed on those pages when I was writing in my head. The essence is most critical. Spelling, grammar, pacing, character traits, and details are all shoved aside to stalk and bring in the essence of the scene. Once I have that, I can return to fix all the rest.

Editing, revising and expanding. This is a deeper follow-up to typing and editing. Often when I finish with the previous phase, I recognize that some decisions I made will affect chapters and scenes previously written. I’ll make notes to vet that belief and fix it. Sometimes more detailed research is required for verisimilitude. That happens in this phase. I’m always on alert in this phase to make the writing active and to eliminate clichés. I’ve also learned that while writing like crazy, I have a habit of telling what I see, and then realizing it and describing it, so I’ll go in to ensure I’m showing and not telling, and eliminate redundacies.

Repeat. Yep, do it all again. My writing process is organic. It often isn’t linear. I’ll usually realize more critical scenes early, scenes that define the essence and tone of the book. Then I’ll need to add bridge scenes. Sometimes I’ll uncover a plot twist. I’ll write it to keep it alive and fresh, but then need to go back in and add the pivot points to help the reader get from there to here. I also tend to write fast, and realize that I like more depth and detail to what I’m reading, so returning to the rhythm Method, I’ll begin with some deep thinking about the characters’ lives and motivations.

My favorite part of all this is that typing and editing phase but the entire process excites me. The first steps are about creativity and problem solving. It is fun. But typing and editing makes it real. Editing, revising and expanding turns it into a draft manuscript. Repeat it enough, and I’ll end up with a novel or short story.

And that’s what is most rewarding.

What of you, writers?

How do you write?

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Five Chapters

I’m starting five chapters today:

Virus

Everything

Nothing

Ice Cream Headache

The Others

With each, I’ll put up the chapter title as a place holder. I’ll add the date beneath it in parentheses, and then a summary of what the chapter is about. I’ll highlight this in yellow and add <TK at the beginning, to help me remove it later. I know what I see and hear as the opening lines for each chapter, and I’ll add those lines. They will probably not be the first lines to the chapter but they’re a nugget around which to build the rest. After that process, one of those chapters will more sharply call, so I’ll take it up.

I always use <TK as an editing tool. Sometimes it’s a placeholder to insert some piece of necessary information, or to clarify or rewrite a passage. Sometimes I know the nugget, the critical piece that I want to immediately write, but know that I need a bridge to the rest of the novel, so I’ll insert <TK and explain what’s required.

I started and wrote five chapters in parallel before. Why five? I’m not certain. It’s not anything magical nor planned. Ideas are germinating. These all sprouted at the same time. I want to cultivate them so I can press on.

I suspect eight or nine chapters remain to be written in ‘Long Summer’. That includes the five I’m starting today.  I suspect that means I’ll write about thirty thousand more words. I won’t bet on whether I’m right but the beginning of the end of the first draft is cresting the horizon.

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

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Fitbit Writing

I’ve had my Fitbit for three and a half months. My daily average for steps is eleven thousand, seven hundred. My daily miles are five point five two. My personal best for daily steps was seventeen thousand, five hundred.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, I achieved almost twenty-two thousand steps and ten miles. I confess, if I’d known I was so close to doubling my average, I would have done it. That’s how I’m wired.

Now it’s the morning after.

I feel great but I question myself about what my Fitbit goal and expectations should be. I will work to reach and exceed my daily goals. I want to attempt another big walking and exercising day.

It’s the same way with writing. I typically write about eleven hundred words a day. I also edit, revise and polish. That’s part of my pantser organic writing process. My writing mind is like a loom weaving the story. I move back and forth through it.

Some days, I catch fire. The most I’ve ever written in one day was five thousand words, five thousand very intense words. Just like walking twenty-two thousand steps yesterday, it felt awesome. The next day, I wanted to do again. Why, if I could do five thousand words a day, every day, I’d become impressively prolific.

But the next day’s writing session was a struggle to achieve my standard output. I fought to achieve one thousand words and felt exhausted and disenchanted afterwards. It’s been like that with other writing days when I’ve doubled or tripled my average. Why, I tested myself to understand.

After thinking about this over the years, I’ve concluded that I do have a finite daily energy level. Exceeding that can happen but it takes it toll on the next day. I don’t know if science and medicine back me up on this, or if others have had the same experience. I know through my military experience of working twelve plus hours a day through illness and terrible conditions that I can draw deeper from the well. But doing so requires me to shut out absolutely everything else.

That was easy to do in a military environment. We had an established mission with a high priority. Other missions and units were depending on us. If we failed, a domino effect began. The stakes were high. So was the visibility.

Our expectations also set us up for success. Everyone outside of ours – family, friends and other unit members – understood our focus. They knew we didn’t have time or energy for anything else, and they gave us space.

But the writing experience is different from the military experience and the Fitbit experience. With Fitbit goals, it’s a personal goal. If I don’t make it, well, that sucks, but c’est la vie. The military commitment was well-established and understood.

Writing, however, is a terribly personal beast that has a hold on me. While the Fitbit goals require physical commitment with some smaller levels of intellectual and emotional commitments, I have all that in me, no problem. The military commitments were drawn at higher levels from those same veins.

The veins of energy and activity required for writing are much, much different. Physically, sitting in a chair, thinking, reading and typing, it doesn’t seem like it should be taxing. Yet, it becomes physically exhausting. Writing takes more out of me than walking all those steps.

Likewise, from intellectual and creative points of view, writing is more of a debilitating challenge. I worked for a decade for IBM as a planner and analyst. I was often presented with unique business cases to analyze and consider for my recommendations, observations and inputs. Those were interesting and challenging logic problems, and required intensely creative problem solving approaches, but still, they fell way short of what’s called for when fiction writing. Yes, my stories, characters, situations and worlds tend toward being complicated and involved. I remain constantly astounded by the levels of commitment I give my writing.

Returning to my Fitbit goals, I understand that twenty-two grand was a terrific result for me. I’ll enjoy it and move on because my goal is not to beat myself every day, but to maintain and achieve an average that will help me toward greater goals of being healtheir. In other words, the daily steps are not an end of themselves but part of a larger process.

So it is, too, with the writing. The word counts, editing, revising and polishing are not the end results. They’re part of a larger process of conceiving, writing, finishing and publishing a novel.

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

 

1

Fooled Again

Ah, the writer did it to me again.

Riding the thrill of yesterday’s progress, I jumped into it today with a razor of doubt hanging over me. What if yesterday was a mirage? What if what I’d written makes no sense, or that I can’t connect and continue? 

My head ached with fear about what might go wrong. Asking myself, where was I, I resumed typing. Within a few lines, the writer sprang another twist on me. Damn, I should have seen it coming.

Exuberant understanding burst upon me. Holy hell, this was the deeper truth behind the concept. Wide-eyed, I laughed at the astonishing epiphany. I’d conceptualized the novel and had started writing but had not taken the concept to its summit. Now, in writing, that’s what the writer within me finished doing.

Implications and realizations bubbled through me. A new light flashed on everything written in that novel to that point. Surreal, abstract and stunning, I considered my running joke, that a writer resided in me who actually came out and wrote, and wondered if that was the truth. At this point, it really seems to me like there is someone else in me who is the writer. He understands the novel. He has organized, outlined and plotted it, but only shares with me what I need to know when it’s being written. I’m just the poor, earthen vessel struggling to hang onto the moment.

Even now, done with my daily writing session, I struggle to fully comprehend and cope with what’s been proposed. It stuns and amazes me.

Seriously, maybe I am insane.

Maybe it’s just a side-effect of writing like crazy.

Is there a difference?

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Today’s Agenda

Between making oatmeal for breakfast and turning on the shower water, I asked the writer, “What are you going to write today?”

The editor joined us. The writer recapped where we were as I washed my hair. The editor reminded him that we need to go back to further revise and add to some previously created chapters because of other events later introduced.

“Yes, I remember that,” the writer answered with affable equanimity. “I will, don’t worry. There needs to be three of these chapters where we’re at now.”

That was the first I was hearing of it. Before I could say that, the writer continued, “That first chapter of this trio is titled ‘Miasma’.”

“It is?” I said. “That’s the first I — ”

“Yes. I don’t know what the other two are named yet. It’ll come to me.”

“Okay, but what’s to happen now? Forus Ker — ”

“The Englis and Exnila.”

“What about them?”

“Do you remember them?”

“Yes, of course, but — ”

“They’re going to show up.”

“They are?”

“Yes, yes.”

“How? And why?”

“Because remember, all the nows.”

“Umm….”

“We’ve only focused on some of the nows. Other nows are happening. We’re going to inroduce them. Oh, yeah. That’s the name of the second chapter. ‘In Other Nows.'”

“Isn’t that a little too cute?”

“No, it’s perfect. Trust me.”

I turned off the water and stood there dripping. “Okay, I’ll trust you. But how do the Englis and Exnila arrive? I don’t see it.”

“I do. It’s coming. It’s developing. You’ll see. Trust me.”

The writer says trust me often. “Okay.” I don’t see that I have another choice than to trust him. If I don’t trust him, we get nothing done. I began drying off.

“Hurry up,” he said. “It’s time to go write like crazy.”

I nodded. “At least one more time.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Writing Bucket

I’ve been receiving a number of queries about when the next novel is coming out. So – updates.

  1. Alas, I’m not working on the next mystery in the Lessons with Savanna series. That would be the third novel in the set, ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’. Continuing the story begun in ‘Life Lessons with Savanna’ and extended in ‘Road Lessons with Savanna’, Studs is being framed for murder in Texas. I promise to update the Facebook page this week. Thanks for being fans.
  2. I’m looking forward to working on ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’. Between recovering memories, coping with creeping insanity and being framed for murder, so much is going on with Studs. It’s the sort of developing character and story that excites writers. A third of the novel was completed before the great computer breakdown of 2016 forced me to send the Envy back to HP for repairs, living without my machine for three weeks.
  3. Work continues on ‘Long Summer’. I’ve been  writing the first draft for eight months. I’m not certain when it will be done. I’m hopeful it’ll be soon but, I’m a writer. As a writer, I’m always hopeful, optimistic, pessimistic, doubtful, depressed and exuberant. It’s a fun soup to dwell in.
  4. ‘Long Summer’  is very challenging to think through and write. While involving time shifting via a modified Alcubierre Drive (which involves, as well, exotic new materials and a whole other set of theories), it’s about the concept of now. Keeping that in mind as the parallel story lines twine together via the major characters and their alt existences causes me to pause and probe, asking myself, “Wait, which of the alts is this?” It’s imperative that each alt’s story is kept true and coherent. As I’m not a very coherent writer, you can imagine the babble in my head.
  5. All of that time shifting involves just the Humans, the ones known as Earth Humans, with the ones known only as Humans (from Aition) far less directly involved. Besides them, though, are the other intelligent life forms and their customs and civilizations. The story centers around a few of the Sabard and Travail, but the Monad’s plots and intentions drive much of the surface tension and action – or so it appears….
  6. ‘Long Summer’ has become so big as a Word manuscript that Word turned off several functions, like spell check and auto-correct. To counter that, I broke the novel up into its parts as manuscripts. It reduces my ability to move back and forth through scenes, parts and chapters, and demands that more documents be opened simultaneously, but I’ve recovered those Word functions. Overall, I consider that a win.
  7. I want to finish ‘Long Summer’ not only so that I can move on with writing ‘Personal Lessons with Savanna’, but because I need ‘Everything In Black And White’  copy-edited and published, along with ‘Spider City’, ‘Fix Everything’, and ‘Peerless’.  Besides them, new ideas have filled the writing bucket. There’s still that coffee shop musical percolating in my mind. I still want to do more with the Stellar Queen and the Magellan.
  8. Besides all this writing, my personal reading keeps falling behind. A friend dropped me an email yesterday. He finished reading the third novel in the Ferrante’s Neapolitan series and raved about it. Having read the first two, I want to read the third. Dozens of books besides it reside on my bookcases, night stand and other places, waiting for my attention.
  9. Meanwhile, I’m moving forward with paperback publication of the four published novels, so those of you bugging and encouraging me to do this, you win. I will do it. Soon. Really. I promise. I’m not crossing my fingers, either.
  10. But, I decided as well to have the covers for the Lessons with Savanna series redone. Time, energy and focus is necessary for that to happen, so bear with me.

Okay, with that out of the way, time to write like crazy, at least one more time. Back to the Wrinkle, Brett and Philea.

1

Those Exciting Moments

when you achieve a goal

reach a destination

or the day has come

AT LAST

Or when you sit down to write the next piece, a section that’s been growing in your head like a burst of spring on a time-elapsed film.

Reading, observing others, walking, thinking and watching television, scenes keep building. Small details are added to earlier chapters as the novel expands to fullness and nears its end. Epiphanies strike about cause and effect, action and reaction, directions and decisions, and revelations and choices.I didn’t know some of it. My inner writer has been waiting to spring it on me. His cleverness astonishes me once again.

Bring on the mocha. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Writing Like Crazy

It all worked like it’s supposed to work today, that is, how it’s supposed to synchronize and develop when I sit down to write fiction. I threw off worries and seized the chapter that began stewing in me when I finished yesterday’s session. Just let it flow, tune out myself, tune out the world and write, write, write. 

Forty-five minutes, more or less, as far as I could discern, I’d typed twelve hundred new words in the novel. I can look at it as, not a great amount but I’m still moving forward, or I can look at it as, woo-hoo, twelve hundred more words! Most floods begin with small drops coming together, pooling and flowing, I told myself, seeking to be the optimist.

After writing that chapter – for that’s what this is, the skeleton of the next chapter – I edited and revised it, correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and sometimes making a pacing change or clarifying.

Then, as I read the final lines written, I cackled with quiet delight about what I’d written, because it was just so much fun. The chapter brought everything together as I’d hoped, expected, planned and tried to achieve, but those final lines, they came from somewhere more devious.

Good day of writing like crazy. I hope you all have the same.

2

Pram

I reached that point. I went into the novel, strolled around the forest of words and found the trails I’d marked. One was marked Pram.

What was I to do with Pram? No, that was a flawed position; what will Pram do and what will happen to him? Walking about after writing yesterday, I reviewed what he’d done and what had happened.

Then Pram spoke up. He knew what was to happen, what he was to do, his role in the greater arc. He understood how he’d not understood himself, how he’d sheltered himself and hid, safely in the middle despite his colossal size, happy to be considered above average but just far enough above average to gain some trust and some attention, but not too much. He saw better than me how his personality and quiet choices of non-choices dictated his endpoint, and he saw how others saw him and had recognized, accepted and planned for his inadequacies. That directed his destiny. He saw it as not giving up, but as acquiescing.

He dictated a few thoughts to me. These sentences were the seeds that sowed the scene and grew into a chapter, becoming a turning point.

I compared him to me afterward, seeing the similarities and differences, how much of myself was vested in him. He’d been a good corporate soldier but could not stretch himself enough to seek another beginning. He didn’t fear new beginnings but didn’t care for them. He’d had new beginnings before. They hadn’t worked out. He was tired of trying.

He lived almost one hundred years. His parents remained alive and together, and the latter was unusual in Pram’s era. He’d been born well-to-do and had been comfortable in his role. He thought he loved his work. Turned out he’d been placating himself about what he believed and accepted. But then came an unfolding of his protections, welcoming a new understanding of himself. Gladly he went on, happy to understand who he was.

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