Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
Revising my current novel-in-progress continues. I expected to be done by now. I was excited the other day because, hey, only thirty pages remain.
I am over page 400 now, so I have that going for me. But, as I read and revise, I encounter matters of continuity. Like eye or hair color, nicknames, and details relating to the characters’ personal histories.
I don’t know what the right thing to do is, but I always stop, go back, and resolve the issue for myself. It’s one of my personality quirks that if I know that’s still in the book, I become bogged down thinking about it. Better to just resolve it.
A danger to going back to research continuity is that rereading those passages entertains me. I get invested with enjoying the story. Which means that the revising timeline gets imperiled by reading my own stuff for entertainment. There’s also often a little more needs to edit and revise exposed. Like, I’ll encounter a sentence that’s slightly scrambled, just enough for me to question my writing skills and stop to fix those issues.
I also backtracked to a previous chapter. I’d been quite long, so I modified it and re-invented the one big chapter into four smaller ones. Then I did something to another long chapter, feeling that the move would enhance clarity and pacing – win-win.
The final note on this part of the revision is that it’s tying up the story, closing with a large battle, with some matters of other dimensions and time thrown in. I’m a sucker for other dimensions and time. My writer self is amused with our current theories and understanding of these things. Like the growing understanding of quantum entanglement and other quantum matters, I think we have more to understand about time and existence.
The passages in question were also written at high speed: think, write, and press on, with admonitions to myself, don’t slow down to analyze and question. Just get it done and fix it in revision.
And that’s what I’m doing. TBH, I’m a little surprised that it flows as well as it does.
Onward, right? Yeah, just give me a little more coffee. Pass it over; doesn’t matter if it’s cold.
Mood: low-energy. Don’t know if that qualifies as ‘mood’. Feels like my batteries are blinking with a ‘recharge now’ message. Or maybe I just have the Wednesdays.
Yes, Wednesday, July 26, 2023, pulled into Ashlandia, where the skies are not cloudy today. Low was in the upper fifties this morning and the high will pull the numbers into the lower nineties. While the fires continue burning north, east, and south, and advisories warning us about our air quality is out, the sky is blue and the air is smoke free. If we can play keep away with the smoke, a lovely summer day will reward us.
After another dream invasion, I awoke thinking about dreams, my mind, and memories. Last night’s thinking about doors in my mind and event boundaries just before going to sleep probably contributed to that. The Neurons ended up plugging a 1967 song by The Amboy Dukes called “Journey to the Center of the Mind” into the morning mental music stream (trademark imagined). This song has a bit of prog to it — reminds me of several Moody Blues works — with a psychedelic edge. The lead guitarist knew his stuff. It’s a guy named Ted Nugent. I don’t usually share his work because I consider him repugnant. On a scale of one to ten, he goes to eleven. It’s about his interest in sex with thirteen year old girls and his comments about not every man being created equal. It’s not a question of his politics; he’s just hateful.
But we’re going with this music to satisfy Les Neurons (who just fired up “Satisfaction” by the Stones in the morning mental music stream). You be strong, safe, positive. Work it as best as you can, right?
Okay, my coffee is singing to me. Here’s the tune. Cheers
Awakening to light, slowly mobilizing brain cells and muscles to enjoin the day, I sensed something different. The sense catalyzed my awakening, catapulting me into a full upright position.
This was not my room.
But it was my room from…when?
Rock groups, astronomy, and Formula 1 racing posters, blue bedspread, simple small room layout were absorbed, an answer gained: this was my room when I was seventeen.
I was in my bedroom from when I was seventeen. I had to be dreaming.
Almost as I went through this, I heard a voice inside me saying something similar. As I endured my shocked understanding, I stood.
Almost as I went through this, I heard a voice saying something. Freaked out, I stood up. “Who are you?” I asked in my head.
Then I did something I never thought I’d do. I asked a voice in my head to identify itself.
They seemed to be doing the same.
They seemed more panicked. And younger. So I took the initiative. “My name is Marshall Chamberlain,” I said in a calm voice. “What’s your name?”
“That’s my name, too. Marshall Chamberlain. I’m Marshall Chamberlain.”
Although I’d almost expected it, my throat dried as realizations took over. I couldn’t accept them but logic forced me to say things, searching for truth and understanding. “I’m in my bedroom from when I was seventeen, living in Pennsylvania with my father. Do you know where you are?”
I turned and looked into the dresser mirror as I spoke, staring at my young, skinny self. Thin dark mustache and goatee, thick, brown curly hair, unibrow, muscles.
“No. I’m…I’m in a bedroom.”
I took a tight grip on my sanity. It was like one of those crazy movies where a parent and child have switched places, except I’d been switched with myself. I was back in time, as had happened to Kathleen Turner’s character in Peggy Sue Got Married, except I’d also gone forward as a youth to my present existence, and we could hear one another.
“Tell me what it’s like. Is it big? Blue walls? Light-colored carpet, king-sized bed? Sliding doors to a patio, and a large bathroom with two sinks, a garden tub, sauna, and shower?”
“No. It’s…no, I don’t know.”
“Is it a nice, airy room with large windows, French doors leading to a balcony? Can you see a big body of water?”
Shock rattled me. A third voice. “Who?”
I was thinking fast, realizing as he spoke, thinking it as he spoke, as the young me also thought it, “We’re all past, present, and future. We all have a past while we live in the past, and have a future waiting to be lived.”
Then the ‘old one’ from my future said, “This could go very good, or very bad. I don’t remember anything like this happening to me when I was young. I think I would have.”
A younger voice asked, “What’s going on,” as another said, “I remember this room.”
Several of us thought, past, present, future, past, present, future. It’s not static but dynamic. The future almost immediately becomes the present and then moves on to the past.
“I hope this doesn’t spiral out of control,” most of I said. Sounded like seven, eight voices.
With a common thought, we all caught our breath and waited.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Sunshine and blue skies. Presently on the mid side of 60 F, up from 52 F overnight, we’ll be hunting the mid 80s before the sun skirmishes with the falling night and carries us into a new day.
It’s June and Saturday, June 3, 2023, for more exactitude. The cats are loving this weather, right? Mostly out there sleeping in part shade, part sun. Seeing them out there, and I drift through memories. Tucker has always been a little strange about doors. He goes to the linen door, coat closet door, garage door, pantry door. A drawn out merow is issued. His meowing is either very loud or barely a whisper. No midpoint for him. When it’s a loud meow, he draws out the sounds and employs several syllables.
I ask, “What? You want into the <insert location here>?”
Head nod (yes, by him), mumbling mew sounds, a head tilt at the door in question, his look shooting from it to me, back to it, conveying his desire.
Head shake (yes, by me). “Okay, buddy.” Sigh. Door is opened. He heads in for investigation, sometimes dwelling in wherever for fifteen to twenty minutes. He’s old now, a long-furred black and white stray who chose to stay with us, showing up with matted fur and bad teeth almost ten years ago, I think. Need to check the histories to know with certitude. Point is, these demands have been incorporated in his behavior since his first year with us.
The Neurons planted “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” into the morning mental music stream. 1966 Yardbirds song. Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on lead guitars, I thought this song was so cool when I first heard it, one of those radio offerings that had me jumping for the radio and reaching for the volume knob. Never heard it much on the radio in the years since. Don’t know when I last listened to it. But this morning, walking out of dream sleep and into the other room to begin standard morning practices, the first lines broke out of memory and into conscious thought.
Meeting people on my way
Seemingly I’ve known one day
Familiarity of things
That my dreaming always brings
Happenings ten years time ago
Situations we really know
But the knowing is in the mind
Sinking deep into the well of time
h/t to AZLyrics.com
Wasn’t long after that before The Neurons delivered the song to a loop in my head. I think it’s a related-to-writing thing. I obsess over time, reality, and questions of what we know vs what happened vs what we think we know is one that in my novel writing. Memory is a mischief maker and history is written by the winners and then revised, leaving many of us floundering about it all. So here we be.
Stay pos. Coffee drinking has commenced. Big old cup is a quarter down already. Goes well with a cool summer morning on the patio, sunshine blazing down, cats washing in the green grass, jay yelling at us all from different perches as he surveys the yard and lands on chairs and trees. Could be a good day, you know?
Here’s the tune. Cheers
Martin was in a glorious mood. Winter seemed to have finally left the area. Sunshine ruled. Unlimited blue sky. The air smelled different. Fresher. Cleaner.
He liked how things were going. Thick described him – legs, chest – which was also deep – arms, neck. Everyone thought of him as a bear without the violence, a slumbering bear, his first ex described him in college. Other than hair drawing back from his forehead and a thick mustache and goatee, he looked much like the man he was forty years before.
His house was finished. He’d moved in and it was beginning to feel like home. Lot couldn’t be replaced from the loss, but life, you know? Heard from daughter. She and her children were safe, great news. Cherry on dessert was his night of passion. Been a long time since one of those.
Seeing his fornicating partner coming toward him launched a big grin. She hugged him. “Hello, how are you, Martin?”
“Hey Cindy, long time, no see.” A joke. He leaned in and planted a big wet one.
Cindy snapped back. “Whoa, Martin, what the hell? We’re old friends but that was a little over the top.” She was wiping her mouth. “No offense, but I’m not interested.”
Martin stepped back and drew up, looming over her by a foot. “Hold up. We did the nasty three times last night and this morning. The last one was just over five hours ago, and a little kiss upsets you? Seriously, really? I guess I read too much into it. Forgive me.”
She was staring. “Did the nasty? In what reality did we do the nasty?”
Pieces acquired new meanings. Fresh air. How it smelled. Sunshine. His safe daughter. “Damn.”
He was in a different reality. Episode number twenty. Real mystery was when it happened. Why, of course. “Sorry, Cindy. My sincere apologies.”
“That’s okay. I forgive you.”
“Will you indulge me and tell me, who is President?”
“President?” Cindy laughed. “Man, you are in another world.”
Michael Seidel, writer 