Marcel Said
Killing Time
It was an excellent day of editing, with little re-writing or revising required. Five chapters were edited. Although I kept part of myself separate as an objective measure to ensure continuity and clarity, reading my work was a reader’s delight. This was the sort of book I enjoy, and I was pleased with myself for what had come of my efforts of drinking coffee, staring out windows, talking to myself, dreaming, thinking, and typing. So, congrats to me.
Meanwhile, this evening, I had spare time to kill. It happens often when the daylight hours grow shorter. It suddenly seems like, hello, it feels like eight at night but it’s four P.M. I have energy but the darkness discourages activities.
So I’m reading. I’m usually reading several books. To pass time this evening, I resumed reading Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order of Time.
His book is a slow read for me. I typically read a few pages a week. Sometimes I don’t read it for a week or two. His book gives me a lot to think about. As I read, ideas stir in me like mice creeping out in search of food. I begin pacing, hunting for the handle about what I’m thinking.
And suddenly, I realize, there is a potential sixth book in the Incomplete States series. There is something else that can happen, that can be done. It seems like it should be done.
Drawing out a notebook that I kept for scribbling about ideas, I confirmed that I’d formed the basis for this final book back in March, 2017. There it was, in the musings about Chi-particle states as they decay and transition from being imaginary and traveling faster than light to gaining mass and energy as they slow to less than FTL, to interacting with a wave-function collapse to establish arrows of time. In those fourteen pages of thoughts, written over three days, was the answer that could be the basis for the final book.
I’m astonished that I overlooked something that I think is sort of obvious, now that I see it.
Naturally, a muse leaps out to take charge. Words flow like lava from an erupting super-volcano. Opening a new doc, I type. As I do, ideas accelerate. Scenes expand. Dialogue rushes in. Plot points follow. Pages are typed.
Of course, I was writing at home. That’s fraught with interruptions as my wife laughs aloud at things she sees and reads on the Internet, plays videos, and talks to me about the news. The cats come in to see why I’m making that noise with my fingers and whether it’s something that they can eat, and if it’s not, can I give them something to eat?
All this puts me on edge. I’m frustrated with the interruptions, excited about the ideas, and pensive about writing another book in the series. Knowing me, one book can easily become two, or three. I’m almost finished with editing book four, A Sense of Time. Do I really want to pursue a sixth?
It’s anguishing. It feels like, I’ve envisioned the framework for the book so I’m now compelled to write it.
I didn’t know how to finish this post. I write to help me understand what I think. I write to channel my thoughts and enthusiasm. I write to wonder…
I returned to the new document to read what I wrote. More ideas and arcs are squeezed out of me. I’m reluctant to agree to the muse and write a sixth book but the writing fever has me, again begging the question, who is in charge here? Is there a master?
I’ll see what I think tomorrow, when it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
All Those Spectrums
Whenever I read about the stages of coping with grief, aging, or ASD, I think more generally about spectrums. My overall philosophy is that everything in existence is on a spectrum. Those spectrums generally have multiple sub-spectrums.
Fer instance, my body is on several spectrums. The spectrums are about my body shape, physical age, genetics, and conditioning. Some of the things are on spectrums that I can’t do anything about (genetics) and knowing this helps me adjust my other efforts and expectations.
The spectrum of time is fun to think about because now because the past in the same instant that the future becomes now. What a spectrum!
Emotions and socializing have multiple spectrums, too. I think of Johari spectrums instead of Johari windows. Nothing wrong with the windows, except for the conceptions that some have that these things are fixed within those panes, but my impressions are that we slide along, changing through the day, depending on circumstances, like whether we’re supervising, socializing, working alone, etc., but also circumstances such as who we’re dealing with, and our what’s going on with our body. Yes, it’s complex.
Naturally I think of these spectrums while writing. I appreciate that I have multiple spectrums about my work in progress and my writing prowess in general. My writing spectrums include ranking my grammar and punctuation, word-smithing, story-telling, and creativity. There are also spectrums for how well I create characters, portray action scenes, create settings, etc. Yes, it’s complex.
Think about it came about because on the editing spectrum for my novel in progress, I feel pretty damn good. Meanwhile, on my story-telling spectrum, I feel far less confident. I’m anxious and worried about whether the story I’m trying to tell will emerge from how I tell it. I’m in the middle regarding its creativity and settings, because I see how I’ve built from the foundations that others have set.
But again, thinking of these things regarding my writing as spectrums enable to visualize my strengths and weaknesses, and helps me assess where I need to improve.
Enough of this stuff. You may say that I’m overthinking, over-analyzing, and over-complicating things. You may be right. It works for me, however, so who cares? Find your way — or don’t. It’s your choice.
Time to write edit like crazy, at least one more time.
The Real Time
Well, they’ve done it, they’ve changed their clocks, setting the time back an hour, “Falling back,” as they like to say in America.
It’s an easy task that he does before going to bed. He has five clocks to change. It’s amazing that the house has five clocks. One is mechanical and battery operated. The rest, on the thermostat, bedroom clock-radio, microwave, and stove, are electronic. Strange that they must be changed manually, but there you go. He confirms, while doing his task, that the guest room clock radio is unplugged. That’s to save energy. He smiles at that.
The household has four televisions. It’s a ridiculous number for a couple who spends a few hours with the TV at night, and always watch together. But there’s been a progression, so the older flat screen digital televisions find homes in the master and guest bedrooms. Neither room had a television before. Each television has time built into its systems. Software manages falling back for him. Same with the Fitbits, computers, tablets, VCR, and phones, but not the cars.
Time is everywhere. For days after going through the change, he thinks, “What is the real time? It’s actually really seven now.” He thinks about how this change affects the daylight, and the temperatures he endures, which affects how he dresses, and his daily plans. He likes the light arriving earlier but he misses the late day light.
He wonders, in the end, what the real time is. His body isn’t certain. One thing he notes: the cats admirably adjusted to the change.
I Live In My Writing
I live in my writing,
an odd place to be,
but you’d be there, too,
if you see what I see.
I live in my writing,
and lose track of time,
at least in this world,
but, to me, that’s fine.
I live in my writing,
enjoying the ambiance of life,
it’s an unlimited existence,
and has far less strife.
I live in my writing,
and some are dismayed,
so am I, really,
because I never get paid.
I live in my writing,
it’s a solitary existence,
and maybe existential,
but at least it’s consistent.
Tick
It seemed like a tick. It’d been Monday and now it was Saturday. May was beginning but now September was being celebrated. He’d just turned sixteen, and now he was sixty-two. 1968 became 1978, and 1998 became 2018.
Just a tick. He’d been beginning, and now he considered the ending.
Viet Said
I enjoyed several interviews with Viet Thanh Nguyen, finding them insightful about the fiction writing and the effort that it takes, including this article on ‘overnight success’.
July
“July,” he whispered. “Feel the passing year’s cold breath breathing down your neck?”
He flicked it aside. “It’s just time. It’s just air. It’s nothing that matters.”
Then he resumed writing like crazy.
It was all that mattered.
Precision
Someone asks for the time. You look at a timepiece. It’s 10:28. Do you say, “It’s almost ten thirty,” “It’s ten twenty-eight,” “It’s about half-past ten,” or “It’s about ten thirty?”
Or do you say, “Zulu or local?”
After the Revelations
This is not how I thought writing would go.
I had a romanticized, glamorized vision about the writing process and a novelist’s life. I thought I would be dictating the story, making it up and writing it down. Instead, here we go again. Philea finishes her wide-ranging tale and brings it back to the moment where it split away, and joins two other paths. One path was forged by Pram when he told his part of this story, and the other path was forged by the six primary characters on the Wrinkle.
I’ve been waiting for this re-connecting. I’d seen and heard, experienced, if you will, what they were going to say and do once they came back together. Honestly, Philea’s side-trip astonished me. She went into a life that I didn’t know existed. It’s also surprising that it startled her as much as it startled me.
But, at last her side-trip is done. It’s time for those long-awaited next scenes. But before I go into writing those scenes, I need to soak in what Philea and the other characters experienced. She and Pram shared more examples of parallel life-experience-reality-existences — a LERE, their shorthand for other Now events that that lived (or are living) and share with the rest trapped in this cycle.
They’re trying to understand what will happen to them. They’re attempting to take a piece of information and fit it in with other pieces of information to create a substantive, believable cause and effect tale for what they’re enduring. That’s human nature, to fill in the gaps, color them with some form of logic or explanation, and make it all whole.
I feel for them, pitying them, because I know that’s not their nature. That’s not what they’re living. Even as they draw closer to the truth, sometimes even stating it in incredulous terms as a possibility, the six don’t always agree on the verbiage or logic. The logic argues against their standard expectations about reality, existence, and the arrows of time. Besides, not all of their experiences will support the truth, in their minds, because they don’t remember everything that they experience. Remembering more answers less by introducing more complexity and gaps. At this point, I think all readers will understand that.
So listening to — hah, typing — my characters’ struggle to resolve these new fragments of information, I really feel for them. The passages of their thoughts and dialogue that I’ve typed leave me oddly reflective.
That’s a first, raw, impression. On greater thought, it’s not leaving me oddly reflective. Instead, I’m taking what I learned through my characters’ learning, and applying it to my existence, here in the real world.
We’re all pieces. We see ourselves as pieces that comprise a whole. Yet, few of us ever fit fully, completely, and comfortably. And when one of us goes, we struggle to see the new whole, because we remember the whole that we knew, and lament its changes. We search for answers and rarely find closure and resolution. We remain wondering.
With these notes softly echoing in my mind, I sip the final dregs of cold coffee and end my day of writing like crazy.
Michael Seidel, writer 