Tag: writing like crazy

Tea and Toast

Sick today. Third day that I consider myself sick. I’d felt it coming on last week and tried to avert it, but by Sunday a cold was marking my throat and my head was congested and throbbing. It worsened Monday. Last night was unpleasant. Sleep has stayed away like it was afraid of catching my cold.

On a side note to that, it’s weird that toast and tea makes me feel so much better when I have a cold. Other than a tangelo, Larabar (key lime) and a cup of coffee while writing, tea and toast has been my sustenance for the past two days. That combo definitely makes me feel better. It might be a panacea effect because tea and toast is what’s always been recommended to me.

So, sick, not on my deathbed, but sick enough to ponder whether I could and should go out to write. I’d gotten about four hours of sleep last night and my head feels like Buddy Rich, Phil Collins, John Bonham, and Keith Moon are having a drum-off.

That lack of sleep left me vulnerable to phantom writing throughout the night. My WIP haunted me, and I felt it was an imperative that I write today. I wouldn’t do any (well, much) walking, but I would write.

So, it’s been successfully completed. Eighteen hundred words and some editing completed. But, my Ibuprofen has worn off, my ears are stopped up, and my nose continues its impressive Niagara Falls imitation. I’m done writing like crazy. Time to return home for some tea and toast.

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Wickedly Aggressive

You ever been writing and catch fire? The words blaze through you and onto the page, forcing you to do your best to keep up. It’s an exhausting but exuberant process, oddly like scoring a touchdown or do something else that requires focus, attention, and energy.

Then you stop writing to attend to the mundane requirements of life, but the writing doesn’t stop. It keeps flowing. Changing metaphors, it’s like rivers overflowing its banks, flooding you with more of the story that you’re writing. Great, but so damn distracting, because it’s consuming your energy, removing you from normal conversations and interactions. You become short-tempered and irritated with others because your energy is pouring into the writing pouring into you.

And then, it won’t stop at the day’s end. Your body and brain are ready for sleep, but the writing continues in your mind, refusing to be stopped.

I’m not complaining, though, just pointing out that sometimes, those muses can be wickedly aggressive.

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

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The Writing Purge

I was out of the writing slot this past ten days, venturing in but once. Life business demanded my attention.

As I traveled, I read The Watchers (Jon Steele, first book in the Angelis Trilogy) and Ready Player One (Ernst Cline). While writing, I often reflected on how my style and material compared to the two books, and what I liked and disliked about each novel.

Then I required a purge. Are you familiar with this? The purge is needed when others’ fiction is enjoyed, and I begin thinking that I need to do things in my novel to make it more like them.

Bad idea? No, terrible idea, worse idea in the bloody world. Almost inevitable, too. I’ve gone through this before. In early years, I tried changing my stories to be more like something just read.

The results sucked, but they were helpful. I learned, and I know, trying to write my book with inflections and concepts found in something recently read ends up torturing my story lines and prose, and dilutes my concept and originality.

That’s why the purge is needed.

Several steps are required for me to purge. I’ve been through this before. I know what to do. One, I need to recognize that I’m about to throw untested code to what I’m writing. Two, I need to understand why it’s so damn tempting.

The latter point is easier to cope with, and best for me to first approach, because the first point is so nebulous, harder to grasp, and is a challenge and affront to my confidence as a writer. Basically all of my writing is untested code. I’m an organic writer. I write it, modify it, and test it until it fits. So, naturally, I think, well, damn, can’t I make other things fit, too?

Yes, probably, but it’s pricey. I may end up muddying my developed story lines, something dangerous to do twelve hundred words and four books into a series, right?

This is why understanding why I want to change my books to incorporate what I’ve read is important. What I read entertained me. I admired their talent and skill. They’d developed concepts, characters, plots and sub-plots, and story lines in novel manners. Their books allowed me to escape.

That’s what I’m shooting to do, too: write stuff that entertains others and lets them escape. Steele and Cline’s books “win” over mine because I still offer a work-in-progress. It’s harder to pick my novel up to compare with their books. But once I stopped to review my WIP, I was surprised anew how entertaining it is. Yes, similarities with other novels and my novels exist, and will be spotted when mine are done, no matter what and how I write. I try to minimize these things but it’ll happen because I’m a product of my environment. Books and other authors fill that environment. Hell, they’re the foundation of what prompts my desire to write and publish.

With that thinking processed, the purge was completed.

Another day of writing like crazy done. Time for other things, like, umm…lunch.

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Ray Said It

Saw this today in passing and love the sentiment. I feel this way, that without writing, reality would reduce me to a blithering idiot (yeah, just stop what you’re thinking right now). I feel that I’m addicted to writing, but that’s okay; I feed it, and it feeds me.

To paraphrase Ray, time again to write like crazy, and get high on words and ideas.

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Post Writing Writing

Yesterday was an excellent writing session. I walked away still writing in my mind. I’d reached a natural ending point for the chapter, but was then left mulling, what happens next? Meanwhile, I had other chapters in mind to write. Most of them were bridges, pivots, and place-holders.

Bridges, pivots, and place-holders are my terms. Someone in literature has probably developed more formal terms, but it’s how I see it, and I go with it. Action scenes often come in flashes, and I write them fast, to capture the lightning. Then they’re edited.

They’re not linear, though, and they’re often not connected to the main body of action at that point. That’s where a bridge or a pivot comes into play. A bridge links two or more action scenes; a pivot turn from one course of activity (or thought, or string of events) to another.

Then there is the place-holder. That’s a poor name for it. This piece of the novel is explanatory material, as exposition, dialogue, of stream of thought, for what has happened, and what the characters think is going to happen. My characters can’t be trusted in this regard. Some are like me, and try to analyze what’s happened to this point and predict what will happen next, but they’re woefully under-informed, so it’s garbage-in, garbage-out.

As I walked after writing yesterday, an audacious twist struck me. It so surprised me, I laughed out loud as I walked along the street. The energy of the idea made me walk faster as the flash scene developed, and then the structures of the pivot, bridge and place-holder scenes jumped into being. By the time I sat down with my coffee to write this morning, I just needed to recall what I wrote in my head on the previous day. The biggest challenge of today’s writing session was keeping up. I’m a fast typist, but not fast enough to keep up with thinking.

Again, I ended up spent, in a good way. I’d stopped at a natural point once again, but a lot of words and scenes remained to be written that I’d already written in my head.

I love it when this happens, but it’s not always like this. I take advantage of it as I can. Eventually, knowing myself and my writing habits, I’ll reach a point that I won’t really know what to write. Then I’ll walk away to think about it. I’ll hopefully begin writing in my head again, because lightning often does strike more than once. If not, I’ll read and edit what I’ve already written. That usually triggers a natural flow of more words.

Meanwhile, the sessions of the last two days are a little different than usual. I’m reaching the end of the novel, and the series. That awareness causes a different tension in the writing sessions as I actively ask myself, is this really going to be the end? Will the ending work?

In such sessions, my thinking and writing focus narrows and sharpens. Even as I do that, other potentials for this series hang on the horizon, because that’s the nature of creativity and my writing process. Ideas rarely stand alone. It’s more like the classic process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad.

I’m careful not to look too closely at what’s on the horizon right now. Number one, I want to finish and publish this series of four books. Number two, other projects are in the wings.

This one must be completed so I can go on to them. I’m done writing like crazy, at least for today.

 

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Flashes

You ever been doing something innocuous, like cleaning the cat box (and thinking, I would be rich if cat crap was worth anything) when writing flashes strike?

Happened to me today. Suddenly, scenes fill me. Gaps are bridged, with the story advancing on multiple fronts, like a creative offensive has been launched in my head.

Everything else is squeezed out for time to make room for dialogue, settings, and action scenes. It’s a struggle to keep up, like I’m in the center of several movies playing simultaneously. An impetus to rush off to write seizes me.

But the creative explosion wasn’t limited to writing and the current WIP. Writing is the largest beneficiary. While scenes for the current work in progress proliferate, so do a multitude of new ideas for other concepts in play, and fresh ideas. Catfinitions, those silly ideas involving cats and weak word play, pour in. Ideas for organizing and cleaning spring up like weeds after a rain. My overall energy levels surge. I feel powerful, confident, excited, and optimistic.

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

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Squirrelly Writing Session

Today’s writing session was weirdly structured (or unstructured). I’d write a few pages in the novel, and then my brain would squirt some random idea out. Like a dog addicted to chasing squirrels, I’d pursue that idea until the squirrel was gone, edit what I’d written, and then resume writing.

I attribute the randomness to conversations with friends yesterday about quantum mechanics and brains (and consciousness), and dreams I had last night. But even with the squirrel breaks, it was a satisfying and engaging day of writing like crazy.

Time to stop writing like crazy for today and squirrel off to do something else.

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Monthly Changeover

A new month has arrived. Hello? February, already? No way. Time continues to accelerate in an unseemly manner with months passing like weeks and hours flashing by like minutes.

I hypothesize that we each have time particles at a sub-atomic level in ourselves. Their interaction with others’ time particles and those embedded in other matter form how we perceive and use time, and how time treats us. We adhere to agreed standards for simplicity’s sake, but time is more personalized than realized. That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it, at least for today. Someday, someone a lot smarter than me will figure all this out, and our thinking about time will undergo a monumental shift. For now, it’s one of those, we can’t make out the forest for the trees sort of perspective.

With the new month comes chores that rotate around the month’s arrival. Besides flipping over calendar pages, reviewing business plans, goals, and dreams, I also back up my writing work on something external that’s placed somewhere safe. While floppies of the five and a quarter and three and a half-inch varieties were used in the past, I moved on to zip drives, CDs, and now, flash drives.

Reviewing the month, I’m pleased with my writing progress, but I’m astonished that it’s taking so long to finish this quadrilogy, Incomplete States. I seem to be adding a new volume every few months; this week I was contemplating a fifth book in the series. Reining myself in, I sought ways to incorporate these new ideas into the fourth book being written. We’ll see how it goes. It’s not like the series is a raised garden bed, where everything must be contained. My motto is generally, write like crazy, and let the words go where they flow. I’m a trifled concerned; if I keep adding volumes like this, I’ll end up with something that rivals the Wheel of Time for the series’ length.

Now it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Velvet Rain

A velvet rain is falling. It’s a rain that makes the world feel cozier and more intimate, inviting deeper thoughts.

I’d planned to walk ten minutes but the rain soothed me, inviting me to keep going. I did, until two miles and an hour had passed.

The rain didn’t appear to soothe all. Some drivers took the rain as a sign to go, “Faster! Faster!”

The walking time allowed for solitude and writing time. I’d dropped into my personal trough the other day in the cycles of buoyancy and depression. Oh, lord, that darkness. Daunting, it drinks me up and swallows me down. The sighs are heavy, the thoughts are bitter, and the world looks grim. Even the cats’ attentions are infuriating irritations.

Perspective helps me survive. Writing, walking, and solitude help me grind out perspective. Alas, Schedules and events kept me from consistently achieving two of the three. But yeah, I survived.

Our new microwave and range were delivered and installed yesterday. They look so modern, I was surprised to realize how ancient the replaced ten-year-old units looked, and the difference it makes to the kitchen. To celebrate, we went out to lunch, and then to a movie.

The movie is part of our annual Oscar Quest. Friends throw a party, and we like to be able to think and talk intelligently about the movies and performances. We’ve only seen a few noms, so we’re behind. We saw “The Post” yesterday. That increases our total to four. We have work to do in our entertainment. None of the previews (“Love, Simon,” “Red Sparrow,” “7 Days in Entebbe,” and “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”) didn’t inflame deep interest. Each struck me as something to stream and watch at home when it’s available through one of our subscriptions. Of the four, “Love, Simon,” sparked the most intrigue. I suppose I’m too picky and cynical.

As the lights dropped and the previews played, and then the movie opened, my writers emerged with scene ideas. When we returned home, I quietly sat down (quietly, so as to not attract the cats, who seemed determined to stop me from writing at home) at the laptop, opened the required doc, and wrote the scene and changes. Not interested in tempting fate (the cats! the cats!), I saved and closed the doc, but later, while eating, more writing visited me. I stole back into the document and added a few more pages. Best, it left me knowing exactly where to begin today.

It’s a fine feeling, to know what to write, to write it, and to look forward to writing more.

Liquid dripped onto the coffee shop table as I unpacked and set up. Rain or sweat? I don’t know; either were plausible. I suppose I could taste it, but it’s not a critical difference.

Tonight, Wednesday, is when I meet with my friends for conversation and beer. It’s a standing invitation. My attendance record is lackluster but the rain is whispering, “You should go.” I’m ambivalent, but contemplating it.

Meanwhile, the first gulps of hot, black coffee have scalded my lips and tongue. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

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