Tag: writing like crazy

Complications

I’m involved in the part of my novel that’s labeled ‘the dance’ in my mind.

The multiple story lines have snaked into a knot. Each of these story lines are represented by a character with a third person personal POV. You’re in their thoughts; you know their lies, perceptions, fears, histories and plans. Now, all of that is running up against the others’ realities and activities.

I end up with multiple documents open:

  • the main document, with the chapters embedded, the actual work in progress, used to confirm scenes and sequence;
  • the bible, so I can look up terms, characters, and details without losing my place;
  • a map of where we’re at and expected to go;
  • and then a document for each of the story lines in progress.

I find myself writing one of the story lines but then switching to another doc and another story line, so as to keep it all integrated and true to the character and their story line.

Then, there are complications, because I love complications. There are the secrets that I know that even the characters don’t know, and that the readers certainly don’t know. There are secrets that the writers and some characters know that others don’t know, and some secrets the readers know that none of the characters know. Complications arise from politics, visions, time and memory. Writing it becomes a breathtaking, cerebral exercise to keep the complications from running me into the ground.

It’s all so satisfying and fun.

Oh, I think, I hope some readers someday find this novel, read it, and enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing it. I wonder what they will see in it that I’ve written that I never noticed.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time, just for the sheer joy of it.

1

One More Time

Dreams beat me up last night. Intense, involved and convoluted, I awoke and thought them over for a while somewhere around two AM. Returning to sleep isn’t usually difficult and I was headed that way when Quinn the Black Paws went cat-crazy. He raced around the house, scratching at doors. When I went to talk to him about it, he rushed to the front door and issued pitiful mews. They sounded like, “I need out now,” to my ears. I tried soothing him but he insisted. It was thirty-three degrees out, a welcomed warmer night than that the last six days, so I released him. I knew he would demand to be let back in by beating on the windows when required and we, of course, would obey.

His antics had awakened the other three feline emperors. Each now demanded either released to the outside, food, attention, or all three. By the rules established by some crazy god, I was required to do their bidding. An hour later, returning to bed, my energy was too high to dismiss. Besides that, all that activity had summoned the writer.

He’d been thinking about where we are in ‘Long Summer’ and had some ideas to pitch. So he started pitching. Pram does this, and this happens on the ‘River Styx’  while Handley does this and this happens to her on the CSC Narwhal and that happens, and Forus Ker does this and Richard does that, and this is what’s happening to Brett and here is a part that I can’t work out, that I need to work out but this happens.

Sounds good, I told him. Keep it in mind and talk to me about it tomorrow.

But no, he wanted to write it and place it now. He mentioned a few more reveals that hadn’t occurred to me.

But really, it was dark-cold-time-to-sleep AM. Much as I enjoy writing like crazy, now was not the time.

I retreated to the recliner in the snug with a blanket. Finding a sitcom on Netflix, I set the TV timer to turn it off after thirty minutes and settled back. This pleased Tucker the Black and White Enigma, who happily landed on my abdomen. After studying me a few moments and conducting an abbreviated sniffing session for clues about what’s been going on, he gave me a nose lick and positioned himself to groom. I was probably asleep ten minutes later.

Now it’s almost touching on eleven thirty. I’m way behind. The writer appears to be asleep, but I have my quad-shot mocha.

Time to wake that rat-bastard up and write like crazy, at least one more time.

1

Finer Points

Finishing up another awesome writing day, knock on wood. I exploded with excitement here in the coffee shop, leaping up to rapidly pace with an epiphany. The coffee shop was empty so there wasn’t anyone to witness this except the security cameras.

I’m eighty pages into Part II. One of my finer parts: do I want to use Roman numerals for these parts, or Arabic?

Other finer points: had to add a reminder into the bible that Travail, regardless of sex, sound female to Humans.

More finer points.

  • Still have trouble with some words. Lay and lie today. I believe it’s because they’re often mis-used, and that ends up causing me confusion. Then I researched the differences between replicate and duplicate.
  • Dislike writing and using the expression ‘time travel’. Movement, travel, etc., indicates physical motion in the inventor’s opinion. She, as a physicist, objects to that expression. It’s under discussion and investigation.
  • After yesterday’s intense session, I continued writing in my head when I left. That’s sort of frustrating and exciting because it debilitates my ability to navigate and manage in the real world. Walking was okay, as I was on residential streets with little traffic. Behind the wheel was more dangerous as dialogue preoccupied my brain. I was able to capture this today and expand on it when I resumed my writing.
  • I had to go over where the novel is at and where it’s going. Eight major story lines exist. Each has its own presenting POV. I went over each one, re-stating where they’re at, where they’re going, what (in a broad sense) needs to be written, and how they intersect and affect the others. This was mentally done three times to sort, organize and solidify my understanding. Part of today’s session was then spent capturing that novel map into (yet another) guiding document. LOL.

They’re such intense writing sessions at this time. I love it. They remind me of how wonderful and satisfying writing like crazy can be. I can’t write fast enough to stay up with the unfolding novel.

Now, the coffee is gone, my ass is asleep, yadda yadda yadda. Besides, this new arrival at another table has an impressive stage voice. We all know that she had two glasses of wine last night. It’s been said three times as a minimum.

Time to go.

3

Where Do They Live?

Just as I had to address “What do they wear?”, I’m now addressing, “Where do they live?”

My Travail and other intelligent species have evolved far beyond my initial glances. I can liken it to glancing at a cat and thinking, “Oh, look, a cat.”

What’s the cat’s sex? Male.

Does the cat have a name? Yes, we’re calling him Meep.

What color is Meep? Um…Meep is a ginger, a blotched tabby ginger with broad swirls on his side, white whiskers, amber eyes, pink nose.

Good. What’s Meep doing when we first see him? He’s sitting on the fence. He’s displaced a half foot of snow from the fence top. No other snow is disturbed so he must have jumped up there from the other side of the fence. Flurries swirl around him but he’s not forlorn looking. He looks relaxed and in command. His attention is fixed on something in the pines, something that I can’t see or hear.

Does he get along with the other cats? Meep doesn’t trust other cats and goes on instant alert, ready to warn, fight or flee, when another cat approaches. He prefers to warn them away. If they attack, he will fight back. Fleeing is the third choice. He considers it the smart choice but knows from practice that fleeing is better as a theory because other cats will chase him. So he stands his ground until the situation is dire.

I’m going through this with the Monad, Sabards, Milennial, Humans and Travail, especially the Travail. Part of that is because I already did a great deal of this with the Humans, but also one main character is a Travail, and their part of the story and activity is told through his point of view. This has forced me to delve into the Travail history, social structure, architecture, behavior, agendas, sex…everything known about Humans on Earth is required to be known about the Travail.

They have a complex structure. Their names end up reminding me of Russian naming conventions out of Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. But I didn’t want to just slap some Human expressions — or cats or other animals — onto my other civilizations. I wanted them to be unique.

They’ve responded to the challenge. I argue with myself about changing the naming convention and simplifying them for the reader.No; the book, the characters and the writer in me all resist this. Screw the readers. I think it was James Tiptree, Jr (Alice Sheldon) who said, “Let them catch up, if they can.” Okay.

Another big challenge was how and why did this species develop the technology to advance into space? Why did they want to go into space? That forced a deep dive into their history, as well as the history and development of other races.

It’s all challenging, daunting, and intriguing. It all builds the novel far beyond my first glimpses of it. That’s how it often goes. When you pursue a destination, details, paths, choices and accidents emerge that you never anticipated. Thinking it through enervates me as brain cells cry for mercy but afterwards, I sit in pleased satisfaction with what’s been developed and written. Each plot arc has its own beauty that touches me.

But now, yeah, my butt’s numbness informs me that time has passed. Mocha remains but it’s cold, cold, cold, with a skim of clotted chocolate like small clouds dotting its surface.

It’s been an excellent day of writing like crazy. Time to chug the mocha, take a walk and prepare for the next session. The words are already bubbling up. Were it not for my numb rear-end, I would pursue them.

But the words will keep until tomorrow, and another day of writing like crazy.

0

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

Twelve Percent

Here I am, storming away, out of coffee, typing as fast as I can, unable to keep up with my mind’s streaming words until my fingers call, “Time out.”

Sitting up and stretching, massaging my fingers, I see how the coffee shop has changed since my arrival. I see my mocha is gone, that I drank it all. I think about getting another. But my laptop’s battery power is down to fourteen percent and I didn’t bring my power supply today. It’s going to be warning me soon that I need to shut down.

Putting it all together, I realize I’ve been writing – thinking, typing, editing – for almost ninety minutes with but a few pauses. I remember checking the time once and seeing it was 12:15. Now it’s 1:01.

Spending time with my characters and exploring their lives and situations was mesmerizing. I’m sorry that it’s ending. I think, maybe I can go power up at home and continue. But I know that’s not how ‘it’ works for me. Time to stop writing like crazy, pack it up and head home. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining, and I have some yard work planned, anyway.

Also, I just realized, I didn’t eat breakfast or anything, and I’m becoming very hungry.

And there is the laptop’s warning: twelve percent. Time to go.

5

Just More

I figure I should rename this blog to Just More BS, because it’s all just about me, baby.

Three days I’ve not written. I feel like those cat satires, whereby felines record how their captors taunt them while keeping them imprisoned. Oh, such a miserable life.

Life is not at all mis for me now. I’m rising, again, but will set again. I’m a creature of cycles and spectrums. But while I’m up —

I recognized stages today, of coping with not having my computer, and not being able to write like crazy each day, and of being limited to writing on the butcher roll paper of my mind. I complained (fuck!) and whined (why me, universe, didn’t you always tell me I’m the chosen), and then accepted (okay, I can do this, I will do this). (Clarification, I’m creating blog posts on the iPad mini 4. I’ve managed to miniaturize my hands so I don’t feel like the Jolly Green typing on a Selectric but I worry about enduring the rest of my Earthly existence with tiny hands. Yes, I’m a handist.)

Yesterday afternoon, tho’, whilst grilling veggies, I speculated, can I go back to writing in a paper notebook? Challenges and obstacles rose through the mists of hope. My writing is organic. I’m like a kid jumping through and around puddles of scenes, plot setting, and characters. I wouldn’t be able to do this, and I didn’t print out the works in progress. Still, I convinced myself I can write some scenes and insert, edit and polish them after the Computer Returns.

Pondering this, I grew hopeful. This morning, I considered, maybe I can just write a short story, hey, hey?

Sure. Whatever. Deciding I needed to write and was going to write, I found an almost blank notebook. The few written pages were perused. Ah, a draft of a performance report, I recognized. They were part of the structure of a past existence and have been banished to the admin vortex where they belong. Tear them out!

Now the notebook is blank and ready. Short story or novel, and which novel, Long Summer (sequel to Returnee) or Personal Lessons with Savanna (third book in the mystery series)?

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I’m in my coffee shop office. I have my quad shot mocha and a pen at hand. Because, when I summarize what I want, what I do, and who I am, I want to write, and I write. To not write is to give up. Why should I assume this will not work out? Perhaps this change will inspire a new spring of creativity. Maybe this is a reboot, Michael G6.

Yeah, that’s all words, justification, rationalization, clarification. I just want to write like crazy. Time to do it, at least one more time.

2

Full Blown Writing Season

I live on spectrums. My moods and energies slide through seasons – or seasons slide along my spectrums. I’m not certain of their true relationship or the degree to which these things are fixed. I don’t know how to predict them. Don’t know what tilting, spinning, revolving, and rotating affects them. I can define specific, larger personal seasons. Lethargy, laziness, apathy, anger, blackness, joy, happiness, excitement, restlessness, I know these seasons among others. Some would call these moods. Moods, a temporary feeling, happens within the seasons, much like you can have a cold summer day or a warm winter day. I can experience a shift through a mood from my season but the season dominates. Moods are more temporary.

I’m in full blown writing season this week. Writing becomes effortless, but more, writing and thinking about writing, rises up. It seems like every thought, observation and experience triggers a desire to write about it. Words, sentences, scenes flow like runoff from a huge rain storm.

Seasons like this have taken me in other realms, too, so they’re not specific to writing. People in other professions and endeavors know what it’s like to be ‘in the zone.’ That’s how this feels. I know about being in the zone from sports and analysis. My vision, thinking and focus are all sharpened, my concentration is heightened. Time becomes more personal and slower. I can feel and sense micro-shifts that position me to be ready.

It’s a beautiful experience, no matter where and when it comes, from sports to math to art, performing, and writing. When it’s a good season, like this, it’s best to enjoy the time. The seasons do turn.

 

2

The Writing Like Crazy Process

The writing like crazy is structured and unstructured, crazy and sane. Really, it just is. Such tautalogy is extremely helpful, isn’t it?

But it is what it is (there’s that help again). Originally structured to shift me from the real world’s insanity to the pleasurable world of writing and editing fiction, the process was all about release. Let me go, job, wife, cats, house, bills, stress, frustration, whatever. Take me away, writing.

The early days began as an after work period. Go somewhere in the house and write. That didn’t work too well, and I blame me. I couldn’t stop myself from falling into normal home routines and thoughts. I initiated a program to go somewhere else and write. Armed with a Z4 pen (my preference) and black and white marble composition notebooks (I was always alert for notebook sales), I usually ended up in a coffee shop, where I would have coffee. Coffee shops were tested like bath water until the ones that worked just right emerged. I was traveling for business often in those years, so I would often write in airplanes and airports.

But my hours and routine were iffy. When home, I often ended up writing only on weekends (at Printers Inc), by getting up early. That wasn’t enough, so the program was expanded to an extended lunch hour at work. Testing the process, I discovered that walking improved my writing mood, so I parked about a mile from the coffee shop and walked. In 1999-2000,  I could be spotted in San Mateo, California, walking to a Starbucks. As my company moved its office to Shoreline in Mountain View, I drove to downtown Mountain View and used that Starbucks. Meanwhile, I lived in Half Moon Bay and walked each Saturday and Sunday morning to La Di Da. After moving to Ashland, Oregon, in 2005, I began walking the town to coffee shops. The marble composition books were replaced by laptops.

In those days, I set a word count target, and I tracked it meticulously. There was no pay it forward, no credits and debits. 1,000 words needed to be reached each day, every day. Even if I did 2,000 one day, 1,000 was required the next day. I never let myself off that hook.

With each refinement, I learned more about myself and my writing process. I discovered I was an organic writer, writing with scant mapping or outlining. I found that writing like crazy was critical. Writing like crazy meant that I shoved aside thoughts of grammar, facts, punctuation, and sometimes even point of view and character, and just rode a wave of words rushing into my mind. Then I’d go back and fix it all. When I stalled, I learned to create snapshots to find direction. Snapshots were just exploratory summaries to help me find understanding of the character(s), setting(s), plot, concept, story line, whatever. They were generally not meant for reader consumption, except for my reading.

Learning and evolving fortunately continued. I learned to ask, why, why, why did this character do this or that, or this or that happened, along with the corollary matters of when, what and how.  I saw how I told and then showed the same thing, how I tended toward passive writing, how I enjoyed run on sentences and became more mindful of them – when editing – but how, becoming aware of them, fixing them were folded into my writing like crazy process. I learned what I really enjoyed reading by critiquing others, good and bad, for my own enjoyment, and then shaping my voice to be what I most enjoyed in those books, and I threw the reading doors open to all genres and authors.

I’ve always ‘written in my head’, phantom writing, where I see or hear a scene or the developing story. I found how to harvest the essence of those moments and pick them up and put them into the story. I taught myself to be unafraid to revise and edit as I wrote, discovering that fiction writing was much more like creating a painting then it was like writing an essay. And I encouraged myself to have fun.

I no longer have a daily word count. They’re not needed and I often find myself writing several thousand words. The shift to writing mind is much easier now. I can pick up the story line and where I was quickly in my mind and typically pick up where I was with just a few moments of thought.

I’ve written a number of novels, but haven’t published but two. They’re both recent after wearying myself with the agent/publisher route. Each agent had different requirements, and that tedious process drained my joy and optimism, as well as savaging my writing time. So, fuck it, I’ve gone the ebook self-publishing route. I don’t have great expectations, but I won’t be a fraud and claim it doesn’t matter; it does. But, just as with the writing process, and most of everything else I’ve done in life, I’ll keep trying, keep working on it, and I’m confident, I’ll continue progressing.

Now…time to write like crazy, one more time.

 

 

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑