Tag: writing process

The Three Cs

Got my three Cs – coffee, computer, and cookie. The cookie is an indulgence. I ate breakfast – granola and yogurt with blueberries – a few hours ago, but I feel hungry, so what the hell, I indulged myself and ate a cookie. Salty caramel, if you must know.

Admittedly, eating the cookie was a little bit of stalling. I was stalling my start today because yesterday’s writing events surprised me. Handley attacked Kanrin with a sword. Kanrin killed her. What was going on with Forus Ker? He just sat there watching. Meanwhile, the ship’s alarms continue to go off. Kanrin’s nets have been compromised. And where are the rest? What are they doing?

None of this was planned. The destination is known but the path is a wildly winding way.

Once I finished writing those pages and concluded that chapter, I cleaned up errors and checked continuity. Then I walked, and wondered, where are we going now? What’s supposed to happen?

All of this took me down paths about immortality and death. Born with a fear of dying, and still capable of suffering injury and pain, one doesn’t abandon those fears, despite the evidence of past experiences. Even if you’ve died and returned before, or you’re not sure that what’s happening is reality, virtual reality, or a hallucination, and even if you’re doubtful if the outcome matters because of everything else happening, coping with the natural emotional and intellectual stresses inherent in these paradoxes challenges your will and sanity. Put yourself in that position and imagine. And remember, whatever the brain or personality might decide, the body may have different ideas. We’re not the masters of ourselves that we’re told as children. It’s a lesson we learn as we age and our bodies and abilities decay. It’s a lesson that’s reinforced as we meet others with lesser and greater abilities than ourselves. Exploring these avenues of similarities and differences and the impact on our decisions and actions is one of the most exciting and delicious parts of my writing experience.

When I walked and thought, I struggled to know what was to happen next in this story? It’s stupid of me to wonder, but I can’t resist. I know, though, I’ll slip into the moment and begin typing, and things will come out that I never foresaw. Consciously, I don’t know what’s next, but once I assume the typing posture, out it comes, if I just let it.

Yeah, it feels like weird fucking magic, typing something when I don’t know what I’m going to type. After all these years of writing, the process still astonishes me. I hope it never stops.

Now fortified with sugar and caffeine, it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Off-kilter

My writing world is a little off-kilter this morning. I’m again doubting that the muses and characters know what they’re doing. I suspect they’re conning me.

The muses and characters agree about what’s to be written, what’s happening, and what’s to come next. “Trust us,” they purr.

I’m jaundiced about their plans. “Seems like we’re going around in a bac.”

“A what?”

“Bac. ” I spelled it, “B.A.C. Big-ass circle.”

“Writers,” one muse mumbled to a character (Brett), who nodded back with an eye-roll. They didn’t care that I’d witnessed this, implying a disrespect that I didn’t like.

“We know what we’re doing,” another muse said, like a young mother speaking to her mother about the way she’s raising her child. “Just follow our guidance.”

“I am,” I said. “If you could let me in on a little more, I’d feel more comfortable about I’m typing.”

Several muses and characters unloosed scoffing sounds while another muse said, “We don’t want to burden you with too much.”

“I’m the writer here,” I said. “Shouldn’t I know where the story is going?”

“You do know,” one muse said.

“Yes, you know how it’s ending, don’t you?” said another muse.

Handley, a character, “Nothing personal, but we don’t want to give you too much to juggle. You already seem a little strained by the novel’s direction.”

“It’s more than a novel, it’s become a series,” I said.

“Exactly,” Handley said. “And there’s a great deal more material available that we could give you, but you seem tired of writing this.”

“Yes,” a muse said. “You’re weary of writing this, doubtful of the content, dubious of your skill and talent, and worried that you’re pulling a Wonderboys.”

I clamped my lips tight for a second before speaking. “None of that’s germane to this conversation. While that’s all true, that doesn’t change that right now, it seems like you guys are leading me in a — ”

“Big-ass circle,” a muse said. “Yes, we know.”

Realizing that I wasn’t going to win this discussion, and that the muses and characters weren’t going to tell me more until they thought I was ready for it, I finished my walk, purchased my coffee, and set up to write.

Time to write like crazy and see where the characters and muses take me. Do you know that the muses have never told me their names?

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Tying Up

I finished another chapter. Serving like a flare in the night, it lit more of the final stages of the novel, Good-bye, Hello, and the Incomplete States series. Seeing those pieces, I re-arranged one chapter and wrote the beginning of another. As I wrote that, the segue off a previous chapter appeared. This was the opening to the final final piece. I laughed at the phrase even while I juggled pieces in my mind and saw it all come together with the ending already written. A chill thrilled me as I read the pieces. So satisfying and fun, visiting this world and these peoples, and all their myths, technology, travels, and adventures. They move into this last phase with hope, but I write with bittersweet inevitability.

It’s been a fun journey with these concepts, and narrowing the focus of the concepts into a tighter and tighter frame. Once again, revelations and realizations surprised me. These mostly involved Kything, Kything, who began as Professor Kything, named in honor of the term from A Wrinkle In Time. Kything was not who they thought.

Kything was not who I thought.

There’s more of him still to be revealed to me. The revelations and patterns remind me of a difficult Sudoku. After wrestling with logic and patterns, hunting for the final solution, a key square was just completed. With it came the insights to finish the puzzle.

Even as I think that it was a wonderful day of writing like crazy, I’m beginning to grow sad, because I see this marvelous journey coming to an end. Yes, a lot of writing remains, and then the the editing and revising marathon begins, but those are different skills, with a separate satisfaction to them, than the unbridled creative flow of raw writing.

I feel a quiet chuckle as I realize, this feeling I have is just like how I feel when I’m finishing reading a good book.

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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.

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The Character Mix

Philea’s voice remains strong. She retains control of the story boards, dictating what’s going on. I’d prefer some shortcuts so I can finish the novel (and series, Incomplete States). 

Not going to happen. The characters know what they want to say to convey the scene’s meaning to them and how they want the scenes to portray them. Kanrin is straightforward when he speaks and pragmatic in his actions, but likes to keep his speaking to a minimum, letting others fill the gaps. He doesn’t ask questions, but wait for people to volunteer insights without being prompted. He knows that many people like to give their opinions, and within these opinions are some aspects of the truth, or enough to give him direction. His story telling tends to be direct and shorn of observations. He’s also very patient.

Handley is more scattered. She tends to do free-association streaming of thinking and interaction. She gets angry at people and hold grudges without sharing why with them. She’s also troubled more than the rest by the entire series and its concepts. They don’t make sense to her, and even while she experiences them, she’s attempting to either rationalize them or reject them.

Meanwhile, Pram has become more physical, aggressive, and belligerent. He’s also awoken to the awareness that he was used and that most people don’t consider him a nice person. Yet, is it really him? Or are his interactions being manipulated to drive him to a specific end? Impatient to be free of the circular complications, he’s always asking the others for information.

He also knows from his external memory that he wasn’t always like this, but he’s trying to unwind the cause and effect to better understand how and why he changed.

Because of his experience in Returnee, Brett is more philosophical about the situation and open to ideas about what might be going on. His experience taught him that systems and perceptions can’t be trusted, and that we often only have a sliver of the available information. Brett is also a rememberer, able to recall and understand his other life-experience-reality-existences with greater clarity than the rest, giving him deeper insights into the struggle they’re all enduring.

Richard, another rememberer, is less talented as a rememberer than Brett. When it comes out eventually that Brett is actually Richard’s replacement, Richard becomes bitter and sullen. He wants the others to want and need him, and is desperate to do and say things that will raise his esteem.

Then we have Philea. A scientist in most of her life-experience-reality-existences, she’s the most intelligent of the group. Her intellectual prowess (and technological breakthroughs like her time-traveling machine, Wrinkle), enhanced her value as a target for the organizations, species, businesses, and other entities who seek to master and control the forces that this group have encountered.

Although Philea isn’t a scientist (or engineer) in her current incarnation, her thinking style and logical expression remains similar, but less practiced. Fleeing and jumping the Wrinkle as hostile forces close in and try to take them, her new experiences awaken greater insights in this part being written now. I always knew and respected this piece existed, and that it would come to be written at the right moment. That moment seems to be now. Her revelations awaken the group to greater depths of involvement and complexity.

Still, I was surprised with her introduction and references to Kything. While writing like crazy during the past week, I wondered how this was all going to tie together even as I typed and edited it. Philea dropped the reveal on me at the end of yesterday’s writing session.

Good to write all that up. Permits me to think through the craziness and reassure myself that I’m keeping up with developments.

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

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Startled Again

Once again, the characters knew what was happening. Following the action, I typed.

While all were heading for the same ending, the characters took different paths. Where they frequently demand attention for themselves like hungry little kittens, today, the characters were coordinated about who should go when. “Start and type this chapter,” one said, and that was done. “Continue with this chapter,” another said when the first was finished, and that was done. Meanwhile, the revelations made and the other characters and points they introduced surprised me — again. They talked about things that I’d never considered, leading me into directions that caused me to say, “Wow.”

Two thousand words later, after intense typing, I told them, “I need to stop.” My ass was asleep, for one. My coffee remained, cold and oily, and my stomach announced it was empty and required something be put into it. But beyond those prosaic matters, I wanted to revel in the characters’ revelations. It’s embarrassing and humbling to make this admission, but it’s like I’ve been reading some terrific book, but strangely, it’s the one I’m writing.

I should put that in quotes, as it honestly felt like I was transcribing what I saw and heard. It’s surreal. I suppose I should be jaded by this process by now, but it still strikes me as a surreal experience. It still amazes me. It’s still fun.

I know that I’m not the only writer who experiences writing in this manner. I’m probably the only one who regularly gushes about it in blog posts. I have read other posts where the blogger is skeptical that my sort of process happens. They doubt that I can’t know what the characters know. That’s writing, though, a different process for all of us.

Enough. Done writing like crazy, for at least one more day.

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Philea’s Voice

Philea didn’t let me down again today. Her voice remains as clear as glacier fresh filtered water. My only involvement was as typist to catch the words as they shot out. It was lovely and astonishing witnessing her character evolve through these chapters. She re-adjusted what she knew of herself and the situation, made new assessments and decisions, and re-discovered her courage, strength, and commitment.

Of course, the story turned corners that were blind to me until I turned them. So the novel and series moves forward, word by word, at what feels like a mincing pace because there’s so much to see, hear, find, and share. But when I step back and take in the entire picture, its breadth and depth surprises me. It’s like walking on a beach, and stopping to see where you are, and confronting the enormity of the ocean’s sound and power.

Great day of writing like crazy. On to other endeavors.

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Today’s Writing #106

The confluence of two events created an excellent writing day.

One, the coffee shop was busy.

Two, Philea seized control.

Maybe due to the Ashland International Film Festival (AIFF), or maybe because of the cold spring rains and chilly weather, the coffee shop was busy when I arrived. I found a table but no outlet for my laptop’s powerpack. Well, I decided, I’d take what I could and write. If a table with an outlet came open, I’d seize it.

Sharply aware of my HP Envy’s short time on battery, I ordered myself to be focused. There was no worry there, because Philea had taken over.

Philea is one of my series’ main characters. I mentioned the other day that I dreamed five muses rode in on horses. One dismounted and transformed into a character, becoming Philea, a character introduced to me when I began writing the second volume of this quadrilogy back in 2016.

Philea has been center-stage since the night of her appearance in my dream. Going back to a previous post about her from January, 2017, reminded me of how strong and independent she is as a character. As before, she didn’t have any stage fright today, but strode out into the action, introducing a quickly realized rich setting, a new character, and greater background information on this leg of her journey.

The bottom line of this confluence: I ended up writing three thousand words in less than fifty-five minutes. There was a lot more in the tank at that point. Philea knew exactly where she was taking me. “I need to stop,” I told her when the computer issued a warning. Half of my coffee remained in the cup.

“No problem,” Philea replied. “I’ll be waiting here tomorrow.”

I hope she doesn’t stand me up. Fantastic day of writing like crazy. I hope every writer has the chance to experience such days.

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The End

I’m reading Bill Browder’s memoir, “Red Notice”. Partway through, I’ve just finished the part of his life when the Asian markets tanked, tanking his Russian-based fortune in his company, Hermitage Capital Management. At this point, still in the first third of the book, he considers his options. It would be easy to sell off everything for what he could get, close the company, and leave Russia, but he disliked the impression.

His thinking reminded me of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”. Habit Two is “Begin with the end in mind.” It’s my favorite habit. When I used Covey’s book in team building, I led an exercise to imagine what you want others to say about you when you’re finished, when you finally say, I’m done. It’s one of those things that provides extra motivation when it seems like your tank might be empty.

I feel like I need to remind myself of this today. My muses are tearing me up with their pace. I’ve been reading a lot, which is a catalyst to dreaming. Dreaming fires up my imagination, and imagination stimulates my writing. Or something like that; I don’t know the exact connectivity between these activities, only that they seem to act on one another in me. Simultaneously, I sometimes worry that I’ve gone off the tracks and have begun pursuing a delusional folly somewhat like Professor Grady Tripp in Michael Chabon’s novel, “Wonder Boys”. Michael Douglas played Professor Tripp in the movie.

Intellectually and emotionally, I know that doubts like these aren’t uncommon among writers, especially while you’re an unknown author and working on a long project. Personally, I know my rhythms and understand this is part of my modus operandi and my untamed impatience to get done and move on to other activities.

You probably get tired of reading blog posts like this. As it is part of my normal cycles along my personal spectrums, I end up thinking, writing, and posting about them. I share it as much to help me think through my situation, but also to let other unknown writers out there that they’re not alone. Every writer that I know goes through these doubts. Some let their doubts stop them from writing. Others take Professor Tripp’s path, figuring that if it’s never done, it’ll never be read nor criticized, creating Schroedinger’s novel. Is it brilliant or garbage? Nobody knows because he won’t let anyone read it.

Looping back to the post’s beginning, though, I don’t want that to be me. The end for that is a writer who never finishes or publishes. Good or bad, I will finish and publish despite myself and my fears, worries, and neurosis.

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

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One Of Those Nights

It was one of those nights. My muse didn’t recognize my need for sleep and refused to issue permission to shut down my brain and close my eyes.

Such times are productive, even though I feel like shit in the morning. I’m exaggerating for effect, of course; I really don’t know how shit feels. I feel guilty, implying that shit feels terrible. For all I know, shit feels great.

Sorry for the shitty detour. I know, terrible humor. Hey, I just confided that I had a rough night. Grant me some latitude.

Back to the muses’ nocturnal gallop through my mind. I’d just been complimenting my muse (or muses – I think there’s a congress of muses within me) about the pleasant week of systematic writing established and reflecting on the progress made. When last I left off writing yesterday, I had a damn good idea of where I was next going.

I’m still going there, but the dark silence of night brought out the muses like they were in heat. Instead of allowing me to sleep, wake up today, and go walk and write to work out details, the muses began shotgunning details into me. The people look like these. These are their names. They’re all women, and —

It’s not polite to ignore your muse, and it’s rude to tell them to shut up. I obliged them by listening. When I thought they’d finished, I attempted to use one of my honored processes to engage sleep. I thought it worked, too, but then, the muses thundered out anew.

When sleep and I finally met, quicksilver dreams rushed in, flashing kaleidoscopes of scenes and words. Awakening, I had a lot to think about between dreams and night writing, and a desire for about four more hours of sleep.

Got a big ol’ cup of dark, unadulterated caffeine loaded coffee steaming in a mug to my right. Time to write like crazy and get all this stuff down, at least one more time.

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