It’s been a year since I collected my last IBM paycheck.
I expected a lot of changes in that year. I’ve been disappointed.
One bitter reason for wanting to leave IBM was my unhappiness of how callously we were treated as individuals. That’s my perception. Others may not share it. The work had become routine and boring. I was rarely engaged, and my circle of involvement seemed to be shrinking. So, I was receiving less validation that I was worthwhile to the company or that anyone there appreciated my work or efforts. Hence, I wanted to leave. When they offered me the choice, I took it.
Yet, being freed from employment didn’t do anything to enhance my sense of validation. If anything, the solitary habits I employ and my social awkwardness remain, so I’m just as out there on my own now as I was when I was employed, and experience even less evaluation. It’s tested my strength and determination.
I thought my writing career would take off. It hasn’t. I didn’t appreciate the hard work required to not just prepare a book to publish but also to market. I naively thought, “If I write it, they will come.”
My year of being unemployed, the first since I was seventeen, taught me how much I require structure, goals and a vision to keep me moving forward. I’ve been forced to re-evaluate what I’d established in the past that helped me succeed, and create new structures, goals and a vision. That’s all still in progress. I also needed to educate myself more about the writing business, something also underway. Frankly, it’s wearying.
In thinking about all of this, I resolved, “I will do better.” It’s a big poster in my mind, glowing at me all the time. “I will do better.”
Today’s writing session is finished. I only wrote about fifteen hundred words and edited some. The novel is becoming hugely busy. I reached the point that I felt like a puppet master getting entangled in his puppets’ strings. Pacing across the coffee shop with impatience and frustration, I gazed out the window and recognized, I need to stop today. Regroup and marshal my energies and intentions to proceed. It’s a complex novel, with complicated plots and societies, set in the future, with unique words, and yada, yada, yada.
Pram has declared Protocol Three. You know what that means: the sierra is encountering the rotating blades.
Meanwhile, Handley and company have found their target. Fermenting in my brain cells for several weeks, I’m looking forward to writing these scenes; their plans are going disastrously awry, and they’re ignorant of what is about to happen. Love writing my characters into disasters and confrontations. Some, like Tang’s confrontation with Pram, I never see coming. Such surprising encounters are engaging, especially when they organically develop from just letting the characters carry the scene and be themselves. And then, what happened next astonished me but made absolute sense from the characters’ POV. Very cool.
After this is written, it’s back to Forus Ker, Seth Nor and the Humans, where they’ve been killing Brett, and Philea and the Wrinkle, where she’s meeting Forus Ker and Seth Nor. I can see and hear these scenes so clearly, I’m impatient to write them, but I don’t want to be hasty. Relax, I order myself; they’ll be written.
The common rule of thumb for movies is that one page equals one minute of screen time. That’s what I learned but The Working Screenwriter says, “Not so,” and gives specifics of movie scripts and running times. Anyway, I’ve noticed that scenes and dialogue take place in my head very quickly. I’ll visualize and realize them in thirty to ninety seconds.
Great, right? So they all pile on, scene after scene after scene. But writing these thirty to ninety second one bites takes a few days of writing and editing, and typically require two or three days. One, I’ll often write to capture the essence. Then I return to pad it with relevant details. In parallel, I’m editing and revising for pacing, grammar, sentence structure, et cetera. Then, I also find that something realized during the writing of such scenes trigger an impact on another scene. Sometimes that scene is already written and needs revision to add the tidbit.
The other scenes then must be held in my head or scribbled onto a notebook page, or have a brief entry typed up in a doc. All those paths fortunately work for me. Sometimes one of them stumbles but I find that with a little work, they start making sense again.
So much to write, so little time. Three…two…one. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
It’s pouring rain. Soaked dark, my coat dribbled rivulets across the floor as I walked across the coffee shop.
“Did you walk?” the coffee shop owner asked. “I know you like to walk. I’ve seen you walking all over town.”
“No, I just walked a mile,” I answered. “I wanted to feel the rain and wind.”
“You like to walk, don’t you?” the owner said.
“Yes.”
Yes, I like to walk. It’s Mom’s fault. In my young life’s dawn, I’d want to go somewhere and requested Mom drive me. “You have two legs, you can walk,” she’d reply. Stories about her walking when she was a child followed. She walked to school miles in both direction, no matter what the weather was, digging trails and tunnels through the Iowa snowstorms, if necessary, fording rivers and forging trails, dodging wild animals while picking berries or nuts on the way home to use in baking, and stopping to milk the cows. If she walked in those conditions, I could walk.
I might have exaggerated about what she claimed to do.
So I walked. I walked everywhere. I didn’t have a car in high school for several years, so I walked the miles home from school after sports activities and play practices. I walked to my girlfriend’s house, miles more, and back again. Sometimes I was given rides. Sometimes, people attempted to molest me.
Once in the military, my wife and I didn’t have much income, so we walked. Over in the Philippines on duty, I didn’t have a car and had plenty of time, so I walked around the base and the town. In Germany, walking was organized into Volksmarching and celebrated with drink and food. Terrific!
By the time I began writing, walking was ingrained as part of my thinking process. I was pleased to discover that studies validated my impressions about walking. Walking ten minutes a day made most people happy besides providing exercise. Walking also enhances the creative process for most.
I was sure of that latter. Deciding I needed to put myself and my goals and dreams first, I started taking an hour out of the work day to write. Bosses, co-workers and team mates didn’t care as long as I did my share. As part of that, I observed that walking helped me shift from work Michael to writing Michael. As I walked to write, I would ask the eternal writing questions, “Where the hell am I? Where does the story go next? What do I need to write next? What did I write yesterday?” Asking these questions and thinking about it prepped me to sit down, ready to type.
Likewise, after leaving, I’d often continue working out characters, scenes and plots as I walked back to work. Then, walking to write the next day, I would recall the previous day and resume writing with little effort.
I was surprised that studies didn’t demonstrate a link to improved focused thinking, as well, and problem solving. Perhaps I’d trained myself to solve problems by walking, but I always felt leaving work for a short work, changing the scenery and releasing my brain from the work environment, was hugely instrumental in being able to see answers and develop solutions. Perhaps, though, that was still the creative brainstorming that writing seems to encourage.
My walking continued once I started working from home. I walked to take breaks and enjoy fresh air and sunshine. Then, walking to the coffee shop to write, I walked to reduce my carbon footprint and help save money and the environment.
Now, I have the Fitbit to encourage me to walk. If I haven’t walked in an hour, it buzzes me to get up and walk. So I leave the coffee shop and hustle down the steps and around the block and back. That’s enormously reduced my writer’s ass, which is when your ass goes to sleep after being almost stationary while typing or writing at a desk or table. When I’m at home, my wife and I jump up and start running around. Sometimes, we chase the cats, but they’re not into it, so we don’t do that much.
But, like many things I do and enjoy, my walking started with Mom.
I think every writer wrestles with the balance of how much to share. Editors and alpha writers can help with the insights but while the process is ongoing, you’re mostly on your own.
I do not explain the complicated Travail social structure. I do not share Travail Mavarish Seth Ted’s vision, nor the visions of Seth Zed and Seth Mee decas later. I don’t explain decas, stellavel, vyhlla, vyhllaminiums, vyllasethin, or vhyllasetha. I don’t tell what a masq is, nor how they came to be worn. I don’t explain the history of Concentrates. You need to learn these things from the context. Some of that is too ingrained in the characters’ ways to ever be explained. It would be like Humans explaining how and why we’ve come to brush our teeth and the history of the tooth brush.
I don’t explain the involved history between the Sabards, Travail, Monad, Humans and Profemie, and the deeper history of the Travail Exnila and Travail Englis, Humans, Profemie and Monad. I know that history. I’ve thought about it a lot and I’ve written a great deal in the novel bible and other documents. I tell much more about the Wrinkle and its existence in the novel, and why Pram made the choice to be a Colossus, and I tell about his starship, the Pentagon. I guess I’m fond of writing about the starships.
I think about all this frequently in between beginning scenes. Should I tell more? If so, how do I tell it without becoming historian, reporting on these linkages? I think about ‘Lord of the Rings’, Asimov’s Foundation series, and Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’, Michener’s sprawling novels, television shows such as ‘The Expanse’, ‘The Colony’, ‘Dark Matters’ and ‘Stranger Things’, and older shows like ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Firefly’. Those are just the apex material of my thinking pyramid as I write this novel. Each character, era, society and culture maintains its histories. The connections weave through my head and form a substantial fabric, but how much should be shared with the reader?
I pause now to explain this because I write to learn what I think, and to confess and cleanse my writing soul. I confess because I hit the reader with these terms within the novel’s first two paragraphs. Grab on, hold on, if you can. I admit, I like writing like this. To steal one of James Tiptree, Jr’s short story titles to express my approach, it’s the only neat thing to do.
My confession is over. Half of my mocha remains. And look: the coffee shop has emptied. The staff’s voices echo across the space. The rain has stopped and sunshine is visible. It looks like it could be a pleasant walk today.
That’s for later. Time to return to writing like crazy, at least one more time.
Here we are, the six of us: writers. Meet Michael the Original and Michaels Two through Six. None want to be called a number, usually channeling Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band when that’s attempted. (“I’m not a number, I’m not a number, damn it, I’m a man.”)
Each writer has their piece to write. We’re seated around a large, round table. Each has their own space and quad-shot mochas. Each is on a computer and has their files open.
One is copy-editing the novel to date. The Original – that would be me – is doing the hard thinking to bring these drunkenly rambunctious stories together. The next four are working on the different storylines and scenes for Pram, Forus Ker, Brett, Philea, Richard, Kimi and Handley, onboard the Faux Mo, Pentagon, River Styx, and Wrinkle, on Willow Glen and the escape pod, in the stasis pod, and in the past, present and future, dealing with the Monad, Sabards, Humans and Travail Seth…and each other…. There are battles, revelations, duplicity, treachery and betrayal.
It’s a lot of work for the six of us.
Unfortunately, there is only me. Having the six wouldn’t be sufficient, either. I would need more, a committee of me to write and edit. Each story and its main character is drumming, “Write my story,” into me. I write a few lines, paragraphs, and then jump into another, tediously advancing on all fronts, advancing, but not anywhere near the desired pace. The process reminds me of a class I took decades ago, in 1988 or 1989.
I was stationed in Germany. Offered by the University of Maryland, the class was four days long, two weekends, eight hours each day. The subject was French literature. Four authors were being studied. Among them was Honore de Balzac.
Balzac was said to write fifteen hours a day. The claim presented to me in that class is that he wrote with a quill, standing up, sucking down cups of coffee. He was said to be always writing and created voluminous manuscripts, often with characters straying from one story to another, and frequently revised. How did he do it, I wondered then.
How did he do it, I wonder now.
But then I figure, man, if good ol’ Honore could write and edit so much on his own, I can as well.
Just give me more damn coffee.
Here we go: time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
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.
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.
A storm was rocking the house.Rain did a Keith Moon impersonation on the walls and roof. My wife could not sleep. She was listening to BBC World News on the clock-radio.
“Want me to talk to you about my novel in progress?” I asked.
“Yes.”
That always puts her to sleep.
So I talked to her.I told her, I just wrote the first chapter to part three of a science fiction novel, even though parts one and two are not finished. Part two needs much more work. But I ‘saw’ this chapter and felt like it needed to be written. It’s like a guidepost about where I’m going. So I wrote it and put it into the novel.
I’ve been researching and writing about Chi-particles, I said, and then talked a little about general and special theories, chemical elements and quantum mechanics. I don’t know much about them, and that part of the discussion was finished quicker than an amuse-bouche.
I went on about my current obsession, Chi-particles. Chi-particles are imaginary particles, with imaginary mass and energy, that travel faster than light, and faster than the theorized tachyon particles. They exhibit properties of light, time and mass. They gain real energy and real mass as they slow down.
Yeah.
Calling them particles is incorrect but that’s what I called them in the beginning so that’s what sticks as part of my world-building history. My imaginary physicists later investigated and theorized that Chi-particles are sub-sub-sub atomic particles.
They are the universal building blocks. Chi-particles are in everything.
My wife was now snoring.
I continued, however.
Chi-particles actually have structures with a nucleus and other sub-level Chi-particles in orbit about them. Their Chi-structure is what drives atomic structure. Everything has Chi-energy. Chi-energy directs whether something develops into a chemical element, energy, dark matter, etc. They direct when something ‘comes alive’ and direct its levels of self-awareness, growth and sentience.
They direct what species the animated, organic matter becomes.
I sketched the Universal Theory of Relativity,in which the quantity of energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared (Einstein’s theory) is equal to the square root of Chi-particles imaginary light times Chi-particles imaginary mass.
I folded the entire thinking into wave function collapse and thoughts of ‘now’, time and the past. From there, I developed several other ideas and kept talking.
One idea is a future technology called star dating. It’s still rudimentary but I see it as a small but critical point in the novel. Essentially, background radiation leaves residual energy on everything, which then can be measured, in a sort of hybrid process between carbon dating, counting the rings on a tree, and using layers of dust to establish global events or using background radiation to understand the Universe.
Next to emerge was Chi-particle entanglement. I’ve thought about this before but needed to more fully vet it. As I walked through what the hell that meant, I came to realize that Chi-particles travel in a petal pattern. I started thinking about energy fields and ley lines.
Ah, yes. Much more came together. Some stuff didn’t work, I realized. They needed more thought. Then an epiphany rewarded me. Dazzled by its audacity, I started laughing in bed. But then, I easily impress and amuse myself. It’s all far-out. Hell, it’s fiction.
The alarm went off.It was six twenty-seven. Time for my wife to get up to dress and head for the Y and her exercise class.
I pulled the covers up to my chin and snuggled into my blanket nest. I wasn’t ready to get up. I wasn’t going to get up. I was warm and drowsy. I wanted more sleep. I’d been thinking and talking, off and on, for over ninety minutes.
My wife rolled over, turned off the alarm, re-settled herself and returned to sleep.
A cat meowed in another part of the house. I wanted more sleep but…
The cats needed to be fed and tended. Taking my Chi-particle thinking with me, I went off to feed them and then, because they were on my mind, presented these posts.
Now I really want a nap. But…there is writing to do, and movie matinees later today. I need to write so I can return and do other things. Therefore….
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.
The ideapat is used as part of a telepathic process among the Travail Avresti Forus and Seth, and the Travail Favrashi Forus and Seth in my novel in progress, ‘Long Summer’.
It’s more than telepathy. Calling it ‘telepathy’ demeans its full range. I felt, in order to be logical and consistent about its use in the arcs, character development and plot, I needed to further define and understand the ideopat.
First, within the ideopat is the phena. Phena is derived from phenomon. The phena is the emotional piece of the ideopat. To help understand it, I think of how drops of waters come together to form torrents. This is generally how the phena comes across on the ideopat. It’s a perception of separate processes and impressions aggregating into an over-arching view.
Generally; exceptions exist. In this way, I think of vision and human differences with their vision. The classic example for me is the ability to see a fastball and the ball’s movement through the air. Not everyone has that ability but some do, and that makes them special.
Good; that was a decent start.
After deeper thinking, I found this video a friend had posted on Facebook.
You can argue, as many have, about whether this is a vortex, and point out that some of the planets are in the wrong orbits, and whether this is true, but it stimulated my thinking. That’s why I’m sharing this. Seeing it, I thought, yes!This gives me greater insight into the ideopat and its structure and motion. There’s a position of recurring motion on one level that doesn’t take in the greater points of view about what’s happening within the ideopat. Beautiful.
The Forus and Seth can also use the ideopat to experience the world through one another’s. After some thought about the development of the skill and individual abilities, I decided that they would need to provide this aspect with a name. Eventually, I came up with sensta as the visual and auditory flows within the phena. As Travail Kidder mature, the sensta is the first aspect of the phena they experience. Their reaction to it guides their further development and direction. Some are overwhelmed. When that happens, they’re trained in how to close the sensta. Of course, closing the sensta to them closes the phena and the ideopat. So they can’t be Forus or Seth but must be named and become something else in the society.
Then I recognized that those for those with the wherewithal to know, the pentha is like an atmosphere, with richly developed layers.
That’s a brief insight into the pentha. In my notes, it takes up a few pages.
The pentha is just one piece. Next up was the ideopat’s true telepathic aspect. The Travail refer to this as the
Now, among this, a very few can perceive the mutex and the saiki. The mutex are the combined threads that make up the flows which become the exopatheia and phena. (Note: the Travail call the threads the sper.) For those who can perceive this level of the ideopat, it’s like seeing the results after white light passes through a prism. What others can only experience the pentha as the white light, they see the resulting rainbow. The greater the ability for them to perceive and segregate the mutex and spers, the more powerful their telepathic abilities. For the normal Forus and Seth, they don’t perceive the mutex and spers but know one another through exposure, repetition and ultimately, familiarity with others’ ‘telepathic voice’.
But one step past all of this, on the very highest level of ability, those that can see sense and see past the pentha, exopatheia and mutex, and find the individual spers and follow them back to the actual person where they originate. This psychic representation is called the saiki. This is so far beyond the skill levels of most that a majority of Travail Forus and Seth don’t believe they exist, that those who thought they’d seen them in the past must have been imagining them. So the saiki is dismissed.
But Travail Avresti Forus Ker has developed the ability to perceive the saiki. He’s not only seeing the saiki of the Travail Forus, but also the Seth and the rest of the Travail, not just his race (the Avresti), but the other races as well. He’s even perceiving the saiki for the Humans and then for the Monad.
And most interesting and frightening for him, he can see the saiki of death. That makes him wonder: is there a saiki for life as well?
And then things really start getting interesting for him.
After that, I set about writing the limitations and further defining the exceptions.
Most of today’s writing session was devoted to fleshing this out and documenting it. I only actually wrote a thousand words in the novel. A few hours have passed. I still had half a cup of mocha remaining when I stopped writing. Just finished that as I wrote this post.
Michael Seidel, writer 