Tag: writing process

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.

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Dueling Novels

Hard writing day. When the Dallas sniper struck, it sapped my interest/desire for writing about murder.

But I had to write, so I began writing a sequel to “Returnee”, “The Long Summer”. Yet, the me that is a writer knew that other novel, “Personal Lessons with Savanna”, remained in progress, and he still had some writing to do.

So I end up doing a chapter of TLS, and then a chapter of PLwS. I’ll be writing one and realize a line or change for the other. Both story arcs are growing and stretching out before me, beckoning as a calm sea on a summer day, but exhausting as I jump from one to the other and strive to grab the evolving threads of each and order them. Neither can be shut down. Each generates their own aha excitement, stirring enthusiasm. Writing like crazy is driving me crazy.

I’m achieving progress, but man, oh, man, that excitement is a burning fire, consuming my patience and energy as its fuel, leaving me a short-tempered, barely functioning shell.

More coffee. Quick, damn it, quick. Ah, now the battery is low.

Time to stop. For now.

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Unprepared

I’ve been thinking about murder. It was fiction, based on news stories and historical accounts of true murders.

I’ve been crafting scenes and realizing characters, and defining arcs. I’ve been immersing myself in these fiction details. It was enjoyable. It was about the writing, the story telling, the characters, and the richness I felt in finding them all in that one beautiful little chapter.

But today it seems odd, even wrong, to write about violence after such a violent week. Besides America’s gun violence, besides Dallas, besides WaPo’s feature that shows 509 Americans killed by Police this year to date, besides the bombing in Iraq that killed 300, besides these and the anti-Semitic, anti-sanity, anti-progress utterings of Donald Trump, GOP candidate for POTUS, besides the ongoing refugee crises from the ongoing wars and fighting, and the animal abuses and murders….

Well, besides these things, and climate change and the hottest June on record and the smallest Arctic ice on record…besides these things….

I write to entertain myself. The entertainment comes from trying to understand events and people. In my murder mysteries, I attempt to understand how one person comes to decide to kill another and the course of thinking investigators follow to discover who did it and why. In my science fiction, I attempt to bridge technological advances with the impact on societies and individuals, and strive to understand how they cope with the challenges of change, of being on other worlds and traveling through space in another world, the one of the starship.

But the real world is intruding today. Dallas is intruding. I don’t want to write about murder.

This becomes a test. I have my coffee, my goals, and my intentions. I’m here to write. Writing is meditative, a chance to escape the world’s trials and errors and the personal frustrations of living. But the building momentum of what’s been going on, the world’s escalating violence and, sadly, what seems like rising selfishness and hatred, is crashing over me and taking me down.

Now I offer another but. Everything is a spectrum for me. This post is on a spectrum of personal and private thoughts and efforts to understand the world and myself. On the private scale, it gets close to the bone, probably a seven on a 1-10 scale. If I’m ever at ten, I’m emotionally and intellectually naked and truthful. There have been searing moments when I’ve been a ten with myself. It’s ugly and beautiful.

So now, the but, writing this post helps me understand my perspective and permits me to vent. It isn’t deep nor gravely insightful or profound, but still, it’s a release. That’s what’s happened by sitting and writing out my thoughts. Now I can take a deep breath, pivot myself, open a file, and write like crazy.

Just give me a few more minutes, and I’ll willing to try.

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More OMG

As I walked today, I returned to a favorite concept and toyed with it. I love the concept but lacked a vehicle. Yesterday’s concept that pleased me so greatly yesterday rose up. Ah, what can I do with it?

Blink, blink. The favorite concept could be told through a sequel to Returnee. I’d been wanting to write a sequel to that – there’s more story to be told. (There always is, isn’t there?) Blink blink. And the conceptual basis of the novel could be the new, exciting concept.

Blink blink. Blink, blink, blink.

OMG, yes, the story and setting began cascading into me. Now, now, I chided myself, stay true to the current novel. It’s in progress, must be written, finished, revised, edited, polished, published, released. Yes, but, yes, but –

Yes, but crashed through. Excitement couldn’t be stopped. A first line emerged. Oh, yeah, what a wonderful first line. So I’ll write it, just it, along with, maybe just a little scene. As the setup evolved, I thought, perhaps I’ll just write a chapter.

Okay, one chapter. Just one, just, like 2,000 words.

That’s all. For now.

 

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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.

 

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Mysterious Writing

Writing sometimes seems like such a mysterious process. It used to deeply mystify me as I would apply the questions, the who/what/why/how/when melange that flavors fiction and struggle forward.

Not so today, this week. I sit down, open up, read a bit of what’s written and resume. I guess I’ve trained and ordered my mind to ‘think like a writer’ and create fiction. But this book is coming along so seamlessly, I worry that perhaps it’ll be thin and bland. I wonder, if it’s easy writing, is it poor story telling? If it’s easy, is it too predictable, too simplistic? Yet, I enjoy it.

It might be that I’ve been reading wonderful fiction, having just finished The Signature of All Things and now progressed two thirds through My Brilliant Friend. I’ll often end up editing books because they’re written in passive voice, or they tell and then show, or the reverse, at any rate, displaying a need for editing. Not so with Gilbert and Ferrante’s books. Ferrante especially creates such a sense of people and place that I’m inspired.

So maybe this is just a zone contrived from writing the third book in a series (which gives me intimacy with the characters) and reading writers I enjoy. After thinking about the matter, I’ll not worry myself about it. Take it for what it is, a blessing, a luxury. Perhaps it’ll end in a day, an hour, a minute. Just write like crazy and see where I end up when I’m done.

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A History of Writing

The Atlantic provides a perspective of writing software. It fascinates me because of my personal history. I began with WordStar on a CPM 86 machine with a small green screen, and two 5 1/4 inch floppy disk drives. WordStar worked well for me but bundled software forced me to a switch to WordPro. WordPro was set up on a Zenith 150 with a 20 meg hard drive and two 5 1/4 floppy drives and an EGA 16 color screen. The colors didn’t matter but the resolution still wasn’t great. Switching to a VGA screen with 256 colors enhanced the experience. I still wrote in tablets and notebooks with a pen and then typed it all up.

Having a natural bent toward being a geek, I used to be really proficient with those programs, learning formatting, editing and saving secrets on my own. Friends and co-workers would come by or call me, asking for help about setting margins, centering, pagination, headers and other matters. People then wrote these insights up and made money off them by publishing books about these secrets, which never entered my mind to do.

Eventually, Microsoft became the Godzilla that wiped everything out, leaving me with Word. I adjusted to Word well in the early years. But modern improvements have made it less friendly. Word offer a gazillion templates when I use two. It’s odd how selecting File versus clicking on Open takes you down different paths. Adopting from version to version as the operating system changed has been a major irritant. I also eventually switched from a tower to laptops and notebooks, discarding the notebooks. I was sad to let them go. They, along with pens, were friends and companions, pets of sorts, for a struggling writer.

I honestly thought shifting to writing directly onto a computer instead of paper would be challenging. Perhaps using email and filling out computer forms over the years helped, but the change was easier than I expected. I even came to recognize the many advantages of using an electronic media to create.

I still read books in paper formats, though. Although I read and edit my own online, almost everyone else’s is printed out or purchased in a hard format. Yes, I have devices to read them, but that change is surprisingly taking me longer. I’ve seen articles about fonts and colors and the impact on reading on a computer but to me, it seems to be that I like shifting the book around for different angles, and that still doesn’t work well with the electronic devices.

Of course, it really doesn’t matter to me whether I’m reading a book online or a hard copy, as long as I’m reading. I guess that was the lesson for the transition from paper to computer, from WordStar to Word, it doesn’t matter, as long as I’m writing.

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And

And

Alone

In a coffee job

Sipping coffee

And

Thinking

And picking up the virtual pen

And opening computer files

And finding the threads of thought

That came out during the walk

And remembering

Where I left off

And calling out characters

And listening to their words

And writing their dialogue

And spinning scenes

And imagining the story

And organizing the flow

And conjuring plot arcs

And editing the words

And polishing the scenes

 

 

And falling into the book

And forgetting all other moments

And not hearing

Anything else

And not seeing

Anyone else

And reading

What I’ve written

And looking for

what comes next

Is the best part

And

There’s always more

 

 

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Sour Grapes, Writing Ed.

Yeah, it’s like, bleah. Like work. Ugh.

Published Road Lessons with Savanna this week. It acquired the attention an elephant bestows on an ant. Anxiety and conflicts arise. Depression. Acceptance, the need to be patient, the requirement to market the book. It takes time, I tell myself, and scream back, “Time? Time?” Because time, you know, stirs fear, impatience, anxieties, as I await time’s passage. Time can be a right cruel bully.

That’s my background moodiness as I return to copy-editing Everything Not Known today. A quarter million words, seven hundred plus pages. I have completed editing on seven chapters. 21,000 words.

Oh, boy. This is going to take forever.

Forever? Could you be exaggerating?

Trying to encourage myself, I say, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

“Shut up, you moron,” I answer. “Keep your platitudes to yourself.”

I enjoy the novel, which is good, happy news, even, as it was written with me in mind as the audience. That’s the only audience I understand, so I kowtow to me and my taste. I’ve tried writing and editing to others’ preferences but their guidance, feedback, and input, is confusing and conflicting. So, responding with great insight and maturity, I replied, “Whatever,” and write for myself.

The snarky corner of me notes with withering contempt, “Who do you expect to read your book if you write if for yourself, you marketing moron?”

Ready for that query, I tell myself, “Good to hell.” So there.

Enjoying the novel does help copy-editing it, but this isn’t my favorite pastime, so I chaff, complain and offer childish whines about what I’m doing and most do. Intellectually, I know, yeah, this must be done, and this, too, shall pass, and other pithy, worn encouraging sentiments. Intellectually, I can see into myself and see all the nuances of living and existing irritating me and the ridiculousness of my complaints.Intellectually, I know enough of myself to know it’s part of my cycles of spirit, attitudes and emotions to drift into the dark side. I know I’ll emerge from it in a few days.

Intellectually, I know it’s all human nature.

Intellectually, I still tell myself to go to hell. Then I drink the coffee, take a deep breath, and play a game.

Then I go to work.

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The Iceberg

Friends this week asked about my writing, or, actually, about my book, or books. Writing and the many projects are so much like icebergs, revealing a little topside but mostly submerged from sight and awareness. Limited progress and activities are exposed on this blog and FB posts but there is generally so much more.

I have two books out. Another is in the publishing machine. That’s the iceberg’s tip. Another book is completed and in editing and formatting. We’ll designate that the water line. I sort of track those more in depth on Booklife but even that is just the water line and above. Below that, another ten books are written. Some have been edited and revised. All need copy editing and formatting. A spreadsheet has their progress.

But at greater depths are the many novels in progress on computer, in notebooks, folders, and realms of paper. Many, many more exist as notes on concepts, ideas and characters. Some of the notes are written. I’d say thirty percent are written notes. The other notes are sticky pages in my mind. There are short stories, plays and screenplays, musicals, novels and series. There are always many things to write.

I used to spread myself out and work on several pieces in parallel. Now I focus on one and write like crazy. Then I revise, edit and polish one. And then I publish one.

Not as much fun in many ways as plunging into creativity’s cauldron and letting all these ideas flame into being. But the trudging, one at a time process, results in more tangible progress.

Whichever way, it’s always about writing for me, and writing like crazy. Time for that, once more.

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