Exactly how I often feel.
Madeleine Said
Exactly how I often feel.
Uncertainty
You ever get involved with writing and thinking about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and observer bias in quantum mechanics, and become uncertain about what you’re thinking?
It’s almost as complicated as trying to explain everything that’s happened on Game of Thrones.
No Panic
I’d resumed writing this week after returning home, completing a ten day road trip. It’d been a sad period, beginning with a red-eye flights across the United States and a five hour drive to a hospital. Eighteen hours of hope and optimism followed, and then, with startling realization, it was over. After that came calls and emails, mourning, memories, and planning. Then there was a service.
Next were visits to my side of the family, and a short, intense, fun reunion with them, the fun and intensity waning under the mourning that continued for my wife’s mother.
Finally, there were return flights.
Routines slowly resumed. Walking, cleaning, writing, etc. Notes and work-in-progress were reviewed, and story lines picked up. But…I seemed disconnected from the work. It seemed remote to me. I understood all the reasons that could account for that distance and my attendant lethargy. I didn’t try to rush myself or berate myself. I took up my routines with the anticipation that I’d catch fire again.
Fire caught this morning as I emerged from the shower and began toweling off. First, there was a chapter title, “Ebb and Flow.” Setting dropped into place. The opening paragraph was written across my mind. Other lines followed.
Suddenly I had the rush. Had to get to it. It’s a beautiful, familiar rush of having something to say about the story I’m telling.
I’m at the coffee shop. Set up is complete and coffee is at hand. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Wally Said
I hold to Wally’s words, but they trouble me. I write for myself, so the book has an audience. I’d like my novels to have more than an audience of one.
Know what I mean?
Trick Question
You ever read something that you wrote and think, “Wow, this is terrible,” and then read something else you wrote, and are astonished to discover that you wrote because it seems so amazing?
Yeah, trick question, isn’t it?
The System Connections
I took an unplanned writing break. One of those things called death interrupted the usual progression.
A family member died. It was expected, sooner or later. The sooner seemed to be getting closer but it came as a surprise. She’d been hospitalized with flu, pneumonia, congested heart and lungs, things complicated by her Parkinson’s disease. We were originally certain, this might be it, but that morning the doctors said, “Hey, she’s doing better. She can probably leave the hospital in two or three days.” They were wrong. She left that day, but she was no longer alive.
I shut down the writing component in my brain. I know this about myself: the writing component demands a lot of energy. It puts me in another place, but removes me from the moment. Being removed from the moment means that my patience and empathy become compromised. That wouldn’t do. So, shut it down, I ordered.
The writing component was kept shut down for three days. I was given writing time but chose not to indulge it. I knew what it would mean. I took the time to think of life and other matters instead of writing.
What I didn’t expect were the side-effects. I slept miserably, tossing and turning way more than the usual. I also didn’t dream, or didn’t recall any dreams, and I seemed a lot hungrier. I never felt rested.
I imagined the chemical and physiological reasons probably contributing to my side-effects. The drugs my body releases through the creative process and writing. The highs achieved, the flow of neurotransmitters and their interactions, and why writing is an addiction.
I kept the writing component off until today. Notifications of the death are completed. Grieving has commenced and progressed. Funeral and burial arrangements have been made.
When I turned the writing component back on, it was a deluge. Whoomp. I was slammed with words and thoughts to write.
Interesting experience. Fascinating, to me, at least. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Ray Said It
Saw this today in passing and love the sentiment. I feel this way, that without writing, reality would reduce me to a blithering idiot (yeah, just stop what you’re thinking right now). I feel that I’m addicted to writing, but that’s okay; I feed it, and it feeds me.
To paraphrase Ray, time again to write like crazy, and get high on words and ideas.
Flashes
You ever been doing something innocuous, like cleaning the cat box (and thinking, I would be rich if cat crap was worth anything) when writing flashes strike?
Happened to me today. Suddenly, scenes fill me. Gaps are bridged, with the story advancing on multiple fronts, like a creative offensive has been launched in my head.
Everything else is squeezed out for time to make room for dialogue, settings, and action scenes. It’s a struggle to keep up, like I’m in the center of several movies playing simultaneously. An impetus to rush off to write seizes me.
But the creative explosion wasn’t limited to writing and the current WIP. Writing is the largest beneficiary. While scenes for the current work in progress proliferate, so do a multitude of new ideas for other concepts in play, and fresh ideas. Catfinitions, those silly ideas involving cats and weak word play, pour in. Ideas for organizing and cleaning spring up like weeds after a rain. My overall energy levels surge. I feel powerful, confident, excited, and optimistic.
Got my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
The Writing Processes
I enjoy reading about other writers and their processes. I’m primarily reading for ideas that I can incorporate or adapt into my processes, but I’m also curious about others’ takes on their creative processes. I’m often amused when people insist that writers must outline, or something like that. I tried outlining; it didn’t work for me. I felt that outlining drained the fun and creativity from my writing processes.
I was thinking about this today because I reached a pivot point. Writing organically, I’m journeying without a map. I like journeying without a map. I feel like an explorer crossing a new continent. Explorers decide, “There’s the sun; we’re following this river and heading that way for now. Let’s see where it goes.” I adapt that as, “There’s the ending; we’re following this path heading that way for now. Let’s see where it goes.”
Sometimes, as accounts of explorers will tell you, wrong turns are taken. Blind paths that lead to nowhere are followed. Yet, it’s not a loss, because they’ve expanded their body of knowledge.
That happens with me and my characters, too. They take a turn none of us expected. I don’t just follow then, though. I stop and ask, “Wait a moment. Where is this going? Are we sure we want to follow this path?”
As I’m also a non-linear writer, I’ll sometimes take a few days to write about other aspects while I think over the new potential path. By non-linear, I mean that I don’t write the novel in the order that the story is told, nor in the order of its final finish. I’m usually filling in expository bridges between action scenes during these periods. Action scenes, being sharper and more intense, come quickly, like a flash flood. In fact, I call it flash writing. A sudden inspiration strikes. It follows the general sense already created, so I let the flood happen. Other flash floods often occur in sequence as these major points are seen and grasped. After writing down their essentials, I edit and polish them, add details, and make changes for coherency and consistency.
By that point, they’re raw pearls. I want a necklace. Bridge scenes help me strand them together.
Sometimes, I make huge leaps. There’s an epiphany, and I spring forward to write it before I lose it. This is when I most feel like the novel already exists, and I’m just taking dictation.
Meanwhile, I write posts like this to help me understand what I think. As I thought about this little post and wrote it, my subconscious mind thought over the new piece and offered me some tent poles.
That caused a short interlude here as I explored the tent poles. I came to see how this new piece wasn’t all that new, but a latent piece I’d previously ignored. Indeed, I’d made a small reference to it once, back in the first volume’s first quarter. I’d flash-written some scenes without thinking about how to strand them together, but subconsciously, pieces were being put together. I just needed to remain persistent, let my mind work, accept what it gave me, and go for it. That, I think, sums up the whole writing like crazy philosophy.
I’ve got my coffee. Its smell helps me focus, its caffeine stimulates my creative energies, and it’s a component of my writing session routine. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.
Michael Seidel, writer 