Tag: writing

Writing Time

I became a little distracted while ordering my coffee. That trite statement is an understatement. I didn’t know Sam was speaking to me. Looking inward, listening to other voices, I was experiencing the bloom of another writing concept in my head.

After ordering my coffee and paying, I drifted off with an internal sigh. This concept, too, needed to be kneed aside. I’m on the third book of a trilogy. Need to get it done, and then on to the etcetera of publishing. Once the trilogy is done, it’s back to the third of a novel in a series that’s already published. There are many more novels loaded in my mind in that series to pursue. There are finished drafts that require editing and publishing, and there are marketing needs.

Seems like no matter how much coffee I drink, there’s not enough time to write. Bummer, as I think “Mrs. Elf” could be a fun write.

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

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Writing Explosion

Don’t you love it when you experience a writing explosion?

Yeah, baby.

Writing explosions are less predictable than earthquakes, weather, and volcanic eruptions. Not even a rumble presages the eruption.

It happened to me as I was walking and writing in my head. Reviewing what I’d written and was preparing to write today, I experienced a gleeful epiphany that exposed an entire scene. I laughed aloud with pleasure as I walked along the city street.

A domino effect was triggered. Other scenes and pieces of dialogue emerged. When I sat to write, I had to go retro with pen and notebook to capture sufficient vestiges of the insights and scenes to help me write them all. Then I powered up the laptop, slugged down gulps of hot, black coffee, and typed with driven intensity.

Afterward, it felt so damn good. Sublime. Flood gates had exploded open, releasing streams of insights into the trilogy’s third novel, and its structure. The final sentence came to me. I felt like I was channeling Philip K. Dick with some of the scenes, and Philip Roth on others.

When it was done, I was grinning. Once again, the coffee shop and other customers seemed like a foreign land, because I’d not been there, in my mind. It’s such a fucking web I’m weaving.

I love it.

Has it always been so noisy in here?

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Coffee Quotes

I stumbled across a page of quotes about coffee today as I navigated the labyrinth of the web. My favorite is the Sinclair post I set as my featured image. Here are the others, and a link to the page, found at WritersWrite. h/t to Amanda Patterson for coming up with this selection.

  1. Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? ~Albert Camus
  2. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. ~T.S. Eliot
  3. It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity. ~Dave Barry
  4. I like my coffee with cream and my literature with optimism. ~Abigail Reynolds
  5. Coffee is the best thing to douse the sunrise with. ~Terri Guillemets
  6. No matter what historians claimed, BC really stood for ‘Before Coffee’. ~Cherise Sinclair
  7. Many people claim coffee inspires them, but, as everybody knows, coffee only makes boring people even more boring. ~Honoré de Balzac
  8. I’d rather take coffee than compliments just now. ~Louisa May Alcott
  9. That’s something that annoys the hell out of me- I mean if somebody says the coffee’s all ready and it isn’t. ~J.D. Salinger
  10. In Seattle, you haven’t had enough coffee until you can thread a sewing machine while it’s running. ~Jeff Bezos

Do you have a favorite coffee quote, writers?

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Expansion

Don’t you love it when you’re writing a scene in your head, and you overhear some strangers’ conversation, and a word in it becomes a catalyst that accelerates and expands the scene you’re writing?

Oh, yeah.

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After the Fun

I’m at that point with the first novel in the “Incomplete States” trilogy that I’m almost finished. 

Finished is as relative a term as happy. I’m finishing with the fun part of the novel, the writing process. Once the entire trilogy is completed, I’ll need to endure the work processes of having it edited, cover design, and the other accoutrements to publishing it as a finished work. It all reminds me a quote.

“I love being a writer, what I can’t stand is the paperwork.” ~ Peter De Vries

That about sums it up. I love discovering the labyrinths of logic and plot as I stalk characters from the story’s beginning to its end, although it sometimes feel like the characters are stalking me. Yes, there is satisfaction in capturing it all on paper on on a computer; capturing the words help me more fully develop what the characters are seeing and experiencing, and allows a fuller enjoyment.

But the paperwork also includes editing and re-wording, polishing and refining. I’ve learned to enjoy those aspects more, but I’d rather be writing. So ponying up to the computer to finish writing this tome is not that exciting. I know that I’m just finishing a phase of creating a novel and trilogy. More work is required.

Realization that finishing the first draft is nigh reminds me that I don’t have a celebration ritual. I don’t smoke a cigarette or sip a glass of champagne, or throw a party. Other than, “Yea, me!” posts like this, I don’t say anything to anyone in particular. If someone happens to ask, “What have you been doing?”, I might say, “Finished the first draft of a novel this week.” They usually respond, “That’s terrific. What’s it about?” “Well, shit, why don’t you write it and find out?”, I don’t say. I sort of mentally shrug, smile, and present a label. “It’s science fiction.”

I have studied touchdown dances to see if any of those will work. I’m not a demonstrative person, though. I prefer lurking under the surface like a crocodile, only coming out when forced by necessity. Lurking creates less social and emotional entanglements.

Playing with these thoughts more deeply, I conclude writers and other artists, like musicians and actors, might understand my state of mind. I think this because I think they more fully comprehend the process and the unsaid trappings beneath the process. Many people I meet either oversimplify what it takes to write and publish a novel and shrug it off as “No big deal,” unless you’re a name, or they gush too much about what an accomplishment it is. That renders me uneasy. Yes, I recognize the incongruity and paradox inherent in my state. Writers are more likely to just say, “Congratulations! Well done!” And that pleases me most.

What about all of you other writers out there? How do you celebrate — or react, or behave — when you finish the novel’s first draft? 

Okay, time to get going and finish this beast. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

 

 

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Messy Creativity

After yesterday’s writing like crazy session, I walked away preoccupied by the random messiness. It’s like, I’m baking a cake and have some of the ingredients, but I’m not sure which ones I have, and what else is needed.

Or, it’s like debugging code without knowing where you’re at in the program.

It’s like walking through a strange room in the dark with little idea about which way to go.

Yes, I’m a pantser when it comes to writing. I’m an organic writer. Unscripted, or semi-scripted. I suppose the outlining writing tribes would tell me, “Outlining can solve your problems.”

That’s perhaps true, but I like my messy creative process. It’s fun to be surprised by a scene’s direction. I have no doubt that writers that outline will say, “Having an outline doesn’t mean that you can’t be surprised by what you write and how a scene turns out.”

Okay, you have me there. I just like the messy process. That’s one possibility. The second is that I’m not patient enough to write an outline. I become too impatient. Likewise, perhaps I’m too undisciplined to use an outline. More likely, it’s all of these things. But I believe that after trying to write outlines first, and suffering, I just stumbled on this messy process, and find it works. In the end, what works is what matters.

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

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Total Sense

After finishing one chapter, I bought a fresh cuppa coffee and began the next chapter. I’m excited. I know what to write, although, again, imagination and characters have taken me into unexpected directions.

Mixed in with my thoughts about writing this novel are a host of other matters to attend. I’ve been procrastinating about them, and worrying about them, even as I urge myself, “Just fucking do it.” And then, without warning, my dream about the cookies, and the job interview (to sell cookies) comes into focus. Understanding blooms. I know what it means, and it surprises me, but also makes me happy.

It’s just fascinating how our brains and minds work on so many levels. Been a great day of writing like crazy. Just a little more to do today, and then I’ll call it.

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The Writing Dream

I was in a busy, well-lit place that seemed home and office. Dozens of others were present, including my wife. People ) were milling around, talking to one another, examining my possessions – for it’s then that I realized it was my place – and offering desultory comments on my writing and past efforts. One odd-looking man, heavy, with slick, black receding hair and a black mustache and goatee on a bullet-head thrust onto a stout neck, was most outspoken. He mocked my collection of past writing efforts, done in the initial years in lab notebooks, saying things such as, “What is this stuff? What is it?”

I tried ignoring him as my wife talked to me. I was sitting at my computer at a table. Her comments confused me. I sought clarification. She was trying to talk to me about another manuscript of mine, telling me, “No, that other one. You know the one I mean.”

Finally, I stood. Walking over to the odd-looking guy, I said, “Stop talking about  my fucking writing. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t say another fucking word.”

He stumbled off, red-faced and shocked.

End of dream.

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India Badge

Woo-hoo. Fitbit has awarded me my India badge. According to them, I’ve walked nineteen hundred ninety-seven miles since I began using a Fitbit in mid-January. Fitbit says that’s the length of India, hence the badge’s name.

All those miles add up, one step and one day at a time. Just like all those words when you’re writing a novel.

 

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