Slowly getting there

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I’m definitely not hitting any huge numbers or even finishing scenes as of yet, but I’ll hit those goals once again, soon enough. I’m not going to push it. Right now, my only writing goal is to get something written. The other day it was a little over six hundred. Tonight it’s probably more like two hundred.

Again, this is how I remember writing A Division of Souls: at the beginning of the project, it was about forward motion, even if it was a little at a time. This allowed me to take my time absorbing the scene and the characters within it, really get to know them a bit. These are mostly all new characters I’m introducing right now, the main cast that will take over where the original gang left off, and I’m learning about them as I go. This has already paid dividends as I’m getting to know one of the new mains more intimately, flaws and all. Which lets me figure out what’s going to happen next.

So yeah, that’s all I have to report here right now. Here, have a new groove from Unknown Mortal Orchestra that’s been playing on my PC lately!

Making that connection

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The hardest thing about writing MU4 so far has been making a personal connection with my characters. I know what I want from them, and I think I know how I want them to evolve, but getting to those points has been fraught with missing by inches.

I also know, this time for a fact, that I’m not trying hard enough. I’m still suffering through waves of the Don’t Wannas with an equal serving of Easily Distracted. I want to write this novel, damn it all, I’m just avoiding working on it, and I’m starting to piss myself off because of it.

If this means I have to take desperate measures, I’ll do it. I’ve already uninstalled or removed several apps from my phone to minimize distraction during Day Job breaks I should be spending less passively. But though I’ve been doing all my actual writing work at home and I do close my web browsers come writing time, I still have too many distractions. If this means unpinning nearly every shortcut from the Task Bar, so be it. Making it harder to open distraction apps usually works for me simply by utilizing the Out of Sight Out of Mind method, and I’d rather not use one of those ‘won’t/can’t open until forty-five minutes pass’ apps if I can help it.

Still — the issue remains that when I am writing, I’m still not quite making that connection. I’m not connecting on that emotional level I’m aiming for. They still feel too distant. And again, that’s a personal issue I have to work through: I have to let myself establish that level, allow myself to take that deep dive. I know I can do it and I’ve done it before.

Eventually I’ll make that connection I’m longing for. I just need to keep trying.

fly-by: brb, taking a few days off…

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I seem to have finally caught a cold and gotten a fever for the first time since I started the Day Job last March. That’s actually a pretty good run! I’ve had a few days where I was running on fumes (these were usually the midday 11:30 to 8 shifts) but this is the first time in quite a while that I called in sick and taken the day off!

I’m hoping the fever will have broken by the time this posts, however. Either way, I’m taking the rest of the week off from blogging to recuperate. See you next week!

In My Blue World…the sequel?

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Out of all my books, In My Blue World seems to be my most popular ebook by a mile on Smashwords. Which, yay! Thank you so much! I’m thrilled that y’all love it as much as I do! I did my best to create a story where it wasn’t just about Conquering the Villain or Trying to Escape a Terrible Fate. This was about three strong-willed sisters who faced their fears head-on rather than run away, and about two women who never give up on what they truly believe in.

[And yes, I do of course have moments of I wish I’d written that scene differently or I could have done this bit so much better whenever I reread it, but I also know that every writer has that feeling.]

A couple years back I actually did have a loose outline plan for a sequel to the book. It was, amusingly enough, inspired not by ELO but a video by K/DA, the animated foursome connected to the League of Legends game. After all, I’d set up the ending of In My Blue World to be open-ended and ready for any number of sequels or related stories. There’s definitely room for expanding this particular created world in all sorts of directions.

So…am I going to be doing this again, writing multiple books at the same time? Or will one of them fall by the wayside again while I work on the latest shiny thing? Or will I figure out a way to make it all work despite the odds? It’s a bit early to tell right now to make any decisions. But I do have a pretty good idea of what I’d like to do with it, and hopefully I can find the time and energy to work on it!

Connections

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what some of the themes in MU4 might be, and I think one of the most important is about personal connections; the ones we make, the ones we destroy, the ones we wish we had and the ones we protect with everything we have.

I posted a rough version of Chapter 1 some months back, in which a young woman named Eika is dropped off in a deserted town and forced to undergo a solo trial to prove her worth as part of the Order of the Blessed Ones. Her story of connection is about the utter lack of it in her failure to live up to her family’s and community’s expectations. In Chapter 2 we’ll see the connection between two new Alien Relations Unit officers, Lizzie Kapranos and Ruu-Sseikassi Tiiegasi, who will have a somewhat unconventional connection with each other that’s different than Alec Poe and Caren Johnson’s in the previous books. And later on we’ll see an arc about Ampryss and Shirai, and how their connections to their original fates have changed because of the Season of the Ninth Embodiment.

I’ve chosen ‘personal connections’ to be one of the backbones of MU4 (and possibly other related stories) partly because of what Denni Johnson did near the end of The Balance of Light: she pretty much broke all the rules and expectations and sent fate off in uncharted directions. Every detail, every question and every choice is related to what connections the characters make, because that is the only anchor with each other that they truly have.

Of course, this isn’t about strict maintenance of those connections…like I said, it’s also about how they can be destroyed, and why.

But then I’d be giving away too much if I kept going, heh.

Read my EBooks! :)

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Yeah, I know. I am absolutely terrible at self-promotion…but then again, there really isn’t any one way to go about it, is there? Maybe I should stop trying to dive into the overcrowded pool of self-published writers trying to get your attention and lean heavy on what comes natural to me: the outsider this is kind of weird but fascinating mystique…? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ANYWAY. All five of my novels — The Bridgetown Trilogy (A Division of Souls, The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light), Meet the Lidwells! and In My Blue World — are available for FREE at Smashwords this week, so if you haven’t downloaded them already, have at it! You can find them here at my profile page:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/jonchaisson

Besides, those trilogy books are doorstoppers (but a lot of fun!) so by the time you finish reading those, maybe I’ll have finished the fourth book! Heh.

Not Writing / Writing

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Again, I’ve been thinking about how I pulled this off back in my Belfry days.

I’m of course feeling a bit frustrated and twitchy because I’m not getting any new words done. Chapters One and Two are still where I last left them, maybe with a few slight revisions here and there. Why am I getting nowhere with this thing?

But then I remember: starting A Division of Souls was also slow going at first, at least when new words were involved. Those first few chapters were written and rewritten so many times before I could accept them as a true part of the novel. I essentially took the best-so-far version I had and started rewriting them from the beginning.

But that wasn’t all I was doing. I was spending a lot of non-Belfry time working on the world-building. Creating short character studies of the mains and the secondaries, getting to know them better by creating seemingly mundane facts and figures about them. Sometimes they serve no purpose, but sometimes they come in handy somewhere down the line in the most unexpected ways. [For example, I came up with Caren having a scar on her leg from someone shooting at her well before I actually mentioned that fact in The Persistence of Memories.]

So this is what I’ve been doing for MU4 these last few weeks. Creating character studies for the original returning cast as well as the new cast of characters coming in. Some of them are from the several recent outtakes, but some of them are reinterpretations instead. In the process, I’m learning more about who they are, why they find themselves involved in these two important chapters, and what their stories will be during the course of the rest of the project.

It doesn’t quite get rid of that I need to write new words now, damn it! itch, but it will definitely make those new words come easier once I do have the chance to make them happen.

Characters old and new

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Recently I wrote up an entry on 750Words laying out a sort of Where Are They Now? for the original cast of the Bridgetown Trilogy in the current MU4 setting. It was all sorts of fun to do and it even gave me a few ideas for plot points to hit later on in the story! The reason I did this was because I wanted a firm grasp on their roles in this new story (if they indeed have one) as a sort of anchor for the new characters I’m about to bring in.

I suppose this confirms that I do want to return to the original cast to explore the Mendaihu Universe a bit further, but it also gives me a bit of distance and breathing room from the trilogy so I don’t feel like I’m trying to revive a story that’s already been told. The new generation of characters provide me with a way to expand the universe yet keep it connected to its origins. After all, this whole story universe is about connections, right?

Anyway, now that I know where the original cast stands, I suppose I should probably do the same for the next-gen cast, given that I know who they are already (due to previous versions dating back to 2015) and what their goals are. Some of them are already fully fleshed out while others are only a brief idea, but that’s okay as well. Perhaps even newer characters will arise when I least expect it!

Songs from the Eden Cycle, Vol 8

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…and without further ado, here’s the freshly-minted eighth volume of Songs from the Eden Cycle, the official playlists of the Mendaihu Universe! These are mostly from new releases that have been getting heavy play here in Spare Oom including Love in the Void by Hammock, After the Magic by Parannoul, plus a few classic tracks from New Order and Wire that I’ve been listening to as well.

It’s definitely a more shoegazey, post-rocky, electronicky mix than I’m used to, but it definitely fits the mood of MU4 so far. Hope you enjoy it!

More on Distraction

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Yes, Cali and Jules (see above) are definitely distracting, in a good way. Especially when they get all cute and cuddly and want our attention. But that’s not the distraction I’m talking about.

I’ve fallen behind on my work on MU4 partly because this past week I’d worked mid-shifts at the Day Job for three of the five days, Tuesday through Thursday, followed by two early mornings starting at 5:30am. My brain’s been a little loopy because of it and the most spoons I had was to maybe do a bit of reading of what I had so far.

I still have the same distractions I’ve had since we moved out to the west coast, of course — fiddling with the music library, refreshing the social media timelines, cleaning out the email inboxes, things like that — but I’d like to think I’ve gotten better over the last couple of years, especially now that my Day Job isn’t a high-stress brain melter and that I’ve cleaned out the detritus up there. I’d say my worst distraction right now is simple avoidance: purposely finding other things to focus on to avoid doing the actual work. The good thing is that’s an easy thing to combat, simply by shutting down those browsers and starting the work whether I’m ready for it or not.

I find that’s the most common start to a writing session when I’m distracted. Most of the time I am ready for it and the output isn’t all that bad (and when it is bad, I try not to dwell on it for long and remind myself to fix it next session). I’m simply just delaying because I’m trying to get the session mood just right. [Hey, remember during the Belfry days when I used to waste a half hour deciding what cds to listen to? Some things never change, do they?] My workaround has been the same thing since I came up with it in the mid-90s: just shut the f*** up and DO it already.

And that still works to this day.

Hopefully this coming week will be better! My schedule is mostly mornings with a day off midweek, so I should be able to work through the lingering Don’t Wanna’s and make some progress. There probably won’t be any new words, but I can at least revise and improve this newly reinserted chapter and work out how to go from there.