What if…?

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The other day while I was working on Theadia I got to thinking: what if I just…stopped writing for a while? I mean, not because I’m stressed out. or emotionally exhausted. or out of ideas. or held down by Real Life Issues or any other external reasons. It’s not as if I’m getting sick of it or feel I can’t hack it anymore.

Or to clarify the question: what if I choose to select a different creative output to be my primary focus at this point in my life?

You all know that I’ve always been drawn to the triad of writing, music and art. Three things I’ve always been interested in and loved in equal measure. But it was writing that took the driver’s seat, way back in the 80s. The bug hit me hard when I started writing the Infamous War Novel as a teenager and I just kept working at it for decades, and, well…here I am. Seven self-published books with an eighth one on the way.

And it seems that, somewhere in the back of my head, I’ve decided that I truly want to immerse myself in music again. I mean, I’m already far past immersion when it comes to listening, collecting and having my creative output inspired/influenced by it; it’s more of a clinical obsession at this point. But I’ve always kept the musical creative output at a distance these last two decades, leaving it as merely a hobby. I’ve learned enough to be Not That Bad (still with a lot of room for improvement), but in the last several years, there’s been that itch.

An itch that I want to know a bit more. To expand on my musical curiosities and see where it takes me. To finally learn how to home-record music without spending a fuckton of money doing it. I don’t even want to be a guitarists with multiple axes; I just want to try being some kind of quirky indie one-person project you find on Bandcamp. [Hell, I already have a name for it that A and I came up with ages ago: Drunken Owl.]

Mind you, this does not mean completely giving up the writing. I don’t think I’d be able to do that, anyway. It just wouldn’t be my everyday creative outlet like it is now. For a while.

Allowing those other creative avenues to open up wide and shine certainly sounds tempting to me these days.

Thinking about it

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The status of Theadia is still in ‘I’m getting there’, but right now I’m thinking about whether or not I want to self-publish it or try my hand at submission again. I haven’t decided either way just yet, but I feel like I should at least keep that possibility open for now.

So why now? Why not keep up with the DIY self-publishing? Well, why not is indeed the question here. I still feel like I could have had a chance with Diwa & Kaffi if I hadn’t sent it out a mere month before a world pandemic strongarmed its way into everyone’s lives. By the time things settled down, I’d wanted to try the DIY approach again. I always hoped that novel could have done so much better, as I still think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written.

The problem with DIY is that I’m still not the best with getting my name and my wares out there. Honestly, it’s kind of hard to do so these days when self-publishing has gotten much easier to do. And of course there’s the completely unnecessary interruption of AI-generated slop out there clogging everything up. I’m sure I can rise above that, but the point remains that I’m not all that great at self-promotion. If I’m going to go this route, I’m going to need to seriously up my game.

[There is also the fact that I’m definitely going to need to commission an artist for Theadia‘s cover, because I don’t think the photo database sites are going to cut it this time. I can (hopefully) afford it, but I’m still nervous about getting it right.]

That’s not to say that this novel is going to be a make-or-break situation for me, far from it. I’m going to keep creating one way or another; it’s in my blood and I don’t plan on giving that up anytime soon. Just that I know I can do so much better than how I’ve been previously.

Balancing

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The other day someone on Threads mentioned how they once witnessed one of their classmates sitting next to them in a lecture hall, seemingly focused only on the detailed knitting project they were working on. The poster thought, initially, that it was rather rude of them to attend a class only to completely ignore it, only to be proven wrong when they then asked the professor a very detailed question about something that had been mentioned twenty minutes previously. Surprised and intrigued, they asked the classmate how they could do that and mentioned that the knitting was their “secondary focus”; they had ADHD and this pretty much their fidget-spinner activity. Something additional for their brain to focus on that gave their initial focus (the professor) more clarity.

Reading this, I thought: wait a minute. I used to do this all the damn time in high school and college. My notebooks were filled with made-up maps and doodles of a character I’d call Murph, maybe even the makings of a poem or a lyric. I was terrible at taking notes in school (I couldn’t focus on what the teacher was saying and transcribe it at the same time, not without missing out on bits of information) and completely by chance I realized this worked for me. Even into my post-academic years, I’d have that secondary focus going on while taking in what someone might be teaching me. And if you ever saw me at various conventions, I’d be sitting a few aisles back in the audience with a notebook out, writing notes on story ideas while also listening to the presenters. [The downside to this is that I’ve had to explain to many managers that I’m not not paying attention, this is just the way I focus on what you’re telling me.]

It occurred to me that this was exactly how I was able to write two complete novels at the same time: I worked on self-publishing A Division of Souls while writing a rough draft of Meet the Lidwells; I wrote Lidwells while writing a rough of In My Blue World. And so on, until I took some personal time off during the pandemic in 2020. I knew I could probably get away with doing it, so I just…did it.

It’s been a while since I’ve done that kind of creative multitasking, but I’m thinking it’s time for me to return to that process. I’ve been feeling kind of distracted lately and it’s causing me to lose focus on Theadia. It’s not that I have the Don’t Wannas, it’s more that I keep turning away to look at something else that might be slightly more interesting at that moment. There’s also the fact that I occasionally forget that I have those ADHD kind of issues with focus and distraction and I just sort of spiral into hyperfocus on whatever’s in front of me. It’s an ongoing battle sometimes.

My plan, at least for now, is to utilize the 750 Words site for this ‘secondary focus’. I’m not entirely sure what project I’ll work on, but I do have a few that I could pass the audition once I give it a try. Will it work? Who knows? But like I said…I just have to do it.

I really need to change my reading habits

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I seem to have fallen back into a terrible habit of re-re-re-reading. In my current case, I’ve been rereading various manga on the Hoopla and Kodansha apps. Not that I mind rereading stories that I currently enjoy, but there’s a point where I’m just passively going in circles and I really need to break myself out of that when it happens.

I’m still not entirely sure how I got into this cycle, but I have a few theories. Some years ago I read the Super Ridiculously Long Edition of Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles history Tune In which ended up exhausting my reading brain for a few months afterwards, but it’s been a while so it’s not entirely that these days. It could be that I’m just being super passive about my reading habits lately. It could also be that I went through a phase where no new books were intriguing me at all (not that they’re bad, just that I’d grown weary of a particular genre that was still everywhere). And it was definitely partly due to Real Life Stuff taking up too many spoons and I needed something light.

That’s not to say I’ll stop reading manga cold turkey, because that wouldn’t fix the problem at all, only shift it onto some other subject or genre I might be interested in. Besides, I’ve grown fond of a few series on the Kodansha app and I want to keep tabs on its weekly updates. No, this is merely about making a concerted effort to pick up a book from my bedside shelf and start reading. That’s all there is to it.

I just need to, y’know, start doing it.

Into the bin it goes

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Looks like my plan to expand on a few scenes in Theadia isn’t working out as well as I thought. Truth be told, I’m not too bothered by it because it kind of felt more like an experiment than a well thought-out plan. I’m still inserting a few new chapters here and there, but I’m dialing most of it back. Why? Well, sometimes I just have to go with my instinct of something doesn’t feel right to me. The more I inserted, the more it felt like the wrong way to go. Simple as that.

I’ve gotten used to this kind of editing over the years, which means that I’m less worried about having wasted time and spoons trying to make it work. It is what it is, and I can always insert it in abbreviated form somewhere else if the information is important enough. [There is also the fact that the novel is a bit over 180k words and still not complete, so keeping it reined in is probably for the best.]

Editing and revising as I go has been part of the overall process for me for ages now. In fact, I prefer that style because it keeps me from writing too many rambling scenes that don’t lead anywhere. It also makes the whole process go by faster, in that it gives me a clearer vision of where the story should lead, as well as what early scenes need fixing or replacing. This has also helped me let go of scenes (and projects!) that need to be put in the bin.

That said, this does clear up my schedule for 2026 a bit, which is a plus!

Almost six years…?

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Has it really been almost six years I’ve been working on Theadia…? More to the point, how is it that I’m not freaked out that I’m still working on this one project and NOT feeling like a failure for taking so dang long?

To be honest, however, I think it comes with maturity and patience. The obvious reason I was able to turn around my last few novels so quickly was that it was actually a two-year, two-project schedule: one written while working on the editing and release of another. [It also helped that those novels were not epic projects like the Bridgetown Trilogy or Theadia, but shorter stories that didn’t need several hours of prep, work and so on.] Still, I’m glad to say I’m on the back end of this one and I hope to get it out to y’all on the back half of this year.

It’s interesting, though, comparing it to the time I spent working on the Mendaihu Universe. Back during the Belfry days I purposely didn’t give myself a set deadline because I knew this trilogy would be done when it got done. On the one hand I did kind of feel like I was lagging behind every other writer my age out there who was already seeing their works in print, but on the other hand I often reminded myself that I was doing this for me only. Being a successful (or even semi-successful) (or even having some random readers at that) was a goal, but not THE goal. I focused on wanting to tell the stories I wanted to tell, and allowing myself to do it the way I wanted to do it.

These days I don’t really mind that it’s taking me this long to release this story, because I know that doing it right means not rushing it.

If you could…

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Sometimes when I’m working on my novels, I think about how potential readers are going to react. Will they like this? Will they think my work is just a bit too out there? Is it work that at best is a C-average when it could be so much better? I never think about it to any large degree, mind you, because in my head I’m always writing these for my own enjoyment first and foremost. If other people like it, then that’s pretty cool too!

With Theadia, however? This is definitely a novel about rebelling against authority.

Mind you, I’ve been wanting to write something like that since I was a teenager. It’s just something I’ve always been drawn to, whether out of a sense of justice or simply that I gravitate towards that sort of thing. It’s just how I’m drawn, I suppose. It’s what happens when college radio blows your mind at fifteen and tells you that there’s more out there than just rigid conformity, and that it’s not only okay to question authority, but there are times when it’s necessary to do so.

I wouldn’t say that Theadia is a reactive commentary on refusing to follow authority, because our two main characters say almost from the beginning that they’re exhausted by having to react to such situations each and every time. And to do that, it’s less about waiting for things to happen and more about understanding when things will happen and preventing it from taking place. This kind of story is a bit tricky to write, because your mains could come across as high and mighty. Or worse, just as authoritarian. The characters must always keep in mind that they’re not merely doing this out of a sense of justice. They’re doing it because it’s necessary.

More than a few times, our mains will say “You know what? Fuck it. If authority isn’t going to follow their own established rules that are there mainly to keep us bound? Then neither should we.” Like bones, sometimes you need to break rules and guidelines in order to make them stronger for the body as a whole. They notice a shocking lack of engineering compliance and use that to their advantage. They notice rent-a-heavies trying to bother the protesters and distract or call them out. They make a noise and escalate to as many legislative bodies as they can to stem the tide. And at all times, they connect with other groups as a way to make communication even stronger.

It’s tiring work, but sometimes it has to be done.