Author: Jon Chaisson

Writer, obsessed music listener and collector, okay bassist and guitarist, hoopy frood. Questionable logical circuits, but he gets by.

Still revising

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Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the right direction either.

I’m committed to not seeing this as yet another attempt at writing the same twenty or so scenes, but just a major obstacle to overcome. And as I’ve said plenty of times before, getting the first chapters right are always a major obstacle for me. I’m not trying to be perfect by any means…just trying to get it right, that’s all.

Anyway, a few previous beginning chapter attempts have been reinserted into this version and I’m much happier again. At least two of them which will take the job of doing two things: introducing newer characters, and also introducing the long-arc plot. The Original Gang from the Bridgetown Trilogy will of course arrive in due course, but in a slightly different way than I’d planned previously, and I think it’s for the best. Once these chapters are quickly revised, I can move forward again.

Now if I can only get past that annoying self-nagging that I’m not writing any new words at the moment…

New Project, New Office Stuff

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Sometimes you just have to treat yourself to new office supplies. After all, they’re useful, right?

This past weekend we stopped at IKEA for home furnishing things and while there I picked up a few items that I could use here in Spare Oom. We’d been planning on heading there for household things anyway, so before I left I did a quick scan of the back room and thought about what I could use to update things. One thing in particular that popped up was the fact that I have a ton of space under my desk, and the only thing currently under there is my trash can and occasionally a cat or two. So why not get a smallish storage set that I could slide under there? And while I was at it, I bought a few more of those ‘inbox’-style stackable desk file organizers not for the desk but for the No Longer Hidden Bookshelf for further storage and notebooks I’m actively using (like my personal journal and the poetry comp book). And they were all pretty cheap, too! Of course I’ll have to put the under-desk storage set together when I have a moment today…

I know, this may or may not inspire me to get my ass in gear and get working on MU4, but it’ll make things a bit more bearable and the top of the desk a bit cleaner. I used to do this during the Belfry Years anyway, replacing things that were wearing out or working on better filing systems at the start of every book. Either way, I see it as a sort of celebration that I’m about to embark on another Epic Project.

Or something like that, anyway!

It’s okay, just…keep going

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Image courtesy of Recovery of an MMO Junkie

I think I need to rewrite Chapter 2, and I’m not entirely happy about it. But it has to be done.

I’ve got a good handle on what needs to happen in the chapter…but this first attempt doesn’t quite stick the landing. I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m writing it from the wrong point of view. The way I have it now is that it’s a nod to the opening of A Division of Souls, but really lacks the oomph I want it to have. It lacks the important conflict that will set the course of the rest of the story. It’s causing the pace of everything else to slow down considerably, and that’s not what I want.

I guess when you’re a deity followed by multiple worlds, you get a little jaded by the repeated nonsense that goes on? So maybe not from Denni Johnson’s point of view…maybe from Alec Poe’s instead? I mean, he spent the entire Bridgetown Trilogy trying to maintain a balance that normal people wouldn’t be able to handle, so maybe he might be a little cheesed off that this bullshit is still happening.

Yeah, that works for me.

I really should be used to multiple takes of early chapters by now, and right now I’m reminding myself that this is all part of the job. Just cut it out, paste it in the Outtakes document, and keep going. That works just fine. I think I’ve done this enough where I can bypass the temporary freak-out of thinking I’m a failure or that I’ll never get this thing off the ground. I hope…? Anyway, I’m not going to let such a minor error cause much of a problem. I’ll just need to start again!

On Gender and Pronouns in Character Building

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One of my coworkers at the Day Job goes by they/them pronouns. I do my best to use the correct ones, though I’ll slip sometimes. After working with them a short time and getting along quite fine, I told them to feel free to correct me at any time — in fact, if I slip in their presence, they are free to slap me on the arm. [And they have, much to mutual amusement.] I’ll still slip from time to time, but I think I do pretty well now. In fact, it’s gotten me thinking a lot about others I work with or the customers I meet, wondering if I’m using the right pronouns they prefer, and it got me thinking a lot about how I write gender in my novels.

I’ll admit I didn’t know much at all about the gender spectrum when I began writing the Bridgetown Trilogy back in the early 00s. I mean, I did, but I didn’t have all that much real-life experience at the time to base it on other than movies and books that may or may not have done it justice. I did, however, encourage myself to insert characters with different sexual and/or romantic preferences. Caren, for instance, is bisexual. Sheila is lesbian and Nick is asexual. (Alec is purely hetero but he accepts the entire spectrum, which fits his character.) The closest I got to it was hinting that Colin was a variant of the gender spectrum, which gets explained in a bit more detail in The Balance of Light — the reveal of who Colin really is, and how there are others like them, is actually tied in with the book’s thematic concept of balance.

It wasn’t until maybe the last ten years that I realized that maybe I should expand my central casting a bit more. I’d learned a lot and expanded my knowledge and experience considerably by that point, so it only made sense to use it. In My Blue World, for instance, includes both nonbinary and trans minor characters that I put there for that reason. And in MU4, I’ll be introducing two new soon-to-be majors, one of whom is trans and the other is nonbinary.

I realize that some writers are worried that they’ll do it wrong: placing this kind of person in there for the gold star (Hey look, I’m inclusive n’ shit! Gimme a cookie!), creating this character for manufactured conflict or drama (the minor role/target that ends up dead because Real Life Is Gritty), or something similar. I knew I’d fall into that same trap if I overthought it or constantly worried about it, so the way I approached it was to approach the way it is in real life: hey, some people are just trans or nonbinary or queer or whatever, simple as that. No literary reason except that’s just who they are, and that’s how life is. I do expand on their character description as necessary to ensure they read as such, but I’m always conscious of making them realistic instead of a caricature or a stereotype. I don’t create these characters for political reasons, because that’s not the kind of writer I am (and believe me, I’ve tried that route and I am absolutely terrible at it). I create them because it’s like meeting my coworker for the first time: they just happen to be such, and it’s up to me to honor that.

And just like my coworker, I have to make sure I use the correct pronouns. In Theadia one of the main characters is nonbinary and I had to make sure I constantly used they/them. And yes, I did have to fix it in a number of places during revision! I totally understand that when you’re taught that he/him and she/her are the socially correct defaults, it’s sometimes easy to forget when you meet (or in this case, create) someone who doesn’t go by that default. It’s not about going out of your way to please them; it’s just about creating an alternative to make it work for both sides.

Fly-by: returning next week

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As mentioned over at Walk in Silence, I’ve been creatively busy these last couple of weeks and I’m happy to report that things are going well so far in writing MU4, at least as far as scrappy first drafts of first chapters are concerned. Exactly where I need to be right now.

I’m planning on returning to the blogosphere at a regular schedule next week, so I’ll see you then!

Still here, still writing

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It’s been a couple of weeks, hasn’t it? So what’s been happening in the Mendaihu Universe? Well, aside from the fact that I feel like my writing work is moving at a glacial pace (I always feel that at the start of a project), I’m actually not doing that bad at all. I’m allowing myself to write as few — or as many — words as befits the scene or the session, so some days I’ll get about three hundred words and other days I’ll get closer to seven hundred.

A few things I’ve learned so far:

–I really love writing in this universe. I mean, really love writing it! When I started working on this version, I immediately felt a lot of things click into place: I knew and remembered the universe’s voice intimately, what tone and pace it’s supposed to take. As I’ve said before, I’m not trying to emulate what’s already been written or trying to relive the sessions of the Belfry years, and in doing that I was able to return to that tone and pace naturally.

–I do loves writing me some dialogue. I’ve also been doing a reread of the original trilogy at night as part of the refamiliarization process, and it’s apparent that one of my favorite things about writing fiction is conversations between characters. Sometimes I worry that the scene might stall a little because of it, but my workaround for that it is to keep the characters physically moving somehow. A frustrated Caren will start flailing her arms, an angry Sheila will barely be holding back violent impulses, and Poe will almost always have the urge to light up a cigarette when he gets stressed out. The focus is on the words they’re saying, but I’m also having them react to them in some way.

–My openings are, as always, a hot mess. But on the flip side, I’ve learned to just write them anyway so I can fix them later. All the new scenes so far are a bit weak, but that’s okay! The whole point of writing them is to get the story moving in the right direction.

–I am, as stated earlier, listening to mood-appropriate music just as I did in the Belfry years. Sure, I’m returning to a few classics (I had Beck’s Sea Change on the other day) but I’m also enjoying some newer albums that will surely become a part of the Eden Cycle Soundtrack list. [At the moment I write this, I’m listening to Radio Songs by Blur’s Dave Rowntree and I’m pretty sure this one’s going to be on the playlist for a few months.] Again: not trying to relive the sessions of the Belfry years, merely trying to recapture its vibe and update it. And I think it’s working!

–And lastly, I admit I’m not writing every single day. I’ll take a day off to focus on errands or other important non-writing things. And I’m okay with that, because I know I’ll end up writing again the next day, whether it’s a quick hour’s session before doing a midshift at work or bashing it out after dinner. By not forcing myself, by allowing myself the writing time, the stress of getting it done lowers considerably.

I’m not expecting a quick three-month turnaround. It might take a few months or it might take a year. I’d love to have something out this year, but it definitely won’t be this. I’m taking my time with this one. I’m writing this on my own terms, with the simple aim of writing the stories I truly want to write. I know I’m not going to be a pro writer, I’ve come to terms with that quite some time ago. It’s not the kind of writing I do. But I’m writing something that’s just as intriguing, just as enjoyable and exciting. Something that resonates with me.

And that’s the most important reason.

Fly-by: brb, starting a novel

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Hey gang! Apologies for the lack of blog entries lately, as I’ve been a bit busy. As of 11 January at 7:04pm PT, I have officially started writing MU4! I’m focusing as much creative energy as I can on it for the time being which means that the blogs and the 750Words entries have gone by the wayside for a little bit.

Which is fine! The important thing is that I am writing a novel again.

The aim here is for me to ensure that I give myself enough time and space to work on this without putting more stress on it than necessary. As much as I love writing these blogs and working on the 750Words exercises, right now I think I’d be wearing myself a little thin by partitioning too much. Once I feel I can handle the extra work, then I will be back. I’ll still post here and at Walk in Silence now and again…I just won’t make it a priority until then.

See you again soon!

Note Worthy

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Notes swiftly written on the back of old team schedules

First of all, I do apologize for the terrible pun in the entry title.

When I was writing the Bridgetown Trilogy back in the early 00s, my process was that I’d start the day by utilizing the slower moments of my work day at Yankee Candle by doing a bit of plotting. Nothing too detailed mind you, as these moments usually lasted no longer than five or so minutes before the next wave of boxes came down the conveyor chutes, but I wasn’t looking for detailed to begin with. This was merely doing a bit of planning ahead of a few scenes. I’d think a bit about what I wanted my characters to be doing while I built those pallets of candle boxes and then write it out when I had a minute. And more often than not these scraps of paper were nothing more than the backs of copied labels that we’d tape to the side of our finished pallets.

Then later that evening during my writing sessions in the Belfry I’d take those notes and start elaborating on them. Sometimes I’d use them to the letter, and sometimes I’d actually go in a slightly different direction, but the whole point of these notes was that I’d be prepared for the session instead of sitting there staring at the screen or distracting myself with whatever music I wanted to listen to that night. When I returned to the Trilogy in 2009 to finish the last quarter of The Balance of Light I realized that the best way to go about it was to do the exact same thing: longhand notes followed by typed elaboration.

I used slightly different versions of this process for most of my follow-up novels, but never to the same degree. Most of the notes for Meet the Lidwells! contained personal information about the characters and a detailed discography of the band. Same for In My Blue World: for the most part that was written on the fly with most of the notes merely being character bios. I think part of the reason for this was that working for a bank, even as a back office drone, didn’t really lend much time or brain power for this sort of thing. I figured out alternate ways to write novels, even if I didn’t feel it was quite the same.

So when I recently decided it was time to return to the Mendaihu Universe, I also decided that the best way to play all of this out was to go back to what worked: a bit of note writing while at the Day Job followed by elaboration at home. And being that I’m back in retail, I’m once again able to steal a few personal minutes during breaks and slow times to write, this time using the backs of the previous day’s team schedule we have set up at each register. I have the time and brain power for this sort of thing again, so why not take advantage of it?

So far I’ve gotten myself maybe two or three scenes down that I can work with. I’ll be starting off the fresh new version very soon, and I plan on continuing this note taking throughout the entire project. I’m even thinking there’s a chance I’ll do a bit more Tuckerization, once again using coworkers’ last names somewhere while I keep them updated on the latest fictional drama.

All told, it’s not only great to be back in Bridgetown, but it’s also great to return to a process that worked really well for me.

Creating and Cats

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Writing — well, pretty much doing anything around the house — with two young cats prowling around and constantly getting under foot and demanding attention can be a bit tricky. Cali and Jules have been with us for a good couple of months now and they’ve been a lovely addition to our home and the biggest distraction ever. (Sometimes enforced distraction when one of us needs to get work done and the other needs to take over catsitting duties.) It’s a matter of taking it as it comes and squeezing whatever time we can to do it all.

During my evening writing sessions I’ll use one of the stick toys to get one of them away from A’s knitting and yarn stash, and eventually they’ll forget that A has all that enticing and chewable yarn in the other room. Jules is a little easier to sway, as she’s more chill about everything and will end up napping on the cat bed I have here in Spare Oom. Cali is a bit harder to deal with, but eventually I’ll get her to calm down as well. Giving them the nightly bowl of kibble also helps. We’re hoping they’ll become a bit less chaotic as they grow older, but for now we’ll need to keep them occupied when and how we can.

In the meantime, as I write this Jules is in the Spare Oom cat bed and Cali is most likely in the cat tree in the living room. That gives us a bit of personal time to get work done. It might not always be a lot of time, but it’s time enough for now.

Day One

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Yesterday was Day One of the new year, and even though I didn’t have to, I did everything I set out to do: take our New Year’s Day neighborhood walk (including coffee and lunch), clean the apartment as well as both the PC and the laptop, and even hit all my creative marks. I even got a few errands done!

I plan to be positive. Not in a blissful live laugh love sort of way, but to move in the right and needed directions. Do what I need and want to do instead of talking myself out of it. No more self-deprecation or self-doubt. Accept the low points when they do come, and find ways to turn it around. Get rid of the distractions and the Don’t Wannas. Follow through with the life path I’m choosing.

Look ahead with hope and eyes opened. Make the changes that are needed.

I have a lot I want and need to do this year, and I can’t wait to start!