Oh, hey there! I’ll be scarce the next couple of weeks as I kick my own ass trying to get The Persistence of Memories out and (relatively) on time by end of month. I’m making serious headway on this last Evil Red Pen No Seriously This Is the Final Line Edit, cleaning it up so y’all will enjoy it when it’s released.
See you all soon! 🙂
This always happens, damn it. I give myself a reasonable, decent timeframe to finish the line edit for The Persistence of Memories, and something comes along and says “OH HEY You need to get this done first, there’s a couple of errands you also need to do outside the house, and oh, by the way, Day Jobbery has been busier than usual, so chances of you sneaking any writing in during the day is slim to nil. Oh, and remember those blogs that you ignored all weekend because you were too busy shopping and doing housework, and watching the new X-Files episodes?”
Grumble grumble whine whine.
But you know, I’m not going to let it get to me. This has happened enough times that the most I can do is work around it. I’ve read too many blog writers and webcomic artists that have this same issue, and that’s all you can do: soldier on the best way you can. I say this, as it seems my original schedule has gone a bit wonky. I’m pushing the release of The Persistence of Memories out a few more weeks, mainly because after this line edit is done, I’m going to need to give it another surgery. It’s great as it is, but it’s still far too long at nearly 169k words. That’s actually about 15k more than A Division of Souls. The response to that book, by the way, has been quite positive, except for the words no writer really wants to hear: it’s too long. And Book 3 is even longer than Book 2, which is not a good sign at all.
But! But! It’s a piece of art! You’re supposed to savor the pace both when it’s fast and slow! Why does no one understand my genius?
Heh. Yeah, right. More like, “….Oh. Yeah. Huh. You’re right, that bit’s pretty sluggish. I should definitely speed it up.”
The thing with self-publishing is that you’re going to see it, warts and all. The original 150k version of ADoS is still out there as an e-book and a trade until I get around to re-editing that. On the one hand, as a writer, I feel like a failure because I put the book out there well before it was completely ready, and now No One Will Ever Trust Me as an Author Ever Again.
On the other hand, I can just get back on the horse, fix what needs fixing, present it again, and move on.
Whatever works, kids.
Granted, I’m also giving myself quite a lot to do in the next six months. Editing and revising books 2 and 3 in the trilogy, as well as writing Walk in Silence. My original plan for WiS was to have it released in April, but due to the trilogy editing and re-editing, work has been embarrassingly slow on it (about 2 handwritten pages a day, which really isn’t much). I’m thinking that one will end up being released during the fall semester. I’m okay with that…as long as it’s done by some point this year.
And then, maybe, finally, I’ll be able to work on new stuff. Maybe.
I’ve been writing and editing via my PC for so long that it still feels weird to be writing new things longhand. The last major project I wrote longhand was The Phoenix Effect; the trilogy was written completely on the computer, using MS Write and MS Word. I still have the 3″ floppies containing all the early .wri files, come to think of it. I did do a lot of the world building and the brainstorming longhand, mostly on scrap paper from work (these were the Yankee Candle years), but the new words were all generated downstairs in the Belfry, tapping away on my PC.
Even later incomplete and/or trunked projects like Love Like Blood, Can’t Find My Way Home and Two Thousand and even the earlier versions of Walk in Silence were started or at least primarily written on the computer. I liked working that way for varying reasons: I could chart my daily word count and my production in general; I could edit while writing when it was clear it was needed; I could open multiple documents for reference use and note taking; and peripherally, I could keep myself amused and entertained with my mp3 collection playing in the background.
Writing on the PC can be a great thing, and I still enjoy it, but over the years I’ve realized its limitations as well. I have a penchant for distraction, whether it’s multiple games of FreeCell and Solitaire, futzing around with the tags and the arrangement of my mp3 collection, or the continued refreshing of my Twitter feed. I’ve also been hiding myself in Spare Oom far too long. And then there’s the fact that I already work from home, so I’m spending most of the day back there already, sitting on my duff for eight hours. Spare Oom may not be a man cave, but over the years it began to feel like I was using it as a hideaway from the world. It’s the one room in the apartment that has the best view (see the banner picture over at Walk in Silence), but I don’t look out that window nearly as much as I should.
Starting up my personal journal a few years back was my way of combating all this. Its original purpose was to divert my kvetching habits from social media to paper and curtail them somewhat, and it worked almost immediately. I also made it a habit to write its entries away from my desk. For the last year or so I’ve been writing in it during my midmorning break, sitting on the loveseat across the room where I can glance out the window as well. Much to my own surprise, I’ve kept it up consistently since then, skipping only weekends and vacations.
Early last year, when it was clear that I’d be wrapping up the trilogy project by year’s end, I started writing the new Mendaihu Universe story. This was the first new story I’d be starting completely longhand, in a yellow-covered 3-subject spiral notebook I picked up at Target. This too was kept up consistently until late last year when I put it aside to self-release the trilogy. Once that project is finally wrapped, I’ll be able to pick it up again. In the meantime, though, I’ve been starting new projects longhand, such as this latest version of Walk in Silence. My return to artwork and renewed dedication to weekly poetry have finally torn me away from the PC as well. In addition to that, I’ve been trying to make a concerted effort to work more often on my laptop out in the living room (where I am currently typing this) if I need to use MS Word. And yesterday afternoon during the two football playoff games I sat at the dining table, writing a few WiS pages.
I’d commented elsewhere that I don’t plan on turning myself into a Luddite writer; I just feel the need to change up the habits to keep everything fresh. I can view using the PC as a positive work process rather than a distraction or a slog. I’m not chained to it, and shouldn’t be. When I was working on the trilogy back in the early ’00s, working on the PC was something I looked forward to as an evening process, maybe even as ‘going to the office’ for my writing career, and I kept that separate from the rest of my life. Returning to longhand after so long is sort of a return to that.
I’m curious to see where it takes me next.
2015 was definitely a banner year for me. One of my best writing years in a long time.
I trunked a majority of dead story ideas and created a number of new ones to work on in the future. That was a big move for me; finally letting go of stories that no longer sang to me, and making the decision not to revive them. That’s always a tough move for a writer, but it has to be done to clean house, so to speak, to make way for newer and more robust ideas. By retiring many of these stories, I’ve given myself more room to focus on the new Mendaihu Universe story, as well as others not in that universe.
I was more consistent with my other creative endeavors that aren’t exactly for public consumption (yet): writing daily journal entries, photography, poetry, artwork, and playing guitar. Are these ever going to be shared elsewhere? Who knows…I’m not aiming to be a semipro poet, artist, photographer or musician for the moment, as these are personal and not professional projects. Things I do purely for selfish enjoyment. I’m able to push myself and get better at them without having an expected plateau to hit.
I hit one of my highest goals of seeing the trilogy out in the wild by self-releasing A Division of Souls as an e-book (and soon to be available as a trade paperback). I was also included in Uniquely North Quabbin, a collection of essays about the area of Massachusetts where I grew up. The trilogy was an extremely long term project for me (spanning over a decade, technically over two), so releasing it has very much given me a sense of closure. I can finally move on to new projects, both within the MU and elsewhere.
So what does 2016 hold for me?
On the professional end of things, I’ve already made the choice to have at least three books to be self-released next year: the second and third book of the trilogy, The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light; and my memoir/music book Walk in Silence. I’ve been working on all three since October, just after I released A Division of Souls, so I’m still on schedule to see these come to fruition. TPoM should arrive early next year, WiS sometime late spring or early summer, and TBoL by autumn.
After that, my writing calendar will be disturbingly, frighteningly clear for the first time in ages.
Which means that I should look for another project to focus on. If I’ve learned anything from the trilogy project, it’s that I now understand the level of dedication and focus I should give to my writing. Whatever project comes next will be given that same amount of dedication and focus.
Do I have ideas? Yes I do! There’s the new Mendaihu Universe novel that’s currently on pause while I get its related novels out. This one probably won’t see the public eye until 2017. Then there’s the musical family idea (aka The Lidwells Story) that’s also on the backburner. That one’s a compact standalone, and a very rough draft has already been written via my daily words earlier this year, so this one could very well be another quick turnaround.
But other than that? It’s wide open. I’m as curious as you are about what I’ll write next.
Speaking of daily words, I’m hoping to return to writing them via the 750 Words website in the new year, especially now that I’ll have more time for them. This is where many of my recent ideas have arrived on the scene, so I think I’d be remiss in passing it up. The key is to not be stressed out about it. The point is not to ensure I write 750 or more words on a daily basis, but to exercise my imagination and have fun with it.
I haven’t updated my whiteboard schedule yet, but I usually end up doing that on January 1, so you’ll see that post tomorrow. Oh! And speaking of updates…I plan to have a much tighter and more frequent schedule here at Welcome to Bridgetown as well as Walk in Silence. Maybe one or two posts a week for starters, but I’d like to expand on that later on. I’d like to expand on the subjects I write about as well. As much as I love talking about college radio or how I write, I’d like to investigate different avenues related to writing and music. Different genres, different processes, that sort of thing.
Other than that, I’m going to revel in the fact that the road looks much clearer than it has in years. I want 2016 to be the Year of New Things. I’m really looking forward to where it takes me.
My cellphone battery went on the fritz the other day, so for the first time in I’m not sure how long, I haven’t had my cell with me when going out somewhere. No looking up my book shopping list that I have saved to Dropbox, no checking Twitter while we wait for our food at restaurants, no checking in to Swarm, no reading what few news sites I still actually read with any regularity. I’ve had to make do with analog diversions such as the local paper or whatever’s playing on the big screen above the tables. Or, y’know, talking to people.
I was able to enjoy yesterday’s errands without distraction or needing to get somewhere or find something specific. I spent an hour or so at Green Apple Books (I had a few items to pick up that we’d ordered), did a bit of shopping close by, and stopped at Café La Flore for lunch. My only entertainment while eating was a writing magazine I’d picked up.
I’ll be honest, I already knew that I’m online way too much. Working from home, I have my work laptop at one end of my desk, and at the other end of it is my home PC, where I’ll distract myself with some online radio station, my Twitter feed, my email, YouTube, or whatever else might be going on. I’ve already made a conscious effort to lessen my dependency on social media and newsfeeds, especially when I sense that I’m about to be irritated or annoyed at something currently trending. Again, it’s the white noise — it tires me out, and I don’t feel like adding to it anymore. So I’ll close whatever tabs I have open, save the radio station (or my music player), and do something offline. I’ve also made it a point to use my work breaks for longhand writing, which forces me to cut screen time as well.
Yesterday’s errand-running up Clement Street was definitely a nice diversion, especially since it forced me to think of other ways to distract myself other than via my cellphone. And more to the point, it was a reminder that being online really is a bit of an addiction, at least for me. The good thing is that I’m aware of it, that it cuts into my personal time and my writing time, and that I’ve been doing things to combat it. I make time for things, because I know that in reality, most of the things I want to do don’t take that long at all. A bit of guitar noodling? Working on my art? Writing in my journal? Writing a poem? Surely I can afford to take an hour or so out of my day to dedicate to those projects. Lately, I’ve been noticing just how true that is, once distraction has been taken away.
And without a cellphone (which, let’s be honest, I use mainly to go online, and not to call anyone), I’m finding myself with more time on my hands, connecting to the world in a different way. It’s slower and there’s less novelty to it, but that’s just fine. I get to enjoy the Zen-like quality of people-watching and letting my thoughts percolate for a bit. I get to listen to the world a little more closely. Overhearing interesting snippets of conversations and pondering what the context may be. Noticing habits, personal tics, cultural quirks. Thinking about why people do what they do. Letting it all enter my memory without having to take pictures of it. Everything that goes into character development and world building.
Am I going to keep this up, once I finally get my replacement battery? Who knows. But for now I’m just going to continue with this acoustic living for a bit longer. I’ve really come to enjoy it.
Hiya!
Thanks for your patience…I’ve been all kinds of busy doing too many things as of late, but thankfully a handful of said things have been writing related! To wit:
The line edit of The Persistence of Memories is about halfway done. This one’s taking a bit longer than expected, but I hope to get this one out sometime early in the new year. It’s a bit longer than ADoS, but it’s actually shorter than it once was thanks to some heavy editing.
The cover for The Persistence of Memories is still in debate phase. So many cover ideas, but none are gelling just yet! The three books have a color theme: ADoS was to indicate late evening, thus the city glow. TPoM is to have a much darker cover, signifying past-midnight; The Balance of Light is to be brighter than the other two, signifying morning. I’ll have a few outtakes for you in the new year once I have more of a solid idea!
The physical book for A Division of Souls should be ready by January. This one’s been tough, as I had to wait for A. to finish reading and suggest any edits, plus there’s a lot of weird formatting bits that I had to work my way through. Thankfully I’ve figured them out, so at this point it’s a matter of doing the edits and uploading to KDP. As an aside, the new (non-format) edits will also make their way to the e-book as well for consistency.
Longhand work on Walk in Silence continues apace, a few pages at a time. Okay, this one has morphed so many times since its inception quite some years ago, but I’ve finally got it anchored. This version is most likely the latest and last version. It’s not exactly the nonfic book about 80s college radio that I’d originally envisioned (that may be a future book), but that music is still the main backbone. It’s now become a memoir of sorts.
The new (still as yet untitled) Mendaihu Universe story got a reread recently. It’s got some really good ideas, but it’s still very spotty. Once I’m caught up with all my other projects, this one gets shotgun.
So yeah…all this on top of the usual fourth quarter Day Job silliness and other personal events going on. It’s slow going, but I’m getting there! 🙂
Oof! Between the end of Q4 sneaking up on me at the Day Job, and giving myself some insane writing deadlines over the next few months, I don’t have too much time to spare for any blog posts of quality. And I’d rather not post something half-assed here (I mean, aside from the occasional silly fly-by post like this one to let you know I’m still here and functioning) if I can help it. Sorry about that.
Thanks for your patience, I hope to be a little more on track soon! 🙂
One of my biggest worries when it comes to the Mendaihu Universe novels, to be honest, is that it would be taken as a ‘religious’ novel, or that it would be mistaken for a soapbox for my own ideas on spirituality. Granted, the novels have a heavy amount of spirituality, belief and faith involved in the world building, so it might happen yet.
Thankfully my worries have been misplaced so far.
The whole idea of using spirituality in the MU is not to preach or to proselytize, but to imagine a reality in which a belief system, its tenets, miracles, and everything else is not only real, but a natural part of society. Like the use of spiritual chakra energy as a source of power and strength in anime like Dragonball Z or Naruto, the enlightened people of the MU use their spirit energy for many useful things: innerspeak (clairaudience), physical sensing (clairsentience), reality seeing (claircognizance), and so on. More to the point, these abilities are part and parcel of Meraladian life — innerspeak is the ‘silent half’ of the Anjshé language, where the intent is projected psychically while the words are spoken, for instance. All these abilities are from ‘within’ — that is, their souls. It’s a part of their life organically as well as spiritually.
That’s not to say that I’m ignoring zealotry and bigotry, of course. There are characters from ADoS forward who use cultural bigotry, even if their reasoning for it is an innocent (to them) ‘you wouldn’t understand’. The new as-yet-unnamed MU novel reveals a new generation of believers of the One of All Sacred who think of themselves as a special enlightened class personally chosen by their deity — something Denni Johnson would have been horrified to see. There are those who are committed to their version of their belief, regardless as to whether it conforms to reality.
I will admit that the terrorism that we’ve witnessed in the past twenty years or so (including the past few days) has been a bit of an influence in this universe as well. The Mendaihu and Shenaihu both contain extremists in their ranks (the kiralla and the nuhm’ndah, respectively), and both have their physical embodiments of such extremism. But as with everything in this universe, nothing is ever black and white, good and evil, and the MU is no different. There are gray areas, where the best of intentions lead to bad conclusions, and vice versa. This is precisely why the Bridgetown Trilogy is not about good triumphing over evil, but about doing the right thing, despite overwhelming outside influence. And this is also why I chose to paint both sides as fallible. Both sides have had blood on their hands at some point in their histories. Neither is without sin.
I’ll also admit I’ve been thinking about this since Friday, after the events that took place in Paris. Understandably I was shocked by the terrorism that unfolded, but I was also equally as shocked by the white noise that followed in social media — the blaming of an entire religion (or all religion, for that matter), the puerile political taunting, the ‘how can you feel bad when [x] is happening elsewhere’ shaming, and the reactive surface emotions of revenge and vilification. That white noise, thankfully, has receded somewhat over the weekend. As they say, cooler heads prevail. I also saw a beautiful outpouring of compassion and love coming from the same channels, and those are the voices that have remained as the others have begun to die away.
And this, by far, was the hardest part of writing the Bridgetown Trilogy: trying to make the events of the novels a global spiritual and religious event, and not something that only the main characters are feeling. I felt that it needed much more than just the population reacting like they were in a Michael Bay film, running away from explosions in glorious slo-mo. I wanted a more realistic reaction: This is really happening. I’m angry/sad/terrified, but I’m not helpless. I will either stay and fight (accept the personal awakening) or take flight and protect those I love (refuse a personal awakening). The trick was to passively show these nameless background people reacting, even if it was in just a sentence or two. The reader sees this three times in the first few chapters of ADoS: via clairaudience when Nehalé performs the Awakening ritual and senses everyone’s reaction; offscreen, with Nick and Sheila mentioning the number of witnesses they’ve spoken with just after the ritual; and onscreen, when Poe passes a car on the highway on the way to the Crest and notices how eager its occupants are to get out of town. I pepper these throughout the three books; just a mention or two to remind the reader that the rest of the world is out there, and they’ve been affected as well.
As a writer of fiction, I’m not going to claim my way is the best way to see reality, nor am I trying to push a message. I’m merely telling a story and unfolding it the best and truest way I know how. I can only hope that what the reader gets out of it is entertainment, and maybe something to think about as well.
Hey gang! Sorry to be so elusive here lately…Day Jobbery and preparing for next week’s vacation has been keeping me busy (not to mention Doing All the Editing in my spare moments), so alas, I have not been able to follow up with any posts on a reasonable schedule.
Man, I really hate 4th Quarter when it comes to the day job. It completely screws with my writing schedule. [Not to say I hate the job, per se…just the volume and intensity that messes everything up.]
Once I return from our vacation, everything should be back to normal.
See you then!
This morning I was listening to a compilation I’d made back in January of 1994 called Nocturne. At that time I’d originally planned on completely rewriting the Infamous War Novel, re-envisioning it as a far-future SF novel, less as a Cold War-inspired story and more as a Future War one. For inspiration I latched onto a lot of familiar genre tropes at that time –revisiting Blade Runner, reading space operas, picking up a lot of interesting anime, and so on — while at the same time briefly returning to my music collection as well, just as I had with the original. This little gem from Sigue Sigue Sputnik, found on the back end of their sophomore album Dress for Excess, seemed to fit the post-apocalyptic mood of my story perfectly.
Granted, this too was an unfinished draft, for various reasons. One was that I’d had trouble fleshing out the idea. I knew I could do something with it, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. [The other was that I was not in the best of places emotionally at the time. Being broke and alone just out of college and working at jobs that had nothing to do with my college studies was probably a worse time for me than high school was, come to think of it. Writing came to me, but in frustrating fits and starts. There are a lot of trunked ideas from that era.] Nonetheless, it sowed the seeds of another story, True Faith, which I started later that summer, and a much more successful writing career was finally born.
The compilation is just shy of 45 minutes long, taking up one side of a cassette — the other side was my 1989 compilation for Belief in Fate, another writing project dating back to high school. I’m fascinated by the mix, as it’s definitely heavy on the atmospherics. Starting off with Curve (“Faît Accompli”) and Inspiral Carpets (“Two Worlds Collide”) and ending with the above track, it’s a dark and somber affair. I think what I was aiming for was a feeling of frustration and uselessness within a larger, less tolerating society, which my characters would fight to transcend through the course of the story. That theme continued into True Faith to a degree. In retrospect, it’s probably for the best that I trunked that story as well, because I was emotionally and mentally too close to it at the time. I would start fresh in 1997 with The Phoenix Effect, and the rest is history.
It’s kind of interesting, comparing the original ideas of the early 90s with the present version of the Mendaihu Universe. There are a few bits and pieces that have survived throughout the entire process — the Vigil group, for one — but the pessimism of the original is nowhere to be seen. I see now (and I knew even then) that I was not only teaching myself how to write a novel correctly, but I was also using it as a cathartic release. I’ve given myself a bunch of different avenues for those sorts of things, leaving the personal out of it for the most part.
Did I know that twenty years later I’d be happily married and living in a much larger city on the opposite coast, self-releasing the first of three novels that came out of all that? Hell, back in 1994 I had no idea if I was going to make next month’s rent, let alone what my future would be. Sure, I had dreams and ideas and a hazy optimism that I’d get there one day. I knew it would be tough, but I was willing to work for it, however long it took. That was where I first fostered that stubborn commitment to keep going, despite it all.
And that’s why I’m content with this future me, why my reaction to seeing my book listed on e-book shopping sites has been one of a deep relief and happiness. That stubborn will took me to this point, and that made all the difference.
Welcome to Bridgetown 