resonance – Welcome to Bridgetown

That’s what I’ve been calling it lately: the process I used when originally writing the Bridgetown Trilogy. And it all started because I felt I hadn’t gone far enough with The Phoenix Effect.

By the time I was writing True Faith in 1995, I felt I at least had gotten the hang of the science fiction genre, and had gotten even further two years later with TPE, but at the same time I knew there was something wrong. There didn’t seem to be any issue with the universe I was creating, and I definitely felt that writing dialogue was one of my stronger creative traits…but it still felt off.

It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was the prose itself.

The problem was that my novel didn’t sound like one. It sounded more like an extremely detailed outline. And that had always been a problem with my work then…I thought I had some really neat ideas, but I was definitely failing in the execution of them. There was plenty of action, but my novel read more like a descriptive ‘A happens, B reacts, C happens, D causes a shift, etc.’ and less of an actual story. I resonated deeply with this tale about underground hackers, spiritual magic and otherworldly kinship…but none of that resonance was coming through at all.

So by 2001 or so, while working on TPE‘s revision and slogging my way through its sequel and getting nowhere, I realized that I needed to do something about it. I wanted to do better. I needed to do better. So one afternoon I decided I was going to completely rewrite it. I mean, start from scratch. Tell the whole dang story from Nehalé’s awakening ritual to the end, and do it right.

The only way I knew how to do this at the time was to do a deep dive. Instead of writing in that old outline style, I was going to make damn sure that every single scene resonated with me. It was a bit like method acting, to be honest: become the novel. Figure out why Nehalé did what he did. Understand the actions and reactions of Caren and Poe and everyone else. And don’t just be flippant about it; those actions and reactions were also part of the story, because it was who they were, and the consequences of their actions were also part of it.

By the time I’d gotten about five or six chapters in on this new version, I’d realized I’d only gotten through maybe two chapters of The Phoenix Effect, and this was EXACTLY what I’d been aiming for. So I just kept going, and eventually wrote myself an almost complete trilogy by the spring of 2005.

I bring this up now for two reasons:

One, after completing and self-publishing the Bridgetown Trilogy, I knew I had more to learn. I could definitely write doorstop epic novels at that point, now I wanted to prove to myself that I could ‘write econo’ (hat tip to The Minutemen, heh), so I started writing much shorter standalones. I’m quite proud of them all, especially Diwa & Kaffi, which I still feel is my best book to date. Even despite the urge to write the fourth book in the Mendaihu Universe, I wanted to stick with shorter works until I felt confident enough.

Two, it was the writing of the still-unfinished Theadia that made me realize that perhaps I was ready to do another one of those deep dives. This is another book I resonate deeply with…and like the trilogy, another book I feel isn’t quite there yet because it too needs a deep dive. Over the course of 2024 I tried the rewrite method, but somehow it still doesn’t feel complete yet. I still haven’t gone deep enough.

Fast forward to January 2025 and I’m focusing on the Trilogy Remaster and also revisiting the several sounds and words that surrounded its original writing, and I’m struck by another resonance that I’d almost forgotten about: this was how deep I’d gone with the trilogy! It had become a part of my life then, socially and creatively, and I loved every minute of it, and that was something that had been missing from my writing life for far too long, even before the revival of the trilogy in 2009.

As I’d mentioned briefly in last week’s blog entry, I feel I’ve come full circle, having learned several things along the way, and now I’m ready to cast the anchor and say this is where I belong. This is the style I love the most, yet it’s a style I haven’t allowed myself to return to. Or more to the point, I’d almost completely forgotten how to get back there in the first place, and it took several things falling perfectly into place for it to return.

Does this mean that my future novels are going to be epic in length? I can’t answer that because other than MU4 and Theadia, I don’t know where my next ideas might come from. But I can safely say that those two projects, at least, will be a return to the deep dive.

A lot of my non-writing things have definitely fallen by the wayside over the years, and I always wish I could return to that. I often complain about that here. And at the end of every year, I make some vague plan to try to do better at it, but never quite follow through. I’ll try for a few days and hit nothing but frustration, and let it go soon after

This year, however, I’ve come to the conclusion that the issue here isn’t quite about being consistent with the whiteboard schedule. I can easily follow that if I put my mind to it; I’ve done it countless times in the past. But sometimes just DO the thing doesn’t quite cut it.

This year I realized that I haven’t been inspired to do it. Think about it: why am I rarely picking up my guitars these days? It’s partly because I’m playing the same damn riffs and bass lines over and over, like I have for the last several years. The last major change I had was when I was doing the Blogging the Beatles and as a side project I taught myself some of their songs, and in the process I learned a few new tricks. But since then I’ll pick it up, play those same songs yet again, then put it down soon after. I’m not trying to be a semi-professional at it like I am with my writing, of course. I just want to expand my repertoire.

The same could be said with my artwork. I do miss doing that a lot, but again: the inspiration is eluding me. It’s been ages since I’ve broken out my pens, pencils and art notebooks, and I think it’s mainly for the same reasons: I keep drawing the same damn things and not trying anything new. Hell, I even miss drawing my maps, but I always end up drawing the same setting over and over!

And let’s be honest, the same could actually be said with my writing as well: I haven’t allowed myself to be inspired to try new fiction projects in a while, either. These last few years have been about finishing the active ones. But with this particular avenue I’ve made some inroads: I’ve been forcing myself to expand my reading habits again. And not just reading more, but leaning heavily on novels that have given me that wonderful I would LOVE to write something like this feeling, which can sometimes be a rare event. And in order to do that, I have to actively look for these books and try them out, whether it’s through trying out a chapter at a bookstore, purchasing them, or borrowing them through Hoopla.

But most importantly, I have to remember this about inspiration: it doesn’t always need to be mind-blowing, heart-moving and earth-shattering. Diwa & Kaffi wasn’t just about me writing a hopepunk story, it was also about me training myself to appreciate the smaller, quieter things in life. Same with me grabbing those Zen-a-Day desk calendars. I must remind myself that it doesn’t always have to resonate so incredibly deep. I swear this comes from being a Gen-X film student in the 90s and soaking in every media outlet that embraced Michael Bay levels of epic action and drama. For years my intake was dialed to 11…and it’s taken me years to unravel myself from that habit. This is precisely why one of my favorite movies of 2023 was Wim Wenders’ meditational Perfect Days, because this was the balance I needed to aim for.

So if anything, if I’m to look for future inspiration, I need to remember to look for the quiet as well as the loud. Whatever resonates the most.

Tag: resonance

Deep dive

Future inspiration