Some of My Haikus
Broiling gray sky
a ray pierces through the darkness
Smile till it hurts
The desert cactus
flowers for no one – oh well
Why am I here now?
My face, brush of wind
a little brown bat blocks the light
Avoidance is key
An endless forest
No compass, is it afternoon?
Fear sets in… look moss
Refactoring
Many of you may not know but my traditional career is in marketing. Specifically, I work on getting requirements for software from the customer and then make sure that the desired outcome of the software doesn’t change as it goes through the design process (requirements are what the customer wants the software to do). Now, as code is developed and lumped on top of other code (all of those updates you get are code getting lumped on top of code), it can get messy so a decision is made and people go in and refactor what was previously written. They streamline it, shorten it, and make the commands more intuitive. This leads to faster APIs, programs, interfaces, and all that jazz. However, no one pays for refactoring, and it is something that can only be done once you have written more code.
Perhaps it is because I am around it all day, but I found refactoring code to be a nice metaphor for editing (in that you can only do it effectively when you have moved on to write more work as you are too close to your previous work, but I digress). The editing processes isn’t to make a book read faster, or smoother, it is to achieve what you want to achieve when you sat down to write it. That means, if you were going for a horror book, and it isn’t very horrifying, you can drop in some more trap doors. Or if you are reading and notice that the characters jump from one location to another location, without explanation, now you can add that explanation. For me, that is cleaning up the story which I have fully written in my head, a notebook, or on a poster board, and making it understandable at the level I understand it. That usually means, more writing once I come back to it.
Normally, I do a refactoring run on my books once I have finished the next manuscript. The reason is simple, to get away from my own work. When I begin work on my next manuscript, I am beginning a new writing style to best fit the story/ideas/and characters I plan to write. This means I am throwing out how I was writing and working on a new format. Not only that, the entire plot, story, and characters are different from the previous book so I am slowly logging the previous book in my memory and bringing a new story to the forefront. Why is this important?
It is simple, it allows me to see what a reader will see. Gaps become much more noticeable as I go through the editing process after spending a bunch of time in my newest book. The character’s voice is scrutinized more. Catalytic actions are put under the microscope and confirmed that their chemical parts will behave in the way I have deduced. Grammar edits are easier to spot since this is no longer my baby (my new book has usurped this book’s claims to be my child). And so forth.
Which brings me to Death by Comedy or as it is now known Ashley Pepin’s Mistake. After a full editing session, the books sub plot is much more visible, the writing has been cleaned up to help differentiate between the multiple narrators (I left it ambiguous at times because you don’t need to know who is speaking), and the manuscript has been submitted to a potential publishing arm (Kindle Singles as this is a novella in length, and they are the only people who actively pursue novellas). In about six weeks, I will know if it has been accepted.
Read MoreExperimental – Project Tempor
While work on Bohr’s Bathos continues at a the opposite of a glacial pace (as in it keeps growing unlike our current glaciers), I have chosen to add a couple of additional projects to my plate to give myself a reprieve. All, but a few, are short stories. One in particular, is what this post is about – Project Tempor. For some time, I have wanted to pursue a project that was designed around the concept of mixing a certain medium. There are some pieces where I have mixed artistic pursuits and tried to translate them into writing, but there is a big difference here, I wanted to take it from a structural foundation and move it into a short story.
My normal process is to move from a question, to a narration choice, to a loosely fitting structure which attempts to answer the question. Here, and to challenge myself, I have decided to build a structure that I will adhere to, then choose a narration style, and finally apply a question I want to answer (this goes against my fundamental philosophy for writing fiction). It is out of my comfort zone, which, I don’t like to do because it tends to lead to poor pieces I don’t want to fix. However, I really enjoy the concept and have been mulling it over enough that I think I can make it work. The question I have to ask myself is simple: did I translate the medium, that I decided to focus on, properly? If I do that right, then it should be an interesting piece – at least for me. Will it be my normal style, probably not, but I am a stubborn man and will probably cheat and end up bending it into what I want it to be.
Read MoreAnswering my own Questions
“Why do you write?” I’ve heard this question more than I would like to admit. “How are you going to earn a living from writing?” This has also been directed at me regularly. “I don’t read.” That’s the most depressing one. Luckily, I know that the odds of me making money from my writing is slim to none. I don’t count on it as system to provide me with funds to survive in a capitalistic society. I look at it as a fundamental need. An addiction that can only be solved by writing more and growing my skill to better help me achieve the reason I write.
For I write for a very selfish reason. I don’t care about publishing (I try to publish so I can get paid to write more). When I sit down or decide to write a manuscript, my goal is to take a complex problem and solve it. Like a mathematician looking for the answer to a formula, I too am seeking answers. Instead of using math, I use language and sentence structure. I place a large question at the center of my manuscript, I pull off related concepts, and then I research. Once I have a base of knowledge and what I want to know, I create humans and set them in my world to see what would happen. Often, things I never expect transpire and I learn. I grow through the creation of my characters and their interactions. How they handle the world that I have placed them in, helps me understand the world we live within. I write to understand and answer what I deem are important questions.
So I write for myself. I do it to make sense of the world and understand all the aspects that interact in on our planet. If you ever read my work, hopefully it will help answer questions you have, but more likely and what I want, it will cause you to get new questions. Each book has spawned another book, and that’s why I need to publish, I have too many questions and I keep getting more.
Read MoreCorruption
There is only one thing I hate about writing a new manuscript: corruption. One of the things a writer must do, to be good and grow, is read other peoples writing. Now, I read non-fiction regularly as it tends to expand my work and give me new outlooks on life. It is a wonderful growth technique and I don’t stop reading non-fiction no matter what I am working on at that time. With my pledge to write essays, the odds are I will have to cease reading non-fiction when working on those non-fiction pieces – until I saw a painting. As of right now, I am solely a fiction writer, which means, I stop reading fiction when I am working on a manuscript, short story, or an outline – sometimes I read fiction during the writing process but it is rare.
The reason for this lack of reading is simple. I caught, during editing, that my narrators voice was absorbing the narrator from fiction I was reading at that time. Also, formatting can change when I see something that is more clear when formatted in a certain way. A great example is Nabokov’s use of the ‘ ‘ for internal thoughts instead of italics. I tend to use bolding, italics, or underlining to denote specific “realms” of the piece. For example, in Three Pills, I utilize all three to denote the different time periods that are taking place. This allows the reader to associate the setting with a specific type face. Back in the day, it was harder to use these formatting details. Yet, I found it easier to use the ‘ ‘ to denote thoughts in the newest manuscript because it was a simpler keystroke. However, I have the bulk of thoughts written as italics. Which means, by reading Nabokov, I have corrupted the manuscript and will have to change ‘ ‘ to italics or vice versa.
Now comes the tricky part and why I may change my model. Philosophically, I believe that manuscripts are living organisms with their own needs and wants. As weird as this sounds, I believe that I am a partial medium and I am helping write the book but the manuscript is also helping write itself. This is a Kantian belief. However, it is one I have experience when writing where I find myself deviating from the prescribed plan, and I cannot explain why I must go down this new path that has arisen from the ether. Those tangents lead to problems as the manuscript begins to shape itself and grow larger. With the Bohr’s Bathos, I am watching my piece expand daily. In my most recent chapter, I have written two thousand words on a tangent that came from a simple concept. I love that about writing, because I treat writing not as a job but as a solution to my mind’s need to solve problems. The original final word count for Bohr’s Bathos was estimated at somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000. At the current trajectory, I am looking at 100,000 due to all the new tangents and the constraints of the narration style.
This line of questioning and change began when I was visiting a friend. As we drove through a city, I came face to face with a mural. The mural was clear, it was beautiful, it was mesmerizing. It didn’t bash me over the head with a concept or idea, but it struck me as out of place and insanely compelling. It was at that point that I realized that I had been doing a disservice to Bohr’s Bathos when describing artwork. That single piece of art corrupted Bohr’s Bathos, but in doing so, it expanded the piece to be more encompassing and flesh out a previously muted point of the manuscript. It added tons of work to my docket, but it is important that it did this because I now have a superior version. So is this corruption or expansion? At this point, I have changed my thoughts and believe that expansion is what happened. But, if I keep expanding myself with additional inputs during the writing process, will I ever truly finish a piece? The first chapter of a book is fundamentally lacking compared to the last chapter, because, your writing grows as you write the manuscript. With each keystroke you grow, and in doing so, corrupt yourself in a good and healthy way.
Read More