Story Sentience?

Aug 24, 2010 Daily Writing

I woke up early this morning and was unable to get back to sleep despite trying for at least a half-hour. Finally giving up, I decided to get out of bed and get something productive done. So I turned to my novel in progress–which has been coming along pretty cleanly so far.

But today nothing seemed to want to come.

Then I struck on a sentence that did not have anything to do with this story I’ve been working on. Not having anything else to do, I opened a new file and wrote down the sentence. Then came another sentence, and another and … well, you get the idea.

So now I’m a thousand words into a story that I have no idea where it came from or where it’s going. Really strange feeling. Is this what woke me up? Did this story demand that I refrain from going to sleep again? Did it know that if I lost consciousness again it would be gone for good? Was it fighting for its life there in the early hours of Tuesday morning?

Am I just over-analyzing the snot out of this?

Maybe the answer to all of these questions is the same.

Time Supply

Aug 20, 2010 Daily Writing, Life

I love the “new world,” this place where everyone is connected all the time, this thing that the internet has gradually morphed into that allows such close and constant contact. It’s a glorious place.

But it’s also a major time sink. And given that time sink, it’s also a major worry. that worry being this: if I’m not participating, I’m not succeeding.

As you can tell, I’ve been away from the keyboard often recently. The day job has been monstrously huge for the past six weeks or more, and there have been vacations and events and travel both within the US and international. I barely have enough time to write a little, better yet read, and better yet keep up with the blog and my fledgling attempts to absorb what Twitter can do for me. And that’s the order of priority–family & work, then writing, then fitness, then reading, then socializing, then anything else.

I admit that I’ve gotten a bit worn down the past couple weeks, and allowed the “anything else” to step in front of socializing–just because it’s easier to sit like a lump on the couch than to actually think.

Regardless of any particular order of priority, I wanted to take a moment to say that one of the things I don’t like about this new and wonderful world is the aspect of competition that seems to be inherent in this social element of the game now. By that, I mean that by stepping out of the blog for a week or two, I find myself feeling that I’m losing ground to everyone else–that going silent is akin to not swimming in the tides required for success as a writer in today’s new world. The intellectual side of my brain says that writing a good story is still the main element of success in this field–that if you write as well as you can write, the rest will take care of itself. But that’s not what the emotional side of my brain says (and I’m apparently one of those weird people who is not dominated by one side of my brain or the other, instead they just bicker back and forth until settling on some compromise).

The intellectual side of my mind says this world of writing fiction is not a competition, but my emotional brain looks at the intellect and semi-calmly calls bullshit.

This is my current little paranoia as I settle back down into something that almost resembles a normal cycle of life and working. I’m sure I’ll recover just fine, and be back to it around here in no time flat.

In the meantime, I suppose I should not that I’ve been progressing moderately well with my efforts on the latest novel. I have one issue that needs to get resolved before I can say I actually know the full story, but these things have their ways of working out.

So fear not, those few of you out there still wandering around here, my silence does not mean that progress has stopped. Only that time is in short supply.

Making New From Old

Jul 11, 2010 Daily Writing, Short Stories

I was listening to a Scientific American podcast the other day while at the health club, and they ran a story about Alaskan dogs that were part of the Iditarod. Among the facts that the story gave was that these dogs burn an incredible number of calories while participating in this race, some ridiculous number like 12,000 calories a day. I mean, yikes. Totally awesome when you think about it, especially given the relative size of these animals.

Humans should get along on a couple thousand a day, for example.

These dogs, it seems, can also modify their systems to begin to dram energy from those calories directly from the bloodstream rather than letting it go through the liver first. Pretty danged fascinating, eh?

Anyway, the story got me to thinking about what would happen if humans used genetic material from a dog, which then got me to remembering a story I had written some time back. It was sitting firmly in my trunk, but I dug it out and looked it over. It is a story that uses the idea of building humans with genetic code from a specific animal in order to make use of its genetic processes.

I’m not in the habit of doing this because most, if not all, stories I put in my trunk are put in there for some very good reasons. This one, though, I decided I liked. And quite honestly, I’m a better writer now than I was when I first wrote it. I could see lots of big issues. But I’ve spent the last two days cutting it up and doing it over again.

And, of course I’m pretty happy with it. It’s always good to have a new story to put in the post.

Still, I don’t think I’ll be trunk diving anytime in the near future. Too scary as a rule. [grin]

Progress?

Jul 8, 2010 Daily Writing

I hear you.

Enough about Picasso’s Cat and all that stuff. What about your actual progress? Are you becoming a slacker, or what?

The answer is, well, uh … maybe a little.

But it’s not bad, really it’s not. At least I don’t think it to be bad.

Between work and travel and spending time on marketing novels and the collection, I admit I haven’t had enough time to actually create words. There’s a much longer blog article coming on this topic sometime soonish, but I’m not going to go into it now. Not the time and place.

What I will say is that the spree of discovery writing on the novel I spoke of last is clearly broken, and so I’ve spent most of the last two mornings at the keyboard beginning to get into the design of the actual story. Thinking, you know?

So that’s my progress report.

Not brilliant, but steadily working. [grin]

Strangeness

Jun 25, 2010 Daily Writing

Lisa sent me this under the subject header Almost a Darwin Award Winner.

progress:

My original thought was that I would do a couple short stories next, but instead I’m finding my mind wants to concentrate on a novel I’ve been thinking about for some time. So that’s what I’ve let myself do the past few days. Now I’m three pseudo-chapters in and having a little fun, which is good.

I’m calling them pseudo-chapters because I’m not thinking about the words I’m writing right now as if they are actually part of the story. Instead, this is pure discovery writing. I’m letting things flow and seeing what happens, and every now and again I stop and jot some bigger plot ideas down as I go. This isn’t even a draft. It’s a thought exercise. In this way I’ve found myself stretching the story out a little.

Isn’t creativity strange?