Narcoleptic Dreaming

Do narcoleptics dream about anything real?

I should certainly hope not.

— Jnilz

Backup?

Backup!

I zip the text file and send it to myself as an attachment in Gmail.

If you don't backup your stuff - the irreplaceable stuff - then I don't want you here.
Don't want you reading my blog.
I want you to go very calmly, but without further delay.
Find yourself a mental institution, preferably an old fashioned one.
Seek out those who are of your variety.

And remember that a white coat means friend!

Your best friend!


Shoo!

Reggae, Challenge, Sci-fi lyrics

Miguel, the legendary, the prophet, has also written some songs according to my script.
So that's another item on my list.
But I could get you to to do that instead, right?
A challenge of ridiculous proportions.

"Hymn of the Oasis"

A large group of members of the Oasis are leaving the collapsing Quira City on a raft towards the setting sun. They sing this hymn when they cross waters for the first time in their lives. They are heading for The Island to get to the only remaining means of transportation off-planet, The Star - a luxury star cruiser. It's a long shot. It's their only chance.

 Activate Poetry-mood...

 Dive into the pool of music and swim to the deeper end.

 A few lines of bass, a few lines of words; words that are like glue and have survived for more than a hundred years in a world where poetry and lyrics are banned.

A new kind of reggae, the kind they would have played a few hundred years ago in Quira City.

Think of a sunset on Tahiti.
(Easy for me to say, I've been there. It is as fantastic as you could possibly imagine. No exaggerations come close to make the place justice.
It has dark sides too.)

How hard can it be? A few lines of bass, a tropical rhythm we've never heard before, and a few lines of words that keep you going in the dark, into the unknown, and that sticks like glue.

--- Take a detour into "The Dreaming" by Kate Bush. The whole album! No cheating! ---

An oasis, an island, a sunset, and God forbid you make it banal!

Are you still reading this shit?

Come on!

Poetry

Poetry as a means for writing better fiction.
My teacher holding the poetry sessions is very enthusiastic and inspiring and had me convinced that poetry is actually important stuff. I have not thought much about poetry before, and have thought even less of it.
The last thing I'd call it would be important.
What ignorance. One reason I've ignored it for all this time is that there's so much of it. I blocked it out like I have with so many things I know nothing about. Where do I start? I have more than once been advised to check out Manga, to write scrips for a market that is bigger than ever. It's probably good advise. But I have had dreams where I see a ship coming in at the harbor. It's ten kilometers long, with a million containers packed with Manga. And I open one of the containers and I get buried by an avalanche of books. All in Japanese. Then I wake up. Haven't had nightmares about poetry but you get the idea.
There is one of book of poetry in the reading list of the course so now the problem of choosing one to get started is solved. It's called Staying Alive. 
And no, I'm not buying the 'higher power' or the 'destiny' stuff. It's not interesting whether it is for real or not. But I'll come back to the issue some other day.
Poetry is important for the same reason science fiction is. It makes us see the world from new perspectives. It keeps us awake. This guy is very much alive so I know he's right. I need this poetry stuff to come back from the dead and to write. I write some lines everyday now. Little notes about anything.
It's a little like when I write lyrics but the lyrics took months to get done, cause of the boundaries of the music. The emotional state of the subject has to fit that of the music, and the scope of it has to be right for the length of the song. And it's the number of syllables in every line, it has to be singable, it has to rhyme to make it easier to remember the lines, and the lines might need to help the melody become clear. And as I had the idea of become a songwriter not a singer/songwriter the lyrics had to be impersonal.
Anyway, writing lyrics was not a means for clearing up my thoughts on the world around me. I used to postpone all ideas and commentary stuff for an imaginary essay on 'The Subject'. I have this notion that everything is connected to everything else and all boundaries are artificial, unnecessary and even evil, and that leaves us with only one subject, The Subject.
The world doesn't need an essay about absolutely everything at once. And I don't need to write it, like if I ever could.
And my novel doesn't need to be cluttered with a lot of stuff that doesn't belong in it.
I write poems instead about the stuff that is personal, private, or just stems from the thoughts the ADHD-engine in the brain keeps producing, endlessly, continuously, no matter what. Poetry help sorting it out. My brain has no gland that does that on automatic like the rest of you seems to be blessed with. "Oh another fruit fly!"
A poem is done in a matter of minutes or hours. No need to postpone it. No need to make everything a project for the future.

I catch a thought on a piece of paper
Don't care if it rhymes or will ever be read
At least, at last, it's out of my head

Fantastic invention this, poetry.
Is this the stupidest the thing you've ever heard? Of course it is. But as I said, being ignorant is punishing the ignorant the most. So no need to rub it in, right?
Don't worry. I am not giving up on the novel to become a poet.
Actually, the poetry is a cornerstone in getting it done at all.
Funny thing also is the character in the story, the legendary Miguel, whose poetry is the basis for the existence of the Oasis, the movement that becomes the resistance to the tyranny, which is the actual story.
Subconsciously I have already decided more than a year ago to write poetry at some stage as this was the first character I invented. I have ignored him ever since. But the time has come to write his poems. Maybe The Premise will reveal itself when I do.
Another thing about being a writer is that you can be as crazy as you like and always say: 'Oh I'm just trying to see the world from a characters viewpoint.'
So this week I'll be the legendary Miguel who died some centuries ago, fifty light-years away on a planet named Quira, where life was much like it is on Earth but were society was going in a direction it hopefully isn't here...
I wonder if the poetry of Miguel would be Science Fiction Poetry? Oh yes, there is such a thing! Has been around since the seventies.

320 Pages

I keep on filling gaps and I'm pulling at all the threads that hang loose half way through the story. (I don't even know how far half way is, but hopefully this is half way.) But it remains a haywire of threads going in all directions at once.
So I'll try a new approach after reading some more in the stack of how-to-write books I've got on my desk.
The big questions you have to ask are: Why is this happening now?
What's at stake?
The problems at the clone factory and the infertility problem. Something, something... Well at least it is at the heart of the story, but is it The Premise? There's also another thing called Theme...
I have to read some more...
Why can't this be easy?

Pragmatism

It's like restraint; it's holding back. I hate it. I truly hate holding back. But, I think it's a good thing. But I'm not sure. I am deliberately holding back the ambition with the novel. I don't expect it to be published. But, I want it to be really, really good. It won't. It's the first attempt at writing a novel. It's bound to be crap. I might not even finish it.

I'm not writing this as an author-to-be only. I have been struggling with this project as a warming up to be able to go back to the university. I've tried to do that a couple of years ago and failed miserably. Twice.

And for blatant reasons. I tried to continue where I dropped out many years ago and that meant starting the advanced class of social anthropology.

It failed, because I hadn't been reading for a decade. Well I had read half a Donald Duck story when I was baby-sitting a few years earlier.

The next time, same course, I got the reading part working better, but not the writing, because I hadn't written anything in a decade. Zilch. Some notes before going to the supermarket.

And there's plenty of writing expected at the university. I couldn't even decide to write in Swedish or in English. 

Which I have now.

More on that tomorrow.

And it failed because I hadn't left the house more than on the rare occasion and had no routine for getting up, getting dressed, and all that.

You have to crawl before you can walk. At least I don't have any tendencies for getting socially phobic, which I should after living as a recluse, with my socially phobic husband for years.

So I have returned from the dead and I have started to activate the social network. I'll write some more about how it's like to actually be able to say the famous "The rumors about my death..."

And now I've spent a year reading and writing daily. In English. And I have also gotten closer to some answers to the questions: Is writing anything for me? Am I good enough? The latter is not a relevant question because I can work on it until I am. Or until I die, whichever comes first.

But do I want to do this?

I haven't given up on the novel after more than a year of daily struggle, on my own. There's no teacher, or employer, or anybody else pushing me; I probably do want to do this.

And now I'm going back to the university. I applied, while I was thinking of something else, at the very last minute a few months back.

I got in, but haven't really thought much of it; I have hardly looked at the letter lying here on my desk. I can see it in the corner of my eye.

The course is about writing.

Creative Writing in English.

Half time. (Restrain!)

Starts next Monday.

Give Them Hell

That is, give your characters hell. Don't take them for a joyride. Unless it's an adventure you're writing. I find this difficult because I like the characters and because I'm in their heads. And giving them hell is a bit like exposing myself to terrible things. I've got a post-it-note on the computer with HELL written on it. It's still difficult. But I'm getting better at it.

Today I'm putting my main character in a plastic bag, destined to be dumped in the ocean, so I have to imagine what that would be like. It's very tempting to watch some television instead. Or even do the dishes. Should sort out the laundry too. Put the shirts on hangers and the sweaters in the drawer, and pair up the socks. 

Pair up socks? 

No I'd rather be forced into a plastic bag by a couple of lobotomized  cops...

The Premise

Without it, you're not going anywhere. That's in all the how-to-write books I've read this far.

Obviously it's important. But I don't get it. And I don't get my story's premise. Maybe I shouldn't get it, but decide. I'm not good at deciding. I know that it's in there already. I ignore the matter for now and keep writing. I have to keep that up. The most important aspect of the project this far is to keep the writing going. The critic lurking in my head has been very active lately, and I don't want that beast growing to strong.

I promise I'll come back to the mysterious premise...

Today I'll just write.

Keep it Clean

Well, I'm not saying you shouldn't use any dirty words. No, it's writing properly from the beginning. Clean the text up continuously. Don't postpone this even if it just the first draft. It's easy to think you could leave this for later, but you will be sorry.

Because sitting there with hundreds of pages with grammatical errors, misspellings, and half finished sentences can be the final straw that keeps you from ever finishing the story.

And you can't get anybody's opinion about it this far because it won't be readable.

And you don't get any faster as a writer if you don't practice getting the grammar and the spelling right - continuously.

I'm using an application called Grammarian for the grammar and the spelling. It has a couple of bugs, and it isn't perfect. But it's much better than the built in grammar and spell checking on the Mac, and it's better than the one that comes with Microsoft Word.

300 pages...

I have to figure out what the story is really about, or this will be the longest script in history. And the most complex.

I keep adding subplots and characters and locations. And the inconsistencies in the plot multiply exponentially; every question answered, every loose thread tied up, generate new discrepancies.

The world I created gets more and more detailed. I'll soon know more about Quira City than I know about Stockholm.

Three hundred pages and it's just a draft. When I start to show and not tell, when I write the actual dialogue, describe the events and places in detail, those three hundred pages will become maybe seven hundred pages.

And the big chunk in the middle, which is now just a few notes, is bound to be just as many pages.

So my little novella is becoming an epic.

I have a problem with writer’s block.

I need it.

At least until I know The Premise; what the story is all about told in one sentence.

Read, read, read...

When you compose music, the rule is simple: don't listen to music while you're at it. If you feel as though you have to, at least choose music that is fundamentally different from the stuff you're composing.

When you write prose: do read a lot. You aren't as likely to unconsciously steal stuff as you are with the abstract melodies and harmonies of music.

I find this part of the process to be quite time-consuming, but I don't get anything done without it.

I'm reading stuff that I can compare to my story in one way or another.

And I have made a list of the novels I've been reading since I started on this project.

I have written a few notes with each book; they are not really reviews but comments as how they connect to my story, why I read them and what I learned from them.

It's mostly science fiction, but some are as far from science fiction you could possibly get.

I devoted a page of it's own for this.

Motivation - the characters and my own...

Why do I write?

Why does anyone write? Often it's obvious; we have to. To document, communicate, make notes to help us remember. I often need to write to be able to understand the heart of some matter, the logic, reason of a theory, idea, or to be able to put forward an argument. And sometimes to figure out what I really think or want when I can't decide.

But this is different. This urge to cook up stories, invent characters, and places, I don't know where it comes from.

And on an another level it is all about putting the words together, play around with their meanings and make contradictions possible.

I just do this. A pen and a paper and I start to write nonsense, doodle a bit, and then a few rhymes and then I toss it. Maybe that's what dudes that bounce and kick a ball back and forth when they get a chance, are doing too. There's no reason for that. It just feels right, an organic need. I'm not going to figure this out. The dude kicking the ball outside alone or in a flock doesn't care if it makes sense. He just keeps doing it.

The motives for this might not be analyzable.

But writing conveys meaning and information that affects the writer and the reader too. It's not the ball being bounced, kicked and tossed, it's the representation of it. If it doesn't make any sense, it's not satisfying. The world doesn't have to make sense. But words do.

Something changes at the core when you describe the dude and his ball. The dude needs to be explained, we need a motive for the hours he spends in the afternoon sun. What makes him do this? Is he crazy? Is he held at gunpoint? He's training for a competition, hopes to win a prize, make money? To pay for his mothers much needed surgery? Now there's a reason. Almost a story. 

I know he does this everyday for the same reason as I rhyme and doodle. It feels right. But in a story we need some answers or it’s no story. "Stop bouncing that bloody ball around and do something useful, damn it!"

What motivates my characters to do what they do? I have to figure that out. What make them tick? That's what make them 'real'. In the real world people do the strangest things for no particular reason. Sure, we think there's a reason, but it's mostly just a guess, any explanation goes. In a story that won't do.

J could fall in love because Betty is pretty and has brown eyes. He would fall in love once every three minutes walking around downtown if that was all it took. No good.

Or does J loves Betty because his brain happened to trigger a flood of chemicals the first time she was around? It's got nothing to do with her. It's sheer coincidence. Just as likely, just as logical, probably why it would happen in the real world, but why bother writing down chains of events that are random? Random words, a bouncing ball, doodles...

The story needs to become what the ballgame becomes when the other dudes come together, and there are goals and rules; and the spectators go crazy.

Stories are games with bouncing words, the writer makes the rules, and the characters try to make sense of it. And the reader feels as if it is important.

Two to one and the home team wins...

J loves Betty because she is everything he is not. Her ability to enjoy a few moments of light in a world of endless gloom... That's what I settle for. And we'll see if it holds up when the going gets tough. 

270 Pages

I'm amazed that I'm still doing this.