Eclectic Writer

I am curious about the process that other writers use? I used to write as the bug bit me. Now, I have set up a regular schedule, like work actually that makes me more productive as a writer.

I write every weekday morning after dropping my kids off at school, writing a 1666 words a day on a new project. It usually takes me a max of an hour and a half. Saturday’s and Sundays I set aside time every day to edit existing work. I know, editing is writing, but it uses different talents. I read through 2500 to 5000 words in an editing session, every day. (Note, at this time I am unemployed and finishing my degree in English literature. While working as a technical write, I only managed 1000 words a day and about 2000 edited words.

This works for me. What works for you?

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Desperation is goad of success, or at least the elect cattle prod. The continuing collapse of the economy makes my work toward my degree in English and a teaching credential an ineffective way of making a living. California, you see, is laying off another 26,000 teachers. So I will be going back to looking for technical writing, and pushing very hard to complete write full time.

Think of this as my year of writing dangerously. Red Tears is close, and another novel in the works, Oubliette, will bend the fantasy and Science Fiction Genre in ways that, I hope, will resonate with agents and readers. But I really haven’t a choice.

When is a picture worth a thousand words? When does it become a story, simply by the story it tells? The picture below was sent to me by a friend. It came with a rather light bit of humor about joining in a road trip to see Obama’s inauguration. But to me, that picture escaped the joke and evoked a whole string of ideas.

Where are these people going? Where did they come from? What would it be like to be one of them? What is buried in those bags in that truck? It is traveling across the desert. It evokes a sense of Africa, at least to me.  It could also provide a glimpse of some an updated Silk Road.  Imagine a caravan of these trucks. 

The potential here is limitless, and I will write a story that uses this truck as inspiration.

Nations rise and fall in a complex dance with history. Sometimes we think we have the reasons nailed down. Rome decayed overtime and, eventually, was destroyed by barbarians. Now, geologists have found information that may indicate that a long term change in climate my have been a contributing factor to the end of these civilizations.

Cave’s climate clues show ancient empires declined during dry spell
The decline of the Roman and Byzantine empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area’s climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. Their analysis, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Quaternary Research, reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.

They, of course, aren’t the only ones. Climate may have brought an end to the Easter Island Civilization and the Anasazi of the Southwest. For me, this puts the human world on equal footing with animals. We already know that climate change has disastrous affects on animals. Perhaps, those same climate changes echo through the human world. As a species, we are tied to the earth, and when the earth deals us a bad hand, our own populations and civilizations collapse.

As a writer of both fantasy and Science Fiction, this information gives me fodder for conflict. An entire civilization collapsing due to an inimical change in climate is an interesting idea: man against nature. How would a magical civilization adapt and survive? How would a civilization that relies on science overcome a change in their world? What technologies wold they develop?

As a thinker, it opens up other avenues of thought. If the Romans and other civilizations could have been done in by the weather, why not us. With global warming (call it climate change if you will) what will be the result? Will we rise as a world and find a way around it? Will our civilization crumble and give way to the next civilization?

You can’t smell them, taste them, or feel them.  They have no mass, no volume, or color.  They emit no form of energy, be it electromagnetic, light, sound, heat, or other more exotic energy.  They have no measurable characteristics, at least from a scientific point of view. Though we have no way of ascertaining their actual existence in any fashion, they are of immense importance to a majority of humans. A belief in these objects are ancient, as the image to the left testifies. Of course, I am writing about the human soul, and recently an archaeological discovery in Turkey has cast light on this belief.

The Human Soul: An Ancient Idea
The slab, or stele, was recovered from an Iron Age city called Sam’al in Turkey. It dates to around the 8th century B.C. On the 800-pound, three-foot-tall piece of rock was an incised picture of a man, the deceased, who was presumably cremated, and words that explained that the soul of this man now resided within the stone slab.

What is it with humans and the idea of a soul? The ancient Greeks, who were around about the same time as the slab was cut, also loved the idea of a soul, and most cultures and religions today buy into it as well. Yet there’s no evidence that such a thing really exists. But still, even the most cynical of us is always trying to save our souls, damn other people’s souls, and searching for soul mates.

The article discusses in a light hearted fashion the way this belief penetrates most cultures, as the discovery illuminates the ancientness of the belief. My thoughts, however, are less on the reality and more on the fantasy existence of souls.

Fantasy fiction, almost by definition, requires the existence of souls. I can not think of a single fantasy novel that doesn’t, at least in some minor way, presuppose the existence of souls. Think about it. Undead ghost, goblins, demons, angels, and other such fantastical elements could not exist without souls. Magic, the channeling of some supernatural power to create marvelous effects, exists within a world view that takes souls and other unmeasurable phenomena to granted.

Science Fiction is often, though not always, a soulless creation. Such ephemeral things as souls are unnecessary in most stories. When they do appear, such as with “The Force” in Star Wars©, or in “Dune” they fit neatly within the social/cultural matrix created for the story and are more implied than discussed.

In my own novel “Red Tears” souls are a critical aspect of magic. Without their existence, no magic could exist. Undead, marvelous magical spells, and miraculous prayers are all part and parcel of one, carefully thought out, magical system, they are the source of all energy within the world.

“I’m sitting in the railway station. Got a ticket for my destination.” Not really. Oh, spiritually and emotionally I am in a railway station. That is life, of course. We all sit in that railway station with the idea that we have a destination, that we know where we are going. We don’t. We all have tickets, but the destination on the ticket is blank. So we guess which train to board. We hope that train travels the direction that we have convinced ourselves we want to go. We are the emergent property of two gametes, coming from nowhere and going somewhere…we hope.

This is not about thanksgiving. The dinner is done, the turkey consumed, and way to much pie eaten. My wife and youngest son sleep in blessed satiation. My next youngest watches a Jimmy Neutron rerun. I should be working on my math homework, plugging away at my novel, or doing something constructive (honey-do list). Instead, I sit here in a bemused Simon and Garfunkel funk, thinking about old songs, and making mental connections between lyrics and the memory.

Thanksgiving, a day to look back, to be thankful of where the train took me. A day to remember a high-school girlfriend. A day to remember dead friends and missing enemies. An introspection inspection of my belly button, to pull myself out into the aether of memory along the silver cord attached to my umbilicus, a day to consider destinations.

A Zero-G Coffee Cup, how wonderful is the mind of man. I mean, a coffee cup for zero-g travelers. No more drinking coffee through a straw. How long before Starbucks opens up the first zero-g bistro. How long before the first beatnaut¹ sips coffee from a wing shaped “Petite Cup” while reciting poetry.

This development changes the nature of space travel, bringing zero-g a little closer to right at home.  Until they build big wheels in the sky that simulate gravity, or come up with some way of manipulating gravity so we can have the real thing, inventions like this will make space travel just a little easier, at least for coffee addicts.

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Beatnaut – An astronaut who emulates the style and behavior of a follower of the Beat Generation, whose behavior, views, and often style of dress are pointedly unconventional. Beatnauts are most often seen in Zero-G bistros sipping coffee from wing shaped Petite Cups.

My short story, “The Last Toy” has now been published by Whortleberry Press in their annual Christmas Anthology “Santa’s Givings and Misgivings.”

Seeing my own words in print is more than a hoot. I feel a strange mixture of pride and worry, similar to the way I felt when I saw my children born. I’d like to spend time analyzing the whole emotional experience, but I have stories to write.

Saturn is showing off again, doing things that scientists do not expect and can not explain.  I am not implying magic, or some mysterious event, but it raises questions.

Mysterious glowing aurora over Saturn confounds scientists
A stunning light display over Saturn has stumped scientists who say it behaves unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system.
The blueish-green glow was found over the ringed planet’s north polar region just like Earth’s northern lights.
It was discovered by the infrared instruments on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

There is not enough time to write every story that comes to mind.  It is fun to play, just imagine.  What if intelligent life living in the Clouds of Saturn use auroras to contact a force that they conceive of as God or Gods.  Perhaps these beings manipulate magnetic fields to communicate as they drift though the clouds and raging storms.  These mysterious auroras are calls to God.  But it doesn’t have to be a religious message, perhaps they are using these lights to contact life outside their world.

We live in interesting times.  The world changed on November 4th, or so they say.  Obama became President elect, and a majority of the people in California who voted for Obama also voted to outlaw marriage between gays and lesbians.

On one hand we have this incredible landmark event.  A man, and a member of a group that many still consider children of a lesser god, was elected.  On the other, Californians voted to deny equal access to the law by other humans.    And it is human rights we are talking about here.   This is not simply about black and white, strait and gay.  We are supposed to be equal under the law.  As long as that laws dictate that the government determines who marries by require all applicants to acquire a marriage license, then it is a matter of the law rather than morality or religion.

This conflict has writerly applications.

This new law is the real opening of a new civil rights movement.  Just as the last civil rights movement in the 60’s caused enormous upheaval in our society, this new movement will also create conflict.  Heroes will arise on both sides of he question.  What new Martin Luther King Jr. will rise up for gays and lesbians to lead them?  Among those who oppose the very idea that a man can love a man and a woman can love a woman, will become the hero and lead those forces in opposition?

But twist this idea a little.

What if Gays and Lesbians were aliens.  In the original Star Trek series, Spock was half Vulcan half human and Worf was half Klingon and half human.  Yes, there is the problem that different species evolved independently on very different worlds would not find reproducing easy, or even possible, like attempting to cross breed a chitzu with a hermit crab.  They addressed that in a Next Generation episode by making all life the descendants of one distance ancestral race, long extinct, but I digress.

Keep the notion that it would be impossible to reproduce, what kind of cultural change would happen if an alien species came to earth and chose to intermarry with humans? Would that be bestiality, or would that simply be two or more loving people seeking to spend their lives together?  Two sexes is no limit with alien physiology.  Who has the right to say no?  Who is hurt?  Who wins?  Who loses?