A Sense of Doubt blog post #3403 - Writing on the plane to Keflavik

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3403 - Writing on the plane to Keflavik

I like to write on planes. I usually cannot wait to get my laptop out and get busy.

On domestic flights, the in flight wifi is pretty good and often seats come equipped with power hooks ups to plug in my laptop.

Maybe it was just Icelandair or maybe because it was an international flight, but as shown in my writing below, I could not get the wifi to connect and my battery was draining FAST.

On the flight home, I did not purchase the in-flight wifi and figured out how to optimize the battery performance giving me 5-7 hours of battery life and not just 2-ish hours.

In the past, I have often made Wednesdays a writing featured post day. In keeping with that tradition, here's a writing post.

The stuff I wrote is full of SPOILERS for a book (book series probably) I have been working on since 1995.

Yes, 1995.

I know I do not have a ton of readers for my blog, and so I am sharing this journaling experiment despite the SPOILERS because it may not even be read by anyone (if you do read, leave a comment!), if anyone does read it they may never read my book and so SPOILERS don't matter, AND who knows if I can finish the damn book anyway, once again making spoilers irrelevant.

I am not unique in using a journal technique as a warm up for writing, as a place to brainstorm, as a document of work progress and process. Still, I tend to like my journaling.

Starting just below is the stuff from the plane ride to Keflavik, Iceland.

Thanks for tuning in.

2405.23-00:05 (Iceland time - actual time in my time zone was 16:05 on 2405.22.)

On a plane to Keflavik, Iceland, and then onward to Heathrow, London.

Haven’t journaled on this book in some time, but I am suddenly inspired, and the Internet on this flight – which I bought – doesn’t just suck, it basically doesn’t work. So, I can’t do much else. And so this dilemma proves one of my personal mottos: store things on the hard drive so as to be able to work offline. We all rely on the constant connection to the Internet so much. Our lifelines are severed without it.

There are also do not seem to be electrical outlets on this plane, so I have limited battery power. Currently about two hours of battery for a seven hour flight.

I am not sure I want to run the battery all the way down as I might work during my layover in Iceland. I may also have breakfast and coffee. I hope I can find somewhere to plug in at the Keflavik airport, which is outside Rek..., which I do not remember how to spell, and I cannot even get the Google mainpage to load. (ReykJavik — it was in my time settings, which I found later). Though the main Google page magically appeared one time, and then crapped out.

Oh well. Two hours of battery. Oh, down to 1 hour and 42 minutes suddenly. I bet the Internet is draining the battery as the wifi router tries to connect. I just disconnected it. Maybe that will slow the battery depletion. Nope. Just dropped to 54 minutes, which might be a poor estimate. Battery is at 57%. So, I just put the laptop in airplane mode because even with the Internet disconnected the wifi router might have still been drawing power. I am going by the percent meter on the battery not the time estimate. But it is plummeting. 53%.

The flight attendant said that there’s an electrical outlet in the screen, but I think it’s just the USB for charging phones and things like that. I don’t think I can plug my laptop into it.

So, wasted money on the in-flight Internet. Maybe I won’t buy it on the way home. Also, maybe I will see if I can buy a hook up to power my laptop with the Anker battery. Or just have a full charge because I did not this time, and that’s unusual for me. And then, obviously, I can’t run the laptop for the entire flight. Yeah, 49%. What’s taking so much power? Google Chrome. Just closed it. Maybe that will slow the drain.

So, fittingly, I put on Valtari by Sigur Rós.

Damn, the shitty wifi borked my laptop. I had to two ctrl-alt-del to get to task manager. Apparently, it closed all my folders. 47%. Still dropping, much too fast. Screen brightness? 46%. But time jumped to 1hr 39 minutes from under an hour. Yeah, screen was muvh to bright for the battery.

Thankfully, I have a new book and inspirations. Holding at 46% and 1hr 39 minutes, for now.

I bought and downloaded a new Kindle book: Infomocracy by Malka Older (?), can’t check it as I have no Internet. Holding at 46% and 1hr 39 minutes, for now.

I liked the opening, and it got me in the mood to work on Cyberspell. Oooh, 2hrs 13 min and 45%. Definitely, screen brightness and CPU drain from Google Chrome trying to load shit with no wifi.

Infomocracy like a lot of “future fiction” (not sure this should be called “science fiction”) drops the reader into the world with lots of salient details and description that slowly becomes clearer and apparent. Astute readers of this kind of fiction know to hold many concepts in abeyance, trusting that they will be explained. It’s a technique I plan to use, but the trick, which Older does well, is not overwhelming the reader. There needs to be forward movement, action, dialogue, the scene, which Older does very well in the first scenes.

Oooh, 2hrs 21 min and 44%! Time estimates improving.

This was my great problem with all the early drafts of Cyberspell. WAY TOO much detail and exposition and not enough action, except in the Natalie chapters, which were much more action driven.

Like many books, short scenes rules with lots of stopping places because of people’s attention spans and our modern world. So, instead of long chapters and one POV character at a time, it makes more sense to do a series of short scenes and back and forths and slowly build up POV characters. Older starts with two and goes back and forth. Then two characters in one scene split up, and she has three.

Oooh, 2hrs 28 min and 43%! Time estimates improving.

This technique is similar to something VE Schwab did in ADDIE LA RUE, which I loved. Addie was our sole POV character for 100 pages or so, and then she meets Henry and seamlessly, Schwab lets Addie walk away and shifts us to Henry’s POV. Like Older’s book, it’s all third person limited, so this works much better than it would in first person.

2hrs 12 min and 42%! There’s a drop.

Though Lauren Beukes’ Broken Monsters is more of a touch stone for my other work-in-progress, Opposable, I didn’t much like the POV character dump to start. She juggles five POVs unless I am forgetting someone. She doles these out one by one and then rotates in whatever order suits the story, so not all five repeating after the first set of five. But I was a bit lost as to why I am getting into all these other character’s heads. The cop and the daughter connect. But none of the other characters connect until the end and they never meet until well over halfway deep into the book.

I like Older’s method, so at least some characters start in the same place. Kind of like GAME OF THRONES. ALL of the POV characters are together at Winterfell in the opening sequence.

Unfortunately, my characters are not all together, but I can do some things to set those connections.

Okay, so, for what inspires me and my new CYBERSPELL ideas.

2hrs 22 min and 40%! Gaining time. And it’s 5:45 my time. The Internet worked long enough to reset the laptop clock to ReykJavik time, which is 12:48 a.m. And there’s the spelling in my settings.

2hrs 13 min and 38%.

I will surely quit before my battery runs out, read some, try to sleep some. I have five some hours left to go in the flight. Three-four hours of reading and sleeping sounds good.

Switching to () by by Sigur Rós.

2hrs 03 min and 37%.

So... inspiration and new ideas.

I liked the very first scene in Infomocracy and the way Older named all kinds of things we don’t fully understand yet, though some crystallize as the scene unfurls, and then there’s a scene that bears some similarities to the scene I want to do with Thomar, the assassin, the kid, and the magic sword.

Staring off into space and thinking is going to cost battery.

1hr 59 min and 36%.

So, do the same kind of thing as I drop details in that scene but keep the action and dialogue flowing. Just enough and slowly make things clearer with occasional short explanations, such as why technology is doesn’t work or is avoided in the Badlands as well as how magic is avoided because it’s unreliable and attracts monsters. Though there’s passive tech and passive magic that is used safely. The sword is not passive. It’s not like anything they know about. It’s an ancient artifact.

Had to take a drink of water. 35%. Time estimate is missing. Oh 1hr 17 min. That may adjust. Yeah, 1hr 47 min. 34%. When I put it to sleep briefly, to reach ahead and get a drink from my water bottle (that must stay upright as it has a small leak), the time zone went back to Pacific because I am not connected to the Internet.

So what if the sword is looking for the right person. So when Thomar is trying to learn about it from the assassin, he doesn’t know much because it doesn’t do much for him. He knows enough to know it may do more for others. In fact, the sword may have told him as much.

Thomar tries to grip it with a gloved hand and nothing happens. The assassin also knows one has to grasp it with bare flesh.

When Thomar grabs it with his bare hand, the thing lights up with a flash and then dulls to a blue glow. The guard above the hilt (I need to check names when I am back to the Internet) curves these barbs back toward his hand and pricks his flesh, sucking up some of his blood. The guard then twists back to its normal shape as the sword glows and hums and a variety of things.

1hr 52 min and 32%.

Thomar is transported somewhere, though he goes no where. He may drop the sword at this point cutting the connection. Not something to do with the assassin there, even though he’s tied up. But Thomar get s a flash of the “other dimension” where he is via the sword (kinda like “inside” the sword). And the sword may say something, like, “there’s something I want to show you.”

And maybe there’s a guide. If not this time, the next time. Someone he knows? Or a child similar to the kid he’s rescuing from the assassins who have kidnapped him.

1hr 42 min and 31%.

So, I had a blaze of inspiration: here’s a way to slowly parcel out what has happened to the world in a series of “flashbacks” that Thomar doesn’t understand at first.

1hr 45 min and 30%.

I was thinking about how the similarities to D&D are intentional because the original idea of the book is that these people are playing D&D and suddenly they change the world into their D&D game world run by an AI (the World Spell), and AI that’s not “crazy” but it has its own agenda and its brain patterns from some actual humans.

What’s funny here is that there was no Internet gaming (or very poor attempts) when I started writing the book in 1995. We were all still on dial up then. But now, lots of things have come to pass, like powerful handheld devices, being “on” the Internet all the time, some limited VR, great connected networks, and lots of things that were not foreseen.

So, what if the sword is part of a network of ancient sentient artifacts that are connected to the World Spell. There’s different factions and different agendas. But the sword is very clear on what Thomar must do. He must stop Sears from re-writing the World Spell and locking in his version of reality. He must use the “disc,” the program Sears is writing to rewrite the World Spell to either heal the World Spell and set up a world of freedom, agency, justice, and fairness, OR wipe it out entirely and “reboot” back to the way the world was before the CHANGE.

1hr 29 min and 28%.

The sword is willing to show Thomar all about his former life, how the world can be, what the world could be if Sears succeeds, and then allow him to make his choice.

This way I can get the reveal over with sooner. Eventually Thomar understands everything, though not in that first scene. But eventually, I can make the D&D connection quite literal. They are playing in a networked space with new and power computer systems and they Trigger the TIDE and the CHANGE.

1hr 27 min and 27%.

And, I can do all this in short scenes and start alternating characters in ways that connect.

We start with Thomar and all that stuff in the first scene. And there’s a teleport. 

??? Maybe it’s not the kid who teleports. Maybe it’s a combination of the kid and the sword. DECIDE. ???

1hr 27 min and 27%. 18:30 hours: 2405.22-18:30.

1hr 18 min and 25%... just a minute or two later. It’s still estimating all over the place.

Sears had hired Thomar to kill the assassins and bring the kid back to Chicago alive. He doesn’t know about the sword. He believes from what rumors he acted on in hiring Thomar that the kid has an innate teleport power. And I could go this way. I could also do some fun “power up” deal. So the sword and kid combo allows for unlimited teleporting. The sword can power up the kid, so he has a certain number of teleports in manna points. The farther he ports the more points he loses. The more times he ports the more points he loses. Once out, he needs to power up with the sword again. But Thomar has the sword and Sears doesn’t know about it. In fact, the kid is under strict instructions not to tell Sears about it. So then what? ANOTHER DECISION POINT.

1hr 18 min and 24%.

Thomar connects with Mi Mei after leaving Sears. We either stay with him or with Sears (because Sears is a POV character; it only makes sense).

Mi Mei has stashed the disc copy on Thomar while he’s in Sears’ tower without Thomar knowing. She reconnects with Thomar on the outside to get the disc. Thomar is also able to leave with the sword because it has all kinds of ways to hide itself from people for which it wants to remain a secret.

1hr 10 min and 23%.

How to connect up all the other characters, I am not sure. And maybe I do not need to use all of them, like I am rethinking Natalie and Gimr.

1hr 12 min and 22%.

It’s 18:42.

Those were most of my ideas. Maybe it’s time to read what’s in this and one other file to fill my head, and then shut down for the rest of the flight.

Just want to remind myself of this:

EASTERN EMPIRE - renamed as THE GOTHAM EMPIRE

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2406.13 - 10:10

- Days ago = 3267 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1970 - Crushing hard - a writing self-inventory

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1970 - Crushing hard - a writing self-inventory

Another of the school posts.

This one is a writing self-inventory.

This time I will paste the assignment instructions at the end, so as to more quickly get to the content.



MY SAMPLE: Writing Self-Inventory Discussion Assignment

- THE PAST -

I have probably always been telling stories. My earliest play time featured elaborate stories. I had to populate my own world as I was an only child until I was seven years old. But I distinctly remember writing my first “official story” in my new yellow spiral bound notebook in fourth grade about Conan the Barbarian, as I was a fan of the Marvel comics featuring him, even though I had yet to read a single Robert E. Howard story.

From then on, I filled many notebooks with stories, novels, ideas for stories and novels, drawings, reviews of comic books, and much more.

Though I have written all kinds of things, my main interest is in fantastic fiction: speculative fiction, fantasy literature, horror fiction, thrillers, and comic books in various styles and genres.

This is an abbreviated history of my writing because, you know, my time and your attention span. And so, a few highlights.

- In high school, I wrote a satire based on the Wizard of Oz based on the cast of a play I was in at the time. I printed and distributed it, and people loved it.

- I wrote a serialized story about magic and magicians in the little village newspaper that agreed to let me write a weekly column.

- Once I played Dungeons and Dragons for the first time, shortly after it came out, I was obsessed and wrote many rules and adventures, including a Christmas-themed exploration of Santa Claus’ castle at the North Pole for the Fellowship of Lankhmar, the gaming club I ran as an after school activity.

- In college, I discovered poetry, mainly because girls liked poetry and I liked girls. I do love poetry for its self, but I will be honest about what really motivated me in the beginning.

- As a college internship, I worked at Marvel Comics and edited and revised some stories published in Epic Illustrated, Marvel’s answer to Metal Durant known in American as Heavy Metal.

- I studied fiction and poetry in both my undergraduate and graduate years under over a dozen different writers, whose name I would list for my own memory, but they would not mean anything to you (and I am going to share some of their work in the class anyway).

- For my MFA project, I wrote a novel based in the world of Star Trek, the original series. Bantam was publishing novels at the time, and it seemed like a good market. Star Trek: The Next Generation was very popular and soon two more shows would follow shortly after I finished the book. An agent took me on. This book and a teen romance I had written were seriously considered by publishers before being rejected.

- I wrote fan fiction about the DC superhero world, mostly the Teen Titans. I am a huge fan of the original Robin, Richard Grayson, now Nightwing. In fandom, this is known as being a Wingnut. I also had a huge crush on Donna Troy, Wonder Girl.

- After the Trek book was rejected, I started a series of other projects that have never been finished, including an epic fantasy series that blends cyberpunk and sword and sorcery, a horror/urban fantasy novel set in Northern Michigan, and tons of short stories and poems.

- I have published all sorts of things. My story “600 Cows” was published in an anthology of new writers and vetted by editors at top literary magazines, like the Michigan Quarterly Review (MQR).

- I have taken more creative writing classes than I have taught.

I have that MFA thing in fiction writing. I have shared stories and critiques in my online and live writer’s groups. I have made money from things I have written. And I do that daily blog at SENSE OF DOUBT via Blogger.



- PRESENT -

In addition to the unfinished things mentioned previously, like the cyberpunk and sorcery novels, I am currently at work on a novella about a future pandemic, just like about three million other quarantined writers and would be writers. I like my idea, and it has expanded to other story ideas set in the world that will produce shorter works.

I have other short stories burbling on my stove as well as a comic book and a thriller, set in Kalama.

I am enrolled in a Master’s Fiction Sackett Street Writers Workshop led by Jensen Beach.

- THE FUTURE -

All those things I mentioned that I am working on.

I really want to finish and publish a novel, and I really want to publish comic books, either as work-for-hire on a thing I don’t own (like Daredevil) or on a thing I own myself, like an idea I have for a story about a young girl who creates a role playing game to keep in touch with friends around the country that has special powers based on ley lines and alchemy. I got the idea from the girl who convinced Steph Curry and Under Armour to put out kicks for girls:

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1428 - Girls also want to rock a pair of kicks

I have some other things in the works that I have not mentioned, such as a superhero satire a la Discworld called POP and a survival guide for living in a world in which vampires have taken over the government.



- WHAT ARE YOU LIKE AS A WRITER? -

I started with pen or pencil and paper on ruled line paper in spiral notebooks. Throughout college, the poems and story ideas went into smaller journals with hard covers or leather covers.

I got a manual typewriter in seventh grade and an electric typewriter as a high school graduation present. I started using the computers at the college I attended that I could not take home and were really monitors connected to an inter-campus network called the Vax.

Eventually my father brought a Compaq “portable” from work and soon I graduated to my first desk top with the big five inch floppy disks. Though I still did some planning and drafting on paper, I almost exclusively did most of the actual writing at the keyboard, and that’s continued through many computers until today.

I have some stuff in Google Drive, but I do not like to write in that platform and only do so when I need to due to access issues. I am still using the same word processor I adopted early on, not the first one, but the second: Corel’s Word Perfect. It’s comfortable for me, and I think writing is all about what makes us comfortable.

I still like to save an actual file on an actual hard drive inside my machine and then transport back up copies to other machines as well as to Google Drive and another online back up storage I rent.

I think best at a keyboard, though first poetry drafts still seem to be better in notebooks.

I like to make notes, especially for stories, as often, what I am doing requires world building, much of which must be done first. I like to write in pieces. Sometimes when I have an idea for the beginning I start with it. Other times if I have a good scene in mind or a sequence of dialogue I just sketch those out. I can always string together what I do in pieces because, you know, I DO NOT HAVE RE-TYPE IT every time I make a change!! :-)

I let trusted readers read things if I have trusted readers handy.

I revise things often and all the time. Nothing ever feels finished, but occasionally, it feels good enough to show people.

I am stopping this part here because I want to do more explanation of process later. I am fascinated by process. How do others achieve their work goals. I have some stuff on my blog about other people sharing their work process. I will try to collect it intelligently to share with you.



- WHAT ARE YOUR PASSIONS? -

I could go nuts with this one, and I hope all you do. I am going to hit highlights only and restrict myself to a very few things for brevity to spare you a book and because I could spend hours writing this part, and as you know, I have things to prep. :-)

I have always liked writing about taboos. I like to push the envelope. I like to make people face difficult questions. I like to break molds and embrace uncertainty.

I am a big fan of Jungian Psychology, and so I like to have the meanings of archetypes and the process of individuation under the surface of the literal level of my things.

Currently, I am fascinated by new language that we’re creating for our ever increasing digital, bit-mapped, electronic world.

I am very interested in surveillance society and dystopias.

I am trying to create a magic system that makes sense for my fantasy novel series.

I like feminism but prefer to say humanist. I am an advocate for many social justice things, especially anti-racism, anti-misogyny, and alliance with LBGTQ communities for equal rights for everyone.

But I am a cys-white, middle-aged dude and so there’s al those invisible privilege things that I am still working through. If you find it endearing and sweet and not creepy and gross, I freely admit to having crushes on Nnedi Okorafor, Marjorie Liu, Cory Doctorow, Seanan McGuire, and Warren Ellis. Just speaking of writers. And that's just the short list. I have always found crushing hard on people to be inspirational.

DISCUSSION: Let’s Talk About Writing!

Writing Self-Inventory Discussion Assignment

In detail:

Create a post for this discussion of any length, as short or as long as you feel it needs to be that details your past, present, and future as a writer.

- THE PAST: What have you written before? When did you start? Have you written creatively? What types of things? Have you had classes or education in writing, especially creative writing?

- PRESENT: Are you writing anything right now? What is it or what are these writing projects? Tell us as much as you wish about them.

- THE FUTURE: What do you aspire to write. What would you like to write in this class, and in the future beyond this class?

- WHAT ARE YOU LIKE AS A WRITER? How do you write? Paper and pen? Pencils? Notebooks? Digital? Laptop? Google Drive? Do you plan and outline? Notes? Pre-writing? Brainstorming? Multiple drafts? Get opinions from readers you trust? Don’t show anyone? Has your process changed over time? Are you still trying to find the best process for your work?

- WHAT ARE YOUR PASSIONS? Share as much as you want about the things that interest you, things you want to grapple with in your writing, especially things you have not yet mentioned.

First post due by Friday.

Responding posts. Leave two messages. Encourage your peers. Compare process. Ask questions.

Writers, watch your replies for questions.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2007.10 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1834 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

some of my journals and writing stuff - current - 2007.10

MOLESKIN

This site is also about the power of journals and using journals.

FROM -
http://www.seaweedkisses.com/2016/06/the-journal-diaries-james-moleskine-and.html

FIELD NOTES