I'm trying to solve a puzzle I have had for a long time, which is how to write. By that I mean, I have yet to figure out a way that works for me to write longer works, say with chapters, and to keep the momentum over time. One thing I know--using a word processor on my computer, laptop or desktop, just doesn't work for me.
What does work? Well, this platform. Blogger works for me. I have using it sixteen years now, at times feverishly every day, or several times a day, and sometimes going weeks or even months without posting. I should note that I rarely have gone weeks without thinking of posting, and would often compose posts in the middle of the night, but I did not feel like capturing them in the light of day after waking.
What works for me in Blogger is the finality of publishing a post, coupled with the connection I feel with readers as a consequence. In other words, what keeps me going is the connection I feel to you who are reading this right now. For me even one anonymous person is enough.
The finality part is that when I hit the "publish" button and it goes live, I feel a great relief and I immediately begin anticipating about how someone might feel reading it, the way one used to do after writing a letter and dropping into the post box (in my opinion, civilization ended when we stopped writing letters to each other). The post feels "printed" and "out there", now beyond me.
Of course I can revise it, and I sometimes do if I find a bad typo, especially one that changes the entire meaning of a sentence, even to the opposite (yikes). My problem is that I never find these typos until after I have published the post. Then something kicks in, where my mind focuses in a way could not, and I begin hoping that I haven't send something in stupid gibberish that was meant to be clever. At that point, proofreading becomes easy.
If only I could do that as I am writing. Mostly it is impatient. As I type a post like this, I begin anticipating the joy of sending online, and someone reading it. Whoever that person, anonymous or known, they are effectively my muse. Every writer needs a muse. You, reading this, are at this moment my muse.
Yet I mistreat you, making you read my barely understandable prose sometimes. Somehow while I am still composing something, I feel the immense pull to make it better, make it perfect for you, as I feel I am up to, and when I start trying to do that, I rewrite to much until I butchered the original spontaneous expression into a hideous mismatch of words. What was I thinking? Better just to capture the raw output and get it online, and you see me exposed for what I am. I think that is the whole point.
The problem with a word processor is that this is what happens right from the beginning, and it scuttles any project. I just started one recently, actually, a historical fiction--suspense, drama, foreign intrigue, etc.---that I have been researching for years and IT want to work on over time. The characters are mostly if not all based on real historical figures, all of whom are now dead.
I have attempted to write this in the past. In fact I promised someone long ago, a dear friend, that I would do this. I have not fulfilled that promise. Eventually we became estranged and I suspect he would not be able to have a civil conversation with me. A year ago, however, I got cheeky and sent him a Christmas card, unsigned and no return address, with a inside reference that he would understand immediately as referring to the promise I made, and giving him a url to follow to one of my podcasts. By the subject matter, he would understand the message: I am still on the case.
Recently in a manic push at the beginning of the year, I began trying to write that story again that I promised for my friend. I started with a word processor on my desktop because I knew no other great option at the moment and I couldn't bear waiting another hour. I knew this attempt would most likely wind up being scuttled, and indeed I have stalled. It is because I got sidetracked from the simplicity. I wound up writing a page of what is more akin to notes than actual prose. I sit here wanting to go back and fix it up. But I should not do that. I should just stumble forward. Stumble forward.
Begin! Begin! Begin! So right, Ned. So right.
Ned by the way is not the name of my friend, but someone in the story. I open in Seattle in 1899. A group of people standing on a dock waiting to board a small steamboat. I used AI to learn research the clothes worn by a young woman, and her younger brother. I learned about lace blouses and straw hats, so I could describe in my own words.
Don't go overboard though. Remember the way L'Engle writes---just enough to paint the picture in the mind of a child. No need to dwell on details for the sake of adding more details, unless it serves the story. This is indeed a children's story, after all, and also a historical whodunnit in a way. I'm going to tell this boy's life story in effect. He isn't the main character. Like me, he will be an observer and participant, and much comic relief.
So back to where to write it. I can't just write it here on Blogger. It would not be disciplined enough. I want to keep this what it has been, between you and me, dear reader, my guest here, and even daring to share a cup of tea.
Could I start another blog here on Blogger. No the interface here puts me in the mood of this blog and I need this channel to keep hearing my muse, who will help me with this other project, this story, which must be done to set things right. My rules I play by for myself.
So I have an idea which is to use a different "blogging" platform called Substack. I actually have a Substack account and a "blog" there but it is about physics in a cultural settings. I wrote a few articles for it before realizing I was writing what other people wanted to hear, and it sort of horrified me, so I backed off. But I might revive that too as people actually (spontaneously) paid me money to subscribe to it! That's the way to do it!
For now I'm going to keep going forward with the word processor technique because I don't want to lose momentum. But probably switch over to a Substack to provide finality of the first draft at least. That's the plan of course. So maybe I'll do that.
By the way, the whoddunit part already started with this post. You see I'm a product of my time---Postmodernity. As anyone knows who followed me when this was a movie blog, I wrote as much about the cinema-going experience as I did each movie itself. Do you imagine I can change that? No.
When Hemingway was stuck, he would say to himself: "just write one true sentence."
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