Advice to Neophyte Writers: Don't Try This at Home!

       

Cover of Part One

       I'm getting good results after publishing The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars, Part One: Eagle Ascendant.  I've already had six reviews, all of them 5 star.  It seems my friend Neil Aplin was right in maintaining it would be a success.  I had my doubts about publishing any of the book, because the entire piece is way longer than any book should ever be.  Neil didn't think so -- he read it in manuscript and he wanted it to be even longer, and it was his enthusiastic support that convinced me to publish the beginning of it.

       Part Two: Wounded Eagle is in the works; I'm revising like mad, trying to shorten it.   Part One is a long book, but at least it covers the first 31.5 years of Capt. Nikalishin's life.  Part Two only covers 2.5 years and it's even longer than Part One.  There will be at least six more parts after that so you see my problem.  The ultimate conclusion isn't even written yet.

       You might be saying, how in the world could you let this happen?  I've written a bit about my writing history before, but now I have new readers and Facebook friends who may not know how my writing came about, so I need to construct an apology, in the sense of a justification.

Sneak peak: cover for
Part Two (tentative)

        I've always been inclined to write long.  In college when the professor would assign a 20-page paper, the other students would be groaning -- how would they ever be able to make it that long?  And I would be wondering how I could keep the paper under 40 pages.

        I started to write fiction after I read Tolkien in 1969, and I had no real thought of publishing at that time. I simply found the act of writing to be tremendous fun.  So I wrote my first endless story. It was somewhat Tolkienesque imaginary-world fantasy and it was my million-word learning process.  It will never be finished and I will never publish it, but in case anyone is interested, my novel Children of the Music was written as a prequel to that long piece.

       From 1983 through 1999 I took a hiatus from writing because of family responsibilities.  Then in January of 2000 I bought my first computer, which made the act of writing infinitely easier.  And I had a sudden surge of literary inspiration, beginning with "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" (a novella! Amazing!) and then The Termite Queen and the rest of the termite stories (I've discussed them plenty elsewhere, mostly on my other blog The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head).  I completed the sixth volume of Labors in July of 2003, so you can see that I wrote furiously for those 3.5 years.  By that time I was a little tired of termites and even though I needed one more tale to complete the Quest, I wanted to do something else for a while.  (I did manage to compose the sequel volume for the Ki'shto'ba tales in 2015 while I was on chemo.)

       I should say that during this time I also never contemplated publishing -- I was simply enjoying myself too much.

       And then I got the idea for The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  I had invented the Bird People of the planet Krisí’i’aid, along with their language, for The Termite Queen, and I decided it would be interesting to write about the first contact with the Krisí’i’aida, which had occurred a couple of centuries earlier.  How about writing a biography of the spaceship Captain who made the first contact?  This would also give me a chance to develop my future history to an extent greater than I had been able to do in TQ.  I never intended for the piece to be so long or so detailed, but it was one of those stories that just grew like a clump of mushrooms.  And again, with no intent to publish, I paid absolutely no attention to the length. (A really serious mistake -- again I say to beginning writers: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!)   I started writing in November of 2003 and worked on that thing until January of 2011, when it suddenly hit me that I was 70 years old.  If I ever wanted anyone else to read my books, I'd better suspend writing and focus on publishing.  So I began to work up "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder," self-publishing it in November of 2011, and that was followed by The Termite Queen and the Ki'shto'ba series -- and the rest is history, as they say.

       So what was I going to do with all that manuscript for The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars? (By the way, that was not the original title, but I don't seem to have recorded the original title anywhere and unfortunately I can't remember what it was.  Once I thought of MWFB, it seemed perfect and I never looked back.) I decided to publish excerpts from the book on my blog -- those excerpts are still here, on this very blog, but they've been radically altered in the final form of the book.  My friend Neil Aplin was mesmerized by those excerpts and so I agreed to email him longer pieces of the book.  He continued to be crazy about it and finally he convinced me to begin to working over the piece for publication.

      At one point I considered getting a professional editor to shorten it.  I'm sure a professional could do that -- just take shears and whack away.  But then it wouldn't be my book and I think I would have an apoplexy trying to deal with that person no matter how tactful and truly interested they were. Nope, that doesn't work for me.  I'm not concerned with becoming a bestseller, and it costs me nothing but time to self-publish, especially since I do my own covers.  However, I do like for people to read what I write and enjoy and comment on it.  I'll take my chances that the lengthiness may exhaust my readers' patience.

       So I think the world is stuck with something no writer is supposed to do -- an interminable novel cut into many segments, each one too long in itself.  That's why I call them Part One, Part Two, etc.  It suggests a single story rather than a series.  I made that mistake with The Termite Queen.  It was too long for one volume, but it is really all one story, and by designating the halves v.1 and v.2 rather that Pt.1 and Pt.2, I made people think it was a series and too many people have stopped reading after v.1 and so don't get the full effect.  The Ki'shto'ba books really constitute a serial rather than a series, but the volume designations seem to fit OK in their case.

So here are the upcoming volumes in the endless progression of MWFB:

Part One: Eagle Ascendant (already published)

Part Two: Wounded Eagle (being edited)

Part Three: High Feather

Part Four: Survivor

Part Five: Phenix (this is the one that requires drastic cutting -- Fathers and Demons was extracted [and will be cut] from that section)

Part Six: Rare Birds (still experimental)

Part Seven + : ??? not written yet!

       Do you think any reader can survive all that?  Do you think I can live long enough to actually accomplish the required editing?  I had some other books I wanted to write, too. Sounds hopeless! Anyway, I just wanted everyone to know how this all came about and warn them about what might be coming.  I beg your indulgence!  At least you've seemed to enjoy Part One.  Who knows?  Maybe you'll enjoy the other parts just as much!

What a Difference Thirty Years Makes!

Tentative cover for Part I of MWFB
I have no artwork for Children
of the Music yet.

I'm in the process of formatting The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars for publication, and at the same time I'm scanning into the computer my early piece called Children of the Music. Yesterday I worked on MWFB in the morning and then scanned and edited another chapter of Children in the afternoon.

Viewing both books in such close succession caused me to be impressed by how my style has changed. Children was written in the late 1970s and MWFB was written somewhere between 2006 and 2010, after I had written the termite books. In the late '70s I was still under the influence of Tolkien -- heroic fantasy was the order of the day. Children is laid in an imaginary world with two races of humans who exist at a level of technology that is fairly primitive, agricultural or pastoral in nature. My style at times verges on the grandiose, and I use a lot of description of setting (I was impressed by how successful these descriptions turned out to be). By 2006 I was definitely a realist, writing about the future of Earth. This started in The Termite Queen and persists into MWFB.

And yet I feel both styles are equally effective for the purpose intended. In fact, I was impressed by the chapter of Children that I worked on yesterday. It depicts the invasion of a pastoral people by a horde of "barbarians" and it stirred me emotionally, which is a good sign. (It's been more than thirty years since I read the manuscript.) It has a feel of both high fantasy and realism.  And I consider the straightforward narrative technique of MWFB to be equally compelling. I'm going to give you an example from each book so you can compare them.

From Children of the Music:

The good weather held, with a flawless blue sky above their heads and a dry northwest wind from the mountains that blew briskly down the neck and whipped the long manes across the horses’ eyes.  At night the cold sharpened, but the days warmed enough to have made life pleasant if only the wind could have dropped.  In the early morning the east was hazed with river mist, but elsewhere and at other times the air was like crystal.  Always the white bluffs barred the west, drawing closer as the caravan progressed southward, and in their breaks the Epanishai could see the ruffled horizon of dark silver mountains. 

In his impatience Daborno pushed the caravan faster than usual, only to suffer on the morning of the fourth day a broken axle on one of the oldest wagons.  After heated contention with the wagon’s family, he ordered it to be abandoned.  “We haven’t time to repair it, by the god of this world!  Where do we get seasoned ash for an axle, tell me that?  What do I care if this wain was made in the south?  Load your goods on the oxen, curse it!  Disperse them among the other vans!  Sirrah, I don’t suggest – I command!  Get this line moving, you snails’ spawn!  “

“What’s the rush, Daborno?” asked Leftis irritably, when they were underway again. 

The Chieftain glanced darkly at Rashemia and made no reply.  Leftis followed his eyes and did not repeat the question.  The High Codian had uncharacteristically taken no part in the altercation and now she rode three or four paces ahead of them, head held high, face pale and eyes farseeing – hoodless, with the wind tearing at loose strands of her hair.  The sight of her imperious otherness made Daborno quake with apprehension.  So they rode, past midday, into the afternoon. 

Suddenly, in a silence of weariness, a low cry came from Rashemia’s throat.  She drove her heels into the brown gelding’s flanks and dashed toward a long, sere brake of alder and birch that seemed to mark the line of a dry watercourse.  After a moment’s hesitation Daborno spurred after her, with Leftis and his wife not far behind. 

The Chieftain crashed through the brush and reined up beside Rashemia, rising in the stirrups to look where her hand pointed.  Before them lay hay fields, with neat, round ricks ready for winter.  Some eight furlongs beyond, in the valley of a lucent silver stream, was a shepherd village surrounded by its frail palisade, its flocks scattered over the slightly rising ground to east and west. 

Along the bluffs not half a league from the village, the woodland of bare birches and hazel thickened, punctuated by the brilliant darkness of cedars.  Amidst the white and gray hatching of the trees, against the chalk brightness of the bluffs, an indistinct lattice of heavy, black shapes teased the eye. 

It was into that distance that Rashemia’s sight strained, but Daborno’s was nailed southward, on the broad, bare knob of land that rose beyond the stream. 

“Aftran.  Aftran!  Rashemia!  Is this it?” He clawed at her arm, her horse’s mane, its reins, half beside himself. 

“Yes.”  The confirmation came, blunt, toneless, crushing down the emotion. 

“Aftran!  Aftran!  We are here!” The words roared from Dabornos throat as he pivoted his astonished stallion.  Then the rowels were buried in the beast’s side and it leaped forward, streaking across the fields, with the other three behind. 

On the north side of the brake, the caravan heard and there were whoops and war cries of disbelief, of elation, of ecstasy.  Everyone who was mounted coursed through the trees and followed the Chieftain.  The drovers screamed at their cattle, stampeding them into the brush; the wagoners beat the oxen with their goads, heaved the wains with shoulder and hip and hand, slashed at the trees with axes to clear a path – shrieking, weeping with frustration at being left behind – abandoning the more hopelessly wedged vehicles to pound on foot after their lord. 

Through the fields east of the village the ragged line of riders and wagons hurtled, hoofs shaking the earth, cloaks flying in the wind, the bound hair of women loosening and streaming behind like black banners.  The wild yelling scraped across the ancient, sunlit air, raw and terrifying as the music of an untuned viol.  The foremost horsemen dashed helter-skelter through the stream; the drovers and the wagoners gave up their charges on the north side and forded on foot; every human creature of the Axe and Owl beat their way up the slopes of the round, bald hill. 

The cavalcade had passed not two furlongs from the easternmost flocks, paying no attention to the two shepherds who rose up with fright on their faces, stared momentarily upon the careering wildmen, then turned and sprinted toward the village to the west.  

Now here is a scene from The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars (a little background   will help: The SkyPiercer Project, flying a starship beyond the solar system for first time, has just been made public.  Robbin Nikalishin, who is to pilot that mission, feels compelled to call his mother after this revelation.  His relationship with her is strained and difficult, owing to a dire misunderstanding that took place during his adolescence):

Robbie called his mother when Kolm wasn’t there, because he knew his public charm would vanish the minute he had her on the link.  When she came on, she said immediately, “Congratulations, son.  I know this is what you always wanted.  You made it happen.  Like you said in the news conference, you saw the stars and you never let anything stand in your way.”

“That’s – not exactly what I said, Mother.”

“Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it?”

There was a silence.  Then Sterling said, “Are they going to give you any leave before you fly in August?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so.  I don’t think they want us having open contact with the public.”

“So … you won’t be able to come home then … ”

“Probably not.  I’m – sorry … ”

He heard a sound at the other end that he couldn’t identify.  “Mother?”

“What if you get killed?” she said harshly.  “You could, I’m quite sure.”

“Mother, a person can walk out the door and fall down stairs and get killed.”

“Don’t give me that trite old probability crap!” she retorted sharply.  “The chances are much greater of dying in what you’re doing and you know it!”

He made no answer, clutching the side of his head, feeling paralyzed of will.  Then he said, “Mother … how can you … really want to … keep seeing me … after all that has … ”  His voice petered out.

It was her turn to be silent.  Finally she snapped out, “I want to wish you a lot of luck, son.  I’m gratified that you’re accomplishing your dreams.  It makes all my hard work and sacrifice worthwhile.  I only hope the rewards you reap will be as great as you think they will.  And just in case something does happen to you out there, I’m going to say ‘Goodbye’ and I suggest you do the same.  You may never find the time to ring me up again before you go and it would be a shame for a son to die without having said goodbye to his mother.”

“God almighty … ” said Robbie in utter misery. 

“Goodbye, son,” said Sterling.  “Say it!  Say ‘Goodbye’ to me.”

“No, I won’t!  I won’t say goodbye …  Dammit, I’m not going to die, Mother!”

But she had cut the connection.  Robbie stood for a moment clutching the com piece, and then he turned and threw it as hard as he could across the room.

When Kolm tapped on his door later that afternoon, Robbie didn’t answer.  Alarmed, Kolm banged harder.  “Robbie, are ye in there?”

“ … ’s not locked … ”

Kolm opened the door and came to a dismayed stop.  “Holy cry, man, what are ye doing?’

“Working really hard … at getting rotten drunk … ”

“Damnation.”  Kolm hastily closed the door.  “Where’d ye get that bottle?”

“Over at … Base Exchange.  … sell the stuff, you know … ”

“Ye walked right in and bought it, afore god and everybody?  What if somebody reports you to Lara or to Teeter?”

“Yeah, I walked right in … could do it then.  Don’t much know if I could do that at the moment … ”

Kolm went to where Robbie was sprawled on the couch and jerked the whisky bottle out of his hands.  “Whatever in Mairin’s name provoked ye to break training like this?”

“They have no right … tell us we can’t drink.  Sometimes a man has to do something … sometimes there are things … a man can’t stand … ”  Robbie squeezed his eyes shut, his face contorting.

Kolm knelt beside his friend.  “Robbie, did ye ring up yer mother?”

Robbie twitched his head.

“Man, this is the worst.”

“That’s right.  The worst.  Goody, I’m never calling her again … don’t care what you say to me.  I can’t stand it.  I hope I never talk to her again … never see her the rest of my life.”

Kolm took Robbie’s head hard between his hands.  “Robbie, I don’t understand, but I feel terrible bad for ye.  If it takes such a radical thing to keep ye from goin’ to pieces like this, I guess I’d have to say I’m for it.  But it’s a terrible sad thing and I wish I understood about it, but I know I never can and that’s all right.  Now, are ye just gonna lie there, or are ye going to get up and let me pour some coffee down ye?  It’s for sure that ye’ve got to be over this by tomorrow mornin’, or the jig’s up.”

And so Kolm was able to pull Robbie together and no one was ever the wiser about his lapse.  But Kolm remained on guard, and if Robbie got particularly moody or seemed to be withdrawing into himself, Kolm made a special effort to stay close at hand.  Robbie knew this and was deeply grateful.  He understood all too well that the masonry on which his character was founded was not the most stable and he relied heavily on his friend to be his keystone.

So do you like one better than the other?

Or do you like them both?

A Tangled Web?

Young Lochinvar Carrying Away His Love
From Misrepresentative Women by Harry Graham  (c1906)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42407/42407-h/42407-h.htm#Lochinvar

       Remember the old quote "Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practise to deceive"? Bet you don't know what it's from. Shakespeare? (Isn't everything from Shakespeare?) The Bible (less likely!) Well, I didn't know either, so I looked it up. It's from an epic poem that's pretty obscure these days -- Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field, by Walter Scott, first published in 1808.  It's a tale of romantic intrigues involving nuns who break their vows, wronged heroes, duels, revenge, deaths at the battle of Flodden Field in 1513, etc., etc.  Modernized a bit, it might actually have something going for it! It was immensely popular in its day, although it was not a critical success; according to Wikipedia, it was castigated for the "unwarranted intrusions" of the letters to Scott's friends that head up each canto and its poetic style was called "flat and tedious." There was also a complaint that it was written solely to show off Scott's erudition.  However, the poem also contained the "Lochinvar" section that people used to read in school.  I remember that galloping anapestic rhythm very well -- and with some nostalgia ...

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar ...

       Does anybody read that poem these days?

 

       So where was I?  What was my point?  Oh, I remember -- the tangled web.  First, however, let me say that some might criticize my writing for some of the same reason they criticized Scott's (although I don't write poetry):  That my stories have "unwarranted intrusions," that my style isn't spectacularly original (although I really wouldn't call it "flat and tedious"), and that I like to show off my erudition (which isn't as mighty as I wish it were).  That's still not my point, however. 

 

       My point is, everything I write is interconnected -- a bit of a tangled web.  I really hadn't thought about that until lately.  All of my books share characters and allude to events or people which exist in my other books.  The Termite Queen is the seminal tale.  It introduces Prf. Kaitrin Oliva, who is also the main character in "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder," which is laid thirty years later.  Kaitrin is also the editor of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head series, which begins hard on the end of The Termite Queen.  The series contains many references to events in The Termite Queen, because after all it was the coming of the Star-Beings to the termite planet that precipitated the New Time (doesn't the arrival of aliens always change things?)  Kaitrin mounts several expeditions to the termite planet after that fateful first one, and these are mentioned in footnotes throughout the series.  And Kaitrin actually does make a physical appearance as a character in the series but only near its end.

       Then of course two of the major characters in the series -- Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head and Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer -- were introduced in The Termite Queen, so that's an essential interconnection.

       See how tangled it's getting?

 

       I also have a number of unwritten books that increase the tangles.  Something I plan to call The Dark Leopards of the Moon (title from a poem by Yeats) will be the story of the remainder of Kaitrin Oliva's life, and then there is an episode of her life alluded to in "Monster" as "my experiences with the Etúmanoi on the fourth planet of Foraka 3."  That one I mean to write as a separate novel (entitled The Hard, Bright Crystal of Being, from a poem by Conrad Aiken), and it also includes a couple of other characters from Termite Queen whose names I won't mention for fear of spoilers.

 

       The only story I've written that isn't tangled up with the others is The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars.  It's laid in the 28th century while TQ is laid in the 30th, and its only association with The Termite Queen lies in the fact that first contact with the bird aliens (Prf. A'a'ma's people) occurs in MWFB.  That's important, of course, but it does allow the plot of MWFB to pretty much stand on its own.

 

       I say all this only because the tangling of my characters and plots may make them a little problematical to read.  You may have read TQ and found some things not to like about it.  It has a double plot line, so you may like one plot and not the other.  Besides, it contains all that conlanging gobbledegook, which is a little bit of a specialized interest.  (However, I can't imagine anybody who wouldn't be curious about how we're going to communicate with aliens when we finally meet them.)  So I would say this: if you enjoyed the termite people in The Termite Queen, please do go on and give the Ki'shto'ba series a try.  And even if you haven't read TQ, it's summarized sufficiently at the beginning of The War of the Stolen Mother, so don't be deterred from jumping right into the series. 
       I hope to meet you there!

      

Why Writing Is Like Jackstraws

        The idea for this post came from a piece  by Vanessa Chapman on the excellent Limebirds website, where she suggests overcoming writers' block by throwing in something off the top of your head, like having a spaceship land on the door step or making the building across the street explode, or even  killing off your protagonist; and then see if that will spark your creative process and get you going again.

       Sigh.  That's improvisation -- a dirty word in my writing vocabulary.  It simply doesn't work for me.  Once I had landed that spaceship or exploded that building, it would accrete itself into the plot, never to be gotten rid of.  The story would turn into science fiction about alien abductions or into a story about terrorism, and my protagonist could never, ever be resurrected -- because now THIS IS THE WAY THINGS HAPPENED!   

       That's why I say, writing is like jackstraws.  Do children ever play that game these days?  I used to love it when I was six years old.  You throw down the straws and then you try to pick out individual straws without making any other straws move.  It's almost impossible at times.

       It's the same with writing.  If you improvise something and drop it into the mix of straws, it affects the whole structure.  Suddenly you have to add something early on to prepare the way for this addition, and later in the text there will undoubtedly be references to what you added.  Then, if you try to get rid of the addition (or in fact if you decide to change anything in the plot, whether added or original), everything will shift position, like the heap of jackstraws.  Plucking out or changing one thing means changing a dozen other things, which makes it necessary to re-read the whole mess of words you've written, or to find some way to search the text for keywords (and then you're never sure you've found everything.  Some allusion is always rearing its ugly head, perhaps inconveniently in the final edit before you publish).  And when you rewrite those passages, the re-writes always feel awkward and stilted and never feel as if they belong organically to the story.

 

       Some of you may have noticed I've been posting the opening chapters of my unfinished "opus" (anything that ponderous deserves that appellation!) entitled The Man Who Found Birds among the Stars (this link will show you all the chapters so far, in reverse order).  The jackstraw conundrum is a part of why I doubt it will ever be finished.  Let me describe the story.  It's laid in the 28th century -- a fictionalized biography of Capt. Robbin Nikalishin, the man who commanded the first interstellar mission (which went to Epsilon Eridani).  The ship crash-lands on a moon of one of Epsilon Eri's planets and the crew was about to succumb when another ship appeared.  It's an exploratory ship from the planet Krisí’i’aid, which is inhabited by three intelligent species, all avians.  They rescue our Captain and his crew and help them get back to Earth, where the appearance of these Big Birds obviously creates a sensation and a crisis.  That's the central kernel of the plot.

       However, since the story is a biography of Robbie Nikalishin, it has to encompass his whole life and a whole lot of stuff happens during a person's life.  It's a big mistake to write that sort of all inclusive story, especially if you're as long-winded as I am.  The story ballooned all out of proportion and became a series.  It took -- well, I'm chagrined to admit it, but I will make my "mia gulpas" as Prf. A'a'ma once said, and confess: the first document alone, which I call v.1 & 2 and which takes the Captain only from birth to his 38th year, when he's about to launch on the Big Mission -- that document consists of 780,000 words.  And we haven't even reached that central kernel of the story -- the meeting with the Krisí’i’aidá.

       I actually think those first two volumes are pretty good and could stand alone, but they can't be published unless they can be pruned.  And I haven't even tried yet.  I thought I would see how people react to the opening chapters first.

       But that's not the worst of it.  I wrote a section to bridge the gap between the end of v.2 and the launching of the Big Mission.  And I didn't have a clue what needed to happen in that time, so I (shudder!) improvised.  (I wrote 580,000 words of pure transition -- how disgusting is that?)  Several subplots developed.  I had to add new characters because the Captain was interviewing and selecting his crew, who would all play a large part in the core of the story.  These characters then assumed a life of their own, with backgrounds, conflicts, etc. 
       In the midst of all this, I decided I wanted to account for what had become of Judaism in my future history, so I introduced a Jewish character, who would become the ship's communications officer.  Actually, I introduced him in the opening volumes, but he wasn't developed there.  I decided that he needed to get married so I could show what a Jewish wedding has become at that time.  That meant I needed to work up a female character for him to marry, who also blossomed into something greater.  And then I had to learn about Jewish weddings. 

       And that precipitated me into a three or four month study of Judaism, including studying some basics of the Hebrew language.  Double-sigh!  I became totally immersed in the subject and fell in love with the Jewish religion (don't worry, I'm not converting, although I can definitely see many strong points in the Jewish faith and culture).  So I ended up writing a whole section where the Captain and his crew go to the Istrian Judish Enclave (in the future there can be small territories set aside where religions can be practiced openly), attend Avi's wedding, meet a couple of wonderfully complex characters who are Rabbis, and learn the tragic story of one of them.

       What does all that have to do with interstellar travel and making first contact with the alien Birds?  Nothing!  But if I were to throw out that entire transitional third part, a lot of the events that happen during the voyage and a lot of the ship's crew won't have a backstory and the pile of jackstraws will be fatally disarranged!

       When I finally got around to writing about the voyage, it went pretty well, but I made one fatal mistake.  Again, I wanted to show as I did in The Termite Queen what making a first contact would actually be like.  I wanted to show in detail how one side would have to learn the other side's language.  This time it would be a vocal language, but one that the human throat can't enunciate, so it's the Birds who have to be taught an alien language, in this case, English.  It was defintely an experimental undertaking and it was a disastrous failure.  I happen to love grammar and so watching crewmembers teach avian extraterrestrials about English word order and verb tenses and pronoun cases and articles was fascinating to me.  However,  it would without a doubt be terminally boring to almost everybody else in the universe.  And I also had no real plot for what happens after the Birds reach Earth, so the improvisation began again.  I had to introduce some new characters and again they threatened to take over the story.

       And I still had the rest of the Captain's life to delineate.  It had certain high points that I knew I wanted to hit but there was no connective tissue.  I also know exactly how he's going to die -- I've written that scene in my head a million times and made notes.  But a vast desert stretches out over the last 30 or so years of his life.

       About the point where the Birds were settling in on Earth, I threw in the towel. I was  spending all my time playing computer solitaire instead of writing because I was so sick of the whole blob, even as I fumed about how I wasn't getting any younger.  So one day I quit.  I went back to The Termite Queen, revised it one more time, and started trying to get it published.

       But I still haven't completely given up on my Captain.  I do think I may be able to work v.1 and v.2 into something publishable.  I have hopes of condensing them considerably.  And I'm thinking of turning the Jewish section into a novella.  It's a wonderful chunk of text and I hate to lose the characters of those two Rabbis and I hate to lose the philosophical discussions that take place in that part.  So we'll see.  Will the whole edifice of the story collapse when I start pulling straws out? Stay tuned!

Do I have any WIPs?

       As I attempted to write a comment on a post on Catana's blog "Tracking the Words," I decided her topic "WIPs and Productivity" would make a good basis for a blog post of my own.  She describes a method of writing where the author keeps a backlog of story ideas, outlines, and beginnings and draws on that whenever she gets burned out on the current opus.  As usual I seemed to be the odd person out because this isn't how I work at all.  In the first place, I'm not a good multitasker -- I start something and I finish it before I go on the next thing.  I can't really pay attention to more than one story at once.  And then for about 12 years I wrote without any intention whatsoever of publishing -- I wrote just because I loved what I was writing.  So I have this big backlog of stuff ready or nearly ready to commit to print (next up -- "The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head," which I've decided to turn into 6 volumes in order to avoid publishing another weighty tome like v.2 of "The Termite Queen."  On that subject see my second blog, which is being dedicated to the "Labors" series).

         But I've decided that I do have WIPs -- I just never called them that.   I have notes for an essential concluding novel in the "Labors" series, and I have separate documents of Story Notes for two other works.  One will be called "The Dark Leopards of the Moon" (quoted from a poem by W.B. Years, fortunately in the public domain); this narrates later events in the life of Kaitrin Oliva and uses "Monster Is in the Eye of the Beholder" as a centerpiece.  The other picks up a minor character from "Termite Queen" and details that character's life, particularly as it relates to Kaitrin Oliva.  It's to be called "The Hard, Bright Crystal of Being," from an poem by Conrad Aiken that unfortunately is under copyright, so if I use that title, I may have to work on one more permission (groan!)

     And then I have a catch-all document called "Story Notes -- Proposed Tales," which includes ideas for a piece about the culture of the termite people (the Shshi) 2000 years into the future, when they have developed technology and are about ready to take to space themselves.  Another story would retell "Huckleberry Finn" with Shshi characters.  Then I had a vague idea about a device that records dreams holographically and allows people to enter parallel universes through those holograms, like a portal (I may never write that one -- sounds too much like "The Lathe of Heaven" and possibly other creative pieces I've run into.)  The most important story is about the author of the Mythmaker drama "The Valley of the White Bear" that's mentioned in TQ; it would be my only dystopian novel and would make it necessary for me to actually write that drama.  That would be  tough because "The White Bear" is supposed to be one of the greatest and most influential pieces of literature ever written and I don't know if I'm up to that task!

       And then there is a wickedly satiric and rather ambitious treatment of Old and New Testament myth, in which a race of "gods" (intelligences so enormous that a galaxy is like handful of dust to them) uses the multiverses as an experimental laboratory.  I actually wrote a rather obscure short story on this theme; it took off when I read an article on the snowball Earth theory of the Cambrian explosion (I might publish that story on this blog sometime; it's called "A Little Laboratory Work"). 

       The long treatment has a working title; it comes from Exodus 33:23 (KJV), where God hides Moses in a rock and covers Moses with his hand as he passes by, because no man can look upon the face of God and live -- "And I will take away mine hand and thou shalt see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen.” So I was thinking of entitling my satiric treatment "The Back Parts of God."  Boy, will I get in trouble!  By the way, I looked at the translation in the website called Hebrew Bible in English and the translation reads as follows:  “I will take away my hand and thou shalt see my back, but my face shall not be seen.”  A good bit more dignified, but it loses a little bit of its humorous potential!  Probably the term "back parts" didn't carry the same suggestiveness in the 17th century as it does today!