Bhagwan @ Large

Links, pictures, and scribblings from my never-ending program of dissipation.

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Merely Nearly Really Ready

Today’s sub-conscious story exercise comes from the realm of apocalyptic underwater dystopia.

It may seem odd to describe your inner thought processes this way, but it’s how my broken brain works. I’ve mentioned before that I am a lucid dreamer. Since my memory only goes back so far, it’s something I’ve always been able to do, and the dreams I can take control of are particularly powerful when I don’t.

This morning was something of an oddity for me, as I knew it was a “go” right away. My in-dream memory told me that I’d been in this situation before, as our ragtag flotilla approached the cave system and it’s frog-like occupants on whatever watercraft we had. I and several others swam ahead and began negotiating for the supplies we’d need to continue our journey, and dream me knew I was about to be betrayed. Making the best deal I possibly could, I returned to warn folks knowing that this dreamscape does not end well.

But here’s the kicker–I had not been there before. So dream and real me were responding to an unremembered dream, something that rarely happens. And since I knew it was going to be a bad one, it’s a dream I’ve suppressed for some reason. We’re about to be ambushed and enslaved for a long time by a technologically superior race, and most of us aren’t going to make it out.

Now the dream fragments, and I wake up briefly as a defense mechanism. I’ve learned over the years that shifting my physical position will either alter or completely cancel the dreamstate, sending it down paths more of my choosing. For some reason, this does not happen today, and “awake” me is still under the control of the subconscious mind. I can’t move, and the only “action” I can take is to re-submerge myself in the dream and ride it out.

In different characters. Still lucid, I play out 4 different viewpoint scenarios, each with a minor rebellion or act of courage that does not end well. As a whole, “we” advance through the dreamscape fairly well, if fatally. Each time, I wake up, still in the same position, and with no real options other than diving back in.

In case you were wondering, this does NOT count as a nightmare for me. Those are really weird.

On my last trip in, I realize that my perspective of our aquatic landscape has been shifting ever deeper on successive episodes. We are now a fully amphibious people, but are still recognizably the same individuals that floated into a trap. This incongruity is what I need to take control, so I do. But now that I’ve got it, I no longer have enough context to materially affect the scenario. I surface for the last time, fully wake, and let out a long breath.

Time for the emotional after action report. I trundle downstairs and read further in the two books I’m cycling on my Kindle. The Author has threaded three very long novels together with about a 3 months staggering of plot in each, and I’m halfway through the first two when I begin. I realized what he was doing yesterday afternoon, and was interested enough to attempt reading all three at the same time. I moved another 15% in the second one, finished the first, then set them aside to get ready for the creative portion of my day.

While I’m reading, I’m also processing what happened in the dream world. It’s still bothering me that I couldn’t take control when I usually do, but it’s not the first time that’s happened. I’ve layered three full dream lines before, conscious of at least two, with one being an example of my aforementioned nightmares. This is nowhere in that league, but I should have been able to at least move things around a bit. Being able to both control the dream and not affect it >is< something new, and has to mean something.

Then it hits me. I was coming at it from the wrong direction–the important part wasn’t the beginning of the dream, it was the end. Being underwater and surfacing was the relevant portion, and now I know when I had this dream before. It was 6 years ago, when I got the idea for a new story about genetically modified, amphibious mammalian humanoids living in an enclosed ecosphere. They have all those adjectives because they knew exactly who and what they are, just not why. I have that dream in my head right now, and it’s the poster child for what my subconscious mind is capable of.

Although dream experiences fuel my creative process, I’m still not good enough to translate this one fully into text. There are complexities and textures to the emotions of the dream I’m not sure I can consciously express, and I ‘tasted’ them again last night. What I have been able to do is one of the most complete outlines I’ve ever worked up, and a lot of the hard science fiction I’ve worked on over the last couple years has found itself tied to the overall universe of that story. My thoughts on what the ‘self” is, how an alien race thinks and acts, all are informed by this story. It’s even crept into some of my work for hire, but not so much that I can’t still call it my own.

I’m not ready to write that book yet. It’s going to be a huge volume, the most immersive project I’ve ever done. I’ll only be able to do that once I learn how to get the “easy” books in front of and resonating with readers. I’d like to get paid for it too, really paid, so it’s by no means a “first novel.”

But it’s a lot closer now that I’ve seen how someone writing his 43rd, 44th, and 45th novels dealt with the big picture. That he’s written 8 more since in those same 6 years is fuel for the fires of ambition. I’ve written two, and started three others.

I’m not ashamed to admit that my internal monologue was somewhat disparaging last night of the prolific man’s work product. I was too heavily grounded in the parts of his books I don’t like instead of focusing on what I do. His characters, their very real motivations and problems, and the HUGE tapestry he gets to work with.

10 minutes and 93 words ago I did the math. 53 books. 2 more on the way. 14 about the same character. I am an ant cursing the ground for being solid, desperately trying to find the scent trail he’s laid down for me instead of opening my eyes to wonder.

It’s time to get to work.

Posted July 8th, 2011.

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Finishing Bad Touches

Thought that might get your attention.

When last we left our hero (that’s ME, in case you were wondering), I was pontificating on what it means to be a writer. Since then I’ve come to terms with sporadic productivity, salved in large part by the sheer volume of words I put out every day at the paying gig.

And I’ve started packing the brown notebook again.

It’s important for me to have a creative outlet, and equally important to know what I write is relevant. In the last month, I’ve completed another draft revision on the Wandering Novel, almost made progress on two others, and gone back to writing short fiction. I’m hoping that this renewed work ethic sticks around for a bit, as I can sure use the practice.

Two weeks ago Tuesday, an idea came to me for a new piece. It started with a dream, in which I paraglided into a clear blue sea from orbit, finding (and fighting) several large ships and oil refineries. Gathering the floating survivors of this battle together, we ended up in a room (a banquet hall) with really old people who at one time were superheroes. They have mostly passed on their legacies, and the hall was filled with second and third-generation heroes in various stages of diaper-changing. The only problem is that I, or rather, my POV, was very much not old, and still an active individual.

In case you hadn’t figured it out by now, my dreams are pretty messed up. This particular experience is of the variety I like to call “tame.”

So then there I was, wandering outside the convention hall, which appears from the outside to be a ramshackle building at the end of a dirt track in a thick canopy jungle. I’m dressed in simple denim and wearing a straw cowboy hat, and at this time am starting to take control of the dream (I do that. It’s a thing). I’ve been walking for a while, but am careful to stay in sight of the shack. There’s important things and people in there. We’re saving the world, and stuff.

Kicking at the dirt, I find some nice, smooth rocks. Roughly palm-sized, they have a decent heft, about a pound each. When the giant lizards attack, I charge them up and give the scaly bastards a good whack on the head to let them know I’m not so tasty after all. It’s sufficient to drive them back into the jungle, but I know it’s a temporary measure at best. Heading back to the hall, I’m stopped by a friend and asked why I’ve been out fighting dinosaurs again. My response is “Somebody has to, and I’ve forgotten how to do anything else.”

Why am I showing/telling/pontificating you this? Because while I remember this dream quite vividly, it’s got very little to do with the story I started on the way into work that day. Here’s what I actually wrote down:

“Immortal super hero has retired, and is anonymously running a hole-in-the-wall biker bar on the New Mexico border. Breaking up a fight at the front door, he muses that no matter what the era, someone always has something to prove.”

What, you say? Where’s the paragliding? Where’s the giant lizards? What’s up with the rocks?

As a writer, it’s my responsibility to tell you that all of that stuff is absolute garbage. It’s scenery, not story. It’s flashy, and to be fair taking on a dinosaur with a pair of fist sized rocks sounds like a lot of fun. But it’s ultimately empty. Because there’s only one thing that matters from that dream.

A cowboy walking down a dusty road, kicking at rocks because he doesn’t know how to do anything else.

Story is about characters, and without a good one, you might as well stay asleep. This particular dream will stay with me a very long time. The act of summarizing its essential elements keeps it alive, even though I didn’t write down the cool bits until just now. Dreams are memories we don’t understand, of events which may never happen in places we may never go.

Stories are accounts of events we haven’t thought to imagine yet. If you ask me why I write, I’ll tell you that, “somebody has to, and I’ve forgotten how to do anything else.”

Which leads me to the first line of my new short story. It took me a while to come to it, because I had to write the middle parts before I understood the beginning. I had to know that cowboy, understand why he does what he does. feel the things he feels when he looks at the world. So I end today’s post with a beginning, and a hope that I haven’t bored you overmuch.

“Buck? You better get out front, we got some more coming.”

Posted June 12th, 2011.

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