Coping: With the Book-writer Within

by

193 pages.  181 footnotes. 4-weeks of every waking minute outside of Urban and Peoplenomics.  And now the BIG problems begin.

Dimensions Next Door will not be ready for proofreading for a couple of more weeks because the book laid out some directions to potential intellectual property (patents) and I need to get them done and filed before the book is turned loose.

The book lays waste to the Philadelphia Experiment – that chapter is called Philadelphia: Three Ship Monte. The chapter on missing ships and aircraft comes up with a far different conclusion than the populists who have written of “12 Vile Vortexes” around the world.  Nope.  There’s a better answer.

(Continues below)

 

For now, it’s out to the shop which will get a good cleaning and then I will run the long-delayed experiments based on the book.

True, I have been buying test equipment for a couple of years now – and curiously, without knowing specifically why.

Yet, this morning it all became clear.  This whole project has been like building a house.  The test gear is like going out and buying lumber which has been “seasoning.”

Writing DND has been the equivalent of drawing up the plans once I was starting to get the “lumber in hand.”  The test-bed is the foundation, the experiments and results should be the majority of the “house.”

If the experiments fail?  This is the highest probability, after all.  Well, it will turn out to be perhaps the most foot-noted piece of fact-based fiction ever.  Or, I can leave out the experiments and leave it in the non-fiction category.  The experiments will determine that…

Main thing to share, though, is what is universally applicable in the way of writing lessons.  This you may find interesting.

How so?  Well, I found in school (back in the MBA days) that if you wanted to score high marks in a class, all you had to do was to “parrot-back” the points of the textbook, changing the context slightly, give it just enough spin…and make it long.

In government contracts, law, non-disclosures, grad school, and most times at work:  Long documents are given more deference than short ones.

So, learning to write – lots and fast – is one of the keys to success. This was doubly true when I was a college director and our periodic accreditation visits came up:  Our “self-study” report was a monster – well over 100-pages, single-spaced and with twice that in appendices that included prodigious computer runs.

I made sure that those reports could be argued from any position, as well.  A favorite lawyerly trick I learned of from a friend in law school long ago.  “Write the brief, but always include as much about the other side’s position as your own,” I was told.  That way, you could easily say “We addressed that on page so-and-so.”

Writing non-fiction is like being a detective.  My first chapter was “First, It Helps to Die.”  It’s where the personal encounters with near-death experience lives.  And from literally, life and death, you can go off on any direction you want.

That’s how interesting non-fiction should be, I think: It should be like reading a detective story, as much as anything.

Writing fiction is much, much easier.  Because it’s like watching television.

In my book DreamOver: A David Shannon Adventure, the writing process was different,

You see, in fiction all you need to do is get a clear vision of a scene from you movie playing in your head (which you are capturing on paper and turning into a book) and turn it into words from the pictures and dialog that is going through your mind.

It goes, without saying, that the most important part of writing fiction is to envision strong scenes and then utilize specific words (much as an artist uses a paintbrush) to fill-in the details and take a boring “picture” transforming it into a compelling (can’t put it down) adventure.

As I’ve explained before, DND is the non-fiction “fact-collection” for my next novel.  The problem with the novel is that most are simply rehashed work-overs of long-spent plots.

To be good, authors need to travel, or in the case of DND, actually run the experiments on being space-time in order to write with authority.

But this, in turn, comes from something else:  We’re back to having and holding the scenes from your movie (distilling to novel) clearly enough that the words will literally jump from brain to page.

DND has taken almost six weeks to complete – longer than I envisioned, if you’ll pardon the pun.  But the research is where the time went; not specifically into the writing itself.

There’s the choice for you.

Everyone has “at least one good book in them” if they have lived a useful life.  It’s one of the most enjoyable things you can do.  Even if it doesn’t pay off up front (huge book sales, notoriety, movie deal and all those traps I’ve managed to avoid so far, lol) it is still deeply satisfying at a spiritual level.

Next time you get ‘the urge to write” – don’t waste it making up eyeball captures for Zuke Markerburg or some other social media gazzilionaire.

Write it for your kids, a few friends, and screw this dribbling out your personal movie on social media.  You will never make any money there and the satisfaction is hollow, at best.

Be what you already are:

A Writer.

Post-it’s

One of our frequent commenters posted half a dozen links to a baseless doom-porn YT piece about how we’re all being poisoned in some paranoid plot.

Eventually, tired perhaps of his posts NOT showing up, he sent in “Testing?” and yeah, that, too, was deleted.

There are simply too many people who have gone into doom-porn and setting up video channels and while entertaining if your time isn’t too valuable, we have a simple test around here.  Are there verifiable facts presented from credible sources?

If not, a couple of doomers out of Canada who offer no supporting evidence of outlandish claims, are not going to be approved as a comment here.  For one, I haven’t written a column lately on how “burning up nuclear spacecraft are going to poison us all,” lately.

If, or when, I do write such a column, then I will reconsider.  But, in the meantime, we are not part of the “me-too” doom-porn posse.

Doom will get here soon enough, brought by too many people and making up too much money.  We choose not to be part of its monetization without concrete facts that we have personally verified.

And our own work, verifying facts, takes precedence over the re-posts of others.

There…now, go home (if you’re in Florida or Houston) and get to work.

Tomorrow, we’ll get into the Insurance Rebellion.

Write when you get rich,

George@ure.net

18 thoughts on “Coping: With the Book-writer Within”

  2. Keep in mind that more than half those people returning after the evacuation have less than $500 available to deal with the damage. So consider, go to work with what? Your money? And many will no longer ave employment in the thousands of small businesses that were already failing before these disasters occurred.

    Those of us not in the first world realize there is no magic like the USA printing press money when it comes to recovery. The cost of simply disposing of damaged property will be greater than the GDP of a small nation. Historically, they used to just build on top of the rubble. No longer feasible where everything is connected underground.

    Most of these people will never recover their former standard of living ever, and neither will their children. For many, a second world existence will be their dream. A missionary friend once told me, you haven’t seen third world until you see a city of 40,000 without a single flush toilet.

    As for radiation, you don need any exotic plot. These numbers are from EPA monitors. Consider that those folks were just feeling what was going on and novelized it, because Norte Americanos sure don’t want to be bothered with facts.

    https://yourradiationthisweek.org

  3. George
    So your going to build yourself a Mad Scientist lab and the sparks will fly! Are you going to dabble in the Hutchison Effect or possibly create a Warp bubble? I hope we don’t hear that you turn up missing one day after you by accident open a dimensional portal!!
    Remember to keep one hand not touching anything when working on high power electrical circuits.
    Have a great time and stay safe!

    • Oh my..if you end up traveling to another time .. make sure you get back so you can let us know

  4. I would appreciate your opinion on self publishing on Amazon as an e-book. The one book in me is a story based on a past life reading I had done. This would be fiction of historical drama type. Do you think it is worth the effort to write a book and use the Amazon publishing method to get it out there?

  5. @ Al B…

    Agreed – Pournelle will be missed. Niven is missed too…

    @ EcuadorExpat…

    Don’t forget the solar situation. When sunspot activity is low, the magnetosphere and the atmosphere are reduced – the rads will increase. It has happened before, and a case can be made that the survivors of these periodic increases are us, those mutations that survived the increases.

    There is already quite a lot of rebuilding going on. What people fail to understand is that this hurricane dropped 45-50 inches on us in about 60 hours. This is well beyond anything envisioned anywhere in disaster scenarios. The Feds are helpless, and already leaving for Florida in droves. They are like crows, just sitting on the telephone wires and watching us work, and talking to each other about what a great job they are doing.

    For you northerners, we got the equivalent of 50-60 feet of snow in 60 hours. We are only now getting to the really ruined areas in the affected zones. Many may not be able to rebuild, but the freeways are working again for the most part, and life goes on. It’s little different from what is going to happen in Chiapas after the quake – life there will go on too.

    For those interested, I am going to visit George and see this mad scientist layout. I just can’t help myself…LOL

  6. I too have been a fan of Jerry since the Byte years. I still have two early copies of Byte that I treasure. The mold was broken when he passed.

    His science fiction stories featured a blend of believable technologies, logic, humor, and adventure, without the need to rely on magic or fantasy. I never had the opportunity to meet him, but he has been a strong influence in my own hard science fiction writing.

    R.I.P. Jerry.

    A.G. Kimbrough

  8. “I will run the long-delayed experiments based on the book.”

    I am torn this week and your running experiments makes me wonder yes/no…
    My good friend just got the your existence is limited diagnosis.
    There’s a couple things he’s been playing with that he’d like to see in completion before he goes.
    I think I understand where he’s made his mistakes.
    I’m torn.. should I build what he hasn’t been able to understand to show him.. or leave it undone and let him leave not knowing.
    The answers are simplistic but would take a minor amount of tinkering.

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