Author Archives: Poseidon's Scribe

Writing—Routine, Habit, or Ritual?

As a writer, you’re trying to form a daily routine of writing well. Or is that a good habit of writing well? Or a ritual? Let’s clear this up.

According to neuroscience expert Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs, all three are periodically repeating actions, but there are differences. I’m going to put my own spin on the ideas Ms. Le Cunff presented in her article.

Routine. This type of action is conscious and deliberate. A routine requires thought and willpower to do. If a strong intent isn’t there each time, you’ll just stop doing the routine, or you’ll delay it until the last minute.

Examples of routines include exercising, cleaning your room, and paying taxes.

Habit. This is an action prompted by an automatic urge, usually triggered by some cue. The closer your mind connects the action to the cue, the more fixed the habit becomes. Habits can be good or bad, and human nature makes it easy to slip into bad ones and easy to slip out of good ones.

Examples of habits include getting up with an alarm clock, brushing teeth after eating, and checking email first after turning on your computer.

Ritual. An action intended to better yourself, not just maintain your existence. It gives you purpose and fulfillment. Your focus is on enjoying the task, not just getting through it.

Examples of rituals include meditation, learning a new language, and practicing a musical instrument.

If you intend to be a good writer, which of the three are you aiming for? To answer that, you need to understand one more concept first—the Habit Loop.

I believe all habits start off as routines. For example, the first time you brushed your teeth, you had to think through the process. It was a routine, requiring intent and concentration. Later, after it became a habit, you performed it automatically, usually right after eating.

How do routines become habits? By using the Habit Loop.

The idea here is to use a cue of some kind to trigger the task, and then reward yourself for completing it. By shortening the time of the cycle, particularly the cue-routine gap and the routine-reward gap, you help ingrain the routine as a habit. That’s what the inward-pointing arrows signify.

How does all this apply to writing? For simplicity, let’s separate writing into three tasks:

  1. Initiation—sitting down to write. I recommend making this a daily habit. Use the Habit Loop to ingrain it, if necessary. For beginning writers, Initiation is the most important task. After all, the other two can’t take place if you don’t plunk yourself down in the chair to write first.
  • Conceptualization—choosing a genre, constructing a plot, fleshing out characters. I think of this as a ritual, in the sense of being done for the sheer joy of writing. This requires considerable conscious thought and creativity, and should not be considered a chore. Don’t get into a habit rut by writing stories with the same theme, similar characters, common settings, etc. Keep things fresh.
  • Mechanics—stringing sentences together, choosing words, etc. Some days, this may seem like a ritual, an enjoyable task done for its own sake. Other days, it may seem like a routine, a task requiring thought but one you look forward to completing. Perhaps for truly experienced authors, this becomes more automatic, like a habit.

Is writing a routine, habit, or ritual? Apparently, it is all three. It’s a routine/habit/ritual much loved by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 31, 2020Permalink

Picking Up Where You Left Off

You’ve carved out some time to write, and you’re enthused about adding a new scene to that story you’ve been working on. You sit down and look back over what you wrote yesterday, so you can resume writing in that same mood and mindset.

But wait. As you review yesterday’s work, there’s a mistake you need to fix. And another. That whole paragraph needs to go. And you forgot to add some character motivation here. Some scene setting detail there.

Before you know it, your valuable time—the precious hour you’d planned for adding a new scene—has been squandered while you edited previous scenes. What a waste!

Or was it?

It’s an interesting question, and your writing style will determine the answer for you. Consider the two extremes:

Style A. There’s a time for writing and a time for editing. Turn off your inner editor when you write. Free yourself to write first drafts as quickly as you can. When you sit down to write, give only the briefest glance over what you wrote yesterday, ignore mistakes, and charge into your work on the next section, writing as fast as you can. Set aside other days for editing. Otherwise, you’ll be editing forever and never writing.

Style Z. Editing is part of writing. When you sit down to write, you shouldn’t ever ignore problems you see in yesterday’s draft. The changes needed there will affect what you plan to write today. If you ignore the mistakes you see in yesterday’s draft, you might miss them later; best to correct them now. Time spent in some light editing today is time saved, and consistency preserved, tomorrow.  

There’s an entire spectrum of options between Styles A and Z. Moreover, you can choose different options every day. Perhaps your choice will depend on the answers to questions like:

  • How terrible was yesterday’s draft?
  • How clear in your mind is the scene you plan to write today?
  • How much will yesterday’s draft affect today’s?
  • Do you have a deadline?
  • Do you outsource the editing chore to someone else?

A recent facebook post by author Lyn Worthen inspired today’s blogpost. Judging from the comments Lyn received, many authors aren’t bothered by the idea of reading the last few pages and editing as needed before continuing with unwritten portions.

If it really irks you to spend time editing previous sections first, but you can’t resist the urge to do that, well, don’t think of it as editing. Lyn suggests calling it a warmup, a method of re-entering the world of your story. She says you may find this cyclic looping process has the benefits of (a) refreshing your memory, (b), alerting you to previous mistakes, (c) maintaining consistency of tone and voice, and (d) saving you from an enormous pile of editing work when you’ve finished.

New day. Time to finish writing this blogpost. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I was about to close with my typical sign-off as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 24, 2020Permalink

Why You Bound Out of Bed

The reason you scramble out of bed each day, wide-eyed and raring to go, is simple. You’ve got things to do. More specifically, you have goals to achieve. As Snuffy Smith always said, “time’s a’wastin’!”

What’s that? You don’t bound out of bed? You (shudder) don’t have any goals?

Hoo boy. We’ve got to talk.

There is enormous power in the practice of committing to goals. There are also numerous side benefits for you, incidental to achieving the goal itself.

I’ll offer two examples from my life. Many years ago, my younger sister called me; she was excited because she’d decided to train for, and run, a marathon. Prior to her call, I’d given no thought to running a marathon myself. After that brief phone call, I was committed.

I registered for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C., at that time about nine months in the future. I bought a book about training for a marathon and followed its plan, including maintaining a running log. Often during that year, I thought I’d never be ready in time. However, I knew the Marines were unlikely to postpone their race just to accommodate me. Still, I ran and finished the race.

As a second example, I recognized, about a year ago, that June 20, 2020, will be the 150th anniversary of the publication of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. I set a goal of launching, on that exact date, a sesquicentennial anthology honoring Verne’s novel. I’ve never co-edited an anthology before, but goals should push you outside your comfort zone, beyond your known limits. They should be big, audacious, and grand.

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

So far, progress toward that goal has been good. Things are proceeding well. We’ve received wonderful stories and look forward to publishing the anthology on time.

Enough about me. What about your goals?

According to this article by Anya Kamenetz, there are mental and physical health benefits to setting and achieving goals. A University of Toronto study showed performance in school improved for all ethnic groups and genders of students who wrote down and worked toward goals.

When you decide to set a goal, I believe it’s important to write it down, not just memorize it. Performing that simple act:

  • Cements the goal and affirms your commitment to it;
  • Gives direction and meaning to your actions;
  • Paints a picture, a vision, of the future to which you aspire;
  • Creates an urge within you that prods you to achieve daily progress and nags you when you fall behind;
  • Helps you overcome setbacks, laziness, disenchantments, and obstacles;
  • Provides immense satisfaction when every milestone and the final goal are met;
  • Boosts confidence in your ability to achieve; and
  • Spurs you on to setting a new goal after each achieved one.

What’s that you say? You have a problem with the entire ‘goal’ concept? You say you don’t set goals anymore because you feel bad about yourself when you fall short?

Well, you may not achieve all your goals. I haven’t met all the goals I’ve set either. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up over failures. Missing a goal doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.

Learn what you can from that failure and set another goal. Consider a smaller one, easier to achieve. Celebrate when you achieve it. You’ll build your confidence one win at a time.  

Pretty soon you’ll be bounding out of bed each day, just like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 17, 2020Permalink

Characters Say More Than They Say

When we talk, we don’t often come right out and say what we feel. That should be the same with your fictional characters. There should be meaning below the words. That’s known as subtext.

I’ll come right out and admit this: I’m still learning how to employ subtext in my characters’ dialogue. As a trained engineer, I tend to speak plainly and strive for exactitude in meaning so I can be clearly understood. Unfortunately, many of my characters sound like me. Not good, but I’m getting better.

Let’s learn about subtext in dialogue together, then, shall we? There are some wonderful blogposts you can read, including this one on the Industrial Scripts website and this one by author K.M. Weiland.

These two sites give us techniques to practice, including having characters say:

  1. what they mean, but in a different way,
  2. something unexpected,
  3. something understated or ironic,
  4. something with actions instead of words,
  5. the same words or phrases again later to gain additional meaning, and
  6. the bare truth in a moment of high emotion.

Each blogpost also provides excellent examples from movies so you can analyze how scriptwriters accomplish the intended purpose.

The technique you choose should be consistent with your character’s motivation and personality.

Every major character has a motivation. The character wants something, or wants to avoid something. Let’s say female Character A is speaking to male Character B. A knows B can help her get what she wants, can interfere with her getting what she wants, or is neutral. Her motivation can guide you in infusing her dialogue with subtext.

Your characters also have distinct personalities. Those personality types influence both what the character says and the subtext beneath that. Therefore, both the dialogue itself, and the subtext beneath will help the reader become familiar with the character as the story proceeds.

In this blogpost, screenwriter Charles Harris discusses steps you can use to improve your use of subtext in dialogue. When you read his post, you’ll learn the details of how to:

  1. Practice writing subtext to hone your skill.
  2. Write straight text first, then alter it to suit the characters and the situation.
  3. Study real-life dialogue; try to detect subtext in what real people say.
  4. Study dialogue in fiction.
  5. Complete a simple exercise to develop your technique.  
  6. Get better acquainted with your characters. Give each one a distinctive speech pattern, favorite phrase, or habitual saying. Hear their voice in your head.
  7. Use idle moments to imagine (and write down) ideas for subtext-filled dialogue.
  8. Eliminate excess words. Keep dialogue to bare bones.
  9. Know when to have a character spill out actual thoughts when in an extreme emotional state.

Now you know. When I say I’m Poseidon’s Scribe, I mean I’m either much more than, or not really—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 10, 2020Permalink

Breaking Punctuation Rules

Recently, in a meeting with my critique group, I criticized an author for using too many em-dashes (—) in a manuscript. This author then acquainted me with an interesting online disagreement.

First, author Kate Dyer-Seeley posted a well-worded defense of the Oxford Comma. I, too, am a fan of inserting a comma after the penultimate item in a list before the ‘and.’

Then, author Kristine Kathryn Rusch (who had once been Dyer-Seely’s instructor) countered with a post of her own. Her objection didn’t concern the Oxford Comma, but rather Dyer-Seely’s willingness to add or delete commas from her manuscripts based on an editor’s suggestions.

For Rusch, punctuation is a tool employed in the service of the story, and useful for conveying an author’s voice. Therefore, if you beak a punctuation rule and an editor suggests a revision, you should be able to defend your punctuation choices.

Who’s right?

Here’s a list of ten famous authors who violated, even spat on, punctuation rules without any harm to their reputation. They would side with Rusch.

To be fair, I’ve over-simplified Rusch’s position. She did say a writer must first learn the rules of punctuation before breaking them. We’ve heard that confusing advice before—learn the rules before you break them. Huh?

Here’s the catch, though. If you’re an editor (or a fellow writer doing a critique), it can be difficult to distinguish whether the writer’s flouting of the rules is part of the writer’s style and is meant to serve the story, or if the writer broke the rules out of haste, laziness, poor self-editing, etc.

If you’re a beginning writer still struggling to find your voice, the recommendations of an editor can seem like a burning-bush pronouncement, complete with stone tablets. It can be intimidating to fight back and defend every punctuation violation, as Rusch advocates.

Until recently, I’d never understood the editorial side of the business, but as a first-time co-editor of an upcoming anthology, I’m beginning to appreciate it. Any submitted manuscript does provide certain clues about why a writer broke a rule.

For instance, are there other mistakes? Are there misspellings and grammatical errors that fling a reader out of the story? If so, chances are the writer lacks a defendable rationale for breaking punctuation rules.

On the other hand, as an editor, did you breeze through the story, caught up in the writer’s world, and only notice punctuation violations upon re-reading? If so, you know this author has an established voice, a solid command of when to break rules. Edit such a story with a light touch.

Rusch’s position is a strong one, and it should be the goal of every fiction writer. Convey your story using your voice. If that means breaking some rules, do so, and stand ready to defend your choices.

Not apologizing for this final em-dash, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 3, 2020Permalink

Just in Time—World Book Day

In an instant of time, a tiny speck of living matter—a virus—has deprived us of many of our closest physical connections. No handshakes, no hugging, and no breathing the same air. The pestilence has isolated us, separated us, left us alone and lonely.

We do have our electronic links, our e-handshakes and e-hugs, if you will. We can see each other through a camera lens, hear others’ voices with that brief but annoying delay. These amazing technological connections are better than nothing, but just aren’t the same as face-to-face presence.

We turn on the news only to see other people, also sitting in their homes staring at their computers’ camera eye, telling us of mounting death tolls, of the disease’s pattern of spread. They warn us to stay in our homes, wear a mask, wash our hands, and remain apart and disconnected.

Is there no escape from the bad news? No spark left of human resilience? No positive examples of people using ingenuity to solve problems? Are there no tales of women or men standing and facing danger with bravery?

Yes, there are. The Coronavirus has taken many things from us, but not our books. Today is World Book Day, and we still have books.

Sure, a TV show or movie can entertain for an hour or two, but a book will enthrall you for days. Moreover, it will engage your imagination to conjure your own images from the words, not spoon-feed ready-made video pictures.

I’ll bet you’ve often thought, “I’ll read that book someday when I have time.” Now, you have time.

Read that book. Let it transport you away from this place of isolation and quarantine. Lose yourself in other lands, other times, and join up with fascinating people, many of whom cope with far greater difficulties than yours. Maybe these characters aren’t people at all, but we all know the literary metaphor—animals, robots, or aliens in stories are really stand-ins for people. They may prevail in their struggle; they may not, but their will to strive onward may inspire you to endure the worst that COVID-19 can inflict.

It’s a fine day to read a book, don’t you think? Happy World Book Day, from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 23, 2020Permalink

That Bookshelf Behind You

On TV these days, we’re seeing the insides of a lot of people’s homes. Particularly bookshelves. If you’re an expert being interviewed by the media, it’s important to have an impressive bookshelf as backdrop behind you.

Ah, but what is an ‘impressive’ bookshelf? Let’s explore that today, so you can prepare for your next Skype call from a TV network.  

A portion of Poseidon’s Scribe’s bookshelf

I’m not that impressed by bookshelves arranged for show. If it looks like the books sit there for years without being read, that indicates a shelf intended to dazzle others, not to serve the owner.

A useful home bookshelf should have a sense of chaos, of disorder, with some books leaning, and perhaps others left horizontal. That indicates a reverence for books as things to be read, not as props to be displayed.

In Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne gives Captain Nemo a library aboard the Nautilus intended both to impress Professor Aronnax (and thus, the reader) and to convey a sense of frequent use by an eclectic mind.

Captain Nemo’s bookshelves

“Tall pieces of furniture, made of black rosewood inlaid with copper, contained in their deep shelves a vast number of books uniformly bound…works of science, ethics, literature, in many languages, were in abundance…And, strange to say, these books were not grouped according to the languages they were written in, and the resultant mixture suggested that the captain could read fluently whatever books came to hand, regardless of language.”

(Well, I do have one quibble, Captain Nemo. If the Nautilus takes an angle or encounters rough seas on the surface, most of your books will fall to the floor. Bookshelves aboard the submarines I’ve seen always include moveable restraining bars to keep books in place.)

Cover image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

This seems a good moment to mention that both I and Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing are co-editing an upcoming anthology titled 20,000 Leagues Remembered, a collection of short stories intended as a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Verne’s novel. Submit your own story here.

Returning to the topic of bookshelves, remember—they’re meant to be used, not just seen. If a TV network calls you for a video interview, you’d like to be known as a person who reads, not just owns, books.

If you work for a news station and want to interview an expert on the use of bookshelves as background, or just desire to interview an interesting author, call me and ask for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 19, 2020Permalink

Coronavirus and Black Swan Theory

Historians will look back, I believe, at the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 as a ‘black swan’ event. For the rest of us, memories of this may fade, but they’ll never go away.

What’s a black swan event? According to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, a black swan event has three properties: (1) It is a surprise; (2) It has a major effect; and (3) After it occurs, people consider it to have been inevitable.

We’re still in the middle of the pandemic and the accompanying economic disaster, but I believe they both meet all three criteria. Some have written articles denying this, on the basis of Criteria (1). Medical scientists had warned us about pandemics, they say, and we’ve even had pandemics before. Novels and movies about disease outbreaks were warnings, too.

No. For most of us, the COVID-19 outbreak and the economic shutdown came as a sudden shock. If anything, those who deny this pandemic is a black swan are just proving it satisfies Criteria (3). It’s to be expected that some will claim we should have known.

Let’s get beyond that. I’m less interested in arguing about criteria than in what we do now. How do black swan events change us? How do we prepare for future ones? 

When this is over, I believe most people will revert back to their pre-virus lives without much change. They might wash their hands more often, but that’s about it. They’ll go to concerts, sporting events, and church. They’ll shake hands. They’ll fly on planes.

However, for everyone now alive, this pandemic will linger on in memory. It can’t un-happen for us. We’ll think about it when we meet strangers, when we buy toilet paper, when we choose investments or apply for our next job. No matter what we do from now on, a corner of our mind will remind us of the risks we’re taking. Future generations will shake their heads at our curious hygiene fixations and risk-averse financial strategies.

For us, that small voice in our head, that conscience, represents part of the solution to the Black Swan problem. As Taleb recommended, you should make decisions that allow you to exploit positive events while still guarding against black swans.

In other words, hug your family, but fist-bump strangers. Go to the basketball game, but don’t scratch that nose itch until you’ve washed your hands. Invest some of your portfolio in stocks, but keep some money in safer accounts. Take that job aboard a cruise ship, but keep your list of grocery store contacts.

Despite their low probability, black swan events happen. The Stock Market Crash of 1929, Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassination, 9-11, and Coronavirus 2020 are all examples, but more await us in the future. They’ll be unpredictable, significant, and, afterward, strangely inevitable.

You can’t plan for what you can’t predict. But reserving a few resources for imaginable worst-case scenarios might prove wise if the worst case comes to pass.  

One more thought about black swan events. As a species, we’ve survived them all. No matter what the future hurls at us, we’ll be inventive and adaptable. We’ll fight our way through. We’ll come out the other side—roughed up, perhaps—but standing tall.

Welcome to the battle for the future. In this corner, you’ve got a black swan. And in this corner, the entire human race. Let’s get ready to rumble! With all my money bet on the humans, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 12, 2020Permalink

It’s Not Too Late

You still have time to submit a short story to the upcoming anthology, 20,000 Leagues Remembered. This book will be a sesquicentennial tribute to Jules Verne’s novel.

Cover Image for 20,000 Leagues Remembered

I’m co-editing this anthology along with Kelly A. Harmon of Pole to Pole Publishing. We’re received and accepted a number of fine stories already.

However, we still have room for two or three more. For us to accept your submission, your story:

•           must pay tribute in some way to Jules Verne’s novel;

•           may be set in any time or place;

•           may use characters from Verne’s novel or you can make up your own;

•           need not be written in Verne’s style;

•           need not be ‘dark’ (as stories in other Pole to Pole Publishing anthologies have been);

•           must capture, in your own way, the sense of wonder and adventure for which Jules Verne is famous;

•           demonstrate a significant and obvious connection with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; and

•           must not disparage either the novel or its author.

Come on. You’re sitting at home anyway. You might as well type up a story and send it here.

Your story might well be the next one accepted by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 6, 2020Permalink

Future Technology vs. Pandemics

Let’s take a break from the unpleasant coronavirus news of the present, and travel to the future. Specifically, let’s see how our descendants might prevent or deal with pandemic viral outbreaks.

Futuristic Caduceus

Speculation about the future is always error-prone. Many technologies I’ll mention won’t pan out, or will introduce unforeseen problems. Also, these probably won’t eliminate the existence of viruses; new ones will mutate to get around our best efforts to defeat them. Still, those concerns never stop a SciFi writer from imagining! With that in mind, let’s time-travel.

Getting Infected

People used to pick up viruses mostly from the animal world. Now, in the future, there is less opportunity for doing that. Synthetic foods have lessened the need for humans to consume wildlife. High crop yield technologies mean we need less farmland, so we no longer destroy habitats, thus keeping wildlife in their own areas.

Other technologies have rendered humans immune to most viruses. These technologies include artificial immune systems, implanting favorable animal genes within humans, and designer babies.

Infecting Others

If someone does pick up a virus in this future time, advanced filters in building ventilation systems lessen the spread. Workplaces and transit systems contain sensors that detect whether occupants are running a fever, and alert them. Bathrooms include automated hand washing machines. Facemasks use fabrics that prohibit the flow of pathogens or bacteria in either direction. Some have opted for nasal and throat implants to do the same thing.  

Alerting the World

Upon discovery of a novel virus, doctors in this future world have new ways to notify other experts. Chatbots share the information instantly. Universal translators ensure precise understanding.

Sensing Infections

Various technologies have enabled people to know at once if they’re infected, long before they feel symptoms. These include home-use scanners, (inspired by Star Trek medical tricorders) wearable and implantable sensors, digital tattoos, genetic diagnosis, and nano-med-robots.

Developing Cures

Today, in our future world, supercomputers work on vaccines immediately after notification of a novel virus. They employ advanced modeling to test the effects of drugs virtually, and in many cases can skip time-consuming animal and human trials. Resulting vaccines are then personalized, tuned to individual body chemistries.

Getting Treatment

People no longer go to a doctor’s office or hospital. Medical care is virtual now, with human doctors remaining remote. Drones deliver food and medical supplies. Robots provide in-home care, including cleaning, examining, and operating. 3-D printers manufacture pain medication in the home, meds that are tailored to the subject and provide instant relief. Recovery makes use of gaming therapy, with virtual reality helping to relax the patient’s mind.

On the near horizon is the long-sought ‘autodoc,’ a staple of 20th Century science fiction—an enclosure you climb into that cures all ills.

Tracking the Spread

Artificially intelligent algorithms conduct contact tracing analysis to map the spread of the virus, notifying people they’ve come in contact with a virus carrier. Through the use of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality, experts can track and forecast outbreaks as hotspots emerge. These same technologies permit rapid identification of the most at-risk individuals.

Isolating the Infected

As in previous ages, governments still vary in the degree of freedom allowed to individuals. Some are more coercive in enforcing quarantines than others. But artificial intelligence at least allows informed decisions based on contact tracing and mathematical modeling. Moreover, citizens have access to real-time fact-checking to distinguish truth from propaganda or bias.

Back to the Present

Unfortunately, that ends our trip to the future and we’re back in 2020 now. I know, it’s disorienting and humbling. Still, imagine a time traveler from fifty or a hundred years ago visiting our time and being equally amazed at the medical wonders we now take for granted.

For many of the ideas I mentioned above, I’m indebted to tekkibytes.com, medicalfuturist.com, futureforall.org, triotree.com, techperspective.net, fastcompany.com, defenseone.com, treehugger.com, and forbes.com.

For further trips to the future, check back frequently with—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 5, 2020Permalink