Haw flakes

While vacationing in San Francisco, I picked up some haw flakes in Chinatown. A fun little confection for me; a conflict trigger for the kids in the next Generation Mars book.

“So, in the interest of preventing strife, Jun and Keiron suggested it would be best if the Chinese ate their own rations until they were gone. Then they would adopt the Metzger menu. Ro reluctantly agreed, as it delayed dealing with the issue of the Chinese eating what she thought of as ‘our’ food. This plan would have worked except for one item the Chinese had in their stores: haw flakes.”

(Excerpt from Food: Generation Mars, Book Four. Coming soon.)

Crafting Generation Mars 9

At this point, I’m keeping track of word count. I’m not strict with myself. I don’t have to be. The enthusiasm is raging and watching that count go up each day is enough. Sometimes I post about it. 

For one book (Shelter), I experimented with daily social media posting of word count updates, along with an image that was somehow relevant to whatever I had worked on that day. It was kind of fun but also a distraction. Now, I just post occasionally for milestones.

Because I tend to be sparing with words and flesh out as I go, my word count rarely goes down, instead climbing steadily, even after multiple rounds of editing.

image: Edited from public domain image at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Word_Count_h_650.svg

Crafting Generation Mars 8

What follows is weeks, months, a year, more (in the case of this book) of painting, resketching, more painting, more research, resketching, painting. This is when the UnusedFragments folder comes into play.

image:

Landscape, Unfinished between 1848 and 1860 Werner Holmberg (1830–1860)
painting: public domain
image: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Whenever I tinker with a scene, I have Scrivener Duplicate it first and work on the duplicate. Then I move the previous version to the UnusedFragments directory. 

Scrivener adds an incremental number suffix to the scene name when you Duplicate. So, what I end up with is an archive of all the versions of every scene. For a project like Food, this directory is getting ridiculously large. I might rethink this for the next book. 

Crafting Generation Mars 7

Structure begins to suggest itself. I start creating Part and Chapter folders within the Manuscript folder and dragging the scenes into them. 

I’m still sketching though. You know how an artist will often sketch a new work in pencil before getting out the paint? It’s like that.

Image: Jigsaw puzzle in progress, set on a large cardboard piece, with a box of jigsaw pieces next to it. photographer: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Balise42 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Crafting Generation Mars 6

Little by little, these scenes begin to find each other. This is when I start copying them into the Manuscript folder. At first, this folder is flat, just a jumble of scenes that may or may not be in order. I make no attempt to divide it into chapters yet. 

Image: Brightly-colored jigsaw puzzle pieces in a random pile. By Hans-Peter Gauster 2017 Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal

Crafting Generation Mars 5

At some point, I start to feel itchy. That’s the best word I have for it. Scenes start popping into my thoughts. Characters too. Inklings of plot arc. That’s when I start using the Notes folder. 

This folder contains a development diary. Each day, I create a new entry and write. Word count is meaningless at this point. I’m not even trying to write anything for the book yet. I just try to write something each day. 

Early on, these entries take the form of Socratic dialogs with myself, as I work out ideas. Eventually, I start writing short scenes and test pieces for these ideas.

Image: Jack London writing in 1905, as pictured in The Book of Jack London (1921) by his wife Charmian London. The photograph is captioned “The Sea Wolf”, the name of Jack’s novel published the previous year. He is seated outside, amongst boulders and trees. From the Public Domain Image Archive.

Crafting Generation Mars 4

AI plays a role in the book I’m working on, so that’s another topic I’ve been researching. In a fit of whimsy, I decided to use AI to research AI.

Wary confession: I discovered that an occasional focused chat session was a good way to work out my understanding of complex topics.

I keep transcripts of these sessions in the relevant Research subfolder. For the current book, I have sessions on AI, Earth-Mars cyclers, tethered spin gravity, Coriolis force, Mars taxi orbits, orbital proximity operations, and the Taoist concept of wu wei.

These sessions also provide me with citations for further, more in-depth research. What they don’t provide is usable calculations. AI still sucks at math. Never trust AI with math. Actually never trust AI.

AI is that friend you find entertaining and like to hang out with once in a while, but you would never have pet sit.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg (license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en)

Crafting Generation Mars 2

I publish through my own publishing house: Noisy Flowers LLC. I came up with the name one particularly clamorous afternoon as my two daughters competed to see who could sing the loudest.

The winner drew the logo.

Crafting Generation Mars (1)

I’ve been buried in the development process for the next book and haven’t had much time for social media. Now that I’m over the creative hump and in the refinement phase, I thought I might post a little about my creative process and production pipeline.

Posts in this series will be sporadic and likely span months. Maybe years, I dunno. Time is erratic. I’ll use the hashtag #CraftingGenMars followed by the number in the series to keep track.

I don’t interact with other authors as much as I’d like to. I have no idea whether my process is typical or weird. If you’re an author and find something interesting, please chime in with your thoughts along the way.

Image: “Woman with wax tablets and stylus (so-called “Sappho”)”, between 55 and 79 AD, Naples National Archaeological Museum 

Starliner adventure

This is a riveting interview with the Starliner astronauts about their experiences with that capsule in its maiden crewed flight.

Orbital dynamics, proximity operations, thruster failures: all play a big role in the coming Generation Mars book. It’s interesting to read about similar events IRL. I had to stretch physics a little for narrative purposes, but it turns out I’m not far off.