My Process Journal

My Process Journal
[Jump to oldest entry] 2024-11-13 Note to self: Show Don't Tell. Show Don't Tell. Show Don't Tell. Example: Not "He gloated" but "That's nothing, you guys haven't seen anything yet". 2024-11-04 My life can be so hard to bear, but I persevere. My dialogue is coming along. In any quiet moment I have, I think of it. I write down notes, snippets, and revisit my drafts. I hope and wish things will be OK for me. Sometimes everything feels hopeless. 2024-10-25 I have finished the introduction of my Dialogue. 600 words. I read it out loud to my brother over dinner. He told me it was "well-written" and the best kind of philosophy is the one that is written as literature :-) that makes me so happy he's said that. How sweet is an encouraging word! 2024-10-17 I am at a crossroads. My "Dialogue between a Man and His Qareen" seems to get larger and larger. I have loads of ideas for it. I am wondering if it could be a separate book. I do not want my work to be like "Chimera" by John Barth. I haven't read Chimera; a classmate once mentioned Barth and I thought that the concept was interesting, but I had already accomplished something like Chimera in my Ellipses. An outline for my dialogue would be most helpful. I am afraid. This is my first real attempt at something quite long. I am afraid that I can't be published because I prefer brevity and implication (the enemy of word count; word count is the guardian of sales), and maybe, after it all ends, I won't have all that much to say. The only solution is to keep writing and see how it fits. I wish I had a friend to trust with the drafts... I feel the words of the Dialogue are too vulnerable... but it is only a friend that could really handle them. Signing off. 2024-10-15 From How to Study "The Best Short Stories" (found on Project Gutenberg! while bored at work), about Ahmed Abdullah: Captain Abdullah, an Asiatic, but educated partly, and living altogether, in the Occident, finds himself at times, he declares, in the position, less emotional than intellectual and cultural, where he has to make a choice between the ideals of East, or West of Suez. In addition, his friends often ask him to explain certain Oriental characteristics, motivations and viewpoints. 2024-10-13 I need to be more focused on my writing. Life makes it hard. I want to move up in the world; I want financial security. It's easy to be lost in the tides of routine... I come back home and my body aches. Sometimes, these days, all the dark thoughts I have at night (the thoughts which aren't to be trusted) find a voice in the morning, and it makes me think that what they have to say is real and true about how I feel about being alive, etc. I am working on my Dialogue Between a Man and His Qareen. I found Plato and Xenophon to be the most helpful, viz. The Republic + Apology. Both books talk about the best life. At the end of Book 5, Socrates says that a city cannot be happy unless philosopher kings rule it; in Xenophon's account of Socrates defense, Socrates says that he has lived the best life, the holiest and purest life. My dialogue is centered around the question of "What is the best life?". I should find the passages and write them down for later. Signing off for now. I said: Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,—nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing. Do you not know that up to this moment I will not concede to any man to have lived a better life than I have; since what can exceed the pleasure, which has been mine, of knowing that my whole life has been spent holily and justly? 2024-09-29 I write bits and pieces of my next story (notes, notes, notes!) on paper bags and receipts and whatever scraps I can find. When I come home after my shift, I stick them into my journal. I feel like a true artist. I feel like a real artist :-) 2024-09-05 One of the worst feelings: writing a perfect story but realizing it can't be fit in with the others. It's going to stay in the drafts :/ 2024-09-01 I realized something today while writing down a story idea. I need all my stories to be of the same quality. This means that there will be less stories all-together. I wrote one story that is just as impactful as another story, and I've realized that my other stories (not the cornerstone ones) aren't up to par. I will still write them, but I need to tighten my execution. Better to chop away than to add. 2024-08-19 Have you ever read The Book of Disquiet? I have, barely. I found a copy in the library in the section I barely peruse. It stuck out to me. Green cover. Life got busy and I got sad, so it stayed on my to-read stack for weeks; the library auto-renewed it. No one else wanted to read it, which I found out is a good thing. One evening I decided to pick it up and skim. I was gently surprised that Pessoa's writing is similar to my own in style. The back of the book has his reviews. Pessoa is so self-aware! one of them says. Oh, give me a break. The Book of Disquiet is lame, and the narrator is pathetic. I have spoken. 2024-08-15 I have finished my divine commedia. With its inclusion, I have reached 1/10th of my goal of 100,000 words. I am exceedingly proud of it. Some of the structure of TMR is taking place. There will be 5-6 cornerstone stories, i.e. longer pieces. In between will be pithy ones. I have been working dilligently and consistently. I set aside time to write and I keep my journal full. Some ideas are psychologically hard to complete, but they are worth working on. I am proud. Secretly, when I share my stories with my friends, I feel a terrible anxiety. My stories are so personal in some way, made out of my own blood, and it makes me anxious to share it in fear that my blood won't be good enough. 2024-06-08 My progress has been very steady. With that much, I am very proud of myself. Last night, it occurred to me that I was making steady progress, and I felt a little twinge of panic. Am I going too fast? But at this stage, the more writing, the better. When I feel like I have written enough to start working on editing, having more to cut and modify is better than having less. I feel skeptical about thinkers who didn't practice an art, but took a removed interest from their object of study... only analysis. A good friend once comforted me, when I felt inferior to my professors, You have so much talent, these men study all their lives, they're all derivative* ....* With The Magic Ring I am feeling confident! 2024-05-17 ...and all my love. 2024-05-07 My stories are coming together. I have been much more frequent, and consistent .... Writing is my catharsis for the bleakness and contempt I feel for this rotten world. 2023-02-21 I have written down many more story ideas and drafted some more. They're all very short, but that's OK. I will have to balance them out with longer pieces. I gave myself a vague deadline that I'd like to have a manuscript ready by this upcoming September, and I've told my friends as much, but this is impossible. I need more time to experience, and feel, and distill my reflections into stories. 2024-01-21 My writing process has been haphazard. My book fills up slowly, my writing starts and stops. These few months have been very difficult for me. I am without a job, and many days I feel down, and I like to accuse myself. The thought of this book completed warms me, and when I work on it, I feel light, as if my burdens have gone away. My book is haphazard. Its stories are very short, there is no unified narrative, but a series of micro-stories. I feel that if it were to sell at all, an audience would have a tough time understanding it, since there isn't a single narrative. Ursula Le Guin does this very well in her Left Hand of Darkness . The book was less fragmentary than I was expecting it to be, and I think this is to its readers' benefit. All of it revolves around a single event, or series of events, but told from different perspectives. My book jumps through time and space, its only linking threads are the themes. But I want to create a work of art, something honest, and I hope that along with its ingenuity, is enough to publish. 2023-12-27 I have been in a hiatus from writing. I'm upset about that. Tomorrow I will begin writing the next part of my project, which is a 4-5 thousand word essay on the zairja, as described in Ibn Khaldun's magnum opus. Hopefully, I will be able to extend it to six thousand words. Current progress: ~1,000 / 100,000 words. edit: I think I can make it 10,000 words. 2023-12-03 I have finished a number of stories for the novel. I finished one last night and will work on more tonight. I notice I write down all the working parts in my journal, take a few stabs at it, then weave it together on the keyboard. Then I print out the story, wait on it for a few days, then edit it as I am working on another story. 2023-11-30 My friend Jesse once told me that many writers and artists before would blot out any of their early works. They wanted you to believe that they had produced a mature work out of thin air. I wonder why.... A few months ago, what inspired me to adopt my means of writing (journal, book, pens) was reading a book called "The Art of Slow Writing". The point of the book is that writing is best treated not as a task, but a project that one orients his whole life toward. But what matters is consistency, planning, staying focused on the project as life ebbs and flows and meanders. 2023-11-29 The reason I've started a process journal is to write down my thoughts about the process of writing a book. It's been one year since I published my Ellipses . It took me three years to write it; I went through a lot to collect the raw material that formed the basis of the stories. It was published by the AGLSP in Confluence Magazine. Its success was... modest. I won a little check that barely covered my flight back home, barely anyone read it, but I won an award. I hope that is a sign of better things to come. I think in the year passed, I don't want to be praised as much. I want to publish something I am proud of, an honest work that preserves honest memories... So I bought a large journal with many empty pages. I have two pens: a black one for writing, a red one for edits, additions, and corrections. When I'm comfortable with the raw material for a story, when I feel the story has all the parts it needs, I type it up, print it out, and attach it to the appropriate page with a paperclip. That's the first draft. The reason I bought a physical journal? It's exhausting using a screen for everything, and speed is my enemy. I've found that writing with my hand forces me to slow down; something more genuine comes out from me.... For this journal, I don't need to slow down. I just need to make a habit of writing down observations about my project: inspirations, habits, etc. I keep a separate daily journal to write down things I've noticed or a turn-of-phrase I want to remember: e.g. a peculiar theme of books stacked in the library, the words a mother used to calm down her child: a writer's notebook. This is the oldest post: newer posts will be stacked on top of it. [Jump to newest entry]

2024-11-13

Note to self: Show Don't Tell. Show Don't Tell. Show Don't Tell. Example: Not "He gloated" but "That's nothing, you guys haven't seen anything yet".

2024-11-04

My life can be so hard to bear, but I persevere. My dialogue is coming along. In any quiet moment I have, I think of it. I write down notes, snippets, and revisit my drafts. I hope and wish things will be OK for me. Sometimes everything feels hopeless.

2024-10-25

I have finished the introduction of my Dialogue. 600 words. I read it out loud to my brother over dinner. He told me it was "well-written" and the best kind of philosophy is the one that is written as literature :-) that makes me so happy he's said that. How sweet is an encouraging word!

2024-10-17

I am at a crossroads. My "Dialogue between a Man and His Qareen" seems to get larger and larger. I have loads of ideas for it. I am wondering if it could be a separate book. I do not want my work to be like "Chimera" by John Barth. I haven't read Chimera; a classmate once mentioned Barth and I thought that the concept was interesting, but I had already accomplished something like Chimera in my Ellipses. An outline for my dialogue would be most helpful. I am afraid. This is my first real attempt at something quite long. I am afraid that I can't be published because I prefer brevity and implication (the enemy of word count; word count is the guardian of sales), and maybe, after it all ends, I won't have all that much to say. The only solution is to keep writing and see how it fits. I wish I had a friend to trust with the drafts... I feel the words of the Dialogue are too vulnerable... but it is only a friend that could really handle them. Signing off.

2024-10-15

From How to Study "The Best Short Stories" (found on Project Gutenberg! while bored at work), about Ahmed Abdullah: Captain Abdullah, an Asiatic, but educated partly, and living altogether, in the Occident, finds himself at times, he declares, in the position, less emotional than intellectual and cultural, where he has to make a choice between the ideals of East, or West of Suez. In addition, his friends often ask him to explain certain Oriental characteristics, motivations and viewpoints.

2024-10-13

I need to be more focused on my writing. Life makes it hard. I want to move up in the world; I want financial security. It's easy to be lost in the tides of routine... I come back home and my body aches. Sometimes, these days, all the dark thoughts I have at night (the thoughts which aren't to be trusted) find a voice in the morning, and it makes me think that what they have to say is real and true about how I feel about being alive, etc. I am working on my Dialogue Between a Man and His Qareen. I found Plato and Xenophon to be the most helpful, viz. The Republic + Apology. Both books talk about the best life. At the end of Book 5, Socrates says that a city cannot be happy unless philosopher kings rule it; in Xenophon's account of Socrates defense, Socrates says that he has lived the best life, the holiest and purest life. My dialogue is centered around the question of "What is the best life?". I should find the passages and write them down for later. Signing off for now.

I said: Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,—nor the human race, as I believe,—and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day. Such was the thought, my dear Glaucon, which I would fain have uttered if it had not seemed too extravagant; for to be convinced that in no other State can there be happiness private or public is indeed a hard thing.

Do you not know that up to this moment I will not concede to any man to have lived a better life than I have; since what can exceed the pleasure, which has been mine, of knowing that my whole life has been spent holily and justly?

2024-09-29

I write bits and pieces of my next story (notes, notes, notes!) on paper bags and receipts and whatever scraps I can find. When I come home after my shift, I stick them into my journal. I feel like a true artist. I feel like a real artist :-)

2024-09-05

One of the worst feelings: writing a perfect story but realizing it can't be fit in with the others. It's going to stay in the drafts :/

2024-09-01

I realized something today while writing down a story idea. I need all my stories to be of the same quality. This means that there will be less stories all-together. I wrote one story that is just as impactful as another story, and I've realized that my other stories (not the cornerstone ones) aren't up to par. I will still write them, but I need to tighten my execution. Better to chop away than to add.

2024-08-19

Have you ever read The Book of Disquiet? I have, barely. I found a copy in the library in the section I barely peruse. It stuck out to me. Green cover. Life got busy and I got sad, so it stayed on my to-read stack for weeks; the library auto-renewed it. No one else wanted to read it, which I found out is a good thing. One evening I decided to pick it up and skim. I was gently surprised that Pessoa's writing is similar to my own in style. The back of the book has his reviews. Pessoa is so self-aware! one of them says. Oh, give me a break. The Book of Disquiet is lame, and the narrator is pathetic. I have spoken.

2024-08-15

I have finished my divine commedia. With its inclusion, I have reached 1/10th of my goal of 100,000 words. I am exceedingly proud of it. Some of the structure of TMR is taking place. There will be 5-6 cornerstone stories, i.e. longer pieces. In between will be pithy ones. I have been working dilligently and consistently. I set aside time to write and I keep my journal full. Some ideas are psychologically hard to complete, but they are worth working on. I am proud. Secretly, when I share my stories with my friends, I feel a terrible anxiety. My stories are so personal in some way, made out of my own blood, and it makes me anxious to share it in fear that my blood won't be good enough.

2024-06-08

My progress has been very steady. With that much, I am very proud of myself. Last night, it occurred to me that I was making steady progress, and I felt a little twinge of panic. Am I going too fast? But at this stage, the more writing, the better. When I feel like I have written enough to start working on editing, having more to cut and modify is better than having less.

I feel skeptical about thinkers who didn't practice an art, but took a removed interest from their object of study... only analysis. A good friend once comforted me, when I felt inferior to my professors, You have so much talent, these men study all their lives, they're all derivative ....

With The Magic Ring I am feeling confident!

2024-05-17

...and all my love.

2024-05-07

My stories are coming together. I have been much more frequent, and consistent .... Writing is my catharsis for the bleakness and contempt I feel for this rotten world.

2023-02-21

I have written down many more story ideas and drafted some more. They're all very short, but that's OK. I will have to balance them out with longer pieces. I gave myself a vague deadline that I'd like to have a manuscript ready by this upcoming September, and I've told my friends as much, but this is impossible. I need more time to experience, and feel, and distill my reflections into stories.

2024-01-21

My writing process has been haphazard. My book fills up slowly, my writing starts and stops. These few months have been very difficult for me. I am without a job, and many days I feel down, and I like to accuse myself. The thought of this book completed warms me, and when I work on it, I feel light, as if my burdens have gone away.

My book is haphazard. Its stories are very short, there is no unified narrative, but a series of micro-stories. I feel that if it were to sell at all, an audience would have a tough time understanding it, since there isn't a single narrative. Ursula Le Guin does this very well in her Left Hand of Darkness . The book was less fragmentary than I was expecting it to be, and I think this is to its readers' benefit. All of it revolves around a single event, or series of events, but told from different perspectives. My book jumps through time and space, its only linking threads are the themes. But I want to create a work of art, something honest, and I hope that along with its ingenuity, is enough to publish.

2023-12-27

I have been in a hiatus from writing. I'm upset about that. Tomorrow I will begin writing the next part of my project, which is a 4-5 thousand word essay on the zairja, as described in Ibn Khaldun's magnum opus. Hopefully, I will be able to extend it to six thousand words.

Current progress: ~1,000 / 100,000 words.

edit: I think I can make it 10,000 words.

2023-12-03

I have finished a number of stories for the novel. I finished one last night and will work on more tonight. I notice I write down all the working parts in my journal, take a few stabs at it, then weave it together on the keyboard. Then I print out the story, wait on it for a few days, then edit it as I am working on another story.

2023-11-30

My friend Jesse once told me that many writers and artists before would blot out any of their early works. They wanted you to believe that they had produced a mature work out of thin air. I wonder why.... A few months ago, what inspired me to adopt my means of writing (journal, book, pens) was reading a book called "The Art of Slow Writing". The point of the book is that writing is best treated not as a task, but a project that one orients his whole life toward. But what matters is consistency, planning, staying focused on the project as life ebbs and flows and meanders.

2023-11-29

The reason I've started a process journal is to write down my thoughts about the process of writing a book. It's been one year since I published my Ellipses . It took me three years to write it; I went through a lot to collect the raw material that formed the basis of the stories. It was published by the AGLSP in Confluence Magazine. Its success was... modest. I won a little check that barely covered my flight back home, barely anyone read it, but I won an award. I hope that is a sign of better things to come.

I think in the year passed, I don't want to be praised as much. I want to publish something I am proud of, an honest work that preserves honest memories...

So I bought a large journal with many empty pages. I have two pens: a black one for writing, a red one for edits, additions, and corrections. When I'm comfortable with the raw material for a story, when I feel the story has all the parts it needs, I type it up, print it out, and attach it to the appropriate page with a paperclip. That's the first draft. The reason I bought a physical journal? It's exhausting using a screen for everything, and speed is my enemy.

I've found that writing with my hand forces me to slow down; something more genuine comes out from me.... For this journal, I don't need to slow down. I just need to make a habit of writing down observations about my project: inspirations, habits, etc.

I keep a separate daily journal to write down things I've noticed or a turn-of-phrase I want to remember: e.g. a peculiar theme of books stacked in the library, the words a mother used to calm down her child: a writer's notebook.

This is the oldest post: newer posts will be stacked on top of it.

[Jump to newest entry]