99: Freedom Is the Ability to Rest

10/14/2015

I just finished Chapter 24: Flirting. This one took eleven days, which is REALLY pathetic for only eight pages, but it turned out well. I’m not entirely sure what happened to me – my not writing a word for nine days before finally cracking the ice yesterday and finishing it today. That’s by far the longest delay with no production in the last 2 ½ months. I tried to force myself a couple times, then just gave up and waited for the need to write to overpower the need to avoid writing. I was getting right pissed off at myself and feeling like shit before I finally was able to force my way back to writing.

I don’t think it was the difficulty of the chapter that daunted me per se, though it’s true I hadn’t a clear grasp of its necessity for being until a few days ago when I realized Diallo needed to be in it. Then came Joyul’s jealousy and her pushing Alena off the log, then came Nip and Pip, and then Wamba – those were the main ingredients and the order in which they occurred to me. The game with the willow ring and Alena’s flirting was there from the beginning though.

But it wasn’t gathering the elements that took nine days. I think I just needed to rest and recharge my battery, even though I didn’t want to. I only have so much time in this ideal writing environment. I hate wasting even one day, let alone nine. But if my battery needed it, I guess it wasn’t so much a waste as an unfortunate necessity.

I hope to start the next chapter ASAP.

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Present-Day Reflection

9/1/2026

Not much has changed in this regard – trying to meet deadlines with a drained battery. The futility of force in such situations is a lesson I learned a long time ago though. These days I simply shift gears and try to work on something else that needs doing, because there’s always more than one facet of the work on my To-Do List at any given time.

Though sometimes I just need a break from it all. It’s probably the best part of being my own boss, my “have-to”s can be temporarily ignored in a way my “have-to”s with my day job can’t. It is, in fact, one of the more compelling motivators for me lately – trying to get things done so I can retire from my day job and devote myself entirely to work that actually matters to me.

It’s not just the freedom to do what I love, but also the freedom to stop when I need to. And for as long as I need to. My drive these days isn’t about gaining the ability to do whatever I want, it’s about having the ability to stop and rest whenever I want.

Not there yet.

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98: Growing From Dreams into Reality

9/30/2015

I got Chapter 23: Running Away, done today. It took me three days to do, which is pathetic for only six pages, but I think it turned out well. It’s just another example of how things grow into so much more than I originally conceived. More proof that my little brain lacks the power to bring things together with the nuance and multiple meanings that pen and paper can achieve.

Before sitting down, I only have a vague vision, a list of background details, and a list of devices to include. I know what’s going to happen, why and how it connects with the other chapter. But it remains dead and two-dimensional until I sit down to string it all together with words, breathing life into it with my pen. If I left it to exist only in my head, it wouldn’t even be a shadow of what it’s becoming. It would remain a shifting abstraction with no reality to it at all.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/31/2026

This, of course, goes for painting and drawing as well. So, I’m not sure why it should be surprising that it’s true with writing fiction. Holding a vision of something entirely in my head without externalizing it through some medium in the real world will always be severely limiting in its scope. The act of materializing it requires a thoroughness of examination and concrete recording that prevents the loss of detail that occurs when confined to my mind.

It’s the difference between a dream and reality. It all starts with the dream, but things will never grow and fulfill their potential until they become a reality. At which point, they naturally become larger and more nuanced than I could have ever conceived.

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97: The Third Rail of Exposition

9/30/2015

I just got done with Chapter 22: The Gift, which was the first chapter in Part Two: Twa Yal-Jukun. It turned out fairly well despite a lack of interesting visuals and a good deal of exposition. The exposition was necessary, though, to help lay the foundation for the entire Part, and I think it’s mixed with enough dialogue to maintain good pacing. It had some cute twists as well due to Guma’s master plan.

I was really happy that after finishing my rewrite of The Yara, I was able to completely plot all of Part Two in a single day by preserving the material already written for Twa Yal-Jukun. This saves me a lot of work (though much editing is still needed), and it has the built-in framework of the lunar festival upon which to hang the story arcs of my new chapters.

As of now, my new outline consists of the original ten scenes, with seven more added onto the beginning and two onto the end. It took me four days to get going and to finish this first chapter though. A touch of writer’s block, despite knowing precisely what had to be written.

The how is harder than the what.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/30/2026

I believe that learning to manage exposition is a key facet to solving the how of my writer’s block.

When I first started writing this series, I avoided exposition as if it were the third rail of bad writing. Touch it and die. Though good writers can skip nimbly atop that rail when they need to without being electrocuted, I wasn’t experienced enough to trust myself. So, I simply avoided it at all costs – adopting the mantra of show, don’t tell.

Though I eventually began to loosen up and allow myself to use a paragraph or two of exposition here and there over the years, I believe banning it altogether in the beginning was the right instinct. The ability to describe or explain things directly and still hold a reader’s attention requires an extremely subtle touch. And I’ve never managed to be objective enough with my own work to know if I’m achieving that or not. I just have to go out on a limb when I need to and hope it’s strong enough to support both me and my readers when they join me out there.

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96: The Dangers of Feedback

9/24/2015

Well, I finished The Yara again. This time I focused on making it clearer that all the Luala sections after the first were flashbacks. I’ve only had three readers of this prologue, and Rob was the only one to completely misunderstand every aspect of it. He not only misinterpreted the boma metaphor (though at least he realized it was a metaphor), but he somehow got the bizarre impression that Mosai was psychic and making the boma before Luala was dead. This, despite the fact that I had clearly stated that Mosai’s flashbacks were indeed flashbacks, even with time references (e.g. nine moons ago, less than a moon ago, etc.). This lack of reading comprehension from a retired professional reader and teacher from an elitist school like Lakeside was discouraging to say the least.

However, I couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility that the fault was mine and my methods of conveying the flashbacks. It’s extremely difficult for me to judge, no matter how much distance I have from the material, because I know all too well every detail and the various meanings and intents behind them.

As for the other two readers who claimed to understood it all, I can’t afford to trust their feedback. The possibility of their not wanting to sound stupid by admitting they found it confusing is all too real. Indeed, neither one ever gave me any useful feedback, just vague comments and flattery that were as welcome as the they were useless.

At any rate, proceeding with the assumption that The Yara plotting structure was confusing, I reframed it into four sections (I-IV) instead of seven. So, instead of cutting away in the middle of a flashback to the next section, I’m hoping my new transitions to the present will not only clarify where flashbacks are beginning but also where they’re ending. It upsets me that I have to dumb-down and spoon-feed this, possibly destroying the fragile artistry of it, but I can’t take the chance of excluding casual noncritical readers at the very outset of my series. I have to at least keep the surface story accessible for all levels of readers in the beginning.

In addition to the flashback transitions there were a lot of general rewrites to smooth out awkward phrasing and subpar imagery. It took four days of work to get all this done, and when I was finished and rereading it, I was much happier with the overall writing quality, but ironically, less satisfied with the flashbacks.

The idea that the flashbacks are indeed flashbacks is clearer, so in that sense it was a successful rewrite. But the pacing of section III, that now combines three scenes into one, is all messed up. Everything goes too fast with a constant back and forth in time that is disorienting and obnoxious. The original had a more natural rhythm with its seven discrete section breaks.

I may yet revert back to my that structure, but not until I’m on a computer. I’m tired of monkeying around with this and I want to continue with the main narrative. It may have been a mistake to stipulate that Rob’s misreadings might have validity, and maybe I shouldn’t have allowed him to cause me to second guess my own instincts. Oh well, it’s nothing I can’t fix and revert back to later.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/29/2026

Allowing feedback to influence the shape of my work is indeed dangerous. Even today, as I prepare for the launch of my first book – Wings of Providence – on October 1st, being able to trust feedback remains problematic. The copy-editing feedback I’m getting is easy to accept – all the grammatical and punctuation mistakes I tend to make. Even some of the stylistic feedback involved in line editing is easy to accept in terms of increasing clarity. It’s the content editing that deals with plotting, pacing, and character development that I have a hard time trusting.

I’ve made changes in content when the advice seems reasonable, though mostly dealing with things being removed rather than having things added. I’m much more open to killing my darlings, as Stephen King puts it, than I am in reworking the plot or fundamentals of my structure.

In the end, I’d rather err on the side of staying true to my own voice and vision than to err on the side of over compromising with the opinions of others. For what would I profit by winning readers at the expense of losing the soul of my work?

It’s a judgement call.

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95: A Mirror of Past & Present

9/19/2015

I just finished Part One: Children of Batu. It came to 21 chapters; 132 pages; 43,547 words. I wrote Chapter 15: A Mother of Batu four days ago, then finished the last one tonight, Chapter 20: Friends. This is it now. I’d like to believe this is really it – no more rewrites of these first chapters!

At least not until I’m on a computer.

I’m going to go back and update The Yara one last time now, too. Then move on to Part Two of this first book. I’ve been dragging ass and moving slow the last two or three weeks. Hopefully I can kick it back into gear. Running out of time if I’m going to make my deadline for getting the first book done by the end of the year.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/28/2026

I was more or less right. I really did finish Part One: Children of Batu. It is still 21 chapters (if you count the two fables); 155 typed pages; 55,887 words. After I wrote Chapter 15: A Mother of Batu eleven years ago, then finished the last one, Chapter 20: Friends – that was it. I was right to believe that was really it. No more rewrites of those first chapters.

At least not until I got on a computer. And even then, it was merely polishing. No more reimagining or major structural changes.

I did go back and update The Yara one last time, too. Then I moved on to Part Two of this first book. Today it is the Twa Yal-Jukun sequence of chapters. Despite all the changes in my life over the last eleven years, and despite all the changes with my Batu narrative, there is still so much that is the same. Like déjà vu – or Kumbella – where it feels like history is repeating itself.

I’ve been dragging ass and moving slow the last two or three weeks. Still ignoring my work concerning the print-on-demand formatting. Hopefully I can kick it back into gear. Running out of time if I’m going to make my deadline for getting the first book’s paperback and hardbound versions done by the end of the month.

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94: Gone Fishing & Ignoring Loose Ends

9/13/2015

I finished Makoa’s Sacred Ground chapter two days ago. It became the new Chapter Nine, and the butterfly swarm approaching Makoa and Banda at the end is a nice lead-in to Alena’s Wings of Light chapter that follows. It also serves to substantiate Wanyana’s comment in Signs and Omens about having seen a chronicle of the comet. Sacred Ground might be a little weak on the characterizations of Makoa and Banda, but I still like the chapter for the rich visuals of the mangroves, the cave, and cave paintings.

I only have two more short chapters to create in order to complete Part One: The Children of Batu. First, I have to write Chapter 15, where Makoa and Bulala establish their new family dynamic with Tamal and his two brothers. Then Chapter 20: Friends, where Alena, Joyul, Tamal, Dougga, and Bakar all gather in Overlook Hill’s ceremonial pit, and the three boys solidify their friendship.

I took yesterday off from writing to focus on organizing, updating, and finishing up odd tasks and details. Needed a little break from creative work and pressures by catching up on more mundane stuff. I’m hoping to at least get an outline and lead-in on Chapter 15 today though. I’m considering a Bulala POV for it, and I need an interesting angle to approach the chapter from that I hadn’t thought of yet.

I’m thinking about going back and redoing The Yara (prologue), bringing it up to date with my new format and plotting before moving on to Part Two. I don’t really want to, but I hate leaving unfinished business behind before moving on. Loose ends bother me. I’d like to have everything up to speed and ship-shape as I progress. And it’s only 35 pages.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/27/2026

I’ve been experiencing similar things these last couple weeks – shifting gears away from my work as technical details stall my momentum. I’ve turned toward more mundane activities to avoid working on getting my print-on-demand infrastructure up and running. I’m not sure why, because the hardest part is already behind me. I probably just feel like a break and need to reconnect with life beyond Batu. The urgency to get things done is still there, but beyond these daily journal entries, I’ve been ignoring it.

Yesterday, the only thing I did beyond my Author’s Journal was to fill out and submit the online application for my Washington State business license. I then got stuck on the Seattle-level application (I need to be licensed through the city as well) because it requires the UBI number issued with the state’s license. And since it can take up to 10 days to get that, I gave up and went fishing – spending the rest of the day shopping online.

I still have faith I’ll meet my self-imposed deadlines, but I hate leaving unfinished business behind before moving on. Loose ends still bother me. It’s as if part of me is screaming to just get things done, while the rest of me is out to lunch.

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93: Everything & More

9/7/2015

I just got done with Chapter 13: The Search for Bakar. This one was not only the longest chapter in Part One (13 pages), but it took me three days of trial-and-error trying to get a hook on it. Took me a whole day to figure out that this would be a search for Bakar after he’d been beaten by his father.

Originally, I thought it would be four pages or so of Tamal getting to know his adoptive parents – maybe with him spying on a shamanistic ritual to determine the nature of the four-tailed comet, which would be a mirror of sorts to Siona’s tambiko-hori ritual later. But I had no teeth in that idea. Nothing I wanted to do would work within the framework of the surrounding chapters.

Then when I hit upon a search for Bakar, and how I could use that to unify The Children of Batu (except for Diallo), I knew I had to use that idea. And I’m going to write the follow-up for that (Chapter 18: Friends) tomorrow.

But even after I got the search for Bakar idea, it took me two more days to get a handle on it. I even wrote 2 ½ pages that I ended up throwing away as useless and starting over – the first time that’s ever happened to me. Usually, I don’t start until I get my hook, my milieu, the POV, and I’m excited and certain about where it’s going. So, even with crappy first attempts, I’m still able to mold and reshape things until I get them right. Not this time. It was all crap beyond redemption through rewrites.

That took the juice right out of my mojo.

So, I jumped ahead out of desperation and rewrote all of Siona’s tambiko-hori scenes. But when I came back to The Search for Bakar, it still wasn’t clicking for me. I don’t ever remember having so much trouble figuring out an interesting angle to enter into a chapter before. I blamed it on the fact that I was too limited from having to squeeze it into a pre-existing framework, severely inhibiting my creative options. Which was true.

But as soon as I dropped Tamal as the POV and gave it to Joyul, everything fell into place. I wanted to give it to Tamal because he only had one brief POV in Chapter 7: The Boy in the Tree. He was in serious need of fleshing out, so I was determined to give the POV to him. But when I looked at Chapter 8: Guardian of the Gate and saw how well Bakar came alive even when it was Dougga’s POV, I realized I might be able to do Tamal better from the outside than the inside.

The Search for Bakar was a tough chapter for Tamal, what with his mother just dying and this sixth sense thing now kicking in. It’s too much drama and morose moodiness inside his head, making me want to slit my own wrists. But do you know whose head is never depressing? Joyul’s. Not because she’s a Pollyanna or because she’s Joyful, but because she’s tough and funny. And when mixed with Dougga for contrast, she shines.

So, Joyul was the only thing that made this chapter possible for me.

I’m not sure why it turned out so long though, maybe because of the logistics of transitioning them through five different backdrops: the village skywalks, Bakar’s hutment, the hub, the stairway tree, and the storage huts at the base of the tree. I didn’t want to just breeze through all those backdrops without creating a sense of place. Plus, there was a lot of dialogue (thank god), which eats up the pages. But I still had no idea it would be that long.

Once I got my hook of Joyul as the POV (and thought it would only be seven pages or so), with every segment of the chapter I finished I kept thinking it would only be a couple more pages before it would be done. At seven pages there were only going to be a couple pages left to do. Same thing at nine and ten pages. It wasn’t until page eleven that I was right about there only being two pages left.

It wore me out, even though the body of it wasn’t that hard to write. It was only hard to get started… and then to stop. I’ve had much harder chapters that fought me from beginning to end, but none were as hard to get a grip on as this one. It was driving me bonkers. Hours of pacing and writing notes and chapter outlines. Nothing was helping.

But it’s done now, and having just reread it in its final first-draft form, I’m proud and pleased with it. It did everything I wanted, and more. That’s all I need from my children to satisfy me as a parent. Everything I want, plus more.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/26/2026

This may be the secret of how I’m able to keep going with this work of writing the Batu Saga, no matter how hard it gets or what sacrifices it might require. It’s the only thing in my life that keeps giving back more than I ask from it. The world I began to build back in 2009 has taken on a life of its own, growing into something much larger than myself – surpassing all expectations.

It also serves as an anchor, keeping me tethered to my values regardless of the shifting weather; providing me a sense of purpose and meaning – a reason to get out of bed in the morning. What began as a creative path has become a calling that never ceases to enrich and surprise me. It gives me everything I really need to be happy, and more.

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92: Dougga’s Introduction

8/23/2015

I just finished Chapter Four with Dougga hiding under his mother’s platform. It took me two days. One day was spent going through my notes and selecting the tidbits I’d need, and thinking about how to approach this and what precisely needs to take place.

The whole concept of placing him under his mother’s hut, hiding within the scaffolding there, came just from browsing through my village architecture notes. I tried putting in a monitor lizard that ate a camouflaged stick-insect, but it didn’t fit so I had to cut it.

The actual writing of it took all of the second day, though the chapter was only 4 ½ pages long. I spent a couple hours per paragraph trying to get the scenery and Dougga’s physical descriptions right, but the dialogue went quickly.

I love how it turned out. Some bits were even better than I hoped for on the final reading. Always a nice thing.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/25/2026

Dougga is one of those characters for whom I have a really firm grasp on who he is and how he’s going to change over the course of the series. Drastic changes, though more in terms of behavior than in his core nature. His core remains relatively stable, but how he responds to his circumstances, and the behavioral choices he makes, will gradually shift to the polar opposite of what they are in his childhood.

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91: Reimagining & Restructuring

8/21/2015

Well, I made some big decisions. I decided to rewrite all of Part One: Wings of Providence, in order to make it a stand-alone book of 85,000-100,000 words. First though, I spent a week doing a detailed character analysis of Diallo, Alena, Siona, Makoa, Tamal, Dougga, and Bakar. Which included detailed physical descriptions, background, and a character-revealing questionnaire for each. I needed this as a basis for a new beginning so that I know my characters much more intimately than before.

Alena had the most drastic overhaul from my original vague and bland conceptions of her. She’s a real person now, not just the nice girl. All of them are much more defined now, and as a result both the writing and the story are much stronger.

I just finished my reimagined Chapter Three today, which actually combined what used to be scenes two and three – Diallo falling from the tree. I really wasn’t looking forward to going backward to this material, it was so played out and dead for me in my mind. But I actually pulled off a minor miracle and turned the whole beginning of the Alena section into something interesting and rich, every bit as good as my most recent work with The Shadow Falls.

I began by pinpointing the premise for my first book, Wings of Providence. Then I tried to figure out how what I had already (Alena, Kumbella, The Fever, and Twa Yal-Jukun) fulfills the premise and story I need to tell for a first book. As a result, the fourth Part: Twa Yal-Jukun is being cut out. That’s 70 pages of work discarded. But I’m sure I’ll be cannibalizing large segments of it, so it won’t be a total loss.

Also, I’m combining what used to be Alena and Kumbella into a single Part One. And I’ll be using The Fever as Part Four now. That means I have Part Two and Three to write from scratch. Part Three will be the quest for the ghost frog, which was only alluded to in my original draft.

Doing all this resolves two critical problems that have been plaguing me for quite a while. The first problem solved is that my books will no longer be massive tomes that would make publishing them problematic. And the second problem solved is that I’ll be able to more easily say what the story is about in each book. It won’t just be a life story (biography) with vaguely related Parts built around a vague notion of a prophecy. I now have a clear conception of “what the story is about” on multiple levels – that of the series as a whole (now eight books long), and as individual books.

What I originally conceived as Parts are now books, and what I used to call chapters (and then episodes) are now Parts. So, each book will still have four Parts, but there will be many chapters now per Part.

What I’m losing with all this is the aesthetic symmetry of maintaining the structure of fours. There are not just four books anymore. There aren’t just four chapters per Part anymore. It also lengthens the whole series and the scope of the stories to tell. Which means more work for me.

Though, maybe not. Because this disregard for keeping to four books means I don’t have to write what was going to be the fourth book, about their exodus and search for a new home. I can end the series with the destruction of their villages and their departure from Kamaria to find a new home. The story of the series then is about the last generation of the Batu as a tribe, not about how or if they’re able to rebuild elsewhere.

Not having to write that story is a huge burden removed. I love exodus stories, but I wasn’t looking forward to writing one. Especially when most of my main characters will have been dead or too old to be viable by then. Alena was the only important one who was going to survive into the fourth book (though like Moses, not surviving to reach the promise land herself). But now with eight books, Mogai will be dying in the last one, as he should.

There are other benefits of this new organization as well. For one thing, it means Book Two: Left Behind, is already done. It was always my strongest Part in terms of having a unified and complete story arc. Its ending is the only possible problem. Ending the book with the protagonist failing (actually, he fails repeatedly throughout the book) is not exactly going to endear me to readers. It wasn’t’ intended originally as a stand-alone, so I have some tweaking to do to make it suitable. But it’s roughly 98% finished as is. Unlike the first book.

It’s hard to say for sure with all the rewriting yet to do, but I’d guess I got 25-50% of the first book done. One whole Part has to be made up from scratch; another has a mix of pieces needing inventing. The other two are mostly rewrites, or as I call them: reimaginings – because they’re so dramatically different, there’s only a bare skeleton of the original that is at all recognizable. All for the better.

All this means I will have two books done, along with a quarter of the third, within the next three months. So, even if by some miracle I could talk a publisher into combining two books in one volume (as Tolkien did), I will still be done with my first volume in three months.

When It’s all said and done, this new structure and reimagining of the first book will make the work a lot better. It’s already so much better, just with the first three chapters I got done already. I had to invent Chapter Two out of thin air (the jola meeting), which turned out well. I needed it to break up the string of chapters with Diallo on the river. But it’s also good for establishing the jola up front, the characterizations of all four jola members, and adding support to the series plotline of the prophecy. I’m at a point now where I need to make up another chapter from scratch, this time using Dougga overhearing that the end of the world is coming. It will probably be a short chapter.

With the one I just finished today (Diallo falling from the tree), I originally had the second half from Alena’s POV, but I used almost nothing from that since Alena’s character and physical description completely changed. Instead of Kiza being the one to take Diallo’s loincloth and tormenting him, now it’s Alena who does it. And instead of Alena putting a halt to it because she’s such a goody two-shoes, it’s Kiza now who makes Alena give Diallo his loincloth back

It’s just so much more interesting, and the writing is much better now, too. Also, the play on various themes is better. There’s a much better sense that the story is about something. It’s all unified and tied neatly together, and the geographical shifts from chapter to chapter is much nicer. Having had multiple chapters in a row set in the same location was tedious.

I’m extremely happy with my first chapter now, and it used to be my worst. There’s a much stronger sense of place and atmosphere. Before it was just reeds and mud with two boys squabbling. Bringing in the log bridge, and starting out with Diallo instead of the heron, just changed the whole look and feel for the better.

It’s going to be a much stronger book and series than it was going to be if I stayed on the course I had been on two weeks ago. This reimagining and restructuring isn’t just a rewrite, it’s a whole new ball game. And I’ll still be able to meet my deadline for having my first book done by the end of this year. In fact, I should have two books done.

I’m not sure what to do about The Yara (prologue). It speaks to the story of the series and to Wings of Providence, but it’s no longer really necessary as a background for Mosai’s withdrawal – if it ever was necessary. But it’s also 35 pages and the scenes are not able to be split into separate chapters due to all the flashbacks. Besides, you can’t break a prologue into chapters, unless…

What if The Yara was the first Part of Book One? Could it be made to work thematically with its premise and theme structure? Is it too short to be its own Part? How would this affect the time structure (every Part spans four years)?

This is going to take some thought. More big decisions. But in the meantime, I’m still writing every day, all day. And loving it.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/24/2026

All of this reimagining and restructuring reminds me of what I’ve read about Frank Herbert’s process of writing the first Dune novel. Originally conceived as Dune World (published as a three-part serial in Analog magazine between December 1963 and February 1964), its first incarnation was a mere shadow of what it would eventually become. Not just rewriting an entire story but recreating it from the ground up. This may be the only way to have work that has a sense of depth that feels real. Everything has a history to it and is built upon things that were once themselves substantial in their own way.

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90: Fundamental Flaws & Changes in Structure

8/7/2015

I’m in my own place now, living alone with nothing to do but write. It’s perfect for my Batu work. Better than ever before because I don’t have any friends and nowhere to go all day. I have books, but they get no more than an hour a day. Usually nothing at all.

I moved in on July 27th and have been working hard ever since. Loving it. From 7AM until midnight or later. With only an hour’s nap in the afternoon, and 15-minute breaks for meals and a shower, I’ve been writing 15-16 hours a day for the last week.

What I’ve accomplished in that time is the rewriting of Episode 9: The Shadow Falls, which is comprised of chapters 83-98. Which reminds me, I’ve redesignated my novel’s structure so that what I used to call chapters are now Episodes, and what I used to call scenes are now chapters. The reason for this is purely psychological. I personally loathe reading long chapters, so why was I writing a book with chapters 60-100 pages long? Everything is already broken down into seven-page scenes (average), so it’s easily redesignated and the perfect length for a chapter. Nothing has changed except how I label things.

Anyway, there were 16 chapters in Episode 9: The Shadow Falls, and though I already had the first draft done before coming to Walla Walla, the rewrite of all 16 chapters entailed a lot of revision and additions. An Additional chapter was added, and one was split into two, so the original 14 is now 16. It took all day, every day, to get it done, but I believe The Shadow Falls is now up to par with the previous eight episodes. If not better.

I’m really excited about the quality, and I think as my skills improve it may make the earlier Episodes look pretty shabby. Which means I’ll have a lot of work to do on the computer to bring everything up to a consistent level. Though it’s not just my craftsmanship with language that is improving, but also my imagination and the nuances of environment and the development of drama. Things are getting richer and deeper, which is wonderful.

I really believe the most crucial ingredient in achieving this is to have my own private space with no distractions whatsoever. No job, no bills, no family or friends (aside from the occasional correspondence), no TV – nothing that needs doing or requiring my attention. Unfortunately, this won’t last long. I’m safe through November, but I may have to move again after that. So, if I want to finish my first book by 2016, I only have four safe months to do it.

This last chapter I finished was number 98, and I have 641 pages written.

Also, Guma is now dead. And I like the direction Siona is going at the moment – off the deep end. Like Joyul before her in The Kulu, Siona is promising to upstage my main characters. Probably a bad sign.

Speaking of bad signs, I was just reading another book on writing fiction this morning, and I learned a nice trick to discover whether I have a plotting and a premise-building problem or not. If I’m able to rearrange my chapters or episodes into a different sequence, then I’m in trouble. It’s a sign that the story doesn’t develop but is merely a collection of random (though interesting) events. The good news is that Part Two: Left Behind (Episodes 5-8) is totally connected where the episodes cannot be reshuffled without everything being changed.

In Episode Five, Diallo’s losing the kulu leads him to run away. That leads to Episode Six, where he is lost and Mosai goes after him and gets killed. That leads to Episode Seven, where Diallo gets help from Alena to put Mosai’s remains to rest. And that leads to Episode Eight, where Diallo and Alena are together, but Alena is sent away to be married, and Diallo goes after her.

So, all of Left Behind is a chain of events that cannot be rearranged with simple adjustments. Part One: Wings of Providence, however, is not causally connected in this way. It is arranged chronologically, but beyond the change in the character’s ages and passing references to previous events, there is no absolute necessity for having the episodes arranged in the order they are, aside from Alena’s opening chapter needing to remain first. But with minor adjustments any of the other three may be reshuffled.

This is a plotting and premise problem. Luckily, it is only Wings of Providence that fails to develop causally. And it’s nothing beyond fixing, though it’s going to take some contemplation and careful readjustments. This problem came about because I was content to rely on my intuition for what feels right as a sequence of events, rather than constructing clear causal relationships in the narrative. So, now I have to go back through it and forge after the fact a strong chain of causality that will bind the elements of my story as a cohesive whole.

For years now I’ve been struggling to come up with a satisfying nugget statement, or a brief answer to “what’s your book about?” And now I can see why it’s been so hard to answer that.

The reason I’ve had such a hard time saying what my premise is (what my book is about), is because it’s not about anything. Nothing in particular anyway. My story needs to focus on one or two particular aspects of human nature or life, not all aspects of it. To try to be about everything in one book is to be about nothing. I need to focus on one, or a few related, particulars.

I’ve basically been writing a biography, which is ironic because I distinctly dislike biographies (though I just read two a week ago). Without knowing what your story’s premise is, you end up simply imitating life (biography), which is fundamentally meaningless with all its byways and blind alleys. No matter how interesting those byways and blind alleys are, if they are not connected and necessary to support your premise then they are irrelevant, diluting the strength of the story.

So, what am I going to do about it?

I’m not sure.

Logically, the first thing I need to do is isolate my premise. The closest I’ve come to answering “what’s your book about?” is by saying it’s a coming-of-age story. But that’s more of a theme, or even a genre. Maybe it would make more sense to look at Part Two: Left Behind as my lead for finding my premise, since it’s the only section where the plot is properly developed with a chain of causations.

Over halfway through the book and I’m just now figuring out I’ve been doing it wrong all along. I had already felt something was missing, now I know what. Though the magnitude of it is daunting. But… Nothing is beyond fixing if you’re willing to put in the work.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/23/2026

This is the big structural shift I was waiting for as I reread these journal entries, though the younger me is referring to Episodes for some strange reason. Perhaps because an episodic structure doesn’t require a premise for the whole, just for each individual episode. Whatever. He’ll get rid of that idea soon enough and just start calling the core elements Parts or Chapters.

And yes, I eventually went back to bring everything up to speed so that Wings of Providence as a complete first novel has a clear premise.

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89: The Shadow Falls & Destiny’s Child

6/9/2015

Well, I relocated again, this time to Walla Walla, having ended my relationship in Aberdeen. I moved as far away as possible while still being in the same state. But in the process, and within my renewed solitude, I completed the entire rough draft for Chapter Nine: The Shadow Falls. It only took two weeks, completing 13 new scenes to go with the first scene and The Shadow of Damu fable, which were already done prior to my move. I’m not sure, but I think that was the fastest writing of an entire chapter I’ve done so far. I had to do it all off the cuff without my research notes or outlines, so it will require a lot of additional content on the rewrite, but the heart of it is there.

It felt really good writing like that without much editing, which is how I’ve always heard rough drafts should be done. But it makes for a far less satisfying rereading after. Nevertheless, I’m happy with what got accomplished and the inventions and plot details that were born along the way. I particularly like the scene locations, and specifically the Shadow Falls itself, the jola hut, and the jola fire circle – all of which adds new dimensions to the Batu world I hadn’t previously imagined.

Once I had finished The Shadow Falls, I went on to plot out Chapter 10: Jawara Ben-Bella, and the nine scenes I have planned for that. I hadn’t pen or paper at that point though, so I had to work it all out entirely in my head. I’ll try to recapture the outline and write it down today, now that I’m finally settled in here at my new place in Walla Walla.

I promised myself to have Book One: The Song of Mugasha done by the end of this year, so I have to get at least one chapter done per month. I proved it was possible even while moving, so I have no excuses. I have to get Jawara Ben-Bella started ASAP to make sure it’s done by July.

Chapter’s 11 & 12 are still pretty murky in my mind, though I know I want to introduce love interests for Bakar, Tamal, Dougga and Diallo in Chapter 11, perhaps even a marriage – Dougga and Joyul? I also need to bring in their training as hunters, and how they take on their societal roles as men (the four chapters contained within this part is entitled Childhood’s End, which reflects the over-arcing theme).

Siona will also be explored. I see Chapter 12 taking place around another twa yal-jukun, involving Siona as she experiences a vision with Fa and Ardra, where she sees her own death. Following that, she abandons Kamaria and the Batu tribe to return to The Others. I need to work out and establish the prophecy and the threat to the tribe in much more detail in Chapters 11 and 12, too. This may be done primarily through Siona’s investigations.

I also worked out in my head during my move (yes, it was a busy month of long walks and writing) the key nuances of their backstory so that things fit together. The title of this backstory is Destiny’s Child, and will possibly be a scene in Chapter 16: Revelations down the road.

What I worked out is essentially this:

Alena is no longer Diallo’s half-sister, but rather his cousin. Luala and Siona were sisters. Guma is Diallo’s deceased half-brother. Siona and Luala were daughters of Amra, the ruler of The Others and a descendant of Mugasha. An oracle foresaw the downfall of Amra due to a child with ghost eyes (Alena) that would be known as the Fa Hawara. So, when Alena was born by Siona she feared for her daughter’s life, and with Luala’s help they fled and escaped with the baby.

They are found by the bachwezi and brought into Kamaria and made part of the tribe. Siona seduces Mosai, though he’s more attracted to Luala, and with Siona they beget Guma. But after Guma is devoured by a swarm of ants as an infant, Mosai leaves Siona to marry her sister, Luala. Diallo is born from that union shortly after.

Luala was the favored daughter of Amra, and it was from him that Mogai’s amber amulet was passed down. Alena is the Fa Hawara descending from Mugasha through Amra rather than Mosai. There were two sons of Mugasha, one good (spawning the Batu), and one rebel, Amra (spawning The Others). The Amra in Destiny’s Child and later in the Batu narrative is a descendant of the original Amra. All first born males within the lineage are named Amra upon taking the throne.

As I said, all of this will probably get revealed in Chapter 16: Revelations, except the part of Guma’s death as an infant. That gets left until Book Three when Mogai’s mind begins to shatter as his psychoses begin to reveal themselves.

Anyway, that’s the gist of it. It diminishes the taboo of Diallo and Alena’s relationship as adolescents, but that may be for the best anyway. They’re still first cousins though, which is taboo enough for my plotting purposes. The important thing is that Guma and Diallo are both sons of Mosai and represent a remerging through Guma of the bloodlines of Mugasha’s two sons. Which in the prophecy is an indicator that the end times are at hand. It might be more satisfying if Mosai was really Alena’s father as well, but no plausible explanation lends itself while maintaining Siona as one of The Others fleeing with Alena as a baby.

But none of this needs to be written in stone yet. It is enough to have the gist of it now as I proceed into Chapters 10-12.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/22/2026

Destiny’s Child is still unfinished today, but it has been developed as far as it needs to be to write the main narratives. There’s a lot of loose ends with all my side projects, but right now I’m entirely focused on getting the first book – Wings of Providence – published. The side projects will have to wait until I’m in between books, or until I’m retired from my day job.

There’s just no time at this point for what’s not absolutely necessary.

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88: The Batu Companion

2/14/2015

I just finished the first chapter of The Batu Companion. It opens with a synopsis of The Yara, followed by a commentary section, and finishes with three interviews about The Yara.

All of this came to 21 pages and took two or three weeks. Why I am doing this (especially when I’m only halfway done with the first book) is an embarrassing question. Mainly because it’s easier and more fun than working on the main narrative. I knew I would want a companion eventually, even if only for myself, and I have a good enough grasp of the story as a whole now to at least start the companion.

A companion would help me to crystalize ideas and give me better clarity of what I already have done as I proceed. Also, if I ever need a detailed synopsis of my novel for submission to publishers I will already have it done. It’s there in the introduction to The Batu Companion.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/21/2026

The Batu Companion remains one of my favorite side projects. Adding it to this website, along with more analyses, interviews, and illustrations, really increases the depth and breadth of what I’m trying to do here. I’ve only begun to include the opening chapters from Wings of Providence, and am looking forward to whenever I have time to continue on that.

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87: Things Best Left in the Cellar

9/22/2014

So, I had this thought that it might be interesting to frame my Batu story within a contemporary context with the Batu story told to the reader from that context. It could open with a man in a city (me) who is so repulsed by his own current life situation that he retreats from reality by creating the Batu – a fantasy world as different from his own as he could imagine.

Sound familiar?

Like Canterbury Tales, it would be a story within a story. A story about the writing of a story. But unlike the other books I’ve seen that have done similar things, my book would contain the entire Batu story rather than just fragments, while the fragmented bits would be the occasional return to the contemporary city reality.

The first obvious question is: how does this help or enhance my Batu story? Or does it? More than anything, I’m just jealous of authors writing fiction set within a contemporary setting with all the cultural and linguistic freedoms that come with modernity. To avoid being anachronistic and remain faithful to the Batu’s historical setting I am severely limited in my language usage, style, and awareness of the details of daily life. Every move my characters make has a cascading effect of creation on my part to invent how things work. Nobody can simply pull into a driveway, stumble drunk up the porch steps, fumbling with their keys in the door lock, flip on a light switch before collapsing on the couch. When you build a world from the bottom up there’s no such thing as simple action. So, as much as I love my Batu world, I often envy the comparable easy format of modern times.

And I know the city.

But a contemporary counterpoint story would inevitably rob the Batu story of its mystery, as I answer and explain the themes of the historical tale as an allegory for my life story. Though perhaps the analysis of the Batu mysteries would only deal with the issues I myself am conscious of, thereby pushing the Batu story to generate even deeper questions, the answers to which I couldn’t provide even if I wanted to.

I can have myself walking the streets with a friend, discussing ideas about the Batu story being written. I can have dramatic vignettes from the city narrative that gets absorbed and reflected by the Batu story. I can have the process of writing the tale also be the unraveling of the mystery of what led me to the writing of the series, my real-life drama being reflected in the Batu story. All my angels and demons are in the tale to be interpreted.

The idea, of course, is insane. Something to think about though.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/20/2026

An idea thought about and rejected. It’s an idea that’s not at all original, which turns me off, but it’s also completely self-indulgent. Such narcissistic navel-gazing sickens me. I created the Batu as a way to get out of my head and the world I’m familiar with, not to go rooting around in its cellar.

I suppose elements of biography are inevitable though, scavenging from my own life in desperation for source material. Especially for a first-time writer. I try to avoid it as much as possible, however, and would much prefer it happen subconsciously than as a deliberate creative strategy. The very idea of autobiography grosses me out.

To satisfy the itch, however – the need for immortalizing key facets of my life, and for writing within a modern context with all the ease and freedom that comes with that – I have written a fictional memoir. It’s called Queer Choices, taking place when I’m sixteen years old and back in high school. It’s a self-indulgent exploration of how my life might have been if I were born into a life situation more in keeping with who I really am. I spent years writing it, justifying the time spent by telling myself it’s necessary in order to get the biographical impulse out of my system. Once done, I could return to my real work with a clean head.

In this alternate reality my parents never got divorced, and rather than being the youngest of three, I’m an only child. The background elements are all precisely how I remember them though – the same house I grew up in, same neighborhood, same school, etc. But, as with my parents, all my friends, classmates, and teachers have a vastly different relationship with me because I myself am queerly different. It depicts the version of me I think I’d much rather be – both physically and personally.

It’s a fantasy memoir, but not because I get everything I want. Indeed, after setting the initial conditions to where everything is as I think I’d have wanted, the story unfolds with a life of its own. It quickly becomes apparent how insane and messed up this fictional version of me is, things being much more reckless and dramatic than my life actually was back then. But that’s precisely what makes it so much fun to write. Give myself everything I think I want, only to find out how bad that can be. Albeit, deliciously bad.

356 pages of pure creative fun, exploring the more bizarre corners of my hidden longings. Precisely the kind of thing that’s best kept hidden in the cellar.

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86: An Artist In Need of an Audience

6/17/2014

I moved to Aberdeen, arriving here six weeks ago. Which means, in addition to losing the solitude of my writing studio, I also have a roommate and a TV now. You can imagine how little work is getting done. Though I’ve worked some on The Song of Mugasha fable, completing Part One with Tapu meeting Damu crossing the bridge to the western forest. Not much, but at least it’s something. As predicted, it’s extremely hard to work while in the midst of a new relationship, but I think the TV is an even bigger handicap than the roommate. I love movies, and have been doing a lot of catching up.

I watched the movie Avatar last night for the first time. It was good, but not as naturalistic as I’d have wanted. It was too obviously computer generated, like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where cartoons were mixed with live action.

I really liked the culture-building and characterizations of the natives though. The lush forest settings with the massive trees and waterfalls were inspiring for me. The “I see you” is a typical African aboriginal greeting. Their hair and music have blatant African influences, too, while their dress, vocalizations, and uses of “horses” are more in keeping with Native Americans.

The story was okay, though I was disappointed by the use of the exploitive white colonist cliche for the bad guys. It’s telling that the movie only bogged down for me when the scenes were human scenes rather than the native ones. I’d have preferred it if the entire movie was native with no humans and a different nonhuman centered storyline.

On the whole it was good, but aside from the lush visuals it wasn’t the cinematic masterpiece it’s touted as being. It was obviously targeted for mass-market appeal, moving too fast without enough substance to balance the eye-candy, for me to call it great.

As for its comparison to my Batu books: the tribe’s plaited hair, their music, and the lush forest that’s larger than life are the only things I see that they have in common. Thank god.

I got Rob Dogget’s three pages of notes, along with the 150 pages of my manuscript, returned to me two weeks ago. His comments were disappointing though. He admits up front to being prejudiced against my genre of writing (then why’d he want to see it? Didn’t Paul mention it?), and that he won’t be wanting to read more. He even said he had discouraged his students in the past from writing in my genre, and if they must, to at least keep it brief.

What kind of teacher is this? You don’t teach them what, you teach them how. What kind of teacher uses his/her authority to inhibit creative expression by pushing their own genre tastes? Way too many do, no doubt.

Rob was polite about it, but he lost me along with my respect for his opinion in his opening paragraph. All his comments after that were pretty much wasted on me. It didn’t help any that he didn’t even understand that the flashbacks in the prologue were flashbacks, though my two other readers (with no training in literature) both understood the flashback transitions. He wasn’t harsh or overly critical in his comments, however, just obtuse. He even praised my writing in general terms. My only problem with him, and all so-called authorities like him in the arts, is the obvious snobbery and prejudices he has and allowing them to influence his instruction to would-be writers. I experienced enough in art school to know that a good art teacher has no right to push their personal aesthetics in terms of content or genre.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/19/2026

I remember how difficult it was to write that journal entry twelve years ago. It seems like a another lifetime, a LOT of water under the bridge, but the profound resentment I felt from Dogget’s response remains quite clear in my memory. I had to wait two weeks to cool off before journaling about it, and even then it was very difficult because I didn’t want to rant or come off as being defensive or imbittered. I held a lot back, with more emotional restraint than is likely evident.

He didn’t discourage my ambition or creative interests in the slightest, however. He only discouraged my sense of what my readership might look like. Made me wonder if maybe my audience might not be as expansive as I’d hoped. I always thought of my work as being genre-breaking and timeless, and that it would appeal to anybody who likes fiction in general.

Naïve optimism.

To be honest, I’ve never really had a good picture in my head of who my audience is – other than myself. Indeed, even today, I can’t imagine an “ideal reader” as being anything other than a carbon copy of me – someone who loves immersive fantasy, rich cultural mythos, and complex family sagas.

I’ve had my Uncle Paul read hundreds of pages of an earlier draft of Wings of Providence – all the way through to the end of Part Two: Twa Yal-Jukun. I respect him as an avid reader (though having no experience with genre fiction), and as a highly intelligent and insightful thinker. My work fell flat with him as well, and his written notes on what he read that he mailed to me indicated he hadn’t really been able to follow the basic plotting, let alone appreciate any of the finer nuances of symbolism and metaphor.

Paul thought the death of Bakar’s brothers signified the story was becoming a murder mystery. He hadn’t picked up what I thought was obvious – that their father had beaten them to death. Which is why I never bothered mentioning their deaths again in the story, because I saw it as a closed case. Not a mystery.

And I’ve had friends who are avid readers of genre fiction who haven’t enough interest to even try reading my work, let alone appreciating or providing me feedback on it. I’ve only had one friend who has read my work, understood my work, and truly appreciated it. We used to go for long walks in the rain, snow, or scorching heat, talking about Diallo and his struggles. This friend wouldn’t give me a critique though, because he was afraid of influencing me in any way. He always worried that I’d ruin it every time I talked about rewriting things.

But he’s the only one I’ve ever met I could think of as “my audience.”

My deadline for building the print on demand infrastructure for my book launch is the end of this month. Starting in September and leading on up to the October 1st launch, I will be focusing entirely on finding my online audience and trying to reach out to them. Which will be anybody who might actually be reading what I’m writing right now.

So, wish me luck. If history is any guide, I’m going to need it.

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85: Batu Sabbaticals

6/17/2014

I haven’t made an entry in my journal here about my Batu work these last three months because I haven’t done any Batu work here in these last three months. I’ve written a couple pages on The Song of Mugasha fable, but that’s about it. I’ve been on a Batu Sabbatical painting murals for teddy bears five days a week. Combining that with the convenient timing of finishing Part Two: Left Behind, as well as realizing I have a huge two-chapter gap in Part Three’s scene outline with no current plotting ideas to fill it. I’ve not even found the energy to tackle it on my off hours or weekends.

I’ve been Batu-lazy.

But tonight I got a letter from Uncle Paul saying that his retired English teacher friend from Lakeside, Rob Dogett, offered to read what I’ve got done with my Batu so far. He’s the one who critiqued my application essay for the Northwest College of Art in 2003. I was ecstatic about this offer, so I packaged up my prologue and first three chapters and mailed it to Paul for Rob. That’s only 162 pages of 556 I got done, but it’s a good sampling for Rob, letting him know where my strengths and weaknesses are. If he wants more, I’ll send more. I’m not sure what kind of feedback he may give, but I’m open and anxious to hear anything from an unbiased professional. This will be my first quasi-professional reading.

I’m excited. Maybe it will motivate me to start writing the second half now.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/18/2026

I painted a large mural for a project I was working with that made teddy bears for children in the midst of crisis situations. The teddy bears we made were donated to local law enforcement who kept them in the trunks of their patrol cars. They’d be handed out to comfort children during domestic violence calls or other emergency situations, and the mural I painted was a long parade of all the teddy bears and other stuffed animals we made, marching through a mountain valley.

That mural led to a few other mural jobs promoting other programs, keeping me busy with painting instead of writing. I probably needed the break from my Batu work. I get that same feeling a lot in my present-day life situation as well. Managing burn-out when I can’t afford to take a sabbatical. I got my book launch deadline set of October 1st, and I intend to keep it. I allow myself micro-sabbaticals in the form of taking an evening off to just read or go to bed early. Or to give a couple hours to doing housework, catching up on general life maintenance things that have been slipping through the cracks. But I never really take a whole day off from doing any Batu related work at all.

There just isn’t enough hours in a day, and I need to get things done for my launch.

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84: Remembering What’s Yet to Come

3/29/2014

Well, I didn’t put the first half to bed after all. I edited and rewrote the first and second scenes of the first chapter. Also rewrote the Wings of Providence fable, transferred the entire edited prologue from my media tablet to paper, edited and rewrote Dougga’s scene in The Kulu, and edited Badru’s scene in The Wounded. In other words, I fixed all my most problematic scenes. Hopefully I can move forward now without looking back.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/17/2026

Rereading my old journals is sometimes like watching a movie I’ve seen before – anticipating, though not quite sure how soon, certain things I know are going to happen. It allows me to appreciate what a blessing it is that memory only works in one direction. Because I suspect it would make doing my work infinitely more difficult if I could remember what lies ahead of me as clearly as I remember what lies behind.

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83: A Prison of Fours

3/8/2014

I wrote the new scene for Chapter Three: The Fever today. The three boys are spear fighting  with hot embers in the darkness beneath the village. It’s kind of fun, and expanded a tad on the allusions of how Diallo got The Fever. It turned out okay, but more than anything I’m just glad I can finally put the first half of Book One to bed. Shouldn’t have to touch it for another eleven years now.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/16/2026

If only saying it made it so. That 42 year old version of myself had only scratched the surface of his rewrites and reimagining, and had yet to even make the transition away from referring to his chapters as scenes. The thing that kept me entrenched in that old model so long was my clinging to a symmetry of fours. I wanted four volumes in the series, four Books per volume, four Parts per book and four chapters per Part. Four levels of Four.

Four is the only sacred number among Batu, and it’s used as the metronome for the entire series – providing a sense of rhythm and harmony to everything. There was a time when I kept track of all my uses of four, but after compiling a list several pages long I eventually lost track and stopped documenting its use. That was about 15 years ago. Suffice it to say that the number four is used almost every time there’s a number put to anything.

A brief sampling of the more obvious uses would be:

·       The four villages that comprise the tribe as a whole.

·       The series centering around four best friends (Diallo, Tamal, Bakar, Dougga).

·       Four members of the jola representing the four spiritual disciplines of the tribe.

·       The four songs comprising The Napatawalata song cycle.

·       The four segments of The Yara prelude to Wings of Providence.

·       The word Batu has four letters in it.

·       There’s four gateways in and out of Ephrathah.

·       There’s four emergent trees with their own fire circles in Ephrathah.

·       Mosai’s kulu has four holes in it.

·       In the Kanar Exegesis there are four glyphs in each set and every glyph has four levels of meaning.

·       The Twa Yal-Jukun takes place every four years.

·       Each book in the series spans four years.

·       There’s four rites of passage in a person’s lifetime that occurs every four years (if they live long enough).

·       Every ritual has 4 stages to it…

As I said, the list goes on and on. And it was this obsession with the number four that kept me fixed to the idea that every book in the series could only have four chapters. Letting go of that took a lot of convincing. The strongest argument was the realization of how ridiculous it is to have 50+ page chapters. Ultimately though, it was my need for creative freedom that broke the chain of fours.

I build my own prisons, and only I can forge the keys that set me free.

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82: The Point of Pointless Play

3/7/2014

Finished my last new scene for Chapter One yesterday, where Alena and Joyul get hit by a swarm of butterflies at the river. I like this scene for the imagery and grandeur, but I’m not sure how it will play with the book as a whole and its plotline. It’s dangerously close to being pointless, beyond its sensationalistic appeal. And it ties in with the Wings of Providence theme, of course, with the butterfly motif and Joyul’s insistence that it must be a sign. But its purpose is still kind of flimsy. No characters get developed, nor does the story. And the action within this chapter has no effect or illumination on later events.

The other two new scenes with the boys, on the other hand, developed them in ways that will influence future actions – so they had a point. Oddly enough though, I think I like this butterfly swarm scene the best. Despite its pointless existence, it’s fun.

Now I have one more scene to write in Chapter Three: The Fever. I’m playing with ideas of Tamal and his bow and arrow, maybe bringing in Makoa as his adopted father. Maybe having the boys engaged in hunting each other in the dark with spears that have hot coals attached to their ends – a sort of ancient paintball battle where pains (or burns) are part of the fun while learning hunting skills.

Not sure. Still playing with ideas.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/15/2026

Focus on the rhythm of the song and clear the clutter of your complicated mind. Meanings don’t matter when they’re idle chatter of a transcendental kind. When they’re able to take any shape one likes, all that matters is the music.

–The Way of the Mystic, excerpt

This epigram used as the header for Chapter 9: Wings of Light is probably the best retort I can come up with to the original journal entry I wrote 13 years ago. All my doubts and concerns about the chapter may have been valid from the point of view of an editorial critique, but they’re completely beside the point of why such a chapter is necessary – because it’s fun

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81: New Perspectives

3/4/2014

Just finished Bakar and Dougga’s Guardian of the Gate scene to plug into Chapter one. And I wrote Tamal a scene yesterday, with him up in the tree atop Overlook Hill after hearing about his mother’s death. That one turned out better, of course, because it was so much shorter. Short and sweet is much easier to make poignant and consistently good from beginning to end. That rule of thumb doesn’t bode well for my first novel as a whole, considering what a mammoth it’s turning into.

Anyway, it was an odd experience to go back and revisit Chapter One like this in order to flesh it out. It’s very much like traveling back in time, only instead of reliving what I already lived, I’m going back to see adjacent stories and circumstances related to my original experience. New perspectives on what was thought to be an already fully realized experience.

None of what I’ve written in these two new scenes are necessary to the plot in any fundamental way. How could they when I built what I have already without them? Yet I believe they do enhance the quilt I’m attempting to weave. Both Tamal and Dougga are better understood now. The theme of Making Friends is better illustrated now for this chapter as well. It anchors the characters with deeper roots, rather than just popping up out of thin air in the Twa Yal-Jukun chapter after 200 pages of story without them.

I’ve got one more scene to write for this first chapter, then that ought to do it for Alena. I’m considering adding a scene into The Fever as well for Tamal, Bakar, and Dougga. They don’t need a lot of presence there, but if Diallo is their friend during this period, they should have a scene in the chapter where he’s on death’s door the whole time.

It will probably have more vague references to Alena sending Diallo on a quest for the ghost frog, which is how he contracted The Fever from mosquitoes in the swamp. Just a two-to-three-page dialogue would do.

Something to think about. First, I have to do this last scene for Chapter One tomorrow. Short and sweet, so it should be good… though I haven’t given it any thought and have no idea what it will be about. It needs to tie into Alena though, since the chapter is named after her and she’s only appeared briefly in it so far.

I’m happy. Things are going well. Better than expected in fact.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/14/2026

Finally, the younger me is getting back to the beginning to flesh things out and bringing things up to where they stand today. More or less. He’s still at the very beginning of his reimagining work and has no clue what he’s really undertaking, but it’s a start.

New perspectives are vital for breathing in new life, adding depth with unforeseen dimensions. This is what reality does, so it’s only appropriate that art should do it as well. Experimenting and growing in new and unexpected directions.

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80: From Dissolutions to New Beginnings

3/1/2014

Just reread all of Dissolutions again. And again, I was disappointed with the overall quality of my writing. It’s going to need a lot more rewriting on the computer someday. It’s clumsy and soulless, with only a few shining moments. The story itself is okay, even good in some parts, but the telling of it sucks! And it gets worse as the chapter progresses. You can tell I didn’t enjoy writing it too much. Oh well, I’ll fix it later. Much later.

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Present-Day Reflection

8/13/2026

Today is not someday. Nothing is getting done today. Or, I should say, nothing is getting finished today. I’ve been working all weekend (my weekend being Wednesday and Thursday) on getting my Kindle account registered and my eBook uploaded and ready to go with all the infrastructure and tech b.s. that goes along with that. As well as my IngramSpark print-on-demand infrastructure setup for my paperback and hardcover versions. Kindel Direct Publishing was an all day affair yesterday, and all of today was spent with IngramSpark.

Though getting my book formatted properly for the print version is going to take a while yet. The templates IngramSpark supply totally suck and would warp the entire feel of my work with their formatting constraints.

Though I have the Author’s Edition of the eBook available right now for the world from my website, not many are aware it’s even there. And nobody that cares. The official launch date for my Kindle page and their EPUB will be October 1st. Same with my paperback and hardcover versions from IngramSpark. That gives me all the time I should need to get the last minute edits and glitches cleaned up, as well as formatting it to perfection.

Unlike my feelings about Dissolutions 13 years ago, I’m feeling really good about Wings of Providence and how it’s being packaged for its birthday. And I’m not going to deal with its fine-tuning later; I’m getting it done for the last time by September 27th – which is the deadline for when my two host sites need the final version of my manuscript uploaded.

Wish me luck. I won’t need it.

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