The HORROR of writing a book

Woo, writing is an exhausting experience, especially when you are trying to make it mean something, maintaining its flow and keeping the reader informed on where he is in the world you are creating. That is what this first chapter is: world creation, character introduction, making the reader care. Caring. It's difficult. You need to get them emotionally invested, and that's what I am attempting to do. This is a fun process-- exploding the character, making him feel real, identifying through him, experiencing him.

Well, wondering what I am talking about yet? Here is the link to the first chapter here: The OtherWorlds Chapter 1 Trojan Horse.

Read it. Edit it. Tell me what you think of it.

Personal.



Lately, it has become even more personal. It always was, but I have been glazing on the themes of the text like a thin icing. (God, that was bad metaphor.)

Here's another one:

Your foot is on the accelerator. Tearing down I-90 between Bozeman and Billings, you see a truck driving in the wrong lane. You put on the breaks but it's too late. Your life flashes before your eyes, to use a cliche; you swerve back and forth, back and forth, nothing to do but die. It's a story about nostalgia, living in these last few moments. It feels good. It feels right. You love it. Even the bad times because they made you who you are in that last second before the crash, before you are ripped to human shreds, nothing but red gunk and pink flesh and brains. Nostalgia. Nóstos for homecoming, álgos for pain or ache. They are ancient Greek words-- melancholy for times past, things you miss, you experienced that you can no longer experience. Jacob and Jhonen, in my novel, literally live on the skeletons of the past, drifting along in a world, full of miraculous new things, but desiring something that is no longer there. Mankind is dying. There is nothing left but pain, loss, and death. Death is the end... it's right in front of you. What do you do? Hold onto something, let it go, forget about it all. Do you give in?

I am living through Jacob. He is me and I am him. My Grandpa sent me this years ago:

Nick: Sorry I missed you. I was busy hauling brush and had to clean the drain troughs out before the weather turns next week. I need the ladder which is hanging on the wall in front of Grandma's car. When she was off having lunch with you and Linda I could get to the ladder. I'll see you at Thanksgiving. Hang over there and do your best. Of all things in your life grades are [sic] crudial now for your future.

My father's father was a doctor. He loved the military and foreign places. In the 1800's when he was about your age now there were few professions acceptable if you wanted to call yourself a gentleman. A doctor or minister were acceptable. That surprizes me because doctors without degrees were plentiful, medicine crude and mortality very high.

He did hold session as a minister but I think in many churches a member was often asked to climb to the pulpet. His doctoring studies even took him to Europe where he finished. The branch of Axlines he was from in his day had money made from the Florida orange groves where they lived and the invoation of the insulated ice cars on the railroad. They could ship the oranges north to the states now where they were a prized commody. He married into a family by the name of Bishop who were a pioneer family from the state of Iowa. The branch of the tree for the Axlines and for the Bishop's would lead your female children to membership in Daughters of the Revolution (DAR) if it were important now as it once was. We missed Montana Pioneers through the Adami line by about seven years. You had to be a resident of Montana territory in 1865 to qualify.

Jacob Adami came to Helena in 1872. It must have been a wonderful time full of hope and expectations. I started telling you about Father's Father, Morton Homer Axline because you have a friend who enjoys the stage from the side of the stage where you stride the planks (actor rather than audience). Morton Homer Axline always wished to have been an actor. Not much credit for actors in his day. Maybe you will get a chance to give it a try for him.

See you later, Grandpa

I had forgotten about this message. One day I was going through my old documents and noticed one titled Jacob Adami. It was a surprise when I opened it. I had, thankfully, saved the email my grandpa had sent me, copying and pasting it into a WordPad rtf file. I guess I am smarter than I think I am some days. The email interested me then and still does.

History. The Past. Living up to someone who is not there. Abandonment.

There is always a past, but the actors are fading away. The old kings are dead, and you can't live up to them. As my old English professor used to say: you are always late to the party. Recently, I have been re-reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. IT is the villain in the story-- he is the father who wants to control everything. He wants to absolve you of your decision making. He wants to let you live in a society without any control of your own. But there is peace of mind in this. You don't have to think anymore. You give in your freewill for complete safety.

But what is the exact opposite? It's living in a world where there is no father, no government, no nothin', says the Texan.

That is the world of The OtherWorlds. There is nothing. Children are guilty. Children run rampant. Children are sad and lost and there's no one there to help when they fall.

This appears to be a very modern problem. I am not sure the extent of the sense of nothingness others feel, but I do, perhaps because of my history. I don't know. There are a lot human 'floaters'. They bump through life like a turd in a bowl until they are flushed, and that's that. So it goes. So it goes. So it goes. That's this story. That's The OtherWorlds. I hope its themes reflect the Millennial generation's sense of guilt-- you admire but abhor your parents. You feel like you have done nothing while so many others have done so much. It's painful. It's evil. You want to change something but can't. You hate yourself. You hate yourself because you have no one to tell you what to do, don't want anyone to tell you what to do. They told you were special, but you weren't so special after all. You don't think anyone loves you, even if you are beautiful, even if they told you were special because you haven't done anything worth a damn no matter what they tell you. There is nothing left to gain for the Millennial. He is standing on the edge of eternity, looking at nothing but defeat and hopelessness. It's all contradiction... Is that what this is? It's nostalgia, something the Millennials are known for-- it's NickToons, it's Power Rangers, it's Pokemon. It's something to hide away inside as society rots around you. You are special, and you don't really believe it.

Jacob and Jhonen.

I chose the name Jacob because I liked the sound of it. I chose Jacob 'Adami' during a revelation while mowing the lawn at my grandparent's house one summer between college semesters. Jacob is one of the Hebrew patriarchs. Jacob was the main character in Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Slave. That is all relevant.

Jhonen I picked because of Jhonen Vasquez, writer and artist of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and show-runner of "Invader Zim". I also liked the name. He is modeled after Oscar Wilde, as you might be able to tell from the description of his appearance.

The story started out as "Star Wars" fan fiction. Jacob was a younger Ben Kenobi finding Morgan Omega who was Anakin Skywalker. The Greek God aspect came from a joint story I was writing with friends. Malick was my character. Morgan (then named something else) was somebody elses. It was all basically conceived between the ages of 10 and 14. I am now 25.

Mythologically speaking, the 'brother battle' is ubiquitous. It has been told in stories across the world, in Egyptian mythos, in Shakespeare's tragedies, and in modern day pop entertainment like Thor: The Dark World. Alan Watts wrote of this perennial tale in his book The Two Hands of God: The Myths of Polarity. Essentially, the brothers are opposites stemming from the same wellspring. They share much but are apart, locked in a never-ending battle between dualistic personalities and philosophies. They complete each other by existing in separation. In my novel, it is represented by cousins Jacob and Jhonen. One is stoic, quiet, and blames himself for his pain. He dresses functionally, is emotionally closed off, and when he does emote, is explosive. His most defining characteristic may be his need for independence. The other, Jhonen Finn, is flamboyant, gaudy, and snarky. His outer appearance secretly harbors deep insecurities, and at his base, he is sycophantic, always moving to new power players he consciously or subconsciously believes can benefit him. In the end, both Jacob and Jhonen care for one another, though Jhonen may care a bit more. That is the nature of brother battles, and I think aspects ofboth their personalities relate to many Millenials.

I grew up in Billings, Montana.

Billings is not what most people think of when they think of Montana. It is flanked to the north and the south not by mountains but by what the locals call 'rim rocks'. They are sand stone, dirt brown, and easy to chip away with fingernails. They are ugly and short, looking like stratified ant hills, not much growing on them but weeds and small trees. The Yellowstone river runs through the southern part of town. It's brown. It's lethargic. It's what you think of when you think of Billings: refineries, banks, hospitals, sugar beats, old timers, brown, brown, BROWN, and kids trying to get out. I lived in the Heights for the majority of my life. They are on top of the rims. We have our own Applebee's, Target, and Wal-Mart. We have no refineries. It feels separate from the valley somehow, like it's its own city.

During the summers I used to push my grandpa's heavy red lawn mower up and down the hill in his yard. It was a good time for thinking. I did this a lot... Jhonen calls himself 'the Dragon'. His last name is Drakard. Birds were in the trees. They would fly away when I brought the mower closer to them, squawking and fluttering their wings. The first chapter contains a lot of birds. What does that mean? These are the types of things I would think of when I shoved that machine up the hill, chopped grass smell in my nostrils, sweat in my armpits and hair, grasshoppers buzzing, sun baking down on the gnarled trees and my body...

My grandparents fed the birds every day like clock work.

Like I said, Billings has a lot of refineries. They are like a second skyline, or a third one if you count Lockwood (which I do). Dark smoke floats into the red sky like dragon's breath. The town stinks. It looks burnt out. But I have grown to love it. People don't appreciate the grit enough. When Spike Lee criticized whites moving into his old Brooklyn neighborhood, I got it. "You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start Bogarting," he said, "and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they did in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people." While I don't agree with Lee's opinions, I think he comes from a real place. I live in Bozeman, Montana now. It is lacking some of what Billings has-- a sense of place, a sense of 'realness', a sense of people actually sacrificing anything. It isn't true of course, but in Billings, you can see the old timers who moved there from Eastern Montana and beyond. You can see the meth heads, the bankers, the school teachers, the doctors, the criminals. They are there. They are real. The phoniness of Yellowstone tourists and college bohemians haven't rubbed off on it, and that's something.

Troy.

The first section needed to feel urgent. It was the hardest part to write.

Troy was originally supposed to be a throw-a-way character, but I grew to love him as an every man. Now I wish he wasn't dead. He has to be for the story to work. I battled myself over and over again. I am still not sure this part is all there, but I have to thank a girl I met who pushed me to make it better. Thank you, nameless girl. That's all I really have to say here.

The Demon.

The Demon is important. It is a bird and you will see it again.

"[...] The secret preserved and nurtured by geniuses as diverse as Plato, St Paul, Leonardo, Shakespeare, and Newton:

1. If you can think so deeply that you can rediscover the spiritual roots of thought, if you can recognize thoughts as living, spiritual beings ...

2. If you can develop a strong enough sense of your own individuality that you can become aware of your interaction with the Thought-Beings that weave in and out of yourself, yet not be overwhelmed by this reality ...

3. If you can recreate the ancient sense of wonder and use this sense of wonder to help awaken the will power that lies sleeping in your deep, dark recesses ...

4. If the fire of love for your fellow human beings rises from your heart and causes you to weep tears of compassion ..."

(Mark Booth, The Secret History of the World, 542-3)

Jacob's demon is a representation of his own darkness which he cannot control. It is a very literal representation. His arc will be redemption, of accepting humanity in all its ugliness of emotion and thought and all its forms and appearances. By the end of the series he will weep "tears of compassion" for his fellow man. That's what I want for him. To be happy.

Montana



The World.

I was reading The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance when I wrote Jacob's ride eastward toward Billings. Pirsig, the author of the aforementioned book, taught at Montana State University in Bozeman right before his breakdown. He references Montana throughout the book-- the homeland of Phaedrus. Phaedrus, I would like to point out, is Saturn. IT is Saturn. That will be important going forward. A land without a father, a land without time, a land without order. Montana is currently a place barely blemished by man's will to dominate. It is a more pure, 'big' nature. That notion will be destroyed in the OtherWorlds. Montana is the homeland of the gods. The world is in ruin-- and they come here of all places, to Granite Peak.

"According to esoteric Christianity, Jesus Christ lived on earth in the middle of the history of the cosmos. His life represents the great turning point in history. Everything after it mirrors what happened beforehand. So we are experiencing the great events of pre-Christian times in reverse order and our future development will take us through earlier stages in reverse order" (Mark Booth, The Secret History of the World, 538).

The Next Chapter.

The second chapter needs much reworking. It will cover various characters. Upon finishing my many re-readings of Chapter 1, I noted how much I wanted to know more about Jhonen. He will be explored more in Chapter 2 where he wasn't before-- his relationship with the king, General Ordo, and the triumvirate in general. I will also detail how important Morgan and Evie are. They are the two, the dreamers, the destroyers.