how to write

Step 1: Live your fucking life

  Step 1-A: Pay attention to everything. Learn how things work. How they fit together. Don't rely so much on your own point-of-view. You're just one character. Zoom out. Zoom in. What would a hero do? What would a villain do? The mentor? The sidekick? The love interest? Every few minutes, most people do something that reveals a little bit about their characters. Take notes. Every fragment won't be useful, but you won't know which ones aren't until you're dead, and then it won't really matter. Write to discover. We already have enough people telling us what they already know. Fiction is great for messy ideas; not everything has to be a clue, or a symbol, or a variation on a theme. Sometimes a character just wants a sandwich. All those moments when you can't think of a clever riposte are okay.  Everyone has those moments. Make a plan. Or don't. You'll probably be more successful if you do plan a little. You're building a world; don't condemn them to be trapped in your own head. 

ghost problems

Everyone gets a choice, at the end, if they want their consciousness to move on to the next plane of existence or if they want to stay on this one. The non-corporeal part isn't an option; you will be, in a basic sense, a ghost. A bodiless you that isn't bound by the laws of physics. 

I chose to stay. I wanted to explore the oceans, the molten core of the Earth, and all the other planets in the solar system.

And I did... I know I did. The problem is I don't really remember. 

Memories, real memories, aren't formed as just pictures. When we experience anything, when alive, there is smell, touch, sound, as well as sight. All of these combine to form the memory. It turns out they also give it shape, hold it up, secure its location, so to speak. Without the extra sensory information received by the body, it gets... lost.

Like waking up from a dream; you only hold on to it for a few seconds and then it vanishes back into the void. 

I can see everything, even experience it, but I can't learn. 

My life is a tangle of wires and a thousand light-emitting diodes. Every glowing screen is a tiny sun that draws my distracted mind into its orbit. It wasn't always this way. And yet, I can harness it to my will, when I can remember what that is. 

Zoom in, zoom out, from infinitely complex to infinitesimally simple. Or the other way around. I forget. Or maybe I never knew. How would I know? 

Carve into you bark of a growing tree. The rings remember. 

The Greenland shark can live up to 500 years. Its flesh is toxic to mammals. 

What does it think about, as it swims deep in the icy waters for hundred of years? One day, will one rise from the depths with the answers to all our problems? 

Will we listen, or pickle its flesh and try to eat it, like we do with everything else? 

There's something in the walls of the house. 

One morning, when I turned 13, I noticed I had two shadows. 

I'm being stalked by a flock of unusually large ravens, and they all have human-looking teeth. They click them at me and smile when I look at them.

I've gotten what your voice sounds like, but I can still see your face. Frozen in the ice; the last time I saw you. 

A tiny pocket universe, where everyone is bored out of their minds. They're not evil, exactly, but so lacking in stimulation that you can pluck them out and promise they can stay in this universe if they'll just do a few terrible things to your enemies, I mean, to some bad guys that deserve it. 

Plastics can be directly bonded to the cells of your skin. You'll lose almost all sensation, but your skin will look perfect, and feel soft to the touch, and also be much tougher. It's very hard to cut, but if it does, it won't heal on its own and will require an operation to seal it. 

Embrace the darkness like a relative you have to put up with at annual holiday gatherings 

I meant to go to bed earlier, but I did not. That ever happen to you? After running around all day, leaping and twirling from task to task, suddenly night falls and the house becomes quiet and the waters recede, and the shores of consciousness spread out to the horizon. 

Man I do need sleep. 

It should be interesting. I'm sleeping on the treadmill. It sounds like a joke, but it isn't. The mattress fits on it, and if I sleep okay tonight then I can arrange this room to have more space for... I don't know I guess I can put my big comfy brooding armchair in here. 

I may be taking this minimalism thing too far. That's likely because I don't really know what minimalism is. There's probably more to the concept than just combining everything into one multifunctional thing, like a Swiss army knife of furniture. 

It must be windy outside. I hear, or think I hear, a dull distant roaring. Like a tsunami, or an uncertain future. 

Last night, it was whale sounds. Tonight, it's ocean sounds. I expect tomorrow will be kookaburra calls in ambient rainforest.

If that is what you wish, then that is what I wish too. 

Goodnight. 

When I fall asleep, I dream of the labyrinth. A labyrinth and a maze are two different things. The labyrinth has one path, to the center, and does have twists and turns and loops back very near to places you've already been. You can't get lost, but certainly you can stop, or give up and go backwards. 

Every night I walk this labyrinth. I am weary, and slightly injured, but I want to see what's next. 

One thing that puzzles me more than the occasional monsters and ancient treasure chests: why all the whale sounds? I can hear very faint whale songs. Am I underwater also? That seems a bit much, even for a mystical dream labyry.  

I'm trying real hard to be here every day. Even if it's just me prattling on about handpans or the correct plural form of octopus. (Both are fine, octopuses or octopi (turns out they don't even call themselves that so they don't really care what we call them.))

I wonder if there is any scientist out there experimenting to see if they can get octopus to live longer. They're so smart and if their lifespans weren't so short, I bet they would come up with some very interesting ideas.