The Sacred Mountain – Writing Days Journal

I have a pretty set outline for my novel that I’m fleshing out now, and there’s nine sections subdivided into chapters from there. And so to approach filling in what I have yet to write I’m using an app that will roll a 9-sided die for me and decide randomly which section I work on that day, or week.

This week I’m working on a chapter in section two based around a Native American character who is part of the rebel faction fighting against the A.I. – he’s a loner who is only loosely associated with the larger neo-luddites and will become more a part of it later as the narrative progresses. I’m getting some material for his story from a book, ‘Apache Legends & Lore of Southern New Mexico: From the Sacred Mountain’ By Lynda A. Sanchez and from a cool Vice documentary: ‘Inside an Apache Rite of Passage Into Womanhood’

I have been kissed between the ears with human error / Leave me here to my devices
I need a word to change my life / I’ve tied my ankles to the table legs with wire / He can’t write so much as type

This week is a period in my writing where I’m buckling down into some research and writing some sections that I’ve had planned (or semi-planned) and so I’m needing to do some due diligence to flesh them out well. In the writers group chats we’re discussing how to become a more consistent writer, and I’ve told some people that I feel you should look at it like playing a musical instrument. You have to play the instrument even if you call it practice in order to get better at playing it, so you have to write to get better at writing. Whether it’s scenes or journals or ideas or drafts of stories, attempts… and then working up from there, you should keep an app on your phone so when you have a thought that could go into a story idea you don’t lose it.

A big part of becoming successful is about getting into a habit of turning your thoughts into stories, and build up that mindset. Everything that happens to you and passing thoughts that occur to you in everyday situations can become fodder for stories, and that’s where ideas live usually. You can sit down and try to squeeze them out but it’s easier if you build up a flowing fountain, so that it’s almost like writing isn’t separate from everyday life, rather writing becomes a byproduct of an everyday life that is geared towards a writer’s mindset. Observation and thought are happening in your head throughout the day but recording them is another matter, so you need to try to capture the things that occur to you, what would normally be fleeting thoughts that disappear into the past, instead writing them down and capturing them. And the more you can ‘streamline’ so to speak the method between the writing and the living I feel the more successful you will be, though of course they are inevitably different realms.

Starry configurations, I’m just a receiver / Divine recombinations, I’m just a recordist / Receptionist, unhappy medium

That’s how it is working currently with me. And reading is important too. That’s why sometimes you have to get down to work and learn things about the world to make a section of the novel realistic and based in truth, so that your story can be about something real. I used to research all the time and want to add everything I studied into whatever I was working on, but I have both learned to narrow the scope of the project I’m crafting, and control the flow of what I learn going into the story at hand.

I feel like I’m honing my craft. Now I just need to not reach that point where I feel like I have things under control so I feel like it’s pointless to continue because I could finish this easily and need to switch to something that displays more passion or is a more challenging affront to God or whatever-the-fuck. Fear of success, or fear of failure, that is the question. Anyway, haha, I’m doing good. Don’t jinx it. Now I need to find a good Apache myth to string a metaphor on.