Tag Archives: writing process

June 1, 2025 · 12:01 am

Writing in My Head

I am reposting this old post from 2015 because I am in the same situation of not being able to write 500 words today.

Okay, I am justifying and vilifying today because yesterday I didn’t write 500 words… the first time in 2015… not in my blog, not in my novels, not even counting text messages. I had extenuating circumstances. I went to a movie, Disney’s Inside Out which made me laugh and made me cry like any good Disney/Pixar movie always does. Then I got a message that one of my children went into the hospital in Florida. And I have been down and out with a bad back, so I missed the Florida trip all together… (the child is fine, by the way, thanks for asking that in your head while reading this). But all of that stuff and nonsense is really just an excuse for a dastardly act of cowardice. I didn’t write a full 500 words. How dare I? This writing thing has now become my sacred mission from God. After all, I retired from the first sacred mission because poor health was God’s way of telling me, “MICKEY, IT IS TIME TO BE A WRITER.” Really! He talks to me in all capital letters just like that.

And you have probably noticed already that I am doing stream-of-consciousness writing for today’s post, a useful form of pre-writing that is known for producing lots of garbage to go along with the gemstones-in-the-rough. My mind is still boiling with emotional turmoil and upset and less-than-critical thinking… The reasons for that are understandable… I am guessing. … But I think the point is (if points are possible in this no-win game I am playing, and losing, called Old Age) that I am never really not writing. I have two novels in rough drafting at the same time. Both When the Captain Came Calling and Stardusters and Space Lizards are both on my task bar at this very moment. I add new inspirations for the next canto every time a new light bulb clicks on over my little furry head.

So the ideas are already there for several pieces of writing that I simply have to sit down and knock out on the keyboard. Potentially I have way more than a mere 500 words waiting to blossom and unfold like flowers into paragraphs of purple paisley prose. (Since this is as close as a writer can come to showing how he actually thinks, I guess I have also answered a question that many who try to read my writing have been wondering about… I really do think in loopty-loops with streamers attached and a knot in the tail.) Writing is not something I can ever be accused of not doing because writing and thinking are the same thing… the only difference between the 500 per day and the leventie-leven trillion in my head is your access to it in a form that is written down and edited (well, at least re-read for typos… I kinda like leaving the stuff and nonsense… and moldy bananas… in the final product because I can pass that particular form of goofiness off as humor). (And, yes, it just helped me pass 500 for today.)

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons

The First Sighting

Cissy had changed the name of the family starship. Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck was now Heart Moon’s Happy Luck. Of course, it was only changed on the log book. On the ship’s hull outside, the ship’s name still read Dark Moon’s Dreaded Luck FT-645-00-X5015-A606. But in creepy Imperium-style letters. She carefully copied Crocodile Guy’s heading coordinates into the log book of the Happy Luck.

“Captain Cissy, scanners are picking up a large group of objects just coming into scanner range.” The glowing holographic form of Steve Irwin, Crocodile Guy, stood beside the Captain’s Chair with a concerned look on his face. He was basically an AI education program, but his AI addiction to absorbing new knowledge had changed him into the far-trader starship’s science officer, engineer, translator, and all-around indispensible right-hand man for Captain Cissy. He even stood in for the ship’s computer, David, who became deceased in the escape from the Stardog pirates.

“Are they hostile? Do you think?” Cissy looked up at the viewing screen. Little red blips were swarming in the upper right corner of the screen.

“Dey maybee bee Pie-rats! Maybee dem Stardogs again!” said the terrified voice of little Friday, the Lupin child that had become more like a little sister to twelve-year-old Cissy than the family dog she distinctly resembled. Friday was out of sight at that moment, hiding behind Cissy’s Captain’s Chair.

“What course do I set, Captain?” asked Suki, the blue-skinned Nebulon pilot.

“They are currently in a position where, if they are indeed starships, they can scan us just as clearly as we can scan them. If they are are space buccaneers, they will make for us any moment now.” Crocodile Guy sounded more calm than any of the rest of the crew. Of course, being a hologram AI program, he was also not as easily killed as the rest of the crew.

“Well, if they are coming to get us, we are way outnumbered. We might as well meet them head on and see for ourselves what they are going to do.” Cissy’s expression was one of stiff-lipped defiance.

“Well, they could be space debris or a group of deep-space asteroids going nowhere,” said Suki. setting the controls on an intercept-course heading. Cissy marveled again at how fast Suki had picked up Galactic English from Crocodile Guy’s tutorials. She sounded like a spacer from the Imperium now. No trace of a Nebulonin accent remained.

The Happy Luck closed the distance rapidly. The red dots did seem to be headed towards them as well.

“I can put the image on screen now,” said Suki. “Do you want to see them now, Captain?”

“Yes, please.”

Friday peered out at the screen from behind Cissy. “Wowz! They iz space fishes! Reelie big space fishes,” said Friday.

“Yes, they are big. In fact, five hundred to a thousand meters in length each. Those are space whales.” Suki was grinning as if she were immensely pleased. “And not just any space whales. Clan Vorannac space whales. My clan.”

“Those are what your people use as starships?” Cissy gasped. They were easily as immense as Imperial dreadnoughts.

“Yes. Those big space fish are hollow and contain entire ecosystems inside them… entire worlds.”

“So, they are friendly?” Cissy hoped aloud.

“If we are lucky and have found a good warlord… rather than a bad one.”

“We iz aboutta fine out,” declared Friday. Her canine eyes grew larger as the looming space whales came towards them, swimming stately and regally amongst the stars.

Writing in My Head

I am reposting this old post from 2015 because I am in the same situation of not being able to write 500 words today.

Crazy Head-Bashing List-Making

20161015_104341

Sometimes I have to stop and think where ideas for posts come from. Yes, and that is usually the point at which my head is empty and I am out of ideas. I spent years teaching the writing process and I advocated many different pre-writing idea-generating strategies. I should be able to come up with something to write about without resorting to bashing my right temple with a hand-held blunt object. After all, those ideas come out kinda wobbly and full of strangely-colored stars. So, let me find a broom in the upstairs broom closet in the empty hallways of my mind and sweep together all the possible ideas I have in one pile to look at, grimace, and compare.

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There is a letter with a Martian stamp on it. Inside it proposes I hold an aliens-only poetry writing contest and put the worst possible results into a post. That could be worth a few chuckles, and possible a gazorpingwallow or two. At least, that’s what the letter suggests. It is from some Ixcanixian from the spinward edge of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way. 20160508_113700

I have several ongoing cartoon projects. I could be adding another page to the Hidden Kingdom graphic novel I have been working on for thirty years. I could also do more action-figure comics to rationalize all the time I spend playing with dolls. And I like to do novel illustrations to go along with the many bizarre and mentally warped novels I have created.

realkinglouie

Of course we have recently received the kind of political Christmas gift that most of us would like to track Santa down to his lair for and return back inside the reindeer butt that it came out of. Insulting the new orangutan king is an easy source of insult-based humor that I don’t have to work too hard at or feel too guilty about. But too much of that is like getting drunk on cough syrup. You intended to cure the problem, but you have only managed to add new problems and a hangover headache to top it all off. blue-and-mike-in-color

I still have to fix the cracked and leaky swimming pool before next spring, so that should yield some cementing-your-feet-into-the-pool-wall stories later on. And there are the numerous frustrations of living life with six incurable diseases to write about. I can probably make the flaking off of all the skin on the back of my neck from psoriasis sound pretty funny if I try hard enough. The family dog is still producing dog poop at Guiness-Book-of-World-Records rates… and, oh, yeah, I am still a long way from being done telling you about the bad jokes from more than a quarter of a century of classroom cut-ups.

You know, I think the way to deal with the problem is to simply make a list of ideas. I can throw darts at the list if I still can’s decide.

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Filed under artwork, blog posting, humor, Paffooney, writing, writing humor, writing teacher

Tagged as goofiness, humor, Paffoonies, Pre-Writing, writing process

June 23, 2015 · 3:26 pm

Writing in My Head

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Filed under humor, NOVEL WRITING, Paffooney

Tagged as 500 words, colored marker, colored pencil, goofiness, humor, novel writing, Paffoonies, pen and ink, writing process

March 25, 2015 · 12:02 pm

A Maker of Books

For an awfully long time I have been filling blank pages with junk and goofy stuff and saving it in book form. I think it began when I was a Junior in high school. At least, that is the oldest of the homemade books I could find. I fill these handmade and factory-made blank books with stories, drawings, poems, clipped pictures, nonsense, secrets, shamelessly plagiarized gunk, and anything and everything. At 58 and one half years of age, I have been doing this insane thing for a very long time and have quite a pile of it. The above is my Tales of Fantastica, a cartoon journey into my own dreams and personal life.

I believe, based on physical evidence that the first collected writing I have done is in my Journal, Rage. It is called that because I named it after a Dylan Thomas poem in which he “raged against the dying of the light” because he was venting on the subject of his father’s death and the dread of living a life without being allowed to really be alive… to really live. I wanted to write down everything I noticed about being alive… my hopes, my fears, my dreams as fully as I could remember them… and it became, over time, quite ripe and fertile, as stored garbage usually will. I was able to use it as a source for other stuff. I have at least nine volumes of this journal composed over a period of twenty-some years… before I started depositing my daily dose of words and interior monologues in other places.

My old drawing notebook goes all the way back to 5th grade. I saved almost every drawing and doodle I did as a grade-school-and-middle-school doodler. It has some of my very first cartoons and bird drawings and monsters that I filled my quiet hours in childhood with instead of doing the homework I was supposed to be doing.

In college, specifically Cow College… Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, I first began putting stories into novel form. These I kept in binders and neatbooks that I had to illustrate the covers of with my own story-specific logos.

Here is the first manuscript of Superchicken, the first manuscript that I actually finished and followed all the way through with.

This book-maker-mania followed me even into the classroom. I collected classroom drawings from students, either as gifts from them or confiscated from them and put them into the binder I call my Gallery. This will make an interesting post of its own in the near future.

And I am still not cured of making my own covers, even though I am now trying to make them into traditionally publlished books. Here is the cover for Superchicken.

I suppose I will never really be cured of this mental aberration for as long as I still live. I don’t know what my heirs will do with them when they are finally rid of me once and for all. But it is all something I don’t regret doing. And besides, I couldn’t help it.

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Filed under autobiography, NOVEL WRITING, photo paffoonies

Tagged as book making, foolishness, garbage, novel writing, photo Paffooney, scrap booking, writing process

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Writing in My Head

Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons

Writing in My Head

Crazy Head-Bashing List-Making

Writing in My Head

A Maker of Books

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