Consider your writing process, how do you write? What helps? What needs work? Why? by Kyle Phoenix

 

My process, seemingly prodigious for about 20–30 years is actually not where or what I would want it to be. yes, I’ve written dozens, close to 100 books. Published most of them with another 100 in process. Then there are the thousands of blogs and articles I’ve published online and around the world. And then short stories that have been published all over too.

Seems like a lot, I know.

To you.

But to me it’s like my current plan around a budget and moving and packing and boxes and storage and furniture I’ve seen at a store I want to buy—-an Asian cabinet—-it’s all sort of up in the air—-hypothesis, not real, entirely.

• Bourgeois is a long short story that I actually have published several times, most recently in the short story collection—Escapades. The idea from there was a senator’s wife, a Black woman has an affair and gets cast out from her privileged circle.
• Clan Chief is about matrilineal passing of Chiefdom in a Native tribe to a daughter and attempts on her life revolving around Indian casino money.
• The Veil about someone who is somewhat more than LGBTSGL in a strict Muslim land. This oe came from an idea after completing Tranny, where I thought there was more in one of the side characters.
• Where The Walker and the Path Meet—-this was a full out dream of following a young through his journey from a Latin land to migrating to America and human trafficking. I did a little bit of research so far where I’ve watched some documentaries about human trafficking so I know what I want to incorporate, what works.
• FiFi-I had a dream about a couple of characters, a story, a name—-FiFi. I know what the book is essentially about/like. Even recently I found this picture online that would make a perfect book cover with some creative touches. I know FiFi. And now I have to write it.
• The same for Court of Conscience, a 12 book legal series—-where I have about 3–5 of the books already completely written. They just need to be edited, cleaned up a bit, better layout—-boom—-published. The first three novels are basically finished—-80% Black & White Justice, Betrayal and Consequences. I want each trilogy to sort of focus on one of three core characters and a deeper social issue such as race, sexuality, family, justice. I started it in high school 20 years ago so I know the characters well I just need to move it along to the imagined conclusion.
• Race War: Hated, Hunted, Haunted, a trilogy I pretty much know. About 1/5 typed up so far.
• Because Mbube Mbube, my first definite horror book, has a kernel at the end that leads into Race War, I’ve rushed it through and it’s about 1/4 done.
• Free is pretty much 90% done, just need to wrap it up, clean it up, edit it, send it off, decide between 2 or 3 good covers and publish.
• Sanction I have about 1/3 of it handwritten so I just need to finish that, type it up, then finish it up. Excitingly it’s the first book I had to do a map of a town and figure out volume of water to flooding the town when levees break. That research was kind of exciting.
• Myriad: The Orisha Wars, is 12 books in a series and I have 1–3 books plotted out. And ideas for other books.
• Escapades. Volume 3 and then an Escapade Omnibus of all of the short stories from 1,2,3—-1 & 2 already published. Plus I have about 50 pages of notes on the design of stories which I wanted to use to talk about, example writing, dissect my writing.

That's 30–32 books of fiction on my 1/3 to 80% done “table”.

• 4 teaching textbooks that I’ve been working on, a tetralogy——I love saying that—-for years now. Very good and finally the publishing idiosyncratic issues have worked out. All four on teaching/education, able to be done in hardcover and paperback at a decent price.
• A revision and updating of the very well selling 2023, 4th edition of Good Men for Men, including High Value Men/criteria, etc..
• He Is Not You, a relationship communication book from workshops. 2023–2024
• Bundles-Love, Passion, Money, Fetishes and Life Stages—-5 separate books combining several smaller books with updates.
• A collection of books of essays/blogs—-maybe a 12 or 24 book series—-easy to combine but then it has to be edited.

That’s 11–35 non fiction books

• Ashe, a semi-memoir, critical thinking book teaching about achieving forms of liberation and power.
• Phoenix, a book on spirituality and energy that I’ve long thought about writing and just printing and giving away for free.

That’s 2 “creative” books.

About 70–75 books on deck for the next few years, our business review coming up in 2025.

How I Write

I write to a loose to tight schedule. I’ve now got project binders and calendars, on a monthly production/editing schedule.

Most of my stuff is sort of written in the sense that I have 50 to 100 pages of at least half of the above projects done in direct text or research. Generally, my challenge is isolating a schedule of production in relationship to managing other projects.

Because I write so much a lot of what I’m looking at is whether an idea is complete enough to finish or does it need to incubate a little longer? Sometimes I have a plot point like I do in FiFi where I’m like okay, I have it up until such and such point but then what? Let it germinate for awhile……

Mbube Mbube I literally have the whole novel from a dream but the work has been sussing out characters to fit the idea itself.

Race War I’ve thought about for about 20 years, since high school. Then the title for each book maybe 15 years ago then the actual plot came on a conference/retreat to Guerneville and the racial upset I saw occur there—-10 years ago. Then a year or so ago I designed the three books—-basic covers and outlines to see what they would look like and then started outlining the format—-I want to do 3 narrative styles as I started thinking out the plot and how each book leads into the next.

Free was from yet another dream of a father declaring to a town that he was going to kill his son. But then I thought about how so many men in my workshops have discussed their Black fathers trying to kill them. Then I remembered that my father tried to kill me——then I had the line of the plot but I had to work or, suss out why or what the son did to drive his father to this end. I have some of it but I want to pour all of this into a French storyline/mold.

Initial Ideas

My initial ideas about two thirds through are like completely straightened hair and then there’s a furious buzz of tools and product and a hairstyle is born. To answer there’s the basic structure—-like a skyscraper girders—-I know how to build a story, a building. Then another part of me comes along, the creative architect and starts slashing and molding and crushing and stretching so that the building itself, completed, as a book, is wholly different that the base structural edifices it began as.

It’s like I walk away from the structure and come back to it with a deeper sense of interest, having seen new things, read new things imagined new things and I kick it into being different, broader, bigger, better—-each walkabout making the work I return to, better for my new ideas.

Then per my mentor and friend Raymond Federman——12+ Drafts everything is cycled through, cycled, cycled, cycled, cycled so that by the time I get a finished product in hand—-the edits are cosmetic because it’s different than it began. One day perhaps I’ll try to completely write what it is from Draft 1 to 12 but I’ve yet to keep a backtrack as much as a forward version-evolution—-accurately——by that I mean files, etc.. Generally, what I file in storage/banker boxes is a completed cycle of drafts and then I’m really working from one version/Proof that incorporates all of the others to that point. Then when I finish whatever stage that Proof is—Say Draft #7—-I put it away as Draft #8 arrives—-and now I’m working on some notes or continuity and the cover and physical layout and some idea that wasn’t complete—-but now it is so Draft # 9 arrives in the mail so Draft # 8 is a distraction and gets put away and so on and so forth.

What Works and What I Need

What i aim for is that every project, novel, story has a gem, a crux, a point, a creative point to make it unique——make it “work” as it’s own entity. Sometimes I’ll forestall finishing a book because the project hasn’t told me that special point. As a writing style throughout projects I’ve discovered that the unique point is completed and also complicated—-a book isn’t working, I’m not growing as a writer unless there’s a level of I don’t know immediately how to streamline it. There must be that Rubicon and that’s when I know its good, completed, ready to publish.

Sometimes there has to be a point where it makes me cry, or sad, or upset, or mad——each one of my books there’s a point that chills me, makes me cry and it’s never the points that folk would think it is.

I need that to know I’m writing something of potentiality, quality, value. That I am exercising my Talent, the Phoenix. My relationship to my work is that I must be able to stand back and not simply like it but see symmetry and down the line, weeks, months, sometimes pick it up in a year and not completely recognize passages but it’s GOOD.

Which I guess is why I have so many projects juggling at once so I can back off before I ruin something or before I greenlight something that’s not ready, that’s not my standard of good. And my standard is very high. By standard I mean it must be markedly different than the last project. If I did 1st person, gotta rock 3rd person. if the last one was female focused, gotta man focus it or trans focus it or lesbian focus it or intersex focus it. There must also be a challenge on the level of what is it like being LGBTSGL in a country where that don’t fly. Or what is it like crossing the border of Central America/Mexico to America, being trafficked. it’s got to sear.

In college I used to refer to it as slitting open a vein in my projects that I presented to classes, that was to be published. I didn’t know the Hemmingway quote about how does one write?—-”sit down and open a vein” but I concur.

I was thinking how to illustrate that GOOD moment, when I know I’ve got something and I thought of a music video because the song was playing as I walked to the store.

So the below Madonna Bad Girl video—-she’s a businesswoman who’s self destructive. She dies at the end. But what I mean by a GOOD moment are two distinctly in th video

• One when she turns to the guy she’s brought home—-when she sees him and she knows he’s going to kill her. That look of understanding and resignation. THAT’s a GOOD moment.
• The second is when the cat hisses. That’s another GOOD moment.

In my writing, I try to capture that somewhere, not always the denouement or beats—-those are time markers, what instead I’m looking for is a snapping when the writing becomes almost self aware, when it stops being about just telling a story and instead becomes the story—-when the reader sees something or reads it that unveils a whole series of realities or events or understandings—-a GOOD God moment, if you will.

It’s ephemeral but of dense matter, perhaps like a momentary black hole appearing—-shakes the reality of the work——and then vanishes. But each time the page before it doesn’t signal and POP—-black hole opens, you recognize it——and then it closes.

That’s what I need and want to always achieve, aim for and even look for in a book I’m reading and some ways that I discern good, better, amazing writers/writing. Bad writers are concerned with worldbuilding, characters, dialogue but not cracking the bat on that good moment, watching it sail into the bleachers.

Sometimes I think, reading or teaching——”Oh, they don’t even know they're holding a bat and (good) baseballs are just swishing by them that they should be cracking into the stands to make this piece good.”

#KylePhoenix

#TheKylePhoenixShow