Sortmind Blog – Michael D. Smith

Complaints, Fight Songs, and Daily Technology

Posted on May 21, 2020 by Michael D. SmithMay 21, 2020

I wrote this piece of satire after perusing some older journals, but to my dismay I realized that if I’d actually run across this passage in a previous journal I might have thought it was a real entry. It’s bugged me for years that a subset of journal entries begin with complaints that my consciousness has been dim, then morph into fight songs urging me to rise above the squalor. Sometimes I was warming myself up to a day’s writing session, but in any case the final result is just a fluffy bunch of words taking up journal bandwidth. So with a certain amused shudder I present this self-satire. Maybe there’s a novel character in here somewhere.

I think I’m now strong enough to finally acknowledge that I’ve been overly tired, frazzled, distracted, and unconscious for quite some time. Yet I feel that this point in my personal history, and this realization, were fated to come, in their exact karmic instance of this moment, now, when I am at last fully prepared to finally realize that I’ve been wasting valuable life energies on mindless aspects of existence that may seem important to the trivial self, but which in fact contribute nothing to my ongoing fate. I must be resilient and grasp the possibilities instead of worrying about such negativities.

Above all I must remember that I am an artist, inserted into this world for a purpose, and that I must maintain a new and responsible vigilance, a more modern and more appropriate interface with the universe, a more direct art identity, at all times. That means 24/7 awareness. I have been so unconscious for so long. BUT I’ve finally realized that I must now, finally, at this exact moment, step up, with newfound courage, based on my deepest values, to the responsibilities facing me as a human being who, for whatever reason fate has decreed, has been called upon to create art, to open up to the world and process these energies instead of wasting them in dull entertainment or futile delusions.

The fight will be endless, but I vow to make it a worthwhile struggle! For my destiny demands it! Above all consciousness must be maintained, and this means that, despite all obstacles of this world, I must become more fully honest, conquering all fears with the full mindful intention of moving forward. Yes, perhaps decades have passed in “merely reasonable consciousness”; but now it is finally time to reclaim that karma once and for all!

I think that’s enough. A send-up of every complaining journal entry, and every italicized and exclaimed exhortation to conquer it, that has marred the journals. I’m both laughing and wincing as I reread it.

Once more back to this blog’s founding statement: I think “There is a Super Colossal Mess Jungle going on. It’s my business to get involved in it, any way I can,” is more than enough direction, and includes the daily technology to support it: get involved and stop complaining. Whatever state of mind you’re in is the starting point. Follow whatever energies arise.

The Super Colossal Mess Jungle 2.0

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Michael D. SmithApril 30, 2020

Following up on the building of the red stretcher and stretching its canvas, here’s the sequence of the completed painting, though as usual I forgot to chronicle all of it, so we see just a couple major steps and the final result before gloss medium varnish. But there was some good learning along the way. I actually did two acrylic paintings Friday, April 24, the entire process as exhausting as usual. And I unexpectedly wound up with a third archival object.

Basically I focused on the 41.5″ x 31.5″ main canvas, destined to be designated Painting 318. Here’s the stretched canvas ready for two coats of white gesso, but I have no photo of the gleaming primed canvas. That dazzling white always looks good in bright light. Here we have the beige tone of the raw canvas.

Before I began the main painting, though, I wanted to try a pouring experiment on a 16” x 20” canvas. I’d bought some pouring medium and thought I’d have a fun ten-minute swirl of thick interesting colors as a warm-up.

I was too dispirited by the resulting mess to take any photos.

Though I got to a point where the image looked like a reasonable poured-paint conclusion, with red and yellow clouds (again, no photos), I was dissatisfied with the almost total lack of control. The thing looked mediocre, with a lot of mud swirled into those bits of bright color. Though I’ve used thinned and spattered acrylic as backgrounds for paintings, allowing a certain level of chance, I’ve always done this with some deliberation, moving around the canvas and throwing the colors where it seemed best. Pouring eliminated most of that sense of control. I found that tilting the canvas to get lovely weird patterns was merely … distressing.

So I scraped off vast volumes of mud and started again, using 318’s black lines and similar colors, intending the smaller painting as a companion to the larger one.

So, back to 318 and its initial syrupy black lines. Though this painting had its improvisational aspect, I was working off a colored pencil sketch I’d done a few days earlier and had a sense of the final result in mind. I wanted a forceful color-field gesture as opposed to the anarchic turmoil of a fully improvised painting. Those abstract expressionist ones are frequently the most problematic, and for this day I’d decided I didn’t want that sort of combat.

Some of the colors filled in with rough texture: ceramic stucco, glass beads, and sand. I’m obviously failing to show all the steps; I just got too involved to keep documenting.

The final painting before its thick coat of Liquitex gloss medium. I definitely wanted a high gloss on this thing. The background color is hard to photograph for some reason I’ve yet to discover. It looks gray but it’s actually a sort of butternut, consisting of acrylic bronze mixed with cerulean blue and titanium white; it looks warm as opposed to the grayish nature of this digital snapshot. I must practice my exposure settings. It occurs to me that this phenomenon mirrors the confusion between Civil War Confederate “butternut” uniforms being taken for and referred to as “gray.”

After one coat of gloss medium, the final painting, “Super Colossal Mess Jungle 2.0,” image manipulated to show close to the actual colors.

Meanwhile the smaller painting, No. 319, “Companion,” 20″ x 16″. It’s crowded as compared to 318, but I like that. Usually my “companion paintings” are mere experiments that don’t have much force, but somehow this does.

The studio at the end of a long day, 9:20 PM. During the process of working on both paintings, I noticed that while I’d gotten dispirited after the first pouring mediocrity, and fatigued on both paintings near the end, I didn’t descend into my usual acrylic desperation. I didn’t succumb to blind urges to just fix and finish the damn things. In fact I felt some intuition on colors coming into play toward the end.

Finally, we have the third so-called painting of the day, “Paint Pouring Disaster Archive,” 6″ x 12.25″, in wood, acrylic, and glue. The only indications of the mud left over from scraping the second painting were four pieces of 1″ x 2″ wood propping up the canvas, but all four were thoroughly soaked with 319’s final muddy color. I glued and c-clamped the dried strips together, and somehow the final result has its own magic and serves as the archive for this painting day.

I was stumped for titles. Trying to conjure some, I made my own tag cloud:

black blog clouds coat colors conclusion control couple disaster dissatisfied documented dots draft experiment gloss image intended journal lack large lines medium mud paint photos point post pouring process quick reasonable red redone scraped sequence shots similar sketch stretching strips table total volumes yellow

I thought to work in the word “progression” somewhere, but that finally struck me as one of my typical bombastic painting titles. I considered that “lucid” might somehow fit, though that immediately seemed like a worse ego trip. Note to self, and in fact to everyone: do not ever title a painting “Lucid Progression.”

Then I recalled the “Super Colossal Mess Jungle,” and the perfect title was there. “Companion” instantly jelled for the second painting.

The manifesto about the SCMJ can be found as this blog’s founding statement from 2010:

“There is a super colossal mess jungle going on. It’s my business to get involved with it, any way I can.”

The original acrylic “Super Colossal Mess Jungle,” 38″ x 38″, from sophomore year at Rice. The phrase was silly but it has stuck. It lovingly mocks chaos even as it accepts it, but it also:

tells me what I need to do with the SCMJ around me: get involved with it.
provides a simple, robust technology: any way I can. That is, interact with chaos using whatever energies and talents I possess, with an implicit caution that there are other paths I cannot, should not, follow. Appropriate interaction.

The sophomore painting demonstrates its own acceptance of the boisterous, often incomprehensible outer world; somehow the chaos holds together in its own rhythm.

Now here in version 2.0 there’s a different, organic order: energy flowing in one set of related directions, somewhat planned, open to improvisation and color experiments. And in its showcasing of the consequences of abandoning all control, even this day’s pouring disaster was a lesson in Super Colossal Mess Jungle.

Stretching the Canvas

Posted on April 22, 2020 by Michael D. SmithApril 22, 2020

This almost has to be demonstrated in person before it makes sense, but I’m giving it a verbal try here.

First, vacuum the floor to get up items like cat hair. Unroll the canvas on the floor.

Place the completed stretcher (here showing my recently completed 49½” x 31½” red stretcher) upside down on the canvas, only the tips of the quarter round finishing strips touching the canvas.

Use scissors (the kind of craft scissors that can cut through rough cloth like burlap work great) to cut the canvas so that the overhang on all four sides is more or less the same, at least five inches on all sides.

D uring the following procedure keep straightening the canvas under the stretcher as you go along. The goal is to work from the centers of the four sides to the four corners.

On the middle of one side, wrap canvas around to the back of the stretcher, tauten it minimally, and place 3 or 4 staples a couple inches apart on the reverse surface (NOT on the side of the stretcher).

Go to either the right or left side from this original stapling and repeat this minimal tautening process. Don’t go to the opposite side yet. Now you have two sides stapled only in the middle, at right angles to each other.

The “full tension” stretching takes place on the two sides opposite these first two sides. Get in the middle of an “opposite” side and pull the canvas toward you almost as hard as you can. You’ll develop a feel for this: it is possible to do this in excess and rip a low-grade canvas. You might also bow the stretcher bars inward, but this usually happens on larger than 3 foot by 3 foot stretchers and on stretchers without cross braces.

Garden gloves are useful, as you can get slight canvas burns from pulling. Commercial pullers are also available. I usually get my feet on the stretcher bar and push it away as I pull the canvas towards me. Then deliver three or four staples to hold the canvas in place.

Repeat this process on the opposite side.

The above step more or less established how tight this canvas is going to be. The process of stretching always starts in the middle and works to the corners. If you’re doing something larger than 3 feet by 3 feet, you’ll probably want to establish another matched set of preliminary tautened side, then fully tautened opposite side, to all sides needing it, working your way to the corners.

Each corner is dealt with one a time. This is how I do but, but you may invent your own technique. First I pull the loose canvas to a right corner, tauten it and staple it in place.

Then at the other side of the corner I pull the remaining loose canvas to the left, tauten it, wrap it over the corner, tighten that, and staple it. It takes a couple times to get the hang of it.

You can either do the left or right side of the corner first, but I always do mine the same way, first moving right towards a corner, then going to the other side of the corner and pulling the canvas to the left to do the final wrap, because my hands have memorized those motions.

Turn the canvas over so that the painting surface faces upward. I was told in my first painting class at Rice that a quarter tossed on it should bounce. There should be a certain amount of give. The goal is “taut,” not “overtightened.”

Check for ripples in the canvas which may occur along the edges. If there are any, you can remove staples with a staple remover and try retightening the canvas at that spot and. The first few times you do this you may need to redo a whole side. You can always remove all staples and just start over.

Preparing the Canvas for Painting

Use a handheld vacuum on the canvas surface or find some other method for removing the cat hair unless you want to integrate this and other floor debris into your painting.

Gesso the canvas. Gesso is a ground incorporating paint pigment, chalk, and binder. It isn’t needed for pre-primed canvas, which is already coated with gesso. Gesso provides the color surface (usually white, though you can buy colored gesso) upon which your paint will be applied. Since oil and acrylics are not entirely opaque, the gesso ground has an effect on the colors. One layer of gesso will work, but you’ll notice you’ll get a much brighter white by using two coats. Gessoing is also a good psychological preparation for getting into the painting.

Appendix 1. Supplies and Tools

Canvas roll. You can buy from dickblick.com or danielsmith.com, to name a couple art supply outlets. The longer the roll, the more expensive. You’ll see a wide variety of quality. I use unprimed duck, medium weight. Though prices seem expensive, you might get six paintings out of one roll. Ungessoed canvas is much easier to stretch and less expensive.

Scissors
Garden gloves to avoid canvas burns

Staple gun and staple remover

Gesso. Overview at https://www.dickblick.com/categories/canvas/primers/

Construction of the Red Stretcher

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Michael D. SmithApril 22, 2020

This will be a non-adjustable stretcher. It doesn’t allow further adjusting of canvas tension as with commercially-made stretcher bars, which have corner slots that aren’t glued, along with pegs which you hammer into these slots to take up slack. However, in making scores of stretchers I’ve never had to go back and adjust canvas tension. Making your own stretcher is much less expensive and allows you to make any size canvas you like.

I’m starting with four 48″ and four 30″ lengths, all 1″ x 2″ boards. Because of the overlap technique described below, the final stretcher will actually come out to 49½” x 31½”. Of course I could have cut to 46½” and 28½” if I’d wanted an exactly 48″ x 30″ stretcher.

I’m using red-painted boards that came from a table I built and eventually dismantled. Not only were these eight red boards nice and straight, I figured the color would be good for a photo demonstration. However, I normally use new, unpainted wood for better glue adhesion. Some of the photos show where I scraped and sanded the surface for better gluing.

Shown are most of the supplies listed in Appendix 1, plus a 1″ x 2″ board for a cross brace, and the two 8′ lengths of half-inch quarter-round finishing shoe that will be cut into four pieces for raising the canvas surface.

Building the Stretcher

Cut eight sections of 1″ x 2″ boards to desired lengths.

Make each side by staggering one board over another to leave a gap at the end, which will be the same width as the board–1½”, but note I use one of the red boards (on the right) to measure the correct width. Make sure the boards are evenly lined up, then glue and nail them with 1¼” finishing nails. I use about 1 nail per foot.

This is one finished side. Note the overlap. The glue is where the stretcher gets its strength. Nails serve to hold the wood together until the glue dries.

I sanded connecting sides down as best I could for better gluing. Normally you wouldn’t have to do this.

Arrange four sides in a rectangle and note how they’ll fit together, each overlapping top board corner nestling into the next side’s corner.

Do one corner at a time, gluing all surfaces and, for now, putting just 1 nail in each corner.

Use a square to check for 90° at each corner. Once all four corners are glued, with 1 nail in each (note there is really only 1 nailed in in this photo), the entire stretcher can be wiggled slightly against the square to get four true 90° angles. Do this before the glue dries; you have a few minutes.

Once you have a perfect square, go ahead and put at least three more nails in each corner.

Also check that the entire stretcher is flat, that is, all four corners lying evenly on a flat surface. They should be, unless your original wood is seriously warped. In that case I would chalk all this up as a learning experience because it’s probably time to start all over again with better wood! But before the glue dries it may be possible to twist the corners a bit, then weight the corners with bricks on a truly flat surface until the glue dries, thus resurrecting real flatness. I had to do that once.

Cross Brace (Optional, Depending on Stretcher Size)

I used one cross brace for this size; it may or may not be necessary, but it’s possible that stretching canvas on the long side might warp the stretcher inward.

Turn the stretcher upside down, so that the side where you hammered nails is now facing down. It’s important that the cross brace is affixed on the reverse side of the stretcher, not the front side where painting pressure may force the canvas against this cross bar.

Calculate the exact middle is of the sides to be braced, in this case half of 49½”, or 24¾”. Then measure the width to be bridged between these middle points. Here the interior gap is 28½” and I cut a 1″ x 2″ board to this length.

When affixing the cross brace, support it with other 1″ x 2″ boards underneath it as shown. (Again note my scraped paint area.)

Glue the ends and then nail in the wicked-looking mending plates. I use ear plugs because the sound this hammering makes is extremely loud and high-pitched.

Again notice that the cross brace is affixed to the back of the stretcher, not the front where the quarter-inch strips are now ready to make their appearance.

Making the Raised Surface for the Canvas

The painting surface of the canvas, once wrapped around the stretcher , will only touch the stretcher along the four lines of the top part of the quarter-round finishing strips.

Flip the stretcher again to have the cross brace down, touching the floor, and the original nailed surface up.

Cut a left 45° angle on all four quarter-round strips, either now or as you go along. You’ll nail a quarter-round strip to each of the four edges of the stretcher, with left and right cuts to each one.

On the first side, place a left-cut strip flush with the outer side of the stretcher, flat surface outward, the curved side facing in. Align the left 45° angle to the extreme left corner, hold the strip tightly to the stretcher and at the far right edge, note with a pencil how long the strip needs to be to cover the entire length.

Remove the strip, place it in the miter box, and cut a right 45° angle at the pencil mark.

Glue this strip and nail it with 1″ finishing nails to the stretcher, about 1 nail per foot. I usually start by putting the strip on the floor and making two starter nails at each end, so when I’m doing the final gluing and nailing I’m not having to hold a loose strip in place while trying to start a nail.

Sometimes it’s difficult to nail straight down on this curved surface. I often only nail just enough to secure the strip in place and then make sure all the nails can be further hammered correctly, or if they need to be pulled to start over. A nail punch can be used to definitively sink the nails below the top ridge of the strip; you don’t want these nail heads to be able to touch the stretched canvas.

It’s also okay to leave lots of unsightly holes if nails don’t work in a specific place. All this is going to be covered up by canvas.

Get Strip #2, place its left 45° angle into the nailed-down right 45° angle of Strip #1, then repeat the measuring and nailing steps. Repeat for the remaining two strips. The last one will be slightly different in that you’re measuring for your right 45° cut not on blank wood, but on the raised surface of Strip # 1 already nailed into place. So make you best estimate of where the cut should be. If you wind up with a small gap, that’s okay. Wood filler can be used to fill this in.

Let the entire assembly dry for a whole day before stretching canvas on it.

When the glue has dried I sand the corners to remove sharp edges for the stretched canvas. No reason to put additional pressure points on the canvas, and the sanding effect isn’t noticeable once the canvas is stretched.

Appendix 1. Supplies

1″ x 2″ boards. You’ll wind up with eight total pieces, two boards per side. For larger canvases you may need a couple more for one or more cross braces. Note also that the real dimensions of any 1″ x 2″ board are, for reasons unknown, actually ¾” by 1½”. When buying, sight down the sides of each to check for warpage. Get as straight ones as possible. Minor defects or knotholes aren’t terribly important because the finished stretcher should essentially cancel out these defects. It doesn’t matter how the final thing looks as long as it’s square and flat; it will be covered by canvas.
½” or ¾” quarter-round strips. Cross section:

These are the finishing strips (or “shoes”) you see along baseboards; the three-quarter-inch ones are a little easier to nail. You can buy in various lengths and calculate what you need, but you’ll wind up with four strips, each at least a couple inches longer than the sides they’ll be installed on, so that you have room to cut your 45° angles.

Finishing nails: 1¼” for the 1″ x 2″ boards, and 1″ for the quarter-round strips
Wood glue
For cross braces: mending plates about 1″ wide.
Optional: wood filler to smooth out various holes, cracks, etc. Not really necessary unless there’s a serious gap that might affect how the canvas is stretched over it.

Appendix 2. Tools

Saw, hacksaw. A regular saw will do the 1″ x 2” boards but you probably need a hacksaw for the quarter-round strips.
Hammer
Miter box–or the ability to eyeball and cut perfect 45° angles on a curved surface
Tape measure and pencil.
Square for checking right angles.
Sandpaper
Useful: nail punch for making sure nails don’t protrude above the quarter-inch round sections.

The World’s First Nuclear-Powered Dinosaur, by Mickey Smith

Posted on April 11, 2020 by Michael D. SmithApril 11, 2020

I’m not sure why my fifth-grade self chose to channel in this morning, but I awoke with this title and I knew I had to write this down. I had no idea what this would be about beyond the first couple paragraphs, but it was as if Mr. Fifth Grade guided the plot from then on. The story comes complete with fifth-grade memes, including the mention of an exact date and an exact city, a few spelling errors even where I knew better, and a quick happy ending. Then Mike asked Mickey to illustrate the beast in question as he so often did for his stories.

Chapter 1. Plans

Billy Thorsen knew that kids called him a twisted gernius, but he didn’t know what that meant, and he hated to use the dictionary so he didn’t.

What was important was his science project for Mr. Marshall’s science class. If he could get it to work, then it would be the world’s first nucleaar dinosauer.

Getting the uranium to power it was no problem, since his dad was a spy and had been stealing enrichhed uranium from the Iranians for years now. So Billy was actually helping his country at the same time.

He worked and he worked on his plans and soon he was done.

Chapter 2. The Monster Revealed

It was still dark when Billy went into the back yard right before dawn on Saturday, April 11 at 5:12 AM, and he pulled the big blanket (actually twenty blankets he sewed together in secret) off the Tyrannosaurus Rex which stood thirty feet high. Then Billy pressed the remote control switch which would activate the monster.

Chapter 3. The Destriction of Des Moines, Iowa

Soon the lumbering beast made its way across the town until it came to downtown Des Moines, Iowa. Someone had told Billy there was a new spaceport there but it was nowhere to be found, so the T. Rex, unable to figure out what to do next, stomped on buildings, cars, buses, trains and people until the entire city was in flames. Then it stalked out to find the spaceport.

Chapter 4. At the Spaceport

Billy knew that he needed to find his dinosaur so he figured it would go the spaceport like Billy had wanted him to. But he went so fast that he forgot his remote control.

Soon at the spaceport you could see millions of U.S. jets blasting the beast with bombs. The government did not want a nuckleat-powered dinosaur stealing their best ship, which was supposed to go to Mars today.

Billy found the monster eating an entire hanger full of U.S. jets and people screaming everywhere. He told the dinosaur to stop but the monster just laughed and said, “I AM GOING TO MARS.”

Chapter 5. On to Mars!

The men on the ship quickly got off once they saw a sixty foot Tyrannosaurus Rex climbing up the side of their ship. The monster had to wreck the whole inside of the control room to get enough space.

Then it fell asleep. This gave Billy time to go home and get his remote control.

But it was too late! The ship launchecd right on time with a giant Tyrannosaurs Rez at the controls!

Chapter 6. Into the Sun!

Billy had a radio attached to his remote control and he tried to talk sense into the scaly beast but the monster did not listen. Finally Billy said: “There’s not enough power on that ship to go to Mars! It will fall into the sun!”

At this the monster got afraid. “I will fall into the sun?” it asked anxiouassly.

“Yes, unless you use the nuclaar reactor inside you to power the ship!”

Chapter 7. Landing on Mars

The monster used his NULCARR RECATOR to power the ship. Soon the ship came to Mars and landed. The Tyrannosaurs Rex got out and liked what he saw. Little did he know that he had really saved the human race because he showed how to get to Mars.

When thousands of Earth people came to Mars the next day in a fleet of spaceships, they knew they had to be grateful to the dinosaur for showing them how to do it. They made a huge park for the monster to live in and they elected Billy president of Mars.

The End

The … 2020–Soul … Institute–Clean-Up!!!!!!

Posted on April 10, 2020 by Michael D. SmithApril 10, 2020

Computer technician Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed Writer in Residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses, unaware that he’s blundering into a catastrophic jumble of power lust, romantic chaos, drug abuse, and gang violence.

The Soul Institute is my best work, my flagship novel. Last month, five years after its 2015 publication, I reread my paperback copy, still enthralled with how marvelously this story unfolds; in fact, it’s hard to believe I wrote this thing. Yet I also noted, in growing dismay, that some of my old writing habits, mostly over-punctuation, slowed me down or distracted me. The novel, I decided, needed a tune-up to more gloriously showcase its flagshippy essence.

I decided not to get into rewriting consciousness, though; no cutting sections, amplifying others, or eliminating characters. I knew the existing structure of The Soul Institute already worked very well, and that I could perfect the novel with the reduction of exclamation points as well as unneeded ellipses and hyphens. I’d allow for minor text changes for better expression and, obviously, for error corrections, but I wanted to keep this project simple. The 2020 update is a severe copyediting exercise, not a second edition. It’s essentially the same novel as 2015.

Where on earth do our literary foibles and bad writing habits come from? Why can’t we readily see around our own corners? It’s difficult to confess the existence of these old habits, but on the other hand, I am moving forward, and my recent work has benefited from these realizations.

And so, more aware of past idiosyncrasies, I began my Soul Institute Word edits with search-and-replace routines, but then discovered I was inadvertently creating fresh errors. That mandated two more close read-throughs, the kind of detail work that thoroughly reacquaints you with your story.

Exclamation points don’t belong in the narrative unless there’s a truly good reason. Though I’d reduced this old habit greatly by 2015, somehow it escaped me that it still persisted in 2015 narrative sections. Dialog is a different matter, because sometimes characters are shouting and upset, but even there, valid reductions can make the scene more real.

I found that changing the exclamation point to a period was usually easy and natural, and the result read much better. At other times, the original meaning seemed lost after the change. As a made-up example:

What did it matter? She was dying!
The original style, coming across as overdone.

What did it matter? She was dying.
Here changing to a period loses some force.

What did it matter? She was dying.
An italics workaround reinstalls some force.

What did it matter? She was dying, wasn’t she?
Revises into a slightly different mood.

As far as that fourth category goes, sometimes exclamation point removal forced me to rewrite much better sentences. This was all quite educational.

Where the hyphens and ellipses come in: from the vantage point of five years I noticed that my characters often indulged in dialog overkill. Although the following is an exaggeration, characters might say things like:

“Well … really … I–I–I don’t know … what I meant, really … was–uh … I mean … if you really … think that … wow, I mean, what–what I–I’m … trying to say … I–I mean …”

I cleaned that up!

I also corrected a few other older habits I hadn’t fully excised by 2015:

ALL CAPS. Sometimes, not terribly often, I had characters SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER IN UPPER CASE. This is simply not necessary. Exceptions are the chapters where a character is writing a story or an email; some of these character authors get pretty overwrought.
Overuse of italics. In 2015 TSI I’d already overcome a former attachment to italicized thinking. A small amount is a spice, but in some previous works I’d piled so much salt on the text that, well, you get the idea. This wasn’t really a problem in 2015 , but I found that some character thoughts did work better without the italics.
I also had one entirely italicized chapter of a character’s thoughts. That was hard to read, and I’m not sure why I stuck with that, because normally I’m disgusted by the entirely italicized chapter, which an author usually intends to be supremely meaningful, or spooky or dreamlike, or else to indicate a Really Important Flashback you better pay attention to. It was a no-brainer to render it into regular text, and the chapter emerged so much better.

2020 is in fact about 3,000 words shorter than 2015, but most of this is due to reducing ellipses (…), which count as a word, and eliminating the above-mentioned character nattering,

So the flagship novel is in much better shape. Again, it’s the same novel, with no scenes, characters, or plot changed. I’m extremely pleased with it. The updated version from Sortmind Press has been uploaded to all sales channels:

Amazon eBook
Smashwords eBook (which ports to other channels like Barnes and Noble)
Amazon trade paperback
lulu.com mass market paperback

TSI Background – and some alternate covers:

Ancient Predictions for Spring 2020

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Michael D. SmithMarch 23, 2020

Celestial disasters of the 2020’s set the background for my Jack Commer science fiction series. While I’m not offering direct comments about the COVID-19 crisis, I’ve been struck by the odd timing of my childhood predictions about 2020.

When my eighth-grader self wrote the unfinished rough draft of The Martian Marauders, Fall 1965 to Spring 1966, he unconsciously followed a useful dictum of setting the story so far in the future that he wouldn’t have to worry–so he thought–about discovering whether his predictions would ever come true. So he could offhandedly note: “In 2020 many famous asteroids were flung into the sun,” as the characters in the book face an incomprehensible breakdown of the solar system across a fear-ridden decade, ending with the improbable collision of Jupiter and Saturn and a war destroying the Earth itself in 2033.

When I decided to complete the unfinished childhood novel decades later, and in the early 2000’s extended the story through a Jack Commer series, I stuck with 2020 as the start of the breakdown, violating my own maxim of pushing the story far into the future. I guess I thought 2020 was the far future. I even toyed with the idea of writing an unrelated novel about what might happen if my science fiction predictions were in fact to come true–if I’d inexplicably channeled knowledge of future calamity through the Jack Commer series.

As 2020 crept closer, I began to realize that my SF series would soon become dated, but I really don’t have any interest in revising the books. The chronology is just too complicated and the first six books are published anyway, though I have to admit I’d like to get my hands on the first three for some editing and polishing. Last year I figured that some light finagling might let me start the disasters in 2024 instead of 2020, but I quickly saw that would just buy four more years and soon the books would be out of date again. My one concession to the approach of 2020 was to jump the chronology ahead in Book Four, Collapse and Delusion. By 2075 rejuvenation technology has enabled all the characters to age into their seventies, yet still look and feel as if they’re thirty-five.

The bright side is that my series can now be considered like the classic science fiction of the ’40’s and ’50’s, where brave space entrepreneurs have colonized Mars by 1970. Those are still enjoyable reads and I hope Jack Commer holds up as well.

In any case placing world-shattering crises in the far future may be too comfortable an exercise for the science fiction writer. How can we postulate how those hapless victims of future dystopias will really act and feel? Our books, films and TV series show impossibly gifted heroes tackling one civilization-annihilating catastrophe after another and coming back next installment for more. Wouldn’t they all be sedated in psychiatric wards by now?

I didn’t really think the whole world would face a shock similar to my Jack Commer 2020. As time-traveling 2036 Joe from Nonprofit Chronowar (first draft 2000, published 2013) tells the May 2020 Committee to End Suffering on Planet Earth:

Joe cleared his throat. “So … February 9, 2020. Just three months ago for you all. Minor planet Ceres suddenly drops out of orbit–and accelerates directly into the sun! All within a few hours! Nobody can believe it. The astronomers and physicists are baffled, to say the least. How can Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, come a complete halt in its orbit and start accelerating into the sun? A lot more than just simple gravity’s involved. There’s no way Ceres would’ve fallen in on its own in just nine hours. There was deliberate acceleration …”

“Okay, what’s the point?” Ranna snapped. “They haven’t figured out about the asteroids yet, but I’m sure they will.”

“Do you have the slightest idea how much energy it takes to bring a 630 mile-wide planetoid to a dead stop in its orbit? Or to accelerate it down? The Reamers quoted one astronomer explaining this as a quantum possibility or some such crap, a one-in-a-googol event. Did he shut up on March 9, 2020, when Pallas, the second largest asteroid in the solar system, stopped dead–and shot down into the sun as well.”

The faces were gray with shock. Joe did recall feeling sick and scared when he heard about the second asteroid. Jack’s advice had been to treat the whole thing logically, to study his physics and prepare to move out into the solar system and study the phenomenon up close. Somehow Joe succeeded in following Jack’s example. He spent weeks grimly keeping a mounting panic at bay about what would happen when the Earth itself came to a dead stop in its orbit …

“Then April 9, 2020. Vesta, the third largest asteroid in the solar system, shoots straight into the sun!”

The audience was doubled up in mourning for those big balls of rock they’d never given a thought to but which, once lost, represented something like the loss of an arm, or a leg–or a cousin–or a child–

“We know, look, we know,” Ranna said. “We can only hope …”

“That your precious CTESOPE can do something?” Joe mocked the nonprofit lady, ashamed of his cruelty, unable to resist it.

“Dammit, I didn’t know about any asteroids, none of us did, I just wanted a Committee to End Suffering, was that so bad? Who the hell are you anyway, to wreck everything like this?”

“Today’s May 8th. Tomorrow’s May 9th. Anybody want to tell me the name of the fourth largest asteroid in the solar system?”

Silence again. Finally the Urside youngster said: “Juno. They’re saying it’ll be Juno … on the 9th.”

“That’s correct,” Joe said. “On the 9th, Juno goes into the sun.”

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhh …” came from the audience.

I can’t get over February fueling a growing sense of unease, and March bringing full-blown alarm. And now Joe fills us in on April and May. Fortunately the Martians put the brakes on their first incompetent (and, unknown to them, software-hacked) experiments with Amplified Thought after May 2020. Yet more uncanny events were slated for the human race, and the deep disquiet grew.

Just to test fiction writers’ easy flirtations with apocalypse, consider my older blog post, Dystopias—And I’ve Written My Share. It does seem apt.

I seem to be asking compassion for the future. Is there such a thing?

Akard Draft One Art Objects

Posted on January 10, 2020 by Michael D. SmithJanuary 10, 2020

It must be highly unusual for an author to post a blurb for a book he emphatically does not want to sell. But I’ve been so pleased with how this four-part paperback version of Akard Draft One turned out that I just had to show off these pretty art objects. Somehow they turned out exactly as I’d imagined they would. I’m surprised how involved I got with this printing project, which also honed my publication technologies.

Why Did I Do This?

The rough draft of Akard Drearstone was my first breakthrough effort after two practice novels. I threw everything into this book, and its writing led me in undreamed-of directions. It’s odd to wonder what I would’ve been like, how many unanswered pressures I might still carry around, if I hadn’t spewed out 1,587 rough draft pages of Akard Drearstone from February 1976 to March 1978.

I had no backup copy of the rough draft. In the era of typed manuscripts I balked at photocopying 1,587 pages of something that over the years I rewrote over and over. But the typescript was psychically important and so, mainly to make a copy, in 2011-2012 I finally scanned and proofed a digital Akard Draft One, understanding I had to be leaving plentiful errors.

Then last month came the idea to use lulu.com to print Akard Draft One with all its flaws. Not for sale, just to print a couple copies and know it’s stored out there. I envisioned a single thick mass market volume with tiny type, but that proved impractical and, keeping a readable Times New Roman 10 font and having much fun making four separate covers, I made a four-part version.

I ran my current manuscript checklist on the 2012 scan, fixing hundreds of minor formatting errors, but soon realized there was no way I could readily make this thing perfect. The rough draft wasn’t faultless, and this digital/print copy isn’t either. Oddly, though, the text seems in basically good shape. I had to check the original typescript a few times, but mostly avoided that.

The master Times New Roman 12 double-spaced manuscript comes to 2,384 pages, 687,033 words. The four paperback mass market-size volumes are 650-700 pages each.

The Draft One Plot

A sudden rising star in 1977, Akard Drearstone wrecks his fifteen minutes of fame on the Johnny Carson show, then languishes as a bank clerk in Houston until the spring of 1979, when he meets sociopathic bass guitarist Jim Piston. Their collaboration rekindles his old fame and they set up an art commune north of Austin with two new band members. The novel meanders for fifteen hundred pages as the four rockers battle corrupt businessmen, freak out on psychedelics, get busted by mysterious narc agencies, stage demented concerts on the beach or at the scene of car accidents in Houston, debate the merits of the new philosophy of Exponentialism with a sexy writer for a Sunday rotogravure magazine, postpone working on their album in favor of a three-month-long videotape, write backbiting novels which get inserted into the narrative, and finally break apart in personality conflicts, psychotic violence, confusion and revenge trips.

The Basic Akard History

The idea of a hippie art commune was a vague life plan as I approached graduation from Rice University in 1974. But in getting married, moving to Dallas, and taking a dull, stressful insurance accounting job as I sought to start a writing career, I soon realized the cosmic impracticality of that idea. But I could write about the commune and create a universe of plot and characters around it. I could split my personality into four musicians and examine each part in depth.

Draft Two, May 1978 to December 1979, saw a much improved if still sprawling novel. Though I declared Akard Drearstone done and began typing a manuscript for submission to publishers, I aborted the effort in 1981, finally acknowledging I’d outgrown it. I had new writing to explore.

In 1985, after two more novels, I wrote the story “Chapter 32” to psychically end Akard’s thirty-one insanely long chapters. “Chapter 32” later served as the conclusion of a vastly altered 1994 Akard Drearstone. 2005, 2010, 2011, and 2012 revisions brought more perspective until 2017 pushed out the final published Akard.

I definitely don’t think of Draft One as the real writing. The final 2017 Akard is far superior, the karmically done expression. Consider that I would’ve had no motive in March 1978 to type up an exact copy of the rough draft. No, my desire was always to revise it into a workable novel. But this first foundation was an amazing experience to have lived through, and I find myself proud of the young man who dared compose it.

I took a lot of chances with the rough draft. I committed all the major literary crimes throughout, but the text does hold my interest despite the fact that I think of Akard Draft One as one good novel, one bad novel, and three mediocre novels maddeningly swirled together.

The 2017 published Akard Drearstone finally pulled out that one good novel.

The final 2017 Akard Drearstone

Akard Draft One covers

Sortmind Press at Smashwords End of Year Sale

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Michael D. SmithDecember 21, 2019

The 3rd annual Smashwords End of Year Sale runs December 25 through January 1, 2020. The eBook versions of my literary novels Akard Drearstone, Sortmind, and The Soul Institute, as well as my science fiction novella The First Twenty Steps, can be obtained for free from Smashwords during this time.

	Akard Drearstone A cinder block falls on Akard Drearstone’s head and he trades his print shop job for lead guitar. As the four members of the Akard Drearstone Group face the onslaught of national fame at their rural Texas commune, twelve-year-old Jan Pace nurses her crush for the narcissistic, paranoid bassist Jim Piston.
	Sortmind A startup company’s telepathic Sortmind app Mindwipes ten thousand users in the city of Canterra, and political factions battle in the streets over whether telepathy should be free or outlawed.
	The Soul Institute Himal Steina realizes his dream of a mythic return to the sanctuary of a vast foggy university of Soul when he’s appointed writer in residence at the Soul Institute and falls in love with one of its numerous faculty goddesses.
	The First Twenty Steps Just released from six years in prison, unsure how to meet basic needs, Harry finds a kindred spirit in Roberta, in thrall to a depraved motorcycle gang. But the motorcycle attack on the Dataflux computer building turns terrifying and surreal, and Harry and Roberta find themselves outgunned by another biker gang protecting a top secret hyperspatial supercomputer.

Paperbacks?

If you’d prefer paperback copies–not part of the sale–try these links:

Akard Drearstone – Amazon
Akard Drearstone – lulu.com mass market size
Sortmind – Amazon
Sortmind – lulu.com mass market size
The Soul Institute – Amazon
The First Twenty Steps – Amazon

My author page at Smashwords

Shackism v. Sortmind, Part Three

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Michael D. SmithNovember 25, 2019

The reader of the previous two blog posts must suspect that I’ve been building to some manifestation of Shackism v. Sortmind in my current life.

So I finally acknowledge a buried concept lurking for several years: the idiotic notion that I might only have one big novel left in me, one intended to sum up and justify my entire existence in suitably solemn tones, and that I must drop dead after finishing such a perfect expression.

God, that is stupid. An artistic poverty mentality, art gasping its last breaths in a long-term care facility, pitied by all. I am here to keep growing, keep discovering, keep expressing. There is no Final Stuff to sum up.

Thank you Mike of June 1971, and Mikes that followed, for reminding me about Shackism versus Sortmind. I’m a Shackist, here to work at each little aspect that comes along. No final Sortmind synthesis is needed. No life project or bucket list, no thematic or philosophical novel is called for. If I come up with interesting ideas as I keep exploring, they’ll just occupy appropriate spaces in the story. There is so much new energy here.

Yes, I want a long, evocative, expressive novel, but I can’t rehash the ones I’ve already done. I’ve caught myself unconsciously repeating myself, such as in my 2002 notes for another big novel that I finally realized would become a thoroughly dull ripoff of my flagship novel The Soul Institute.

For a couple years I’ve been compiling new novel notes, but though I enjoyed lifting some of them for Jack Commer Seven, Balloon Ship Armageddon, these notes have mostly adhered to Big Philosophical Summing Up consciousness, and have seemed grim and unwritable. They follow a somewhat amusing pattern in my note-making of positing a couple opening chapters with interesting action, and after that all is vague and boring.

I can admit that right now I don’t have any interesting characters. I don’t have a What If. But that’s got to be okay. I seem to have grasped the cork in the mind bottle that’s prevented me from really cutting loose.

Related to all the above is coming to the end of a long period of looking backwards. I date it as starting from a November 2006 evening rereading of what I thought was my glorious HTML version of Nonprofit Ladies, then gagging at its vulgarity and its unconsciousness. The shame I felt about that book led to a great revision into Nonprofit Chronowar, the unfolding of four more Jack Commer novels, and successful revisions of Akard Drearstone, Sortmind, and The Soul Institute.

Balloon Ship Armageddon as the last Commer novel dovetails with the end of looking backwards, though eighty pages cut from BSA Draft 1 could theoretically be a basis for a Jack Commer Eight. But if that ever comes about, it will be quite new.

The other recent theme is that so far publication from commercial publishers hasn’t led to sales/success/influence, and then again, neither has self-publishing. But now I’m not even sure what counts as a success. Have I ever been truly ready to have an influence or make a real contribution? My ego no longer seems to be in the way, and I do feel I’ve put some worthwhile stuff out there. If anything, The Soul Institute is out there.

Disparate themes seem to be tying together. That is intriguing.

The Soul Institute if anyone is interested