Kick What to the Curb? (I am a Writer!)

(Above graphic created by author.)

I am a writer. Though that is a simple sentence, there is a lot contained within its structure.

You probably don't know who I am because I am not a famous writer... yet. Despite that fact, I love writing most anything that comes to mind and most every day, I fire up the MS Word or Notepad++ or notepad to craft my art as best i can. I write for the joy of writing and even if i don't have a massive following, there are some people who buy and read my books.

It used to be that the traditional publishing houses had a monopoly on the printed word. You either managed to get published by them or you shared your work with a person or two. That has changed a lot in the last 5-10 years. What used to be looked down on as vanity publishing has evolved into what is now called independent publishing. I publish my work through Amazon and Smashwords and it is no easy task. From concept to finished work is a path littered with obstacles physical along with emotional and mental ones but my muse still shines through for me... most of the time..

At one point, i decided to see if i could find an agent and I gave it a good try. I went to a reputable online literary agent search engine and stated the contacting game. This is where I first heard the phrase 'kick it to the curb'. I was already doing something like that even before hearing that phrase so I decided to delve into the rationale behind such an action. I will also comment on the path from inception to publication of my first original novel.

I do a lot of what I call freethinking. When i do such a thing, no potential idea is ruled out regardless of how far afield it might be. I make sure to save my freethinking output so i can peruse it at a later time. That initial perusal is where i discard a lot of ideas. My Documents folder contains hundreds of document type files and a number of them have the word (abandoned) attached to them. I wanted tto do a modern day human transported to a magical land series but I couldn't think of any original take on the concept.... *boot* (I later adapted the concept into a Swords & Sorcery series called The Spiritlands). That is why you should never discard even that which you have abandoned. Another freethinking idea i had that was a no go was two races of people on the same planet that could only live on their part of the planet. If a planet doesn't turn on its axis, it can't have a gravity well and without gravity, everything on a planet would float away. I managed to salvage the idea for potential later use but some research would have to be done to justify why the two races can't live on the other sides of the planet. Another idea that made it out of this stage was this: What if a person could see in only numeric values versus the way a human normally sees? I immediately decided to take a scientific approach to this idea versus a magical one.

Even the most simplest physical human actions are complicated at their core. You may take a drink of water but even for such an action, millions of synapses and nerve endings come into play. T\Your mind signals your body that it is thirsty so synapses come into play to move you towards a source of consumable liquid. You will either operate a water fountain or procure a glass to contain liquid refreshment. Even drinking involves an amalgam of separate actions and seeing is no different. Raw information is collected by our eyes and sent to the vision portion of our brains. That input is then filtered through your stored knowledge in order to define what you are observing. A human being always attempts to apply order to their world (or what they consider to be order) and if they fail, they would be unable to function. Building on the idea beforehand, what if a human was given artificial optic modules that could mimic the natural seeing function of a human. In order to be able to 'see', you would have to have optic modules and a conduit leading from those modules to the proper part of your brain. If some of the Optic Nerve/Chiasma filaments wound up in the wrong part of a human brain, vision might accidentally take root in that brain area... but the area is not meant to see...

While there are irrational numbers, numbers in a normal course of being are rational in that they define a certain order to things. Having an area of the brain not meant to see gaining access to artificial eyes could cause disruptions in the thought processes of the brain but perhaps the application of rational numeric systems on the abnormal input could enforce a sort of needed order. Discrete numeric values would be considered to be digital in nature versus analog so another word for abnormal sight bounded by discrete numeric streams would be called... Xenodigital.

This was the hardest part of my novel to figure out but once I did the above, the rest was rather straightforward. I made the protagonist profoundly blind as an impetus to want to see (and potentially better able to handle xenodigital input upon ordering.) The protagonist would have multiple adversaries and not all of them would be human in nature. I introduce a darker side to his newly gained means of vision which clashes with the decent person that he is at his core. This novel eventually became the first one of The Diginoir Quadrilogy series: Digit Eyes. Since that time, I have independently published nine other novels and three total series so far:

The Diginoir Quadrilogy: Digit Eyes - Digi-Storm - Digi-Geddon

The Twisted Earth: And a Pestilence of Gods - They Call Me Evil - Fractured Land, Fetzig Leute - Bane of The Revenant

The Spiritlands: Balance and Shadow - The Degradation of Balance

Brainspace - (Standalone Short Novel)

Notice: My writing is grimdark (imperfect/flawed characters, no topic out of bounds) in that it contains adult content and adult consequences for adult actions. I don't recommend my novels for young children. (Adult content does not mean pornography.)

This wasn't an overnight process; it took months before I even had a rough draft. I do my curb kicking out of sight of the reader but I still keep what I have discarded. As to what I have already written and published, why would I want to get rid of it? It comprises my resume and if you approach potential readers without any experience on your resume, you could be disavowed or even worse... kicked to the curb.

Timothy G. Linnomme

https://www.timothylinnomme.net