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Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This): Regarding coincidences



(6/10)


I don't believe in coincidences. Or at least, I don't think, I believe in coincidences.


When a writer starts writing a book, they have to have one goal and one goal only: their book needs to be smarter than them.


If a writer writes a book that's stupider than them, it's clear they failed. If they write a book that is as smart as them, it's just a stroke of the ego. But if they write a book, in which they find life, coincidences, happenstances, and poetry, a book which creates its own worlds... then, they have written something meaningful. And they got the job done.


Ironically, a writer should never start writing like this (I say that with my grand experience of a debutant). If the writer does it, the text would be needlessly forced.


No. A writer needs to flirt, to respect, to love their work. At least that's how I see it. I admit, this view is heavily influenced by Margaret Atwood's thoughts on writing.


A piece of writing needs to reflect life, and give birth to life on its own. As it is the same in flirting, the writer needs to have a plan and goals, but to be ready to face rejection or to let the partner lead them. In love man should never start with grandiose ideas and assumptions.


First, I nerdily researched my topics, I wrote out the chapter names of the different characters, I wrote the relationships in the Council of AIs, I wrote out the fictional geopolitical history of the future.


During this process, I started living with my characters, and since I had some early chapters in English written way-back-when (2015) without any plan, I ended up having in Autumn 2021 my plan, and my goals.


But obviously a book cannot be written entirely in its planning phase, so I continued living with my characters


I saw them as real people, I removed the bits I'd forced onto them, I developed them in imaginary conversations with other imaginary people. I lived with my characters while I slept, while I showered, while I waited for the bus, and so on.

Furthermore, I imagined their internal monologues, and kept in my mind that they weren't always truthful to themselves. That also helped me imagine their personalities.


There are some pluses in hearing voices.


And so the true joy started: writing. Breathing life. I should put it better. I wasn't breathing life, I was just observing the natural life of people I already knew.


Sounds very pretentious, but I am not lying.


In reality, the most important parts of the plot, a type of determinism, I had very early on. The start and the end of the book were the first truly completed parts of The Ultimate Deal, so I could know why these characters had found themselves in these situations.


In short, as the author, I knew a couple of facts and needed to find out their story.


It helped that I wrote The Ultimate Deal in Scrivener, which allowed me to split the manuscript in scenes, so I could write chaotically for me, but in the order that would be important for the character themselves


I did also want to propagate my own (overt) propaganda, humor, and views about the world. The egocentric downfall of any writer.


But I did find myself changing my own views exactly because my characters showed me that something in my understanding was lacking.


I wrote so much and we still haven't gotten to coincidences. Truth to be told, there are plenty of coincidences in life. Or at least a feeling that coincidences exist.


So that is why, there must also be some coincidences within a novel. However, the reader must be always aware that most of these are never truly coincidental. That is not interesting for me because obviously a writer needs to know how to use coincidences (I'm saying that as a reader).


I am more interested in coincidences which are loaded with meaning but should never exist.


I will tell you the story of the most bizarre coincidence.


I had a chapter of Dragan named after Fatboy Slim's song Ya Mama.


Dragan is a disturbed student who drugs himself with the drug of the future GlasGlow.


Dragan is a very good pattern-solver, especially of abstract models. That is why, his chapters are named after music titles as music is a beautiful abstraction which fills are lives with noise and color on both a primal level and on the level of angelic mathematics.


So this chapter was called "Ya Mama" (the song with the refrain "Push the tempo, push the tempo".


Very early in the first draft, this chapter contained the following paragraphs (note that these are translated from the final Bulgarian version)


For the first time in a long time, Dragan heard music distinctly. He wasn’t imagining it. Correction, he didn’t feel he could imagine it. He could hear it distinctly, albeit quietly. It was as if the music was playing directly in his brain. It seemed strange to him when his senses presented information that he knew didn’t exist, but yet he could not turn exclude it. It was as if his heart was a snare drum and his breathing was an electronic synthesizer. Music that supposedly to lull him to sleep, to enjoy sweet dreams, when in fact it was a call to disappointment. A nightmare cry.


People were already in space. The universe that had forced people to obey nature in order to manipulate it was now the fruit of a cosmic conquest. The requisite environment was for this species of no importance. Man could model it in his own image and likeness. Man did not obey. He subjugated.



I know for certain that the original first draft had this sentence.


It was as if his heart was a snare drum and his breathing was an electronic synthesizer.


Also true for this:


cosmic conquest


But once I was nearing the end of the writing process, I realized that something annoyed me in the chapter title (and that the song didn't reflect what was happening in the chapter).


It was too vulgar, but the story didn't necessitate vulgarity at that point.


So before even re-reading the chapter, I thought to myself: this chapter needs to be slightly different. The atmosphere is stranger, more melancholic, more futuristic, and with a dose of nostalgia. So I choose Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams.


Once doing this change, I figured I should re-read the chapter to see if the new song fits. I read about the synthesizer and was shocked to find that I was actually already describing this song, but what made me lose it were the words "cosmic conquest".


I thought to myself, there is no way this fits Sweet Dreams.


And then I saw the seventh second of the video clip:

ree

I called my friends and started screaming at them:


"It's writing itself, it's writing itself!"


I do admit adding some sentences in other parts of the chapter that would resonate with the song better, but what I told you above is a true story.


I find that the collapse of the Universe in these coincidences is much more interesting than "what did the author mean here?"



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