The theme of my week anyway.
It's so weird. Usually, I will be completely wound up or associated in one story and I'd go with that for a long time.
With very little traffic coming to mind with the story I'm working to get published, I'm starting to think I might be better off trying with something else first, especially if the signal's a lot stronger. I had been stuck in neutral halfway through Chapter 4 for a number of reasons. One of them, I think was the same thing that got me going. I thought Gary Oldman would be the right person to play him. But that's not the image I get in mind.
For Jonas's guardian, Peter Bronson, he's a tall, thickset, middle-aged man with a salt & pepper beard and whiskers with a very generous disposition. Gary Oldman isn't the exact build with the character I have in mind. Kinda strange rereading part of the screenplay I was writing for the same story. Jonas felt more like the character I wrote than the latest draft I'd been writing. I can't for the life of me figure out why that is.
Oh great, now I'm thinking of going there.
I rewatched a movie today that I'd seen a couple times. That resulted in me writing a short rant about what I thought about this one person. He's always a lot of fun to write about, even if most of it is spent complicating and overthinking things.
Keeping things positive is the only way to go with him. It's a lot easier on me when he's the kind of person who makes me carthartic and relaxed, as if I could just chill with him for literally hours every day.
I'll just leave it at that.
I have some doubt that I will be able to finish this chapter and press forward. At least not for a while... and I guess that means my publishing aspirations will have to be put on hold for a bit.
And that's okay.
Right now, I have two projects that I've gotten pretty excited about.
Over the weekend, I'd written a little bit considering or reconsidering an idea I had a little while back.
Just yesterday, though, I jotted down a couple of notes because I rewatched "Wedding Crashers"... Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams did that together and later on, they did "Midnight in Paris." There's a little give and take there. In both cases, Owen Wilson really isn't as bad as I used to think. I mean, he just screamed frat boy to me, someone I could never take seriously.
It took dreaming about him for my attitude to change. That got me buying "Midnight in Paris," despite never having seen it, on a whim and it became one of my new favorite movies. He is so intelluctal in that one that it's crazy. One would think that'd be beyond his capacity, but no, I doubt anyone else could play that character the way he did. He was so on point that I was surprised. Definitely desired that Golden Globe nod (eventually went to future Oscar winner Jean Dujardin of "The Artist"... coincidentally, the only two Oscar nominated movies I saw... I read "The Help" and plan on watching the movie at some point too).
With Rachel McAdams, I dunno, my dreamscape was strange in that she was the one I was in the relationship with. BUT there was a piece missing, had been for a while.
I don't quite know where this new state of mind started taking shape... I'd come across a few R-rated movies that had sex scenes, none more insane than "Black Swan" which was like the crux, the apex of this entire thing. I started to experiment in my work, writing a few sex scenes to see how I liked the feel of it. In some cases, it just seemed necessary and there was no other way to go about it.
My characters were channeling this unusual phenomenon of offering themselves... okay, strike that. I keep making this same mistake. That was only one story I wrote, or rather a couple of scenes for a really short story that was nothing more than breaching forgiven with someone. Okay, maybe there was two. Feeling sorry for this guy who was in a bad place and that eventually led to antics in the bedroom... well, sex in odd places, actually. One was set on a couch and the other story, I don't know if anyone could get away with this in real life, in the room this guy was staying at a rehabilition clinic. Him being a recovering drug addict and all that.
Very strange. In these cases, she just randomly jumped into the situation, not thinking of the consequences, just being in the moment. I'm hesitant to try to finish off that story with the couch because, you know, what's the #1 thing that occurs after randomly having sex with someone? I don't think I'm comfortable with addressing that issue, though I doubt there's any other way to go about it.
A lot of these stories I'd been writing... I can write about people in relationship, it getting to the point where my character feels up for having sex with her boyfriend or her friend, whatever the case may be.
I wrote about some scenes with another character entirely where it came to a head... but the result was either a product of rape or some mysterious circumstances... like immaculate conception would be an example, but not... well, you know what I mean.
Point I'm trying to make: in my writing, I want to focus on the relationship at hand, it getting super serious, sometimes racy, but never freaky (it's nothing short of intercourse... no oral sex or anything weird like that. I am nowhere near ready to even address that kind of stuff).
Kinda strange how I'm a virgin and writing some of this stuff. No wonder I'm not up for sharing what I'm writing with my family when they ask.
But I have found it kinda liberating to write this stuff because for whatever reason, it is in my head :shrug: Everyone gets to that point eventually either between the mere desire of it or the curiosity. For me, its mostly curiosity.
What really got racy, though... and I don't consider this freaky. It's completely normal among particular partners in the bedroom. But from what I can interpret from my dream, Rachel McAdams and I were in an intimate relationship. I jotted down some notes to kinda nail down how we relate to one another. I decided that we either lived in the same dorm room or the same floor in the dormitory building, she is my shoulder to cry on after a night with a guy that asked me out goes south. (I considered for a moment that maybe it was because he came onto her, drugged her or whatever comes of that... but I decided that it made no sense. For the storyline to work, my character had to be a virgin when she and her started having this relationship).
And also, Owen Wilson would go on to be, in my dream, "my first time with a man." The desire in the dream was so insane. I'd never felt anything like that before in real life, but apparently there is something in my subconscious that secretly pines for this type of closeness with another person. The desire was to do the deed with him and... omg, I can barely even go into description or just naming parts of the anatomy, but in my dream, it got extremely racy where that's what I was on the edge of my seat about (not literally, metaphorically).
Anyway, I wrote down the details I got from the dream, bits and pieces about my relationship with both people. Owen Wilson more or less was someone I'd known a while, possibly one of my best friends and he secretly had been wanting to get with me for years. In his movies, I know him usually as the frat boy type, not the kind who cares about women or their feelings... but in the dream, he was perfect.
No way am I trying to say that I think that either of these people are what they are in real life as they are in my dreamscape. I'm only writing what I saw and felt about what I saw. I mean, they're both actors by trade. Pretending to be other people is what they do and if both of them in this particular world happen to be that thing to me, so be it. I'll experiment away and by the end of it, if I like what I end up with, I'll just limit things to first names and done with it. Only me and a handful of people will know the idea came from a twisted dream about them.
The "give" of "Wedding Crashers" was that Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams eventually end up together and are very romantically involved. Whereas in "Midnight in Paris," they were engaged, but by the end of the story, they end up breaking up... kind of downer in that respect (kinda odd how that all worked out too, lol).
The "take"... in "Wedding Crashers," she has brown hair. I dreamt about Rachel McAdams with blonde hair, so obviously, I'm a little more gravitated towards her as a blonde than otherwise.
I've been open to the idea that maybe I could be bi... anything's still possible at this point. But at present, I'm starting to think that if I go that route, there are only a handful of women I'd fully consider for that. They have to be a special type and breed that I just gravitate more than the rest. My type seems to be round faces with large blue/green eyes. Amanda Seyfried, one or two I've kinda thought of her in that way. Mila Kunis kinda goes without saying because, hell, she was the other half in "Black Swan." She was so good in that (and I mean her acting too) that she deserved at least to be acknowledged by the Academy for a nomination. She got completely snubbed on that (Natalie Portman was not and totally deserved the award for that).
The most I'd figured out about the overall idea relate to how I relate to both parties.
With Rachel, she's very maternal, kinda protective, like she feels like she has to take care of me and all that. I mean, considering my only encounter with a man left me to not trust the other sex for a very long time, that only makes sense, right?
I'm taking a little bit of poetic license from my own experience. A guy asked me out via Facebook, we chatted online a few times and he asked me to his apartment. It felt like the most awkward, most uncomfortable hour of my life. I wanted to be open to a few things, but not kissing on "the first date," if you could call it that. A lot of people might read about this and think I'm being completely overdramatic about it. That's why in the story, I think I might have to kick things up a notch for it to be more believable. Like he came onto me, started to get a little too close, a little too physical.. maybe tried a few things until I finally got the hell out of there. That might be enough to open things up to the next thing.
I'm sure it's happened a number of times. Girls finding more comfort with their own kind because one man did her wrong... that sort of thing. Anyone who wants to call me out on what sounds like "choosing to be gay," go right ahead and harp on me about it if that's what it sounds like to you. I'm just saying there's the possibility of it.
One of the key ingredients I need to hash out is figuring how to get this relationship off the ground. Is it because she's interested in me? Is it because I start to think she's the one I'm meant to be with? Once I figure out how to get us together, the rest is smooth-sailing.
Then with Owen Wilson, it's like... I guess in recent times, there's a missing ingredient from the formula that worked for a while. In simplest terms: "the sex isn't as good as it used to be." Either because she's never around or there are other things going on in my own head. In spending time with him and him coming out and saying he feels this way about her would help a great deal, she comes to realize she can't be sexually satisfied unless it's with a man.
Pretty deep and racy stuff, but it should prove interesting. Not surprisingly, the only scene I wrote so far was the sex scene that would have eventually happened in my dream if my own mind didn't blank out/turn away from it, lol. Deep down, I was highly anticipating it, though.
Onto the other idea, before I get completely sidetracked.
There are a number of things that have grinded my gears as of late. In the workplace, there have been a couple cases of that. One never really came to anything because it was a summer job. I figured that at some point, I was going to write a murder mystery story where I end up suspecting the one person I didn't get along with of murder because she has the temperment for it. And instead, it turns out to be the guy I really liked, got really close to. (In reality, I was close with him, considering him a good friend. Then one day, he and this other guy got fired because they were selling or doing drugs on premise... never saw him again).
That never came to anything, so it's still sitting up in my head.
A few years back, to channel this depression I was going through, I wrote a story about vampires. Not quite "Twilight," but that version of vampires... i.e. "not monsters."
I write about this girl who is depressed, feels like she's not getting anywhere. She stops on the side of the road on the way to work. A vampire named Ulysses, who is kind of a cross between Brad Pitt's Louis in "Interview with a Vampire" and David Bowie in "Labyrinth," who had been watching her actions for a while comes by to talk her out of whatever train of thought she's on. He ends up taking her to where he lives, which is like a mansion inhabited by several vampires. Some are discrete, but a lot aren't.
There, she also meets Jamison, who is kinda like a thorn in Ulysses's side... inspired by Ian Solmenhander's interpretation of Damon Salvatore from "The Vampire Diaries."
This story more or less came about because a) I was very depressed, but not necessarily contemplating any drastic measures, and b) I was watching a whole lot of "The Vampire Diaries."
Between "American Idol" and just too many things to keep track of, I stopped watching... around the time that Damon was becoming my favorite character :-P he's such a bad boy that he's good
Anyway, the story went through a few chapters. First, the mansion scene which ends with her being slipped a pill... the end result is that she wakes up in her own bed, and apparently she hadn't missed work that day... nobody acknowledges her absence or anything of that nature
Another day, after a really hard week, she's on break outside. She gets whisked away by Jamison, who wants to get her out of sight (apparently vampires here are very attracted or drawn to people with dark, depressing thoughts... go figure). He offers to change her himself (something that Ulysses is against, as he wouldn't choose this life for himself... kinda like Edward's POV from "Twlight"), but at the last minute, decides against it or Ulysses stops him. I forget which.
This was around the time I felt like I was being extra scrutinized and I wished that I could just be invisible or just be invincible to being taken aside or spoken to about shaping up.
It wasn't that I was overally terrible. I didn't handle things well a lot of the time. Most of it, I think was the fact I procrasinate and insist on doing a lot myself rather than reaching out for help... something I never quite lived down.
So anyway... the story came and went. Vampries in my world can be spectors in that they can come and go as they please... almost like ghosts, but they have physical shape. So I kinda was aiming for her to become a vampire so she could disappear whenever she pleased without feeling the need to worry about being scrutinized... kind of a hard thing to explain and keeping it in her favor.
But anyway... it kinda fell apart because... I was terminated before I could take the idea any further than I could... plus my inspiration came and went.
Every now and then, and this past weekend was another "then"... I dream about being back there or wanting back in or a couple of people that got under my skin (or rather, I might have gotten more under theirs. They must have thought I was so inept that they had to babysit me)... and one of them in particular, it's kinda hard to forget.
She wasn't mean like the "queen bee of the night shift" at the deli counter was... but it felt like getting yelled at by a boss when she gently told me off and said that I wasn't doing things as well as I could. She's the type of girl where she gets along with everyone and you know, you kinda want to be liked by her or at least accepted... as if that alone makes you feel more important, like you're part of an exclusive club. With us, I doubt it was going to work out that way... our tastes were way too different. (I mean, she lives and breathes "Jersey Shore"...).
In the dream, I remembered two things: that I was trying to "buy" my way back in by doing one set of samples that was usually the most demanding, but I was good at it... as if they would ask me back or let me back or give me a second chance.
Fact of the matter is that I felt like I got short changed. I was there for a little over a year and clearly that didn't give me enough experience to where I'm easily employable. The work world kinda sucks right now, still does...
In a completely sarcastic, sadistic way... I entertained the idea that if I ever decided to punch my own ticket, I'd drive a car right into their building or at least do it right there... hang a sign around my neck that reads "Because you fired me, nobody else wants to hire me." ...sounds like the ultimate revenge, especially if OSHA gets involved and the places gets shut down due to conspiracy.
Then I had the brilliant idea after having this dream... I felt pretty discontented about that place, the hell it was a lot of days and what hell I'd gone through trying to get employed again.
How about I put my sadistic idea into this story... but kick things up a knock?
I wrote down a number of bullet points for scenes that will lead up to this. I wrote a few bits of paragraphs about my "judgement day" as it were... but didn't get to the point where it got super serious. It's hard to be open and objective when I'm writing it longhand (I think faster when I type, more at ease).
But what I gather: she won't become a vampire until this last scene where she gets her revenge.
She crashes her car into the building, staging her suicide... and it's on a Saturday morning where it's a small crew and two of the people getting under my skin are there... the other is the supervisor who probably really thought I was an idiot. She never took me seriously.
It would be something if there was a conspiracy about this place... better yet if the one girl was in charge of the heroine, watching her back, getting her back in line while a couple of people were scheming to get her out of there... for whatever reason.
Naturally, they'll see if she has a pulse... being a vampire she won't... she'll be taken inside. They do this to kinda avoid attention and all that, covering it up, but she'd already sent the photos online... (Jamison is going to be her accomplice in all this, but she does all the work & heavy lifting). She kills the one girl and perhaps with the other, she goes after her after hearing some incriminating information while eavesdropping on a phone call.
There's one other character that's kinda central to this. She's hyperaware of stuff. I originally thought of her to be a vampire slayer type, but she is just hyperaware of vampires, not really wanting the heroine to go that path.
Eventually, the place gets taken down because of notoreity and negativity (driving their employees to suicide is a little drastic, but hey, this story is for me and my self-persevation & satisfication)... most likely why this story won't see the light of day unless I'm the only one seeing it :-P everyone I know would probably know where the inspiration comes from and judge me harshly for the things I say.
I'd like for one to use my writing to take my frustrations, but for the end result to be something I can be proud of, rather than ashamed.
Kinda interesting how this became a story about being depressed, wanting to escape from an unpleasant reality... it's going to become something more like a story of revenge and redemption... should prove interesting
I'm thinking that maybe they want her out because her assocation with the overall manager... not liked by a lot of people for whatever, I don't know why, she was always perfectly nice to me... I'll see what else I come up with.
Unlike my Owen/Rachel storyline, this is still in the beginning stages, so I haven't worked out the details yet.
What I do know... only one name will stay the same and that's going to be hyperaware Heidi... not really a nickname or anything... we weren't super close in real life, but she was the most grounded person there. Kinda looked up to her, she was very sweet and generous. She knows how crappy the place was and urged people to get out while they could (I heard within a month or two of my leaving that she left for somewhere else after being there for 3 hellish years).
If anything, this will be kept under wraps because I'll be advised to do so by my folks. Don't want to be caught badmouthing my previous place of business... but I can't help that sometimes, some things about that whole institution really pissed me off
Just saying :shrug:
I didn't get a lot accomplished today on either front, but hopefully tomorrow something will strike my fancy and I'll get writing.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 20, 2012
Where my writing tends to reside
phew... I'm just like a bundle of nerves right now... between so many things that it's crazy.
You know things are really bad when you've got a few things stressing you out at the same time...
Apparently :-? there has been "suspicious activity" on my gmail account to where I had to go through some crap just to get in and I had to, yet again, come up with a new password.
I have used the same password my whole life and it seems like every account I have, I either have to change it completely or modify it... I know it's probably the work of some hackers, so this next sentence is void:
How the hell do these people keep guessing my password? It is a MADE-UP WORD... my very first book series, it was a big part of that... how in the world is this possible?
One word just isn't enough anymore. You need letters, sometimes number, sometimes symbols...
I kinda operate on two different tracks. When it comes to one of those tracks, I use a different password for everything relating to that. But with everything to do my regular, everyday stuff, I'd used the same password for my whole life. Except that my AOL account, all of ours, got hacked... so we had to change the password to something... not nearly as cool as what I had before, but you know...
every now and then, it might just be a good measure to change my password every 6 months... hopefully that'll throw some people off... at least there won't be enough "suspicious activity" to speak of because it doesn't get hacked into as often.
Not sure why that would be... I have nothing for anyone to really use... so it's like every time I sign in, I'm gonna be paranoid that I'll have to reset my password again. PAIN in the butt...
I'm waiting two very important phone calls... one of the two, I might not necessarily get... but if I do... it would be the greatest thing since the mere act of initiating this long-distance friendship with the person calling... I guess I could disclose some details here.
Prince is kind of a big part of the title of this entry :-P
As it is with so many things in my life, I get into things pretty slowly and only when I feel "the waters are safe" or whatever it is... the timing being right... I go head first into things. I tend to do that a lot ;)
My writing as of late has kinda been cautious like that... I never know if an idea is going to work out because they'd come and gone so quickly. Only when I have enough information is it when I start writing.
Quickly, before I forget... the main phone call I'm expecting... response actually... something about a possible end to this seemingly endless period of nothingness... that is according to my family. But how I do really explain, unless I have some way of taking initiative, that writing is my life and its what I'm going to do with myself? Not making any money off it now because I'm doing all this blogging for my own benefit :shrug:
I'm more nervous about that and rightfully so... I have no way of predicting what's on the other side for me. She could easily say "haven't made my decision yet" or "we've chosen someone else" or "we'd been trying to contact you to tell you got it"... apparently our phones are kinda messy at the moment. It rang a number of times on Friday... like 5 times but with nothing on the other side... so there might be something wrong with one of our phones... again... we went through this issue before and Verizon had to come here to fix the issue (or was it our cable/internet provider?)
I thought writing could help get my mind off things, but talking about it, I'm getting to be kind of a wreck. The unknown can be a scary thing sometimes... and for me, that sometimes comes up quite a bit :-P
I think what has me the most nervous is the possibility of getting it and contempelating when I can start... do I say tomorrow, Wednesday... or next week? Will I be able to negotiate a starting date? Or will they need someone ASAP?
I'm definitely going to need an extra 24-48 hours to prepare... and now I'm down to 5+ minutes to go.
Anyway, discussing that other call I might be expecting will help take my mind off things if only for a little bit.
I can't quite explain why I waited so long... I mean with Robert Downey Jr. recently, I was a fan of his already... going back to 2009 when I found out who he is after seeing "Tropic Thunder"... I didn't want to really go out of my way to check into his other movies aside from the ones that weren't released yet. Plus I kinda wanted to remember him as he was at present, not going back to the 80's.
Watching "Less than Zero" kinda changed everything :-? for better and worse, but mostly for better... I'm being more brutually honest with myself as a result of all this, but that kinda makes me miserable when I do it too often.
His checkered history, which intensified rather than slackened after doing that movie, was something I couldn't leave alone. I had to make sure that nothing got uber serious... and I'm talking more serious than getting arrested, put in rehab or spending time in the same prison as Charles Manson (different yard, though, never saw him)... get what I mean?
Why does it seem like a lot of the people I let into my life... both actors and musicians... they're all kinda weirdos?
I mean, I think of myself as a weirdo a little bit... so I guess that makes total sense that I'd feel a connection with some of them... and yeah, of course people like Prince and Lady Gaga... two examples... make Robert appear normal... and actually he really is... he just plays a lot of weird roles... a few... noted more for his weird roles, at least before "Iron-Man" came along...
any minute now.... BOY am I nervous :-P
talking about Robert used to take the edge off, just a little ;) he's good for stuff like that.
all in all, he makes me feel happy... which is a big thing for me right now... or rather has been for the past year or so
Prince seemed like a really long, dragged out process... "Purple Rain"... seeing maybe 10 minutes of it, the only that really stuck in my subconscious for a number of years... turned me onto the idea that he was unlike anyone I'd known before... a Neo-Mozart if you will 8-) I'd had that in my subconscious for quite some time and every now and then, I wanted to rent the movie to see it all the way through but I never got around to it... there was never a good time
Him doing the SuperBowl HalfTime seemed like the perfect excuse... saw him perform a bit... not to mention this dream I had where I was in line to get tickets to see him... the morning of no less... that's kind of a sign if you ask me...
so I did... watched whatever music videos I could find, joined a messageboard to see what people were saying about him because if anything else, they were the people that would know him in the way I wanted to get to know him. That was a good 6 months.. 9 months... before everything kinda went south and nearly everyone had turned against him... something about him blocking YouTube videos or anything relating to him cuz he thought he was copyright infringement, never really got the full story... but I'd gotten all I could from that place and kinda stopped going every day... it was like a regiment, lol
I started a blog about him maybe 2 months into it... April of '07... because just answering threads or starting them wasn't enough for me... I wanted feedback right away and wasn't getting it... plus I didn't think everyone wanted to read through my massive messages just to see what I was talking about.
If anything, blogging was good for all the stuff I had stored up in my head about him. And if at all possible, I tried to keep things positive.
amidst all the negativity that started coming from there, I did get some good stuff out of it. People were kind enough to send me some of his music, including some stuff that was to be kept hush-hush (its a well-known fact that some untrustworthy people at Paisley Park and his other studio were sneaking out tapes of his music and sending it to their friends... and a little something called the Internet made matters a bit worse... but that'd been going on for years, so it's not necessarily why he started cracking down as he did)
I made a couple friends, but only keep in touch with one of them.
He replied to an entry I posted after seeing all of Purple Rain the first time... and also emailed me, saying how much he appreciated and "got" the stuff I wrote about him... so it started building... now it's almost like we'd... well we had known each other for years... 5 years next month, in fact. The fact our friendship is based on more than just our love of Prince's music... that's saying a lot
I can feel it, any second now... I'd hate to be in the middle of a sentence and BAM, lol
One big thing that has been in discussion for as many years as it's been a topic. The whole matter of whether or not Prince's touring band The Revolution will ever get back together... all under the same roof with him at the forefront of the pack. One way or another, between a number of things in the mid-80's, there was a falling out and he disbanded the group, starting from scratch. Since then, a number of things has delayed the reunion... including a little something called pride, his to be specific...
last year around this time, their drummer Bobby Z had a really bad heart attack, but fought back from it. They put together this reunion to raise heart health awareness and of course money for charity... seemed like the perfect occasion.
Just last night, my friend went to that concert... and if something extra special happens, he'll call to let me know ;) that would be something, wouldn't it? I mean with him, it'd been a life-long goal... been listening to him since he was at least 3 :-P his sister turned him on to him... so we're talking roughly 20+ odd years...
okay, it's been 15 minutes already... just put me out of my misery
I do have my phone out of its case so when it lights up, I'll know. but it's not as if I'm staring blankly at it, waiting for it to ring... willing it to ring with some telepathetic powers I so do not have :-P
My blog did originally start as a Prince blog. I started accumulating music and I dunno... I just had to write about it, my thoughts and feelings, my likes and dislikes (likes outnumber dislikes about 85/15)... then stuff started accumulating. And you know, I could one day write a book about all this... and I have had the intention of doing so. Just a number of things called reality and lack of interest have delayed me. Plus it's a huge commitment with a lot of information.
More or less, it's going to be a book (my friend will co-author some of it) about Prince's music, doing justice to it, explaining it and hopefully through it, more people will see how accessible he can be and also that his career didn't stop in the 80's like so many other people
There are so many misconceptions with him that it's crazy. There's the obvious question of whether he's straight or gay... a man who's been with that many women and married twice... c'mon, it's not that difficult. Plus part of the reason it took a while longer for him to get back in a good place with Lisa & Wendy was because they were gay (and apparently they were in a relationship at some point as well) and he is anti-gay marriage as well...
There are other things that aren't as easy to supplement. Back in the day, his music was pretty controversial cuz it touched on really sensitive topics like sex, religion and politics (mostly sex), so people didn't really know what to make of him.
For a number of reasons, people think he's a freak or just so eccentric that they kinda dismiss him about. He's almost as hard to bring in discussion as are those subjects he writes about. I know in my family, there are a number of people who don't get him, think he's weird.
To a degree, that is true, but I think I'd done enough decoding where, you know, as hard as it is to comprehend, I don't really see him that way. He's a bit out there sometimes, but things seem less threatening and more approachable after you learn more about it.
I'd gone through that period myself, in the very beginning, when I wanted to stick to the music that wasn't as controversial. I didn't want to really listen to anything where he was openly discussing sexuality or his language was more than a little explicit. Some of the people on that site thought I was crazy that I'm naive about all this stuff, yet I want to listen to him.
I learned pretty early on... if not 24/48 hours after, that I had to find my own way through his massive amount of work rather than listening to everyone else saying I'll never be able to manage it.
As a testament to how far I'd come, "Darling Nikki" has become a guilty pleasure of mine... and that song was such a hot topic when the album came out that the parental advisory stickers became part of regulation... also it was a song that I was very terrified to hear for the first time when I saw the movie. I knew how controversial it was and I was literally bracing myself.
After a number of viewings, :sigh: ... I guess I desensitized myself to it... or just the whole thing I was saying earlier... if you investigate into something long enough, it's not nearly as terrifying as you thought it was going to be.
now it's been 30 minutes...
I guess by now, one would kinda get the answer to my question...
there was a period of time, like the past 2-3 years or so... between the real world and the fact I'd overdone things, I stopped listening to him and really had no desire to. Plus on my blog I'd run out of things to talk about that I hadn't already gone into
So when I found less things to discuss regarding time, I turned to other sources of discussion... in 2010, I became such a movie junkie (well, then I had a car so I could head to the theater whenever I pleased without having to really ask to go, lol) that I started reviewing the movies I saw.
Then with last year.. you can kinda decipher who I loved writing about then too ;) good times, but I'll try to cut down on that. It's not nearly as the same when I wouldn't come near stuff with a 20 foot pole. I guess now, I kinda know my limits :-?
I guess that kinda goes to explain why I hadn't spend nearly as much time writing on this blog or anything else for that matter. Maybe I should just make it a weekly regiment, rather than something I do whenever inspiration hits.
Between a number of things, I'd slowly started to start blogging about Prince again. And it kinda... well, not kinda... this is true... writing about other people provides me interest for me than my own stories, the stuff that I really ought to pay attention to if I want to make a living as a writer
Although I could technically self-publish that book on Prince, whenever I get around to working on it or getting close to finishing it, and get a small fortune of that... and I doubt I'll make much more than maybe $500, lol
self-publishing is the only way I'll be able to go on that cuz there's no way any publishing house will be interested in such a vast subject. I doubt I'd be able to sell myself as well as I could
40 minutes...
okay, I think what I'll do... I think I'd more or less explained myself.
I am stressing out so much that I'm barely breathing and I'm feeling very tight around my chest and waist... so I think I'll lay down for a while just to cool off a bit.
If all goes well, I'll get the call not a minute later and perhaps this whole thing can finally be over.
You know things are really bad when you've got a few things stressing you out at the same time...
Apparently :-? there has been "suspicious activity" on my gmail account to where I had to go through some crap just to get in and I had to, yet again, come up with a new password.
I have used the same password my whole life and it seems like every account I have, I either have to change it completely or modify it... I know it's probably the work of some hackers, so this next sentence is void:
How the hell do these people keep guessing my password? It is a MADE-UP WORD... my very first book series, it was a big part of that... how in the world is this possible?
One word just isn't enough anymore. You need letters, sometimes number, sometimes symbols...
I kinda operate on two different tracks. When it comes to one of those tracks, I use a different password for everything relating to that. But with everything to do my regular, everyday stuff, I'd used the same password for my whole life. Except that my AOL account, all of ours, got hacked... so we had to change the password to something... not nearly as cool as what I had before, but you know...
every now and then, it might just be a good measure to change my password every 6 months... hopefully that'll throw some people off... at least there won't be enough "suspicious activity" to speak of because it doesn't get hacked into as often.
Not sure why that would be... I have nothing for anyone to really use... so it's like every time I sign in, I'm gonna be paranoid that I'll have to reset my password again. PAIN in the butt...
I'm waiting two very important phone calls... one of the two, I might not necessarily get... but if I do... it would be the greatest thing since the mere act of initiating this long-distance friendship with the person calling... I guess I could disclose some details here.
Prince is kind of a big part of the title of this entry :-P
As it is with so many things in my life, I get into things pretty slowly and only when I feel "the waters are safe" or whatever it is... the timing being right... I go head first into things. I tend to do that a lot ;)
My writing as of late has kinda been cautious like that... I never know if an idea is going to work out because they'd come and gone so quickly. Only when I have enough information is it when I start writing.
Quickly, before I forget... the main phone call I'm expecting... response actually... something about a possible end to this seemingly endless period of nothingness... that is according to my family. But how I do really explain, unless I have some way of taking initiative, that writing is my life and its what I'm going to do with myself? Not making any money off it now because I'm doing all this blogging for my own benefit :shrug:
I'm more nervous about that and rightfully so... I have no way of predicting what's on the other side for me. She could easily say "haven't made my decision yet" or "we've chosen someone else" or "we'd been trying to contact you to tell you got it"... apparently our phones are kinda messy at the moment. It rang a number of times on Friday... like 5 times but with nothing on the other side... so there might be something wrong with one of our phones... again... we went through this issue before and Verizon had to come here to fix the issue (or was it our cable/internet provider?)
I thought writing could help get my mind off things, but talking about it, I'm getting to be kind of a wreck. The unknown can be a scary thing sometimes... and for me, that sometimes comes up quite a bit :-P
I think what has me the most nervous is the possibility of getting it and contempelating when I can start... do I say tomorrow, Wednesday... or next week? Will I be able to negotiate a starting date? Or will they need someone ASAP?
I'm definitely going to need an extra 24-48 hours to prepare... and now I'm down to 5+ minutes to go.
Anyway, discussing that other call I might be expecting will help take my mind off things if only for a little bit.
I can't quite explain why I waited so long... I mean with Robert Downey Jr. recently, I was a fan of his already... going back to 2009 when I found out who he is after seeing "Tropic Thunder"... I didn't want to really go out of my way to check into his other movies aside from the ones that weren't released yet. Plus I kinda wanted to remember him as he was at present, not going back to the 80's.
Watching "Less than Zero" kinda changed everything :-? for better and worse, but mostly for better... I'm being more brutually honest with myself as a result of all this, but that kinda makes me miserable when I do it too often.
His checkered history, which intensified rather than slackened after doing that movie, was something I couldn't leave alone. I had to make sure that nothing got uber serious... and I'm talking more serious than getting arrested, put in rehab or spending time in the same prison as Charles Manson (different yard, though, never saw him)... get what I mean?
Why does it seem like a lot of the people I let into my life... both actors and musicians... they're all kinda weirdos?
I mean, I think of myself as a weirdo a little bit... so I guess that makes total sense that I'd feel a connection with some of them... and yeah, of course people like Prince and Lady Gaga... two examples... make Robert appear normal... and actually he really is... he just plays a lot of weird roles... a few... noted more for his weird roles, at least before "Iron-Man" came along...
any minute now.... BOY am I nervous :-P
talking about Robert used to take the edge off, just a little ;) he's good for stuff like that.
all in all, he makes me feel happy... which is a big thing for me right now... or rather has been for the past year or so
Prince seemed like a really long, dragged out process... "Purple Rain"... seeing maybe 10 minutes of it, the only that really stuck in my subconscious for a number of years... turned me onto the idea that he was unlike anyone I'd known before... a Neo-Mozart if you will 8-) I'd had that in my subconscious for quite some time and every now and then, I wanted to rent the movie to see it all the way through but I never got around to it... there was never a good time
Him doing the SuperBowl HalfTime seemed like the perfect excuse... saw him perform a bit... not to mention this dream I had where I was in line to get tickets to see him... the morning of no less... that's kind of a sign if you ask me...
so I did... watched whatever music videos I could find, joined a messageboard to see what people were saying about him because if anything else, they were the people that would know him in the way I wanted to get to know him. That was a good 6 months.. 9 months... before everything kinda went south and nearly everyone had turned against him... something about him blocking YouTube videos or anything relating to him cuz he thought he was copyright infringement, never really got the full story... but I'd gotten all I could from that place and kinda stopped going every day... it was like a regiment, lol
I started a blog about him maybe 2 months into it... April of '07... because just answering threads or starting them wasn't enough for me... I wanted feedback right away and wasn't getting it... plus I didn't think everyone wanted to read through my massive messages just to see what I was talking about.
If anything, blogging was good for all the stuff I had stored up in my head about him. And if at all possible, I tried to keep things positive.
amidst all the negativity that started coming from there, I did get some good stuff out of it. People were kind enough to send me some of his music, including some stuff that was to be kept hush-hush (its a well-known fact that some untrustworthy people at Paisley Park and his other studio were sneaking out tapes of his music and sending it to their friends... and a little something called the Internet made matters a bit worse... but that'd been going on for years, so it's not necessarily why he started cracking down as he did)
I made a couple friends, but only keep in touch with one of them.
He replied to an entry I posted after seeing all of Purple Rain the first time... and also emailed me, saying how much he appreciated and "got" the stuff I wrote about him... so it started building... now it's almost like we'd... well we had known each other for years... 5 years next month, in fact. The fact our friendship is based on more than just our love of Prince's music... that's saying a lot
I can feel it, any second now... I'd hate to be in the middle of a sentence and BAM, lol
One big thing that has been in discussion for as many years as it's been a topic. The whole matter of whether or not Prince's touring band The Revolution will ever get back together... all under the same roof with him at the forefront of the pack. One way or another, between a number of things in the mid-80's, there was a falling out and he disbanded the group, starting from scratch. Since then, a number of things has delayed the reunion... including a little something called pride, his to be specific...
last year around this time, their drummer Bobby Z had a really bad heart attack, but fought back from it. They put together this reunion to raise heart health awareness and of course money for charity... seemed like the perfect occasion.
Just last night, my friend went to that concert... and if something extra special happens, he'll call to let me know ;) that would be something, wouldn't it? I mean with him, it'd been a life-long goal... been listening to him since he was at least 3 :-P his sister turned him on to him... so we're talking roughly 20+ odd years...
okay, it's been 15 minutes already... just put me out of my misery
I do have my phone out of its case so when it lights up, I'll know. but it's not as if I'm staring blankly at it, waiting for it to ring... willing it to ring with some telepathetic powers I so do not have :-P
My blog did originally start as a Prince blog. I started accumulating music and I dunno... I just had to write about it, my thoughts and feelings, my likes and dislikes (likes outnumber dislikes about 85/15)... then stuff started accumulating. And you know, I could one day write a book about all this... and I have had the intention of doing so. Just a number of things called reality and lack of interest have delayed me. Plus it's a huge commitment with a lot of information.
More or less, it's going to be a book (my friend will co-author some of it) about Prince's music, doing justice to it, explaining it and hopefully through it, more people will see how accessible he can be and also that his career didn't stop in the 80's like so many other people
There are so many misconceptions with him that it's crazy. There's the obvious question of whether he's straight or gay... a man who's been with that many women and married twice... c'mon, it's not that difficult. Plus part of the reason it took a while longer for him to get back in a good place with Lisa & Wendy was because they were gay (and apparently they were in a relationship at some point as well) and he is anti-gay marriage as well...
There are other things that aren't as easy to supplement. Back in the day, his music was pretty controversial cuz it touched on really sensitive topics like sex, religion and politics (mostly sex), so people didn't really know what to make of him.
For a number of reasons, people think he's a freak or just so eccentric that they kinda dismiss him about. He's almost as hard to bring in discussion as are those subjects he writes about. I know in my family, there are a number of people who don't get him, think he's weird.
To a degree, that is true, but I think I'd done enough decoding where, you know, as hard as it is to comprehend, I don't really see him that way. He's a bit out there sometimes, but things seem less threatening and more approachable after you learn more about it.
I'd gone through that period myself, in the very beginning, when I wanted to stick to the music that wasn't as controversial. I didn't want to really listen to anything where he was openly discussing sexuality or his language was more than a little explicit. Some of the people on that site thought I was crazy that I'm naive about all this stuff, yet I want to listen to him.
I learned pretty early on... if not 24/48 hours after, that I had to find my own way through his massive amount of work rather than listening to everyone else saying I'll never be able to manage it.
As a testament to how far I'd come, "Darling Nikki" has become a guilty pleasure of mine... and that song was such a hot topic when the album came out that the parental advisory stickers became part of regulation... also it was a song that I was very terrified to hear for the first time when I saw the movie. I knew how controversial it was and I was literally bracing myself.
After a number of viewings, :sigh: ... I guess I desensitized myself to it... or just the whole thing I was saying earlier... if you investigate into something long enough, it's not nearly as terrifying as you thought it was going to be.
now it's been 30 minutes...
I guess by now, one would kinda get the answer to my question...
there was a period of time, like the past 2-3 years or so... between the real world and the fact I'd overdone things, I stopped listening to him and really had no desire to. Plus on my blog I'd run out of things to talk about that I hadn't already gone into
So when I found less things to discuss regarding time, I turned to other sources of discussion... in 2010, I became such a movie junkie (well, then I had a car so I could head to the theater whenever I pleased without having to really ask to go, lol) that I started reviewing the movies I saw.
Then with last year.. you can kinda decipher who I loved writing about then too ;) good times, but I'll try to cut down on that. It's not nearly as the same when I wouldn't come near stuff with a 20 foot pole. I guess now, I kinda know my limits :-?
I guess that kinda goes to explain why I hadn't spend nearly as much time writing on this blog or anything else for that matter. Maybe I should just make it a weekly regiment, rather than something I do whenever inspiration hits.
Between a number of things, I'd slowly started to start blogging about Prince again. And it kinda... well, not kinda... this is true... writing about other people provides me interest for me than my own stories, the stuff that I really ought to pay attention to if I want to make a living as a writer
Although I could technically self-publish that book on Prince, whenever I get around to working on it or getting close to finishing it, and get a small fortune of that... and I doubt I'll make much more than maybe $500, lol
self-publishing is the only way I'll be able to go on that cuz there's no way any publishing house will be interested in such a vast subject. I doubt I'd be able to sell myself as well as I could
40 minutes...
okay, I think what I'll do... I think I'd more or less explained myself.
I am stressing out so much that I'm barely breathing and I'm feeling very tight around my chest and waist... so I think I'll lay down for a while just to cool off a bit.
If all goes well, I'll get the call not a minute later and perhaps this whole thing can finally be over.
Friday, February 10, 2012
My story idea of Wish Fulfillment: Rebel Diana/Nobody 'Till You
I have so many pet peeves in the writing world that it's crazy. Even if I narrowed it down to the pet peeves I have about my OWN writing, that doesn't really narrow down much of anything. Most of my pet peeves are just things that I have no control over, but continue to annoy me nonetheless.
I like to get to know some of my CD's by playing them along with my choice of video games. Sometimes, it just so happens that the CD in question becomes the soundtrack to a part of that video game. With Jak & Daxter, I could probably work up a couple of CD's to cover the entire game. But for the moment, when I play through, I always have to play two CD's because they just fit the scenery and actions perfectly.
Often times, the combination makes me a better game player, if not temporarily.
There was maybe once or twice when Ashlee Simpson's "Autobiography" was my companion for the first two sections of the game-- Sandover village and the Forbidden Jungle. Now I'd gotten too fast for my own good, so the next installment comes later than I'd like.
Covering the realms from Misty Island to crossing the Fire Canyon, I use "Speak" by Lindsay Lohan. Say what you want about her, but I thought the album rocked when I was in my senior year of high school. I'll go into more detail a little later, the reason I'm starting this entry in the first place, but yeah, a guy had a little something to do with it.
I made up two mixes of songs that were the most often played by me or alluded to certain parts of the school. 10th grade & 11th grade.
With 10th grade, I had a number of Dream Street songs, three by Michelle Branch ("Here with me" being the break-up song... marking the end of me fantasizing I had a chance with one of my guy friends), a couple by Vanessa Mae (if only for filler, lol... the last 4 had no real place, I just liked them a lot), two by Plus One... and that was basically it. There was a repeated theme with my "crush d'ans," but they only held up for so long.
11th grade was something else... if anything, it became a work of art. It started with the first song I heard coming into my Physics class. My teacher had a radio in his desk and he was a big Guster fan. I got the one album for two songs ("Fa fa fa" and "4, 3, 2, 1") and sold it a couple years later cuz I didn't really like the whole thing. The same went with Stacie Orrico. I liked "More to life" and instead, I ended up selling the album because we didn't quite gel together.
So after the Guster song, I'd have this song "11 out of 10" by Play and "Worthless" by Greg Raposo. Nothing too special unless you were in my place... Pre-calculus was the bane of my existence that first marking period, but playing those two songs helped a bit.
Then I think I had a couple of my favorite Clay Aiken tracks from his first album (and I'm sorry to say it was his only good album... after that, it just went downhill) that reminded me of another guy that came into my life. This actor with a velvety tenor voice that I still haven't forgotten to this day how crazy I was about him. I guess the connection came because a) he was graduating that year and he'd be sorely missed and b) Clay Aiken has a fine tenor voice that reminds me a bit of him... that's probably the reason a couple Josh Groban tracks got in there too...
"Stairway to Heaven" got in there because I heard him sing it once and that really made the song come alive for me... loved it ever since.
Then it gets kinda sparse with the meanings behind why I picked the next couple songs. Jesse McCartney covering a song from "Peter Pan" was something I played a million times, so why not... we did the song "Masquerade" in concert choir and the opener was a solo version of "All I ask of you"... Simple Plan's "Perfect" came in because a) I loved the song and b) I felt such a camerarderie with it... like it fit how I felt at the time...
As for where this all fits in the game... I started playing it when I got to the Snowy Mountain realm of the 3rd world... and somehow, the rest fit into place. I'd get up to "Stairway to Heaven" by the time I finish... and I'd navigate the deadly Spider Caves realm. If all goes well, I'm in the Lava Tube by the time the 2nd Guster song starts playing.
My thing for music goes back more years than I can remember... but one thing's for sure... combining music with video games makes it go all the more faster, makes it more fun...
I'm also very visual when it comes to music. It used to be that I could listen to a song and images of something or someone would come to mind... so when I write, I like to have music close by to inspire me or help prolong some scenes.
Playing the game again today... going through Misty Island and Sentinal Beach... to "Speak"...
it kinda inspired me... just a little bit... to revisit the idea that more or less came from the album.
First of all, the first time I heard it kinda felt like an electric shock, a little more harsh than I thought it was going to be. But I was expecting bubblegum pop. In a way, I guess it still kinda is. It's just that when a certain guy started coming to mind, the two were like a match made in heaven. Or so it seemed.
It started with a couple of songs from the album kinda hitting the right spots and areas.
"First" is about wanting to be a guy's first priority... and when it came to him, I kinda felt that way. Well, not kinda, I definitely felt that way. He had his own circle of friends, a lot of them were girls and he'd be super close with the bunch of them. I wanted to get in on that popularity, but I didn't know how. I got so uber jealous and wanted badly to be able to speak my mind.
"Speak" kinda came from that too, the title track... wanting desperately to not be afraid to say anything to him... as it often is with guys, I'm very scatterbrained, not quite knowing what to say to them a lot of the time.
"Nobody 'till you" sounded perfect for describing the feeling of what it was like to be around him. The few times we got to talking, he made me feel like I was the only one in the room. You know how it is... getting a little extra time with a special guy in your life, you feel special because he took the time out for you.
All the other songs kinda helped in one way or another.
The story more or less became a feat of wish fulfillment that I was never completely able to bring to a head.
Meaning that it started out really good, but it got so lost in the middle... muddled in fact.
A lot of people say how the first 50 pages are the hardest to write of a story/book/novel, whatever you want to call.
Maybe it's because in a bunch of my works, if not all of them, 50 pages is actually HALF of the entire story...
#$%& me, this story is just a little more than 50 pages...
first 50 pages, my ass...
and if I rounded up, my word count is just less than 24,000... this is no book, it's more like a novella that probably nobody would buy into, nevermind a publisher
No, length really isn't the biggest issue at hand.
Neither is the first 50 pages... the beginning for that matter.
I mean, yeah, the beginning is a little wooden. A lot of exposition or background information. I doubt anyone's going to buy into it. I mean, I started this when I was maybe 18. I was still very emotionally immature at the time. Like getting the attention of who I perceived to be the most popular guy in my concert choir class was the most important thing in the world to me.
The beginning could do with some reworking because, even in 3rd person, it's very melodramatic.
The way I used to write was in this method: wish fulfillment. What I couldn't make happen in real life, I made happen in my writing. Each time I look back at this work in particular, I just want to crawl under a rock or hide or whatever to just put it out of my mind. It's just so embarassing.
Granted, I'm still very insecure with myself, but supposing I knew nothing about me and I was reading this for the first time... who wants to read about an insecure protagonist?
Diana is probably one of the weakest, if not the weakest personality I'd ever written and she was derived specifically from my own psyche. Because of a little something called multiple personality disorder, she developed another personality who saw all of this going on and wanted to take her place so she could fulfill what her other half was too afraid to... afraid to take any chances, afraid that people wouldn't like her overstepping her boundaries...
Leaving all that aside... going into the first three songs I dervied inspiration from...
"Symptoms of you" is just the regular symptoms and side-effects of crushing on someone
"Disconnected" could go on to mean a number of things for the situation. I'm starting to believe that there are times that Diana blocks out or senses another presence inside her mind... there's a lot of contradictions to the lyrics as there are for her confused psyche.
"Nobody 'till you" brings a lot of pieces together, her motivation throughout the story.
Wanting to come "First" makes the other personality all the more powerful and closer to taking control... but unlike what you see in the soap operas, the other personality screwing over the host personality, "Rebel Diana" wants to fulfill her host's wishes using her stronger persona.
Establishing the first couple of characters and the stronger personality taking over for Diana is one thing... I can live with a lot of those details quite happily with very little objection. It's just the first couple pages that need work, all the insecure I hate reading about, but that was and still is part of who I am.
Here's the hard part:
With the help of her stronger personality, Diana assimilates her way into Brian's life. For whatever reason, he finds himself a little more drawn to her, wanting to spend more time with her because of her newfound confidence. That much I can buy into.
But how far can I push it without making it sound too unrealistic? Is his current girlfriend really necessary in the story to add conflict? Originally, I had it that she eventually got jealous and broke up with him. But supposing I have him break up with her instead... would that be a little too much?
I mean, wouldn't that sound a little too much like something out of "The Little Mermaid"... you know that whole part where, after Ariel was starting to get Eric to fall in love with her, Ursula cheats in turning herself into a girl and putting Eric under a spell so he's persuaded to marry her instead.
How far can I possibly push the envelope before it completely bursts in my hands?
One way or another, Diana and Brian become a couple. Because he's so popular and she's more or less a nobody, people want to know who she is ("To know your name"). Jealousy flairs up a bit and Diana starts to alienate Brian from his friends, him spending almost all of his time with her instead.
Because of that, rumors start to fly around her about how in the world she wormed her way into his life... however he and his girlfriend break up, that has validity in this instance.
Everything starts to crop up when the Spring Fling dance comes around.
Diana's stronger personality starts to see the error of her ways ("Anything but me"). She comes to sort of realize that not only is Brian not nearly as happy in this relationship as he could be... takes into account how she'd more or less cut him off from everyone else... Diana didn't want to interrupt the status quo and that was kind of her one request before letting the other personality take over for her...
"Over" is the break-up song. I don't put it in the story, but towards the beginning, she secretly wishes to have a slow dance with Brian. She gets her wish, but kinda realizes that this isn't the way she wanted it to be.
This is something else I'm also trying to figure out how to handle it... when do the two personalities reverse position to how they were? Who breaks up with Brian? Is it Rebel Diana or her default personality?
Because one way or another, it has to lead to something that would make the following confrontation make sense. This conflict happens completely within the recesses of her own mind. Rebel Diana more or less explains what she did to achieve what she wanted to achieve for her and everything got out of hand.
I see a few reprises of the songs from the album. And I thought it'd be perfect if there was a complete role reversal here. During "Speak" the first time around, Diana's rebellious side tried to talk her into believing that she needs to say what's on her mind or she won't get anywhere near what she wants to achieve in life.
Then after everything that happens happened, Diana turns the table, almost mocking her other personality in saying "you said it wasn't going to be a big deal, that it'd be good for me. I was better off never listening to you in the first place."
One way or another... I'm not quite sure how it all works out... the two personalities kinda agree and Diana more or less becomes a combination of the two of them... a little stronger than before, a little braver, but not nearly as domineering or selfish in that "winner take all" way.
Now, getting the acceptance of the student body back... that's probably the most difficult part. As if hammering out the details of her relationship with Brian when they were together was hard enough.
But taking all of that aside, how in the WORLD am I going to make the final scene I have in mind happen?
We fast-forward to prom. Diana goes alone and ends up having a good time.
But then the dance floor parts, with Brian waiting for her to dance with him... giving her the slow dance she'd always wanted.
He gives her what sounds to me like BS... saying that he understood why she did what she did, forgives her and allows her the one thing she really wanted, just for once for someone to treat her like she was special, like she was the only one in the room.
Certainly, this is something I'd pose as a question on a series of message boards. But there are simply too many questions to ask and a lot of people probably wouldn't have the patience to weed through all of my explaining of my story.
There are so many flaws in this story that it makes me want to quit, erase it completely, but it would hurt just as much to do that as it does leaving it in limbo like this.
In all seriousness, who but me is going to buy into this story? And each time I look back at it, I wonder if I even buy into it anymore. The person having two personalities is one thing... but its another thing having this whole story painting her as the victim. How long can I hold onto that until I turn the reader against her? When she starts alienating him from everyone else, who would feel sorry for her then? She's no better than the people she'd fought against, the herd of sheep following him around.
And after all that, how can he forgive her? I see all of this coming together, but I don't know if it holds any water... if it makes any sense. Yet the entire time, I see this playing out like a movie... one song at a time, ending with one song playing to a slow dance at prom while the credits are scrolling on the other side of the screen.
They say that 1st person POV is very flawed and can only be used with certain protagonists. At the same time, with my heroine being as weak of character as she is, it feels like the story still suffers even when she's not the one telling it.
So much to do, not enough time and interest to do it in. But I hope that someday it'll work out where I can actually stand by what I've written.
The only positive I can derive for the moment: if it ever gets published, by the time that comes, everyone the story is about probably won't remember anything about the 2004-5 school year and wouldn't be able to figure out that I'd written my own reality.
I like to get to know some of my CD's by playing them along with my choice of video games. Sometimes, it just so happens that the CD in question becomes the soundtrack to a part of that video game. With Jak & Daxter, I could probably work up a couple of CD's to cover the entire game. But for the moment, when I play through, I always have to play two CD's because they just fit the scenery and actions perfectly.
Often times, the combination makes me a better game player, if not temporarily.
There was maybe once or twice when Ashlee Simpson's "Autobiography" was my companion for the first two sections of the game-- Sandover village and the Forbidden Jungle. Now I'd gotten too fast for my own good, so the next installment comes later than I'd like.
Covering the realms from Misty Island to crossing the Fire Canyon, I use "Speak" by Lindsay Lohan. Say what you want about her, but I thought the album rocked when I was in my senior year of high school. I'll go into more detail a little later, the reason I'm starting this entry in the first place, but yeah, a guy had a little something to do with it.
I made up two mixes of songs that were the most often played by me or alluded to certain parts of the school. 10th grade & 11th grade.
With 10th grade, I had a number of Dream Street songs, three by Michelle Branch ("Here with me" being the break-up song... marking the end of me fantasizing I had a chance with one of my guy friends), a couple by Vanessa Mae (if only for filler, lol... the last 4 had no real place, I just liked them a lot), two by Plus One... and that was basically it. There was a repeated theme with my "crush d'ans," but they only held up for so long.
11th grade was something else... if anything, it became a work of art. It started with the first song I heard coming into my Physics class. My teacher had a radio in his desk and he was a big Guster fan. I got the one album for two songs ("Fa fa fa" and "4, 3, 2, 1") and sold it a couple years later cuz I didn't really like the whole thing. The same went with Stacie Orrico. I liked "More to life" and instead, I ended up selling the album because we didn't quite gel together.
So after the Guster song, I'd have this song "11 out of 10" by Play and "Worthless" by Greg Raposo. Nothing too special unless you were in my place... Pre-calculus was the bane of my existence that first marking period, but playing those two songs helped a bit.
Then I think I had a couple of my favorite Clay Aiken tracks from his first album (and I'm sorry to say it was his only good album... after that, it just went downhill) that reminded me of another guy that came into my life. This actor with a velvety tenor voice that I still haven't forgotten to this day how crazy I was about him. I guess the connection came because a) he was graduating that year and he'd be sorely missed and b) Clay Aiken has a fine tenor voice that reminds me a bit of him... that's probably the reason a couple Josh Groban tracks got in there too...
"Stairway to Heaven" got in there because I heard him sing it once and that really made the song come alive for me... loved it ever since.
Then it gets kinda sparse with the meanings behind why I picked the next couple songs. Jesse McCartney covering a song from "Peter Pan" was something I played a million times, so why not... we did the song "Masquerade" in concert choir and the opener was a solo version of "All I ask of you"... Simple Plan's "Perfect" came in because a) I loved the song and b) I felt such a camerarderie with it... like it fit how I felt at the time...
As for where this all fits in the game... I started playing it when I got to the Snowy Mountain realm of the 3rd world... and somehow, the rest fit into place. I'd get up to "Stairway to Heaven" by the time I finish... and I'd navigate the deadly Spider Caves realm. If all goes well, I'm in the Lava Tube by the time the 2nd Guster song starts playing.
My thing for music goes back more years than I can remember... but one thing's for sure... combining music with video games makes it go all the more faster, makes it more fun...
I'm also very visual when it comes to music. It used to be that I could listen to a song and images of something or someone would come to mind... so when I write, I like to have music close by to inspire me or help prolong some scenes.
Playing the game again today... going through Misty Island and Sentinal Beach... to "Speak"...
it kinda inspired me... just a little bit... to revisit the idea that more or less came from the album.
First of all, the first time I heard it kinda felt like an electric shock, a little more harsh than I thought it was going to be. But I was expecting bubblegum pop. In a way, I guess it still kinda is. It's just that when a certain guy started coming to mind, the two were like a match made in heaven. Or so it seemed.
It started with a couple of songs from the album kinda hitting the right spots and areas.
"First" is about wanting to be a guy's first priority... and when it came to him, I kinda felt that way. Well, not kinda, I definitely felt that way. He had his own circle of friends, a lot of them were girls and he'd be super close with the bunch of them. I wanted to get in on that popularity, but I didn't know how. I got so uber jealous and wanted badly to be able to speak my mind.
"Speak" kinda came from that too, the title track... wanting desperately to not be afraid to say anything to him... as it often is with guys, I'm very scatterbrained, not quite knowing what to say to them a lot of the time.
"Nobody 'till you" sounded perfect for describing the feeling of what it was like to be around him. The few times we got to talking, he made me feel like I was the only one in the room. You know how it is... getting a little extra time with a special guy in your life, you feel special because he took the time out for you.
All the other songs kinda helped in one way or another.
The story more or less became a feat of wish fulfillment that I was never completely able to bring to a head.
Meaning that it started out really good, but it got so lost in the middle... muddled in fact.
A lot of people say how the first 50 pages are the hardest to write of a story/book/novel, whatever you want to call.
Maybe it's because in a bunch of my works, if not all of them, 50 pages is actually HALF of the entire story...
#$%& me, this story is just a little more than 50 pages...
first 50 pages, my ass...
and if I rounded up, my word count is just less than 24,000... this is no book, it's more like a novella that probably nobody would buy into, nevermind a publisher
No, length really isn't the biggest issue at hand.
Neither is the first 50 pages... the beginning for that matter.
I mean, yeah, the beginning is a little wooden. A lot of exposition or background information. I doubt anyone's going to buy into it. I mean, I started this when I was maybe 18. I was still very emotionally immature at the time. Like getting the attention of who I perceived to be the most popular guy in my concert choir class was the most important thing in the world to me.
The beginning could do with some reworking because, even in 3rd person, it's very melodramatic.
The way I used to write was in this method: wish fulfillment. What I couldn't make happen in real life, I made happen in my writing. Each time I look back at this work in particular, I just want to crawl under a rock or hide or whatever to just put it out of my mind. It's just so embarassing.
Granted, I'm still very insecure with myself, but supposing I knew nothing about me and I was reading this for the first time... who wants to read about an insecure protagonist?
Diana is probably one of the weakest, if not the weakest personality I'd ever written and she was derived specifically from my own psyche. Because of a little something called multiple personality disorder, she developed another personality who saw all of this going on and wanted to take her place so she could fulfill what her other half was too afraid to... afraid to take any chances, afraid that people wouldn't like her overstepping her boundaries...
Leaving all that aside... going into the first three songs I dervied inspiration from...
"Symptoms of you" is just the regular symptoms and side-effects of crushing on someone
"Disconnected" could go on to mean a number of things for the situation. I'm starting to believe that there are times that Diana blocks out or senses another presence inside her mind... there's a lot of contradictions to the lyrics as there are for her confused psyche.
"Nobody 'till you" brings a lot of pieces together, her motivation throughout the story.
Wanting to come "First" makes the other personality all the more powerful and closer to taking control... but unlike what you see in the soap operas, the other personality screwing over the host personality, "Rebel Diana" wants to fulfill her host's wishes using her stronger persona.
Establishing the first couple of characters and the stronger personality taking over for Diana is one thing... I can live with a lot of those details quite happily with very little objection. It's just the first couple pages that need work, all the insecure I hate reading about, but that was and still is part of who I am.
Here's the hard part:
With the help of her stronger personality, Diana assimilates her way into Brian's life. For whatever reason, he finds himself a little more drawn to her, wanting to spend more time with her because of her newfound confidence. That much I can buy into.
But how far can I push it without making it sound too unrealistic? Is his current girlfriend really necessary in the story to add conflict? Originally, I had it that she eventually got jealous and broke up with him. But supposing I have him break up with her instead... would that be a little too much?
I mean, wouldn't that sound a little too much like something out of "The Little Mermaid"... you know that whole part where, after Ariel was starting to get Eric to fall in love with her, Ursula cheats in turning herself into a girl and putting Eric under a spell so he's persuaded to marry her instead.
How far can I possibly push the envelope before it completely bursts in my hands?
One way or another, Diana and Brian become a couple. Because he's so popular and she's more or less a nobody, people want to know who she is ("To know your name"). Jealousy flairs up a bit and Diana starts to alienate Brian from his friends, him spending almost all of his time with her instead.
Because of that, rumors start to fly around her about how in the world she wormed her way into his life... however he and his girlfriend break up, that has validity in this instance.
Everything starts to crop up when the Spring Fling dance comes around.
Diana's stronger personality starts to see the error of her ways ("Anything but me"). She comes to sort of realize that not only is Brian not nearly as happy in this relationship as he could be... takes into account how she'd more or less cut him off from everyone else... Diana didn't want to interrupt the status quo and that was kind of her one request before letting the other personality take over for her...
"Over" is the break-up song. I don't put it in the story, but towards the beginning, she secretly wishes to have a slow dance with Brian. She gets her wish, but kinda realizes that this isn't the way she wanted it to be.
This is something else I'm also trying to figure out how to handle it... when do the two personalities reverse position to how they were? Who breaks up with Brian? Is it Rebel Diana or her default personality?
Because one way or another, it has to lead to something that would make the following confrontation make sense. This conflict happens completely within the recesses of her own mind. Rebel Diana more or less explains what she did to achieve what she wanted to achieve for her and everything got out of hand.
I see a few reprises of the songs from the album. And I thought it'd be perfect if there was a complete role reversal here. During "Speak" the first time around, Diana's rebellious side tried to talk her into believing that she needs to say what's on her mind or she won't get anywhere near what she wants to achieve in life.
Then after everything that happens happened, Diana turns the table, almost mocking her other personality in saying "you said it wasn't going to be a big deal, that it'd be good for me. I was better off never listening to you in the first place."
One way or another... I'm not quite sure how it all works out... the two personalities kinda agree and Diana more or less becomes a combination of the two of them... a little stronger than before, a little braver, but not nearly as domineering or selfish in that "winner take all" way.
Now, getting the acceptance of the student body back... that's probably the most difficult part. As if hammering out the details of her relationship with Brian when they were together was hard enough.
But taking all of that aside, how in the WORLD am I going to make the final scene I have in mind happen?
We fast-forward to prom. Diana goes alone and ends up having a good time.
But then the dance floor parts, with Brian waiting for her to dance with him... giving her the slow dance she'd always wanted.
He gives her what sounds to me like BS... saying that he understood why she did what she did, forgives her and allows her the one thing she really wanted, just for once for someone to treat her like she was special, like she was the only one in the room.
Certainly, this is something I'd pose as a question on a series of message boards. But there are simply too many questions to ask and a lot of people probably wouldn't have the patience to weed through all of my explaining of my story.
There are so many flaws in this story that it makes me want to quit, erase it completely, but it would hurt just as much to do that as it does leaving it in limbo like this.
In all seriousness, who but me is going to buy into this story? And each time I look back at it, I wonder if I even buy into it anymore. The person having two personalities is one thing... but its another thing having this whole story painting her as the victim. How long can I hold onto that until I turn the reader against her? When she starts alienating him from everyone else, who would feel sorry for her then? She's no better than the people she'd fought against, the herd of sheep following him around.
And after all that, how can he forgive her? I see all of this coming together, but I don't know if it holds any water... if it makes any sense. Yet the entire time, I see this playing out like a movie... one song at a time, ending with one song playing to a slow dance at prom while the credits are scrolling on the other side of the screen.
They say that 1st person POV is very flawed and can only be used with certain protagonists. At the same time, with my heroine being as weak of character as she is, it feels like the story still suffers even when she's not the one telling it.
So much to do, not enough time and interest to do it in. But I hope that someday it'll work out where I can actually stand by what I've written.
The only positive I can derive for the moment: if it ever gets published, by the time that comes, everyone the story is about probably won't remember anything about the 2004-5 school year and wouldn't be able to figure out that I'd written my own reality.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Chapter 4: what I have so far and the fear of conquering the rest
The rest of my life-- my non-writing life-- has been on hold for a very long time.
I worry that I'm never going to get over my own social anxiety, that I'm now owning it more than doing anything constructive to fix it.
Dialogue seems to be my biggest issue right now with this chapter. And strangely enough, I am STILL stuck in the first part of it: meeting the first three new characters for this chapter.
And even though I have said that if I got the chance to Hollywood-ize my story, Gary Oldman would be who could fill the shows of this guardian for my protagonist. It's just when I... that's a good word... I was going to say that "burly" seems to come to mind for this character. I was about to say that I think of him as being this middle-aged, tall, thick-set man with a charcoal beard & mustache... but maybe I'm thinking more of salt and pepper instead of charcoal. Charcoal is black right? With spectales that make him look very scholarly, but I could easily continue with that theme in what I said about Jonas explaining the several shelves of books in the den.
I don't know why I've stuck with his specific age for as long as I have. Does a man being 55 years old really make a difference in his descripton? I suppose burly is a good description for him. Peter can't be any more than 200-240 pounds, but I keep imagining him being thickset.
Dialogue is extremely tough for me and the part of the reason I haven't been able to leave this first part... okay, maybe 90% of the reason why I haven't been able to fix it. Nothing seems to work out perfectly. I would rather my readers make up their mind rather than me telling them what to think of people. Once or twice, there has been dialogue from Peter and Jonas that alludes to far too much.
I worry that I'm never going to get over my own social anxiety, that I'm now owning it more than doing anything constructive to fix it.
Dialogue seems to be my biggest issue right now with this chapter. And strangely enough, I am STILL stuck in the first part of it: meeting the first three new characters for this chapter.
And even though I have said that if I got the chance to Hollywood-ize my story, Gary Oldman would be who could fill the shows of this guardian for my protagonist. It's just when I... that's a good word... I was going to say that "burly" seems to come to mind for this character. I was about to say that I think of him as being this middle-aged, tall, thick-set man with a charcoal beard & mustache... but maybe I'm thinking more of salt and pepper instead of charcoal. Charcoal is black right? With spectales that make him look very scholarly, but I could easily continue with that theme in what I said about Jonas explaining the several shelves of books in the den.
I don't know why I've stuck with his specific age for as long as I have. Does a man being 55 years old really make a difference in his descripton? I suppose burly is a good description for him. Peter can't be any more than 200-240 pounds, but I keep imagining him being thickset.
Dialogue is extremely tough for me and the part of the reason I haven't been able to leave this first part... okay, maybe 90% of the reason why I haven't been able to fix it. Nothing seems to work out perfectly. I would rather my readers make up their mind rather than me telling them what to think of people. Once or twice, there has been dialogue from Peter and Jonas that alludes to far too much.
Monday, January 30, 2012
My Romantasy Portfolio [part 2]
I hope to get through this post and finish it before I completely blow this off...
during part one, I took the reader through the first number of original stories I wrote... most of which fit the bill of this blog... a couple did not...
although if I really get down to it and make the idea as good as I saw it in my head... heck, I don't think I had any pure intentions about that. I wanted to rewrite my life with that story and when it proved to be too close to the real thing, it got to be too much... but taking all that into account, if I did this story right... it could bridge romance/science fiction... but the phenomenon of multiple-personality disorder isn't entirely science fiction... its just that a few soaps including "One life to live" used characters who had two personalities in one body... later on, Jess & Tess gained another personality called Bess (which I still believe to be one of the stupidest names I'd ever heard in my life... who names their kid 'Bess' anyway? and don't give me that whole 'it's short for Elizabeth' BS... how in the name of god is that possible?)
Soaps tend to take a lot of things to extremes and I did that with Jamie... to the point I really do regret making things so horrible, building up all that drama. I actually read a book review in the paper about a kid after he attempts to commit suicide, how his life changed and all that... it'd be interesting to read that just to see how they approached that oh-so-sensitive subject
It's called "Trying not to breathe" by Jennifer R. Hubbard
It's a story I certainly don't want to fade to obscurity where I can't find a good way to write it without it being too depressing and without it making me sound suicidal...
the closest I came to that, ever... was me thinking during the darkest and loneliest of times... between the time I was 15 to now... the past 10 years... I thought that "I really wish I wasn't here anymore, I can't take much more"... maybe somewhere between 4-6 times... but never so much where I elaborately planned anything out... just the mere desire to not be facing what I was facing at the time. But when I was in high school, the two times I was really in a dark places... 9th and 11th grade, it was my grades... I was so afraid to disappoint anyone that... well, at the time, the alternative was an easier idea... but it never came to that
I'd go into more detail about it, but to save myself trouble, I'll end the conversation there and pick up where I left off
I started writing my short story "The Ghost of Leo" August of 2005 and probably only got to the first 10 pages before I had to go away to college...
between this and that and other things, I guess the fact I kept missing out on watching Danny Phantom really took its toll on my pool of inspiration... I started writing the story cuz I loved that show... was kinda crazy about him too... trust me, not the first of my cartoon crushes :-P
for a number of months, my personal life got in the way... or rather, you know how they say "life happened"... it was kinda like that... trying to find my way around campus, getting around, making friends... I only had a couple... one lived in the bottom floor of our dormitory, he was a big nerd like me and we went to a couple anime club meetings together... but after the first couple, he either found interest in other places or just stopped coming... I guess in part cuz they didn't do the kind of anime he wanted to watch...
and of course my other good friend was my roommate... lol... omg, I'm thinking about the way I felt about her, it's almost something out of "Mean Girls" when Regina was explaining to Cady the time she and Janis Ian were best friends.
a little while later, "I started seeing my first boyfriend... who was totally gorgeous... and Janis was weirdly jealous of him... I'd be out with him and she'd be like 'why didn't you call me back' and I said 'why are you so obsessed with me'..." then she said that she couldn't invite her to her pool party because she thought she was a lesbian... after being outcasted by that rumor, Janis came back the following year with that goth look going for her
there were times where I literally felt obsessed... I would make excuses to spend time with her just because it was a helluva lot easier since we roomed together than for me to go out and find my own friends... then a couple of her friends kinda became my friends, which was kinda nice. Both happened to be gay men who were real theater types... espeically one of them... oh now I remember, and through him, I met another group of people... three other people... Nikki was one of their girlfriends and omg, she was so cool... had this 'take no prisoners' attitude about her
but yeah, with my roommate, I just loved spending time with her... then it got to the point sometimes where I felt I wanted her all to myself... but its not like it was a new phenomenon... I feel oddly possessive of my girl friends. All of them seem to be extremely popular and I'd fall between the cracks because I wasn't the most outgoing in the bunch... I lost one or two of my girl friends because they had so many other friends... what was I to them? the sort of thing
also it got to the point where I'd always be in the room and girls would stop by looking for her and I'd say that she wasn't around... she was busy between class and ballet and stuff like that... but seriously, almost never would anyone come to the room to see me... I put more of the blame on them than her... I shouldn't have been too surprised how popular she was because she just had this loving, gregarious personality
I could go on that forever... she's one of a couple people I'd love to write about in length right out of my real life... in fact I started to... it was meant to be a sequel to that multiple personality storyline, where I find out that the guy I spent the whole story wanting to be with was gay... a total buzz-kill too... I guess at the time, he was still figuring things out (well, in the story, not in real life, we never became more than casual acquaintances)...
I've so gone off the handle with this... I took it the point where I wrote about this encounter I had with this guy who asked me out through Facebook and he wanted to jump right into making out and all that when we hadn't spent any physical time together before... it left me so sick and not liking anything in romance for a couple months... I guess that helped open the door to fanfiction too cuz I couldn't do much of anything else... after that, I started to wonder if whether I have grown to distrust men because of that one incident...
the story ended where I come out to her and say that I might have feelings for her beyond friendship... didn't find any way to reinvigorate that story after that... what else could I say?
Anyway, take all that aside and so sorry it took me this long to get here:
White Tiger Demon, Princess Chihiro
genre: YA, romantasy
fantast"ical" qualities: another world, beasts with magical powers and anthropomorophic attributes
this started out, originally, as an InuYasha fanfiction... I started writing it in March of 2006... right after I discovered YouTube and was really getting into the show (I was it a few times on Adult Swim but at the time I couldn't physically stay up super late... my night owl habits didn't start until a couple months later, lol... Facebook and a Prince messageboard took it to extremes)...
and after I fell head over heels for my character, I wanted to make changes so I could one day see her story published... it is still in midst of heavy duty edits :-P I started by starting the prologue in greater detail....
I'm someone who loves prologues, apparently :-P
here's kinda how the story goes...
there's this big issue in InuYasha that helps booster the plot every now and then: the fact that he's half-demon who's father was this great powerful demon, he had a human mother and his older brother Sesshomaru (who is the handsome beast I've been using as my blogging profile picture for years) is pure demon and wants to become as powerful as his father...
I took that and ran with it... would it be like if Inuyasha came across another half-demon and developed a friendship with them? there were a couple of other half-demons in the series, but they were only there for a storyline and more or less disappeared for the rest of the series...
Chihiro ( three guesses where I got the name from, lol) had a human father, born into a clan of tigers and her mother was the leader... war breaks out and her family is destroyed... she gets away, not wanting to live anymore because she has nothing now, she comes across Lucas (my Inuyasha-esque character) who was near fatally injured... apparently she has this power of healing because she knows how to heal his wounds. Because of that, she gets the courage to keep going in life and he's able to live to fight another day.
they meet again several years later. She's almost ready to take over for her new clan and he helps teach her how to fight. throughout the story, she starts to fall in love with him and (SPOILER ALERT) it gets to the point where she would give her life for him... and makes that noble sarcifice... just so encumbered by love that nothing else seems to matter
I usually go out of my way (well, not really, its a lot easier than that) to not kill off my characters... but I didn't see it go any other way... it was inevitable, based on who she is, how selfless she is, that she would give her life to save his in a heartbeat...
let's see if I have this right... when I was in high school, I was uber prolific with my writing where I'd have multiple stories going at once... I started slowly, but I think I finished them a lot quicker than I do now (for a number of reasons... strangely I wrote in greater length back then than I do now)...
Jamie's story- started in Oct 2002 and finished... umm.... I dunno, 2006 could be when I finished this rehash rather than the first draft... I'm sure it was in a shorter amount of time just before I got the next idea
Jonas's story- March 2003 through... I'm sure the first draft I finished in maybe June or July
Orion's story- October 2003 through June 2005 (sounds about right)
a bunch of stories in between, I think I stared writing sequels and all this other stuff... most of them are gone because I didn't like how they turned out and/or I couldn't do much else with them...
I think my sequel to Jonas's story and Orion were going on around the same time... or I was in edits for Orion while starting the sequel
I've been meaning to write a sequel to Orion that includes my knowledge on sea life, my idea of Atlantis and more good versus evil... my favorite clichéd conflict for sure
but in most cases I'd be writing one story at a time, but I'd usually start another halfway through when I got bored or just had writer's block... or just an emergency brainstorm session I had to take care of
8-)
usually, though, and its more the case in college than anywhere else... I average a story a year... either takes me that long to finish or otherwise I spend an entire semester working on it.
my 2nd semester (spring 2006) belonged to my white tiger... between the fanfiction and the conversion to otherwise... that took me beyond that semester... and I'd been tweaking it and going very experimental with another type of storyline specifically revolving around her. I can't really explain it any better than saying it's very pro-life heavy, even though under most circumstances, I lean more towards pro-choice... it depends on the person and the situation... rape/incest/danger of life, absolutely... but the exact opposite... in the words of one of my friends "it's ridiculous when some girls talk about going in for their 10th abortion"... that is utterly ridiculous and when I start to think that the pro-life people are right in pushing their beliefs
this has me primed to go on another rant on those branch of things... I do that elsewhere and I'd already been sidetracking enough as it is
I usually start writing heavily about my latest interest... that interest became Prince as of February 2007... so this year, it'll be 5 years...
I not only started visiting messageboards to discuss his music and build my collection, but I started my first blog to discuss his music... and before I even saw Purple Rain in its entirity, I started writing based on whatever perceptions I had of Prince at that time... being an up & coming musician who loved his music to the point it was all he lived for... and in case you're wondering, there's nothing relating to suicide in this story, thankfully...
It more or less is a story about an artist and who becomes his greatest admirer/supporter/muse...
this might be actually be the first thing I wrote in the style of The Great Gatsby and Sherlock Holmes... you see how the main protagonist and the admirer get along from both sides of the equation in my case, but the other party is heralded as being an eccentric genius, paid all these compliments and written as to hoist the protagonist to almost god-like status... well, that's the case in Sherlock Holmes more than Gatsby, lol...
I had only read Sherlock Holmes recently so that wasn't at all my intention 4 years ago
the only downside to "Joshua Isaiah Prince" was that the ending was kinda... anti-climatic... just ended... I wrote an epilogue and everything, so it isn't quite like the end of The Sopranos... but anyone else aside from me might not buy into it... that I just ran out of ideas and let it go :shrug:
maybe an epilogue wasn't even necessary, there was no prologue
I went down that rabbit hole and listened to Prince almost exclusively for a little more than a year.
focused my writing mostly on him and my blog... a lot of which was pretty insightful and yet reaching at points... I was trying to explain his eccentricity in layman's terms... though I'm not sure if anyone got more out of my blog than I did... I find that I understand things a lot easier after writing them down...
I wrote that story in a span of 2-3 months, starting it in Feb/March and ending it May... roughly...
perhaps much all of 2007 was dominated by this phenomenon... much the way 2011 was dominated about my favorite actor
my last novel-length, romantasy story, I wrote between January and December of 2008
"Hope in Alaska"
genre: YA, romance with a tough of fantasy
I don't know how long "White Tiger" is because of all the rewrites I'd put it through, but aside from that, I think this story is my longest... okay, not really... "Joshua Isaiah Prince" caps off at 199 pages with the epilogue
I've had an affinity for wolves for more years than I can count. What inspired me to finally write something about that... well, that's also not entirely true, I started writing a story about wolves, but it ended up getting deleted off my computer cuz I didn't know where to take it, continue it... etc, etc. the story wasn't entirely about that either.
when watching "Ratatouille" on DVD, there was a trailer that looked like it was going to be another sled dog movie... instead it was "Snow Buddies" about golden retreiver puppies pulling a sled... I called for blasphemy... haven't gotten over it since...
I think at the time I had just finished reading "Twilight" and just fell in love with the series... so the beginning kinda takes on the same tone, Bella going to Forks, which she loathes but does so to spend time with her dad and give her mom more alone time with her new husband...
I think since the Parent Trap remake, I've loved the name Hallie. so I used that for my heroine... I find its harder to write a female lead because they're a little too much like me or take on too many of my negative attributes...
she's kinda like my own incarnation of Holden Caulfield, but without the foul language or fragmented grammar... but definitely a cynic...
the story kinda begins in tragedy... she and her dad were in a car accident, she survived and he didn't. She now has to move up to Alaska to live with her free-spirited mom who was such a free spirit that she abandoned her family... she lives in a different place every 2-3 years, but Alaska will be her home at least until Hallie graduates high school.
In the beginning, Hallie is still grieving for her dad, has harbored a grudge against her mom for years. In the outdoor shopping village of Nanook (it's an Alaskan name, but I doubt that's the name of an actual place), Hallie meets Joey Stevens, the son of one of her mom's closest friends... it's kinda the same thing that happens in Forks... it's such a small area that everyone knows everyone and hears about Hallie coming.
She hangs out with him and his friends. I guess at the time and I make allusion to this, I was still hyper aware of Edward Cullen, just being taken in by him as much as Bella (its hard not to when she's narrating her story)... and some of those things made their way into this character. Joey is of Inuit descent, chestnut brown hair and eyes to match and he's more old-fashioned than his friends. He opposes commercialism and wants to keep the art/sport of dog sledding alive because those were the old ways.
Anyway, the wolf aspect. Well, first of all, Hallie has a boyfriend named Andrew that she leaves behind with all of her friends, but they want to make the long distance relationship work. She hasn't told her mom about him at all so when she finds out about him, Hallie blows a fit and gives her a piece of her mind... actually letting her know how she feels about her, that her leaving left her dad with a broken heart that he'd harbored ever since she left....
fueled by anger, therefore clouding her judgement, she runs off... their house is maybe 20 minutes away from Nanook village, but it's almost in the middle of nowhere. She gets lost in the wilderness, wakes up the next morning and discovers that a wolf had saved her.
She sees this wolf a number of other times and they have this interesting relationship. He's a cautious individual, but neither seem to be afraid of one another. More or less, I got this idea that the spirit of her dad is living on in the wolf, who is looking out for her under mysterious pretenses.
After that, she and Joey start to get close and she more or less forgets about Andrew up until the most crucial point of the story. A lot of the plot builds up to the fictional Alpine Ridge dog sled race, both of them enter because they want to use the prize money to save an outdoorsman shop from being bought out and replaced by a snowboarding boutique (an idea being supported by Joey's cousin Nathaniel, who's the exact opposite of him in almost every way and is at least 10-15 years older than him)
I started writing the first chapter in a computer lab one day, but only had a short amount of time before my next class. I started carrying a notepad with me so when inspiration struck, I would be writing in between classes and during class break... eventually, the institution stuck... I just couldn't get in a rhythm on the computer like I had been able to for years.
I actually had this notepad with me at the SuperBowl party they had for the Giants/Patriots game... I wrote maybe some of the 5th chapter at the time, just before that fight breaks out and Hallie runs off... even more funny, I had this with me everywhere so my friends saw me writing it. One of them was talking about reading it when it got published so he could say he knew me when, lol
if only... this story is still being looked through. I started doing track changes a couple years ago to fix some of the odd language I put in my narration, stuff that more or less didn't make sense... haven't gone through a lot of it because of everything else that started going on
but with "The Grey" being out in theaters and me being totally opposed to, if not offended by, wolves being used as villians... I might start working through this again, if not reading it
during part one, I took the reader through the first number of original stories I wrote... most of which fit the bill of this blog... a couple did not...
although if I really get down to it and make the idea as good as I saw it in my head... heck, I don't think I had any pure intentions about that. I wanted to rewrite my life with that story and when it proved to be too close to the real thing, it got to be too much... but taking all that into account, if I did this story right... it could bridge romance/science fiction... but the phenomenon of multiple-personality disorder isn't entirely science fiction... its just that a few soaps including "One life to live" used characters who had two personalities in one body... later on, Jess & Tess gained another personality called Bess (which I still believe to be one of the stupidest names I'd ever heard in my life... who names their kid 'Bess' anyway? and don't give me that whole 'it's short for Elizabeth' BS... how in the name of god is that possible?)
Soaps tend to take a lot of things to extremes and I did that with Jamie... to the point I really do regret making things so horrible, building up all that drama. I actually read a book review in the paper about a kid after he attempts to commit suicide, how his life changed and all that... it'd be interesting to read that just to see how they approached that oh-so-sensitive subject
It's called "Trying not to breathe" by Jennifer R. Hubbard
It's a story I certainly don't want to fade to obscurity where I can't find a good way to write it without it being too depressing and without it making me sound suicidal...
the closest I came to that, ever... was me thinking during the darkest and loneliest of times... between the time I was 15 to now... the past 10 years... I thought that "I really wish I wasn't here anymore, I can't take much more"... maybe somewhere between 4-6 times... but never so much where I elaborately planned anything out... just the mere desire to not be facing what I was facing at the time. But when I was in high school, the two times I was really in a dark places... 9th and 11th grade, it was my grades... I was so afraid to disappoint anyone that... well, at the time, the alternative was an easier idea... but it never came to that
I'd go into more detail about it, but to save myself trouble, I'll end the conversation there and pick up where I left off
I started writing my short story "The Ghost of Leo" August of 2005 and probably only got to the first 10 pages before I had to go away to college...
between this and that and other things, I guess the fact I kept missing out on watching Danny Phantom really took its toll on my pool of inspiration... I started writing the story cuz I loved that show... was kinda crazy about him too... trust me, not the first of my cartoon crushes :-P
for a number of months, my personal life got in the way... or rather, you know how they say "life happened"... it was kinda like that... trying to find my way around campus, getting around, making friends... I only had a couple... one lived in the bottom floor of our dormitory, he was a big nerd like me and we went to a couple anime club meetings together... but after the first couple, he either found interest in other places or just stopped coming... I guess in part cuz they didn't do the kind of anime he wanted to watch...
and of course my other good friend was my roommate... lol... omg, I'm thinking about the way I felt about her, it's almost something out of "Mean Girls" when Regina was explaining to Cady the time she and Janis Ian were best friends.
a little while later, "I started seeing my first boyfriend... who was totally gorgeous... and Janis was weirdly jealous of him... I'd be out with him and she'd be like 'why didn't you call me back' and I said 'why are you so obsessed with me'..." then she said that she couldn't invite her to her pool party because she thought she was a lesbian... after being outcasted by that rumor, Janis came back the following year with that goth look going for her
there were times where I literally felt obsessed... I would make excuses to spend time with her just because it was a helluva lot easier since we roomed together than for me to go out and find my own friends... then a couple of her friends kinda became my friends, which was kinda nice. Both happened to be gay men who were real theater types... espeically one of them... oh now I remember, and through him, I met another group of people... three other people... Nikki was one of their girlfriends and omg, she was so cool... had this 'take no prisoners' attitude about her
but yeah, with my roommate, I just loved spending time with her... then it got to the point sometimes where I felt I wanted her all to myself... but its not like it was a new phenomenon... I feel oddly possessive of my girl friends. All of them seem to be extremely popular and I'd fall between the cracks because I wasn't the most outgoing in the bunch... I lost one or two of my girl friends because they had so many other friends... what was I to them? the sort of thing
also it got to the point where I'd always be in the room and girls would stop by looking for her and I'd say that she wasn't around... she was busy between class and ballet and stuff like that... but seriously, almost never would anyone come to the room to see me... I put more of the blame on them than her... I shouldn't have been too surprised how popular she was because she just had this loving, gregarious personality
I could go on that forever... she's one of a couple people I'd love to write about in length right out of my real life... in fact I started to... it was meant to be a sequel to that multiple personality storyline, where I find out that the guy I spent the whole story wanting to be with was gay... a total buzz-kill too... I guess at the time, he was still figuring things out (well, in the story, not in real life, we never became more than casual acquaintances)...
I've so gone off the handle with this... I took it the point where I wrote about this encounter I had with this guy who asked me out through Facebook and he wanted to jump right into making out and all that when we hadn't spent any physical time together before... it left me so sick and not liking anything in romance for a couple months... I guess that helped open the door to fanfiction too cuz I couldn't do much of anything else... after that, I started to wonder if whether I have grown to distrust men because of that one incident...
the story ended where I come out to her and say that I might have feelings for her beyond friendship... didn't find any way to reinvigorate that story after that... what else could I say?
Anyway, take all that aside and so sorry it took me this long to get here:
White Tiger Demon, Princess Chihiro
genre: YA, romantasy
fantast"ical" qualities: another world, beasts with magical powers and anthropomorophic attributes
this started out, originally, as an InuYasha fanfiction... I started writing it in March of 2006... right after I discovered YouTube and was really getting into the show (I was it a few times on Adult Swim but at the time I couldn't physically stay up super late... my night owl habits didn't start until a couple months later, lol... Facebook and a Prince messageboard took it to extremes)...
and after I fell head over heels for my character, I wanted to make changes so I could one day see her story published... it is still in midst of heavy duty edits :-P I started by starting the prologue in greater detail....
I'm someone who loves prologues, apparently :-P
here's kinda how the story goes...
there's this big issue in InuYasha that helps booster the plot every now and then: the fact that he's half-demon who's father was this great powerful demon, he had a human mother and his older brother Sesshomaru (who is the handsome beast I've been using as my blogging profile picture for years) is pure demon and wants to become as powerful as his father...
I took that and ran with it... would it be like if Inuyasha came across another half-demon and developed a friendship with them? there were a couple of other half-demons in the series, but they were only there for a storyline and more or less disappeared for the rest of the series...
Chihiro ( three guesses where I got the name from, lol) had a human father, born into a clan of tigers and her mother was the leader... war breaks out and her family is destroyed... she gets away, not wanting to live anymore because she has nothing now, she comes across Lucas (my Inuyasha-esque character) who was near fatally injured... apparently she has this power of healing because she knows how to heal his wounds. Because of that, she gets the courage to keep going in life and he's able to live to fight another day.
they meet again several years later. She's almost ready to take over for her new clan and he helps teach her how to fight. throughout the story, she starts to fall in love with him and (SPOILER ALERT) it gets to the point where she would give her life for him... and makes that noble sarcifice... just so encumbered by love that nothing else seems to matter
I usually go out of my way (well, not really, its a lot easier than that) to not kill off my characters... but I didn't see it go any other way... it was inevitable, based on who she is, how selfless she is, that she would give her life to save his in a heartbeat...
let's see if I have this right... when I was in high school, I was uber prolific with my writing where I'd have multiple stories going at once... I started slowly, but I think I finished them a lot quicker than I do now (for a number of reasons... strangely I wrote in greater length back then than I do now)...
Jamie's story- started in Oct 2002 and finished... umm.... I dunno, 2006 could be when I finished this rehash rather than the first draft... I'm sure it was in a shorter amount of time just before I got the next idea
Jonas's story- March 2003 through... I'm sure the first draft I finished in maybe June or July
Orion's story- October 2003 through June 2005 (sounds about right)
a bunch of stories in between, I think I stared writing sequels and all this other stuff... most of them are gone because I didn't like how they turned out and/or I couldn't do much else with them...
I think my sequel to Jonas's story and Orion were going on around the same time... or I was in edits for Orion while starting the sequel
I've been meaning to write a sequel to Orion that includes my knowledge on sea life, my idea of Atlantis and more good versus evil... my favorite clichéd conflict for sure
but in most cases I'd be writing one story at a time, but I'd usually start another halfway through when I got bored or just had writer's block... or just an emergency brainstorm session I had to take care of
8-)
usually, though, and its more the case in college than anywhere else... I average a story a year... either takes me that long to finish or otherwise I spend an entire semester working on it.
my 2nd semester (spring 2006) belonged to my white tiger... between the fanfiction and the conversion to otherwise... that took me beyond that semester... and I'd been tweaking it and going very experimental with another type of storyline specifically revolving around her. I can't really explain it any better than saying it's very pro-life heavy, even though under most circumstances, I lean more towards pro-choice... it depends on the person and the situation... rape/incest/danger of life, absolutely... but the exact opposite... in the words of one of my friends "it's ridiculous when some girls talk about going in for their 10th abortion"... that is utterly ridiculous and when I start to think that the pro-life people are right in pushing their beliefs
this has me primed to go on another rant on those branch of things... I do that elsewhere and I'd already been sidetracking enough as it is
I usually start writing heavily about my latest interest... that interest became Prince as of February 2007... so this year, it'll be 5 years...
I not only started visiting messageboards to discuss his music and build my collection, but I started my first blog to discuss his music... and before I even saw Purple Rain in its entirity, I started writing based on whatever perceptions I had of Prince at that time... being an up & coming musician who loved his music to the point it was all he lived for... and in case you're wondering, there's nothing relating to suicide in this story, thankfully...
It more or less is a story about an artist and who becomes his greatest admirer/supporter/muse...
this might be actually be the first thing I wrote in the style of The Great Gatsby and Sherlock Holmes... you see how the main protagonist and the admirer get along from both sides of the equation in my case, but the other party is heralded as being an eccentric genius, paid all these compliments and written as to hoist the protagonist to almost god-like status... well, that's the case in Sherlock Holmes more than Gatsby, lol...
I had only read Sherlock Holmes recently so that wasn't at all my intention 4 years ago
the only downside to "Joshua Isaiah Prince" was that the ending was kinda... anti-climatic... just ended... I wrote an epilogue and everything, so it isn't quite like the end of The Sopranos... but anyone else aside from me might not buy into it... that I just ran out of ideas and let it go :shrug:
maybe an epilogue wasn't even necessary, there was no prologue
I went down that rabbit hole and listened to Prince almost exclusively for a little more than a year.
focused my writing mostly on him and my blog... a lot of which was pretty insightful and yet reaching at points... I was trying to explain his eccentricity in layman's terms... though I'm not sure if anyone got more out of my blog than I did... I find that I understand things a lot easier after writing them down...
I wrote that story in a span of 2-3 months, starting it in Feb/March and ending it May... roughly...
perhaps much all of 2007 was dominated by this phenomenon... much the way 2011 was dominated about my favorite actor
my last novel-length, romantasy story, I wrote between January and December of 2008
"Hope in Alaska"
genre: YA, romance with a tough of fantasy
I don't know how long "White Tiger" is because of all the rewrites I'd put it through, but aside from that, I think this story is my longest... okay, not really... "Joshua Isaiah Prince" caps off at 199 pages with the epilogue
I've had an affinity for wolves for more years than I can count. What inspired me to finally write something about that... well, that's also not entirely true, I started writing a story about wolves, but it ended up getting deleted off my computer cuz I didn't know where to take it, continue it... etc, etc. the story wasn't entirely about that either.
when watching "Ratatouille" on DVD, there was a trailer that looked like it was going to be another sled dog movie... instead it was "Snow Buddies" about golden retreiver puppies pulling a sled... I called for blasphemy... haven't gotten over it since...
I think at the time I had just finished reading "Twilight" and just fell in love with the series... so the beginning kinda takes on the same tone, Bella going to Forks, which she loathes but does so to spend time with her dad and give her mom more alone time with her new husband...
I think since the Parent Trap remake, I've loved the name Hallie. so I used that for my heroine... I find its harder to write a female lead because they're a little too much like me or take on too many of my negative attributes...
she's kinda like my own incarnation of Holden Caulfield, but without the foul language or fragmented grammar... but definitely a cynic...
the story kinda begins in tragedy... she and her dad were in a car accident, she survived and he didn't. She now has to move up to Alaska to live with her free-spirited mom who was such a free spirit that she abandoned her family... she lives in a different place every 2-3 years, but Alaska will be her home at least until Hallie graduates high school.
In the beginning, Hallie is still grieving for her dad, has harbored a grudge against her mom for years. In the outdoor shopping village of Nanook (it's an Alaskan name, but I doubt that's the name of an actual place), Hallie meets Joey Stevens, the son of one of her mom's closest friends... it's kinda the same thing that happens in Forks... it's such a small area that everyone knows everyone and hears about Hallie coming.
She hangs out with him and his friends. I guess at the time and I make allusion to this, I was still hyper aware of Edward Cullen, just being taken in by him as much as Bella (its hard not to when she's narrating her story)... and some of those things made their way into this character. Joey is of Inuit descent, chestnut brown hair and eyes to match and he's more old-fashioned than his friends. He opposes commercialism and wants to keep the art/sport of dog sledding alive because those were the old ways.
Anyway, the wolf aspect. Well, first of all, Hallie has a boyfriend named Andrew that she leaves behind with all of her friends, but they want to make the long distance relationship work. She hasn't told her mom about him at all so when she finds out about him, Hallie blows a fit and gives her a piece of her mind... actually letting her know how she feels about her, that her leaving left her dad with a broken heart that he'd harbored ever since she left....
fueled by anger, therefore clouding her judgement, she runs off... their house is maybe 20 minutes away from Nanook village, but it's almost in the middle of nowhere. She gets lost in the wilderness, wakes up the next morning and discovers that a wolf had saved her.
She sees this wolf a number of other times and they have this interesting relationship. He's a cautious individual, but neither seem to be afraid of one another. More or less, I got this idea that the spirit of her dad is living on in the wolf, who is looking out for her under mysterious pretenses.
After that, she and Joey start to get close and she more or less forgets about Andrew up until the most crucial point of the story. A lot of the plot builds up to the fictional Alpine Ridge dog sled race, both of them enter because they want to use the prize money to save an outdoorsman shop from being bought out and replaced by a snowboarding boutique (an idea being supported by Joey's cousin Nathaniel, who's the exact opposite of him in almost every way and is at least 10-15 years older than him)
I started writing the first chapter in a computer lab one day, but only had a short amount of time before my next class. I started carrying a notepad with me so when inspiration struck, I would be writing in between classes and during class break... eventually, the institution stuck... I just couldn't get in a rhythm on the computer like I had been able to for years.
I actually had this notepad with me at the SuperBowl party they had for the Giants/Patriots game... I wrote maybe some of the 5th chapter at the time, just before that fight breaks out and Hallie runs off... even more funny, I had this with me everywhere so my friends saw me writing it. One of them was talking about reading it when it got published so he could say he knew me when, lol
if only... this story is still being looked through. I started doing track changes a couple years ago to fix some of the odd language I put in my narration, stuff that more or less didn't make sense... haven't gone through a lot of it because of everything else that started going on
but with "The Grey" being out in theaters and me being totally opposed to, if not offended by, wolves being used as villians... I might start working through this again, if not reading it
Friday, January 27, 2012
renewing biographies and a new casting choice
The most interesting things seem to come out in my re-edits lately, all of which are extremely welcome. The only thing not welcome: a friend of mine forwarding me a link to an Amazon "breakthrough writer" contest... when I don't even have a completed novel I want to enter.
Granted, I'd love to enter Jonas's story into the running, but after the things I'd come across in the editing bay, especially over the past week where I've been rehashing/polishing storylines for the minor characters... I'd like my audience to see my final edits rather than ripping them off with my previous version just because I'm in a hurry to get the story published.
As far as I can tell, I'm nowhere near ready for it to be published. The one thing I seem to have found fault in, the reason why a lot of people don't want to answer my queries: when they ask for sample chapters, I'd been including my prologue, which I have found out to be a turn-off. You send the first couple chapters with no previous stuff and if including the prologue at all, call it chapter one...
Hell no am I selling myself short in calling my prologue "chapter 1"... not to mention I'd have to include a little blip about it being in present day or the prologue being eons ago... going from prologue to chapter 1 in general has got to be a little jarring... especially when you're in a completely different environment in chapter 1... must be a true WTF moment to people not familiar with my material
Anyway, the whole matter of that contest had me almost having panic and anxiety attacks because that would mean I'd have to be working non-stop up to Feb 5th... and there's no way I'd be able to do that. And this is something I've natured and allowed to grow (the most growth has happened in the past 6 months, moreso than the past 8 years I'd been writing it and tweaking it for publication) for a long time... I'm not going to do a rush job just for even a CHANCE at winning
Romantasy probably wouldn't get that many votes to begin with.
In the strangest of ways and also in the most commonplace of ways (best of both worlds, insanity mixed with renewed common sense), in watching several of his interviews, most of which several times each, Robert Downey Jr. has become somewhat of an inspiration, an influence and otherwise anything he has to say when it comes to movies, just because he can choose his words with so much ease and spontaneity that it's a talent I'd kill to have. I make the most sense when I'm writing things down.
Just to cut matters short (I've spent the past 51 weeks on my other blog with all the fanatical comments and repetition, so no need to bring that crazyness here), there are two things I've brought into the project this time around.
1) the way he can pitch a movie & the character he plays so well, I would like to know my characters that well, really getting down to the bare bones, knowing them as well as, if not better than, the back of my hand.
Thus: the renovation of a lot of my minor characters, really figuring out what makes them tick and giving them more importance than just for me to have a person to bring into a scene as part of the scenery
2) He hates motives, so as far as the hypothetical casting goes, I'd like to keep that in mind. Like I've considering casting some of the actors (including him) in certain roles just because of the off-chance I'd get to meet them during the auditioning process... I tend to get extremely fanatical about celebrities so I kinda don't go about things the right way.
Yesterday I was considering the idea, after watching one of his earlier films (i.e. pre-"Chaplin" and post-"Less than Zero"), to cast him as Peter Bronson, Jonas's guardian... then I remembered what he said about motives. I'm more or less doing this with that realm of impossibility in mind, having a hidden agenda about things.
I was merely looking for an excuse to cast him in this movie with that motive in mind... but if I'm being completely truthful and I totally am, he's a big name that could give the whole thing a boost cuz he's hot right now. Even if he'd consider it himself, I doubt he could fill the shoes of this important character and use him to his full potential.
I read a short article a little while ago, one of the many writer's digest newsletter articles I click on to read more. Writing about teenagers and such. It said to not make the parents/guardians an opposing force... in other words, don't baby your characters. Almost like what Dory said to Marlin in "Finding Nemo"... "that's a silly thing to promise. Well, you can't have nothing happen to him, or else nothing will happen to him" (I threw that quote in for good measure cuz I'd become such a movie buff lately).
In some stories, the more dramatic ones, you have abusive parents or overprotective parents that shelter the kids and nothing really comes of their tribulations... in other words, having the parents stand out of the way would allow more things to happen to the story.
I swear I had the idea in my head last night and I can't remember... but there was one other story I read where... or maybe it was a movie... where a parent worked behind the scenes to support their kid in whatever it was they were trying to achieve...
I have Peter Bronson written as: "a tall 55-year old man with a charcoal beard & whiskers. A former English lit professor (I wrote about having several bookshelves in the den yesterday). He accepts Jonas for who he is, enables him and supports him in the most dire of times without question. [I might not make it clear in my narration, but] he knows a lot more than he lets on and people give him credit for."
The whole persona seems like somewhat of a challenge for Mr. Downey. I can't recall him playing anything close to that before.
But still... I'd like to think that after seeing 30+ of his movies in the past year (6-7 more than once, 3-4 of those more than 5 times) that I know a little bit about what he brings to a role. I'd be brown-nosing by saying, to paraphase his words, this isn't a role that would enrich his life or help him learn anything about himself. He did do movies like Iron-Man, Sherlock Holmes, A Scanner Darkly and Fur where you're expected to accept a little more than what you can see on the surface... so I have my doubts he'd buy into the concept of my book even if I slaved away for hours on how to explain it in layman's terms
But that's something I can totally live with. He doesn't have to get anything I throw at him.
It's just that I'd like to aspire to slave over my craft and really know it backwards and forwards, live by it, the way he does with his acting... so I have my writing going for me rather than superfluous comments on pop culture, not wasting as much time with stuff leading nowhere but perhaps driving me more and more insane.
Between a number of things, though, Gary Oldman came to mind. The more I thought about it, the more I thought he could bring something great to this character. I'd only seen him playing good guys (Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series and Commisioner Gordon in the Dark Knight films-- one of the few good things I took away from them), but there was just a certain spark where I figured... yeah, I really do believe that Gary Oldman could make this part everything I thought it would be, if not better.
So for the part of the chapter that went between Peter, Jonas and Nina, I wrote a few bits and pieces as if picturing Gary Oldman reading the lines... trying to find what works and what doesn't. A lot of actors are attracted to roles by good writing and putting two things together, I went through each sentence to make sure that they all had their purpose and weren't just filler.
As far as the other roles I'd assigned... I think I went for the non-biased approach... trying to put faces to names that would really bring them to life rather than me trying to get something out of it.
Taylor Swift is the only casting choice that might have had me with a hidden agenda, but at the given moment, unless someone else comes out of nowhere, I can't see anyone else bringing to life this character who really is the catalyst for this story to get going. The activating incident, if you will... it's almost funny how she's the new girl, but this is really Jonas's story more than hers.
Just checking into my go-to fiction book real quick: "Master Class in Fiction writing: techniques from Austen, Hemingway and other greats" by Adam Sexton.
I'm getting this from an Internet site: Nostalgia Chick made a comment that "The Little Mermaid" (her least favorite movie in the entire world) is more about King Triton than Ariel because he changes as a character from start to finish while she only has one goal and achieves it rather than learning one of life's lessons.
Anyway, I'm trying to determine whether Nina has the composition of a well-rounded secondary character or if she's a primary character.
When I think about it, she really doesn't change all that much from start to finish. She's a very kind, generous, open-minded, accepting person. The only change is that she meets Jonas and falls in love, simultaneously falling into this other world that she really doesn't question... just accepts the fact that Jonas has this mysterious persona and this would explain a lot of it.
The one thing I want to avoid are the same critics who ripped apart "Twilight" and the rest of Stephenie Meyer's vampire stories. Aside from the people that hated what she did to vampires, giving them emotions and not having them be monsters... there are the people who really don't buy into the plot in general.
I read someone that a couple people thought that Jasper, Rosalie and Alice were more interesting characters than Bella & Edward... which I guess you could say I somewhat agree with a bit...
There are people who loathe the set-up... this plain uninteresting girl ending up with someone who she thinks is perfect, but really isn't as perfect as she thinks... :sigh: take away the vampires, though, Bella definitely lived my life's story in high school, not really fitting in anywhere or knowing what she wanted out of life. I'm a bit of a nerd myself and don't think I'm the prettiest girl in any given room (otherwise people would have asked me out throughout high school and college... nobody was interested and simultaneously, the two people interested in me... I really wasn't interested in them... maybe because I still am figuring myself out)
The comment I loathe the most is people calling Bella a lackluster character who is stubborn, helpless and otherwise unable to stand on her own feet without Edward around (not just because she's the world's biggest klutz)... she's dependant on Edward too much and has no sense of self.
some of those same people wondering what is wrong with her because she detests surprises and birthdays... as if that's such a big red flag that she's not normal :roll:
Selfish is another word that gets thrown around a lot.
Me, I don't see that so much. A lot of people neglect to notice in the 3rd act of "Twilight" (oh great, he's got me using that phrase too... 3rd act), the book, Bella is uber-freaked out that everyone around her is going to get killed because of her. She's frantic about Charlie, the reason why she wants to go back to her house to make sure James doesn't go after him. She's frantic that her friends will get hurt more than worrying about herself getting hurt. Then she's frantic that James will go after the rest of her family, ultimately saying that the Cullens can't protect everyone she cares about forever.
Man did I take a long time to get there.
My point is that, in addition to hoping nobody thinks I'm ripping off "Twilight" especially when it comes to Jonas (trust me, there are enough differences where only the Twi-haters could nit-pick until they find similar faults in him), I'd hate for people to think that the two characters are too dependant on one another. That Nina's new life completely revolves around Jonas, that she can't stand on her own without him.
In response to all that, I think I'm going to cut down on the dramatics just a tad.
There are a number of incidents that start piling up. Most of which really aren't necessarily or pivotal to the plot.
The first, of course, is important. He gets struck by lightning and Nina's there to witness the occurrence. She learns that this strange phenomenon is the reason behind his explicit absences.
He returns to school and has somewhat of a panic attack... which has Nina a little shaken up and he believes that she no longer trusts him... one thing leads to another, he gets thrown off the back of one of his horses into the iced over river and goes temporarily deaf.
If anything, the only function of his deafness is that he misunderstands Corey and Nina spending time together and he feels left out because he can't hear the song they're working on for Mai... long story there, but otherwise, I can't really see his deafness having any real use. Not to mention I worm my way around it using his mind-reading ability
I mean, the incident that has Nina temporarily freaked out... a little of that might be good for her, but the consequences of it really have no point. Not to mention he's put out of commission three times scattered over maybe 2 weeks... the first time makes sense, but after that, people might get bored with it. Not to mention that's around the part of the story, the middle, where I start to lag in all kinds of places.
Not to mention the panic attack in the middle of Social Studies... kinda pointless... especially because a case of deja vu occurs later on... Eric is put out because Mai chose Corey over him and eventually, Jonas becomes an unwilling participiant in the fight and he loses control
After which, everyone clearly remembers what he's capable of.
I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And if none of this is making any sense, my humblest apologies. I'm just thinking aloud here, answering my most crucial questions that have been bugging me since I decided to go into full-on rewrites
He might be a little old to play the part now, but after seeing Kris Allen perform "Heartless" on YouTube (better version than what he recorded for his album) and listening to his album for the first time in sevearl months... I remembered what a great contestant he was on American Idol and the great attitude and presence he had. Some people might say they don't even remember Kris because Adam Lambert stole the show because he was oh-so interesting... not to be confused with talent... there were maybe 2 performances the entire season that I liked at all... the rest he just was over the top and I'm still getting the ear-piercing screams out of my head a couple years later...
Kris's lackluster performance on the charts amounts to two things:
Adam Lambert has Max Martin writing his songs, the Swedish king of catchy songwriting (Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Britney Spears, Katy Perry to name a few)... with Kris, the only name I recognize writing his songs aside from him on maybe 3-4, is that guy from Train... and I don't even like their music to begin with.
Therefore the music's not nearly as catchy and memorable to the casual music fans.
...and secondly, the marketing and promotion of the album has been appalling... I've heard two different songs on my primary radio station and the one played the most is "Live like you're dying"... which is possibly the weakest, worst song on the album that they could have put on the radio... the guy from Train co-wrote "The Truth"... but there are at least 4-5 other songs that were better for the radio, so people would remember them and therefore go out and buy the record...
okay, that's another rant that should be on my other blog.
I'm starting to think that someone like Kris Allen would be perfect to play Corey... the guy who becomes Mai's boyfriend, one of Jonas's best friends and the two of them have a role to play later on. He has the right look and attitude, the only thing off is his age :-P
Before I completely go off the handle again, here are the biographies I renewed.
I may/may not split Chapter 4 in half because there are two different settings... too big for one chapter (kinda makes the other chapters look tiny in comparison)... I just finished the first part of it that introduces Peter and the iguanas Sparky & Scorch
I had an epiphany, a couple actually, while writing the introduction. I had decided that at their size, they might be too large for a single cage that Jonas carries downstairs... and considering the relationship that builds between him and Scorch, only one iguana makes an appearance.
He comes down the stairs with Sparky and coincidentally, Nina isn't one of those girls who can't stand to be around reptiles... he eases the transition to her because he has to tend to a new wound he's acquired: "Scorch was a little less than cooperative"... went to explain how he found the two of them, how they used to get along, but Scorch turned nasty after he had to move them into separate enclosures. Nina considers jealousy as a factor because Sparky's terrarium is closer to his bed. That gets shot down after Jonas tries to switch them around, still getting bitten. The vet attributes it to Scorch getting on in age, losing sight in one eye, but Jonas thinks its more the fact he separated them than the fact Scorch is getting oddly senile.
Iguanas rely more on smell than sight, so he's not sold on that explanation.
What I'm not explaining in this chapter will be explained later:
he found the two of them shortly after his first incident of lightning (the day after his first public panic attack).
In the past, the elements of fire and lightning were under the sorcerer's control, but after his defeat, the dragons came under Jonas's allegience.
But something went wrong somewhere. He may not have officially gained ownership of the elements. He gave the dragon of lightning (and the pegasus of thunder) the power of speech, so fire could have taken that as an insult. Somehow, though, the power of lightning is still under Nightariel's alliegence. For whatever reason, that explains the lightning strikes that keep happening (and you'd think that Jonas would just stay indoors after the first couple times, but he has to go to the stables to feed the horses... that can't be avoided)...
quite possibly... I kinda put that Sparky had a scar on his tail in the original draft, but I omitted it for the time being cuz it has no relevence... Jonas never saw the iguanas fight so he didn't think it was from one. But I'm thinking Scorch became unforgiving because Jonas separated them... knowing that was going to happen, he takes a bite out of Sparky's tail... perhaps taking hold of some of his power... dealing under the table, if you will, to Nightariel...
between him believing that together they're a stronger opposing force and a number of other things, the separation of the two is the activating incident for the vendetta that emerges
Huh... I can't help but feel I might have overcomplicated that just a little bit. :-?
Granted, I'd love to enter Jonas's story into the running, but after the things I'd come across in the editing bay, especially over the past week where I've been rehashing/polishing storylines for the minor characters... I'd like my audience to see my final edits rather than ripping them off with my previous version just because I'm in a hurry to get the story published.
As far as I can tell, I'm nowhere near ready for it to be published. The one thing I seem to have found fault in, the reason why a lot of people don't want to answer my queries: when they ask for sample chapters, I'd been including my prologue, which I have found out to be a turn-off. You send the first couple chapters with no previous stuff and if including the prologue at all, call it chapter one...
Hell no am I selling myself short in calling my prologue "chapter 1"... not to mention I'd have to include a little blip about it being in present day or the prologue being eons ago... going from prologue to chapter 1 in general has got to be a little jarring... especially when you're in a completely different environment in chapter 1... must be a true WTF moment to people not familiar with my material
Anyway, the whole matter of that contest had me almost having panic and anxiety attacks because that would mean I'd have to be working non-stop up to Feb 5th... and there's no way I'd be able to do that. And this is something I've natured and allowed to grow (the most growth has happened in the past 6 months, moreso than the past 8 years I'd been writing it and tweaking it for publication) for a long time... I'm not going to do a rush job just for even a CHANCE at winning
Romantasy probably wouldn't get that many votes to begin with.
In the strangest of ways and also in the most commonplace of ways (best of both worlds, insanity mixed with renewed common sense), in watching several of his interviews, most of which several times each, Robert Downey Jr. has become somewhat of an inspiration, an influence and otherwise anything he has to say when it comes to movies, just because he can choose his words with so much ease and spontaneity that it's a talent I'd kill to have. I make the most sense when I'm writing things down.
Just to cut matters short (I've spent the past 51 weeks on my other blog with all the fanatical comments and repetition, so no need to bring that crazyness here), there are two things I've brought into the project this time around.
1) the way he can pitch a movie & the character he plays so well, I would like to know my characters that well, really getting down to the bare bones, knowing them as well as, if not better than, the back of my hand.
Thus: the renovation of a lot of my minor characters, really figuring out what makes them tick and giving them more importance than just for me to have a person to bring into a scene as part of the scenery
2) He hates motives, so as far as the hypothetical casting goes, I'd like to keep that in mind. Like I've considering casting some of the actors (including him) in certain roles just because of the off-chance I'd get to meet them during the auditioning process... I tend to get extremely fanatical about celebrities so I kinda don't go about things the right way.
Yesterday I was considering the idea, after watching one of his earlier films (i.e. pre-"Chaplin" and post-"Less than Zero"), to cast him as Peter Bronson, Jonas's guardian... then I remembered what he said about motives. I'm more or less doing this with that realm of impossibility in mind, having a hidden agenda about things.
I was merely looking for an excuse to cast him in this movie with that motive in mind... but if I'm being completely truthful and I totally am, he's a big name that could give the whole thing a boost cuz he's hot right now. Even if he'd consider it himself, I doubt he could fill the shoes of this important character and use him to his full potential.
I read a short article a little while ago, one of the many writer's digest newsletter articles I click on to read more. Writing about teenagers and such. It said to not make the parents/guardians an opposing force... in other words, don't baby your characters. Almost like what Dory said to Marlin in "Finding Nemo"... "that's a silly thing to promise. Well, you can't have nothing happen to him, or else nothing will happen to him" (I threw that quote in for good measure cuz I'd become such a movie buff lately).
In some stories, the more dramatic ones, you have abusive parents or overprotective parents that shelter the kids and nothing really comes of their tribulations... in other words, having the parents stand out of the way would allow more things to happen to the story.
I swear I had the idea in my head last night and I can't remember... but there was one other story I read where... or maybe it was a movie... where a parent worked behind the scenes to support their kid in whatever it was they were trying to achieve...
I have Peter Bronson written as: "a tall 55-year old man with a charcoal beard & whiskers. A former English lit professor (I wrote about having several bookshelves in the den yesterday). He accepts Jonas for who he is, enables him and supports him in the most dire of times without question. [I might not make it clear in my narration, but] he knows a lot more than he lets on and people give him credit for."
The whole persona seems like somewhat of a challenge for Mr. Downey. I can't recall him playing anything close to that before.
But still... I'd like to think that after seeing 30+ of his movies in the past year (6-7 more than once, 3-4 of those more than 5 times) that I know a little bit about what he brings to a role. I'd be brown-nosing by saying, to paraphase his words, this isn't a role that would enrich his life or help him learn anything about himself. He did do movies like Iron-Man, Sherlock Holmes, A Scanner Darkly and Fur where you're expected to accept a little more than what you can see on the surface... so I have my doubts he'd buy into the concept of my book even if I slaved away for hours on how to explain it in layman's terms
But that's something I can totally live with. He doesn't have to get anything I throw at him.
It's just that I'd like to aspire to slave over my craft and really know it backwards and forwards, live by it, the way he does with his acting... so I have my writing going for me rather than superfluous comments on pop culture, not wasting as much time with stuff leading nowhere but perhaps driving me more and more insane.
Between a number of things, though, Gary Oldman came to mind. The more I thought about it, the more I thought he could bring something great to this character. I'd only seen him playing good guys (Sirius Black in the Harry Potter series and Commisioner Gordon in the Dark Knight films-- one of the few good things I took away from them), but there was just a certain spark where I figured... yeah, I really do believe that Gary Oldman could make this part everything I thought it would be, if not better.
So for the part of the chapter that went between Peter, Jonas and Nina, I wrote a few bits and pieces as if picturing Gary Oldman reading the lines... trying to find what works and what doesn't. A lot of actors are attracted to roles by good writing and putting two things together, I went through each sentence to make sure that they all had their purpose and weren't just filler.
As far as the other roles I'd assigned... I think I went for the non-biased approach... trying to put faces to names that would really bring them to life rather than me trying to get something out of it.
Taylor Swift is the only casting choice that might have had me with a hidden agenda, but at the given moment, unless someone else comes out of nowhere, I can't see anyone else bringing to life this character who really is the catalyst for this story to get going. The activating incident, if you will... it's almost funny how she's the new girl, but this is really Jonas's story more than hers.
Just checking into my go-to fiction book real quick: "Master Class in Fiction writing: techniques from Austen, Hemingway and other greats" by Adam Sexton.
I'm getting this from an Internet site: Nostalgia Chick made a comment that "The Little Mermaid" (her least favorite movie in the entire world) is more about King Triton than Ariel because he changes as a character from start to finish while she only has one goal and achieves it rather than learning one of life's lessons.
Anyway, I'm trying to determine whether Nina has the composition of a well-rounded secondary character or if she's a primary character.
When I think about it, she really doesn't change all that much from start to finish. She's a very kind, generous, open-minded, accepting person. The only change is that she meets Jonas and falls in love, simultaneously falling into this other world that she really doesn't question... just accepts the fact that Jonas has this mysterious persona and this would explain a lot of it.
The one thing I want to avoid are the same critics who ripped apart "Twilight" and the rest of Stephenie Meyer's vampire stories. Aside from the people that hated what she did to vampires, giving them emotions and not having them be monsters... there are the people who really don't buy into the plot in general.
I read someone that a couple people thought that Jasper, Rosalie and Alice were more interesting characters than Bella & Edward... which I guess you could say I somewhat agree with a bit...
There are people who loathe the set-up... this plain uninteresting girl ending up with someone who she thinks is perfect, but really isn't as perfect as she thinks... :sigh: take away the vampires, though, Bella definitely lived my life's story in high school, not really fitting in anywhere or knowing what she wanted out of life. I'm a bit of a nerd myself and don't think I'm the prettiest girl in any given room (otherwise people would have asked me out throughout high school and college... nobody was interested and simultaneously, the two people interested in me... I really wasn't interested in them... maybe because I still am figuring myself out)
The comment I loathe the most is people calling Bella a lackluster character who is stubborn, helpless and otherwise unable to stand on her own feet without Edward around (not just because she's the world's biggest klutz)... she's dependant on Edward too much and has no sense of self.
some of those same people wondering what is wrong with her because she detests surprises and birthdays... as if that's such a big red flag that she's not normal :roll:
Selfish is another word that gets thrown around a lot.
Me, I don't see that so much. A lot of people neglect to notice in the 3rd act of "Twilight" (oh great, he's got me using that phrase too... 3rd act), the book, Bella is uber-freaked out that everyone around her is going to get killed because of her. She's frantic about Charlie, the reason why she wants to go back to her house to make sure James doesn't go after him. She's frantic that her friends will get hurt more than worrying about herself getting hurt. Then she's frantic that James will go after the rest of her family, ultimately saying that the Cullens can't protect everyone she cares about forever.
Man did I take a long time to get there.
My point is that, in addition to hoping nobody thinks I'm ripping off "Twilight" especially when it comes to Jonas (trust me, there are enough differences where only the Twi-haters could nit-pick until they find similar faults in him), I'd hate for people to think that the two characters are too dependant on one another. That Nina's new life completely revolves around Jonas, that she can't stand on her own without him.
In response to all that, I think I'm going to cut down on the dramatics just a tad.
There are a number of incidents that start piling up. Most of which really aren't necessarily or pivotal to the plot.
The first, of course, is important. He gets struck by lightning and Nina's there to witness the occurrence. She learns that this strange phenomenon is the reason behind his explicit absences.
He returns to school and has somewhat of a panic attack... which has Nina a little shaken up and he believes that she no longer trusts him... one thing leads to another, he gets thrown off the back of one of his horses into the iced over river and goes temporarily deaf.
If anything, the only function of his deafness is that he misunderstands Corey and Nina spending time together and he feels left out because he can't hear the song they're working on for Mai... long story there, but otherwise, I can't really see his deafness having any real use. Not to mention I worm my way around it using his mind-reading ability
I mean, the incident that has Nina temporarily freaked out... a little of that might be good for her, but the consequences of it really have no point. Not to mention he's put out of commission three times scattered over maybe 2 weeks... the first time makes sense, but after that, people might get bored with it. Not to mention that's around the part of the story, the middle, where I start to lag in all kinds of places.
Not to mention the panic attack in the middle of Social Studies... kinda pointless... especially because a case of deja vu occurs later on... Eric is put out because Mai chose Corey over him and eventually, Jonas becomes an unwilling participiant in the fight and he loses control
After which, everyone clearly remembers what he's capable of.
I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. And if none of this is making any sense, my humblest apologies. I'm just thinking aloud here, answering my most crucial questions that have been bugging me since I decided to go into full-on rewrites
He might be a little old to play the part now, but after seeing Kris Allen perform "Heartless" on YouTube (better version than what he recorded for his album) and listening to his album for the first time in sevearl months... I remembered what a great contestant he was on American Idol and the great attitude and presence he had. Some people might say they don't even remember Kris because Adam Lambert stole the show because he was oh-so interesting... not to be confused with talent... there were maybe 2 performances the entire season that I liked at all... the rest he just was over the top and I'm still getting the ear-piercing screams out of my head a couple years later...
Kris's lackluster performance on the charts amounts to two things:
Adam Lambert has Max Martin writing his songs, the Swedish king of catchy songwriting (Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, Britney Spears, Katy Perry to name a few)... with Kris, the only name I recognize writing his songs aside from him on maybe 3-4, is that guy from Train... and I don't even like their music to begin with.
Therefore the music's not nearly as catchy and memorable to the casual music fans.
...and secondly, the marketing and promotion of the album has been appalling... I've heard two different songs on my primary radio station and the one played the most is "Live like you're dying"... which is possibly the weakest, worst song on the album that they could have put on the radio... the guy from Train co-wrote "The Truth"... but there are at least 4-5 other songs that were better for the radio, so people would remember them and therefore go out and buy the record...
okay, that's another rant that should be on my other blog.
I'm starting to think that someone like Kris Allen would be perfect to play Corey... the guy who becomes Mai's boyfriend, one of Jonas's best friends and the two of them have a role to play later on. He has the right look and attitude, the only thing off is his age :-P
Before I completely go off the handle again, here are the biographies I renewed.
I may/may not split Chapter 4 in half because there are two different settings... too big for one chapter (kinda makes the other chapters look tiny in comparison)... I just finished the first part of it that introduces Peter and the iguanas Sparky & Scorch
I had an epiphany, a couple actually, while writing the introduction. I had decided that at their size, they might be too large for a single cage that Jonas carries downstairs... and considering the relationship that builds between him and Scorch, only one iguana makes an appearance.
He comes down the stairs with Sparky and coincidentally, Nina isn't one of those girls who can't stand to be around reptiles... he eases the transition to her because he has to tend to a new wound he's acquired: "Scorch was a little less than cooperative"... went to explain how he found the two of them, how they used to get along, but Scorch turned nasty after he had to move them into separate enclosures. Nina considers jealousy as a factor because Sparky's terrarium is closer to his bed. That gets shot down after Jonas tries to switch them around, still getting bitten. The vet attributes it to Scorch getting on in age, losing sight in one eye, but Jonas thinks its more the fact he separated them than the fact Scorch is getting oddly senile.
Iguanas rely more on smell than sight, so he's not sold on that explanation.
What I'm not explaining in this chapter will be explained later:
he found the two of them shortly after his first incident of lightning (the day after his first public panic attack).
In the past, the elements of fire and lightning were under the sorcerer's control, but after his defeat, the dragons came under Jonas's allegience.
But something went wrong somewhere. He may not have officially gained ownership of the elements. He gave the dragon of lightning (and the pegasus of thunder) the power of speech, so fire could have taken that as an insult. Somehow, though, the power of lightning is still under Nightariel's alliegence. For whatever reason, that explains the lightning strikes that keep happening (and you'd think that Jonas would just stay indoors after the first couple times, but he has to go to the stables to feed the horses... that can't be avoided)...
quite possibly... I kinda put that Sparky had a scar on his tail in the original draft, but I omitted it for the time being cuz it has no relevence... Jonas never saw the iguanas fight so he didn't think it was from one. But I'm thinking Scorch became unforgiving because Jonas separated them... knowing that was going to happen, he takes a bite out of Sparky's tail... perhaps taking hold of some of his power... dealing under the table, if you will, to Nightariel...
between him believing that together they're a stronger opposing force and a number of other things, the separation of the two is the activating incident for the vendetta that emerges
Huh... I can't help but feel I might have overcomplicated that just a little bit. :-?
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Much ado about Iguanas and guardianship
Whoa... can I just say that my mind is completely blown?
I mean, yeah, I know I should have done the research like... YEARS ago when I started writing this. I'm not sure what I was watching. I think it was the first Ace Ventura movie... there were a couple of iguanas in that movie and they were pretty big. So much so that I started to panic a bit.
The only research I really did was seeing how long they lived because that question came up. I don't know why that's even relevant. I mean, with the horses, I guess it kinda makes sense. Establishing the age between them, with Rain being the oldest, Thunder in the middle and Windy being the youngest (explaining the fact she's very coy and has an energetic personality... phew, I haven't used that word in a long time. Though I'd forgotten how to spell it). Can't spell relevance to save my life.
I am so glad that I decided to do this... finally. Because other than, yeah go figure. I have no experience with any of these animals, but I did do my research with the horses more than I did for these two characters. One of which becomes extremely important to a certain plot twist.
Well, anyway... long story short... I was checking out Google Images to see if I could find a few candidates. As it turns out, wow I consider myself so lucky that everything worked out this way, aside from your common green iguana, there are other colors available. Two of which are ones I definitely needed for the plot to work, but I didn't think I'd get this lucky.
There are actually albino iguanas that look just like this. Wow, he's a beauty.
And maybe for Scorch, I was thinking about something like this (he's on the right)
Or better yet... just so I don't have to write about this huge age gap between the two
Ain't he a beauty?
Okay, I sound too overly pleased with myself. But I can't help it. I simply had no idea... yeah, goes to show that I really haven't done a lot of research. I usually don't have to sort to that cuz I'm so good at making stuff up. But I'd printed out just a few little things about iguana care.
The only thing is maybe.. I'll have to rewrite/rethink my introduction scene with the two of them.
Another thing is that I'm trying to really work on the whole situation between Jonas and Peter because I got really concerned writing it a couple nights ago. Kinda shell-shocked and been afraid to go back ever since. I have a feeling that I went too far in the other direction, so instead of Jonas being angry and somewhat moody, he's become the exact opposite, dejected and almost on the verge of having one of his panic attacks.
Sure, he's a little embarrassed and ashamed of his living situation... not knowing what happened to his parents, but I dunno... I just can't help but think he and Peter have a really good relationship. There's just this really intangible integer that's been buzzing around my head that I can't quite touch up on.
The story goes like this:
in the somewhat dramatic, literary fashion, Jonas was left on Peter's doorstep 13 years ago... I admit when I wrote this that Harry Potter's origin story kinda came to mind and I may have borrowed from that. But it's not like J.K. Rowling was the first and only person to do this.
It really doesn't make sense, especially the fact that Jonas's parents have mysteriously disappeared... not leaving so much as a last name... which is REALLY strange. Then again, none of my characters have last names, so that's almost like an inside joke, isn't it?
Peter doesn't know how or why, but somehow Jonas was on his doorstep... okay, that really doesn't make a huge amount of sense. Why his house of all the houses? Did their car stop in the middle of nowhere and it so happens that nobody was residing in what would become Nina's house... oh wait, maybe the house wasn't even built yet... maybe that's where they lived... I wanted to keep it as mysterious as possible so I really didn't care to elaborate at any point... whichever way it becomes clear to Jonas what happened to his parents... on Christmas no less... it's really hard to explain and it really pushes the envelope just a little bit, unless of course it's not the only incident of this: touching something and through that, seeing into the past or something like that. I DON'T KNOW.
Certainly if I don't find it believable, I doubt anyone else will. Now if anyone can get through my whole prologue about reincarnation and whatnot, I doubt too much else is going to rattle them too much... that and the whole "psychic abilities" thing that Jonas deals with when social anxiety flares up.
Speaking of flaring up, I don't know what is with me today, but I'm not feeling good. I think something I did or didn't do yesterday is giving me an ulcer... the same old story "denying and staying far out," except now I know what to call it... just that.
I think the thing is that I'm very unsure as to what to make of this relationship... it is freaking me out to say the least.
So get past the whole thing of how the two of them came together.
huh... would it be a little extreme if I said Jonas's birthday happened to coincide with Christmas day? I mean, he was an angel in his previous life and had been the one summoned to relinquish the current embodiment of evil... but I don't know. It's one thing that I wrote about the story beginning in the very distant past... I think my timeline unnerved one of my friends, who happened to be the inspiration for Jonas's pale blue eyes, his most distinguishing feature.... I think I had it listed as the first chapter dating 66 million years later... as if the angel and evil sorcerer were around just after the dinosaurs were just destroyed...by the sorcerer himself... yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.
But it's another to somewhat make Jonas synonymous with... what the hell, people are born on Christmas and Christmas eve all the time... it doesn't mean that they're the second coming or anything like that...
I just came up with a brilliant idea, corresponding to all this.
Supposing Jonas turns... I dunno... 14 going on 15... what's so significant about him turning 15?
on Christmas... or Christmas eve or whatever...
either way you look at it, whether Peter just got a reply from the FBI after several years of trying to find out about Jonas's parents, or this idea... he has the worst timing in the world because Jonas was having a great holiday/birthday and this bomb drops on him
Here's what I have in mind, though.
Peter Bronson is Jonas's guardian (his uncle for all intensive purposes when it comes to Nina's parents... and I'm not sure how far I'm willing to stretch that anymore). He operates a lot behind the scenes, knowing what's going on with Jonas getting struck by lightning on a conspicuous basis, and somehow... well, not really somehow... it doesn't have to be explained really, but he knows a lot more about Jonas's destiny that people give him credit for... he's very observant about things but doesn't readily ask Jonas about them because he respects his privacy and all that. He's merely there to provide for him and to support him no matter what it comes down to.
The story is more or less going back and forth between Nina and Jonas's POV... with it being in 3rd person. I'm just saying that the story follows them around, showing what they're seeing and experiencing... therefore we don't see their classmates or their parents/guardian unless they're in the same room. But from my POV as the writer, I have that planned out that... I guess saying he's the 12th man on the field... like the crowd is at a football game, they don't directly influence the action that takes place, just creating an atmosphere and cheering their team on.
The one thing that Jonas... well, maybe not that one thing, because there are a lot of things about him that he doesn't know... but the biggest unanswered question is where he came from, as in his parents and what they were like.
My idea is that when Jonas turns 15, Peter offers an explanation... I believe it's something he said that he'd tell him when he was ready, whenever he asked... what gets him believing that Jonas is ready at this age can just come down to the fact his destiny is upon him and the information might be helpful to him.
Supposedly, after he found Jonas on his doorstep, once he found a suitable sitter for a couple hours, he reported Jonas to the police, asking if anything came up recently about... well, anything in relation to his parents and what happened to them. A few DNA tests are run because the authorities or whoever was in charge suspected that his parents were recent burn victims that were found maybe a few yards away from the residence... I'm just trying to figure out where the bodies were found, like what the most logical location would be... too near or too far away from the residence would be pushing it just a little bit, not to mention if they were anywhere near Nina's or Jonas's... maybe one neck of the woods somewhere where a bunch of the trees burned and never completely recovered from... that might be the most logical location.
Anyway, someone stops by the house to report his findings, giving a envelope full of information about it. Peter decides that all of it must be kept secret from Jonas until he's old enough to handle the loss and understand it.
I just have a lot of trouble, at the moment, depicting Nina and Peter's first meeting when she stops by the house. What kind of conversation do they have? How far can I push the envelope (coincidingly, Jonas) without things (him) bending too far in one direction? It has to be handled very carefully because I want him to be sympathetic, but the same one-tier countenance that he has. Showing too much emotion too early bugs the hell out of me and I surely can't see it being believable, should I go that route.
After that, though, I have another idea about how to introduce the two iguanas. Jonas has two terrariums in his bedroom because the two of them are obviously too big to be in the same cage. Meaning I can't just have him bringing this terrarium downstairs with him.
He comes down the staircase with Sparky on his arm. Right now, I'm picturing it and its almost comical that he comes off this way, as if its no big deal that there's this huge lizard that's about as big as his arm hanging onto it. He leans towards Nina, asking if she'd like to pet him and of course, yes... this scene doesn't last too long. Maybe he brings down a lettuce leaf or something for him to munch while he explains where they came from. Both of them, he found at Spring Lake, but Scorch arrived a little more recently. He then proceeds to show Nina a picture of Scorch rather than taking the care to bring him down also or asking her to come upstairs... that's a little too foreward.
Anyway, he says that Scorch can sometimes get into moods where he doesn't want to be touched... like he could come down the stairs with his thumb wrapped up because he bit him or whatever. The moods have been a bit more frequent lately so he uses extra caution during feeding time... and also he maybe doesn't want to scare Nina away too easily.
Yeah, once I get that first conversation off the ground, everything else should fall into place nicely.
I mean, yeah, I know I should have done the research like... YEARS ago when I started writing this. I'm not sure what I was watching. I think it was the first Ace Ventura movie... there were a couple of iguanas in that movie and they were pretty big. So much so that I started to panic a bit.
The only research I really did was seeing how long they lived because that question came up. I don't know why that's even relevant. I mean, with the horses, I guess it kinda makes sense. Establishing the age between them, with Rain being the oldest, Thunder in the middle and Windy being the youngest (explaining the fact she's very coy and has an energetic personality... phew, I haven't used that word in a long time. Though I'd forgotten how to spell it). Can't spell relevance to save my life.
I am so glad that I decided to do this... finally. Because other than, yeah go figure. I have no experience with any of these animals, but I did do my research with the horses more than I did for these two characters. One of which becomes extremely important to a certain plot twist.
Well, anyway... long story short... I was checking out Google Images to see if I could find a few candidates. As it turns out, wow I consider myself so lucky that everything worked out this way, aside from your common green iguana, there are other colors available. Two of which are ones I definitely needed for the plot to work, but I didn't think I'd get this lucky.
There are actually albino iguanas that look just like this. Wow, he's a beauty.
And maybe for Scorch, I was thinking about something like this (he's on the right)
Or better yet... just so I don't have to write about this huge age gap between the two
Okay, I sound too overly pleased with myself. But I can't help it. I simply had no idea... yeah, goes to show that I really haven't done a lot of research. I usually don't have to sort to that cuz I'm so good at making stuff up. But I'd printed out just a few little things about iguana care.
The only thing is maybe.. I'll have to rewrite/rethink my introduction scene with the two of them.
Another thing is that I'm trying to really work on the whole situation between Jonas and Peter because I got really concerned writing it a couple nights ago. Kinda shell-shocked and been afraid to go back ever since. I have a feeling that I went too far in the other direction, so instead of Jonas being angry and somewhat moody, he's become the exact opposite, dejected and almost on the verge of having one of his panic attacks.
Sure, he's a little embarrassed and ashamed of his living situation... not knowing what happened to his parents, but I dunno... I just can't help but think he and Peter have a really good relationship. There's just this really intangible integer that's been buzzing around my head that I can't quite touch up on.
The story goes like this:
in the somewhat dramatic, literary fashion, Jonas was left on Peter's doorstep 13 years ago... I admit when I wrote this that Harry Potter's origin story kinda came to mind and I may have borrowed from that. But it's not like J.K. Rowling was the first and only person to do this.
It really doesn't make sense, especially the fact that Jonas's parents have mysteriously disappeared... not leaving so much as a last name... which is REALLY strange. Then again, none of my characters have last names, so that's almost like an inside joke, isn't it?
Peter doesn't know how or why, but somehow Jonas was on his doorstep... okay, that really doesn't make a huge amount of sense. Why his house of all the houses? Did their car stop in the middle of nowhere and it so happens that nobody was residing in what would become Nina's house... oh wait, maybe the house wasn't even built yet... maybe that's where they lived... I wanted to keep it as mysterious as possible so I really didn't care to elaborate at any point... whichever way it becomes clear to Jonas what happened to his parents... on Christmas no less... it's really hard to explain and it really pushes the envelope just a little bit, unless of course it's not the only incident of this: touching something and through that, seeing into the past or something like that. I DON'T KNOW.
Certainly if I don't find it believable, I doubt anyone else will. Now if anyone can get through my whole prologue about reincarnation and whatnot, I doubt too much else is going to rattle them too much... that and the whole "psychic abilities" thing that Jonas deals with when social anxiety flares up.
Speaking of flaring up, I don't know what is with me today, but I'm not feeling good. I think something I did or didn't do yesterday is giving me an ulcer... the same old story "denying and staying far out," except now I know what to call it... just that.
I think the thing is that I'm very unsure as to what to make of this relationship... it is freaking me out to say the least.
So get past the whole thing of how the two of them came together.
huh... would it be a little extreme if I said Jonas's birthday happened to coincide with Christmas day? I mean, he was an angel in his previous life and had been the one summoned to relinquish the current embodiment of evil... but I don't know. It's one thing that I wrote about the story beginning in the very distant past... I think my timeline unnerved one of my friends, who happened to be the inspiration for Jonas's pale blue eyes, his most distinguishing feature.... I think I had it listed as the first chapter dating 66 million years later... as if the angel and evil sorcerer were around just after the dinosaurs were just destroyed...by the sorcerer himself... yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.
But it's another to somewhat make Jonas synonymous with... what the hell, people are born on Christmas and Christmas eve all the time... it doesn't mean that they're the second coming or anything like that...
I just came up with a brilliant idea, corresponding to all this.
Supposing Jonas turns... I dunno... 14 going on 15... what's so significant about him turning 15?
on Christmas... or Christmas eve or whatever...
either way you look at it, whether Peter just got a reply from the FBI after several years of trying to find out about Jonas's parents, or this idea... he has the worst timing in the world because Jonas was having a great holiday/birthday and this bomb drops on him
Here's what I have in mind, though.
Peter Bronson is Jonas's guardian (his uncle for all intensive purposes when it comes to Nina's parents... and I'm not sure how far I'm willing to stretch that anymore). He operates a lot behind the scenes, knowing what's going on with Jonas getting struck by lightning on a conspicuous basis, and somehow... well, not really somehow... it doesn't have to be explained really, but he knows a lot more about Jonas's destiny that people give him credit for... he's very observant about things but doesn't readily ask Jonas about them because he respects his privacy and all that. He's merely there to provide for him and to support him no matter what it comes down to.
The story is more or less going back and forth between Nina and Jonas's POV... with it being in 3rd person. I'm just saying that the story follows them around, showing what they're seeing and experiencing... therefore we don't see their classmates or their parents/guardian unless they're in the same room. But from my POV as the writer, I have that planned out that... I guess saying he's the 12th man on the field... like the crowd is at a football game, they don't directly influence the action that takes place, just creating an atmosphere and cheering their team on.
The one thing that Jonas... well, maybe not that one thing, because there are a lot of things about him that he doesn't know... but the biggest unanswered question is where he came from, as in his parents and what they were like.
My idea is that when Jonas turns 15, Peter offers an explanation... I believe it's something he said that he'd tell him when he was ready, whenever he asked... what gets him believing that Jonas is ready at this age can just come down to the fact his destiny is upon him and the information might be helpful to him.
Supposedly, after he found Jonas on his doorstep, once he found a suitable sitter for a couple hours, he reported Jonas to the police, asking if anything came up recently about... well, anything in relation to his parents and what happened to them. A few DNA tests are run because the authorities or whoever was in charge suspected that his parents were recent burn victims that were found maybe a few yards away from the residence... I'm just trying to figure out where the bodies were found, like what the most logical location would be... too near or too far away from the residence would be pushing it just a little bit, not to mention if they were anywhere near Nina's or Jonas's... maybe one neck of the woods somewhere where a bunch of the trees burned and never completely recovered from... that might be the most logical location.
Anyway, someone stops by the house to report his findings, giving a envelope full of information about it. Peter decides that all of it must be kept secret from Jonas until he's old enough to handle the loss and understand it.
I just have a lot of trouble, at the moment, depicting Nina and Peter's first meeting when she stops by the house. What kind of conversation do they have? How far can I push the envelope (coincidingly, Jonas) without things (him) bending too far in one direction? It has to be handled very carefully because I want him to be sympathetic, but the same one-tier countenance that he has. Showing too much emotion too early bugs the hell out of me and I surely can't see it being believable, should I go that route.
After that, though, I have another idea about how to introduce the two iguanas. Jonas has two terrariums in his bedroom because the two of them are obviously too big to be in the same cage. Meaning I can't just have him bringing this terrarium downstairs with him.
He comes down the staircase with Sparky on his arm. Right now, I'm picturing it and its almost comical that he comes off this way, as if its no big deal that there's this huge lizard that's about as big as his arm hanging onto it. He leans towards Nina, asking if she'd like to pet him and of course, yes... this scene doesn't last too long. Maybe he brings down a lettuce leaf or something for him to munch while he explains where they came from. Both of them, he found at Spring Lake, but Scorch arrived a little more recently. He then proceeds to show Nina a picture of Scorch rather than taking the care to bring him down also or asking her to come upstairs... that's a little too foreward.
Anyway, he says that Scorch can sometimes get into moods where he doesn't want to be touched... like he could come down the stairs with his thumb wrapped up because he bit him or whatever. The moods have been a bit more frequent lately so he uses extra caution during feeding time... and also he maybe doesn't want to scare Nina away too easily.
Yeah, once I get that first conversation off the ground, everything else should fall into place nicely.
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