Keeping your eyes open

Writing is a way to convey emotion.

To be human is to feel emotion.  The actions done to us and the actions we do to others arrange our feelings in intricate patterns.  The voices we hear, the sights we see, the food we taste, the aromas we smell, the textures we touch all combine into this colorful painting called life.

Writing is merely the art of taking those colorful paintings and putting them into words.
As a corollary to that rule, the best authors know the most about life, about love, about hatred and strife, pink clouds and stormy nights,  forsaken churchyards and pretty damsels and ugly witches.  They know about fires and wind and voices and silences because they keep their eyes very, very open.

Sad to say, many are turned off from writing because they "don't know what to write about", and many more stunt their abilities by keeping their eyes closed.  While photographers frame gigantic, breathing pieces of life in a single snapshot, writers need to feel those gigantic, breathing pieces of life.


Keep your eyes open, fellow authors.


Snapshots of life that are blurry are impossible to write, and, thanks to modern commodities, life has been packaged and sold with fuzz and static.

   For example, how often is music merely white noise?  Too few take the time to close their eyes and enjoy solid feeling and lyrical depth, if there is any, in a piece of artwork.  Instead, we bustle around from the mall to the restaurant, talking over the radio in the background and drowning out music with...still more music.
   Another question: do you really care for people?  How will you ever get to see the nuances of individuals for writing purposes if you gruffly greet everyone with a how-do-you-do and have-a-nice-day.  If you're asking, "How are you?" merely because it's United States politeness, you're speaking a blur of life, and the legitimate response will be equally dull.
   What about food?  I'm horribly guilty here, sad to say.  My mom's an awesome chef, and whenever meal time rolls around, I just shovel everything down my gullet in less than three minutes, not even taking the time to taste what I'm swallowing.  I'm pretty sure she could feed me cardboard, and I wouldn't even notice.  The literary result?  I'm horrible at describing food...period.
   Are these direct variations?
   You tell me.
   Think about touch and sight for a moment.  Think about your toe pads.  Are they hot?  Sweaty?  Why?  Cold and numb?  Why?  Are you wearing shoes?  Why?  Are those shoes too tight or comfortable?  Without looking, think of what the nape of your neck feels like, think of if your hair is up or down, think of a part of your body that is ticklish.  Stretch your arms out and back beside you - seriously...do it - and feel your tendons straining...
   Do you know your own body?

Authors, we are sincerely out of touch with this physical world.
If you're one to live so fast that you can't even remember what earrings you're wearing, your writing will suffer, as silly as that seems.

Just sit down once in a while and listen to music without doing anything else.  I don't mean classical opera or anything; I enjoy relaxing and tensing music together, but the catch is that I "enjoy" music.  Before you eat something beautiful, observe it and fondle it and feel floury crust warm your fingertips.  Smile and genuinely care for people around you.  Observe them.  Taste food in your mouth.  Stroke your clothes as you put them on.  Keep your eyes open and absorb the small things around you that you missed.  Let shower water bounce off your palm.  Better yet, take a bath and fill the air with the scent of bath salts and inhale the thick sauna.  Melt chocolate in your mouth before swallowing.  And most important of all?  Laugh.  Laugh hard.
There's so much to experience, we can never possibly write enough books...

...but we very well can try.


Keep your eyes open, kids.


Write on!
Clove

Religion?!

Hey one, hey all, welcome back.

We're about half-way through November, and I still haven't gotten Chapter 3 up yet, and I might not until around December-ish, sad to say.  My life has pretty much exploded between driving classes, school, weddings, violin, and upcoming birthday parties, and, to add on top of all of that, I'm sick as an over-worked horse.  Fun, fun, right?

Anyway, here's an update on what's to come:
--CHAPTER 3!  My dad was supposed to edit it while he was on a business trip to Europe, and he comes home today.  Hopefully, it'll be all marked in red and ready to go.  Hopefully.  :)
--An entire forty-five page story, which will be out in three parts by next Sunday.  Again, the story is a birthday present, so...I have to wait for the birthday to roll around before posting it.  :)
--A modern day parody on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  I was doing this for school; it was supposed to be 750 words minimal, but I had so much fun with it, it ended up being around 2,000 words.  I'd like to edit it one more time before I get it up here.

Got all that?
I am not leaving you guys in the dust; I promise.  :)

That being said...

So...I was in one of those dream-zone of writing the other day, just a side-story idea that my brother came up with and challenged me to write, when all of the sudden, in the story, BAM--

RELIGION.

Whoa.  I stared at the screen and screwed up my face and said, "Did I just write this?"  Apparently, I did.  Guys, I've tried to write religion stories before; I've tried and I've tried and I've tried, but the words never represented what I felt relative to God.  I gave up about a year and a half ago, which I'm now certain was before I had really felt that much concerning God.  I mean, seriously?  I have shed a lot of repentant tears and have heard a lot of deep sermons between now and 18 months ago.

That said, I think I can include religion.  I've been trying, anyway...
Of course, I'm sick and tired and my ribcage is burning and my lungs are raisins and my hands are crackling with ice, so...when I'm feeling better, I might come back and look at my work and laugh and say, "Yup.  Still cheesy."
But rather than wait for my health to return, I thought I'd let you guys take a look and tell me what you think.  Still cheesy?  Cheddar?  Capable of making American mozzarella?
Have a gander.  :)

~ ~ ~

     Agitated, Keary paced briskly to the elevator and shot towards the roof of the skyscraper.  He emerged on the top floor, took a staircase even further up, and ducked outside, letting his thoughts be swept away by the cold wind.  Mankind would put greed first, the wind took that, but he would put integrity first, the wind stole that, and he would be manipulated by the greedy?  The wind nabbed that thought away and threw it back at Keary in gusts of chilling air until his tight shoulder blades were numb and his tight forearms were numb and the gun, resting on his chest, was a block of ice.

     Man is...

     Wind.

     Man...

     Wind.

     Is...

     Wind.

     ...is...

     ...wind...gale...breeze...

     Rose.

     After the long moment drained his resolve, Keary stumbled his way over to the side of the roof and gazed over the cement wall, fingers grasping the rough edge.

     The cars were colored dots.  The people, the masses of people, were smears.  Their sounds and jeers and catcalls and honks were silent.  Just wind.  It would be a long, long, long, windy drop.

     No.

     Rose wouldn’t forgive him.

     But...

     She’d join him, wouldn’t she?

     Grace too.

     They’d all be dead.

   Why was he so unwilling to compromise?  Why couldn’t he be like lesser men just for once and burn the records?  Did his virtue make him stronger?  Did his integrity make him better?  Did his conscience’s innocence aid him in life?

     Keary laughed out-loud.

     No.

     It couldn’t, and it never would.

     Virtue made him weak.

    A preacher had told him something funny once.  “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.  A fool endures, but a wise man dies.  Life is vain, Mr. Sikora, but there’s more to life than vanity.”

     Keary looked up at the azure sky, then back down to the gray ground, up to the cotton clouds, then back down to the muddy ground, up to the transcending sun, then back to the helpless ground.

     That idiot preacher must have been right, somehow...somehow...

     Some sort of savior must exist.  Maybe not a monarchy of insane, power-thirsty gods, definitely not a group that created all the misery...no...man did enough of that himself...but one that...that...saved them emotionally.

~ ~ ~

Write on!

Clove

Hey, you.

Hey.  Hey.  You.
Guys.
Guys.
Guyses and girlsees.
Guess what?  Guess what, guess what?
Guess...


...


DON'T WRITE WHEN YOU'RE TIRED.

Write on!
Clove
P.S. I put one character to sleep, moved on to another, put her to sleep as well, and put a guy from a different story to bed as well.  -_-  The Muses are not with me tonight.  ;)

Why I Hate Grammar...

Josiah, my younger brother, and I make it a point to, when we bring a box of cereal to the table, turn the box to the back and read that little memo thingymerbobber that talks about how such-and-such product is the best, the most nutritious, or the most delicious.  We're both Grammar Nazi's, Warriors of the Red Pen (well, he's in training), and capable of listing every single punctuation and spelling rule that exists.  Thus, we (geeks) find a good amount of entertainment in marking out the errors on published paragraphs.

That said, I just recently finished Fahrenheit 451, my official second favorite non-spiritual book, second only to Saint Augustine's Confessions.  (At least...that's what I think...I haven't done an official list of my favorite books.  I probably should some day though...)  I noticed that Ray Bradbury, as he wrote, used punctuation only to signify pauses.  Of course, there were periods at the end of every sentence, but even every sentence he wrote didn't include a subject and a verb.

And surprisingly, I can't even say it annoyed me.

It was smooth, classic, and flowing with a pace slow enough that I wasn't just reading a blur of words, but fast enough that I wanted to re-read it as soon as I put it down to make sure I caught everything.

Even more frustratingly, I've tried to study the book and analyze the writing style so I can mimic it myself, but...sad to say...I can't.  The plot just draws me in with the fire, the funnels and water, the books, Clarisse McCellan, the parlor families, the seashells, the river, the Hound, the...the...the...

...er...

So, what was I talking about?
Right.
Why I hate grammar.
Well, after reading this book, I've found some sentences in my own stories that potentially could be broken into one independent clause and one dependent clause, but my grammar instincts prohibit me from such actions.

I want to write:

     Keary turned to Tariq.  “You knew I was going to be watching you in Samuel’s office, didn’t you?”
     “Yeah.  I guessed it.  But don’t feel bad, Keary."

But my Grammar Warrior instincts kick in, and I end up writing:

     "Yeah.  I guessed it, but don't feel bad..."

It rushes too much, too emptily, too...ehhh...it lacks the proper feeling.  I'm starting to think that in order to keep a good flow, sometimes, deviations from punctuation are necessary.

But anyway...that's just food for thought.  :)

Write on!
Clove

Poetry

I am not a poet.

Out of the 10,000 hours it takes to become a literal master at anything, I've probably spent about...100 hours on poetry.  Only 9,900 more to go.  ;)
That doesn't mean I don't like poetry.
Some poems, I just look at, screw up my face, and say, "This has neither rhyme not rhythm.  WUT ID DEH POINT?!"  I'm sure I speak from naivety and inexperience and bla bla bla because I haven't worked in this particular branch of writing long enough.  Other poems, however, really hit home in a beautifully crafted paragraph of glory.  Some are sheer hilarious, some are gorgeous enough to make me sob, and some, I just respect because I know I really, really should respect if I want to say, someday, that I'm a poet.
*coughSHAKESPEAREcough*

Non-poet that I am, I pretty much chock poetry down to the art of fitting as much emotion, as many thoughts, and as many pictures as possible into as few words is possible.  I think it's a fun challenge and a delightful way to convey emotion.
If you don't think your poetry is good or don't know how to start your path to poem-dom, here are two easy tips in the art of rhythm and rhyme.

1. RHYTHM
2. RHYME.

Simple as that.

Hehehe, okay, sorry...but seriously, guys?  Poetry is put down, in my head, to just those two things.  I count each line and make sure they have the same number of syllables.

It's loathe to me to be this blunt, - 8 syllables

But gone the doe, no foe, no hunt - 8 syllables

Sometimes, I might do something tricky like...

How much longer can we wait? - 7 syllables

How much more is there to take? - 7 syllables

Take it all; I gave it all, - 7 syllables

We believed we couldn’t fall, - 7 syllables

And then we did. - 4 syllables

Where do we stand? - 4 syllables

We’re hunted now; - 4 syllables

I’ve no more plans, - 4 syllables

The rest of the poem ends in 4 syllable lines, even though I started with 7.  The point is that it flows and is readable.  Like with actual writing, read your poems out-loud and see if you have to add in any unnatural pauses.  If you do have those awkward silence, rearrange your syllables and words, add in adjectives, or change sentence structures.

The rhyming is just as simple.  In the above poem, I did a style of...

It’s loathe to me to be this blunt, - A

But gone the doe; no foe, no hunt. - A

I don’t see why you hide in wait, - B

To search what’s left except to hate. - B

The last syllable of line one (A) rhymes with the last syllable of line two (A).  B rhymes with B and so on and so forth.  Either every other line will rhyme or couplets (two consecutive lines) will rhyme.  Just as long as your rhyming pattern is fairly consistent, there should be no problems.

With those guidelines, you then smell the flowers, taste the rain, curl your toes into mud and.....

Write on!

Clove

A Spiritual Musing

"Then you shoot me," I say furiously, shoving the weapons back at him. "You shoot me and go home and live with it!"  And as I say it, I know death right here, right now, would be...easier... 
~The Hunger Games 

And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him.  There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam.  Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound.
~Fahrenheit 451

Pain, agony, excruciation; burning, fire, coals; identity, identity, identity.
The backwards worlds depicted by dystopian adventure novels.

"What is it with the masses who mindlessly read these books with such succulent satisfaction?  These books are horrible and vice-ridden.  They are bloody, they are sad, they are full of sacrifice, murder, and lost love.  They teach us evil.  My daughter mimics Katniss; my son mimics Gale.  I find myself thinking like Montag, like Haymitch, like Four.  The books will be our destruction."

The voices of those concerned with modern-day novels ring true to the above paragraph.

If you brush aside the thick, dusty layer of Edward-versus-Jacob fangirls, the I-want-to-be-like-Peeta-Mellark fanboys, and all the grime in between, what are you finding?  Is it mimicry?  Is it disdain?  Is it a desire to transcend?

Yes.

But wait.

First, take a large step back.  Very far back.  Israel, Babylon, Ancient Greece, Rome - Plutarch, Livy, Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, Plato, the Pentateuch.  Who played the central role in their stories and literature works?  God, gods, the hierarchy of the heavens.  Disproving gods, worshipping gods, ignoring gods, gods, gods, gods.
Then a short step forward.  Renaissance, the Neo-Classical era, the Romantic era.  Who played the central role in their books and self-help novels?  Man.  Does man need to be more creative, or does man need to be more rational and restrained?  Should man seek logic and order or should man seek random wildness?

We sought salvation in our written works.
Each story, no matter how absurd or menacing, is merely a copy of the Gospel.
In the ancient times, we, mankind, sought salvation from the gods; our gods were the protagonists, and our gods aided us to victory, to satisfaction, to happiness.  But did we ever feel our gods' deliverance outside of their papyrus pages?
No.
Then what of man?  Did we ever find what we sought for in ourselves by Neoclassicism or Romanticism?  By Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, was anyone of us capable of mastering the thirteen virtues?  Was happiness obtained?
No.
Wars went on, fights still held, people died.  Broken love, broken life, broken media, broken politics, broken economics, broken, broken, broken.  Shattered, smashed, cremated, and the ashes burned again, then scattered, not in a single river, but over an ocean, one dust particle for every square mile.

Another step forward.
Modern day.
Mankind already "proved" that gods cannot save us, that man cannot save himself...
...then what?
What are we seeking?

Dystopian novels are only the logical gut-reflex to this dilemma.  Either we push aside those voices hissing in our ears, saying, "You have no hope, you have no hope, you are not happy, not happy at all," or we admit our failure.  If we truly recognize our loss, which many good authors do, we cannot live on by merely blinding ourselves to our reality.
Finally, mankind, though subconsciously, is realizing that he is HELPLESS.  In thriller books, romance books, especially those books with dark, confused characters who shroud themselves in a misty haze of their own base need for survival, readers seek to find identity and blame the blur of voices on the portion of the world that would choose to blind themselves to reality.

So.

Can you now see the logic in modern day dystopian novels?
By process of elimination, we, collective mankind, have ruled out all sources of salvation, beginning with God Himself.  Postmodernism pervades our world, saying there is no truth while, on the contrary, there is truth, but we have already unanimously denied it as a lie.

If you're a Christian author, I challenge you to define right from wrong in your novels.  Sure, you could do something interesting like Divergent, where the main character has no idea if what she is doing is good or evil, but please, please, please make it known that, in the end, your character did make the right choice, even if the sacrifice is heavy.

Write on!
Clove

Freestylin'

It's been six days since I last posted, and I've sat down at the computer each of those days, pondering what to blog about but ending up empty-handed every single time.  I guess that's because I've so preoccupied with other projects.

--My teacher gave me back an old, old, 120 page+ edit of DWBSN that I gave her, and I'm reviewing the text, copying some phrases and sentences that I like before I trash the rest.
--I'm still working on the co-story that Josh and I are writing.  The first novel I ever started was in the fantasy genre, and I'm heading back there now with great anticipation.  The challenge of creating an entirely new world is thrilling...and challenging!  x)
--I've put the finishing touches on my birthday present story to this guy.  After his birthday, I'll be posting it here in three parts.  (It's really, really long.  I started, thinking it'd be about 9-12 pages, but the words just kept coming.  All in all, it's 50 pages, ladies and gents, 50 pages of drugs, assassins, an Organization, and Japanese weapons.  Fun stuff.)
--I found myself writing fan-poetry for an anime I finally just finished - Fate/Zero.  That's been taking up some of my time.
--Of course, I'm still plugging away at the story that you all are seeing here every month.  Chapter 3 is on the way; I have two editors who are giving it a thorough scan, and they're not quite done yet.

That said...

I wanted to discuss freestyle-rapping, which, I know, I know, isn't what you're expecting to read on a writing blog.  Just hang in there until I make my point.
Old-school freestyle-rapping used to be where one person would rap impromptu without music and make up rhymes that either made sense or, more than not, didn't.  Nowadays, freestyle-rapping is basically the same thing, only the lyrics are pre-written.  Some people will do rap battles, where they try to use ingenuity, quick-thinking, and puns to, on-the-spot, diss their opponent.
(Maybe you've done something of the sort with a sibling...?)

Now, to get to my point, I'm here to encourage you all to become freestyle poets.

There must be a name for this exercise, but as far as I'm concerned, there isn't.  I'll just call it freestyle poetry, and if I'm wrong, correct me.  Freestyle poetry is where you write a speech that has rhyme but no rhythm.  If you want an example of freestyled poetry that I've done, you can click here.

I honestly love freestyle poetry.  I write a speech, then sit in front of a computer for hours, switching out words for other words that rhyme.  In fact, I do it all the time.  My mind has gotten so wrapped around this hobby of mine, that I fear I'm intertwined with a need to incessantly rhyme...
...
Yup.

Write on!
Clove