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

MONDAYS.

*stumble stumble stumble*

*plops in seat*

*turns on computer*

*groggily pulls up story document and stares at screen, mesmerized by shiny pixels*

Thirty minutes later...

*groggily shakes from stupor*

Nothing has been written.

*turns off computer*

*gets out of seat*

*stumble stumble stumble*

Okay, how many of us haven't had this kind of day?

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you...

MONDAYS.

Anyway, here are some song so emotionally charged, you can't help but writing something after listening to them:

Write on!
Clove

UF...ohhh...

If you all didn't know, for the past few months, I've been attempting to learn how to accurately write like a teenage/young adult male.  In the process of this task, I spent a lot of time talking to Ellen Potter and Anne Mazer (two of the most amazing female authors on the planet due to this) about their strategies, I spent a lot of time talking to my brother about his brain, and above all, I spent a lot, like hours and hours, of time, doing this:

"ULTIMAAATE...FRISBEE!!!"

In conclusion, I have come to learn that the easiest way to write like guys is to hang out with them for a little bit...or a lot, in my case.

But, in case if you, as a female author, don't want to do all that leg-work concerning technique, I'll spare you and just give you, a female author, 3 Tips to Aid Writing Like a Young Man.  (And note well, this is only as best as I have figured it out.  In the end, it's practically impossible for a guy to fully understand a girl and vice versa.)

That said.

Numero Uno.) Quit talking.

Honestly.

When searching for male-esque dialogue, I first tried to talk to guys and see what slang they'd use, if it was any different from us girls, if I could put my girl-to-dude conversation in place of a dude-to-dude conversation.

Yeahhh...no banana.

There's a boatload of difference between a guy/girl conversation and a guy conversation.

Trust me.

So, if you're searching for male-esque dialogue (or any funny dialogue), conveniently stick yourself somewhere behind a dude-conversation with a notebook and pen in hand as if you were doing homework and listen.

Stuff'll come, trust me.

Pro Tip: Bring something with which you can stuff your mouth.  If you pick the right guys, you're going to be snorting and giggling and smirking and making suppressed happy noises.  Young men are just funny people, and you don't want to blow your cover.  ^.^

2.) Don't go to Dad.  Do go to Brother.

I know, the first thing in your head when you're trying to write as a male is, "My Dad's a male.  I'll go ask him."

No, no, no.

If your dad has any sort of job that includes writing, you're going to get a very formal, businesslike voice when you ask for sample text.  That's meh-inspitation if you're shooting for a young man's voice.

On the other hand, if you happen to live in a mutualistic relationship of any sort with your teen male sibling, have at it.  I can't measure the number of things I've learned from Josh when he and I have talked.

Pro Tip: Don't alienate your siblings.  They're sooo useful when it comes to story ideas, especially the young ones.  How many times have I asked Joe or Kait a story question that they answered from an angle I never considered and totally could use?  Countless.

3.) Plaaay Ultimaaate Frisbeeeee!!!

Why?

BECAUSE IT'S FUN.

More specifically, you should play with guys.

Pro Tip: Learn how to throw and catch a frisbee before you begin.  It helps IMMENSELY.  Brownie points if you can do cool tricks with the frisbee as well; that always stands as a good thing.

Pro Tip: Make sure you already have a positive standing relationship with the guys you are playing against/with.  Otherwise...

Eh, just do.

As you play, don't get so sucked into winning that you're not paying attention to the things around you. Watch how guys interact, how they run, when they run, when they don't, and specifically what they say.

I've learned that it's really hard to guess how guys feel, and, the majority of the time, we girls feel things much more intensely.  We're the ones to get hung up over something, have indecisive moments, and cry at anger, sorrow, fear, happiness, envy, success, failure, spilled milk, burnt bread, cry, cry, cry.  Admit it; we cry a lot.

So when writing like guys, I prefer to express their emotions through dialogue, which includes a lot of squabbling when they're angry, quietness when they're sad, and joking when they're happy.  The more time you spend around a male's natural habitat, the easier male dialogue will become.

~ ~ ~

At a water fountain...

Josh, motioning at Jon: Ladies first.

Jon, going first: Pearls before swine.

Andrew: You're not even using that phrase correctly.

At a water fountain...

Jon, motioning at Josh: Ladies first.

Josh, going first: Beauty before age, ugly.

A: From the way that they run, you'd think that we're offering them as child sacrifices to Molech or something.
B: Just tell them that if they keep running, we will.

Jarod: One word: that hurts.
Josh: That’s two words, you idiot.

Daniel: Hey, Clove, this is my friend, Nathaniel, but feel free to call him Betsy.
Me: Hi, Betsy.
Nathaniel: And you can call him Sally.
Me: Hey, Sally.

A: Oh, there you guys are.  Where’s B?
C: He died of food poisoning.
D: No, he died in China.
E: He’s right behind you.
B: What’d I miss?
A: *facepalm*

E: You look tired.
A: I am.
E: So, how much sleep did you get last night?
A: Last night?  Or this morning?
E: Depending on what time it was when you went to sleep.
A: Then this morning.
E: *facepalm*  So, how much sleep did you get this morning?

Bob: Hey, Jon!

Jon: Yes, ma'am?

~ ~ ~

Write on!
Clove

Masterdom

Scientifically...
*takes out steel-rimmed, bridge-taped glasses and puts them on*
...it takes 10,000 hours of focused, involved practice to become a literal 'master' at something, thus when someone brags that he/she is a 'master commander', I just laugh.  (*pointed glare*  You know who you are.  :D)  10,000 hours of focused, involved practice is necessary to become a master at writing too, and folks, those 10,000 hours are hours I am not bragging.

I'm the person who loves to go back into memories and journal entries and read of all the inane things I did way back.....a few months ago.....
*clears throat*
I also like to do the same thing with my stories, and if you don't, I advise you to do so.  Because you increase in skill for every hour of determined practice you spend, if you wrote two hours every day, you'd knock out 728 hours every year.  At that rate, it'd take you under 14 years to become a master.  Not bad, huh?
By going back and looking at stuff I, currently somewhere around hour 2,184, wrote during hour 573 of my career, I find that I've transcended many, many errors.  Plus, old, unfinished stories tend to contain small flashes of gold that I can use in my current writing.  Very handy, isn't it?

Just a few thoughts for y'all.  What hour are you on, junior-writing-master?

Write on!
Clove

Is two reeeaaally better than one?

I'm about to fulfill my social resume as an author - soon enough, I will be joining a RP co-blog where a group of crazy, maniacal, distinctly-different teenagers group together to role play in a story, one chapter at a time.
It'll be a bla--mUAUAHahhauUauah--
Eh.
I am trying to decide if I want to role play a ninja or an assassin (they're essentially the same thing), and one of my closest friends was saying a vampire might be thrown in.  My brother is going to be a mythical creature called a Dkhotoan (think slate blue, wings, and super agile), and I think we may have some elves/queens.  Oh boyo.  x)
Until then, I thought I would go ahead and mark out the pros and cons of co-writing versus solo-writing:

CO-WRITING
Pros:
   -You don't have to deal with the nitty-gritty of an outline.  Whereas I would get stuck on one idea if I was soloing a story, my fellow author is always there to help me get out of seemingly inescapable plot holes.  As they say - two heads are better than one!
   -Insta-editor!  Just add coffee, generous compliments, and humility.
   -Half the actual writing!  Unless...if you decide to double a normal story's length and each write the length of one story...  ;)
   -Insta-anti-writer's-block!  If you ever hit writer's block, you always have your partner there to bug his/her eyes at you and say, "Why haven't you been writing?  Hm?  Hmhm?  Hmhmhmmm?!"
   -Quality time.  Personally, this is my favorite part of co-writing.  I've only co-written twice, and neither books are finished (though one will be).  Odd as it is, however, I don't mind that I have a half-finished story rotting in the empty corners of my computer.  I learned and am learning a lot about my writing partners; long chats about outlines, plot holes, plot, plot, plot, redoing plot, reworking plot, refilling plot, totally trashing plot, starting plot all over, and PLOT have taught me several skills about communication, empathy, and sincerity.
Cons:
   -Your partner is bound to annoy you.  This ties in with the last point of the above; if you have a writing-partner who agrees with your every word, I'd like to see your cloning machine.
   -Writing is slooow.  You have to agree on a final outline, you have to agree on characters' ages, expressions, and looks, you have to agree on the characters you each will be writing.  That's a TON more red-tape than there is in solo-writing.

SOLO-WRITING
Pros:
   -All decisions are up to you.  If you notice a loophole, you just find the most convenient way to close it.  If a character is inconsistent, you just rewrite as you wish.  If you are sitting down to deal with logistics like time of year, daytime, ages, and other numbers, you don't have to run everything by someone else.
   -You have more control over the characters.  They are your children, and you can make them do whatever horrors that you so desire.
   -You follow your own time schedule.  Frequently in co-writing, you make an outline, your partner finishes the first chapter, and then it's your turn; the pressure of someone standing behind you, waiting for you to finish so that he/she can begin the third chapter is nonexistent in solo-writing.
   -Nobody has to know what you're writing or all the flaws you make in the writing process.  For example, I think the people who got DWBSN after I had taken out Drew (a snooty character who belonged in a first-grade girls' book, not a romance novel) think I'm way better of an author than those who got the version of DWBSN with Drew in it.  We make silly mistakes like adding unnecessary characters and events, and when you write alone, you can make as many silly mistakes as you want, and no one will know.  Not so in co-writing.
Cons:
   -Solo-writing can be rather lonely at times.  When you first stare at a blank document or sheet of paper and take a deep sigh, you can see exactly how everything will transfer from your outline to the story, but it's still hard to take up a pen and write your first words.  (That's what I've been told, anyway...I personally love starting stories.)  At other times, your characters are being jerks, and they refuse to do what you want them to do.  Unlike with co-writing where you have someone else to team up with you against your creations, you're all...alone...
   -You make ten-thousand times more mistakes.  There have been countless times when I've mentioned a seemingly flawless plot idea to Josh (my brother and co-author), and he's deconstructed it and showed me all the flaws.  While that process is painful, it saves a BOATLOAD of rewriting.
   -When you're done with the story, no one else is there to celebrate with you.  You kind of just sit there, stare at the screen, scroll through all 100 pages or so, then do a happy dance in your seat and squeal a little maybe, but that's it.  Very anti-climactic, I found.

Hehehe, so there you have it!  I'll try to get you some material from the co-written story I'm doing (since we officially started writing), plus more of my solo-written story, and if I get permission, I'll also send out the link for the RP co-blog that me and my peeps are doing.

Write on!
Clove

Teardrops

I can honestly boast that I don't cry a bunch over characters from books or movies.  In fact, the number of times I've shed tears for a fictional someone is definitely countable on one hand.  Want the number?

Five times, ladies and gentlemen, five times.

Either I haven't seen enough movies/read enough books or my heart is just that cold.

Or...to avoid the either/or fallacy, I'll offer a third suggestion: after writing for so long, I've learned to look at plots with the eye of an analyst, which means that I rarely connect with the true emotion of a story.  When I do connect, it means the character development was really, really well done.

To share:

5.) Gandalf and Boromir - Fellowship of the Ring.

This is the only one I'm not entirely accrediting to character development.  I'm giving the credit to the music (I cry at music all the time) and to the fact that I was watching this at 3 in the morning after a long day of swimming, tubing, and jet-skiing...and also to the fact that I was watching on a HUGE flat-screen TV with the volume up WAY high.

I totally knew Gandalf was going to try bungee jumping without a cord, and I totally knew Boromir was going to play William Tell.  I had read the book beforehand, but as soon as the music cued in, my eyeballs were melting.

It's still a good watch and read.

4.) Up.

HOW DID A DISNEY MOVIE GET ON HERE???

Guys.

Up was awesome.

I don't care if it was Disney.

I'm not going to spoil this one since it's not quite so old, and if you haven't seen it, SEE IT.  However, I will say this: Disney properly portrayed how love shifts and expands from a newly-wed husband and wife to husband and wife and children, and they did it in a spectacularly sweet, but not overly mawkish, manner.  MOVING, PEOPLES, MOVING.

3.) Toy Story 3.

AAAGGGHHH!!!  IT'S ANOTHER DISNEY MOVIE!!!

Sorry.

Disney did it right again.  They worked up your love for the Space Ranger and Cowboy in two previous movies, and just when you sit down to watch a new adventure, you realize...

ANDY'S GOING TO COLLEGE!!!

I have a certain affinity towards my own stuffed animals, so that makes up for some of my tears, but the rest of my tears were due to laughing at this:

2.) Edward Elric - Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

My tears for Edward were definitely stemmed in character development.  Edward, the protagonist in the 64 episode series, seems, at first, to be a cocky know-it-all with an aversion to milk.  He seems to be temperamental, whiny, and argumentative with both his younger brother and his friend-who-is-a-girl, Winrey, yet as the story progresses, you get to see his backstory, DUH, and realize that he has had it preeetty rough.

He makes sooo many great quotes, again, DUH, but I think the icing on the cake was Edward's loyalty to his brother.  It made me think of my own bros...hehehe.  And yes, I cried multiple times during the anime, but I feel no compunction for any tear shed.
*quiet fangirldom*

1.) Charlotte A. Cavatica the Spider - from Charlotte's Web.

I WAS SEVEN, OKAY?

But...even then, every time I watch Charlotte die in the 1973 film, I can still bawl like a baby if I let myself.  I think it has something to do with the theme of compassion.  Wilbur definitely does not deserve to live, he does not deserve to go to the fair, and he does not deserve the kindness of the farm animals, but out of the love of her heart, Charlotte spends full nights weaving words for Wilbur and making certain that he will live and avoid slaughter.  Even in her pregnancy, she cares for the undeserving.

Story of my life - I've been loved way more than I deserve.

Any sob-stories of your own?

Comment box is below!

Write on!

Clove

P.S. Sorry for the sporadic posts, guys...life has been absolutely crazy recently...

Between a constant headache due to a pinched nerve and PSAT studying, I've been fighting to just stay alive, nonetheless find time to write.  ;)