Ideas

I'm full of ideas for blog posts, but it always takes an undue amount of effort to sort out my loose thoughts and structure them into sensible words. It's almost as though my ideas are a waterfall and I stand at the bottom with a plastic cup trying to catch all of them. For some reason they always end up spilling over or not filling the the cup enough. It's difficult to get the right amount of an idea. I find myself thinking for days how great one of my ideas are, and then when I try and capture that idea into words it doesn't actually match up. 

That stands for every idea; not just blog posts. Be that in writing or life in general. I imagine a world whose magic is fueled by the hearts of deceased dragons; then when I write it I suffer through pages of cliches until I abandon the idea. I think--for once--to go for the girl; and then am left to wander when she chooses someone else anyways. I come up with an entire world on the brink of full scale war; and suddenly I am lost as to where the plot should go. I think I can make a career from a hobby; and am confronted with fears so great that I'm unsure I could accomplish it.

If you can't tell, I have a lot of ideas. And most of them fall through in the end. It's why I'm not published yet, or even have anything finished writing-wise. And life-wise that's why I'm such a mess. I have this insane lack of ability to finish. Perhaps, though, overcoming that will be the reason I continue doing what I do. Perhaps the feeling of "I finished this" will push me onward to greater tasks than before.

A Proposal on Reading

For writers of all sorts, the best piece of advice anyone can give is to read. Read, read, and read some more. Because if you don't read, how do you know what you like? Another great bit of advice you often hear as a writer is to write what you would want to read. And if you don't read? The obvious conclusion: you don't write.

A big part of reading, especially as a writer, is reading like a writer. When you read, you don't just dive into the story and submerge yourself into the characters and put yourself in the setting, though that's still important. No, as a writer, you've got to analyze. Analyze the style the author uses in certain situations, their overall voice, how they meld different styles together. Analyze how they establish the setting, how they keep you grounded in the reality they're creating, how they drive home the emotion of the locations. Analyze the characters themselves, how the author brings them to life, how they react to each other, how they act under duress, how they talk. You have to analyze how the author uses all of this to their advantage in the actual plot of the story, how they string everything together, where the beginning and end are, the pacing between each major event, the impact the climax and resolution really have upon the story. All of these things are majorly important as the writer reads anything.

The real problem begins, then, in deciding what stories to read? Many many people will say to read anything and everything you can get your hands on--which is true to an extent. However, I would like to argue that there are enough books published that if that you can easily get your hands in anything you want. The real issue at hand is choosing which books are more worth reading than others.

Lives, Lived, Will Live: Bioshock Infinite

 

Irrational Games' Bioshock Infinite is set in 1912, in the floating city of Columbia, and centers around the character Booker DeWitt. Booker's mission is to make his way into the city, retrieve the girl Elizabeth, and take her back to his employers. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt." It couldn't be simpler than that. Right...?

Reading: The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack - Mark Hodder

Everything that I read is not necessarily new. That doesn't stop it from being good or make it unreadable.That said, Mark Hodder's The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is a steampunk mystery novel that is acclaimed by many a steampunk reader, and I've finaly decided to pick it up and see what all the hubbub is about.

The story follows Sir Richard Francis Burton, an explorer (among many other things) whose reputation has been tarnished and his partner missing and most likely dead, as well as Algernon Charles Swinburn, an unsuccessful poet and friend of Burton's. The city of London is changing with new technologies and specialized animal species, as well as a division in the opinion of the population. These two are assigned to investigate a case that leads them to a strange apparition called Spring Heeled Jack and werewolves that terrorize London's East End. Their investigation will lead them to an age-defining event, and the possible discovery that the world they reside in shouldn't even exist.

Camp Nanowrimo: April, 2013

That's right. There's a camp for Nanowrimo. Seeing as my writing has been lacking, especially as of late, I've decided once and for all to participate. The idea of setting your wordcount goal at whatever you please is specifically appealing to me, which was the deciding factor in me doing it. I figure the boost of writing will pick me back up, and not only will I continue at my novel writing efforts, but also to pick this blog back up in earnest.

A toast. To writing. And to something new.