My Dark and Dangerous Past

"The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause." - Mark Twain


I was arguing with my mom earlier about something, and (like most of our arguments) it ended with her saying "That's the way it is, and when you're living on your own, you can do it differently." So I was thinking about that and...I only have LESS THAN 3 YEARS left until that time is pretty much here. I mean, I'll be at home over the summer and other breaks and stuff during college, but for the most part...God, it's so close. Yet so far away. 


(This post was going to be a lot longer and have a main topic. That topic involved me talking about the Shadow quartet and the Bible stories it references, so I got my Bible out of the closet to look up the quotes and...
Wow, I was angry during Confirmation class. I mocked the living hell out of the first few chapters of Genesis via the margins.
It's funny to read them, but I also feel bad now. I'm sorry for desecrating you.)


Of course, when I'm sitting in a room I was forced to sit in listening to a bunch of people talk about some stuff I disagree with and/or find offensive, I'm liable to be angry. At least I kept it to myself instead of bringing it up in discussion.


Come to think of it, some of the most "heretical" bits of fiction and poetry I've ever written were done before/during/after those classes...hm.


The Family Business was one of them. It was originally a lot darker and more serious (and a lot worse) and was about Jake's sister Eve instead of Jake. It was called Sweet and Sinister and didn't have much of a plot other than "Eve is the angel of death and malicious and darkly awesome." I was in 5th grade at the time. I think I started chapter 1 before setting it aside and re-writing it as Jake a year or two later.


Now that I'm finished with those classes, though, I'd like to say that I'm a lot less malevolent toward it all, but maybe that's just because I'm exposed to it a lot less. Sorry if I've upset anyone. :)


So there you have it: the backstory to a novel I intend to write eventually, some dark tidbits of me during middle school, and a paragraph of insight into my I Am Growing Up nerves. And also a nice quote from Mark Twain.

A Butt In Chair Day

Today was a Butt In Chair Day. I worked on my 50 characters for about an hour. I should be typing all of that up right now. Obviously, I'm not. I'll do that after dinner or something.

I've been taking characters from Clockwork, When The Sun Was In Your Hair, The Family Business, as well as some abandoned projects. I've also been creating new ones, of course.

And wow, has this assignment evolved The Family Business. I've worked out a good deal more stuff about the characters you know about, added several more (Bubos Puth being the most hilarious of them), and decided some things about the world Jake and co. live in. I might have to bring some of the descriptions next meeting just so you guys can have the information. Clockwork combined with Homework (that was a joke) will likely be keeping me too busy to work on much else. I also have to work in some time for me to do nothing more than play solitaire and watch YouTube videos (yeah, lazy me. Too bad.).

I haven't actually written the ones for Clockwork yet, so no astonishing things about that, but I did figure out some more motivations regarding the robots on the way home last night. No, they are not all going to be robots, by the way. You will just have to wait and see.

When The Sun Was In Your Hair, in case you don't know (which you probably don't), is what I worked on for the latter half of 8th grade. At the time, I intended it to one day be a published novel, but now I realize that it's pretty crappy stuff I don't want anyone to ever read ever (yet more people [just 2] have read it than have read the entirety of any of my other longer works). It sits sadly at around 52,000 words, abandoned. Looking back, I see that it was actually my form of self-psychotherapy. I needed to work through issues in my life and tell someone some things about me. Now I've either evolved out of those issues or have come to terms with them. I don't need Sun anymore. The characters are there (a version of one of them turned up later in 2009, oddly enough), and I'm using them for the assignment, but that's all the use it will give me, I believe, without so much editing that it would probably end up being an entirely different book.

We're in the computer lab for some of tomorrow typing up some of the character stuff, and then Monday and Tuesday will also be Butt In Chair days. 1.5 hours a day in which I can write with little relent while listening to my iPod if I so choose (which I didn't until I got to Evendara Diabbla, since I didn't have appropriate music for any of the other ones).

And my teacher for that class has such a bias towards us. The other classes (he teaches AP and Standard English 12) aren't allowed their iPods, gum, food, or a few other things we get. Ah, the unexpected perks of being a writer. :D

An Actual Post About Writing...With More Doctor Who Gushing

This blog is supposed to be about writing. It hasn't been. This post is to bring it back to center, at least a little bit.

I was going to start working on my NaNoWriMo (The Clockwork Experiment) again today. Really. I was. Something came up. Two things, actually.
The first was that my mom gave me some stuff I need to do today. Chores.
The second was the discovery that BBC America is playing Doctor Who ALL DAY up until around 10:00. This means that I will eat lunch, do the chores, and then be happily seated in front of the TV from at least 4:15 till the end of Part 2 of the End of Time. Unfortunately, this will probably not work out to ideal perfection. Dinner has to fit in somewhere, and my mom prefers us all to sit down and eat together at the table.
About this forthcoming epic finale: I will cry. I will most definitely cry, seeing as how immersed within any given episode I usually become. I cried when Rose got trapped in the parallel world. I almost cried when the Doctor was treated as the Master's dog. I teared up when he was painfully human in the Family of Blood (and whatever the first part of it was). I am not ashamed of this. It means that I enjoy the show. I'm bracing myself for whatever there is to come, and my fan gene is getting excited for the next season. I've dilligently stayed off of YouTube and away from spoilers. Tonight is going to be great.

But this is not supposed to be a post about me crying over the death of my doctor (yes, another is coming and he will probably be awesome, but too bad). This is supposed to be a post about writing. So here we go:

I've been rewriting the beginning of The Family Business (since all that there ever was of it was the beginning). It has gotten considerably longer, but still covers the same amount of plot and information. I read it to my sister (since I also read her the original). She was sad over the changing of a few minor details, but still liked it. More importantly, I am far more pleased with this new version than the old one. It reads better, has less tangents, more dialog, and is generally better. There's just one or two sentences I need to change before I bring it to writing club to read, since you can't turn on lights when there is no power.

On reading, I've started The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. It's fascinating, and I'm enjoying it immensely. I just have to wonder how much of the stuff is true (which is why I plan to read one of the books written precisely on that subject). Noetic Science is an extremely interesting topic.