yWriter

I found this word processor someone made specifically for writers, it has different sections for chapters, scenes and characters. It’s always good to be organized in writing, I’ve lost a lot of pieces to the endless ‘My Documents’ file on my computer at home. That’s one of the coolest things about blogging, it’s all pretty well manageable and you’ll never lose these posts unless the website disappears or something. All and all though I’d say blogging hasn’t come naturally to me, it’s kind of difficult to think of topics every day but I’ve learned that i just need to step it up and start reading the news more and over all just write more. The more I write these blogs the better i get at thinking of topics and ways to write about them so it really is a positive tool for aspiring writers.

Speech Writing

I stumbled across this article on the Time website about how Barrack Obama writes his speeches.

“When you’re working with Senator Obama the main player on a speech is Senator Obama,” Axelrod said. “He is the best speechwriter in the group and he knows what he wants to say and he generally says it better than anybody else would.”

I think this is a powerful way to view Obama, I’m not much for political talk but he is clearly an exceptionally literate person. If Obama does win the election it’s going to be a huge shock for American’s to go from President Bush, a figure head who most of us have taken to ignoring, to a well-spoken Barrack Obama.

Fantasy

If you look at my other posts, you’ll notice that I tend to deal in the realm of fantasy over anything else. Within fantasy I can deal with urban or obviously fantasic settings and characters, but everything I write is not likely to happen in reality.

If you look at my bookshelf, everything on it is fantasy. I love dealing with vampires, elves, mages, wizards, goblins, magic and everything else that shouldn’t be real. If it doesn’t exist, I want it to.

I think that I write fantasy because I live reality. I see it everyday, know what it’s like; I don’t need or want to write slice-of-life books when I’ve experienced it. I can’t experience fantasy in everyday life, so that’s what I want to write about.

However, in fantasy there are many subgenres and those are fun to explore. I prefer either modern/urban fantasy with modern settings and fantasic characters, like in Holly Black’s Tithe or what is called high fantasy, with the basic magic and sword-fighting. If I’m creating a magical world, chances are it’s a more medieval setting, with the fancy dresses and swords and everything.

What’s fun with fantasy is trying to find ways that other people haven’t done yet. There are only so many plots and most have already used; today’s writers are recycling the old ones established long ago. So I try to make it different. Tolkien’s elves were a dying race; mine are a dominant one that hunts humans for sport. Dragons are powerful, wise, and great lizards; mine perfer to function in their human form, thank you very much.

Fantasy opens up so many different paths that I don’t see in reality. Now, you’re welcome to disagree with me and challenge this, but reality and writing about doesn’t interest me. Fantasy… well, which path do I travel first?

A Random Thought/My Muse

I find that I do my best writing when I’m either feeling lustful or completely run down by life.   A lot of people find their muse in love or by reading the works of a favorite writer, but for me, I have to feel one of those extremes.  When I’ve had the worst week of my life and all I want to do is stay in bed for the weekend and not do anything, that is when the most beautiful combinations of words flow from my finger tips onto paper or the computer screen.  Or, when I’m in lust and fantasising about someone all day, I love what I write.  I also get the best feedback from these pieces of writing.

   I wonder if that’s just the way that I function, or if those feelings are just so strong for everyone that they open up a part of the mind that otherwise cannot be reached.  Those are the two times I feel more in touch with myself than any other time.  It’s like lust is a stronger feeling for me than love, or maybe I only think I’ve been in love before and I haven’t–and if that’s the case, then I wonder what my writing is like when I’m in love–is it better than my lust or hopelessness writing?  I suppose I’ll find out eventually. Anyway, this was just on my mind and I figured I’d blog about it because it had to do with writing…

The Seeing Eye

      As long as we are blogging about our personal interests, I thought it would be important to take a little time and talk about The Seeing Eye and Rowan’s involvement in it.  Not many people are aware of how to get involved with the RUFF program on campus and it discourages them from looking farther into it.  I will provide the link to Rowan’s Ruff website, as well as the official Seeing Eye website at the bottom of this post.

    At Rowan, you must have a group of four people willing to raise the puppy.  You then have to attend Rowan’s RUFF meetings, where you are given updates and puppy news, and you begin the application process.  You must have a GPA of at least 3.2, and in addition to an application you have to go through several interviews.  If you are selected to raise a puppy, one person in the group gets the puppy over the summer before school starts, and then when school starts the four group members move in together and take care of the dog.

    At first I thought that it would be a lot of work, but split up between four people it’s really not overwhelming.  The puppy just has to be diciplined, walked, fed, and most importantly, loved.  Our puppy’s name is Hogan and I’ve never seen a dog get more love and attention.  A lot of people think that we aren’t allowed to play with the dog because he is a seeing eye puppy and he can’t be pet when he is out walking, but Hogan gets plenty of playtime.  In our quad in Edgewood, there are three other dogs, as well as a few dogs that live off campus, and they get together in pairs on almost a daily basis to have playtime with each other.  Rowan also owns a house next to Chestnut that has a play yard for the dogs in the back.

   Overall it’s a really awesome thing to do to be able to raise a puppy and know that it will help a blind person become independent.  If you have at least two years of school left (because puppy raising takes about 18 months), and you are interested, definitely look into it.  If you don’t have a few friends that are willing to participate, you can always contact RUFF anyway, and they can try to place you with other people who are lacking group members.  I could not find any friends who wanted to raise the puppy with me, and one of the RUFF representatives here introduced me to three girls who needed a fourth group  member.  I now have three great new friends, and a puppy .

 

The Seeing Eye’s Website: http://www.seeingeye.org/default.aspx

Rowan’s RUFF Website: http://www.rowan.edu/studentaffairs/ruff/

Prose

I have to submit a prose piece for my creative writing class in 2 weeks so I’m starting to think about it a little bit now… and nothing is really coming to me. I need to take a trip; i think routine is the biggest inspiration killer… Ever since i can remember i’ve always wanted to play in a band so i could tour all the time and never be in one place, constantly meeting new people and seeing wild new places… that’s what i need to be able to write like i know i can. i think I’ll rent some Wes Anderson movies later, seeing his screen play and the way his characters tie together always inspires me. Plus he always has so much color and excitement in his sets; I’d love to be able to write in a way that would evoke similar imagery. It’s time to start working on my vocabulary… I think I’ll make the word ‘whimsical’ basis of this piece; that is, I’m going to try and make people say, “wow that’s whimsical” without ever using the word myself.

I’m going to write a prose piece about a whimsical car ride… One time in high school when my friends and I were way more reckless my buddy Brian picked me up from school in his minivan and just as I got in he shouted “lets play a game called Africa!” then he locked all the doors, started blasting a prayer station on the radio, turned the heat all the way up and peeled out of the parking lot chanting something that sounded like voodoo and waving his arms around as I swung across the back of the van. Barely 30 seconds later we hear “woop woop” and 5 minutes later we’re driving away with a ticket for peeling out in a school parking lot. I think I’ll write it as a dream piece where it’s just all these wild stories mixed together with almost poetic description and then at the end I wake up with a new haircut and decide not to sleep with scissors anymore.

This is what it looks like when I get frustrated and decide to just write for the sake of writing… maybe I’ll use bits of it.

Sick As Hell

Well, I’m sick as a dog, and so are a lot of other people. I got a sore throat, I gave it to my roommate, my roommate gave it to my friend, I gave it to a friend, and now we’ve got a classic campus outbreak. Figures.

And when I’m sick, I can’t write for crap. I’m totally unmotivated to do my schoolwork, especially when I feel like my brain is cooking. So, I’m walking aimlessly on Nyquil or whatever else I’m hopped up on, sweating and freezing at the same time, trying to write a paper as much as I’m trying to write my own stories.

The problem is I’m motivated to do neither. And I’m questioning whether or not other authors feel the same way. Is is possible to write when conditions are less than optimal, or do they have to be absolutely perfect to get any information down on the paper at all?

A Catalyst

“Anyway, I wrote the book because we’re all gonna die. In the loneliness of my life, with my father dead, my brother dead, my mother far away, my sister and wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world of sweet attention, but now are left to guide and dissapear their own way into the common dark of all our death.” Jack Kerouac

Everyone in the writing community has a different way of viewing Jack Kerouac’s work as a writer. Some may consider him a worthless drunk but others have ranked him as one of the greatest American writers of all time, and still others think him the father of modern American culture. I’ve read almost all of Kerouacs work and I see him as a deeply spiritual and personable writer. America has been lost ever since it lost him to alcoholism and could not pick up the ball.
When I look at all the magazines and television shows that have become popular in the past twenty years I feel like there is a huge lack of emotion. It’s like these media are trying to drag us away from our real human aesthetics and desires and make us into machines; perfection is a personal goal for the children of the technological revolution.
When I read Kerouac I feel revived, just listen to the audio in the youtube video I’ve posted above. The first line may be one of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard, a man describing the purpose of his life work to be a celebration of mortality, but listen to the transformation that takes place as he gets into talking about Dean Moriarty. Kerouac’s writing was about realizing the existential truth that life is fundamentally tragic but being able to still find beauty and justify going on.
Many of us undoubtedly have been touched deeply by tragedy already in our young lives, and still I see many others looking back at me through sheltered eyes. They don’t even feel death and it’s consequence from their cushioned lives and they show it with a defined lack of motivation. I write because I want to insight a fever in America.

In darkness a light shines.