Carry Me Ohio

"I'm sorry that
I could never love you back
I could never care enough
In these last days"

"Children love to sing but
Then their voices slowly fade away"


This isn't so much to talk about writing (although I will mention that I am feeling the itch that only writing can scratch) as it is to talk about my life. This coming week is my last full week of the semester and living in the dorms.

I have my el ed portfolio to work on, as well as two essays, two projects, and two exams. All of which are due this coming week and next. After these two weeks, I go straight into my job. I will be working this job all summer, up until sometime in August.

Furthermore, I know my summer projects are to write and read, clean up my music library, play some games, and hopefully get into some photography.

What is this thing called life? What's the worth? Maybe...

April Marches On

That it does.

So I finished The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. I learned a few things and it was nice to see things from an editor's perspective. The most important thing I learned, and I know it's going to sound arrogant but I promise I'm not overplaying it, is that I am doing a lot of things RIGHT. That's right.

I'm not saying I'm the best writer or that my writing is flawless. All I'm saying is, from what I've read in the book and compared to my own writing (more recent writing, like within the past year) is that I'm doing things well. There are things I can improve on and develop more, sure, but I'm doing a lot of things right. Like I'd read a chapter and think of my writing and realize, "Wow, I've managed to avoid that or do that right." It's not that I just am a perfect writer, I've been developing my style for years. I had quite a bit of help in high school and later on, through both books and people. I used to do many of the things that Lukeman condemns but now I'm doing well.

I probably sound defensive in these paragraphs, sorry about that...I just didn't want to come off as arrogant.

In other news, I saw Once recently and while it was a good movie, it didn't change my life. However the song, Falling Slowly did. It is sung by Glen Hansard (of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova. And it is amazing. I loved it so much I am learning to play it myself on guitar. A wonderful, wonderful song...it's so beautiful and powerful, I just dig it so much.

Also, while I'm recommending music, be sure to check out Greg Graffin's (of Bad Religion) solo album Cold as the Clay. On it he covers a bunch of folk songs he grew up with in the most amazing way. Usually it reminds me of Autumn and Mississinewa (this War of 1812 reenactment I've gone to the past two years) but lately it's been reminding of that wonderful thing known as summer.

In sad news, I haven't written a lick in awhile but frankly guys...I'm too consumed by school. Occasionally, I'll write a bit of a short story or something but not much. I know, I know, I'm being quite the slacker. It's not that I don't have the time...I just don't have the quite environment I guess...I don't know all my excuses are lame but hopefully I will write quite a bit this summer.

LIFE GOAL: To publish my first novel before I graduate. I have approximately two and half years to go. I have two unfinished novels.

Goldmine

This will be really quick but I just wanted to exclaim how much I love the goldmine I wrote over the summer. I had these three short stories stored on an online drive (www.freedrive.com) and forgot about them for a while. But I recently went back and downloaded them to my macbook. They are phenomenal. One, the dog one mentioned in the previous post, is finished but the other two are still in progress. They are great. Morbid for sure, but wonderful.

One is currently titled Pizza and its a first person story about a guy that takes care of his 500-pound, morbidly obese neighbor. He just can't take it any more and cracks.

The other is called Ghost Writer. It's about this guy that discovers a type writer in his attic and a completed manuscript. The manuscript is gold and he publishes it. After a time, another appears, just as good as the last. They are all stories of tortured souls. It turns out these have been written by some sort of entity inhabiting this guy's house and he keeps taking credit for the stories. The ghost gets pissed and exacts his revenge. There are going to be many twists, however.

I really think these are publish-worthy stories so I am going to find time to work on them. Hoorah!

Two dogs walk into a bar...

I have no follow up to that. No punchline. It's not a real joke, sorry. I just thought it was nifty title because it ties in with this short story I wrote over the summer and recently went back and read. I'm really excited about this one.

I wouldn't classify it as horror per se, hell I don't know what you'd classify it as other than spec lit. It's about two abused dogs that overcome their tormenter in a morbidly amusing climax. It takes place all from the dogs perspective (even though it's technically third person). Personally, I think it's well done and, dare I say, well written. Ha-ha, anyway.

Also, in like a lion and out like a lamb, my ass. I had to walk about a mile in the rain with no umbrella. The rain soaked through my backpack and onto my macbook which barely survived. I'm currently using it to write this and I hope it holds together. I've saved all important documents onto a flash drive just in case but god damn. Fuck you, March.

Go ahead and eat that extra slice of pie (I almost said cake, but I don't like cake),
Will

We're lacking something, something good...

So it seems to me that every person who is really big into music has a band or artist that represents him. Mine, after long deliberation and years of listening to music, has become Third Eye Blind. As much as I feel other music represents me, Third Eye Blind will always hold the strongest place in my heart.

So here's a little taste of their greatness:

"A spaceman fucked an ape
Then cut out on the date
And now its much too late
The spaceship has escaped.

We're lacking something
Something good
Is this all for nothing
Show me the goods
Something good"
-"Darwin" by 3EB

Also, Audiosurf is the best ten bucks you'll ever spend on a game. Guaranteed.

EDIT:

I have update my word counts, finally. This includes all the bits and pieces I've written of both works. And yes, Skin and Bone is the title of my zombie-esque novel. Maybe in a few years I'll be published and be looking back at this post and have some sort of epiphany or whatever. Maybe nostalgia. Whatever.

Summertime and the wind is blowin' outside...

First of all, some interesting news. When people ask me how the Big Brother thing is going, I always say "not bad" or "OK" or "good," because truthfully, this is what they want to hear. Or rather, it is what I want them to hear. I didn't want to go into detail because it was something I was really struggling with. The truth is, it wasn't going well at all. The kid was fine, its just we never connected, I never felt like we clicked. We got along, just never connected.
The good news is that I am breaking off the relationship and starting anew at some point in time. I'm going to be very cautious this time. Before, I should have said 'no.' This time I will be wary in saying 'yes.'

In other news...

This is going to be a confession post, I feel, because the other thing I wanted to talk about was camp. It's been almost two years since I first set out for Waycross, a young, naive, soon-to-be college freshmen. I've grown up so much since then. I notice it all the time. But, and I say this without any sort of exaggeration or dishonesty, that summer of 2006 changed my life. It caused me to realize a lot of things. The most potent of which being that I miss everyone and everything from that summer. Sure there were downs (I missed vacation with my family, first time in fourteen years, I didn't make as much money as I could, etc) but there were so many ups to outweigh them.
The truth is, guys, not a day goes by that I don't think about the place. I'm heartsick for it. I am in love with it. But I can't go back. Partially for monetary reasons but also because going back would not be the same. The first time is the best, I think.
But I've discovered something else. I'm sure by now you're wondering, "You haven't talked about writing yet. Does this relate, somehow?" And it does. The only way I'm going to get this off my chest and out of my mind, the only way to cure my aching heart, is to write about it. Which means my camp novel is going to go through some changes. Nothing horribly drastic. I can keep about 90% of what I've written and probably only need to delete about 2%, which leaves the other 8% to revisions. The biggest change is that my main character, Andy, is not going to be an eighteen-year-old going to camp for the first time. He is going to be a 20-year-old returning to camp after two years. He hopes for the best and discovers the worst. He'll find love, loss, hope, and more. And he'll find something else. But I won't say it here.
So that is where I am in my life. I'm trying to overcome my hatred for things. Yet another confession. I hate, a lot. It's not like I mean to, it's just things bug me. So I hate. I can love, too, don't get me wrong. I'm a pretty caring guy. It's just a lot of things piss me off. I won't ever blog about them, I got that out of the way in my younger days (this is my fourth blog, by the way, the other three are gone because they were way too whiny--and political).
There. That's all for now. Take a breath because this isn't over yet. I'm just beginning. The change to my blog isn't just to lighten things up, it's to show that the future is bright. I have so much ahead of me. It's time to jump in.

Hang on to me and I'll hang onto you...til the end or until the day is through

The very last song on Carbon Leaf's album Indiana Summer is the best. It's over 7 minutes long but it's the best.

So I have been writing. A little bit here and there but more so than I've done in the past few months, which is great. Oddly enough, this is crunch time. I have all these projects and essays and shit do. I have all these video games and books and television and other stimuli but despite it all I've managed to write. Go figure.

I'm slowly connecting the dots on Skin and Bone, well the first part anyways. Once I finish that first part, I'll put it together with the second part in a word document (for word count purposes mostly and for formatting) and then update the word count here. I'm rather excited for whenever that happens. I probably only have about 40 more pages to write (about 10,000 words). That sounds like a lot but if you've ever gotten on a role, you know 40 pages is nothing, except countless hours that you don't even notice passing by.

Then I need to make some changes to part 2 but generally continue writing it. Thankfully part 2 isn't a bunch of pieces like part 1 was. Not so much in the beginning but later on I wrote scraps here and there and now I'm busy connecting them. Part 2 just needs to be altered a bit (if you've read it, what I'm doing is adding the kid's father into the mix. Just...don't get too attached to him). Then I need to continue it. It's at about 75 pages but I know exactly where it's going and it's going to kick ass.

Part 3 is the biggest part. I have actually written a few pieces here and there and I will certainly incorporate them into it. They're like teasers to myself, which is great.

My hope is to at least have part 1 and 2 finished by the beginning of May and hopefully have the first draft of this god damn thing done by next semester (mid-August for those keeping score at home).

I try not to have definite goals at the moment because it wold stress me out too much and make me feel bad if I didn't meet them. So right now I just have hopes which, as a theme in my story, is best.

Take care and rock on.