The Resolutions Are Going Strong

Posted: February 4, 2013 in Living and Life
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I heard somewhere that 92% of New Year’s resolutions are broken before January 31st. I don’t know how accurate that statement is (it came from LL Cool J on NCIS: Los Angeles), but it sounds like it’s probably true, as it’s the number I’d expect for broken New Year’s resolutions. I’ve managed to keep mine for the past couple of years, mostly by saying I won’t make any resolutions that I know I can’t keep. This year was different though, as I wanted to lose some unnecessary body fat, eat healthier, and consume less sweets, among other things.

So far, I’ve made some progress. I’m visiting the gym more often, eating smaller portions, and I can’t remember when I had any cake or soft-serve yogurt. I know if my weight is changing dramatically, but I hope it has. My “among other things” have gotten slightly better too…though like the weight, it’s a work in progress. And no, I’m not telling you what the “among other things” are, because they’re more personal problems I have than weight. Have fun guessing what they are, though.

I’m not saying that people who are unable to keep their resolutions have something to be ashamed of. Change certainly doesn’t happen in a month (I’m directing that one to FOX News). And you don’t need the New Year to make a change. You can make a change any time. All you need is resolve and a support network. However, if you did make a sresolution on December 31st, 2012 or January 1, 2013 and you’ve managed to keep it, then good for you! Keep up the good work, friend.

What’s your resolution? And how’s it going for you?

The Superdome Goes Out, But I Light Up…With An Idea

Posted: February 3, 2013 in ideas, Scary Stuff, Writing
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I was watching a scary movie in my room while everyone else watched the Super Bowl downstairs. I’m telling you, besides college football and basketball, I don’t usually give a damn about sports. I only decided to support the Ravens out of some admiration for Edgar Allen Poe (“Nevermore!”). So I ended up in my room watching the sequel to The Haunting in Connecticut, which was decent compared to some other horror films I could name. After it’s done I check the news, and see the headline: 39-Minute Delay as Superdome Experiences Outage.

It’s at these moments, when I’ve just been in a scary state of mind and strange events happen, that ideas come to me. Scary ideas, horrific ideas, macabre ideas. And one did come to mind. I immediately start pondering the idea, meditate, and then start thinking of an idea. Suffice to say, I came up with a possible story. During the coming years, until I actually get around to writing it, that story will probably change around in my dark, zany mind until a fleshed-out story appears. At the very least, I have something here that I can put down on my ideas list.

Tell me, have you ever had any ideas that have come to you from strange events? Because I have an idea for a slasher film based on Hurricane Sandy also that came to me when I was walking into work after the third straight day of rain.

Am I Becoming More Literary?

Posted: February 3, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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I’ve taken two writing workshops so far at school, with the goal of becoming a better writer. Have I become a better writer? I like to think so; none of the stuff I’ve produced since my first meeting in the workshop last semester has gotten a “yay” or “nay” as far as being published, but I think that same stuff is a little bit better.

However I may also be a little more literary in my writing voice. This is because the workshops I take emphasize literary fiction, mostly because of the character development aspect of it, but also because some critics believe that genre fiction is predictable (I’ll admit that’s sometimes true, but quality genre fiction can do the same old shtick several times and each time make it seem original and utterly compelling, so there’s no reason to put it down). Because of this emphasis on literary fiction, I’ve had to write my stories with more of a literary verve than before, and I’ve definitely had to critique and merit the stories based on how good they are, both as literary fiction and as fiction in general.

Because of all that, my style might sound a little more literary than before. I mean, today at the library, taking a break from homework and school pressure, I started writing a story about a character contemplating suicide. Before, that would’ve had a more thriller bent. But now, I’m wondering how to draw out his character, how to make it seem natural and realistic, how to get people invested in the character. And I find myself drawing on everything I’ve written and read for these workshop classes I’ve been taking, and I find myself thinking, “I’m becoming something I swore I wouldn’t become.”

What I swroe I wouldn’t become was an author of literary fiction, which I feel for the most part is boring and slow and too realistic for my dark tastes. And even though I’ve resisted, some of the elements of literary writing have rubbed off on me. Am I sad or angry? I’m not sure. Maybe a little worried. I mean, I like genre fiction. If I write in a more literary style, will people stop liking my work as genre fiction? Or is the fact that I’m a bit better at writing realistic stories with character development only going to aid me in the future?

I have no clue. And truthfully, I won’t get a clue for a while, at least not until I’ve published a little more work and seen how people react to it.

What’s your opinion? Do you think having some literary aspects to your creative process and to your writing is a good thing, or a bad thing?

“Enigma” Is Rewritten

Posted: February 3, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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And I think I’ve thought of a new title for it: “In The Lady Ogre’s Den”. Why I call it that, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to read the story to find out.

I like how this new version of the story turned out. Sure the ending might need a tweak or two, but I think this version is much better. Hopefully I can make it even better on the second draft. I’ll know once I start editing.

Unfortunately I had to take out the Navajo elements from the story. The black wolf character identifies itself as a death wolf, but that’s as close as it gets to the original Navajo themes. Also, I expanded the role of the main character Jason’s father, mostly because I thought that for this version his role needed to be expanded a little.

Anyway, I hope to have this particular short story edited and finished soon. Until then, I’ll just keep writing. I’ve got plenty of ideas, and they’re just screaming to be implemented and turned into short stories.

Hope for updates soon, so I’ll let you know.

My Style Is My Own Style

Posted: February 2, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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I was talking to someone who lives on my floor today, and we started talking about our mutual interests in Stephen King and James Patterson. At some point during this conversation, he asked me if my style was very much like Stephen King’s. To which I replied, “My style is more like my style.”

I returned to this conversation just a moment ago, thinking about what goes into style. There’s word choice, tone, pacing, character archetypes, setting, conflicts, themes…all these and more go into style. But trying to categorize something like style in words never seems to do it justice. When we enjoy an author, we get a feel for their style, and that’s how we define style, by that feel we get. It makes us say, “This is definitely one of his/her books.”

And speaking of feel, I had a feeling that my friend was talking about my influences, so I told him I was very much influenced by King, Anne Rice, and Patterson, with a few others adding here and there. But it’s mostly those three, and they all have a very interesting style of their own: King has a rawness even after all these years. His plots are strange and convoluted, often veering to the science-fiction areas of fiction, especially in his recent work, and he’s not afraid to go to places most of us wouldn’t, be it a crass joke or a sex scene involving fifth graders.

Anne Rice is an aristocrat among writers. Her work is dark but deep, philosophical and full of supernatural mystery. There’s a sensual feel in her words, as if every gesture of her characters has a hidden flirtation in it, and the worlds she paints are rich and vivid, almost like a painting. But as her characters sometimes remark, no matter how pretty the painting, it’s always just a painting, and we are aware of the trappings we adore, and the things we possess, and we realize that they are all meaningless, that this entire world is meaningless if we detach from it, just like Rice’s characters are often detached from the world.

And James Patterson is fast-paced, full of emotive power and simple sentences that convey to us what is happening in the story. When we see into the minds of some of the characters, we can sense all their feelings, whether despairing, angry, or full of sick glee (especially true of the villains).

But my style? I’m probably not the best person to categorize it. It’s dark sure, and it does show that I’m not as experienced as others in my field. Occasionally you get a feel for the zany character that wrote my fiction (and don’t deny it, I’m plenty zany). But most of all, I think you can sense a yearning. Yes, yearning. I’m yearning, yearning to give the world fiction that people will like and that they’ll read and possibly review on Amazon and maybe talk about with others, whether to trash it or praise its merits. I’m yearning to give people that sort of work, and I think you can sense it when you read my creative work. Maybe that’ll go away as I gain more experience, but until then, it’s part of me and my writing.

In the meantime, I shall work on my stories, yearning or no yearning, and see if they can bring joy (or terror) to others. Wish me luck.

What’s your style like, if you have to define it? Who influenced you?

Another Shooting Happens, Yet Some Are Still Not Seeing The Point

Posted: February 1, 2013 in Politics and Leadership, Reflections
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Yesterday, a shooting occurred at a junior high school in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the news reports, the working theory is that two students got into some sort of fight, one pulled out a gun, and started shooting. The student who fired the gun is currently in custody, while one student who was shot in the neck survived, is in the hospital, and at last update, was in good condition, thank God. There were other minor injuries, but thank God no deaths. The school itself, as well as neighboring elementary and high schools were placed on lock down for two hours before students were released to their anxious, loving parents.

It seems President Obama was correct when he said we are suffering from an epidemic of violence. And speaking of the President, deliberations over gun control are still raging in Congress, where some still deny that we need stricter gun control. I mean come on! A kid nearly died of injuries because another student somehow got access to a gun and brought it to school with him! And yet there are people who use the craziest arguments to say that we need looser laws on guns. Let me repeat that: looser laws on gun control. And I italicize that for a reason: because it’s nuts, and it’s not a solution.

Now I know conservatives fear that stricter gun control laws will immediately lead to a dictatorship where guns are only held by the authroities and the people are powerless. This phobia of theirs is the basis of all their arguments. For this phobia, I recommend seeing a psychiatrist, because it’s just not going to happen. America is not going to turn into Nazi Germany, because Nazi Germany was the result of a madman taking advantage of a system with way more flaws than our system and a people who were unused to democracy and thought it was decadent. Does that sound like our system? Does that sound like our President?

Oh, and Mr. LaPierre, you said nearly fifteen years ago that you supported universal background checks (and so does a majority of the organization you head, by the way). What changed? All those checks from gun manufacturers go to your head? And to Ms. Treyor, the woman who told the thrilling story of a woman who used her legally-bought home weapon to defend herself against attackers, the woman in your story used a shotgun, not an assault rifle. The weapon in question would be allowed under an assault weapons ban. How can you not know this before you tell your story?

Honestly, I find the fact that I’m compelled to write these posts every now and again ludicrous. I mean seriously, we regulate driving and women’s uteruses more than we regulate guns! The last I checked, guns were killing more people than cars or uteruses! There needs to be some consistency here, folks! We need to stop this epidemic of violence.

And not only do we need stricter regulations on guns, we also need to do something for those with severe mental illnesses, especially those whose illnesses make them a danger either to themselves or others. Ever since deinstitutionalization in the fifties and sixties, there’s been no safety net for those with mental illnesses that aren’t helped by drugs. We need to reestablish a safety net, if only to see that these people can get the help they need. Sure it might cost us a little more in taxes, but it’s better than having another Sandy Hook, isn’t it?

So Congress, stop listening to the fear-mongering and the lobbyists with the checkbooks, and get to work doing your jobs, which is helping the American people. Because sitting around and quibbling over whether or not an imaginary dictatorship waiting to rise from Clint Eastwood’s friend the chair does not help us with our actual, not-imaginary problems.

To Write Means To Give Up Vanity

Posted: January 31, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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In my creative writing class yesterday we critiqued a story by one of our classmates, the story starring a rather interesting character. The “interesting” part I’ll decline to elaborate too much on in case this classmate edits this story and it gets published or something, but there is something that I can reveal: the main character is one of those writers who think they are the best thing since Shakespeare, that they are destined for greatness and anyone who dislikes or doesn’t understand their work is an idiot who couldn’t find brilliance if brilliance kicked them in the ass.

The funny thing is, every writer has been that writer at some point in their careers. I certainly was. It’s usually at that point where we can string together some semblance of a story together with any coherence to it. For those who discovered the joys of writing young, that’s usually in the teen years. I know for a while I thought all I had to do was write and eventually I’d come out with a novel that would be published within a year of finishing it, sell millions around the world, and I’d have an actress girlfriend whom I’d take to the premiere of the movie version with me.

Thank God, most of us outgrow this phase and realize that writing’s hard, good writing is harder, and writing anything that could be published is an amazing feat. For some, it’s only done once or twice in a lifetime. Others get a bit luckier, and they get published several times. A few of those get famous for it, or at the very least can afford to take up writing full-time (I’ll settle for that if I can’t be famous). All of these people who have been published though, even if it’s only once, were published after they got through this “I’m brilliant” phase.

Now, I know there’s no way I can prove that to you. It’s not as if I went to thousands of published writers, both contemporary and in the past, and asked them what they thought of themselves and their writing. But I have a reason why I think this, and here’s my reasoning: the writers who believe this way look at those who can’t understand or don’t like their work as fools, as annoyances. At best, they should be tolerated, but according to these writers, the world’s better off without them.

Sounds a little sociopathic, doesn’t it? But I’m sure it’s a thought that every writer who’s dreamed of greatness has thought, especially during this vanity phase. And it’s a horrible thought if we let it take hold, because it make others look less than human. Subhuman. Inferior. Weak. And a writer writes stories for these people. Not for fame or for money (though I’m sure some writers do write for those very reasons, and if they have any talent, they are wasting it by writing that way), but for the people. We want to share our work with people, to let them enjoy our fantasies. Maybe they’ll like them, maybe they won’t. But we write for them.

And if we denigrate the common man, if we think our readers and the masses are fools compared to our geniuses, if we writers can’t empathize with the persons reading our work, then we can’t expect them to like our work. At some level, they’ll see the emotions we’re trying to portray through our work are false and that we don’t really feel them like others do and they’ll reject the story.

This came up yesterday in class. “If the writer can’t empathize with the readers, he can’t make a good piece of fiction.” That’s something like what my teacher said, and I think it’s true. The writers who let go of this egotistical, self-centered vanity, who don’t let it take hold of them, they’re the ones who end up published, who are in the bookstores or in the magazines or on the e-readers. The ones that don’t…well, if we could tell what they think when they think about themselves and then think about you and me, I think we could really learn to love to hate them.

Of course, you can be a little vain about your first published work or something that’s gotten some success. But for God’s sake, don’t go around thinking you’re all that and a bag of chips until you’ve sold a million copies of your novel, and even then, resist those thoughts! Not even the prettiest gold digger will want to be near you if you make it obvious that you are only interested in yourself and she’s just another planet revolving around your light. There’s a reason pride’s one of the 7 Deadly Sins.

Well, that’s all for now. If I don’t post anything tomorrow, have a good weekend.

I Love Getting New Ideas To Modify My Bad Stories

Posted: January 30, 2013 in Progress Report, short story, Writing
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I often have ideas for short stories that start out promising but after I write them I look at them and I go, “How did I come up with this crap?” So I store the story away on my flash drive until I can come up with a way to make it better. Sometimes this takes days or weeks. Most of the time it only takes a few months, though I have one that’s been waiting for an idea for four years.

Remember the story I wrote over winter vacation about a possesion gone wrong? I had an idea that’ll basically mean total rewrite, but it’s a better story than it used to be. Perhaps I’ll be able to submit it afgter all!

Of course, this’ll have to wait until after I finish rewriting “Enigma”, which means there’s going to be a longer wait for the new stories I want to write. Virtual sigh, a writer’s work is never done, is it?

Well, I better get to work. Have a good night.

The Rise of the Television Serial Killer

Posted: January 29, 2013 in Reflections, Scary Stuff
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Occasionally, I have to devote a post to some hardcore horror subjects, and today I’ve got something I’d like to discuss: serial killers on TV. It used to be that serial killers were relegated to the worlds of novels, and films and they stayed there. Why wwas this? Well, novels had long ago ceased to be scandalous, and a novel was only called to be banned if there was something very extreme about it (such as the gratuitous and very kinky sex of Fifty Shades of Gray, or the popularity and messages seen or percieved in Harry Potter). A serial killer or two in a thriller novel wasn’t so bad, especially since there was always a detective or two there to hunt the freak and his mommy issues down (because until recently, it’s always been mommy issues; damn you pop psychology!). As for movies, they may be decried for their violence and sex, but those sorts of horror movies are restricted to adults mostly, and it is difficult for a kid to get in to watch them. Even with videos and DVDs, not a lot of parents show their kids serial killer films, afraid their kid might become the next James Holmes, Eric Harris, or Adam Lanza.

If a serial killer did show up on TV, usually it was in a crime show, and only just for one episode (two, if it was an episode arc meant to draw out something special from a character). There were never any shows about serial killers, the movies that featured them were heavily edited for sexual content and swearing before airing (never mind being fitted so that the end on the :00 or the :30), and otherwise they weren’t a part of the wasteland that is television. Why is that?

I think it might be due to that TV, unlike the movies, is open to everybody with a TV and a remote, so it would suck if a kid whose favorite game is fairy princess sees Michael Myers stab two teens who’ve just been copulating. Also, TV shows are marketed to get the most viewers, unlike movies, which are marketed to get the most money from moviegoers. Yes, there is a difference: movie studios get a portion of the sales from movie theaters when people see their movies, while television studios get profits when companies pay to have their ads air during the commercial breaks of popular shows. Since a broad variety of people watch TV in general, unlike a single movie, so the shows are marketed to get the most people watching in order to get the most ad fees.

Horror only appeals to a small number of the TV-watching population, and serial killers appeal to only part of the horror fan community. With that in mind, horror doesn’t often get airtime, let alone serial killers. When horror does make an appearance, usually it’s during Halloween or it’s an element of a crime or drama show (examples are Grimm or SVU).

But for reasons I’m not sure about, serial killers are appearing on TV these days, with their own shows or being a huge part of other shows. I think it might have something to do with a resurgence of serious horror on TV. We’ve got Walking Dead on A&E, American Horror Story on FX, and Supernatural on CW, serious horror shows without any of the comedy associated with earlier horror shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the girl-bonding themes of Charmed. No, this is serious horror with traditional tropes like angry spirits, demons, and zombies, and the critics and the viewers are eating it up like candy. I guess it was only a matter of time before serial killers started getting their fair share of airtime, and there’s been some pretty good sharing there:

There’s the Bloody Face character(s) of American Horror Story: Asylum, who’ve been bringing the terror to the TV screen; the cancelled J.J. Abrams show Alcatraz had several serial killer characters throughout the series; and The Following, a crime thriller about a serial killer with a following of killers he manipulates from his jail cell, is enjoying strong ratings on FOX. Plus there’s more: A&E is developing a prequel-that’s-not-a-prequel of the famous 1960 thriller movie Psycho called Bates Motel; and on NBC, there is a much talked about adaptation of the first Hannibal Lecter novel Red Dragon called Hannibal, that I am looking forward to with a vengeance.

So there are several shows featuring serial killers, some on the major networks such as FOX and NBC, and perhaps more will be made in the future. As a huge fan of serial killers (the fictional ones; I don’t condone killing outside of fiction) and a guy who penned a novel about one, I can’t complain about that. Thoguh don’t expect me to watch the Psycho prequel unless the reviews are phenomenal, because with a story like Psycho where the sort of psychosis that Norman Bates has isn’t even clearly defined, it’s going to be difficult to create a show based on how that psychosis developed and keep it interesting. Now if there was a show about Jason Voorhees between his supposed death and when he started killing…no, that’d still be difficult to sell to me.

Also, I would like to clarify some comments I made on this post. Although I said that parents don’t usually show serial killer-themed media to thier kids so they don’t become killers themselves, and that TV shows try not to traumatize kids for that same purpose, I don’t believe that violent movies/TV shows/videogames produce killers. Although there are studies that link excessive video game playing and violent behavior and stuff like that, there is no proof that these violent shows, movies, and games produce actual killers. And if there is any study that shows a correlation, feel free to show me, but I would like to remind you all that correlation doesn’t mean causation; I’ve taken two or three classes that have emphasized that point. Besides, the killers I listed above all had documented mental disorders, and there’s no study yet that show a correlation between movies/TV shows/video games and mental disorders.

And while we’re on the subject, mental disorder doesn’t necessarily mean dangerous. That’s very rare, and it usually doesn’t get to the level of violence we’ve seen in recent months when it is dangerous.

Now that I’ve said all this, I’d like to say good night.

Updates on “Enigma”

Posted: January 29, 2013 in Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’ve been tackling ways to make one of the short stories for The Quiet Game a better read, and so far I think I’m on the right track. For those of you who haven’t read previous articles on this subject, The Quiet Game is a collection of short stories I’m putting together, and “Enigma” is one of them. At the center of the story is an autistic boy named Jason, who sees a wolf spirit symbolizing death. I had originally started this story with a large Navajo mythology component, but I’m afraid I might have to drop that.

In fact, I may have to drop a lot. This story is getting a total rewrite, and so far a lot has changed. In fact, the title of this short story may have to be changed to reflect its new nature.

But I’m okay with that. I did it last semester when I turned “Doll’s Game” into “Animal Child”, doing a total rewrite to make a better story. I’m not sure where “Enigma” will go as a story, what’ll happen later in the plot, or what the name change will be, but I hope that by the end of it, I’ll have a much better story than I did when I wrote the first version. I’ll let you guys know how it came out.

Oh, and if you want more updates on The Quiet Game, please check out the Facebook page I set up. The address is below:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheQuietGameFiveTalesToChillYourBones

Have a nice day.

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