Posts Tagged ‘ideas’

A Short Story That Is Not Going In The Collection Is Done

Posted: January 3, 2013 in ideas, short story, Writing
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If that’s not a creepy demonic possesion, I don’t know what is!

You know, I only have one or two more posts where I can use that sort of title before this collection of short stories is done with? Just shows how much progress I made during winter break.

Okay, so while I waited for the research materials I’ve been looking for to come in for me at the library, I wrote a short story about a possession gone horribly wrong…for the demon. It’s about ten pages and 2800 words long, and I already know which magazine I’m going to send it to. I hope this magazine accepts it; I submitted to them years ago when i first started writing short stories for magazines. I even got a letter back from the editor saying I had potential, which only spurred me to continue writing short stories and sending them to the magazine. However, after a few rejections, I decided to hold off, to wait until I had written a truly extraordinary story before I submitted to them.

And I think with this story, I could do it. I could get published in this magazine. The story I wrote is different than other stories about possessions, and my voice has really matured and become unique in the years since I last submitted to them. I’ve learned a few tricks, polished a few skills. Heck, I’ve gotten short stories published in other places! I think it really is time I sent something to them, and I think this short story, which I entitled “Ownership”, is the one I should send to them. I hope they like it after I send it to them.

Well, that’s all for now. I hope you have a good evening, and I hope to have more writing updates in the time to come. The next short story I write will be about an autistic child attending a Native American healing ceremony, where weird things start to happen. I can’t wait to get the research done so I can start writing the final short story for the collection. Hopefully, I’ll have the collection out by May, when the Spring Semester ends for me, and then I can put it online.

And I hope you all like it. Because if I get good reviews and if a lot of people download copies, I’ll feel richer than Bill Gates, because I know people really like what I’m writing and they want to read it. That’s better than all the stocks in Microsoft combined, although the royalties from sales would definitely be nice, especially when it comes to paying for tuition, rent, and other needs I have.

Well, like I said before, good night everybody.

Writing as an Exorcism

Posted: January 1, 2013 in Reflections, Writing
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“Help, I’m stuck in a human body! Call a priest!”

Lately I’ve come to see the act of writing in a whole different light. Yes, writing for me is sharing my twisted imagination with the masses, that’s always been a fact. And writing is certainly a creative outlet for me. However, writing for me is also a form of exorcism. What do I mean by this? Allow me to explain:

When I have a story, until I start to write it down the story stays stored in my mind. However, in the ever-present chaos of my mind, the story takes on a fluid quality. Ideas and aspects for the story change every second, with some things being added in, others being taken out, and others evolving or taking on a new shape. Frankly, it’s a little annoying that the stories stored in my head can’t stay in the same shape for much longer than a day or so.

But when I start to outline the story, especially when it’s a novel, the story starts to calm down a little. And when I finally write it down, the story starts to solidify, to take on a definite form. Finally the story, once written out, is now concrete, immutable. The only thing that can change the story now is my will or the suggestion of an editor, and that is not experimental change like in my head, but change that is meant to improve the story once it has been enacted.

So in a strange way, writing for me is a two-part exorcism: I am exorcising the story from my head and onto paper, through which I can share it with as many people as I want, and it is an exorcism on the story, taking out that mercurial aspect and allowing the story to harden into a definite form that doesn’t change on me or the readers. And since I’m constantly coming up with ideas for stories, I have plenty of exorcising to do!

So in this new year of 2013, I hope to exorcise plenty of stories and share them with you. Wish me luck, and I wish you all a Happy New Year!

The Third Short Story For the Collection Is Done

Posted: December 26, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’m on a roll! Today I finished the third short story for my scary story collection, The Quiet Game. Note: the name of the collection is The Quiet Game. The name of the short story is Samson Weiss’s Curse, and it’s a short story about a dybbuk haunting a senator over something the senator’s grandfather did several years ago. I think my father, who’s a rabbi and has told me for years to try writing something based on my experiences or on something that I know, will be happy to read this one, as it contains a spirit from Jewish folklore and two of the characters have Jewish last names, and one has a Jewish first name.

For those of you who don’t know, a dybbuk is the spirit of a dead person who comes back and possesses a living human being. Dybbuks have been featured in a few plays and stories, and the recent horror film The Possession, which I reviewed, is about a dybbuk. After watching that film and another film with a dybbuk as the antagoinst, I wanted to write a dybbuk story for myself, but I couldn’t think of a good idea for a dybbuk story beyond someone getting possessed. But then about a month ago, I saw an episode of the TV show Ghost Adventures where the location being investigated had involved some miners breaking into a vault and how two of the miners were double-crossed by an unknown third miner in the end. I can’t remember exactly which episode it was that I watched, but I remember wondering what would happen if the ghost of one of those miners came back and sought revenge, and wondering what had happened to the third miner afterwards. I already had the dybbuk idea, so I decided to incorporate the two ideas together and I got the basis for Samson Weiss’s Curse.

Writing this one was a lot of fun, because as I wrote I kept adding in a bunch of creepy aspects that I hadn’t originally envisioned in the story, including swarming bugs and creepy telephone calls. I also had planned a darker ending for the story, but that seemed anticlimatic once I actually got to the climax, so I decided to change the climax to something happier and with a bit of mystery. I have to say, I like this new ending better, but I bet there’s a lot I could improve upon and so I’m going to hand this story off to a friend to look at and critique.

Now I’m done writing for the day. Tomorrow I’ll start the fourth short story in the collection, and maybe I’ll get it done by the end of the weekend. The way I’m writing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the final collection comes out in late March, early Apirl, right in time for Passover. Thanks for reading, and wish me luck.

The First Short Story For The Collection Is Finished

Posted: December 20, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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And what a short story it was! It scared me a little during the writing process. Me! And I’m the guy who thanks Mrs. Voorhees for her hockey-masked son Jason. Tells you what sort of a story it is.

Now, how can I tell you about this short story without giving too much away? Well first, it’s longer than the average short story. But then again, this is for a collection. Most writers who release collections will make their short stories a little longer than usual just because they can. Stephen King definitely does it a few times, even if his stories end up as novellas in the collection. Thankfully this one didn’t get to novella length (20k-40k words) but it’s longer than usual.

But like I said, this story scared me. Why? Well, imagine yourself placed in a situation like The Hunger Games, where you’re in a battle you don’t want to be in and someone else is controlling everything that’s going on. Even worse, it’s a psychological battle. No weapons, just some crazy crap that’s messing with your head. It can be taxing, especially if you’re in a space that doesn’t get much bigger than your high school campus.

And then I added a few other things. For one, I added a religious zealot with a bit of charisma and a thing for power? Well, after every disaster–real or just percieved in your head (I’m talking to Clint Eastwood and Chuck Norris on the latter)–there’s always someone saying the world’s about to end and we better do as s/he says or we’re all going to hell in a shopping cart. And occasionally, people believe them. Which leads to a bunch of problems.

Add a little doom and gloom, a bit of Celtic/English mythology, and my disturbed mind, you get a rabbit’s hole that scares the person who dug it. Nice!

Oh, I forgot to tell you the name of this short story. It’s called “The Quiet Game”, and I think I’ll also make it the title of the collection. It feels like the right thing to do, and it was the right choice to write this story first. I like it, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

But first, I’ve got some editing to do, including turning a male character into a female character, because if the character’s male, there’s a romantic element in this story, and I just don’t want that there. So I’ll take it out and turn the character female. No romantic element, but still plenty of emotion and psychological terror. It’ll be awesome.

Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to take a shower and then watch the original Die Hard movie, because the new one is coming out in two months and I’m psyched to see it. Tomorrow I’ll do the editing, send it off to a friend, and then I’ll start on something else.

Trust me, this next story will be something else. It’s based on a friend’s experience, but it’s given the Rami Ungar treatment, so you know it’ll come out twisted and freaky!

A Paper-Clip of Short Stories

Posted: December 12, 2012 in ideas, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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I’ve received a lot of support from friends, family, and readers on the possibility that after I finish Snake, I could work on some short stories and possibly turn that into a collection, and publish it before I publish Reborn City or Snake. Well, I’m still a little undecided on that, but I’m definitely taking some time this vacation to write a few short stories. I actually picked out five of the fifteen ideas I had amassed on my tack board and put them on a paper-clip. And I don’t mean I had some ideas, wrote them on pieces of paper, and paper-clipped them together. What I meant was, I put down some short story ideas on pieces of paper, and then poked them with the business end of a paper-clip. I’d take a photo with my camera and post it here on my blog, but my writing is big and recognizable. There’d be no point if one of my stories gets stolen.

So I’ve selected my short stories. When I get home tomorrow and I finish Snake, I’ll start working on them. Shouldn’t take me too long, especially if I’m not distracted by anything. Unfortunately I tend to get very distracted somedays, so hopefully I can keep my mind on work long enough to make some progress.

So, if anyone is wondering on the short stories I’ll be working on, here’s the ideas I have, without anything that’ll give away anything important:

  • An isolated girl’s school becomes even more isolated one morning, and something dark is beneath it all…
  • A man trying to go clean gets a strange and spooky experience while going cold turkey…
  • A politician running for reelection gets a very deadly and undead visitor while in an old mining town…
  • There’s an old, abandoned hospital on the outskirts of town with a bloody history. And that history is very much alive…
  • A young boy with autism gets an encounter with the spirit world, and his small world might get a shock that’ll shatter it to pieces…

Sounds pretty awesome, right? Especially with the … after every idea. And if, God forbid, the two short stories I sent out recently get rejected, I could add them to this list; they’d make a great collection. Either way, 5 and 7 are lucky numbers for me, so either way I’m good.

Now assuming I decide to do a collection, what should I call it? Definitely nothing with the word “paper-clip” in it; that’d sound too comedic for what I’m doing. Perhaps “The Bells At Dusk”? Or “Eyes in the Smoke”? Or perhaps I’ll take a title from one of these short stories. Who knows? Any suggestions would be great.

Well, I’ve got work to do. Blog on you later!

A Story For The Black Dog

Posted: December 3, 2012 in ideas, Living and Life, short story, Writing
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Peek-a-boo! Woof!

Peek-a-boo! Woof!

Well, I’ve finally come up with an idea for a story that features a black dog spirit, and it came from the most unexpected place. You see, I was writing the latest chapter of Snake while listening to some Native American meditation music on YouTube. I paused to go and take my medication, and while I was taking it, I had epiphany: why not bring together the black dog spirit–normally a harbinger of death and occasionally an emissary of Hell–and meld it somehow with a Native American ceremony? It might require a lot of research, but the payoff would be enormous.

After I took my medication I went and filled out a sticky note, which I then put on my tackboard, bringing the new total to fifteen ideas on that tackboard. As you can tell, I’m going to be extremely busy when I’m done with Snake, but I finally figured out what I’m going to do with that idea for a story and I’m very happy with it.

Now, I know very little about Native American myths involving dogs. I know some of the Plain Indians equate the coyote with evil spirits and sometimes the Devil or King of Darkness. I’ve also heard of something called a “manitou”, but I think that’s some sort of shapeshifter. That’s all I really know, to tell you the truth. However one of my two majors is History, so we’re trained to do research. In addition, I’m at Ohio State, one of the biggest and most diverse schools in the country. More likely than not, we have a department that deals with Native American history and culture, and I’d be more than willing to ask them for help. And if I have to make a trip to our humungous library, all the better; I like to read, and I love that library (if you’ve seen it, you know why).

So before I go, I thought I’d embed the video that inspired me in this post. You should listen to it, and since it’s a long video, you should listen to it when you’re working on something and you need a little background music; you might find yourself inspired, or at the very least you’ll feel relaxed while you work. Enjoy.

So Many New Ideas But No Time At The Moment To Write Them

Posted: November 29, 2012 in ideas, Progress Report, short story, Writing
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Last night before I went to bed, I came up with another idea for a short story. It didn’t involve black dog spirits, but it did strike me as an interesting idea, so I got out a sticky note, wrote it down, and tacked it to the tackboard above my desk. The idea was someone who had an unusual addiction (I’m not going to say what this addiction is, for obvious reasons) and what happened to him when he tried to get clean (again, I’m not going to say what happens to him, just to be mysterious). I considered saving it for my creative writing class next semester, where the teacher has a bigger emphasis on literary fiction than my previous teacher, but I felt this story would be better written with some dark, supernatural elements, and besides, I wouldn’t know how to make the conflict interesting if it was just getting over his addiction (there’s enough stories out there, real and otherwise, that are like that).

This makes fourteen stories if you include the black dog idea that’s still forming in the mess that is my head. And yet with my school and work schedules and trying to write Snake in a timely manner (I started Chapter 68 last night), it’s difficult to find time to write them. I probably won’t even consider starting one of these stories until after I finish the first draft of Snake. So until then, I’ll just have to keep them on the tackboard till then.

But after Snake is finished? Well maybe I’ll do some short story writing. It’ll be fun and good practice for me. And who knows? I could get some of them published in magazines, or I could create a short story collection and put it online as an e-book for $1.99. I really won’t know until I start writing.

Until then, I’ll keep collecting ideas as they come to me. When Snake is done, I’ll have plenty of work to keep me occupied until Reborn City is published and I’m ready to tackle its sequel and editing Snake. And keeping busy is a good thing in my book.

Snake & Black Dogs

Posted: November 27, 2012 in ideas, Novel, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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Well, it’s been an interesting day for me, and I’m going to end it by watching NCIS and writing during the commercial breaks. I’ll start with the first chapter of Part IV of Snake (wasn’t that a small break?). This part is where the Snake is offered help from a powerful sponsor in his goal to bring down the mafia family he hates so much (why does he hate it? You’ll have to read the novel once it comes out).  This section is much smaller than Part III, with only sixteen chapters, but what sixteen chapters they are! The Snake doesn’t just meet allies: the family he’s fighting calls on its biggest and baddest hitman; someone comes dangerously close to the Snake’s true identity; the Snake has an episode; and there’s a sex scene. Yes, you read that right. A sex scene. It’ll be awkward to write.

WOOF!

As for the “Black Dogs” part of that title up there, I got another idea for a short story. Or perhaps the beginning of an idea for a short story. Black dogs are more than just cute; in folklore, particularly Celtic and English folklore, the black dog is a portent of death and a messenger of the underowrld. Occasionally they also double as benevolent spirits that watch over children and traverlers, but more often they are not something you want to run into on a dark, lonely night. So I’m going to write a short story based on the idea of a black dog spirit. First I’ve got to think of a context for it that’ll be exciting and not relatively used. Nothing’s come to mind yet, but I’ll come up with something; I did with the dybbuk idea.

You know, now that I think about it, this’ll make 13 short story ideas on my tackboard. What do you think? Should I create a collection of short stories and put it on the Internet as an e-book? I could write several of them over winter break. Let me know what you think.

The Power of a Symbol

Posted: November 11, 2012 in ideas, Reflections
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What does this image mean to you?

I started watching The Dark Knight trilogy recently. I’ve seen all the films, but never one after the other, especially with the most recent one, and I thought I’d see them with a new perspective if I watched them as an adult than if I watched only the first two as a teenager. I do have a better understanding of the concepts presented in the films, but I also started thinking about something apparent througout the movies: the power of symbols.

Symbols do a lot in The Dark Knight films, making the men who use them more than just men. Batman is a symbol of fear to the criminals of Gotham, something that can’t be tamed or limited by rules and regulations. The Joker is a symbol of chaos, a psychopath with a sadistic streak who destroys for the sake of destroying…and getting to wear a skirt. Harvey Dent is both a symbol of how one can be twisted and how one can be a lighthouse for good. There are numerous more examples I could use, but let’s face it, Batman is rife with people-as-symbols, and The Dark Knight trilogy goes to great lengths to point that out.

This has made me think about some of the major symbols that men and women embody in some other works of literature and film that I admire. The Phantom of the Opera is both a symbol of fear of the unknown, and a symbol of tragic beauty. V from V for Vendetta has become a symbol for overthrowing tyrannical government through unconventional means (whether that government is tyrannical or not depends on which hacker you ask). Lelouch Lamperouge, the protagonist from my favorite anime Code Geass, symbolizes both mystery, the struggle of every oppressed Japanese man, woman, and child, and finally unconquerable rebellion. Heck, I’m not even Christian, but I can see what Jesus and the cross do for so many Christians around the world!

Even in my own works, there are people who act as symbols. The Snake is a symbol of rebellion against the Camerlengo family, a symbol that some are willing to use to their advantage (see my excerpt a few posts back). And in a work I plan to write someday and a work that I plan to make my personal magnum opus, the main character references the Phantom of the Opera when he decides to take on the evil government in the story, becoming a symbol of revolution by donning a mask and doing things others can’t (I would have him reference Batman, but this guy is operating about a year before Batman ever hit the bookstands).

So what does this tell us, besides that the only examples I can think of are men? Well, that humans-as-symbols are extremely powerful, especially when they are able to cause a stir, a wave in a criminal underworld or in the working staff of an opera house. They represent that which is impossible, that which can’t be imagined, that which shouldn’t come to pass but passes anyway. Why? Well, that depends on a number of reasons. But the point is, a symbol is a powerful thing, and when a man embodies it, it becomes even more so.

Some Thoughts on “Dodi Li”

Posted: October 18, 2012 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Reflections, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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For those of you who have no idea what that title means, Dodi Li is a short story that I started this summer and that I’m rewriting before National Novel Writing Month starts in two weeks. It means “my darling” or “my beloved” in Hebrew and should not be confused with a popular Jewish song that is sung sometimes on Friday nights by Jews everywhere.

Dodi Li features a succubus, a demoness who visits men at night as a beautiful woman and steals their sperm in order to create demonic children or steal pieces of their soul through fornication, depending on what myths you believe. However my succubus, who I’ve named Umuruk (sounds like a name a succubus would have, right?) is not the antagonist of the story. Instead, she struggles to protect the other protagonist, a male she’s fallen in love with. Succubi have fallen in love with humans before, according to the folklore and stories I found by people who say they’ve had experiences with succubi (it’s on the Internet, so I can’t be sure if the writers are crazy or not, but I try to keep an open mind), and I decided to tap into that for this story.

The first draft was very plot-oriented, and sucked immensely. I decided to leave it alone until I could think of a way to make it better, and if I couldn’t, then it’d make a great learning experience. But yesterday in creative writing class, my teacher gave me an idea on how I could improve the story. So I went back and started to completely rewrite it, going until half-past ten last night, and then resuming for a little while this morning before class.

As I was heading to class, I realized something about my story: the main character, whose nine years old, and the antagonist, a 40-something with some mental issues, are the only male characters. All the rest are female: the doctor, the head nurse, the head of neurology, a possible detective character, and of course the succubus Umuruk, are all women, and all are women in positions of power that they use to help people.

I started to wonder if that might mean something, if my psyche was trying to tell me something through my writing. If it’s that I respect women in positions of power and that I think there should be more of them, that doesn’t surprise me at all; I grew up in a house full of women, my mom’s a rabbi, my boss is a woman, her boss is a woman, and I took a Women’s Studies course my first year at Ohio State, which I did very well in. So no surprise that powerful women show up in my story.

However, if it has something to do with the fact that Umuruk is able to help the main character more than these women, then I wonder what that might be saying. Perhaps even if women are educated and in positions of power, if they don’t occasionally open their minds to the impossible, then a mentally unbalanced man will hurt an innocent nine-year-old? That’s also a possibility.

In any case, once I finish the story I might understand more, and if I manage to get it published, you might be able to read it and give me some suggestions on what my Muse is trying to tell me.

Anyway, I’ve got some homework to do before I go to work, so I better get that taken care of right now. Have a nice day.

Oh, before I forget, something funny I have to tell you: I was talking to my history teacher after class today, and we had a really great discussion on the way out the building. You see, at the beginning of the semester, my teacher, whose focus is African History, told us that if any of us intentionally failed his class, he’d used magic he learned from tribal priests to enter our dreams and scare the heck out of us. Ever since then I’ve been trying on and off to get him to agree to teach me how to enter people’s dreams (can you blame me?).

At some point during our conversation, my teacher revealed he’d been joking, but I thought he’d been serious because he said it in such a serious way. This led to a discussion on witchcraft in different cultures, which led to a discussion on using magic and summoning stuff. That led to a discussion on spirits and possessions, and in the end, I ended up recommending my teacher to go see The Possession, which I reviewed back in September. Turns out, he agreed to see it. How about that?

Anyway, I think it’s funny, I have no idea what you think.

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