On Following Your Dreams (a work in progress)

1. 

I was sitting in the car with my brother, father and mother at Thanksgiving. We were driving back from dinner on the Cape and my dad had just said he was tired and would I mind driving. We were looking for an exit and my brother started talking about who amazing his internship was. I kind of wanted to hit him.

2. 

I had a friend in high school who was perfectly nice, if a little needy and clinging. When we graduated she became rather agoraphobic, and didn't go to college as a result. She wrote a piece for a website about something that happened on Bones, and Hart Hanson responded to it. The creator of the show responded to it. I hid her status updates on facebook after that. 

3. 

At Christmas we discovered all of the ornaments had gone missing in my mother's purge of the house. I offered to make some paper cranes, do a little search on google to figure out some paper flowers I could make. I ended up making a kusudama ball -- it involved folding 60 petals and a lot of patience. My brother told me I was doing "craftwork". It wasn't a compliment. 

4. 

I wrote an essay for an application recently that started out like so: "Most people like things that come easily to them – I am not most people." 

5. 

When I told my parents I wanted to be a doctor my mother looked at me and said "Really?" and not in the "Really? You think you can do that?" and not even in the "Really? That's so interesting" way. The kind of "Really?" that means: "Is that really what you ant to do with your life?" The kind of really that speaks to the fact that my mother dropped out of secondary school when she was 16 to go to art school, and now, years later, makes her living from following her art career. The kind of really that means: "I brought you up in privilege so you could find your dreams, and I don't think this is what your dream is."

6. 

Have you ever wanted something so bad it hurt?

7. 

I read this today and there was a longing there -- a scared knowledge that you are not good enough. Its what I feel all the time, the secret behind why I don't tell people about my writing, why I think I won't be able to publish anything ever. I want to live as much as possible, to let go of everything and free fall. I want to go to California and write TV, publish a novel, be someone. But I'm waiting. 


8. 
I'm too scared to jump.

History

Apparently I've given up on numbering these. Huh. Well. Josh wrote an entry about ideas and getting things going and privacy and it got me thinking about my own writing. I'm not going to post anything here -- you know first rights get messy when you post on websites, and I want to keep my options open right now, especially since, ew editing -- but it occurs to me that I talk and talk about writing, but my own history remains clouded.

You might not be interested, but this is my blog and you don't have to read my entries, so I'm going to do it anyways.

I don't remember when I started writing specifically. There is an old book I made when I was 6 about someone who lost a tooth, and old diaries in which I wrote things about fairy stories I wanted to write to evidence that its been a while. I can't remember not writing. I do remember the first time I started a novel. It was, in some ways amusingly, fanfiction for Julie of the Wolves. It was awful, and involved a ten year old kayaking down the east coast as part of a race. I did get about 60 illustrated pages in before I stopped, worried that it was too similar to Julie of the Wolves.

My next attempt was with Josh and Jasper. Jasper had gotten really into Warcraft 3000, and was telling us about the story and we got into a discussion on how to make a story that would work. This is the first and only time me and my brother have collaborated on anything creative together. Usually Jasper pisses me off too much for us to have conversations, so it seems like we're unlikely to start that again.

Sometime later I had a tutor who wrote a 14000 word story with me, which I illustrated and for the most part I plotted. I still have it somewhere, and its amusing to read. I sent it to a magazine once, but they said it was too long (what a surprise).

Serious fantasy came next because I started reading Tamora Pierce. There was the Five Worlds series which has since been lost, Rise of the Phoenix, which actually wasn't a terrible idea and when I put it up on the original fiction part of fanfiction.net got reviews that shaped my future writing career. I had a problem with pacing in seventh grade, and this person wrote an extensive review of how I should read more and needed to pace things better. I got mad at yelled at them later, but I wish I knew who it was now, because -- well everything changed after that.

There was Apinda, a novel I wrote with Felix and Rory's help the summer before ninth grade. It was basically an idea similar to The Old Kingdom but there were some clever bits in there about races and a world banded in seasons. Unfortunately I'm a bit too science-y to be willing to write it now, plus I would need to reestablish a connection to the characters, but it was an idea at the time. Apinda was the first novel I ever finished -- hand written in a notebook I have since lost. I loved that I finished it.

I was about to say I didn't know what I did between ninth and eleventh grade, but it occurs to me that it was the RP phase of my life where I wrote consistently for days and days and days with two people (for the most part). Cat, who helped shape Adair and Will, and Dany who helped create Jacob and Cnyderia. This was probably the most industrious part of my life, the time when I got the most practice and worked out my pacing issues. This was the part of my life where everything was about getting to write that post, to get things out. I often say that RPing is a great way to become a better writer (maybe not here) and it is because this was the point where characters became different from me, the point when I found my feet as a writer. RPing may have screwed me up socially (okay, it did. My second boyfriend came around during this time and I dumped him because he was cutting into my RP time... how screwed up is that? Also, I stopped being friends with certain people during this time, and in the end, the person I was closest with during RP vanished abruptly and without warning, leaving me with a host of issues that probably precipitated the break with my current (at the time) best friend... I have suffered for my art... or am just a screwy person, your choice) but it gave me a huge amount of practice (there was so much writing all the time) and cemented my love of writing.

After that novels started coming out every year. I started NaNo and wrote -- a lot. Since then I have written 6 novels in their entirety and have countless other projects which are all at least 10,000 words in (mostly because these days 1 chapter is 10,000 words x.x). There are two novels which I have begun the clean up of, three which are never going to see the light of day (partly because half of them got lost when my hard drive died, and partly because THEY ARE SO BAD), one which is actually all right, but is the first book in a series that I don't know where it is going and one which has been turned into a web graphic (a graphic novel on the web if I ever get around to putting it up).

Um... I don't know why I wrote this. I REALLY don't know why you read this if you got to the end. It was a bunch of rambling because I was reading Josh's post (have I mentioned Josh is my cousin? I don't know if I have, but he is, and probably the person out there who I have shared most of my creative endevers)  and he has this one project which he has been working on for years, and I was like "What have I got to show for a lifetime of writing?" (lifetime = 22 years thus far). This is what I've got to show. Seven novels, two that I would be willing to show to anyone. Well, show might be a little bit of a stretch.

After the RP phase, I stopped showing people my writing, or talking about the fact that I did write. People who knew me from before knew I loved to write, but people after often get surprised when I say I write, and their surprise surprises me. I could probably read something in to that, couldn't I?

On Comedy

There is something to be said about talent in the field of comedy, a personality that goes well with being funny. From the reading/watching documentaries about my favorite comedians (Eddie Izzard, Jon Stewart, Margaret Cho) the personality type that brings out stand up comedians is perseverance. It is not, in the end about being really funny (though I'm sure it helps). The ability to talk into the silence is what makes a good stand up comedian, and as I am currently writing a blog about writing and don't even have the guts to share my writing with my best friend, stand up is probably out for me. Not that I really wanted to do it.

The other kind of comedy you get is from writing. There are mediums to writing comedy and shows that come to mind almost at once for me: the straight up sitcom (Friends, How I Met Your Mother), the dramady (Castle, Psych), shows that are serious drama but have humorous moments and sarcastic comments (Sherlock, Doctor Who), novels that are humorous (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, David Sedaris pieces) and so many other forms that listing them would waste your time. So the question becomes, how in these contexts, do you create comedy. And do you want to include it (the answer is yes, always yes).

Comedy looks easy and is hard while drama looks hard and is easy. You can kill someone off in a dramatic, horrible fashion easily, but you can't just have someone walk into a room, slip on a banana peel and have people laugh. So the first thing I think about when attempting to write humorously is practice.

I am a big proponent of practice. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers, brings up the point that most people who are considered to be geniuses in their fields are in fact, simply well practiced -- a lot practiced in fact. He goes into a magical number, and while its interesting, its not the major point, you can read the book if you want to know more. The point is that practice is very important. I don't think I had really grasped this until I took a class in logic and discovered that the only way to learn logic was to do logic problems, over and over again until something clicked. But then it started bleeding into other parts of my life. I realized that chemistry made more sense because I had practiced problems in it to the point where it was intuition that brought about the answer, I found that when I was saying my characters were "telling me" how the story went, it was because I have read and written for a long time, and my mind was following the path that stories go in, piecing back extraneous information from the first chapter to make it very important without me even realizing it.

Practice allows you to write without thinking about it, which in turn, allows you to write effortlessly, discovering the story as it comes out of you, and seems natural instead of forced. So, shouldn't practice help you fumble for the joke, the moment that will be the most funny? I don't see why not. Most people say when you start attempting humor, you should write in the voice of someone you admire who is funny. When you do this, you are starting to ingrain the flow of your humor, you are practicing being funny the way you want to be.

So practice, its important, but there are other factors involved, of course. These factors do depend more on genre then on anything else -- after all the joke in a sitcom is not the same as the joke in a dramady, and the joke written for TV can fall flat on the page without an actor to prop it up.

I suppose though that there is a common theme to comedy and that is taking something and expressing it in a new and unexpected way -- juxtaposing situations, or physical gags -- but always leading to some greater truth. Comedy gets to express truth through making you laugh, and I think in some ways, it makes the lesson stick better that way.

Now, if only I could write it. I'm just going to attempt witty at the moment. ;)

A Thought

Kat wrote an EPIC fanfiction piece for Yuletide (now moved elsewhere, but this will give you an idea of what it is) which has somehow wormed its way into my brian (impulse was to say soul) and we are currently in the early stages of writing a TV series based on it. Its fun and stimulating, and its helping me (and Kat too) work on our humor writing (impulse was to say circuits. The RoseyBot 2010 has defective humor circuits, hopefully in the RoseyBot 2011 will have had some practice by the end of the year and a re-released model will be better equipped to provide you amusement), and work on being NOT SUPER DRAMATIC ALL THE TIME (evidenced by my use of caps).

Anyways, the point is not about the TV show or the fic, or humor writing -- though there may be a post on that in the future -- but rather it is about characters.

Shockingly, I like characters. I think people know this by now, but if not, I like characters. Why does this matter?

Well Kat made a comment about how one of her characters, a jock who was woken up at an odd hour, thought about going for a run. The comment goes something like this "I would never think to go for a run. [He] really has a mind of his own."

I hadn't thought about it much until now, but my response was "Of course he has a mind of his own, he's not you." Funnily enough though, once I did begin to think about it, the thought occurred to me that I remember the first time I thought something similar.

I must have been a freshman in college, and a character of mine, who is all about action, and not sitting still, and chasing after bad guys, was told she was going to have to read, and she threw a minor hissy fit over it. Reading, Sam stated (as her name was Sam), Is for boring people. I don't read.


I have never written a main character (being one of the POV characters) who doesn't read. Some of them are avid readers, others are not, but all of them were well read, and had a certain grasp on why literature was important. Sam was completely different. She wanted nothing to do with books because they bored her.

In other words, she had a mind of her own.

It was invigorating, exciting, and it gave me a whole different set of ideas about characters I already had in the world, and how I was just viewing a tiny facet of all of them. Sam was different and it was a minor miracle to me.

I think its good to get into the minds of other people -- after all it does take all kinds to make the world -- but I find it fascinating how there is a line at which you stand when you're a writer, the line between yourself and your characters, and with each successive character, with more practice, the line begins to sharpen rather then blur.

Has anyone else experienced the first moment when they truly felt separate from their characters? Was it great, or did you feel it was bittersweet?

A Moment

(Warning: mild Alias spoilers for season 1)

You know how you know you watch too much TV?

Kat and I had just finished Psych and were attempting to figure out our new show to watch. We were going to do Sports Night but finally settled on Alias as usually we watch shows I have watched, but Alias  is one that Kat has seen and I have not.

We got to the episode where Sydney decides to turn her father in and as soon as he walks into the meeting and says something about how Sydney can now learn the truth I go "Oh, it was the mother who was the spy."

Kat informs me that most people would not jump to that conclusion at once, but it makes good, economical sense to have the mother be the spy, and have Vaughn's dad be killed by this unknown agent who could be Sydney's dad -- too many characters can drag a show down.

So yes. I watch too much television because I knew without any real foreshadowing about this secret on Alias. I am a giant dork.

A Second List of Possibilities

Shows that have been added to my repertoire:

36. Psych

37. Alias

38. Futurama

39. Avatar: The Last Airbender

40. The IT Crowd 

41. Sherlock 

42. Black Adder

43. Sports Night

44. Episodes

45. Mr. Sunshine 

46. Dead Like Me
47. Fullmetal Alchemist

Influences

For a blog about analyzing writing, lately, its become slightly personal. I don't know where the last entry came from, except I didn't have anywhere else to put it. I need to update this more -- figure out where its actually going and coming from. But anyways, I'll do that later.

There was a facebook meme going around where you put down 15 authors who have influenced you. I think it was more about thoughts and ideas then about writing, but I think its applicable. I didn't post it on facebook, but I'll post it here along with commentary. They are listed in no particular order, just who I thought of first.

1. Douglas Adams 

Comedy has never been a strong suit of mine. If I do anything comedic, it is always sarcastic and dry; very British as my friends would say, though to be honest, I don't know if its true that British humor is so clear cut. I will, however, admit to the fact that Douglas Adams always makes me want to write comedic stuff. I once attempted it by emulating his voice -- putting the preposterous into a statement that appears to make sense -- and it was awful, just awful.

That being said, Douglas has influenced the way I view writing about space. My NaNo, which changed dramatically this year, was in space, and I often found myself borrowing from some of the more ridiculous things that Douglas does -- the names, and on occasion, the creatures. There was a lot of creative energy, imagination and plan interest in all of Douglas's work, and that is something I aspire to.

2. Neil Gaiman

Its funny, I was reading The Sandman at the desk the other day and someone asked me what else Neil had written that I had read. I got kind of stuck because despite the fact that I feel like there is a lot of Neil Gaiman out there, I haven't read all of it. I've done Stardust and American Gods. I've read The Graveyard Book and some of his short stories, but when it comes down to it, I am always at a loss as to what to say when someone asks that question.

Neil's influence on me has not been writing style -- I will admit I found some of American Gods hard to read because of the writing style -- but rather on ideas. In Stardust, Fairy is constantly changing, growing as people dream it, and it came from seeing a wall while driving. In American Gods, a war is coming, but it is between the old gods, and technology itself, a fascinating mixing of layers and intrigues.

I don't want to write like Neil, I want to think like Neil -- finding a story where ever you look.

3. Clive Barker

Abarat is the only book I have read by Clive (plus its sequel) and if you've never read it, I hope you do. When you do, I suggest you get the color version with his artwork. Its beautiful.

That being said, Clive has actually influenced me in other ways then me thinking about writing a story with images (though after reading Abarat I thought about trying it. Its an in progress project that will take forever to finish because its all on my mother's computer and I would need a wacom tablet to really do it). Similar to Neil, Clive has amazing ideas. The idea of twenty four islands that exist as times of day is interesting and provides a fantastical and fantastic backdrop for the story, which is surprising and rich.

Abarat was the most original story I had read at the time and when I was done I sat still, wondering how I would ever write something so different from what you expect.

4. Diane Duane

Young Wizards and the world that it inhabits is probably my favorite series apart from Harry Potter. In some ways, Diane's world outclasses J. K.'s, but really I would like to keep them as separate as possible, despite them both being about wizards working behind the scenes of our own world. Now that's out of the way...

I don't remember reading the first book in this series clearly. So You Want to be a Wizard was good, but a little distant to me at the time, but the idea of magic being controlled by words -- the Speech -- a basic language for the universe was so interesting to me. Young Wizards remains completely technologically based with the Speech being a programming language. The concept of the world as such is extremely pleasing to my world view -- everything based on logic in terms of magic, making the twists that the characters manage to pull out all the better because you don't see it coming but it makes so much sense.

But its not just the internal rules making so much sense (despite the shifting time period, though I appreciate that as who would want to read a book that was still in the eighties when there are so many opportunities in modern life to play with for Diane), its also about the character's themselves. Nita especially.

I am so glad I read these books as a teenager (and again as a young adult, they are still coming out). There is something so relatable about the characters and you love them and sometimes you hate them, but you always understand where they are coming from. Wizard's Dilemma never fails to make me cry -- hard and most of the way through the book -- Wizards at War never fails to make my heart skip a beat in the middle, and at the end my heart breaks over and over again. A Wizard of Mars had me cheering at the end, despite my disinclination towards Nita and Kit being together. These are characters that I love and I want to keep reading about them. And that is the main influence I have gotten from Diane.

The last thing I got from her is the fact that you can have serial novels -- there is no limit to the number of Young Wizard novels she can write because the premise is solid. Saving the world is Nita and Kit's job -- but its also Dairine's and Carmela's -- and all the characters you never get to meet. They aren't the only ones saving the world, we just get to watch their part, and that is really interesting to me.

5. William Styron

Whenever I get asked what my favorite book is, I feel an onrush of panic. What to say? I love Harry Potter a lot, but what about Young Wizards? And what if its just one book that I have to decide on -- my favorite book from a series? I don't generally, read books that are stand alone making it difficult to decide. So I say "What? That's like Sophie's Choice! Deciding on ONE book as my favorite? Luckily, I really like Sophie's Choice so let's say that."

Of all the authors I have read, William Styron (who I can't call by his first name), has influenced my writing style. I read Sophie's Choice in high school in the best English class I've ever been in (AP English with DePeter) and we looked at the language carefully and it was then that I decided -- I want to write like this.

Styron introduced me to the dash, to beautiful language, to self referential writing, to discussion of mental illness without really talking about it. There is so much about this book that I want to emulate. If I were to ever write a novel that wasn't fantasy/sci fi, I would want to write a novel like Sophie's Choice.

6. Louisa May Alcott

There's a FRIENDS episode where Rachel says she has re-read Little Women a lot, a classic, and I know exactly what she means. I have re-read Little Women so many times since I first opened it in third grade. Each time I come away with something new -- a different association, and point of interest. Little Women still makes me cry when Beth dies, still makes me incredibly happy when Laurie comes for Amy in Vevey, and remains one of my favorite books of all time.

Sometimes I think about how the book is set up -- a group of stories about a family that loves one another. There is a moral -- all books at that time had to have one -- but if you ignore the moral, then you get a lovely portrait of people -- and that is the important message about writing. Character's always drive my interest in reading, and in writing.

7. L. M. Montgomery

Similar to Ms. Alcott, Mrs. Montgomery has a childhood appeal to her. I read Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island before stopping. I like thinking of these three books as a trio and ignoring the rest because I never got into the rest. However the appeal is partly Anne -- again a character based story surprisingly -- but also the kind of childhood scrapes people get into, the childlike delight Anne takes in everything which allows a nostalgic feeling and that is something I enjoy and use today in my own writing.

8. J. K. Rowling

While I don't remember reading So You Want to be a Wizard for the first time, I remember Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone clearly. I was in England in fifth grade for a month, and I was in my aunt's house, which was a converted barn at the time. My cousin Josh gave me the book, and said he liked it, and I had already received Chamber of Secrets from my grandmother for Christmas, so I thought Why not?


I didn't stop reading until I got to the end. This is the first book I read cover to cover. And I still remember how freaked out I was by the end, how I kept making funny noises and shaking with how awesome this book was/is.

There is no way that J. K. couldn't have influenced me. The subtle influence, of word choice and character creation is something that comes from other places, but for me the reason J. K. continues to be a major influence in my writing is the world building she did.

9. C. S. Lewis

After the last post you might be confused as to why I would put down a clearly Christian writer, but L. M. Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott were more preachy about religion then these books in my opinion. Well except The Magician's Nephew, but lets move on.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was certainly among the first books that I remember reading. I re-read them every now and then (and with the new movie, which I still have not seen, so no spoilers please) I probably will read them again. There is something incredibly nostalgic and endearing about them that I love. This from a series that was published around the time of Lord of the Rings and with just as rich a background story, but with language that was easy to understand, and a story that takes a lot of the ancient and makes it modern.

10. Phillip Pullman

As soon as I put down C. S. Lewis, I knew I had to put down Phillip. I ran through The Golden Compass, was obsessed with The Subtle Knife and got The Amber Spyglass the day it came out (I was sick, but my dad picked it up for me... also was in sixth grade so I wasn't able to go at midnight to wait for it). Again, as with J. K. I was subtly influenced by Phillip. His writing is interesting and nuanced. It laces science with religion and creates a world that is almost, but not quite, like our own in such a way that you believe it -- deeply and seriously.

I read other things by Phillip -- though I can't remember them clearly as Sally Darling did not stay in my head the way Lyra did -- but what I do remember is the complexity of character, the way it was definitely the characters that drew me in. And, would you look at that, I love characters.

11. Tamora Pierce

Without a doubt Tamora Pierce has influenced the way I write the most seriously. My first attempt at a chaptered work was a cheap Tammy knock off. There is a lot to be said about what Tammy did for my sense of fantasy writing. Large scale battles, and women with swords and magical fire that burst from their fingertips had never occurred to me until I read her work.

Tammy's worlds are typically fantastical, but they are rooted in reality. There are gods and goddesses that regularly visit and talk with characters. Magic is common, and possessed by those born to it. The thing about Tammy's work is not that she breaks boundaries in her worlds, but in that she empowers her female characters while maintaining their femininity. They are people and it wasn't until I got into broader fantasy that I realized this was not common.

12. Garth Nix

If you have never read Sabriel I suggest you do. The world Garth created in this work is endlessly fascinating with a deep and rich background history. And he does it over and over again. I have only read the Old Kingdom series and The Keys to the Kingdom, but both of them have wonderful worlds and a definite sense of time and space.

The attention to real detail is something that I have picked up from Garth. He is specific in many of his descriptions, lending them the aspects of the objects or things in question. Scenes are better done when there is an exact quality to the descriptions, ideas of time and space and clearer when you are given measurements (though not too many). I have never read anything else quite like it, but I find the level of detail in Garth's work something to live up to.

13. David Sedaris

Moving out of my childhood books, we get to David. Ah David, you funny, funny man. I have already said that humor has never been my strong suit, but I do find that reading and listening to it to be the best way to learn how it is done. Whether it is through the comedy of performance (which David does) or the way he states things with clarity, he is able to provoke a laugh.

Sometimes a turn of phrase, or a way of saying something that is so thoroughly different and bizarre, but perfectly right, will come out of me and I know it has come from reading him.

14. Malcolm Gladwell

Moving out of fiction all together we get to Malcolm and Mary. Malcolm Gladwell has influenced the way I think in many respects, not because I agree with him all the time, but because every time he says something I think about whether or not I do agree with him based on his arguments.

Writing fiction might not be trying to make you agree that communication is the best, but it certainly is about trying to get people to believe in what you are writing. Malcolm has shown some obvious flaws in logic in some of his writing, but the interesting thing is not that he does so, but that it can show you flaws in your own logic. There have been times when I have found myself backpedalling, attempting to find the edge of my "argument" because I can sense such a hole appearing. I'd like to give some of that credit to Malcolm.

15. Mary Roach


Dealing with horrible situations with dry witticisms, Mary Roach has convinced me that it is always important to have a sense of humor. Death seems to attract Mary a little, but I don't mind, it does me too -- and for Mary its always a little different. However, the tendency, that I believe is mostly human, to add humor to situations that are grime is very telling.

All death, mayhem and horror is not something you read. Gallows humor on the other hand -- you can read and laugh.



So there it is. My 15 influences. Who's influenced you, people who are starting to comment on here to my shock. :)

Religious Preference?

I was at the hospital today and was asked if I had a religious preference in the admissions interview. I have never been asked if I had a religious preference -- except by facebook and places where I could make it public if I chose -- so I was thrown into a loop of unexpected questioning.

I am an atheist, and it is an incredibly important part of my self identity. Its been increasingly important throughout college as I was exposed to people with strong religious beliefs and found myself challenged to think about other forms and ways of life. There was L, who was adamantly Christian and thought that evolution was fine, but God had set it up to run, and K who was Catholic and intense about her conservative norms (despite being a lesbian, her one aberration). There is B who feels that God has to exist as a power in the universe, and M who was brought up Christian but has atheistic leanings. There is C who is a Methodist, and B who is born-again, and lets not even start in on C who will pray to God to clean his food when it falls on the ground. Anyways, there is so much religion out there that seems to predominate everything about the world, and I didn't realize it until I got to college.

Before college I hadn't really thought too much about it. Atheism seemed to come naturally to me as a result of thinking hard about what the universe was like. I spent my younger years thinking that God was some sort of big guy in the sky, and being confused about the father son and holy ghost bit, but really caring about Santa and the Tooth Fairy more. When I was in Catholic School for two years, I thought for a while I was Christian, but the more I went to mass, the more I felt like it was all empty gestures, done to impress someone who didn't exist. I wasn't sure what it meant when I said I didn't believe in god, and until high school, I didn't really admit to being an atheist, still trying to figure out what the word meant.

I did eventually proclaim to the world I was an atheist. Science bases my world, and according to science, there really isn't a need for a big guy in the sky, a force in the universe, God, to do anything. Molecules will form, evolution will occur, without magic, or a watchmaker or whatever. The world spins, the universe expands and science explains it all. Even if there were a big guy out there orchestrating everything, he wouldn't be needed, so why have him at all?

I was brought up in a world where science is expanding its knowledge at every turn, and explaining the things we used to not be able to explain, but also in a world where religion still holds on to the minds of everyone around me and it makes me sad. What also makes me sad, is the fact that because I don't conform to a religious ideology, people will make assumptions -- mean and jagged assumptions.

Only once have I been attacked for my stance on God personally, but I often feel attacked. Every sign that proclaims that God has something to do with so-called morality, every time someone (even myself, for I will confess to using 'God' in a habitual manner) uses God as a noun, as a person who can hear what is being said, or explicative, tells me that I am strange, that I should believe because non-belief is tantamount to admitting I am an alien from another planet.

To me there is an important distinction between non-religious, and atheism. Julia Sweeney says in 'Letting Go of God' that she just considers herself to be a naturalist, and religious people are therefore a-naturalist, and while I sincerely believe what she says for her reasons why, the common person won't without the background that explains what a naturalist is.

This morning I was moved into a waiting area and when the nurse came to register me, she looked at me and said "Ms. Waters, do you have a religious preference?" and I froze. I thought about whether or not atheism counted as a religion, or if there was a label for it in her system. I sometimes have this paralysis over the question "race". If there is an option for "other" I write in human. Race is not a true distinction, merely a formal construct, like god, that humans created. But atheism is not a religion, its a lack of religion.

So I sat there feeling like I was betraying myself, worrying over I was counted now as "non-religious" or atheist.

I said atheist in the end. It is, and remains, who I am.

NaNoWriMo Day 11

Week two stop kicking my ass.

I have done NaNo for six years and this is the first year I've had a week two. Well, its not the fault of the story, more the fault of my professors having huge projects due in classes and tests this week, and being an RA so I have to do things like put up posters and have floor events, plus Harry Potter next week, so its gotten a little crazy writing time wise.

I also might have made a decision that the people at NaNo would call stupid. I changed my entire story.

Okay, so yes, not the best plan when 1667 words a day looks difficult to work in (even for ME, when it takes half an hour to get out 1000 words at most these days), and now I have to play catch up. But, on the plus side, I'm actually liking this story.

We got a pep talk the day after I decided to quit the current story and it said that you shouldn't quit because the writing gets hard or boring, and just plow through. For beginning NaNoers, I agree. Don't quit because it gets hard. Struggling through three hundred words about the sunset or some such is not an excuse to restart your novel. But when you're 13,000 words in, and you have yet to find someone or something that sustains your interest for 1000 words, and every day getting up an writing 2000 words is a drastic struggle and relief, it sucks the fun out of the month.

Yes, writing is not supposed to be about the good days, its about the days when you just don't want to write but do it anyways. I believe this. But there is a difference from slogging through a hard novel that you are still unsure of because it sounds so cliche, with characters that don't interest you incredibly, and writing something that makes you like writing it.

I'm basically trying to justify why I restarted and abandoned Alane and friends. Perhaps that novel is not supposed to be written. Perhaps, Tia and Penny want to be written more. Whatever the reason, I can write 50,000 words easily in a month. Shouldn't I at least enjoy it?

Especially when its a month as busy as this one for me. I'm a senior in college. I have to pass all my classes, and be a RA, and not fuck my residents up too much, and have some semblance of a social life. Possibly. Maybe?

I'm probably writing myself in circles here.

NaNoWriMo Day 6

Fail.

Just fail.

Now that's out of the way, on with the extravaganza!

I've been reading, I was going to say a lot, but in reality it hasn't been much as I've been super busy. Anyways, what happens around now is the people who don't like NaNo start talking about why NaNo is not a good thing. I was reading an article about how NaNoWriMo just puts more crap out there, and it makes the efforts of "real" writers who do it "right" less significant.

I have things I get upset over. Religion is among them, as is the woman's right to chose, and these statements produce the same sort of rage I get when I read about people saying I'm going to hell for not believing in god, or when someone says that abortion makes angels weep or any of that other type of crap.

True, there are people who write for a living. But does that make them "real" writers? I think not. I consider myself to be a real writer, and I have never published anything. To me being a "real" writer is more about the need to write then about whether you're published or not. There are pleanty of people who are published who I think are utter jackasses who aren't writing good literature (Stephanie Myer I'm looking at you). The fact that you think that these "real" writer's professions are diminished by other people trying it out disgusts me.

Writing is a creative expression, its not like plumping, or engineering, where you could make an applicable comment. No one should EVER say anything about someone else's creative expression without considering the consequences. This does not mean that I think that people aren't bad, I do. But to me, bad is writing about teen vampires who are afraid to change their girlfriend simply for plot -- apparently most teenage girls would disagree with me.

The point is its subjective and telling someone to not write if they want to is stifling them. What harm does it do to you, other then to hurt your own inflated ego as a "real" writer for amateurs to attempt something you do all the time. If your work is really that great, then you don't need to worry about what other people think.

Maybe this is because to me, writing is an expression of myself. I would do it no matter what other people do or say. I don't do it for glamor, or praise. I do it because not doing it physically hurts. My life is enriched my writing. If someone told me to stop I wouldn't. So why would I have the right, or anyone else, to tell anyone else to stop?

Anyways.

Day six and I've finally got around to some blogging. I'm at about 13,000 words, which is lower then I intended to be at. I'm averaging about 2000 words a day, which is fine, but I did intend to write much, much more for this month. Maybe it will shore me up so that when I get a short break -- Thanksgiving is coming up -- and can attempt real 10,000 words days. I did try yesterday with that but was disappointed because I was so tired.

I could consider it today, but I'm too tired really to do anything more then want to sleep.

It would be unfortunate if I got mono, I suppose.

Well, I believe this is the end of my post. I haven't done much blogging about the process, but I wanted some response to the things I have read to be put somewhere.