Tag Archives: web comic

August 5, 2013 · 2:46 PM

Writing Wish List

I have decided that I do want to talk about Grotesque briefly (Or as briefly as I can manage.  What I’m saying is it won’t be brief), but first I wanted to get a different post out of the way.  It’s something I’ve been wanting to write for a few weeks now, and I have to admit it is more for my benefit that for my readers’.  That said, you might find it interesting.  What it is, as the title of the post suggests, is my wish list.  There are several books that I want to write, some that I even have a shaky plot for, and I’m hoping to get them written in the coming years.  What I’m going to do is share this list with you, as well as my reasons for wanting to write that particular book.  Obviously I will be excluding all the books that I have already written (including the three I have reminisced about in my last few posts) since I think I have made it clear that I want to write them.  Having written them once already.  So, let’s start.  Keep in mind that they’re not in any particular order.

1. A werewolf book – Say what you will for vampires.  They’re okay.  Hell, I’ve enjoyed some vampire novels in my time.  But none so much as werewolf novels.  Mercedes Thompson is one of my favorite fictional characters to date.  And I am a fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Raised by Wolves series as well.  Why?  Well…um….because wolves are cool?  Look, I like the idea of exploring pack-mentality that’s been forced onto people.  In a book I’ve tried to write several times over, entitled Lupine, a group of friends makes a pact that turns them into a pack of friends.  One of them suddenly becomes the Alpha and they all have to learn to reconcile their human friendship with their newfound wolf pack instincts.  I want to write that book.  As soon as I have a strong enough plot.

2. A book in which the protagonist is deaf – I have a shaky plot for this one, too.  Inspired by a dream, as so many of my books go.  A human baby girl is found on a prison-planet of sorts that is ruled by tyrannical “enforcers.”  The girl is adopted by the rebellion leader and his ragtag group of aliens who are not convicts, but descendants of convicts, treated just the same as their less-than-law-abiding ancestors by a ruling class that is no longer kept in check by an apathetic government (galactic government?  I don’t know.  I don’t usually do sci-fi).  It soon becomes apparent that the baby girl is deaf.  The book, which I’ve been calling, The Bamboo Pole, for reasons I’ll explain only if asked, would center around the deaf protagonist and her Enforcer love interest.  Why?  Because I think Sign Language is fascinating.  Not just because it is a beautiful, visual language (and that’s a HUGE part of it; I love studying language), but also because it evinces humankind’s remarkable ability to adapt.  I would want to encapsulate that in the book, but I think I’d need a Deaf consultant first.  Wouldn’t want to accidentally insult anybody, after all.  And while I’m not a huge proponent of “Write what you know,” I do feel some background knowledge (besides my stumbling grasp of basic ASL signs) would be required for a project like this.

ASL

3. A book about a writer – I have a feeling that I am not alone in saying that there is a very strong, egotistical drive within me that wishes to put my struggles and experiences as a writer into well…words.  That’s what I do best.  Or what I claim to do best anyway.  The problem is that my several attempts to write such a book have fallen flat.  Firstly, because I can never get a good plot in mind.  Secondly, because I am terrible at writing realistic fiction.  And Thirdly, as my sister once pointed out to me, a book that is cathartic for me to read and write would not necessarily interest anyone other than myself.  Not that I shouldn’t sometimes write just for myself…hmmm…maybe I’ll write a book just for myself.

Anyway, that’s where I’ll stop.  If I think of others I’ll write them in a new post.

Word of the Day: Catharsis (n) – the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

Writer's-Block-Strip-35

1 Comment

Filed under books, Comic, Humor, Language, writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 1, 2013 · 11:20 AM

A Look Back – Leaves (Part 2)

Obviously if you’re just joining us you should read the post before this one.

Ok, moving right along.

The problems with Leaves:

For one thing, it is incredibly difficult to write children.  I have probably not spent enough time with children to be able to write them well.  Molly started out as an eight-year-old who spoke and acted with the perspicacity of a world-weary grandmother.  When my mother pointed this out, I changed it so Molly was ten.  So then she became a ten-year-old who spoke and acted with the perspicacity of a world-weary grandmother.

“It probably does,” Molly stated, picking up another nut. “You’re trying to sound sure of yourself to make me feel better, but you know as well as I do that our chances of finding her aren’t very good.  First of all, before I could look for her, I’d have to look for a way back to my village, and that would be hard enough.  Then I’d have to actually search for her all over the countryside, which is also an impossible task.”

The biggest problem, though, is one I still face – I was attempting to write a historical novel when my grasp of history is laughably poor.  Whenever I try to write books of this nature, I run into the same questions I can never answer: How did they speak?  What technology did they have available to them?  What historical events had happened?  How did they travel?  Did they wear hats?  What were the class systems like?  On and on.  And I tried to write despite not knowing any of that, which, as you can imagine, did not work out so well.

Finally, the plot was shaky and cobbled together, the characters not well developed enough, and the tone too kitschy.  I had set out to make it read like a dark fairy tale.  Instead it reads like a book someone wrote with the goal of having it sound like a dark fairy tale.

HOW I’D FIX IT – For one thing, I’d have to do my research.  Maybe learn how kids act, talk, and think.  Definitely learn how History works.  I’d tighten up the plot and really try to give each character a life of his or her own.  Those are the issues that I need to tackle before I can even begin to rewrite this book, and I just don’t know when I’ll have the time.

That’s it for now.  Might want to talk about Grotesque.  We’ll see how I feel.

Word of the Day: Perspicacity (n) – Keenness of mental perception and understanding; discernment

Writer's-Block-Strip-34

2 Comments

Filed under books, Comic, Humor, writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

July 24, 2013 · 7:51 AM

A Look Back – Leaves

Here we go again!  Have you read this post?  If not, consider glancing through it so you know what’s going on.  For those who haven’t guessed, I’m going to go over a book I wrote called Leaves.  This book holds a special place in my heart for reasons I can’t begin to understand, and at 93,300 words (about 175 pages, single-spaced on Word), it is the longest book I’ve ever written.  By far.  And that makes me want to cry, because I want to rewrite the whole damn thing.  Alright, let’s get on with this.

INSPIRATION – It was the summer before I was going to start college, and I had a dream that was exactly like a movie.  I was not in it; I was just watching it happen.  There was a little girl with curly hair who lived with her mother.  Her father, I understood without being told, was a bad man who was either dead or just out of the picture.  Then the girl got separated from her mother, and somehow ended up in another world.  She was standing in a forest, in the middle of a hollow, ankle deep in a pile of leaves.  The trees that surrounded her were crooked and black, and leafless.  Cut to a shot over a man’s shoulder.  He has one hand braced on a tree and is peering at the girl from behind the trunk.  The man looks like Jack Skellington if Jack had skin – huge torso, thin, spindly legs, tattered pinstriped suit.  He has skin like parchment and looks like a fearsome thing, but he is actually kind.  I can tell that this man wants to help the little girl, but he is afraid that she will fear him, so he puts an illusion on himself to make him look more friendly.  Cut to inside the hollow – the man approaches from between the trees wearing a suit that is striped with all the colors of Fall – brown, orange, and yellow.  His appearance has changed so that he looks less like a dead man walking and more like a human.  He steps up to the girl, and she quickly looks down at her shoes.  Then he says, “Aren’t you even going to look at me?”  The girl looks up at him and says, “I’m Molly.”  Then the “camera” pans around them, circling slowly.  As it gets around to the back of the man in the suit, a flash of lightning briefly illuminates his true likeness, though Molly doesn’t notice.  (I swear to God I am not making any of this up)

Then…something.  There is some adventure that I could not remember, but Molly is in danger and the man does everything he can to help her.  They become very close.  Then this happens: Molly and the man are sleeping on beds of leaves.  Molly’s mother appears out of nowhere and wakes her to take her away.  I remember feeling like something was wrong.  I should have been happy that Molly had been reunited with her mother, but even Molly looked apprehensive.  Then the man wakes up and sees that Molly is gone.  He searches frantically for her, then he looks up to the heavens and bellows her name.  And I woke up with the heartbroken wail of “MOLLLLYYYY!” still ringing in my ears.  I tried desperately to go back to sleep.  I needed to know how it ended, but, of course, it didn’t work that way.  I was awake for good, and I never found out.  So I wrote a book.

I swear that is the shortest version I can write.  I can see already that this is going to be a two-parter.  Damn.  I’ll tell you the plot of the book I guess and then save the rest for the next post.

PLOT – A little girl named Molly lives with her mother until one day her mother is kidnapped.  As she runs through town searching for help, Molly stops to catch her breath at a fountain and ends up falling into it.  Instead of hitting the bottom, though, she tumbles through some misty portal and ends up somewhere else, standing in a pile of leaves and…well you know this part.  So then Molly and Zan (I named the Jack Skellington guy Zan) have some adventures looking for Molly’s mother, but all is not as it seems and there’s a whole second part to the book which centers around grown-up Molly which is just stupid because I was doing the whole living-through-the-character thing again.  That’s about it.

I’ll spare you for now.  Soon to follow – the thrilling conclusion!

Word of the Day: Amalgamate (v) – To mix or merge so as to make a combination; blend; unite; combine

Writer's-Block-Strip-33

Leave a comment

Filed under books, Comic, Humor, writing

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,