"The Problem with Reading" or "Wrestling Inner Demons"

What has been will be again,
 what has been done will be done again;
 there is nothing new under the sun.- The Bible- Ecclesiastes 1:9

I've read - a lot- in my years on this blue glowing marble we call Earth. I often find myself reading two or three books at once. This is probably not the best idea for absorbing long term information, but I often feel driven to constantly learn or explore new ideas and concepts. This is an amazing blessing and at the same time, can often impede progress. I often wrestle with trying to reach for something unique or different without being cheesy or ill-conceived. These inner demons are vicious and unrelenting. They're like lead weights within the gut seeping out poison that eats away at every creative thought or motivation.

That's when I remember the last line above, "there is nothing new under the sun." These tales we tell have been retold like echoes over and over again. Perhaps a better example is that each tale is told and retold and with each retelling, it changes and becomes something new, like a game of telephone. It's in the re imagining that we come upon that glimmer of something new and special. The more I read, the more I know this is true. It is rare that I'm caught off-guard by stories whether in a book or movie or TV show. It's not that I'm smarter than anyone else, I've just been exposed to more stories. When I am caught unaware, it's either due to a very clever writer, or a writer who has left out the most pertinent clues. But, I digress. I am not saying I enjoy these stories any less. I have instead, learned to enjoy them for what they are-- someone's labor of love.

So, here I am talking about a problem that I'm sure I'm not alone with. There is something that you learn though as you wrestle with these thoughts and that is that sometimes you just have to let it go. Much like perfectionism, sometimes you have to learn when good enough is simply good enough. Let the chips fall where they may and see what shakes out in the end.

So why this topic today? There's no time like the present they say. We all know they know everything so we should listen - right?

I've had a book concept for many years now and have done a decent amount of world building so that when I write, I understand the world I'm creating and that my characters live within. I've even started writing bits of it. But still, I wrestle with pulling it all together. I fight bits of doubt. I fight time. I fight the, "but will it work?" questions that come to me as I think of the concepts that enfold the story and make it breathe. I'm fighting myself more than any other person I could ever fight with. I am relentless on myself. And then, I read something that smells vaguely like what I'm writing and I worry that it's too close. Others will notice the cracks in the façade. "Pay no attention to the (wo)man behind that curtain!" I'll exclaim to readers. 

“Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Sound advice there. Any writer or artist should pay heed of such wise council. And so, I will close doors inside my mind to stave off the demons that whisper doubt, and leave you with this video from one of my all time favorite bands:

It's Not Too Late

It's a cool Saturday morning. The sky is overcast and heavy with clouds filled with silvered bits of rain. For some, this is a sign to curl up for the day and ignore the outside world. For me, it's a sign that this may just be my kind of day.

I said that I'd blog more, and here I am sitting in a fluffy large brown chair, legs tucked beneath me, and the glow of my laptop before me. It's not too late.

I've been a bit dry on inspiration for awhile and it's time to correct this immediately. I've watched too long while others (whom I adore) stretch their newly hatched wings to dry and then set off for greater heights. I'm not saying I am aiming for great heights. Frankly speaking, I'm not a fan of heights, but at least climbing up the next hill to see what's in the valley beyond isn't such a bad deal. Who knows what I'll find there.

I am surrounded by inspirational people. Those who I am happy to call friends or colleagues at the least. You would think that would make it easier to be inspired, but sometimes you instead feel as if you stand among giants or you're a background singer lending support. It's much harder to stand out as your own shining star when surrounded by many in a constellation of talent. But, it's not too late to shine a little brighter, dig a little deeper, and stop singing back up. I don't need accolades or fame, just to feel as if I've regained a bit of lost momentum and passion.

I am a writer. I write. I have always written from the time I was a child. I have stories aplenty to be told and one way or another, they will be told. The journey is in the telling of the tale. My focus is just a bit different than it once was.

For now though, this will have to do. I have some bacon-wrapped goat cheese stuffed dates to make for a party. I'll be thinking of what to write next while I do it and most likely burn myself a little, but I'll just consider it suffering for my art.

Welcome to the New Age

I was listening to Radioactive by Imagine Dragons when I named this blog post. What can I say? It struck an immediate chord with me. It's not the New year as of yet (though it's looming bright on the horizon), and I don't have any intentions of waiting for  it to arrive to kick things back into gear. This isn't a New Year's resolution, just something I've been wanting to do for awhile. You see, I've been neglectful of this blog and if I'm really going to babble, I should at least be consistent about it. It's good for sharpening my overly dulled writing skills and it gives me an outlet that perhaps I don't always take the most advantage of.

Once upon a time, I was a rather prolific blogger. Shocking, I know. I had opinions and shared them regularly, but fewer cared about what I said beyond a rather small circle. Things have changed over the years and while I'm still me, I'm a  more cautious me. So, my focus will be on less controversial items and more on artistic pursuits or general thoughts. I hope you don't mind. My hope is that there can be some inspiration to be gleaned or thoughtfulness provoked much like a hungry tiger looking for his next meal. (Please don't eat the other visitors.)

This is an admittedly short blog for the moment and I feel the need to finish it with some sort of flourish. I am not wearing a hat so I can't whip it off my head and curtsy with anything close to aplomb. Even if I had a hat and tried, I'd most likely end up bruised from tripping over my own feet, so instead, I guess I shall leave it with this:

“There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.”- John Steinbeck

Sometimes I manage to write it down...

I tend to do a lot of writing in my head. This is fantastic and not so fantastic both. When it's happening, I'm more often driving or doing something in which I don't have the capability to stop and write it down or even record it. But, this morning was a bit different. I had an idea, a brief line or so that described a moment in the morning that encapsulates a little piece of the human soul. It's not much, but here it is:

I see her nearly every morning-- lips wrapped around a cigarette, breathing in contemplation and blowing out smoke like mist in the cool morning air.

I'm not one to romanticize  smoking in any way, but you can't help but notice when someone has a ritual about them, especially when it's done in the pre-dawn hours under a porch light in near perfect quiet.

Cloud Atlas: What The Fountain Should Have Been?

I've gotten relatively jaded as I've gotten older and while I find joy in many things and try to take most things at face value, I've had a hard time becoming truly excited about new movies. Cloud Atlas is probably the exception as of late. If you ever saw The Fountain you'll understand the general premise. It's about lives intertwined in a way that every decision creates a new path toward the future and has a ripple effect on all those touched by those lives. Much like Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder", something as simple as stepping on a butterfly can change the future irrevocably. In this case though, it seems the movie has the potential to tell the story The Fountain tried to tell in a more clear and equally visual way. It's the type of movie that I've been waiting for. I've been longing for something deeper, but not the usual crime drama or overly depressing sap that makes you walk out of the theater wondering why you paid to feel miserable at the end of two hours. This movie, seems like a roller coaster ride, but the best sort, filled with possibilities of joy, sadness, adventure, and more.

To explain the movie and how it came to be, the directors got together to share.

And here's the extended trailer for you.

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."



If you believe in karma even just a little bit, you may find this movie as something to look forward to as well. It is set to hit theaters October, 26, 2012.

P-P-Poetry- That'll Work

I often see and hear people say things like, "Oh, I don't like poetry. I just don't understand it." or "It's boring." Yet, you've probably been wrapped up in poetry your whole life and hear it virtually every day. At least, you do if you're a music lover. While not all poetry can be made into song and not all songs read perfectly as poetry, they are both essentially sewn from the same creative fabric - even if their end presentation isn't quite the same.

Something in the Air

There must be something in the air. Perhaps it's just that it's summer. I have an odd relationship with summer. I like it, and I don't like it both. On one hand, it was the time of year I was born in. So, you could say, that's a check in the "good" column. On the other hand, I'm not one for hot weather. I much prefer cooler weather. So, while everyone else is more active and running amok (amok amok), I'm languishing in the heat of the day and waiting for the cooler evening air to help me get motivated again. Once the evening hits, and I can cool off, it's like magic. (Ironically enough, I disdain air-conditioning. It's like sitting around in a refrigerator all day, and I find it stifling.)

Here we are coming into the swell of evening, the air is getting cooler, a soft breeze is blowing in the windows, and now, now of all times of the day, is the time I want to begin doing something more than just laze about and almost sweat. (I say almost because as indicated above, I was not designed to withstand high temperatures so thus, am not very good at the sweating.)

I must admit, that I have not been very diligent at writing on a regular basis. By the end of the week, my creative juices have dried up. The heat just adds insult to injury by making me feel physically like a wilted plant thirsty again for the cool evening air. I'm going to try harder. I'll try because it's what I love. Whether I'm good, or great, or not so great, it's been in my blood since I was a child. If I can tell one good story, share one good moment, or inspire one additional thought for someone else, then I can call these efforts a success. And if I can't, then I'll just do it for me because it's hard not to do anything else.

In the end, all I can do is be me, whether you like who that is or not. I make no excuses or beg for acceptance. All I know at this time of day, is that there is something in the air that makes me want to do more, strive harder, write, stretch my limits, and be more. It's the beauty of summer despite the heat of the day. The evening and night time hours almost make up for how punitive it can seem to be.

And so, my time of day has come, and so, I write.

Following the Lines

I've been doing family research for many years and have ran into many gaps or holes in the lineage or even incorrect or inconsistent information or dates. Imagine my interest when I managed to trace my lineage back to (potentially) 620 A. D. I've just been tracing the lines that others have put out there, but I have no reason to believe that it's all that wrong when I've found historical references to back it up.


So, to "celebrate" (of a sort) discovering my Viking roots, I give you a poem. ;)


The earliest surviving reference to the term "berserker" is in Haraldskvæði, a skaldic poem composed by Thórbiörn Hornklofi in the late 9th century in honour of King Harald Fairhair, as ulfheðnar ("men clad in wolf skins"). This translation from the Haraldskvæði saga describes Harald's berserkers:

I'll ask of the berserks, you tasters of blood,

Those intrepid heroes, how are they treated,

Those who wade out into battle?

Wolf-skinned they are called. In battle

They bear bloody shields.

Red with blood are their spears when they come to fight.

They form a closed group.

The prince in his wisdom puts trust in such men

Who hack through enemy shields.

I guess this could explain why (in part) I've always been fascinated with Norse mythology and history.

World Building

I've been trying to do more world building. I decided to take a step back and make sure I've answered the important questions (or answered them clearly enough) that need answers before I can put together a truly comprehensive story. I discovered that I had a lot of things to answer. Perhaps all the details won't make it into the book (or books if I get that far) but I'm not sure that really matters. Knowing a bit more about who and what I'm writing about, and how it all fits together is more important.

So, here are just some of the questions I've been asking myself:

• What's the primary focus? What's the heart of the story? 
• Who is (are) the protagonist/s?
• Who are the heroes/antiheroes/villains?
• Where does everything take place? What do these places look like, smell like, feel like?
• What are the dangers?
• What are the wonders?
• What do they celebrate?
• How do they mourn?
• What do they do with their dead?
• What is their form of government?
• What is the food like?
• What are the traditions?
• What is socialization like between the various people based on gender, age, status?
• What are their homes built of?
• How do they light their homes?

I could go on, but I began to see how much I had yet to flesh out before I could truly sit down and sketch out what really should happen. I have no doubt the characters will guide the story to an extent, but I don't want to find myself lost in my second book (should I do one) and realize that I implied things in the first that weren't true etc. By knowing more about what all exists and how it works, I think I'll have a much easier time putting all of the pieces together.

10 Minute Exercise

I purchased a book recently that has some good exercises (from what I've read so far) for writing. It's called Write Great Fiction -Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell. It advises "warming up" before writing, so during my lunch, I thought I'd give it a shot.  So here it is, an (interrupted) ten minutes with no real edits.

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I remember the bits of sunlight streaming through the trees in the woods. Each one speckled with wisps of fog and streaked with the edges of shadow. They were a welcome respite from the constant silence and darkness that we had just traveled through. It was a great relief when we, at last, heard the first sounds of life beyond our own footsteps crunching in the foliage. Bird and insect sounds floated on the air, much like the sunbeams, in bits and pieces as if breaking through the cracks in the shadowed barrier. I began to feel lighter as if the air pressure itself was lifting from my head and shoulders. There was a relief swelling in my breast and I breathed out as if I had been holding my breath for too long. My lungs burned slightly as I exercised them in an effort to breathe the suddenly cleaner air. The freedom I didn't realize I was yearning for was so close and tears began to come unbidden to my eyes. As I took the last steps that would bring me into the light, my surroundings fell into darkness once more, swallowing me back into despair.

Lost Prologue

I wrote this a long time ago and it's just been sitting ever since. I doubt I'll do much with it ever, but it was an interesting exercise at the least and it did launch a new idea of which I am currently working on.

What's My Motivation?

There's always something that drives someone to create. For some, it's money and fame. For most, it's a burning desire to share something from within yourself with others in the hope they'll like it, and the "voices" will be appeased. At least, that's what tends to drive me.

From the time I was very young, I've told stories or have written poetry. It was a "party trick" of sorts that I would have people give me a topic and I'd write them a poem in a short period of time. (Often in as little as five minutes.) I'd write these on napkins or whatever anyone had on hand. It was cathartic to get the words out and give them form even if it was briefly so.

I don't plan on being famous from writing a book or making a lot of money doing it. I just plan on enjoying the pursuit of creating something that I can claim as my own.

So what's my motivation? I just want to create, pure and simple. It's what I was born to do even if it's something that only a few friends and family care about. Besides, the "voices" are tired of being crammed into the recesses of my mind. They want out and they're kicking up quite a ruckus.

Story Fragment- The Inn

This is a fragment of a progressive story I wrote with a friend. It most likely will never evolve beyond this point, but it was an interesting experiment.

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Vignette #1- Life's Brief Reflection

I like stretching my writing skills now and then by writing Vignettes. I'm a bit rusty, so it's time I knocked it off and started really putting forth some effort again. I miss creative writing more than I realized. It's a little like forgetting to breathe until you find you're gasping for breath.

vignette  (vɪˈnjɛt)
— n
1.	a small illustration placed at the beginning or end of a book or chapter
2.	a short graceful literary essay or sketch
3.	a photograph, drawing, etc, with edges that are shaded off
4.	architect  a carved ornamentation that has a design based upon tendrils, leaves, etc
5.	any small endearing scene, view, picture, etc

Vignette #1 - Life's Brief Reflection

 The room was palely lit and anemic in color save for one woman softly wrapped in crimson velvet. All else about her seemed dim, dingy, and faded as if by decree that she, and only she, should shine. Her lips shimmered in nearly the same crimson as her dress and her eyes were as cool ash surrounded by dark feathery lashes. Even the sounds of the party dared not touch her for fear of causing offense. All else, save for her were but fractured and imperfect mirrors by which she was merely a bare reflection within.

"It is sad," these fragments whispered.

"She was lovely--too lovely," they would say.

"Too young by far," came the flat and faceless words echoing and falling limply against the curtained walls.

"We shall miss her," nodded these broken things with their empty platitudes.

She blinks but twice as the voices fade. She turns attempting to put faces and names in her memory, then shatters into starlight that flies free returning once more to the boundless heavens.