The last Webseries Writing Journal

http://www.webserieschannel.com/dragon-age-redemption/

1. Dragon Age: Redemption is probably the best webseries I have viewed this semester. Earlier I watched Spellfury, a similar webseries in style but it was a terrible webseries if not one of the worst things I have ever seen, but I think Dragon Age is a good example of a high fantasy. It reminds me of Hercules and Xena from the 90s. This webseries has Felica Day, which I think she writes some of the episodes so that's a pretty nice selling point in and of itself. The characters are pretty traditional and could use some beefing up so as to stand apart, and actually have more three dimensional qualities. I actually feel engaged into this webseries for once, and perhaps that's because there's a mystery to where it is all headed. It fits into all the tropes of a medieval fantasy so that makes it plausible. The music and sound effects are all fitting and do not overpower the rest of the artistic work. There are some nice production designs, for instance there is a nice red tent built around a castle... that may interest Kat.

My main problem is I think it could take more risks in character development. Perhaps over the course of the entire webseries this will improve, but they do feel somewhat vanilla making this seem like just another ordinary piece of material that will... not be so memorable in my mind within a few years. Without taking risks, I think the inevitable wrath is that the creative piece ends up less memorable.

2. Self assessment:

a.) How do you believe you succeeded in contributing to the collaborative process?
In being involved with the Bible, I definitely got the chance to make a mark on several of the creative choices overall. It was fascinating for me to come up with the character design of Arch and see how it transformed in the class several times. I think in many instances in looking at other groups writing I was able to see where the weak points fell and generally was able to point those out and give at least some introductory advice on where to go with those potential problem areas. In all honesty, if I wasn't in the class I think the outcome of where this webseries would have gone would be different, whether for good or bad all I know is it would definitely have different quirks to it. There were definitely many things I brought to the table throughout the semester from character designs to finding plot holes, or logic problems. I spent a pretty significant amount of time on the pilot script and rewriting it to pieces to get it to where it needs to be. I enjoyed the experience and felt that the group I was with was balanced and knew how to use our different personalities to make a strong whole.


b.) How did the collaborative process help your individual creativity? How did the collaborative process hinder your creativity?
I feel that what I've learned about creative craft I was able to implement into this project and also I developed a stronger sense of structure, which is mainly why I wanted to go to graduate school (to hone in on craft). I think I'm developing a stronger critical eye while also being sensible with creativity. I think on the whole this project helped me to think in big terms and also know when to pull back and be reasonable. In collaborating, it teaches you how to negotiate your ideas and also to continually think of what will make the piece standout among the infinite amount of creative pieces being made in the industry. I think this process helps one to wrap their mind around being audience centered.

As for how this may have hindered my creativity... I don't know if hindered is the right word, but I may be able to challenge myself more in an individual setting. There's certain wild things you can do mentally and emotionally when writing by yourself, and I think I may have been inspired to dig deeper... that's what a month long break remedies. Perhaps after spending some time digging deeper with creativity on an individual sense I can bring that to the table in the next collaborative writing experience. I think sometimes first as writer one has to experiment alone before what's being produced in the brain can be translated and shared for a group setting.


c.) What do you believe you gained in the ever-continuing educational process as a writer?

More than I could possibly know.

Writing teaches self-discipline, perspective, organization, and well developed thinking. I am well pleased with what I've learned as a writer over the past few years, and this semester has been insane from learning different writing pedagogies in composition, linguistics, and webseries writing. This has probably been one of the most difficult semesters of my life, perhaps it will be the most difficult. There was something about the concepts and the workload that was more extraneous than usual, and I am fortunate that my instructors were on my side and could tell I was juggling a lot of ideas. As for webseries writing, I needed this class so as to have something creative otherwise just studying theory wears me out, even though I enjoy theory and think that in the end it will be what sets me apart in whatever I decide to take on in academia, careers, and so forth -- creative classes always cheer me up because I actually feel like I accomplished something by the end of the semester and that the experience itself teaches me a great deal that tends to stay with me. I think with this class what I gained is confidence in my own ability to create, whether in making characters or writing the script itself. There were a few times that my ambitious side was sparked and I was actually able to have faith that even when our work wasn't at it's best, that in the end I would be able to trust that it's ready for production. This is a pretty speedy process overall that this story development has taken, and I think we as students probably forget this, but it's amazing to see how quickly a simple idea can be transformed into gold.

Webseries entry 3 -- November 15th

1.)

Cell: The Web Series

http://cellthewebseries.com/episodes/episode-three/

"Cell: The Web Series" has a nice layout overall. In fact, they have contests at the top of the page which may be particularly helpful for our own web series' success. I think with such short episodes, that title sequences are a bit contrived, and almost get in the way of the viewer's experience when advertisements are thrown on top of that. Breaking it up so much is somewhat irritating, be it, time consuming.

I'm going to focus on the DON'T's first. This series' first issue is the overplay of the music, which brings down the quality since it's kind of an amateur music composition. The narrative is ambiguously vague which isn't promoting a direction, but rather presumptuousness that doesn't live up to its potential threshold. The characters are unenthused and meaningless; it's essentially a rather dry series. I'm not sure how the emotional drive is supposed to pull me in, but it more or less puts me to sleep. If anything, there's a lesson to be learned: be careful with your music composer and also realizing that silence is perfectly okay in any series, and especially with something that's intending to be suspenseful. A proper play of silence and music is vital. At the end of the day, this web series comes off contrived rather than organic.

With that being said, what are they doing right? The cinematography appears to be intentional. With what appears to be a low budget production, they are appropriate with their shots and editing; the story itself is bland and the directing and actors is pretty mediocre, but I think with what is available, the cinematographer and editor are putting in enough effort to keep me watching for a handful of episodes. However, it is fairly dark in its video composition which makes it hard to read. The shots that are more lighted are flattering, but I wish instead of putting so much effort that this is based around a "Cell" that the production itself could have come up with more creative ways to light the set.

2.) As a writer, in this past month, I had a lot of stress on me and a great team to work with, but I definitely pushed myself to think in more concise terms and also how to combine sequences that are alike rather than have them dispersed. I definitely thought in more logical terms and was able to have a pretty strict eye to cutting out nonsense, although I created some nonsense of my own. I found that having strong organizational skills to keep old drafts stashed away came in handy when realizing what may have been lost from draft to draft that was passed around, and also what type of central tone needed to be carried out overall. Sometimes it was scary to not know what was going to happen in passing it to various writers who all have different perceptions, and so it comes with some bartering and reasoning as to what actually works and what may have been added in that's -- unsound.

After having the script's last draft out of my fingers, I felt a sense of relief. I was impressed that we were able to cut out so much fluff and really make it a lot more dense with depth in the 10 pages we magically brought it to... unless someone tampered with the draft last minute and added back pages in a frenzied haste upon submitting it.

The difficulty in collaboration is figuring out how to properly navigate through the piece while consistently building the team up instead of going down the wrong path where people gnash at their teeth; fortunately, this group is mature enough that we can criticize each other and find out how we're being sensible. I've definitely been in groups where the individual selfs got out of control and squabbles were born, which sometimes is understandable and even necessary for the growth of the group, but I think what I'm getting at here is that proper communication and encouragement toward each other helps to create a safe working environment and that's something I think creative individuals among collaboration need to consistently hear. It makes it a lot easier to throw out ideas if you can trust each other; it's pretty scary when you're consistently wondering if someone's going to burn your house down (hyperbole intended). I'm fortunate to have worked in the group I have this semester and that each of us are able to throw in a different lens and catch each other while also building each other up.

3.) How critical is the element of the storytelling process to your development as a writer?

Storytelling itself is critical to me as a writer. I decided to spend more time in English so that I could understand storytelling to a finer degree and also command it for the best of purposes. It shouldn't be a surprise that Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan both went for English degrees in college, and I'm sure this is a noticeable trend throughout Hollywood and beyond. The "storytelling process" can be defined in a number of ways here. If we're talking about the steps of the hero's journey, it would seem this is golden knowledge to help establish structure and be able to build from that other more complex structures to carry narrative. Storytelling process, as in, what processes you use to tell stories is another ballgame. Depending on how I need to discover tone and theme, storytelling process is of the most essence. Certain music, lighting, and rooms can help trigger what is needed in order to create thoughts which add depth to story. Without proper nurturing of thoughts, I don't think writing will come out as masterfully as need be: and that's what I think for both of my interpretations of "storytelling process."

4.) How critical are theme and message to our webseries and how well do you believe your work-in-progress is succeeding in underling these elements?

Theme and message are inherent in storytelling. It's what helps give overall meaning, and for me, it's always what I look for in a story. Once I know that framework, all the pieces make sense and have a real direction. I don't necessarily think you have to know all themes jumping into the piece, being intentional of course helps, but I imagine that through story world building and really understanding how one's narrative is pieced together, that unintentional themes can be and will be born. Themes are critical in writing. Without them, in all honesty, a story will lack depth. Also, there may be some correlation with having stronger themes that help build stronger stories. I would expect the themes of Shakespeare to outweigh the themes of a Soap Opera; Shakespeare has tested time, most soap operas will not be known within a handful of centuries, decades, and so forth. Pulling on theme will help make the web series overall stronger. I believe with the work I've done in class, the themes are apparent. Inevitability and regret are made apparent in the pilot; they may not be fully explained but the questions in them are raised. Rucker instantaneously faces regret after the first time travel mission due to his sickness while Samay's regret is hinted at with the Bhopal disaster letter. The guitar shop burning down hints at inevitability especially since the guitar in the present is scorched by the events of time -- fire becomes a symbol throughout. For instance, Samay's usage of his lighter applies a rather emotional fire sequence and the hot ironing work of the Blacksmith at the end with the iron dagger again portrays fire / heat / and the like.

Webseries entry 2 -- October 15th

Webseries Watched:

Spellfury (http://www.spellfury.com/)

It's visual garbage in all the wrong ways possible. If you wait till the fourth episode or so, you will crack up uncontrollably from laughter (that's if you're me and have that tendency.) I would highly recommend watching episode 5 then stopping, with no turning back.

It's like Ed Wood meets Jim Henson and the Clash of the Titans. The one redeeming character it has is an abominable snowman who may or may not be a parody of the old video game 'Ski Free.' We have the regular femme fatale character of a female elf and several male characters who portray a magician, a warrior, and a mad dictator who is dressed like the wicked Queen (as a crone) from Snow White.

So why on Earth is it worth mentioning? Because it has a rather healthy fanbase: it's first episode is over 200,000+ views. Why? Because it's following all the tropes necessary, and unfortunately, garbage has a place in the internet world. A treasure is obviously worth a great deal more in the online world, but we shouldn't underestimate garbage either. The cinematography is terrible, the lighting is so bad that it really makes it look below amateur. The costumes, however, rather intrigue me, as well as some special effects that look circa 70s-80s. If I'm being honest, this reminds me of family reunions... with children the same age as me (lets say around age 8) and the odd games we would make up in some fantasy type sense. The story in this webseries is essentially that -- poorly made fantasy by children who had access to a costume closet.

I have harped pretty heavily on the DON'Ts of this series, so here's a couple of things they are doing right: music, consistency, and again, the loyal fanbase due to... RPG gamer tropes. The music, I doubt is original, is at least thematic, and does help to create some sense of story building. It isn't enough to save the series, but at least tie things together and help the audience just by mere tone to understand what is happening considering much of the dialogue is too mumbled to really grasp. I say one of the strengths is consistency because from one episode to the next there are no major leaps in style, making it somewhat easy to keep my bearings, even in its Ed Wood likeness.

Also, a fanbase addicted to a particular type of genre -- is one wonderful thing to exploit.

AS A WRITER....

How have I progressed in the past month? I've been big on tightening things up and looking for the 'essential' polish needed to pull things back. I'm getting a sharp eye for what is sentimental to the writer and what is necessary and making those changes so as to be as economical and clean as possible. Also, I'm encouraging myself to be more visual and organized so that before even meeting the process of an outline or draft, the mind palette has already been soaked in the necessary story elements to create, and not be blank.

I've had to grade a number of freshmen papers in composition, and I think studying the very basics of what is composition alongside theorists spanning from the Greek to the now, is helping me as a writer as well as as a communicator of words, if not, as bizarre as it, a teacher. I'm learning more and more that not everything that is in your head must be said or is even relevant, and that sometimes even the most precious of ideas have to be cut because they just might not fit with the puzzle. I'm becoming more analytical as well as seeing the overall big picture in writing. I would say, compared to a few months ago, my mind is a lot more clear for me to write, and part of that may just be that I'm in a more concrete living situation with more money in my pocket. Granted, if there are any lessons to be found, it would be in poverty, even if I would hardly consider it true, authentic poverty, there is a huge difference when you can pay the bills and have groceries.

1. What sort of impact / effect do you believe this medium will have on society in general?

The webseries as a medium is in its infancy as a whole.

Hopefully, this medium will get to spread its legs a bit and have the chance to stay around awhile before new technology may intercede it. With television and film already setting the groundwork for sequential visual media, the webseries is its child (whether, prodigy, step-child, or bastard) and depending on how the webseries is raised and optimized, it could become a powerful tool. Unlike the other industries, the webseries is much more open to entrepreneurial and indie film artists due to it having less pressure for people to move to Los Angeles and other network communities; at this point it has the leverage of being above the censorship standards and conventional standards of television and film allowing for a much more experimental medium. However, experimentation should not be taken over narrative otherwise the webseries will struggle (and continue to struggle) to be recognized as a credible medium.

Eventually, some type of censorship may be employed, but I think it will be more to the creators to identify their audience and create visuals that compel them and keep them as an audience rather than set aside discretion. In fact, that brings question, who is our target audience? Are we going for educators and scientists alike? How can we broaden our target audience?

From 2000-2010 the advent of videos being streamed online rose to powerful heights both enabling artists and hurting pockets left and right. Newgrounds.com has brought the proclivity of animators and flash video game artists back into blood; and thereupon are a great number of animated webseries which have become the sole careers of the artists involved. Due to the large amount of animations that have been produced over the years, I would dare to say this medium is expanding and producing a plethora of outstanding as well as humorous amounts of art: from Xombie, Saladfingers, Blockhead, the Jerry series, and Brackenwood (to name a few). Yeah, sure some of these are ridiculous, Brackenwood however is one of the best flash animations I've ever seen that's completely of its own Australian universe and has some of the most beautifully slick animation to date. The kind of appeal here is so strong, that not only can it help amateurs to make art when in a hiring freeze, but setting up your own work and it gaining popularity online also looks fantastic on any resume and makes a person that much more desired for a company.

I believe animation is actually ahead to some degree in building up artists and helping them to get noticed; perchance that's because many of the people behind these animations are doing everything, including the music, voices, story, etc.

For a webseries to standout and have the same appeal as a film, it will take a ton of crew, an intelligent crew at that. It's easy to get attention for one fluke video, but to keep that consistency and actually create a meaningful story is no simple task. I've followed certain people online for a number of years due to things they consistently produce, not having enough quantity will push you to the wayside in this industry. It's about consistently putting out quantity that has quality: neither of these two terms should be neglected.

I seriously doubt that webserieses as a whole will take in more cash flow than either film or television in a given year, but perhaps it has the chance to glow and perhaps networks will start pushing for this style so as to survive in a world gone digital.

2. What sort of impact / effect do you believe our webseries will have on society?

We have a couple of huge advantages: 1.) We should have some of the best writing a webseries has seen up to date, which is on par with traditional narrative theories, making it slick as a story and compelling automatically. 2.) I don't know of any other academic institution that is working toward making a webseries, one that also has government science agencies supporting it and so forth.

Now with that being said, we will need as much prep work in the production and post-production teams that either equals or surpasses the creative merits of the writing group or else, we'll have a great story, but -- terrible visual development all around. I have no doubt our framework will be outstanding, but the questions continue onto the next departments, which takes a great amount of faith.

*And I highly recommend that whoever will be editing, should get the chance to do so continued on into the summer... when said student(s) will be much more free to sit at editbays for real industry type shifts instead of having to mix it with school, graduation, finals, and all the other variables. Being a student who has been in that process and seen others do so -- summer editing is important to both the MJF and EA departments as a whole (and should probably be mentioned more to students). ANYWAY, with that little commercial being said, I think where it will have the most influence is for the university being recognized as an actual player in film schools. It's innovative, as well as shows a high amount of collaboration within the community with outstanding students who have somehow, and in many cases, quite literally come from the woods. It will also be great for all the students involved if its does in turn become successful, at a bare minimum a point on a resume, an actual script and Bible in hand for portfolios, and the actual end product itself. That's pretty cool.

The sky's the limit, really. If we market this right, we should put ourselves into magazines, be in the competitions, and of course, the website itself -- which will need to be slick, alluring, and as graceful as can be. No one likes clumsy websites.

Perhaps this too can show that Missouri State students are capable of research that's even outside their supposed field, such as science and time travel, and that they can have educated opinions as well as creative ways of approaching critical problems -- as well as tying together the knot for literary themes and their philosophical implications with the flesh and blood of the mechanics of science. Simply put, that's a dream come true.

One last note, Tarboy is an animated flash that was entirely made by a college class, and is one of the more revered flash cartoons that has been made to date.

Webseries entry 1 -- September 15th

Seeing as how this blog is already up and running from a previous screenwriting class, I'll just keep using it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OwDyWfjb48&feature=BFa&list=SL&lf=sh_e_top

In regards to the Mortal Kombat webseries, I find it fascinating on many levels but also it is unfortunately doldrum. What it has going for it are known actors, a cinematic style of filmmaking, and an already well known universe. These factors are what has allowed it to have a dedicated and large audience. Mortal Kombat also has the unique edge in that many video games centered around the classic street fighting style have come to the screen, and most have honestly been fairly poor in production quality; therefore, I don't know if the fans are in need of a breathtaking narrative or even well developed characters, since that's really not that typical of the genre anyway.

Overall, it's part of the recognition of favorable characters and a playful attitude (not to mention short ten minute videos) that's keeping a nearly 5 million viewer audience from episode to episode.

With that being said, there's a few things that are slipshod. I hope as part of a collaborative group of writers for a webseries, we will be watchful of as many of these things as possible. Many of the sequences have no emotional quality and are quite boring with action sequences that have no real punch to them since there is no drawing in of the audience. On the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon's director's commentary, the director suggests that the only real fight in the entire film (about fighting) is at the end when the two female protagonists battle. Literally, at this point the blades of the swords have met the point of the narrative, the intensity, and our overall curiosity. It's that dynamic that makes a world of difference. Just having characters fight each other does nothing for an audience -- until there is some sort of meaning to which we can relate. I absolutely hate long, drawn out action sequences that to me are just a hopeful wish of the writers, directors, and editors that maybe if they run the variables long enough, confuse the audience, and drift away from the plot that somehow when we come back to what matters that all the nonsense in the action somehow added up to the sequence of events we previously watched. I think it's sloppy writing and editing; it sadly happens all the time.

My other drawback with the series is that in the first two episodes there was such heavy shadowing in the camerawork that I was unable to see some of the possibly finer details in the picture. I don't know if this was due to color tinting or in-camera effects, but it's too dark and I have no patience for poor color quality. Bad saturation and shaky-hand cams are serious threats to keeping an audience happy. If you're going to move the camera, it needs to be clean and for the sake of the narrative, not to just be cool and show that you can move a camera in a crazy assorted way. The camera is telling the story just like every other piece, obviously. Not to mention, the third episode of the series left me confused. I wasn't sure I was watching the right thing and almost gave up since it was so divergent from the first two episodes from camera style to the actors. I ended up enjoying the episode slightly for the playfulness it had, but I'm not sure how many really appreciated all the intricate layers of meta language it had to offer, then again it shows that the makers of this series are totally taking advantage of the medium and showing off how the form of a webseries can be manipulated since a conventional style all the way through the series is not required. Here in this third episode is where the series is proving that webseries(es) can be its own distinct medium with its own rules that diverge from television and film.

As for my own writing:

1. What do you believe you can bring to the collaborative writing process that will occur in the development of this series? I've been studying writing and film for so long on the student side that I hope I can help in a number of ways. As for a class setting, I tend to keep my focus a little tighter while people speak in whirlwinds about ideas, and then I can retarget the idea so we remember what exactly needs to be done. It's easy to get sidetracked into a wormhole, even though I firmly believe tangents are often the adventures writers need to bring gold to the table. I think I can help others to bring out their ideas and feel as though they are a part of the group, give back good feedback, and also help others to respect each others suggestions. I tend to try and think as far away from cliches as possible to bring back something that's both clever and cool because one of my secret fears is that we won't fly high enough and end up in cheezy-town, which would be terrible and not something I would want to find my name scribbled into. I think the more we can turn tropes upside-down the better, but not everyone quite knows what the tropes are, or how to help round them into butterflies. There's a billion tropes, so all of us will be learning what needs to be shaken out of its two-dimensional frame.

2. What do you expect to take away from the experience?

I am excited to work with others in this unique setting and to build connections with newcomers as well as build stronger connections with those I've known for years. Part of the film experience on any level has some degree of networking, and it's a pretty sweet deal when you can make real friends out of it and not just film crew acquaintances who were there that one time on that one project who did that one thing that no one is ever going to see.

I expect that my understanding of how a writer's room works will be much more informed than previously, while I also learn both the pros and cons of that setting. I'm hoping it will teach me several valuable lessons from developing a stronger sense of writing as well as learning valuable skills on helping foster a healthy sense of community.

3. How do you anticipate the collaborative process helping your individual creativity?

In any group setting having multiple people helps one to develop a stronger sense of perspective. I think seeing how others process their ideas could open me up to some new brainstorming ideas, types of characters I've never considered, or even use it to help catalyst and research ideas with a slight more ease and cohesive sense than maybe a more introverted setting would have to offer. With all the competing ideas occurring in one person's head, in a collaborative idea setting the competing ideas seem to be what's spoken and that leaves less of a headache on my part.

4. How did the collaborative process hinder your creativity?

I would say I'm a fairly organic, creative person and if this project were placed merely into my own hands in a hypothetical sense, it would have a different spin on it in a number of ways -- not necessarily for the better or worse, but just different since it would have a number of different variables in its inherent process building.

There's beauty in knowing that the process of how I would work as an individual and with a group is entirely (and should be) different as well as the end product would be different. I definitely process my ideas for a story in a completely different way which is first I make a single character or event and I give that character an identity then a setting. I try to think of something that has an impulse of intrigue. After I have that, I start to ask what's wrong with the storyworld and develop it from there, and even though everything might not be perfectly mapped out, it's usually enough to start asking the pre-writing questions and see what I'm missing and with a firmly established storyworld, I know the angles of where I can pull which tends to be effortless. And with that in mind, themes come pretty naturally. I think I see most of these concepts as connected so it's odd to me to break them down so much. I have noticed I tend to think visually first on solo projects before ever scratching the surface, while in group projects I think first of what may be missing, a quirky idea, or just something to strike a stimulus so we eventually arrive at something we can all agree is worthwhile. It starts with a few group conversations here and there to start building a frame we can play with -- and then I start thinking visually. Both have their pros and cons, for one thing writing in a vacuum can get lonely, but it also allows you to play with ideas in a way that might be more personally edifying or freeing at times. I like the collaborative setting because it forces me to stick to a schedule and I have people who are accountable. Solo I can take a break and explore the emotions of an idea which helps me to rewrite and also process and understand what I'm going through. I don't think I go as deep cognitive wise in a group setting, there may be ways of doing that but I think other aspects of group dynamics replace that style and that's okay as long as something awesome comes out of it.

Week #16 -- Trapped

Were there 16 weeks this semester? I'll double check on that.

I think sometimes the realizations that are found in writing makes it an intimidating craft. Perhaps this is why sometimes putting a paper bag over my head seems more inviting than reckoning with my thoughts. It is important for a writer to realize what they are headed into and properly setting herself up so that she can come across the heavy words of writing no matter how dense, hilarious, or depressing those words may be. It's not always easy to see what's written before you or even how to rewrite words to their absolute best. It takes obedience to see these things out. A lazy writer isn't going to be able to commit to the more tasking aspects of writing and storytelling.

Writing may come with more ease as one practices but there are definitely difficult paths to cross. Writing about a loved one's death can move someone to tears as they process what's happened, writing about someone's afflictions could bring out their aggressive sides, while writing about love could make one lightheaded. It's important that whatever emotions come out in writing that these emotions do not consume the writer and prevent them from craft. Emotions are often an untaught entity that we are just expected to go through in life. In this day in age, emotions are often not even appreciated. Writers need a good sense of self-control in regards to emotions so that whatever happens, does not control them.

Of course, emotions are often used as a form of control. This is a manipulation of emotions and is not there intended use. Anger, sadness, and humor all alike can direct people and move their hearts, but these forms can easily do damage, very unnecessary damage. Clear thinking is the goal along with clear, purified emotions. There's nothing worse than having someone emotionally come on to you and the aftershock of clingy attitudes attached to it. In this day and age, closeness is not always easy to find so emotions are often used as traps to help people get what they want. Writers need to be on the lookout for what traps them. It's easy to be consumed with ideas, but sometimes it's not so easy to find motivation, to have faith in one's ability, or just to actually commit. Writers need to constantly be looking for keys which help them to overcome traps as well as be on the lookout for what may cause a writer to slow down too much and in turn be afraid to write.

Week #15 - Appreciation

I appreciate having this writing blog and seeing the more intricate thoughts I have on concepts, life, and... writing.

I find it fascinating how one year of concrete study in the English department has changed my life. The fact that I've gotten e-mails from professor that I am a deserving individual and that my ideas are actually worthwhile means something to me. Knowing that people have faith in me and are willing to direct me to the right path has not only improved my intellect but also given me one the best years of my life in regards to education and beyond. I occasionally have my failures in identifying myself against the grain, or in comparing myself at all I tend to fall short. It's easy to let a grade or someone's perceptions nail you down to false truths. In the end, these marks actually don't matter; it's the eyes of those who take me on that translate those marks, so I hope that they come across me with wisdom. Superior grades and grades of failure should neither scar me.

Which I have seen, countless times. I'm known for falling in the cracks or for taking on more of the world than necessary, or in having to face a great deal of tragedy all at once. I often find I'm surrounded by people who have much more spotless grade point averages than me, more sustainable test scores, and even better resources and networks to manage what it is they are going after. I'm often fascinated, blessed, and somewhat challenged by these people. Just when I think I am an awesome outlet for something, I get the hunch that maybe I need to seek out people who are stronger than me so that I can get my perspective straight again. At the same time, if I only seek the geniuses of the world then how much am I subjecting my perspective to a limited view of reality?

I'm concerned a great deal about many of the events that are developing throughout the world. My hope is that by dedicating myself to the arts, I will be able to find wisdom and bring that back in this excited time of events, hysteria, and propaganda. I'm often afraid that if I speak up my voice will be incomprehensible or silenced. Sometimes letting thoughts stay with me is an act of protection or an act of needing to digest what I'm really thinking and really come to an agreement on whether any particular set of thoughts is accurate or just biased, full of fear, and so forth. I am much more naive than I could possibly be aware; there's too much happening in the world and a great deal of it, I probably don't want to be involved in.

Currently, I'm trying to banish the fats of my life that are hindering the bone of my thoughts, the precious organs, and more. I think if I want to be a strong writer who is aware of their own scruples, I should be bold enough to find those truths in my life. I have developed a sick obsession with music and I think now is the time to seek clarity, silence, and perhaps a better playlist or two. As well, I've been fasting which apparently is excellent for the immune system. I hunger for these types of lifestyles. I hate seeing materialism at any level having merit over my life. So if I have to say goodbye to something, than so be it.

I want to apply all of this to my writing by a thousand percent.

Week # 14 Cookie Cutter Disease

I might be a couple of weeks behind now. I think I caught up and then disappeared with other tasks.

The lesson that's striking me now is the curse of the cookie cutter disease. I've seen it before in writing; it seems to appear quite often with female writers, just sayin' at this point. Sometimes we as writers get too wrapped into rules, format, grammar, cleanliness, and the sort that an unfortunate thing happens: our writing suffers. With few to any risks for the sake of cleanliness, many of the story elements become undeveloped. Characters need enough room to be the dynamic sorts they hunger to be, and if the parameters are set too tight -- the conflict, the tension, the meaning behind everything struggles to hit anything profound. We are left but with sheets of clean white paper, inconsequential, gray matter.

There's nothing bold about sticking too intimately to these clean, OCD patterns of writing. The language itself should flirt with the the reader, spiral them into a rage of ecstasy, and give them hope that somehow this spiraling world of madness has hope. In order to set the reader free, the author needs to be set free as well. There are times when breaking the rules isn't just creative, but an absolute necessity. Writing is meant to be overflowing. It is a craft that should not be contained in a box, but has the need to spread over the cup because it is a mirror to reality; perhaps the finest mirror. And if we are not overflowing, than we are oppressed, we are losing the battles of this finite world, and we are no longer living -- we are formalized robots.

I always find this writing habit in at least one or two writers in a critique workshop and my heart goes out to them. I see that this writer has more potential than she realizes, but isn't quite ready to be bold enough to break lose of the status quo of law and etiquette. I usually give these excellent writers different treatment than all of the other scholars because I see this vulnerability right to the core. I point right at cookie cutter disease because it isn't an act of purity, but an act of fear.

Writing needs to be expressive. It needs tension. It needs to break through all the walls of a broken generation, a soul full of hurt, and an ignorant mind. Writing at it's absolute is intended to enlighten, to engage memories, and to touch at our deepest emotions. It's not an easy task and by no means is every piece of writing going to fit this bill. For those wanting to have excellent prose, one must be willing to be bold because true writing in essence is always bold, therefore cookie cutter disease is worth being remedied.

In short, cookie cutter disease is the dusted over traditional concepts that are in need of a resurgence of light. If we refuse to change our ways and stick to our current state of affairs, how much more are the aspects, variables, and peoples that can bring in a more noble reality left behind to oppression?

Week 13 - Reality -- The Flip Side Part II

Going from one extreme to the next, I'd like to talk about my muse.

I fell in love with Japan at a young age. I was fortunate enough to have video games, cartoons, and stories from this country sent to me. There is no doubt in my mind that this has been one of the greatest, if not greatest, influences in my capabilities, interests, and love for story telling. I will admit that with all the tragedies that are happening on the planet, and the ones that are soon to come, I feel the most connected and troubled by the pains Japan is facing, for this country is one of my favorites. Their teaching have given me hope, have brought emotions to my heart, and have given me the mindset to expect more out of reality, to see the more brilliant side of every color.

My heart mourns for this country as the news rattles out more concerns from earthquakes, radiation, to individual instances of death within families. This country has faced a number of tragedies throughout the ages. More than any other historical moment that I've been born into through American citizenship, I feel more guilt and shame at the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For such a country of such rich ideas and souls, knowing the amount of pain that's been incurred over the centuries pierces my heart.

All of who we are, the kingdoms we try to build, the systems of knowledge we try to bring together, so easily fall apart within a handful of seconds. Life is far more fragile than we realize. Just the right air pressure, gravity, oxygen, heat, lighting, distance from the sun, distance with the moon, the terrain, and so much more -- if the tiniest thing is taken out of its balance, we so easily fall.

Japanese art has taught me to think big. To think of emotions and the spirit. One must always think of their characters, that it's okay to make fun of the art you are working with, and to take bold risks. Not everything has to have a rhyme or reason; it may have larger implications and be an open case in the end. Everything that is beautiful, wonderful, and inquisitive isn't always smashed into a white or black box, sometimes emotions and everything else have a way of overflowing rather than sticking to one label.

Overflowing with ideas is exactly what I want in writing.

Week 12 - Bad Art = Self-inflicted Torture Part I

I just spent the past thirty minutes thinking... what the hell?

Maybe I'm alone here on this, but I think a few million people missed out on what is actually genius and what is a pot of uncooked rice.

I stand by my words.

Alright now, here's the gist since graduating. I've had job offers, film offers, bad boyfriend offers -- and the thing is, they are all lacking BIG time. I would much rather spend my time not making money rather than working for a pitiful company. I am happy, things are provided, therefore a job is not about money for me (hallelujah!). I don't want my name attached to your bad film, I'm sorry I want to believe in it-- but no, if it has no basic story for me to follow then I doubt it's going anywhere victorious. And why, in all that's gracious and glorious would I ever date someone who can't keep up with me? I am a loser, no doubt everyone is, but why should I lower my expectations for a terrible relationship when I am perfectly happy single? THAT is insulting to myself.

So here's the writing lesson for the day -- you need magic. You need to believe and you need to learn and keep going. I'm not going to stop by and make friends with someone who only says "meow." It's lackluster, it's stupid, you need a backbone in everything whether it's a company, an artistic project, or a relationship. Nobody wants that putrid stuff clogging up their precious hours of time, so just say "no."

And here's my reason why you should befriend the word "no"...

If you truly want the awesome to happen, if you really want to find beauty, if you actually have a desire for greatness, then go get it. It exists so there's no reason you should be wasting your time on, in all do respect, shit. We're not going to be mamsie pansies right now. There is absolutely no reason for shit in creativity. None. If you don't have it, take a class. Do what it takes to find it, but it's gross when you work for a company that doesn't know what it's doing, it's gross when you're on a film set and it's a disaster, and it is big time gross when some juvenile delinquent twenty something thinks they're hot stuff when someone as clever and devious as I am can knock them down to size within thirty seconds. (Something my ego relishes in).

These, my friends who have stumbled on to these somewhat wise words, is why I am a snob. I will help you with writing, I will teach, I will preach, I will do everything I can to help you shine more -- but when it comes down to the bottom line, if you're not up to speed in this competitive world of ideas then you need to rattle up your perspective and find a much greater world of imagination. No one should have to put up with the bad. If you can't do it, find someone who can take your visions and make them sparkle. That's what it's all about -- vision, not the stuff clogging up your colon.

It all comes down to one thing and that's your mind. If your mind is not exercised and ready for true, fantastic creative energy than you're going to make a fool of yourself when the true bands, the true heroes, and the true artists rise up. No one wants to sit and listen to a bad band; I know you have to learn somewhere and I applaud that. You do in fact need to stand and face the crowd, what I'm talking about is you've got to keep digging deeper and deeper otherwise... you are a false artist. In the end, people do not want to pay for bad art, for a bad concert, and so on and so forth. The remote control is one click away. Your star employee is just seconds away from walking out the door. Women will gladly slap your face.

Don't be unreasonable. You've got to be charismatic with this stuff. You have to be real. And the most important thing of all: you have to enjoy it, otherwise you're a slave to some industry and that -- is just as terrifying as bad art, the world's finest self-inflicted torture.

This may be the Simon Cowell buried deep below my surface, but I have respect for a man who had to see so many terrible auditions and have to wait for just one true, pure awesome singer whether or not they ended up spreading their wings after the competition. You do not want to be the fool that all of America laughs at from an American Idol audition. You do not want to be a joke. THAT is self-inflicted torture. And you can do better with your life and your creativity (whether or not said talent was the correct soul-mate for you.)

This isn't about writer's block or having a fear to get started and plunge into the depths of an artistic medium; this is realizing that without faith and having a road map in your mind of where you're supposed to be headed with a particular talent, you will end up a vegetable in the creative realm which every last human being should be free and able to experience. I can't understand why anyone would settle to be a vegetable when they are a fully fledged human being.

Yes, dare to suck. BUT in daring to suck you must have a vision of where you are going. If you don't have that -- what is the point of suffering? Daring to suck will help you to find humility, it will help you to realize your weaker, under exercised areas. What is most important in daring to suck is having joy for criticism. If you don't find joy in the criticism, feedback, and so on -- the creative world will crush you.

Week #11 - Focus

I have had a hard time keeping up with my schedule this semester. Paying off bills, reading hundreds of pages of critical theory, writing daily papers. It's overwhelming. I've felt some amount of guilt in not being able to keep up. And what's more, I'm really feeling a strong amount of need for self-evaluation as I realize my departure from undergraduate and a strong childhood and into the unknown territory of adulthood.

All of this is pulping together. All aspects of my life are working in this way, which I think is being reflected in my writing, both in non-fiction and fiction. I feel like the strongest aspect of my life currently is the social aspect, which has always been positive since being in Springfield. This hasn't been the toughest part of college for me. I don't even know how I got through some semesters, but for whatever reason my mind keeps inquiring of what really matters. (What really does matter?)

I've been practicing piano, voice, and dance lately. I have a pile of French flashcards that I occasionally go through at night. I make all sorts of plans almost everyday to meet with people. I have a knack for friendship, this is a pretty clear discovery I've made in recent days.

I have so many fiction works sitting as drafts. I'm not even sure how many bills I have anymore, and I'm waiting eagerly to see if I'll be a graduate assistant next year which would greatly help with my financial wading through waters. Somehow last semester I had a dynamite run, but this time my mental state is completely different, not to say I've dumbed down, there's just a yearning for certain activities. I've found that I've neglected certain aspects of myself while being dowsed in study and also in walking alongside others.

My issue here is that I'm in a sort of limbo. Many people are leaving here and moving on while also others are entering my life or returning. I just completed one program, with much intensity from every life aspect imaginable, to wondering where I really need to go. It is so hard to focus. I know what I want, but there's about 256 things I want. I try to combine common goals so that I can at least obtain some of my dreams. I have so many dreams planned that my life here isn't going to complete it all, which I think that's the type of person I want to be -- having so many dreams that my life can't contain them.

The problem is that I'm overwhelmed with options. I think my generation is overwhelmed with options unlike any other generation before it. At this point, I could run off to just about any country, learn a million different things through the aid of the internet, and keep up with thousands of people. No wonder it's so hard to figure out what matters in this multi-tasking generation.

Being in graduate school will open more doors, and some of these doors I may not go toward till I'm in my 40s. Essentially, I'm having problems with focus. With this many variables in may landscape, I often don't know what to focus on so everything either gets to be connected and in the same ground or it all goes fuzzy. One object in frame with the rest in fuzzy land is somewhat distracting to me. But if I can't narrow my focus, I think everything will all meet the same level of mediocrity. Each subject will have to be taken in focus and allotted its time -- however, in seeing how these things connect, perhaps they can influence each other and cut down on my amount of time in each.

Either way, this semester can be summed up as a need for focus. I am certain I will accomplish the things I need to accomplish, however with that attitude it may end up sloppily. I'd rather each part be taken care of well and seen as a whole in influencing each other. Perhaps I'm just overwhelmed on what to focus on first.

As for writing, I'm having a hard time finding a center in just about everything I'm writing. It's a new kind of writer's block, one where I honestly don't know the picture I'm trying to convey. I have all the words in my brain, the concepts are there, and even the understanding, but necessarily how to put all the puzzle pieces together -- I don't know. I'm afraid my puzzle pieces are supposed to come together to make a picture of a pastoral scene but I'm ending up with a man-eating flower from the graveyard of some nuclear reactor incident. I need to focus on getting things into a pattern which fits the intended prompt.

Week 10 -- Story Telling

What have I learned about writing this week?

I just got feedback on my first pages, and yes, it was a complicated set.

Rewriting is no joke. The first draft of anything is usually one of the toughest hurdles. At that point, nothing is on the paper yet, and so you have to offer yourself a lot of material in order to work with. Writing is somewhat like working with clay, you mold it over time, rarely does it form into a perfect piece of pottery in one instance -- maybe it does.

Writers have to be willing with their work. It took Christopher Nolan nearly ten years to write out Inception, and still, there may have been opportunities for ironing things out. The frame of mind I like to take to art is: "What can I do to take this to its best level?" I like to think in terms of best, not perfect, good, or satisfactory, but best.

What I realize at this point about my own writing is that I have acquired much density with my words. I don't know if I can entirely avoid this. Last semester in short story writing, one of my critique partners consistently commented on how they were fascinated by my mind and the dynamite characters I created. However, at times... they got lost. But if I explained just a little -- everything became clear. I'm learning how to do a balancing act here. I speak generally with more than one or two meanings in writing. I've gotten a knack for layering. This layering is not only in my prose, but it's starting to appear in my screenwriting. This could be in my favor because it could help to make my language more concise, on the flip side, it could be making things more complicated than need be.

That's the thing, I enjoy complicated stories. They put a high level of degree on setting things up so that in the end the payoff has to be high too. If the payoff doesn't meet the mark, I'm disappointed. I can see clearly that I am setting myself up pretty high, and I don't expect to meet the mark the first couple of runs. I believe Steven King is right in that good writing is like an excavation, you have to carefully take the dinosaur bones out of the ground or else it all falls apart and you won't know how its all connected. With the wrong frame of mind, writing any story could be a disaster. But, if I take my time and really invest in knowing my characters, story world, and series of plots, than I think I will know how they are suppose to flow and most importantly, I'll know how to best serve them.

I like the subject matter that comes out of my mind. I will admit I have some pride in that I come up with some fairly intriguing magical stories. I think fantasy is one of the greatest places to showcase Campbell's steps to a hero's journey. Myth making is intended to be esoteric, to be larger than life, and to be exciting. What's the point of retelling anything if it has absolutely no redeeming emotional quality to it? Is there anything worse than boredom in storytelling?

I think not.

But I do want what's best for a story. I think in finding what is best for a story, the audience ends up feeling appreciated. And more important than money, they feel as if their time was well spent.

Week 9 -- A Mess, Honestly

I looked at a calendar. I believe I am supposed to be on week 11 so I'll do what I can to catch up.

Money gives one more options to buy things. The more money one has, the more one can expend. The less money one has, the less the person can buy.

Wicked simple logic.

I'm trying to apply this to writing. If having more money allows one to expend more, then in writing what does one need more of in order to expend?

I think it's a combination of:

1.) Time
2.) Experience (in real life too)
3.) Practice
4.) Education
5.) Discovering perspective
6.) Courage

Being a luxurious writer is a bit more complex than how many dolla' billz one has in their bank account. Wealth for the writer is counted in several different currencies. One may be lacking in one of the listed areas, but they may make up for it due to another quality, perhaps one not listed. In fact, some writer's methods may be lethal, just as some actors methods may open doorways into madness. The arts can be dangerous, even damaging. This is why it's important to know one's storehouses of knowledge rather than succumb to one side, one method -- that brings an artist to suicide.

My key here isn't to talk about the dark side of the artistic world, it's to give myself (and others) a practical eye on what can shape them as a writer. It's easy to leave a piece in its 16th draft in a desk drawer to collect dust. What's not easy is to keep going even in the face of obstacles. If one really wants to become a strong writer, this person should pursue it, and even when afraid to write -- continue forward. Instead of constantly being the critique of one's writing, it's best to love one's work even for its mistakes. Besides, mistakes are opportunities.

Lets look to the list I made and see why I chose those as (6) pertinent writing currencies.

1. Time:

Regardless of how one feels, we are all under the control of the clock. Everyone must face death. In order to be a strong writer, one must realize that it takes time. A perfect draft rarely (if ever) comes from the initial typing of words onto white space. It can take years until all of the story is untangled before one's eyes, before all the characters are shaped into the creatures that need be, and before the mind has finally excavated the material it drew upon to get to the heart of the story. A story is a maze and the author travels through it to find what needs to be told and what is the quickest and shortest path. You see, overtime a writer will find that certain elements whether characters, plot devices, and themes actually diminish the story and thus can be deleted. Whatever distracts one from getting to the end of the maze, is superfluous. The same goes with story telling. (But don't be too against tangents now; they have their purpose just the same.)

*If people are not going through this process, I don't know if they're challenging their selves enough to write excellent prose whether in the novella or the screenplay. Keep in mind, by challenging yourself in writing you will gain strength and stamina. By gaining these qualities, you will be able to race to the finish... more successfully and often.

2. Experience:

Experience is closely related to time. The more one writes, the more one becomes familiar with the rules. In the early stages of writing, grammar rules are memorized, but not until one picks up the pen do they actually intimately understand those rules, and more importantly, when they should be broken for the greater cause. One needs to experience the world before he or she can write about it or anything outside it. In any literary piece that's off Earth, there's still a need for reference, essentially, the reader and audience must relate with qualities even if they are beyond them. However, it is important to keep in mind that people can write about things they've never experienced: to presume otherwise is laughable. There are plenty of people who write about mass murderers but are as innocent as lambs. What I mean to say, is that even in the vacuum of writing, the writer needs to venture out, speak with various kinds of peoples, go to places down the street and even to far off places. Not only do these experiences help to define reality, they also help the mind in recalling information. For all writing is the providence of memory, down to the last character I am recalling a memory.


3. Practice:

Regardless of... I wish I had made this list shorter. I'm gonna make some real short sums here now.

If you don't write, how do you expect to actually figure this writing thing out? Perhaps you are "reading" in a well balanced diet. But just because you know the game's rules... doesn't mean you play well when in the arena.


4. Education:

I don't mean get a degree. You need to study up on good writing. I'll admit, knowing a thing or two from last semester's composition writing class improved my prose by about 300%. If you take the time to study good writing and why it's good writing than you've unlocked the secrets that you can use to benefit your own spectacular story. One of my favorite professors refereed to this as being: "narrative gangsters."

5.) Discovering perspective:

This is pretty close to #2. Except, I mean, you have to know a thing or two about the religious and political arenas of this world. If you want to have characters of varying perspectives, you need to know what perspectives, personalities, and traits exist. You can't find all the knowledge within yourself because sadly, you don't know everything. This is another place that I would like to say -- the writer needs to step away from the keyboard, preferably calmly, and with excitement.

*DISCLAIMER: you can learn the universe through pictures, books, movies, songs, and the like. In fact, I encourage these endeavors. But don't forget your social needs, those "social needs" can be beneficial in helping you with your writing.

6.) Courage:

You, my dear reader, are going to write garbage, grade-A barf, and incomplete gibberish. Who cares? Progress takes time. You have to have faith in yourself that from draft-1 to draft-9,243 that you will improve, that the story that's trapped in your mind will come out... and that you'll eventually learn how to write less drafts.

In film making, rarely is something done to perfection on the first take. But you keep going until you get the magic take. Your job is to make sure you have good shot coverage; it's the same with writing, your job is to get the best writing possible out of each word, paragraph, and chapter to complete an entire story. Each new draft is a new take. You have to rearrange the lighting, new blocking for characters, and new special effects. You keep playing with those components until it sparks.

Don't expect writing to be easy, effortless, and full of smiles. Sometimes it is effortless, but other times your characters will be just as difficult as people in real life. Keep your eye out for lessons, enjoy yourself, and do the type of writing you want to do. Even if that's so bold as to take a severance in pay, if you're not happy, then you need to find another project that brings out... you.

As lame as that may sound, there's nothing more soul-sucking than a project not worth attending. Beyond being a writer... everyone is a person who needs to live as much as possible. So yes, have courage to do the things you love. If it happens to be writing, than write the things you love, figure out how to love what you are writing... and if you can't muster it in you -- honestly, don't stay attached to a dead donkey. Time is too precious to waste it on junk. There's no reason in this massive world FULL OF OPTIONS that any writer should have a bad marriage to their prose. Don't let a writing project abuse you. You've got to live, and if you're not living with your writing... it's dull, lackluster.

*DISCLAIMER: You should always try to appreciate what you're writing, even if it isn't an initial love interest. In fact, if you don't love it, do what you can to study out and figure out how you could appreciate your writing venture.

Week 8 -- Linguistics + the Visual World

I may be behind on these posts. I need to look at a schedule and see what week we are in for the semester.

I'll try to make this short, sweet, and to the point. I have plenty to do so there's no point in overstaying.

I just got my linguistics midterm back and I have come to the discovery that linguistics is well suited for film. Linguistics looks into the core concepts behind words, what visuals come out of those concepts, and the sounds used to convey a word, which holds a concept. I apologize for the muddy language here.

If at the core of words is concepts and visuals, then how much more can the world of film be improved by studying linguistics? Linguistics is like biology: it traces words, like fossils, down to their origin. Therefore, if we study words, we should be able to find more appealing visuals, and not only that, but how those visuals connect with other visuals (a symbol a director plants into a film may end up having more density than intended). I think one of the keys for good film making is finding how visuals can best tell stories. Sometimes in production, crew members and the like become distracted by movement in itself but forget how to make things connect in a compelling and or visceral way.

There was a section in my linguistics class on studying dreams. I for one am the type of dreamer who goes through series of abstract visuals from spinning staircases, giant fountains with roses, dragons at tea parties, and castle in clouds. There's no end to what may happen. It doesn't always make sense to me, but the dreams that actually stay with me, that I wish I could have again, are the ones with images that are beyond me. The purpose of dream linguistics is to look into how a language the conscious mind not be fluent on, but fluent in the subconscious, how this other language can be made accessible.

I think what I'm getting at is that film makers need to venture out to find more incredible graphics while also finding ways of breaking these images down for the audience to understand. Sometimes we are not in tune with the absurd, the beautiful, or the complex, and therefore, the art of writing strong visuals is to edit it together in a way that the eyes can read, the mind can enjoy, and the heart will keep for years to come.

Basically, my post here is to say that studying linguistics may be a fine tool indeed for any film student, film amateur, you get the point, to have on their list of talents.

*I struggle to write on the topic of linguistics clearly. I may need to look this post over in the future for fine tuning purposes.

Week 7 -- Characters (Again)

Humans are complex, inconsistent, and cursed beings. Depending on any given sequence of events, different tones may come out of a person. The faithful priest may in the next moment be covered in the blood of saints, the homeless drunkard may in the next sentence disprove the words of a professor, and a virgin may become the world's greatest prostitute. Often what we define as ourselves are just roles; these roles help us to configure the world around us, give us obligations, and some sort of disfigured identity. We can stay strapped into a flat character mold, or traverse through a myriad of masks... some masks may be more fitting than others, but what is truly underneath the mask?

The same things are in all of us: brokenness, heartache, shame, joy, worry, poverty, blame, and mercy. Character isn't just a role. Character goes into the eidos. It's when we put the materialistic masks we call roles over ourselves that the true identities of who we are become shadows, copies of our true potential.

My greatest love for writing is strong characterization. A story will resonate forever in my mind and heart when the characters are brilliance beyond years. It's their choices that fascinate me. Whether a character is moving through tragedy or comedy, it's the choices that define them, not the world around them, except without that world there are no boundaries for characters to develop a sense of decision making.

I played video games growing up, and one of my favorites was the American Super Nintendo version of Final Fantasy III. One of the main female protagonists, Celes is revealed through a series of sequences on the true character of her nobility. At the beginning, she is in the hands of a global company bent on enslaving a magical race, but then she becomes the prisoner, the traitor, the heroine, and even an opera star. Her decisions take her through some wild places; she even comes close to the point of suicide. And yet still, it's through her decisions that people are able to group together and overthrow a powerful world dictator; in fact, he didn't just conquer the world, he destroyed it. He won, but eventually out of anarchy rose people hungry for the original home they had.

It's not the trends, quirks, and avant-garde styles that bring a character to life. If those things take precedence over the character themselves, it's like a present finely wrapped, but with nothing inside. The aesthetics are the aroma of art. Those gimmicks from chewing bubble gum, wearing plaid socks, comb-overs, red cowboy boots, and the like speak of other things that are much deeper than the surface. A true character does not allow a role to define them or a series of sequences, a job, education, and the other goods. A true character comes from navigating through these hurdles, by using them to get to the core of what matters most. They have innate qualities that implore them to fight for the cause of mercy, justice, love, death, beauty, and so much more. A flat character is someone who distracts themselves with the hurdles rather than using those hurdles to do the one thing we truly are: alive.

Sure, some business nuts are going to say this is ridiculous. "You have to have a job to make money. To put food on the table. To keep the bills paid." What if that job turns against you? What if as a woman your whole life you are raised to have children, but either your body won't allow it or the children you have end up destroying you? Men are not just jobs and women are not just sex objects and baby holders. When we start classifying ourselves this way, we demean ourselves. Family and work are blessings; if we allow them to cloak ourselves, define our entities, and so forth -- midlife crisis will be imminent, and mid-life crisis can lead to fatality, divorce, impulsive decision making, and depression of the worst kind.

The most important part about life is life. Paradise is now, so I implore each person to live exactly how they would if they were to extend into eternity. Are you happy with the choices you are making? Is this who you would want to be in a world of perfect ideals? What are you doing to transform the world to reach closer to eternity? The characters that last in our minds are not the ones who end at "happily ever after" in a realm of "There is nothing left within this character's life that is worth noting, for we have already told you the greatest portion of all." Good characterization has us constantly thinking about what will they do next, why isn't there more written about them, and who were they before it all began.

Have you ever listened to music where it is impossible to hold it in one genre? Are those not some of the most inviting and compelling pieces of all? For they transcend the mold.

Going back to the word eidos that I used earlier: eidos is the highest plain of reality according to Plato, it transcends the materialistic world. The material world is the flesh, the conveyor of the concepts. All characters are vectors; they have direction with the concepts they hold. When two concepts collide, the stronger of the two prevails.

It takes great strength to build character whether to the highest peak of heroism or villianism. Only one of great character can fend off another of great character.

Week 6 -- Music

Okay, I'm taking myself down a notch. I'm making this writing journal harder than need be. Often I do this at the start of something new.

You know what is a sad reality? Good storytelling is hard to come by. I think we're still striving for the best and not quite meeting the mark. I think we need innovative people to enlighten us so that we won't settle for garbage. The snobs need to rise up and declare war. I'm tired of going to a film and feeling bored.

The worst criticism for any type of storytelling isn't failure; it's boredom.

I think the key to my writing is listening to music. In the song world, where you are only allotted a handful of minutes to prove yourself, the lyrics, beats, so on and so forth, have to be brilliant to last beyond the cliche of a billboard chart. If you want a timeless tune, it has to speak beyond its own generation; it has to connect with people (duh).

When writing, I listen to just about anything at least once. Depending on what type of setting or mode I'm trying to create, I'll listen to certain genres. If I can't get myself to write, I listen to the worst pop I can find -- although, I think my reservoir for this is on overload and I may just ban myself from public radio for the next year.

Here's the thing, I think the problem with most people, most things, most everything -- is that people are too freaked out to think, and then sometimes they embellish so much that their imagination doesn't know how to chart what's happening and turn what's occurring into something productive, and not just a landscape of unpolished creative ideas. It's important to both be free spirited and responsible. The imagination needs to be carved, not an ambiguous entity.

And leaving thy imagination alone creates dismal settings... the murder of my soul.

I think the first step for the author is to know that characters have lives of their own, and if you try to make them do exactly what you want, they're going to turn into boxed, second rate mess. So what I learned some time ago is that instead of trying to plan out every little piece of a character's life, I should instead listen to music, lay down, make sure there are no distractions, and allow my brain to make a story on the spot with whatever character I decide owns the story at that point, and huzzah -- recipe for success.

You can't truly know your characters until you throw them into the music world and force them to be active, just sitting there and trying to tact qualities is idle's play. What's your barbarian going to do if you turn on a hypnotic hippie song from the 60s?

During this time, I let my mind have a passion draft. If dragons are suddenly in westerns, then so be it. Sometimes I have to fight my mind when it thinks something is playing out rationally; the rational needs to be found later. In fact, if I listen long enough, lets say through a whole album of 12 songs or so, generally speaking a narrative forms itself whether or not I'm forcing it. But the important thing is to give the story to the characters, to let them show you who they are and what needs they have, what makes them vulnerable, and what makes them all around tick. The best advice I've ever been given is this:

"The great thing about advice is that you the listener are the one who decides what you are going to take out of another's advice."

Same goes for this exercise. Take what you can out of it.

Often times the best music is instrumental; I think if you're only trying to think in visuals, taking out the chance for words to preach helps significantly.

Anyway, as someone who fancies film, this not only helps in story building but in thinking visually. The mind should be something that challenges the film industry; it should be capable of making images in thought that we don't have the technology to match, and for whatever reason, music helps me to have a grip on my characters.

Also, music is structured just like any other form of storytelling. It has its beginning lines, its main message, its repetitive nature, and its limited cultural contexts. It works off pattern building, and right down to the second, it has to make everything matter to the ears or it will be turned off.

Week 5 -- Input / Output

I remember some physics teacher I had saying something along those lines of you output from what you input, and you always input more than you can actually output.

So, I'm going to keep this short and simple. Everyone who is creative needs to work on their input capabilities. With what you input, you take and turn into output energy. By watching several videos, listening to all kinds of music, and reading series of books, you are therein giving your a mind a supply of creative tools to work with.

With creativity, the mind summons memory at all times. Whatever is inside your brain you are able to work with, you can't play with tools your mind is not equipped with. Therefore, if you want to create good art, you need to know what good art is. So please, by all means, go out and explore different creative avenues. By doing so you are preparing your mind to create. A mind can't create when it is dry. So constantly bring back water, allow your mind to digest it, and have at it with creative-town.

Week 4 -- Writing about Writing: Easily Turned Rant

What have I learned about writing this week? Well, from reading several linguistics criticism theories for somewhere around fifteen plus hours, I must say that writing about writing is one of the most daunting and complex tasks in the entire universe. I just wrote a long paper on why this is so for another class, and I'm not one for making two of the same pieces, due to the obnoxious redundancy it creates for myself, mainly.

The basic gist is that what is difficult when defining what is writing -- and the truth behind words and how they are indicators of concepts -- is that words change with time, perception, and so much more. To get through understanding writing through the process of writing can almost look like madness in trying to keep riddles, rhetoric, and metaphors from conquering the author.

I think mentally the artist needs to train their self. The starving broke artist isn't broke because they're an artist; it's the art that keeps them alive while in the poverty. I have seen true poverty, I think I would be silly to say I've actually lived it. Just because you don't have material goods doesn't mean your life feels unsatisfied. I think we often put these material goods where other more fruitful concepts can alleviate the pains of a homesick mortal soul.

Going back to my point: an artist not only needs to be trained in their craft of choice, but they have to be willing to strengthen their mind. If one allows their body to be sedentary, you don't just gain weight, you also gain tension, soreness, and often times, depression. Once you start stretching, even though at the time sounds like the worst idea, it actually helps to free up all the stress one carries. We carry stress in our mind; it's a battleground of concepts, memories, dreams, and other related psychosis. Without alleviating the stress that allows the mind to run free, the mind reverts to a state of confusion, of feeling like it's lost to a jungle without any tool to combat all the dangers. Exercising after a long lifestyle disease of sedentary living often feels painful, as do most things when they go through a purification process, like being thrown into fire to strengthen the sword -- this is bringing up some crazy religious notions in my mind. I need to slow down.

So what is a healthy mind? Defining that is complex because we have to use our minds to figure out what that is, and since we are in part liars it becomes an abstract set of statistics that may or may not prove pertinent.

This is part of the problem in writing about writing, for you see if you do not give writing about writing proper direction it does in fact turn into madness, and by madness I mean having all the information but not being able to balance it properly for it to be solved into a cohesive text. For me to straight up tell anyone how to have a healthy mind should always be questionable, and since each human brain has its own distinct entity, yet commonalities with other minds, giving a universal remedy for the health of a mind is fairly convoluted, if not arguably insulting (considering it removes personal touch).

I think in writing well, and I mean extremely well, and not the tripe candy we all may enjoy from childhood on up, I mean writing that actually enables you to have genius -- I think to write genius you must experience genius. Discovering genius writing is not an easy task. It's a chaotic field to seek through, and even more so, it is hard to come up with a system whereby you find patches of literature that have inspired readers, philosophers, mystics, fools, and kings. We could look to the anthropomorphic texts of our past and ask ourselves how have they carried on into the future, or perhaps best seller lists, but again these texts are hit or miss depending on the audience. I'm not here to say look at what sells, at least this time, because the future does some weird things to art that when people are dead transcends money. Franz Kafka wanted his work destroyed and most of his work wasn't brought to the attention of literary circles until after his death... and yet there's been a fortune made off it. Be thought provoking, not for the sake of money because money doesn't always satisfy what the heart needs.

Be thought provoking because genius helps us to relieve the stress of our minds. It's those eureka moments that bring such insane amounts of joy that actually makes life worth living, even in the darkest of times. To know that there is truth out there, to know that there are answers to our existence is fascinating and in all happiness, a huge relief in that there's actually some sort of logic in the way our lives move forward. Even if our pasts are foggy, even if trying to find our origins with the scattered puzzle pieces is terrifying, the shards of evidence in bringing truth together helps us all.

The brain needs to be treated well in order for it to create. There is a relationship to our inputs and outputs and the way it affects us. If you want to enjoy what's been given between your ears, you have to treat it well regardless of what circumstances may offer to lessen one's personal dreams.

Writing is summoned at all times through the power of memory. Each letter was learned through systematic memorization and as you develop as a human being, concepts come into understanding. Through the significance of memory, writing grows. Writing is the epoch of all forms of thinking for it is the conveyor of concepts, human thoughts, science, mathematics -- all of it is connected together in one piece that relates to each other, both aiding in solving out the complexities of the other individualized parts.

How would we come to any understanding of science without rhetoric? How could we make sense of science without language? And how could we come to any sense of language without science existing at all?

If you want to be a better writer you have to take care of your mind. Enable your mind to find significance in life and eventually one will be able to fashion words together. From order breaking a part, we have chaos, and when we put chaos back together, we have order.

I think this will suffice for now. I just have to make sure to catch up with these posts, because somehow this winter has gotten the best of me.



It's often through writing we find edification. Whether or not our minds are paralyzed with disease, the nutrients of our generations' drugs, or the synedoches of misconception -- writing things out and seeing it before our own eyes helps to push out of the jungle and into the open air.

Week #3 -- Self Awareness Writing

Snow days are perfect.

They help me to finally do the things I dream of doing after leaving idle for months.

I also had some mental constipation and didn't do some required things... yay for me. I'm actually behind on this journal so I'm going to try and catch up. I seem to be suffering from... writer's block.

I don't know if this is just a writer's block or a multi-faceted creative block. People say a lot of stupid things about this erm, phenomenon. Writing about it is actually fairly annoying.

Here's the truth, writer's block is a lack of motivation followed by a dosage of fear. It's also this compulsion to delete everything, like the very words I'm writing now. I think the truth is that when you don't want to write something it's like going to the dentist to get a tooth filled. When you enjoy writing a certain tale, you may have a flood of ideas. And then there's the overwhelming novel that pops into your mind... and it's not that you don't know how to get started it's just... like going to the gym after a long spell, and you've gained some weight around your waist (rather, you have some waste).

I am so out of shape; maybe not, no really... I'm in excellent shape and maybe having too much time with ellipsis. I'm deceiving myself. I know what I can do and that alone is a scary recognition, especially as I uncover more of the truth in knowing my strengths, capabilities, road blocks, and incompatibilities.

I think my best writing is when I allow it to be free. I'm not trying to force words to suffice an end, but as I am thinking of a particular story my emotions react to what I write. I may laugh at the absurdities that spring forth or I may be in awe at a sudden metaphor. The worst of the worst is a block that says: write exactly into this space eleven lines of crap for this awesome and life altering prompt. Well, thank you for telling me what to do and not giving me the chance to run across the galaxy.

These boxes didn't make me perish as a writer growing up; they did as a singer. When I studied music at a younger age I didn't realize how some of the songs required for class were actually very unfitting for my voice. Once the box was removed, I was free to go, free to tell stories the way I saw fit, actually free to use the emotions I understood rather than trying to sing about love or death at the very pure, innocent age of sixteen where any concept of love at that point was a fabrication, at least on my part. And maybe I just wasn't a very good liar.

I don't want to write about anymore lessons at the moment. I just kind of want to scramble around with half-made-up words. I think for just one prompt I'm going to go free association style. I don't know how to transition into this...

Here's one way:

Sample of absurd writing (free association style) :

And go:

Language is a distortion of reality. It tries to convey what is happening and set it into a handful of characters to contain concepts. Perception is a focalizer. But words are much more fascinating when we take the leash off, take the collar off and throw them into a volcano to burn and disintegrate so that words can dance their way into whatever way they please, just like writing equations in math, all they are is the codes to a certain kind of reality whether its one we have the chance to experience or one we are making up to explore.

We can never abandon it all the way because we have to use from what we know to build something new; all new things have at least some particles of the old because how can anything that is of existence, something that is an entire new "is"? There's definitely better ways to write these butterflies out, but this isn't the time for rewriting. That will come in due time.

I want to abandon all these concepts and theories for a moment. I'm being all meta, or rather I'm laying out my plans instead of doing what I actually can with words. This is all secondary. I want something primary. I don't know why I'm failing to do this. I really don't know. It's some kind of writer's block and all writer's block centralizes around two things 1.) A lack of motivation 2.) fear. (Repeating myself, it's like a coda.)

If cats could swim through oceans with ballerina shoes, they probably would only get as far as the sand. Some old lady may ask why those cats have ballerina shoes on, but to these cats they never had anything more luxurious so why take it away from them now? The floor suffices as a bed. There's many, upon many material things that can just be tossed aside and once those extra fatty marsupials are thrown to the wayside, than the true kickboxing kangaroos can take a stand, and what more could we ask for in the Raging Bull of boxing?

I've never pictured a kangaroo playing a piano, till just now. For the Australian beast, I generally imagine something less dramatic and classical, something you would hear on the open plains like a guitar, a non-classical guitar. That seems more suitable for a Joey. I wonder if old women, who don't like cats to wear ballerina shoes, I wonder if they ever snap their fingers and think of their past when they had younger, smoother fingers that could snap the perfect pop. Now they're hands are all shaky and they can barely keep it together, isn't it sad? The littlest things we don't appreciate. Today is now the day to seize, not tomorrow because asking and requesting that you have a tomorrow is far more than any of us deserve.

Eggs can be made into so many shapes. Each with a different taste. Each with a different name, but really they're all just eggs. What difference does it make? Why be so picky about food? I imagine your digestive system will take it the same way any which way one decides.

Anything past third person becomes a gossip. Gossip is bad. Don't write in fourth or fifth person; it's unnecessary. Getting meta and secondary again...

Okay, if I were to travel through the stars I would want to float. I would want it to be perfect. I would want to move as fast as possible, and I would want to see all kinds of familiar objects drifting at all new rates, like feathers, marbles, water... Why is the universe so big?

I like to think of space like an ocean. I would never swim to the bottom of the sea, and I would never travel in space. There's so much danger, so much pressure, and I'm a chicken, and I don't know, it would be so lonely, and so far away. I would just want to go home. I would want green grass and sunshine no matter how silly that may seem. There's beauty in the everyday things, and it's all taken for granted until one day, it's not there. Cliches are attacking my brain; they like to be overlords and cease the outlier thoughts from escaping and showing any sense of enlightenment. Cliches want to be kings, but they're really servants, little streams to the bigger ponds that are full of delicious ideas.

What is texture in writing? Is it the density? The thickening of language and narrative? Language and narrative are tied together in perfect matrimony.

I think I will stop here.

THE END.