Category: writing

There were two constants in my young life: reading and writing.

I have no idea if I learned to read early or easily, but once I had, there was no stopping me. I have memories of winning an award in elementary school for reading the most books. My mother used to go the library and bring me a stack of books. I would polish them off in a week and she would go back for more.

Apparently somewhere along the line I taught myself to speed read. Always impatience to find out what happened at the end of the story, I tore through books at a speed that continued to impress teachers and friends. Once in second grade we were reading a story in class. It was about ballerina shoes and the class had to all read it silently to themselves. I read the story, and when I was done I looked around to see how everyone else was faring. My teacher came over and told me I needed to read the story. When I told her I had, she told me to read it again, because she had only just finished reading it herself, and so there was no way I had read it that fast.

My love of writing came in fourth grade.

The assignment for the class was an illustrated storybook about a cute, furry creature who has a problem, in the form of a bad guy, and then solves it. My protagonist (not that I knew that word back then) was dutiful Cottontail, a female rabbit who was out picking clover for dinner when she ran into the antagonist, a bear. There was an ensuing chase and refuge in an underground hidey place, far from home.

The next day Cottontail decided that if she was going to get home, she had to deal with the bear. A plan hatched, she let the bear chase her to the edge of a cliff, where she jumped out of the way of his charge and he fell off the cliff and into the lake below where he drowned. Unsure as I was at the age of six on the spelling of ‘drowned’, I went to my teacher, Mrs. Ligon to ask.

She read over my story and praised me for my creative ending, in not just having Cottontail and a bear randomly become friends as many of my classmates were doing with their stories. That little bit of praise stuck with me, and I have been writing ever since.

It is rather often in my stories when I come across a situation where I would like more detail. Where I know a character would be more eloquent than I am able to write them. Where discussions between or among people would be more involved. When I know that if this story were ‘real’ it would take many more steps to get from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B’. However, after my reading of Brisingr, the third in the cycle of Eragon’s story by Christopher Paolini, I have simply come to realize that while it is nice to have that level of detail, too much can be mind-numbingly boring. I understand there are intricacies with the running of a rebel force like the Varden, and currying favor, and helping the wounded, and getting food and supplies, but by Mark I don’t need every blasted detail. I found myself skipping over most everything that happened whenever Nasuada showed up. Reading bits of paragraphs until something of actual worth (in that the plot advanced AT ALL) showed up. And you know, I didn’t miss anything important.

Not that I’m saying it’s all bad. Christopher, I feel, has matured rather a bit through the three books I’ve read. I’ve been impressed by many of the details pertaining to Eragon and Saphira’s connection. As well as the interesting feel of sections written from a dragon’s point of view.

I just have to, in my own writing, realize that I don’t strive for the level of detail Christopher instilled in his books, and that the level I want to reach really isn’t as far away as I would have thought.

With NaNoWriMo on the horizon and my need to actually make some money, I’m just going to have to officially call this quits. It’s a shame, but I doubt I’m disappointing anyone anyway. Well except myself. Gonna keep writing, just not posting it here.

I’m feeling rather discouraged, for all my advertising and such it seems like I’ve had almost no visitors and it’s hard to even tell if any of them stuck around past their first visit. And while I don’t write for an audience, that is the main reason that I bother to post anything online, otherwise it would be much easier to just leave everything on my computer until the end of time.

But then it probably comes back to my one main fault in that I never do quite enough to actually be good at something. Maybe I didn’t advertise enough, maybe my story stinks, maybe I’m expecting too much.

Oh noes! Josh has lost his first fight. Poor guy.

An intro to Munashii. Quartz is a character I have developed pretty extensively, though not for this story. So she really is a good challenge and would have won against most people. Just the luck of the draw sometimes.

Apparently the pure freedom that now exists in my weekend has made it impossible for me to actually remember that Sunday is my update day. After three weeks of trying, I am now giving up and switching my update night to Tuesdays, which is a day I always spend a the local game store. Since I have my laptop here, and usually work on my writing, I should be able to remember to actually update.

Anyway, now for Canopus’ fight. Rilen is actually a character of mine from long long ago. Now she’s just a fight in this tournament. >.>

Kind of a little in-between post, but there you go.

I guess a failing of this website design is that if I do, do a double update, you have to click the little back button to see the first of the two. However, life goes on, and it ended up working really well as the second update gets you right into the first battle involving our heroes.

Okay so despite the fact that I’ve had a hotel reserved since January and a number of the webcomics I normally read mentioned it, I totally forgot I was going to be gone on Sunday for Otakon. Yes. I am a bad person. Double update this coming Sunday.