A Prologue to a Different Past

In honor of Columbus Day, I offer up a prologue that I quite recently wrote. It is by all accounts a rough draft, but it outlines the events leading up to a story that I haven't even begun to write yet. Some day, I might finish one of these stories that are set in my mythological world. As my ambition often outpaces my abilities, it might take me twenty years, so don't hold your breath.

Did I mention that I want to include dwarven-engineered steam-punk deforestation-mecha? It could become a train wreck of hyphenation!

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     By the most careful of my estimations, little more than 200 years have passed since the most courageous men in the country found the other world. on the first day of the first year of what has come to be known as the Century of the World, Captain Benjamin Bruford set out with a fleet of 6 vessels in hopes of finding the fabled land far to the west, marking the very precipice of the world's edge.

     The great Captain Bruford, however, was by no means a young man when he embarked on this journey. After a decade of conducting business at sea, or what the royal families called piracy in the highest degree, Captain Bruford was captured by the Royal Armada of the Bretting Empire. All of his treasure that they could find was confiscated, and he was imprisoned for a number of years, during which time he began to compose a series of essays based on his observations at sea. This included notes on everything from sea life to the patterns of the winds and stars to his own conclusion that the Empire's lands made up only a small part of the ring of a great bowl that held the oceans together.

     It was with this in particular that the royal families became enamored. They agreed to put an end to the search for his remaining treasure and pardon his crime if he would claim the western edge of the world on behalf of the Bretting Empire. Over the next six months, Captain Bruford assembled a small fleet of 3 ships, only to have the Empire insist on an escort of matching size in avoidance of potential betrayal.

     During the voyage, the fleet was waylaid by a violent storm, during which two of the six ships were destroyed. Captain Bruford fought the wind and waves for three sleepless nights, which left his right arm crippled. When the storm finally cleared, the fleet had found land. The wreckage of the two lost ships had run aground, and most of the crew had survived to the shore.

     This grand new world that they had discovered was heavily occupied by forests, which in turn were heavily occupied by an odd old race of people, made most notable by their fair countenances and acutely angled ears. Captain Bruford began compiling notes on the new land over a period of two months, deciphering what he could from the local tribes. His reports were then to be conveyed back to the Empire by the escorting vessels, as the return journey would be impossible given the Captain's injuries. However, Captain secretly prepared a lock box containing copies of Bruford's completed memoirs, which included the locations of his remaining treasures. Coded instructions were engraved into the box itself, which was itself to be conveyed to Bruford's sons by his first mate.

     And thus, the remaining four ships departed with as much of the crew as desired to return home. Those who returned to the home in the Empire did so as heroes. All that remained was for the Empire to extend their power to this new found land, and no one anticipated it to be as bloody and hard-fought a conflict as it was.

     This I know all too well.

Iterative and Incremental (Narrative) Development

A few weeks ago, I promised that I'd draw a connection between software development and writing, which forms the logical basis behind how I've been writing (or attempting to write) in recent months. However, I'm not going to draw this unsurprising connection without first boring you with a little personal background.

The 5 years that I spent in college chasing my first bachelors degree were not spent studying writing (as this blog might lead you to believe), but rather the supposedly lucrative field of "Computer and Information Technology".

One of the topics that I found particularly interesting were the agile software development methodologies, most of which were generally associated with iterative and incremental development, which is based on the idea that software can be broken into logical increments that can be developed in cyclic iterations.

You might be wondering how this applies in any reasonable way to writing. To be honest, it's not as complicated as you might think. Let's demystify:

1. Initial Planning: This is the first step of the process, in which a software development team would define the software they mean to develop in the simplest terms.
   
   Do that. Write a paragraph to summarize your idea. You can even think of said paragraph as a teaser you might read on the back of the hypothetical book you're writing.
   
2. Planning and Requirements: This is where the development team would define in the first logical increment in their project and document the technology that would be required to make it work.
   
   What you should do at this point is consider what you want to accomplish with the segment of the narrative that you're working with. What should happen? What characters need to be involved? Where should it take place?
   
   
3. Analysis/Design and Implementation: At this point the development team would define in much greater detail the logical workings of the functional increment they are working on. This is immediately followed by implementation, during which they build the increment.
   
   Likewise, you'll be writing the part of your narrative that you've decided to tackle. This is seemingly the most straightforward step in each iteration, but it should prove to be the most time consuming part.
   
   
4. Testing: During this phase, software development teams test the software they've written to make sure that works as expected.
   
   Proofread your work. Does it make sense? Does it accomplish what you decided that it should accomplish a few phases ago?
   
   
5. Evaluation: This phase is incredibly important for iterative and incremental development. The development team tests the functional element that they've been working on to make sure that it works within the context of the rest of the system.
   
   At this point you should examine what you've writing to make sure that it doesn't break the story or contradict other parts of your story. This is absolutely critical to the cohesiveness of your narrative.
   
   
6. Repeat steps 2 through 5 until...
   Deployment: The development team delivers a completed software project.
   
   And you're done!

The good news about this method as it applies to writing is that it can be as formal or informal as you want it to be. You can write short iterations of a few paragraphs at a time or pages at a time with fewer iterative cycles. You can even build the writing in any order you like... just as long as you pay attention during the evaluation phase. The key to this method as with any creative process is to find what works for you.

Imperative

It's been several months since I've posted anything, and in that time I've been fighting it out with a pretty mean writers block.  I might just be winning the battle right now.

What follows is a writing exercise from Brian Kiteley's The 3 A.M. Epiphany:

An Execution — Write a fragment of a story that is made up entirely of imperative commands: Do this; do that; contemplate the rear end of the woman who is walking out of your life. This exercise will be a sort of second-person narration (a you is implied in the imperative).

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     Pull on a black mask and step out of the van. Run to the door. Swiftly enter the bank. Lift your gun-holding hand into the air and your voice along with it.

     “Get on the ground!” Grab the burlap sack from your accomplice. Throw it at a teller. Order her not to do anything stupid. “Don’t panic! Just give us the money!” Shake the gun at the scared patrons. “Don’t even think about moving if you want to live!” Walk to the women crying in the corner. Ask her if she’s got any children. “Get up! Go tell your children you love them.” Smile as the woman scurries through the glass doors and out onto the street. Hear the sirens begin to wail in the distance. “Hurry up, Kennedy! Grab the money!” Take the sack from the accomplice. “Get the van.” Hear the sirens growing louder. Point to man in the expensive suit. “Get up! Come with me.” Nod toward the van as it pulls up to the doors. “Get in.” Follow the man through the glass doors. Hear the sirens growing louder still. Open the door. Push the man into the van. “Step on it, Kennedy.” Feel the van’s tires screech underneath you. Look back at the man. “Move and you die.” Lurch forward as one of the van’s rear tires is blown out.

     “Pull the vehicle over now!”

     “Don’t stop, Kennedy.” Feel the van swerve as another tire is blown out, causing the van leave the road. Brace yourself as the van tumbles down the embankment. Slam into the windshield as the van enters a retention pond. Push on the door. Kick against the door. Give up on the door. Think frantically of a way to escape the van. “Help me, Kennedy!” Kick the windshield. Try to remain calm as the remains of the windshield give way and water begins to rush in. Hold your breath as the water fills the van. Swim to the back of the van, and push it open. Barely make it to the surface before passing out. Swim to the shore.

     “Don’t move!” Drop to your knees when the police officers approach you, guns bared. Allow yourself to be handcuffed and dragged to a police car. Exhale deeply as the door is closed on your life.

Reason and Rhythm, Part 2

For me, my passion for writing had it's beginnings in 5th grade. One of my teachers, Mrs. Douglas, required her students to keep a journal. At first, I viewed this assignment as a chore and was unenthusiastic about journaling. I mean, what about my 10-year-old life was worth writing down in my stupid blue, wide-ruled notebook: nothing... or so I thought.

It wasn't long before my little notebook began to become a repository for all of the important goings on in my life and the lives of the people I thought were cool. I wrote about basketball, cute girls, strange dreams, books I was reading, spiritual encounters, toys, and just about everything else. Ever since then, I've had an undeniable compulsion to chronologically catalogue all of the highs and lows as they occur.

The principle that Mrs. Douglas was trying to instill in us is that of making writing a habitual occurrence. I would encourage you to do the same thing. Set aside a notebook and an amount of time specifically for journaling.

You may, as I once did, view this as an exercise in futility. You may think that you can remember all you need to remember about life in your mind or with photographs or in video recordings. However, you'll find no better way to capture the richness of the emotional texture in your life either in the daily grind or the most unique of moments.

With a little discipline, you'll may come to find view these moments spent journaling as an investment into your future. Think of each entry as an opportunity to snapshot some otherwise un-keep-able gem of your life that would otherwise disappear into the folds of time. Sometime, you'll crack open this treasure trove you call a journal and feel like the wealthiest time traveler.

A Mind-Blowing Breakfast

I had a very strange dream a few nights ago.  In keeping with my advice from my last post (read that here), I decided to write down what I could remember.  I peppered in a few embellishments here and there, but the story remains just as bizarre as the night I experienced it.

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     Adam stood in the center of a blacktop basketball court, having no idea how or why he would have gone there. The paint lines were faded from the countless footfalls they had received, and the nets were worn to almost nothing.

     The tall brick buildings looked oppressive. They appeared to have received the same amount of wear that the court had experienced. But for all of the use that this place had seen, Adam could not find a single person. He walked.

     After having walked for a few blocks, he found a courtyard in the center of a few of these apartment buildings whose only tenants must be ghosts. The courtyard had been overgrown before a lack of care had resulted in the death of any plant life. Brown foliage hung limp from every bush and tree.

     Then he heard a percussive shuffling noise from behind him. Startled, Adam spun on his heels. An gaunt-looking young woman stood with hand on hip. Three younger girls, identical triplets, hid behind the woman and stared from behind her waist.

     "I've got what you need." The woman produced a cigarette from a pocket, lit it, and took long drag. She coughed as the smoke was pulled into her lungs. "Where's my money."

     "Um...I don't know... what are you talking about?"

     The woman let out a raspy sigh and walked away. Her girls followed in a straight line, skipping along in playful manor.

     Adam, as confused as he was, felt compelled to obtain whatever it was that she held. "Wait! Can I have it?" The woman turned to face him as he searched for his wallet. It wasn't in any of his pockets. For that matter, he couldn't recall ever having owned a wallet. "I'll pay you later."

     "That's not how it works." She turned to walk away.

     "I promise I'll pay you." He found himself pleading for it, although he could not remember what it was that he wanted so badly. "I'm a good person. I'm trustworthy."

     Her facial expression turned from irritation to concern. "No one who buys is trustworthy."

     Adam was struck to the core with some unknown shame. He dropped to his knees as the dead foliage around him seemed to turn black and decay. The woman had disappeared. It seemed as though time had sped up. He felt dizzy from a heightening despair. He shut his eyes and shook his head.

     Looking up, Adam found himself in the basement of a friend's house, a plastic bag sitting in his open hands. Carefully, he unrolled the bag and broke the seal. A delicious smell leaped up out of the bag and into his nostrils: Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs cereal. He couldn't resist the urge to eat.

     As the first few puffs hit his tongue, pleasure receptors throughout his brain fired off and he nearly jumped. However, this pleasure slowly transformed into something very different. The bland-looking basement began to become brighter and more full of color.

     Colorful cartoon mushrooms began to sprout from the floor in bright red and white. Large blossoms sprouted from the walls, emitting 60's era music to match his psychedelic euphoria. From somewhere animals, as of yet unimagined, danced into the room, harmonizing with the joyous songs. Even the lights in the room seemed to gain significance as they alternated through every color of the visual spectrum.

     Adam sat down on top of one of the mushrooms and took in the brilliance that surrounded him.

Reason and Rhythm, Part 1

Sometimes the strangest of life's occurrences are things that don't happen in the waking world. I would encourage you to write about your dreams. Most often these incoherent sequences of image and sound won't yield anything that makes any sense, but once in a while, your subconscious might fabricate something more unusual and elaborate than you could in any other state.

When you write, feel free to add or remove details as you see fit. Your purpose in this doesn't need to be accurate retelling of your REM sleep adventures, although you may choose it to be that way. Personally, I feel pretentious when I write in first person, so I write in third; you should write from any perspective that you prefer.

This might seem like a frivolous exercise, but it serves an important function. Any reason to spend sometime activating the part of your mind that thinks creatively is cause to write. Hopefully, you'll begin to establish a regular rhythm in writing. Your goal should be to feel the desire to write on a daily basis, and to be able to find something to write about just as often.

Find Your Happy Place

One of the things I've learned recently is how easy it is to loose sight of ones inner craftsman. We become discouraged with our writing. We allow the manic nature of day-to-day living to steal away the joy we once found in our writing.

Do not loose hope, my friends!

I would encourage you to secure the border that separates your happy place from the harsh wastelands of rationality. Handcuff the Watcher to a light post just outside the city limits of the creative capitol in your mind. Then go to the steps of your town hall and shout aloud as to how excited you are to write: to create.

Or... perhaps a more practical idea: go to that location where you find the most inspiration and write for a few minutes. Write about how happy writing makes you feel. Write as quickly as you can. Deliver your thoughts to the page with as little filtering as possible.

And if all of life's frustrations have stolen this joy from you, write about how you want to feel when you write. Think about how proud you want to be when some small seed of thought blooms into a matured writing. Remember that, published or not, you are an artist: your words are valuable.

Then when you finish this verbal snapshot of your good-feeling, frame it! If you're like me you may even glean great pleasure from looking at this in its rawest form (sloppy script, misspellings, grammatical errors, and all). If not, feel free to pick out a key phrase or two and write them in your best penmanship on your finest sheet of paper. Now, place it in the aforementioned inspiration location, where you will see it whenever you write.

And when the time comes—and it will—that you begin to feel frustrated or uninspired, look to those words and find your happy place.

The Watcher

In Discovering the Writer Within, Bruce Ballenger and Barry Lane make reference to an entity inside of all of us that they call the watcher. This watcher is the internal critic that can—if left unchecked—take all of the joy out of writing.  Beyond that, it can rob you of any creativity.  It's nasty, and the your success as a writer begins by silencing this beast.

• When you write, write as quickly as you can. Don't allow the watcher enough time to jam your creative process with thoughts of penmanship and spelling and syntax.
• Write whatever you feel like writing. If the ideas that present themselves are disjointed and incoherent, write them down. If you wander off your selected topic, write it down.
• Enjoy yourself. Don't worry about what other people would think if they read your scribbled words; you should write for yourself first and foremost!

There will be a time for editing and criticizing your work, but it is not now. The best of what you will write will likely prove itself to be that which you spent the least amount of time planning out. Think about the most memorable conversations you've had:  weren't the most alarming and intriguing insights birthed from words that were uttered without forethought.

And as for the watcher... eventually he will become a valuable ally to you in the editing process to use when you see fit. But until then, outrun him!

Tod Isn't Part Of It

     It was approaching the cool of the day when she sauntered through the commons area, past Tod, and toward the darker parts of the campus. She was accompanied by a young man: an odd pair. The awkward juxtaposition of his clothes, too loose; and hers, too tight; that highlighted the excess of her exposed flesh. She was clean and possessed a style that Tod found cute, but just on the edge of what he considered provocative.

     Tod palmed his forehead, and his body gave a quick, involuntary shudder as though to shake free the assumption of what intention the young couple might have for the point when the escaped an eye-shot of the sparsely populated commons area. His glance met that of another young man, who wore a shirt with the word "DOOM" painted across it in a unfriendly-looking font.

     Tod had never seen him before, but the young man, just out of normal speaking range, nodded toward the awkward pair and then too him. Tod reciprocated as if to agree as to what the two represented.

     Tod thought to himself that if he were someone allowed a great deal more moral leeway, he could see himself letting her try to take him apart and put him back together again. Then again, he'd be miserable if he had burdened himself with such an encounter.

     That'd make me part of the problem of the problem, wouldn't it? The problem. It was one thing to recognize the biological forces that compelled him to "mate" with any girl that met his fancy, but it was something else entirely to respond to this. Some people thought this process to be nothing more than a species-advancing imperative that was present in all of us, and therefore something not to be denied. Then again, we're not animals.

     Then Tod stumbled upon something inside of himself. A spark. He fed a few of these thoughts into that spark. A small flame: pride. It had not been all that difficult an accomplishment to buck against the primal up to this point in his life. A few more years of celibacy would be simple.

     Slowly, Tod's attention returned to the present time and to the real world. He shook loose a slack-jawed gaze whose focal point lay beyond a wall of columns that supported an over sized clock that dominated the grassy commons area. Late for class!

     Tod snatched his backpack from the bench next to him and shuffled toward the paved walk-way. Leaving the now empty commons area behind him, he hurried to class.

Craftsmanship?

I've heard it said (or perhaps I made up the idea of having heard) that a craftsman may only be as good as the tools that he uses. And, of course, this is likely a gross overstatement, but that's not to say that there isn't merit in this old adage. So, let's talk a little bit about what you tools you need to be a writer.

1. Figure out what is the most comfortable medium for your writing: is it a sleek-looking new iMac, a sticker-laden composition book, or even a worn vintage typewriter. Whatever it is, recognize it's importance in your creative life. And like any healthy relationship, you'll need to set aside plenty of time to spend with it.
2. I would recommend having something that is portable to carry with you at all times. My personal preference is a pocket-sized moleskine notebook (moleskine, incidentally, has a interesting and debatable history that you can read here). This will allow you to jot down ideas as they come to you. This is of particular importance because inspirations comes without warning and, more importantly, leaves in similar fashion.

Honestly, there are countless ways that you can record your ideas. Try a few, and learn what best facilitates the flow of your ideas. Then go forth and begin your collecting.

First Things First

The word "fiction" is derived from the Latin word fingere, "to form, create".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction
I've always thought that it was something of the good Lord inside of us that drives us to "create" things weather it be stories or music or paintings or even a really nice cake. Humans love to make things, and we take pride in what we make. However, the purpose of this blog is not to force my philosophical ideas on any unsuspecting reader, but rather to explore some of my ideas about writing (and, more specifically, writing fiction).

And of course, I'll probably choose to post some of my own works because I can do whatever I want.