Words and more words

I'm still here, but my taste for writing has somewhat left me. Everything I attempt to put down on this page seems to echo back to me false. I can't explain why, I feel... a lot right now, and writing feels like I'm playing with fire because at any moment I could be taken over by my irrational mind and write something stupid. I was going to write about grief, or friendship, or something along those lines last week, but words failed me. It seems they're failing me quite often these days and I don't quite know to get out of this funk, so I'm here writing, trying to break out of it I guess.

But on the bright side of things, Lost, 24, and my newly found addiction to Dexter has been quite nice. My taste for entertainment (ie games) has completely left me for the time being, and I'm not quite sure how to take that.

On the social side of things... well, I've been able to convince some of my friends to unplug somewhat and hang out more often, so that's been nice. But they're still connected to that world, and I couldn't be further from it.

-A

Face-planted...

...into Facebook. I was holding out on the whole social network thing, it seemed... well, just look at myspace (but don't, it's so ghastly bloated it bottles my mind). Glad I got out of that one. However, I'm glad I finally did sign up, I'm so terrible at keeping in contact with people, it makes it easy.

Bonding with a serial killer

I recently have become addicted to Dexter. The show is on Showtime, so there's some language, but not as much blood as you would think considering the shows subject matter. Dexter, you see, is a sociopathic serial killer... but he only kills murderers. While the ethics and morals of this in the outside world are debatable (not mine however) it's everything else about him and how he lives his life with people that feel and love, which he doesn't, which is the real fascination with the show for me. I would wager that the first episode is PG-13, but I couldn't be sure. His sister in the show has a spectacularly bad mouth, and flaunts it a lot lol. But if you're looking for something different, something really different, try it out.

As for my own sociopath in my book, I've decided to rework the story, while I was telling a story about something I found interesting, the story didn't match the subject matter very well, and it needs to 'click' you know? If it doesn't click for me, its not going to click for everyone else. So, back to the drawing board somewhat.

-A

Plato's got nothin' on me

So, I wrote myself into a corner a few days ago and I was feeling kinda lost in where I was headed with my character. I mean, he was supposed to be this really lost soul and what not, but he was just depressed and lonely, not damned. I wasn't telling the truth about him I realized, so I sat down and wrote out a new conversation he had with someone in the past. I wrote an entirely new character, but the right one I was trying to write from the beginning. This is good and bad, good because now I can write how he would truthfully act in a given situation, and bad because I have 40 pages of him NOT acting that way lol.

School is... school. My philosophy class is going to be a cinch. Thinking abstractly about values and perspectives is something I do naturally, as well as writing them down. So, it's nice to have one class I can just do and not have to worry about.

On a more personal note, I've been going through some... well I don't know what it is, but it sucks lol. Anyway, the suckiness has caused me to grow uneasy in my complacency and moderately sheltered socially life. I would like to have claimed that I made this realization and grew in this way this summer, but the truth of the matter is that isn't what happened. I cheated. I got all the appearances of an improved and happy life, but with one swift (anticipated) kick I was out treading water alone again, wondering how it had happened and wondering WTF was happening to me. Emotional story short, I've decided to work on actively getting stronger, instead of just allowing the appearance of it. Stronger in every way possible, physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. I'm not saying I AM at the moment, but making these decisions has sure helped me feel it already.

-A

Schoolin'

School has begun once more. So, I looked through my degree requirements and figured out if I took 4-5 classes a semester I could finish up in two years. That's not counting the two summer terms they offer, which I'll for sure take some classes in. But we'll see what happens and what classes are offered during those times. So with those added summer classes I think two years (including this semester) is an realistic goal. I've got philosophy, health, history, and web languages this semester, two classes online and two lectures. I'm bouncing in between institute classes at the moment too. I about signed up for the two I thought would be interesting (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and Living life with the Gospel or something like that), but the classes seem... I don't know too small or whatever, I'd like to find some classes that are more populated. When there's only ten people in the class getting a good discussion going is intimidating. Besides, there weren't any cute girls in the two classes I went to hah.

My writing is going pretty steady at the moment. I've realized I've written probably five or six pages, which is like an eighth of everything I've written, that won't end up in the book at all, which is kinda disappointing but necessary. I realized I didn't have some back stories fleshed out and the only way to do it honestly was to sit down and write how it happened for reference in the actual story. But I'm not too worried about all that because the back stories might be kinda dull anyway, or if I find some way to tell them in a different interesting way other than the linear method I did to get it down on paper. Anyway it's fun to have something down to mess with, but kinda frightening to just delete a whole page because I realize I was trying to muscle the story the way I wanted it to go instead of the way it wanted to. The sculpture is in the stone already, I've just got to remove the unnecessary parts.

Also, writing a truly evil, sadistic person isn't as much fun as it might sound.

-A

2009? More like 1909!!

Hey, 2009, 1909 called, it wants it's lack of flying cars back... seriously, WTF is my flying car!? Some future!

Hope everyone had a fun-filled New Years! As a treat I'll divulge a little bit
about what I'm spending my time writing.

The thing with writing a book is: it's a refining process. What is it about? Right now I'm writing the story of a family who has a couple sons go on an LDS mission, come back, and take very different paths. One picks a path of darkness and becomes an enemy to everything good in this world. He's so consumed with his guilt he chooses to forget everything he believed and is consumed with lust and hate he rejects everything his family believes in. Where the story goes from here I can't really say. People are going to be happy, people are going to be sad, I'm going to try and be as true to life as I can get. Living a good righteous life is still filled with pain, doubt, and misfortune, and figuring out how to have faith in the face of failure is paramount to enduring to the end. So, how that's all going to happen I don't know (or even if that's going to be where it takes me).

Right now it seems like a dark story with no happy ending, which is okay. I can't guarantee a happy ending, but just because I haven't thought of one doesn't mean it won't be. I'm not going to plan out a very detailed plot about each character, who lives and who dies, etc. The book takes place over a few weeks of the bad son coming home to say goodbye to his family. Goodbye why? I don't really know yet, he knows something I don't know, but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

I'm not trying to write a depressing book. I'm just trying to tell a story I find interesting.