Ho Hum
My fault is sloth. If I don't have a basic structure to follow I just laze around all day. I can say, though, that I'm not as bad as I was last winter break. I've gotten out a few times; visiting Alex, going camera-searching with Mom, and I'm going to Tim's for New Years. I've also been getting some good ground covered in terms of writing. I finished the first draft of the Mario sketch and I set up the chronology for the first one or two issues of Personae (all it needs now are developed characters, a setting, motivation, and themes...gotta keep moving). I told myself the other night that if I don't want to do groundskeeping again this summer, I had better get accepted to work at CCY. If I want to work at CCY, I need to be competent enough to counsel Creative Writing. To prove I'm competent I need to read and write as much as I can between now and then. Applications and interviews are going to be in March--better start now.
Every so often a scene of interesting irony or "damn, that's smart/convenient" properties forms in my head, and I try to find a way to build a story around it. Not necessarily on paper; in fact, they almost always are for movies or comic books (which I guess is paper, you know what I mean). I get what I think is a nugget and I try to build the rest of the gold mine around it, to use a shaky analogy. Eamon Grennan spoke wise words when he urged us to "smother our darlings," but I still like to imagine these scenarios, even if I know other people won't relish them as much as I do.
The one I got today struck as I was listening to my "Stop Making Sense" record. I'm a sucker for sequences where little items, casually mentioned or foreshadowed previously, end up saving the day--exactly like the abacus in the original Ocean's Eleven didn't (Melissa, Tim, and Karen know what I'm talking about). Anyway, I imagined a man, partway through some cheesy suspense novel or comic book, being trapped in his house, wheelchair-bound and mute. He sees/hears/knows some men downstairs are setting the house on fire, but he can't leave his room and he can't get out the window. He ends up getting help by fumbling through his CD collection, pulling out the Talking Heads, and
A)playing "Burning Down the House" to some friend on the other end who will understand what he means but won't take him seriously if he tries to call otherwise (PLOT PROBLEM) or
B)blasting "Burning Down the House" to alert other people in the building (PLOT PROBLEM: PEOPLE TOO DUMB/DEAF TO HEAR ARSONISTS IN THEIR HOUSE WON'T RESPOND TO DAVID BYRNE).
Writing it out just sent home how silly it is and how much it doesn't work. It's more of a thing that would be cool if it happened in real life, something I think would be cool; using on-hand items to save the day in a not-really-MacGuyver fashion. Smother your darlings, Mike. Try developing deep characters and see where they take you.
Hopefully I'll have started a layout for Personae before break is over.
Wow, I hardly ever write this much (that's not a good thing for an English major).
Every so often a scene of interesting irony or "damn, that's smart/convenient" properties forms in my head, and I try to find a way to build a story around it. Not necessarily on paper; in fact, they almost always are for movies or comic books (which I guess is paper, you know what I mean). I get what I think is a nugget and I try to build the rest of the gold mine around it, to use a shaky analogy. Eamon Grennan spoke wise words when he urged us to "smother our darlings," but I still like to imagine these scenarios, even if I know other people won't relish them as much as I do.
The one I got today struck as I was listening to my "Stop Making Sense" record. I'm a sucker for sequences where little items, casually mentioned or foreshadowed previously, end up saving the day--exactly like the abacus in the original Ocean's Eleven didn't (Melissa, Tim, and Karen know what I'm talking about). Anyway, I imagined a man, partway through some cheesy suspense novel or comic book, being trapped in his house, wheelchair-bound and mute. He sees/hears/knows some men downstairs are setting the house on fire, but he can't leave his room and he can't get out the window. He ends up getting help by fumbling through his CD collection, pulling out the Talking Heads, and
A)playing "Burning Down the House" to some friend on the other end who will understand what he means but won't take him seriously if he tries to call otherwise (PLOT PROBLEM) or
B)blasting "Burning Down the House" to alert other people in the building (PLOT PROBLEM: PEOPLE TOO DUMB/DEAF TO HEAR ARSONISTS IN THEIR HOUSE WON'T RESPOND TO DAVID BYRNE).
Writing it out just sent home how silly it is and how much it doesn't work. It's more of a thing that would be cool if it happened in real life, something I think would be cool; using on-hand items to save the day in a not-really-MacGuyver fashion. Smother your darlings, Mike. Try developing deep characters and see where they take you.
Hopefully I'll have started a layout for Personae before break is over.
Wow, I hardly ever write this much (that's not a good thing for an English major).