Okay, I suck at titles. Whatever. I just had a lot of fun with inspiration a couple days ago, when a friend of mine introduced me to a kind of jellyfish that I had never heard of before. An immortal jellyfish, actually, which has a unique way of having kids. Like a lot of aquatic creatures, it buds (the child just grows on the parent, and eventually breaks off). Unlike a lot of other ones, though, when it breaks off, the parent has shrunk down so much, or has given so much up to the child, or something (since my friend didn’t know the specifics, I’m just guessing here), the parent is reduced back to a child. So, it’s basically immortal because, whenever it has a child, it becomes a child too.

If the first thing you thought of was, “What if people did that?” you have just as great (read “great” as “f***ing weird” ^^;  ) as mine. I’m not going to talk a lot about the specifics that I thought of here, because I’m trying to write a story with it, since i found a fairly good way to frame all the different things I’ve thought of about it. But I bring it up, because I wanted to mention something on inspiration. I’ve only written for a few years, and I’m not really professional, still (surprisingly enough), but every book on the subject has said the same thing; inspiration is not everything, and you can’t worry about inspiration.

I’d say it’s true, but not for the same reason, I think. First off, yeah, inspiration isn’t the most important, because inspiration doesn’t get 50, 100, 500k words written. You’ve got to slough through writing everything down; inspiration doesn’t solve that. Trust me, if it did, I’d have six books out by now, so don’t expect inspiration to solve your problems.

But, you also don’t need to worry about inspiration. Maybe this doesn’t work for everyone, but inspiration isn’t something you can drag out. I don’t get completely new ideas by sitting down and burning a hole in a piece of paper with my eyes. I can develop, build, and expand something I’ve already come up with. But inspiration’s, well, out of the blue. Like my friend mentioning a jellyfish. One of the best shock-inspirations I’ve had was a Livejournal quiz (yes, I used LJ at one point, get over it) which, since I had just started and didn’t have a lot of friends, jammed a couple of my friends into completely random spots in the quiz more than once. And instantly, I had a story where people had these conflicting characteristics.

In short, I guess, don’t expect inspiration. It’ll just show up, usually at the most unlikely of times. Just, make sure to write down what you find out when it shows up, because it’ll probably be important.

There’s always been a problem, if you listen to game designers, with dialog. Usually, it’s that there’s too much (especially if it’s not voiced, which helps make the dialog more cinematic than book-y), but there are usually also issues with the lack of interaction and control the player has in dialog. It’s true. Most games have dialog, from fps shooters to massively story-intense MMO’s to just about every Squaresoft game released (though, being a narrative-game loving nerd myself, I like the two-hour talking scenes in the Final Fantasy series).

The problem is that there is not enough control for the player in these scenes. The best system we have is a multiple choice response card that comes up whenever the player gets to a point where they are asked, by the designer, to respond to something said so far. Sometimes, there’s a timer, which mimics the pressure of a conversation (since you can’t sit around thinking about the choices for twenty minutes in real life). Occasionally, there’s also games which allow the player to input their own dialog, and the game parses and interprets it for the game to use; this only really occurs in interactive fiction though, and there are still problems in word choice (lots of games can’t understand synonyms, meaning the players have to pick exactly the right word), which, if you think about it, means the game also has a multiple-choice system, only without a page showing what the choices are.

My biggest problem with dialog, though, is not the choice system. After all, most of the time, there are really only a couple ways a situation can be responded to. Someday, we need to get to the sandbox where choices are procedurally generated and we can have anything thrown together on the fly based on exactly how the player forms their choice, but that’s a ways away. My problem is, the player doesn’t have control over the way they say things. Think about it; what you say is important, true. If I shouted “I love you,” instead of “I’m going to kill you,” the outcome would be different. But how I say either of those things matters a lot. But, there’s no system for doing that in the way dialog is designed nowadays.

I’ve got some ideas on this, but I’m trying to keep updates short, so that I actually do them, so I’ll just leave it at the problem here. I’ll have more on this soon.

I finally got to spring break. Hooray for that. I’m planning on trying to finally get some serious writing done, and I’ve got some cool ideas to put up here over the next few weeks, once I finally get around to writing them up. Unfortunately, I also need a job, so a lot of time is getting spent putting together resumes and cover letters, and strangely enough comedy stories. When I get some places to post those up here, I think I’ll put them up too. It’s really late, and to be completely honest, the only reason I’m updating is to just have done something in the last few days to prove I’m still alive and keep myself from falling into that trap of not updating much for long stretches of time. Hopefully next time it won’t be one AM when I get around to updating again. Next time I’ll have something with more substance. Probably.

I’ve finally gotten around to carrying a notebook with me wherever I go — to class, work, and such — and I haven’t had something work as well as people have told me before. It’s a wonderful thing to always have paper on hand, for whenever some unusual idea strikes, but having something specific to put them all in, small enough to carry anywhere, but large enough to write more than a word or two per line really makes everything worthwhile.

Of course, I’ve done this with other notebooks before, but I ended up with a smaller sized three subject notebook, that I can more easily tell is not one of my school books, and is divided up so I can work on a few stories at once (which I am always doing, even though I probably shouldn’t). We’ll see how long it lasts before I end up putting it down in favor of some other notebook, but I don’t think I’ve found something so useful to write with since I realized Notepad was much easier to write in than Word or OpenOffice (especially OpenOffice, for me at least). But that’s another story for later, when I’m not staring down midterms and multiple papers.

I love bookstores. There’s always something to be found, looked at, considered, and, given how much I get paid from my part time job, put back on the shelf dejectedly and walk away empty-handed. Okay, well, technically, this time, I bought Night Watch by Sergi Lukyanenko, but there’s plenty of other things I would have loved to have gotten too. Besides, that’s . . . research for monster stories and horror and such. ^_^;

Of course, I went to the writer’s section too. I’ve come across plenty of great books on writing, and there are lots that I still keep trying to collect the capital to obtain. But there’s just so many ridiculous titles: “20 Ridiculously Awesome Plots!” , “How to Sell your Novel Guaranteed*! (*Not Guaranteed)” “Make Writer’s Block Your *****!” Okay, yeah, none of these were real (though some were based off real titles), but it always amazes me to see these on the shelves. I don’t know who buys them, I don’t know who writes them and thinks it’s going to work, and I don’t know how much money they make, which is probably why I don’t understand the second part. Maybe that’s because every other book I’ve read on writing eviscerates these books with a wooden spoon.

There are some awesome writing books out there. Stephen King’s On Writing, all three of Noah Lukeman’s books, John Dufresne’s The Lie that Tells a Truth, and, of course, the amazing, awesome, and unbelievable How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card (since I haven’t finished reading Strunk & White’s Elements of Style yet, I needed a placeholder).

I think, reading those first, and realizing that writing wouldn’t ever be easy, is all that keeps me from buying those. I can see why people want those books: if they were true, they can write, they can get published, and that pretty much solves everything, doesn’t it. Everyone has times where they get scared about these things. I do. A book like those, with the “master plots” and “sure fire strategies” sure would calm my nerves faster than a couple beers or a shot of sake. If only, if only. But, as far as I know, they’re not true, or at least not true enough to make things all that much easier.

I’ve been trying to write something for this all day and failing, so now I’m going to write something rather pointless instead. I’ve finished an anime I’ve been meaning to watch for almost two years, I’ve found an amazingly atmospheric game that shows a complete story without a single line of text or dialogue withing the game; but whenever I try to write about those, I get nothing, so now I’m going for the reverse.

I’ve screwed up a lot of things this week, actually. I skipped one class, didn’t pay attention in a lot of others, got behind on emails, friends, and everything in between. I’m running out of money, I’m horribly disorganized, and instead of doing real work, I spent a lot of time playing games and watching anime. I’ve left a lot of projects behind that were going great, and all the ones I’ve tried to start recently do nothing but flounder and die right after I start working on them. It’s really not been an amazing week at all.

I started this blog about writing, and I can’t remember how many times I’ve repurposed the ideas behind it. Forty or fifty, I guess. I’m getting rid of that. I just want to write. Hopefully, something useful comes of it. If not, well, I can’t get any worse off. Given the economy, I think I’m at the worst time to be a writer in a lot of ways. Certainly, a lot of people say that this is the best time to be an entertainer. After all, people have time, you have time, that gives you everything you need to make an audience, build a persona, get your work out there, become famous, and then when people have money again, the bank account suddenly comes out of the red and you have a bright and wonderful future ahead of yourself. I don’t really believe it in any more than a rational way. I don’t think it’s possible to; when you decide on something rather crazy, such as making a career out of writing, hope doesn’t really stick around.

But, I’ve learned a lot. From a lot of things. Especially when I fail. I’ve had two stories, that made me some degree of minuscule fame once, which I spent days on end working on, pouring my heart and soul into writing them. I could never earn a cent from them, and never will; it would be illegal, actually. But they were great stories, and I’ve made some good friends from that. And both of them cut out in the middle. I just stopped writing them. Not because I couldn’t figure out what to have happen next. I knew what would happen. I just couldn’t make it happen. It was too much, too tightly written, that I couldn’t get myself to make the next part come together. The work it took to make what I wanted to have happen work became unbearable, and I flaked out.

I’m actually trying again. If my random, unreliable plans finally come through, I’m going to start a regular story on this site here, just as ambitious, just as ridiculous in terms of realistic planning to write, and just as interesting to me. I don’t know how to explain what happened the first two times I did  long form story in very discreet pieces, but I’m going to have to make it work this time if I want to make my dreams. I’m at the point of no return now. College is almost done, I need a job, I need a life, I have people I have to take care of, meet, keep sane for. If I can’t get myself back to where I was once, soon, I’m going to end up giving up on writing, I’m sure. And then I don’t know what I’ll do.

But I guess I’ll see what happens next. After all, I’m a writer in a failing economy with an English degree. It’s not like they can pay me less than zero.

I’m supposed to be working on a paper for Jewish American Lit right now, or one of my other papers due next week, but I’m really not up for it at the moment. However, the topic, examining three stand-up comedian’s views on Hanukkah and how their comedic styles do, or do not, draw from their Jewish Heritage, will be a lot of fun. Once I start. But not yet. Later.

It got me thinking, though, about the old idea that comedy doesn’t translate well. It doesn’t make sense, when I actually sit down and think about it. I don’t have the book on hand, but the explanation I got about how comedy works is that it can be broken down, eventually, into two types: superiority jokes and incongruous jokes. All humor either makes us feel superior to someone or something, or makes a logical/illogical jump from one point to another. That doesn’t seem to be something dependent on language, so, translating comedy should work.
Okay, yeah, I’ll admit, I don’t think it would necessarily be easy to translate complex word humor and jokes based on specific cultural things, which means yes, in some ways comedy doesn’t translate. But in terms of cultural jokes, that’s a flaw on the part of the reader, not the translator. Okay, not really “fault” but that sort of thing, I guess.

Here’s the thing, though; to use Japanese Anime as a reference, how many various comedy animes and mangas are out, and have done well? How many involve humor in one part or another, that Americans still get? Suzumiya Haruhi, Excel Saga, Azumanga Daioh, Yotsuba, Crayon Shin Chan (sorta), Lucky Start (mostly), Ranma 1/2, Nerima Daikon Brothers, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, or the jokes that come up in dramas and action shows like Evangelion, Full-Metal Alchemist, One Piece, Inu-Yasha, etc. etc.?

This is an interesting little experiment that I came across on another blog, mostly on design, but it has some interesting things for writers as well. It’s called Telescopic Text, and it’s just a sentence that can be expanded into a longer, more complex sentence, by clicking on the words. In the end, it always becomes the same thing, but it’s an interesting thing to check out. While the design thing is probably a more interesting element, the actual fact of looking at the writing expand and become more descriptive is another good thing to check out, as a lot of people, myself included, don’t describe things well. Here’s an actual sentence, “I made tea.” being built out into a full paragraph, full of asides, ideas, actions, and sensory effects. Check it out at: Telescopic Text by Joe Davis

Malcom Gladwell, author of both Blink and The Tipping Point, has recently released his newest work, Outliers: The Story of Success. And, due to that sort of an opening sentence, you can guess that I am currently reading, and am a strident fan of, Malcom Gladwell’s work, and his newest book as well. Like always, though, something caught my attention, different from the rest (at least so far; I still haven’t gotten to the part where they talk about plane crashes).

He offers a rule for success, the 10,000 hour rule, which states, if you look at the masters of any field of work, they all practiced a minimum of 10,000 hours to master their craft. Art, literature, music, science, mathematics, computer programming, he offers many examples. I don’t feel like going into the book and searching them out right now for other reasons, but they are there. It’s nothing special, when you think about it. Everyone seems to mention that the most important part of any occupation, whether sports or creative or academic, constant practice with whatever medium that is used is the most important. Writing is just the same. I’ve heard other ways of saying this, though I cannot remember the names of the people, such as the famous quote of some Violinist to a fan.

Fan: I would give my life to play like you.

Violinist: I did.

Practice is hard. Doesn’t matter what for, it’s hard, dirty, and oftentimes what comes out of it is pretty useless. (I should know; I read some of my poems I did for practice — boy was that a s***storm and a half) But everyone says it’s important, mainly because, it is. Maybe I don’t have the right to say that yet, but I’m fairly certain, one day, I will have the authority to say that, if only because the bile I spew forth onto clean white paper is so bad from fiction-writing-brain-cells atrophying over the years from lack of mental exercise.

I used to write a lot more than I do recently. I’ve written hundreds of pages for one or two stories, and had the energy to keep going on and on beyond them. But that was some time ago. And for all the writing and working I did, then all the way until now, I don’t think it was ten thousand hours. Maybe four thousand, which, according to the music scale which is used as the primary example, would put me at a perfect place for a middle school music teacher. Hot diggidy damn. Maybe, if I really squeezed, I could get six thousand, which is just enough to not be sucky.

I want to go back to writing again. I miss it. Every time I stop writing, and then go back, I realize more and more how important it is to me. I don’t want to write. I need to write. It’s wonderful to be able to think that sometimes, because at least some part of me then knows that it will be forced to keep writing until the day I die. If it was only a want, I need to be doubly sure to make room for it, to set aside hours to write and compose. But a need, that’s different. That will grab you by the throat in the middle of the night, while spending time with your love the day before she leaves and say “GET OFF YOUR FAT ASS, D*****T!” I know. That was last night, and it felt like a relief to just sit and write again, not just for class, but because I wanted to write a story. Barely got a page done, and it’s clear how ridiculously hard the story I’m trying to write now will be, but it’s started.

I’m going to keep writing here, if only to make sure I have to write, a little bit at least, every day. I don’t know how well that will go. I’m not a consistent, dependable person. I shirk a lot. I procrastinate more than I shirk. And I’ve left a lot of projects by the wayside and forgotten. So, should you come across this discarded blog post some five years in the future, you know what happened. But even if I should fail into nothingness, I wish you the best of luck yourselves, those of you who . . . well, those of you who do anything.

Well, actually, I was going to do a post on this today, but the “short update” I did for Gundam 00 turned ou tot take a little longer than I had planned. I want to mention this novel, though, because I do want to take some time to talk about it.So I’m just going to mention a great little novel called Little Brother.

Cory Doctorow wrote a young adult novel based around recent political and social ramifications started by the 9/11 terror attacks and the Patriot Act, and spins a tale about how a young group of kids take on the Department of Homeland Security cracking down on personal freedoms in San Fransisco after a second terror attack there. There’s a lot of cool privacy and security technology he pulls in, a lot of which is home-made and cheap as dirt (perfect for high school age “miscreants” or college-age-English-major-turning-aspiring-novelists . . . ^^; ) as well as real solutions and questions we have in our day and age. Plus, for those non-technical out there, it’s pretty accessible and explains the theory and ideas behind all the technology very clearly and fully. And for those of us who are tech-loving (I found out about this through a tech podcast myself), there’s a lot of useful tools buried in it. There’s even a free version online, through Cory Doctoro’s site, which you can download with the entire text.

And here’s the site.

Now pass it along.