Names

I read. I write. I spend hours a day thinking about reading and writing. I constantly try to analyze why I like certain books and movies, but I hate other ones, and especially so when other people either have an overlap of those two or have the complete opposite opinion. I spend time every single day writing fiction or writing about writing fiction, posting it here on this blog. I've written on numerous occasions about my love of character development, and how that affects the way I think and whether or not I enjoy certain things. When I write my own stories, I keep the number of characters low for the express purpose of being able to focus on each of them more intimately and fully, so that they can have the time and development they need to be, in my eyes, truly great and interesting characters.

So you'd think I'd be better at coming up with names for said characters.

I was actually going to write something different tonight. A fairly typical fantasy story, really, of the knight ascending the tower or excavating a series of dangerous caverns in order to face off mano-a-mano with the dragon, all so that he might rescue the princess and take her hand in marriage for his reward. The difference was it would have been from the dragon's point of view. Who knows, I may still write it one of these days.

The problem was that I was sitting here, staring at my blank document, trying to think of a name for the dragon. I went looking for name's of famous dragons in fiction, I spent some time looking up certain words in different languages that I thought might be relevant, and eventually I had lost track in my mind of how I had even wanted to write the story.

Unfortunately, this is something that happens to me fairly often. And those are the kinds of things that I do. I look up names in lists depending on what I'm writing and who I'm naming, I translate words into different languages, and sometimes I just grab whoever is closest to me or most accessible and ask them to give me a name, the first name that comes to mind. Sometimes that works. And sometimes it doesn't.

I have this gut feeling about names when I hear them. It's never really a maybe kind of thing. When I hear a name, it either works for what I want to write, or it doesn't. Sometimes I have to ask my friends to throw a dozen or more names at me, and sometimes the first thing they give me is perfect. Sometimes a name they give me sends my brain down a spiral that ends up on a different name entirely that is exactly what I'm looking for.

As you might imagine, it can be pretty frustrating. I can know a character's entire history, every part they're going to play, even the things I want them to say and how I want them to say them, entire personalities planned out in my head, but I just can't put a name to it.

Granted, I'm also the kind of person that will recognize a voice or a face, be able to relive entire conversations in my head, and still not be able to remember their names. So maybe that's part of the problem.

Friends

It seems the days that I have the most trouble writing, and when I am most likely to succumb to memory fails and miss a day entirely, are the days when my friends come over to hang out.

I love spending time with my friends, and I generally don't turn them down when they want to hang out. There are certainly days that I have done so, but I enjoy their company most of the time, especially when we're playing video games, which is conveniently what we spend most of our time doing. But when they come over, I don't spend much of my time thinking about writing. I easily lose track of the time, and before I know it, I've missed my chance.

I don't want to kick my friends out, because I want to spend time with them. And I don't overly want to be writing while they are around, because I don't want to make them feel like I'm shafting them. But it can be quite difficult at times to do the things that I need to do with them around.

I have less trouble with this when it comes to my girlfriend. Perhaps because I've effectively trained her to be a reminder to me to write, and because she actively wants me to succeed. Perhaps because I simply feel more comfortable around her, and know that she will still be there, ready and waiting for me when I am done writing. In fact, there are times when it almost seems easier to write when she is around than when I am alone. I can't fully explain why that is, because I don't fully understand it myself, but at times it does seem to be the case.

A big part of the problem here, of course, doesn't lie with my friends at all, but with me. If I took care of my writing early in the day, instead of procrastinating and pushing things back, it wouldn't be an issue at all. But because of the fact that I don't, and I end up writing so late at night, losing track of time as the night goes on becomes a massive problem.

In writing this, I don't want to imply that I'm blaming my friends at all for me being bad about sticking to my schedule. The problem lies solely in me, and how I act with my friends around, and even how I act when they're not around. It's more of that I want to document my thoughts and get my ideas and problems written down, because I tend to remember things better once they're out in the open. I'm just trying to make sense of how I act.

Funnily enough, despite the fact that I struggle with writing when my friends are around, they have a tendency to be one of my larger sources of inspiration, whether they mean to be or not. I will occasionally throw out questions at them, seemingly out of nowhere, because I am trying to fish for ideas. Hearing other people talk about stuff is a good way of getting your own thoughts going, after all, and when stories abound from those around you, your own stories tend to come out as well. Which is exactly what I'm looking for.

Good eating

Drew sighed and fell back into his chair. Sarah chuckled from her spot, leaning against the door frame as she had been watching her new husband bringing in the groceries and putting them away. He had insisted on doing it all himself, although she had written the list, because he wanted to prove how much of a 'manly husband' he was. He had been quite determined and happy when he had left, but upon returning he didn't seem quite as up to snuff as he had been before.

She sauntered over to him and leaned against the arm of the chair to look him in the eyes. "Is my big, manly husband realizing that doing the groceries isn't quite as manly as he thought it would be?" she teased. Drew looked up at her with a look of resentment for her dripping sarcasm. "Don't give me that," she rebutted. "I told you it wasn't necessary to do it all by yourself. And it's not like you have to prove your manliness to me. I already married you."

"I don't mind doing it by myself," Drew responded, somewhat flatly. "I've been doing it by myself for years, you know that. It's the list you gave me."

Sarah sat down on the chair's arm and draped an arm around her husband's shoulders. "You know you can get things that aren't on the list, right? Those are the necessaries. You can get some optionals, too."

Drew waved off her words like they didn't mean anything. "It's all this health food. I mean, it's not like I don't enjoy it, and I know you cook it well, it's just... I miss the old days, you know? Back when we were kids, and we didn't have to worry about what kind of junk we stuffed into our fat mouths. Back when we were still growing, and our bodies were still figuring themselves out. We didn't have to do constant maintenance."

Sarah smiled and gently ran a hand through Drew's hair. "Maybe that's how it was in your family," she said softly, "but not in mine's. I remember being raised to eat right, because someday I would need to. I was taught to take care of my body instead of just letting it run on its own, because it's going to run longer that way. Like having regular service visits on a car."

Drew smiled up at his wife. "Yeah, and your body shows it," he said, half teasing. "Your figure is incredible. I'm surprised you let yourself marry a slob like me."

Sarah giggled and planted a kiss on his forehead. "That's because that slob happens to be very lovely. Besides, you promised to eat right and exercise with me. We'll get you in shape sooner or later."

Drew chuckled. "Maybe. But that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it."

Creating a language

Especially when it comes to fantasy and science fiction, some of the biggest names in fiction are those stories that have an entirely new language contained within them, from the ancient elvish languages of Lord of the Rings to Klingon in Star Trek. The fact that the languages are consistent words meant to mean specific things is impressive enough, but that they can be fully translated and learned is another thing entirely. Granted, in at least a few of these instances the author was in fact highly trained in linguistics of these natures, but regardless. It is quite the feat.

I and several people that I know would love to be able to implement that kind of system in our own stories. But unfortunately, more frequently than not that just ends in the author spending all of their time developing a language, and little to no time writing a story in which that language can even be used, much less implementing that language into the story in any meaningful way.

The easiest way to create a language is to simply develop a new alphabet, and continue to write in English (or whatever your language of choice may be) but with said new alphabet when the chance arises. However, this is both a weak cipher, as well as considerably less interesting. Not to mention finding a way to put that new language into a computer so that it can be recognized and used for typing, and then be recognized by a secondary software or a printer so that it is not lost in any part of the process.

On the other hand, you can go through the effort to fully develop a new language, with its sounds, inflections, words, and word order. If you've ever studied a secondary language, there's a good chance you've found that the order of their nouns, verbs, and objects are not the same as your home language. And when developing an entirely new language, you have to consider that part alongside the words themselves. After all, a language is not only defined by its words, but by the way those words interact with each other in order to form sentences.

But of course, none of this is even necessary. It's simply flavor that is added to the world one's story takes place inside of. You can go not only entire books, but entire series without ever stepping into this realm of writing. There are far more stories that only contain really world languages, after all, then there are ones that have brand new languages. Readability is the least of the reasons for that.

In fact, you could simply make sounds in your head, transcribe them onto paper, and arbitrarily assign meaning to those sounds if you saw fit to do so. If that secondary language is used sparingly, and only for specific situations, such as spell casting for instance, then who cares about forming sentences? You don't have to say "I summon thee, the power of fire!" when just shouting "Fire!" works just as well.

But as soon as a reader realizes that there is no discernible pattern to that secret, ancient language, it becomes significantly less fascinating. That's something I can say from personal experience. Both from losing interest in the language of a story I am reading, and seeing people reading my own stories lose interest in the strange words that I seem to use needlessly. It only serves to confuse, rather than expand.

It's a situation where adding a spice to a recipe can certainly help, but adding too much will simply ruin the entire thing.

NSFW

First and foremost, let me address that this post itself is not going to be "Not Safe For Work." It will merely be me addressing the topic of not safe for working writing, what my feelings about it are, and why I have not been writing any pieces that would fall under that category.

Not safe for work pieces, if you can't tell by the incredibly apparent name, is generally what would also be called adult pieces. Pieces with excessive gore, language, or sexual content. I have written pieces with blood, and ones with a bit of swearing, but up until this point I have tried to refrain from going anywhere excessive with these things. It's not that I don't enjoy them, and in some writings that I have done elsewhere I have gone pretty NC-17, but I have this blog available in public. I don't particularly want to have to mark the entire blog as being NSFW because of a few pieces. I also know several if not all of the people who read what I write, and I don't know how particularly comfortable I would be with knowing that they are reading something along those lines, nor how comfortable they would be reading them, knowing that I wrote them.

Sex in particular is something that people have told me that I should write, and while I have entertained the thought, I don't know about posting it on the blog for those exact reasons. It is certainly something that I should consider practicing, and it would give me a certain mindset to go under that you can't get from many other places. Even if I were to never write a book that gets published that had any sex in it, it is something that I could conceivably do as a way to practice my writing and hopefully expand my boundaries and improve myself. But there are logistical problems with doing so that I'm not sure I want to handle.

Language is one that I am more familiar with. Curses are a part of my vocabulary, and a piece that I am quite prone to using in my day to day life. I personally have no qualms with swear words, because the only weight that any word can carry is one that you place upon it, either as a reader or as a writer. The connotation I have in my head for these kinds of words, and in fact many words both tame and viscous, are potentially quite different from the connotations anyone else may have. That being said, I am aware that other people have problems with these kinds of words, and if I were to think about, I would likely not be comfortable with children hearing or reading these words. Do I have children reading the blog? Probably not. Is there a possibility that they might one day? Potentially. And because of that, I'm not sure how far I want to push it.

These are things that I think about every time that I sit down to do any piece of writing, fiction or non-fiction. Everyday I sit down and ask myself, "Is today going to be the day that I cross that line?" And thus far, the answer has always been no. But I don't know if that will last forever. In the instance that I do ever cross that line, I will ensure that I make it apparent in some way on each piece of writing that contains adult content that it is, in fact, there. But, of course, it may be that not every one reading adheres to those warnings, and thus may be caught off guard by a sudden turn from one story to the next. And so, for the time being, I will refrain from taking that action.

Ecstasy

Mark looked down at the substance that had been placed in his hand. He wasn't exactly sure what to even call it. It had just been handed to him, giving him no chance to question or object. It was a strange mixture of purple and green, somewhat swirling fading of colors, and it felt like it could be torn in two if he so much as moved his hand the wrong way.

He glanced around and saw other people holding the substance, popping into their mouths and washing it down with a glass of whatever it was they were drinking. He didn't want to be the only one still holding onto it, looking like an outcast, so he reluctantly dropped it into his mouth and tried to swallow it down with water. Despite the liquid, it felt dry going down his throat, like it was trying to grind out a fire on the way down, and he covered his mouth, trying to hide the sputtering cough that was threatening to overcome him.

The moment it hit his stomach, he began to feel weird. Colors in his eyes began to swim, and while he stayed steady in his seat, it felt as though the counter under his hand was moving up and down, like a wave on an ocean. He looked desperately around at the people he had seen previously taking the substance, only barely able to make out their shapes, but they didn't seem to be having any problems. In fact, they seemed to be even happier than they had been before.

Mark moved out of his seat, but the floor wasn't there to catch him, and he fell hard on his face. Almost immediately, two sets of arms were set around his own, lifting him back onto his feet, and holding him steady. Mark tried to look at them, but their faces were muddy, almost like they were melting away. He was in a state of panic, but he was beginning to find that his jaw hurt. He had fallen on his nose and forehead, but the pain was absent from that space.

"Take a seat, buddy," their voices came to home, but not from their faces. Forcefully, they pushed Mark back into the seat that he had been occupying. "Think you should just ride this one out."

Mark slumped against the counter, placing his hands on his face to realize that he was smiling uncontrollably, and his jaw was hanging open. He was able to think clearly, but his body was going on its own. It was like the part of his brain that experienced was going on a wild journey, while the part that thought was being left behind.

He was becoming scared. He didn't know how to deal with what was going on. But as the world around him became increasingly more bizarre, he concluded that the only choice he had was to let go and go with it. And as he did, the thoughts in his brain began to muddle as well. Like a wall that he had been holding up had abruptly fallen away. And he disappeared into the haze.

Books

I have recently been given an opportunity to work in a library, which I am quite excited about, though admittedly a good bit nervous as well. But going into this, I am also being made aware of how little time I have spent in libraries throughout my life, which is not only a shame, but somewhat stupid, given who I am and what I want to be. This is a place where I can be surrounded by the things that I want to be able to create, and it doesn't cost me so much as a dime, and yet I hardly take advantage of the fact. So I was trying to think about why that was.

A friend of mine, who for a long time worked in libraries, pointed out a problem that she had with said libraries, which I think has been a subconscious concern of mine. All too often, she saw books that had been treated incredibly poorly. Pages and covers bent and falling apart, stains on the pages, writing inside of the book. Things that some might consider to be "well-loved" but to us is just misuse and blatant disregard for that book.

I hate seeing books treated that way. I've never been one to save a couple bucks by buying a used copy of a book, because I hate that someone would let a book degrade the way far too many used books are. Hell, I prefer paperback books to hardcover, and I'll place weights on them after I've read them for a while in an attempt to reflatten the inevitably curved covers. I want books to look as good as their contents are. If I see a book that is falling apart, I don't care how good the story it holds within might be, I'm probably not going to open it, both because it doesn't look good, and because I don't want to risk damaging it any further.

I once had a book that I loved, but part way through reading it I accidentally left it in the sun for an extended period of time in the midst of the summer heat on the passenger seat of a car, and the glue holding the book together came off. The cover removed from the pages entirely, and the pages themselves split into two blocks of pages with some loose leafs in the middle. As much as I enjoyed that book, I almost put it down entirely after that. I was tempted to go out and buy a new copy of the book, just so I wouldn't have to deal with the mess that my book had become.

I have seen used, well loved books. Ones that have been kept in excellent condition over the years, and have stories inside of them simply don't exist elsewhere anymore. These, I don't mind, because they have been cared for. It doesn't take too much effort to care for a book. You don't have to feed it or clothe it, and you don't have to give it new content from time to time. You just handle it gently, you don't throw it, and you keep it away from grease or other liquids. Yet, looking through a library, so few people seem to understand this.

Maybe I'm just too picky. Maybe I just don't understand the appeal. Maybe I'm blinded by prior judgements and should learn not to, quite literally, judge a book by it's cover. But I would far prefer to spend my time in a bookstore than a library.