The Friday Four (Memorial Day Weekend Edition)
1. Memorial Day is not just about barbecues and going to the beach and having a day off from school or work. It’s about remembering those who have died while serving our country. So if you find someone who does not know the meaning of Memorial Day, educate them.
2. When you’re feeling bad about your word count, keep in mind that there are people who come up with ideas all the time but do not write down a single word. Any word count, no matter how small, is better than nothing.
3. I’m reading The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb. The storyline is absolutely crazy and unbelievable, but the book is still laugh-out-loud funny, even if overdone. The main character irritates me, probably because she is the exact opposite of me. I guess I’m jealous of her extroversion. 
4. And I’m still rewriting XIII, whilst constantly fighting a stream of nonsensical internal voices telling me how bad the story is and asking me why I’m still bothering to write it. Because I love to write it, that’s why. I love the characters (even when they make me unspeakably angry) and I want to finish the story.
How’s your Friday?
Big Fish Eats Little Fish
Yahoo (I refuse to spell it with the exclamation point at the end) announced that it had bought Tumblr this past Monday.
It irritates me, but I suppose it was inevitable. Small, successful companies usually get incorporated into the giant companies. What bothers me about it is that a lot of the time, what made the small company and its services special is lost to what the larger company wants for it.
In this case, it bothers me because I have never liked Yahoo (the interface has always looked too cluttered to me) and I love Tumblr. I’d hate to see ads on Tumblr and to see a bunch of changes that really don’t improve the site, but at the same time, it’s a good reminder that I should be backing away from the Internet. I spend altogether too much time on it.
If anything, I’ll move back to good old pencil and paper, which have never failed me.
So Easy to Say…
…so hard to do.
This is something I’ve been seriously thinking about lately.
You might feel strongly about the death penalty or euthanasia or abortion or any number of controversial topics. It’s easy to say that you’re for the death penalty… until your son murders someone. It’s easy to say that you’re against the death penalty… until your son is murdered by someone.
So we should not judge others when they are for or against certain things. Because you never know what might happen to you. You might find yourself on the opposite end of the debate from where you started, and you might find yourself questioning beliefs you had strongly held.
But… it’s so difficult to not be judgmental toward others. It’s something that we, as humans, struggle with every day. You can’t understand someone’s entire situation unless you are that person. Even if you think you’ve been there, done that, you cannot see it from their perspective.
Your Soul’s Appearance
I recently finished reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and I found it to be both heartbreaking and fascinating at the same time. Dorian Gray, a narcissistic and incredibly handsome young man, makes the foolish wish to be eternally youthful, while his likeness in a portrait will age and grow old instead. Dorian gets his wish and learns that one should be careful what he wishes for.
I think it might be neat to have an image of yourself that displayed not only the physical age of your body, but the “age” and decay of your soul as you went through life making bad and good choices. Would one bad choice permanently ruin the image of your soul? Or could you make up for it with good deeds and improve the way your soul looks? But in a way, being able to see the condition or status of your soul might lead to obsession, as it did with Dorian Gray. Another one of those scenarios where ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
Definitely something to think about. Have you read The Picture of Dorian Gray (or seen the movie)? What did you think?
While Writing a First Draft…
…here’s what NOT to think about.
1. Formatting. It doesn’t matter what kind of font you have at this stage. Pick the one you like writing in and looking at and move on. Also, it doesn’t matter where you break your paragraphs, just as long as they get written. Even if you have one big wall-o-text, it’s better than nothing.
2. Grammar. Who cares about grammar during a first draft? Don’t pause at a sentence, wondering whether it’s “lie” or “lay” or “who” or “whom.” Keep going.
3. Criticism. Especially imagined criticism. Sometimes, while I’m writing a first draft I can hear all the voices of potential critics telling me that what I’m writing sucks and will never get better. Ignore it. It doesn’t matter. You’re writing, and that’s farther than many people get in the process.
4. Genres. If you want to write something that’s a quarter fantasy, a quarter romance, a quarter steampunk, and a quarter Western, go right on ahead. Don’t try and box yourself into a genre. Write what you like to write.
5. Details. Your main character might start out hating techno on page 1, then on page 5, he likes it. Inconsistencies and discrepancies don’t count against you. You’ll sort them out later.
I could go on and on listing things that don’t matter while you’re writing a first draft. But here’s the one thing that does matter: your story. Get it on paper (or in a Word document) and get it finished. You will have plenty of time to worry about the rest later.
