Between Waters

Hrm hrm hrm.

So I've decided that Harry Potter does a poor job of representing the magic-school genre, which is fertile ground for writing and which I feel must be wrested from the tyrannical grip of one JK Rowling for the betterment of writing in general. To that end I have become to compose a story that is equal parts The Lord of the Rings and Looking for Alaska with heavy doses of the Bible, American Idiot, and Persona3. In brief the main character is a girl whose magical ability is noticed by a representative of a school in the Boundary Waters between her freshmen and sophomore years in high school and who despite initial resistance ends up attending where she becomes friends with another girl named Bombay Ginny (Gin), who is in many ways Alaska in messianic clothing. The more interesting angles of the story come from the lead's interaction with Gin, through which both of their characters develope. The story explores various facets of revolution as well as how teens approach faith, love, friendship, sexuality, and just about everything else that is both interesting and important. Quite a bit of work, I'm aware, but if John Green can do it in 220some pages I think I can do it in under a thousand. The original thurst of the project was to create a Lord of the Rings level of backstory, which I have been diligently assembling as often as I've been actualy writing. There's quite a bit of speculative chemistry and physics that goes into the explanation of just how magic works, as well as some economics and history behind the underpinnings of magical society and the economy of the magical word. In fact, the goal is to provide enough information for Appendices A-F, which comes out at six, if I can count properly, though the better test will be to see how it compares to Tolkein's appendices on a word-count level. I feel that between the explanation of how magic works and thorough explorations of the politics of the magical world as well as its social structure and economy I ough to chew through quite a few pages, never mind history and all that.
On a narrative level the story is told exclusively in the first person by the lead--I call her Mary, but have yet to decide whether to reveal that as her name, or whether it even matters--in the present tense, except for numerous digressions and narrations of past events as well as some snippets of history that she presents in fairy tale form.
The writing itself has proceeded exceptionally smoothly, which leads me to believe that I may in fact complete this project, which would be a significant accomplishment after the fractured nature of the writing that I've done over the last...four years.

In other news, here's the summer reading list, as accurately as I can recall it--
Read:
In Cold Blood - Capote
My Own Country - Verghese
Outliers - Gladwell
Kafka on the Shore - Murakami
Looking for Alaska - Green
Fahrnheit 451 - Bradbury

Reading:
Darkness at Noon - Koestler
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Murakami
Midnight's Children - Rushdie
Dune - Herbert
Last Orders - Swift
The Power and the Glory - Green
The Trial - Kafka
The Red Badge of Courage - Crane
The Economist - weekly, cover-to-cover excepting on the art exhibit article

On the Verge of WCATY, from a Different Angle

So, once more unto the breach, except this time I'm working, at least nominally. Doing grunt work, more likely than not, oh well.

Mm, don't have much to write about, I suppose...Let's see, I finished The Creation of Chastity Damnation, and am working on Islands, now--another lovely Catholic story. Well, I think it's Catholic, Christian certainly...In that vein, I've been working on reading the Bible by book alphabetically. I also snagged a copy of the Qur'an, might need to expand outside of the middle east eventually, but that may take some time.

I've made an effort to read A Prayer for Owen Meany, but it's like trying to read Dickens, so I've given that up in favor of Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, which is far more interesting.

Don't know how I feel about this whole Catholic writing binge, but it's interesting...things keep getting longer and longer, which is a tad annoying. Islands should be fun, if I can get it done in under 30 pages or so, but that may not actually happen... As for Amos and The End...that's going to kick my ass. Awfully.

Hi, My Name Is/Hi, My Name Is//

So I've been gone for a while. In the interim a few things have happened:

- I started listening to Eminem again. A lot.
- I relapsed into Pokémon addiction.
- I relapsed into certain "emotional states". Oops.
- I realized I'm not disciplined enough to write anything longer than a longish short story.
- I stopped talking to my friends. Oops x10
- I started talking to other friends.
- I created an alter ego, lurking somewhere out there on teh internets. Good luck finding it.
- I realized that I'm an extremist after a fashion.
- I started reading The Economist.
- I stopped reading TIME.
- I realized how fertile Catholicism really is as a field of literary exploitation and subjugation.

Okay, so I don't even know how long it's been since I've been back here...oh well.

So the current writing projects are twofold:
- The Creation of Chastity Damnation: a story about a girl who isn't quite as crazy as her dad.
- Islands: a story about a lot of Catholics on an island (shocking!) after a minor rebellion. Lots of blood. Lots of angst (legitimate, though). And there are crosses (so blood goes with the territory, I suppose...)!
More on those when I actually get done writing them. Which is what I would be doing now if I weren't avoiding it...