Spontaneous Inspiriation

"I was on a stone altar somewhere very dark. I’m not talking ‘bout no Sunday mass crap here, I mean bloodstained pagan altar. As in I was laid up for sacrifice. While I sat there, shivering, someone walked out towards me and stood on the ground by the altar. It was part of me, the part of me that thought I could take on the world. It was dangerous; it scared me. But I gotta’ say offhand, it looked way cooler than I thought any part of me could be. It was telling me I had to get up because I still had to fix the problem.
I was like, Shut up. You were stupid. You were wrong.
But it kept telling me to stand. You got up in the desert. You have to get up here. There’s no difference; it’s only harder this time.
That is stupid, stupid logic.
Is it? Look at you, the ‘strange little victim’. That what you’re gonna’ let Mr. Boogley-Eyes make you?
I’m just a kid, it’s not up to me.
“Damnit, you can’t see it is up to you!”
I turned my head towards him, taking it off the altar. “Hey, hey, I don’t swear! ‘cept maybe once to make fun of Mr. Clarebecker.”
“Neither do I, except to you.” It drew a sword and stabbed the altar, but the blade slid off. “You can’t accept this fate.”
Now it was my turn to make a comeback. “Oh, yeah, why not? How do you know this isn’t my punishment for all you did? Haven’t you ever heard of God’s punishment for crimes like ours in church?”
“And maybe it’s community service. You don’t know yet, and if you’re meant to die, I sorta’ figure you will anyhow. But I wanna’ go down better than this. Look, Jack, get over it for now. Here, right now, in this place, that you killed someone means nothing.” It laid it out flatter than three-day old soda.
“That’s kinda’ cruel. You know it still hurts me, too.”
“Not much else I could say. After all, that’s the one thing you won’t run from facing right now.” It spun in a frustrated circle. “Look at you! That’s not even you talking; you have enough compassion to see reason, I know it, even though you’ve shut me out recently. That’s not you talking, it’s fear!”
Something laughed evilly through my mouth; not the voice from before, something else altogether. A dark misty shape came and possessed me; even though it didn’t hurt. And my mouth spoke back to the only free part of me, still standing by the altar. “Yes, thorn in my side, it is Fear. And the decision has already been made for you. We will stay right where we are, and this mind, this heart, will be fed to Fear.”
“NO.” The strength of his voice shocked us both; my body recoiled a little."

Chapter 21 is done, but this next one will be a logner chapter. This passage above just appeared when I was writing today. There were absolutely no plans for this scene in my original outline, not even any plans for it when I wrote right through this part of the book, drafting all the paragraphs before and after it. But when I went to type it up, I just came up with this. And boy do I like it. These are always good days. I'm not sure how much of this I'll keep, or what I'll change, but I think this scene in general will certainly be in the final copy.

Chapter 20 Complete

"I reached out a hand. “C’mon here, dude! We’re friends, right? I help you, you help me.” It started getting’ really smoky up there, an’ I coughed so hard I couldn’t hardly talk. I always wondered what breathin’ in that fire smoke’d be like, but hey, I wasn’t gonna’ last much longer up here. And it just stared at me with those empty robot eyes.
Rose grabbed onto Alpha’s leg, crying and everything. “Please,” she sobbed, “please, Mr. Robot, save Jack! We need you.” She knew I was passin’ out, didn’t she? The fire was running down the ceiling, too. Man, I was baking!
Alpha glanced a little at this new disturbance. It’s eyes flashed as it recorded the lab all collapsing on us."

It's been a little while since I've updated this, but a lot has been done since then. I'm essentially in the climax chapters. Tantalizingly close to finishing drafting before the school year starts, but I think I'll finish it in the first month of high school this year.

Chapter 14, 15

"Staying cautiously in his spot, Bask soon gave in to trying to listen in on the stories exchanged around the fire. It didn’t work; he was too far away. Why did he care so much about the words being said over there? He knew they couldn’t be important; even from the tone he could tell that. But something pulled him, there was something critically important being discussed, he felt, something he couldn’t put his finger on, like the insects hiding in the shadows over here."

Chapters 14 and 15 finished. Not much to say, except summer is unfortunately soon over. I wish I had more time, but I'm going to have to work at the slow school-year pace to finish this book.

200 pages

" Although, I was having a significant degree of trouble justifying this one. It was just that the heavily armed walker in front of me didn’t look like a tool for helping mankind. Just think of it as a scientific instrument, is what I told myself, eventually resolving the problem. This device will help you learn incredible things.
And that was that."

Over halfway there, while it looks like I won't finish drafting this summer. A pity. Lots of littler chapters recently, different things going on at once, time for some character exposition, development, bonding. Good stuff.

13 Chapters

"Great. I leaned my head against the rock I was tied to and let the heat fry me. If I’d been those Fire villagers, I’d a’been trying anything to appease that mountain spirit, too. I could fight a dozen more Rock Kami and still not get enough experience points to be able to beat that thing. “Gimme’ a break!” I yelled. “Just, c’mon! This is what I get for killing one monster?” I thought about Bask. He always was right.
Rose was thrashing around trying to break the ropes. “I hate you, Bask!” she cried. “I hate you I hate you I hate you Ro-yaru!” A few folks stared at us. If they were payin’ any attention to what we were saying at this point, they didn’t care."

Almost 200 pages. It's nice things are starting to get more serious for Jack; I've had some great ideas for things that will catch up with him later and really make it tough. But at that point in the story the reader'll be invested, so he can be, heck, suicidally miserable without causing too much trouble. Certainly a transformative experience. Must be strong for a 12-year old...

Chapter 9 (10)

"Was morning. Sun still rise. Yay-yay looked for anybody, scary, friendly, big, small. Nobody! So she slip out of the rope tied on her and look over edges of metal table. Hoped men wouldn’t be mad she leave ropes. Wanted her to stay. Ktchue-ktchue-ktchue!"

""...And I don’t want anyone taking revenge for me. I’m a Ranger!”
Bask sneered. “This has nothing to do with you. I’ll take revenge for me, and when I feel like it.”
“You don’t care abut being a Ranger!”
“Keeping the peace? No. That’s an empty phrase for featherheaded fools.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You? Really? I wouldn’t have thought it.”
A sorta’ side door popped open on that helicopter, and five guys with pretty mean looking guns jumped out onto the plaza. Just me, or was it getting a little crowded up here?
They marched towards us all menacingly; Bask leveled a business end of his staff at ‘em. “Come and get it, dogs.”

I've finished the equivalent of chapter 10 just now. The big city story is finally over; now I move people into the wilderness for a good long time.

100 Pages

"What was this? Checkered tablecloth? A hundred wine bottles? No dancing? Oh, no; I’d been trapped in an old people party!
The worst part is, I couldn’t even leave. I was the guest of honor, remember? That commando tore up his uniform for me, so I might even have to drink some of his rotten grape juice just to be polite."

I can hardly beleive I've written a hundred pages so far; I must have written more already this summer than all of last year, or almost. It's getting pretty good; I'm into chapter 8, but I'm already seeing a couple things I'll have to go back and fix. For now, I just keep talking, keep telling the story.

Moving Forward (3 chaters)

"The doors shut behind me. Oh boy. It was like I imagine being inside a car engine would be like; grey metal parts everywhere. Except I really felt like throwing up. No, worse. I was on my knees by the time I figured out what was going on. My arms hurt so bad, like they were vibrating. So this was dying. Way cool. I always wondered what it would feel like."

Summer's here, and I'm finally writing full steam ahead. I'm working on what's essentially chapter 4, depending on whether you count the first chapter as a chapter or just an introduction. It could go either way, but it's so long I'm counting it as a chapter. Gosh, it's so good to finally write these characters I've been keeping cooped up on my wall for so long(in the form of character sheets)! They're shining.

Prystillian Rangers (Nintendo DS)

"...It was prob’ly just the way he started leaning at me away from the lamp, but his face was totally darker now. "You leave me no choice.”
“Should I worry?”
“You should be worried. Now you’ll have no chance to work on your already failing grades.”
I did this sort of gasp, clutching my shirt and everything like I was stabbed. “Oh! Woe is me! I wont’ be able to work on my grades! Oh, ‘tis a fate worse than death!” The principal actually stood up then, and I kinda’ sat back. You know, he’d never done that before, ever. “Hey, you should be glad I’m really learning something in drama class.”..."

I've finally drafted Chapter 1 of this book. The reason it's such a 'finally' is because I plotted the thing out towards the end of summer last year. Summer's almost back around! Just goes to show how little I get done during the school year. All the same, I did a major revision of The Federation Wars, all three books, so maybe things aren't as slow as they seem.

Moving Forward

Last summer, I'd planned to start on a whole new book, and make some real progress over the summer. I'm just now starting it. But at least I have good reasons.
What I did instead is, over the last year, revise the whole Federation Wars trilogy. It even has a new name-AWOL Soul trilogy. The new title gets mixed results from people I show it to, but it's more of an attention-grabber than the last one.
A lot of changes were in the second two books. A whole swath was cut out of book 2 and replaced to give it more tension, and I changed a few characters in bk3- a pair of commanders were demoted to lieutenants and squished together into one character. I really feel like the new guy has much more emotional weight, so, good.
But I'm finally done. When I first set out to write these books, waaay back when I was something like eleven, I found it incredible that I'd finally found the commitment and skills to write my own story at all. Now, at the end of it all, things have changed. I'm proud of 'em, but I'm done with them now. If they're good enough to sell, they'll most likely sell as they are.
So what now? I wrote a short story with a quirky idea, and found it so bad it was only good to- as my good freind Twain put it- "tar and pitch". Once I learn from it what I can, the file's getting deleted and the paper recycled. You know, to save the planet. So I get to start on my book! I've already mentioned it once or twice-as soon as I finish a chapter, I'll post a couple paragraphs up here so everybody can see. This new main character is a lot different from Rand Morgan. Rand's mature and serious and driven by empathy. The kid at the heart of my new project is-at least first off-a disrespectful, lower-class, snarky thing of a twelve-year old. But I'm young enough to remember what middle school is like, and any twelve-year old readers should have no trouble understanding his life.

Update

Well, the press said no after a few week's consideration. But I do have good news! Before Christmas, I won first place in a writing contest at my high school. The prize, which I was just paid earlier today, was $15. I nailed the money up on my wall! It's not a lot, but it's the first money I've ever earned off of writing.

Yayness

It looks like I got my first nibble! There's a small press that's sent me two or three e-mails already, none of them rejections! I'm still in consideration. Meanwhile, I'm working like crazy on the book I sent them (previously Star Escaper, as I've posted before, but I have by now changed it to Light Escaper), adding every little bit I can think of to get readers to care about the characters. It's stressful already, but gratifying. I'd a thousand times rather write than bother with all this buisness, but I don't mind.

Some Writing

I decided I ought to put a little bit of my writing up here on this blog, so I chose this: these are some description notes I took while on a walk on a trail.

The Carriage Hill Exploration

The boardwalk continues, several feet above the marsh, the zigzag line. It feels like a remnant of a dark shanty town; and all was cleanly wiped away, save this one path. I can feel the ghosts of stilted houses when I stare across the lower cattails into the bare poplar crowns, with one lone white birch, a stark signal in the distance. It marks the hut for councils, in the dream there - of a past that never was, no more faded than those pasts that are no longer.
The older cattails rustle in a wind-gust. Most are dry as papyrus. These have matured from young greenery into perfect instruments, always playing for an absent - or perhaps merely incorporeal - audience. If I look over there, my vision is across the lake, the wide ruffled expanse reminding me that this is a very small marsh indeed. And it is turning unfreindly, as I shiver. The warmth that bred a soup of life here is gone. No more frogs, no more water-spiders, no more tadpoles - the wind sounds so mournful as if because, now that the cattails have just finally, after so long, perfected their song, all the listening ears have cruelly fled. Their conductor is a dead half of a tree, standing out in their midst, of a breed unrecognizable. It leans, and the only three meagre branches point, the way I've come. It is a sign, a traditional "Turn Back", built by that ghostly village whose boardwalk I enjoy, and spotted with white mushroom disks out its side.
But I move on. As I turn a corner - here, perhaps, hosted a barbershop above the water, there a dock for villagers to take their canoes out on the lake, a sound responds to me - the quite distinct sound of something fleeing over bits of dry ground on the marsh, something hidden by fallen branches and briary somethings proffering toxic berries. As I stand, watching my nothing, it sounds once again - and then must be gone, for I hear no more? Could it be? Life, still here? Animate life? Heavans, no. More likely, an alien from outside the marsh, with outlandish elongated ears and a cotten tail. If I wait long enough (and I do) another sound, this time a birdsong from farr off, clearly a lark far too dignified to descend to the marsh, and loud about it, too. As I cast about for the faint, distant chirpings that follow, I notice on one of the trees on the north side of my path has frown right beside the boardwalk. And, of course, the most outlandish thought enters my head. It really wouldn't be a difficulty at all, just to step out, and puit my foot in that low fork there. I could hoist myself into that tree quite easily. And so, having come upon a most certainly bad idea, I must simply do it.
But I am interrupted. A sound like water dropping on a rottne board catches me, and I turn back to see a starling sized woodpecker pecking his way up my sign-conductor-tree. He (or she) spirals up like the lines on a barber pole, then disappears, does it again and finds his hidey-hole nearly up the top. He pokes his head out once or twice, perhaps to see if I will leave, then gets bored with sitting at home and pokes his way up the tree once more.
Finally, I get up in the tree. Barring the slight security of some interloping twigs, I invade the wide fork of the tree. What a nice perch! Almost as nice as the woodpecker's, though a deal lower. I am still inferior to his black-and-whiteness, and he is still poking around his tree. You think he would know it better. Only now do I really notice that the marsh is the perfect spoiler of all clothes, a half-frozen miasma of water and hummus, whose effluvia are unpresent surely only because the cold has stifled them. Oh well, little price to pay for being a part of the scene. I'm no longer some invader on the boardwalk, but a representative of the long lost village of Never-was to the dead republic of the swamp. At least, I am, and proud of it, until I have to get down, set upon the path again, and turn back the way I came, leaving my huts and rope bridges to the imagination of the marsh. Let it do with them as it pleases. From a distance, back up the slope, the whole marsh is nothing but a few trees poking up in front of the lake. The whole expanse of water altogether is nothing but a cold still-life, lonely, distant and undeniably unhaunted. One feels as though they could marsh back down to that boardwalk and claim the whole place for themselves. But I know that the moment my foot creaked upon a board, the true marsh would return, complete with spooky signs, quiet orchestras, and a thoroughly disapproving woodpecker, reigning king and the temporal absence of all other citizens, animal or human.

Looong Time

Erg... It's been a while since I posted here. Oh, well. Hard to know if anybody ever reads this thing anyhow, seeing as I haven't found many opportunities to link to here. It's been even harder to write during school than last year! I have a killer religion project that eats up 7-5 every Saturday at least, so I'm getting next to nil done. I did finish outlining my next big project (a stand-alone story about a 12-year old boy who plays too many video games) but I haven't written an actual line yet. Pity. I started a short story, but I haven't finished it yet. And the first quarter's already over! Yikes!

Finito

I've finished editing the third and final book of the Federatin Wars trilogy. It's finally done. So, I've begun planning my next project; I'll probably post more about it later, once I begin writing. I've also sent Star Escaper, not to Ocean View, but to an illustrated book publisher called Celler Door Press.

Done!

I finished drafting bk 3, at 14 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. It's been a long haul, given high school, but I'm proud to see this done. Of course, I haven't started editing, so I'm only halfway to REALLY being done :). I'll be working on this thing for at least a few months more. I'll also be sending in Star Escaper (bk1) to another publisher in a couple of days or so. I'm looking at Ocean View Books at the moment.

Chapter 14

I needed to cut chapter 13 short because it had its own little story arc. In more interesting news, I just entered Star Escaper into a Scholastic book contest. (Or rather, the first 50 pages therof). I lose the copyrights for 2 months, but who cares? Maybe it's miniscule, but a chance to get published under Scholastic? That would be worth it.

Chapters

Wrote through Chapter 11 and am now on chapter 12. I don't want to end on 13 chapters ( :) ) but I know I certainly won't be ending on chapter 12, so I'd better keep writing.

Chapter 10

I've begun Chapter 10 in my third book! It's getting pretty long. I feel like I'm going to end up cutting a lot of material from the beginning that just doesn't move the plot along or raise the action at the pace I need.

Ooligan Press

I've sent in Star Escaper to a publisher called Ooligan Press. It's run by students out of Oregon State University. Seems small enough, so I might have a chance even though they seem to have an emphasis on West Coast Culture. In other news, I'm on Chapter Ten of the third book in The Federation Wars, which I think will be titled Skypin Nine. Oh, yeah, and I entered the Writers Weekly quarterly short story contest. It's been almost a month now, so I expect the winners to be posted soon. Come to think of it, the winners could have already been posted on the site, and I just wasn't notified because I didn't win. I hope not!