The spring becomes a fountain.

It seems in our world that more and more we worry about running out of resources.  We're going to run out of fossil fuels, trees, animals, oxygen, space, and just about everything else you could conceive of.  But it seems to me that there are a lot of things that we'll never run out of.  

There is something about what we do as humans that is amazing, if we work at something we get more of it.  The more I run the more distance I'll be able to do next time.  The more I lift weights, the more I'll be able to lift in the future.  The more I eat, the more I'll be able to.  (All right, that last one wasn't the best example)  

It is surprising that we see physical achievement and improvement as different than mental improvement.  Society seems to have the idea that you can improve your muscles, improve your stamina, or improve your physique.  Yet when it comes to your mental improvement your intelligence isn't as important. 

What if the problem is the perception of the world is it is better to be physically fit than mentally fit?  You could be the worlds strongest man if you work out enough, but you can't be the worlds smartest man because you weren't born a genius or a prodigy.  If we were to work towards changing the picture of society that instead of valuing bulging biceps and a washboard abs we instead valued someone who could solve calculus differentials.  What kind of a picture would it create for us?  

I suddenly see beer commercials where engineers, and scientists are flocked over by women.  I see a Chess Championship as something which draws as big a crowd as the Super Bowl.  It is an interesting picture of the world, where it's not survival of the fittest but survival of the smartest.  

Why did I go through this long rant?  Because I've been amazed at the changes that occur in a mind when you begin to work towards something and practice at it consistently.  In many writers circles they talk about you need to write every day.  That the important thing is that you continue to train your mind in order to produce the ideas and to form the stories in the way you want them.  

Ten years ago I made my first attempt to write a story as a novel.  It came down to three pages of pencil written words that seemed to gloss over ideas but never really explored them.  It was a fantasy story that I felt I could write and would explore a world where reality is based entirely on some kind of group consensus.  That was when I first realized that writing was hard and set it aside. 

There are days that I wish I would have kept at it, where I should have pushed the story to five thousand words, to ten thousand.  I would have something that I could look back at now to see how much I've improved in my writing.  Instead it took me another five years before I finally put words to paper in any concentrated effort.  

Now I can look back and see Creativity is like a muscle, the more you use it the more ideas come to you.  The more you work at formulating sentences, at devising plots, and at crafting characters the better they become.  

There are times that I look back at decisions that I made in my life and regret them.  Regret that I didn't realize that if you want to accomplish anything in life you can't take the easy route.  If you want to write, put your butt in a chair, your fingers on the keyboard, and start writing.  Like with sports, if you want to get better you need to practice.  

Edit's underway and Writing Lovecraft

I've finally committed to a few things which i'm hoping will lead to more for you to read.  I'm setting a date to have my first novel ready for Beta-reading by mid-April.  That's a little over a month away and I have to go through it at least once.  Also there are some things I need to rewrite as this was something first written over two years ago.

I know, two years is a long time to sit around without being worked but I haven't felt the fire under me until recently.  I think part of it has to do with the lesson's I'm learning from the Fear Project.  Having a weekly deadline and only a few days to turn around a finished product is tough.  Though I feel my editing and proofreading skills have really started to blossom.

Another thing I've learned from this challenge is that a deadline isn't always a bad thing.  There are days when I can procrastinate like the best of them.  I can find excuses and distractions to keep me busy for weeks.  But alas, that's one thing I love about National Novel Writing Month.  There is a goal, there is a time frame, there is a deadline.

Since I mentioned the Fear Project above I may as well continue to that now.  During this weeks challenge the rules changed.  We received an e-mail earlier in the week warning us that things would be changing this week.  The ideas which were thrown out were vague but all we knew is that everything was about to get more interesting.  

This week we have a guest judge who asked us to write a story where our main character is wet, cold, and in the dark.  Then, to top it all off, he would really like it if we went with the Lovecraft style.  That is something that I struggle with.  It is something that try as I might in the past I've never been able to pull off.  I've tried for the weird, tried for the darkness, tried for his settings.  Yet somehow it has all escaped me.

Now I love H.P.Lovecraft and his style is amazing in my opinion.  He makes wonderful use of the first person.  His work is the stuff of dreams, nightmares, or even just the weird.  I feel like I did well but this week is still young and we have yet to see which of us the judge likes best.

But that is the way that of life sometimes.  All we can really do is hurry up and wait.

Overloaded

So... I completely forgot about last weeks blog post and it is shameful. What's worse, I didn't take the time to let people know that I was too busy and forgot about this until Sunday afternoon.  So for anyone who was missing my update I'd like to take a moment to say, "I'm sorry."

Well, let's take a moment and talk about projects that I have going right now.  Currently I'm working on an edit and rewrite going for the novel, "A Patchwork of Graves." For anyone following me on David Wellington's Fear Project you were introduced to Patch during week three in the story "To Mend A Broken Heart".  Many people showed interest which makes me happy to have created such a bad guy.

There is also the Fear Project which occupies most of my weekends.  From the time the prompt posts at midnight EST Friday until I send in the submission in, all of my free time is occupied by thoughts of my story.  They might be short in length, probably the length of what I've already written, but the wording is so important.  I can honestly say that in the last four weeks of creating these stories I've learned about the importance of word choice.  It has also helped me in analyzing what I need to cut or change in my own stories to focus on the key elements.

This week I posted a story about Nurse Summers who works in a psychiatric ward. When vampires show up trying to turn her patients into a buffet, she steps up to set things right.  I have to admit that I unwittingly have fallen in love with this character. I never thought that I would want to write  a vampire story.  In fact one of the things that inspired Patch was the lack of a good undead alternative.  But it isn't the vampires that make this story unique, this character seems to have a story behind her behavior that makes me want to explore it.

To answer a question which was posted on my comments the last name is a pop culture reference.  The nurse originally didn't have a name, yet I felt having her nameless was cheating.  When I was thinking of a good name for a woman who is a duty bound slayer of vampires I couldn't resist using the last name.  Just think of this as an Easter Egg and move on, the character isn't Buffy and if I decide to write more with her then you'll see just that.

What has been discussed is just about a third of what my project list has on it.  Needless to say I'll be busy for sometime into the future working on getting all of these done.  But on the bright side, at least I won't be a writer who finds himself without an idea after writing one novel.  I will have to say that I've been blessed with a mind full of fun new ideas.