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Showing posts from November, 2010

The Hunger Games and King David

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The Hunger Games The story goes that the prophet Nathan came to King David and told him about two men from the same city. One was rich, and the other poor. The poor man had little except a lamb he had raised. He shared his food with the lamb, slept with it at night. It was more, even, than just a pet. He loved it like a child. One day, the rich man had a visitor for whom he wanted to prepare a feast. Instead of taking a lamb from his own large flock, he took the poor man's precious lamb, slaughtered it, cooked it, and fed it to his visitor. King David was outraged by the tale and swore that the poor man's loss would be repaid fourfold—and that the rich man would die. Nathan told him, " Thou art the man ." Nathan didn't walk up to the king and berate him for taking another man's wife. He didn't accuse him of murder for sending that man to his death in battle. He told a story, got David ticked off at the antagonist, and then in four words turned it ar

Gifted/Cursed: Poem for Aspiring Writers

Hmm, how's that for a title? Seriously, sometimes they're one and the same. It's so hard to tell a good story, but I can't help but try. Fall in love with people no one else knows Cry about tragedies no one else sees It's a dream a world in your throat that you can't quite speak Feelings real as anything about phantoms hallucinations in the night It's only a story Write it down with just enough skill to make you think you can Just enough love to keep trying and nothing more Try And again Because you must It's your gift

Finished!

Excuse me while I laugh. Okay, I'm back. So, three months ago—wait, let me check—holy cow, it was exactly  three months ago! I'm a man of my word! Anyway, back on August 12th, I announced I was virtually chucking my novel in the trash and rewriting the whole thing. I said " Give me three months from tomorrow ."  Well, I wrote the last sentence of that rewritten book on Saturday, November 13th. Finished? No! Not by a long shot. Well, it's a whole lot closer than it was before, but now I've essentially got another rough draft on my hands. I've gotta go through it again and tweak the emotional responses and speech of characters, work on setting (which I frequently forget about), get rid of repetition and redundancy (get it?), and pay a lot of attention to verb choice. And delete commas. They always creep in where they're not wanted. So what did I do with that three-month-long rewrite, aside from have a lot of fun? I got the story right. Everyt

Infidelity

Do you ever cheat on a book? You know what I mean, and it could be either a book you're reading or one you're writing. I'll confess that sometimes, if a book I'm reading doesn't quite intrigue me all the way through, I'll see a prettier one sitting on the shelf just waiting for some attention, and I'll pick it up without finishing the first. Usually, that's it for my relationship with the first book. If you go back to it, where do you start? You can't really start over, knowing that it didn't work out last time. You can't really pick it back up where you left off once you've lost your connection with that world. I guess if you wait enough years, you forget everything and can start back up like strangers. That's what I did with The Hobbit. I tried reading it in elementary or middle school, but it was just too—something. Wordy? Obtuse? Over my head? I read it a few years later and loved it. I cheated on Stranger in a Strange Land , an

A Car Crash

Ever wondered what it's like to crash into a freeway overpass at high speed in a convertible? What would it be like? Would you survive and with what sort of injuries? What's in those yellow barrels, anyway? I wondered. Yeah, it's weird, but I have my reasons. I'm sure you can guess what they are. The yellow barrels you see in front of overpass supports and barriers, especially on the freeway, are impact attenuators . More specifically, they're called Fitch barriers, named for John Fitch, who invented them. There are other types of impact attenuator, but Fitch barriers are the simplest and probably the most effective. Each barrel in the line is filled with a progressively greater amount of sand or water. When a car hits the line of barrels, the sand/water is scattered in all directions, taking with it some of the car's momentum. Each barrel slows the car down a little more, as the amount of energy absorbed (and speed reduction) increases with the mass of sa

Prayer of the Gifted

For the treasure of potential For the night we know will come Blessed and gifted Cursed and scorned Lead us far away from home Let our power tame our passion Hold its fire, quell its pain Send a hero Send us someone With a calming gentle rain May desire die like morning May its flame no longer burn Good around us Be inside us May our human evils learn May the blessings we are cursed with Never make our loved ones cry Blessed and gifted Shall we thank thee? Let us ask thee only—Why? (Does anyone understand what I'm saying?)

Polishing

I recently downloaded The Rescues' first album, Crazy Ever After. I got one of their songs a few months ago, and it was good enough that I decided to see what else they'd done. That song, Break Me Out, is probably the most perfect rock song I've ever heard. I wasn't paying attention when I downloaded the album, however, and now I have three different versions of Break Me Out—the single released through iTunes plus two more from the first album. The funny thing is that as perfect as the iTunes single is, it took them three tries to get it like that. And that's just counting released versions. Version one is rather restrained. Break Me Out 2.0 (that's what it's called) hits you with a wall of sound on the first time through the chorus and tries out some different licks in the middle. The final version, which is on their new album, has different mixing for a cleaner sound, a faster tempo, and drives harder. But what makes it stand-out amazing is its story a