A Different Approach

Isn’t always great how tragedy can sometimes strike at a moment of great triumph? After staying up until four a.m. reading July’s issue of GQ Magazine, I turned the experience into something positive by writing an amazing blog about the profound effect that the magazine had on my life. I had it cued up and ready to post as soon as people got sick of reading overextended metaphors involving video games. I was all ready to post it and dazzle the world when, without warning, my external hard drive crashed. Okay, that was a lie. In reality, I tripped over a wire and knocked my hard drive onto the floor where it immediately broke, destroying over 18,000 mp3 files and a priceless collection of porn I didn’t pay for (also my resume and all of my writing that I ever bothered to type up). Oh yeah, and that spectacular blog (which would’ve changed your life).

Although it’s tempting (and arguably even possible) I’m not about to retype that amazing, spectacular, life-changing blog. I will, however, give you an abridged version (less awesome, but shorter):

It turns out that I do like nice (read: expensive) things. Who knew? Also, women in men’s underwear are hot.

Take a moment to catch your breath if the unbridled awesomeness of that (really abridged) blog just took it away.

Okay, now on to today’s blog (I make it sound as if I blog every day).

I’ve got another confession to make: I am a master of bullshit. That’s a bit of a contradiction, really. The fact is I’ve been bullshitting my way through life for as long as I can remember and it’s kept me from mastering anything. Does that make more sense? I pretty much got through school on intelligence and luck. I’ve had almost no technical training or extensive practice on drums and have really been getting by on natural rhythm since the 8^th grade. The only type of writing that I’ve had any real success in is poetry and that’s only because I can write poems in one shot without any sort of planning or forethought. The common thread here is that everything I’ve ever accomplished has involved almost no planning or effort on my part. If life had been less kind to me I’d probably be homeless and starving right now.

I’d love to say that I’ve made a complete turnaround and changed my life completely but that would be a lie. I am moving in the right direction though. There are a few areas where I’m actually trying to, well, try. I’m learning guitar, an instrument that I have absolutely no natural talent for. I’m seriously looking for a job so that I can pay my rent next month. But most recently, I did something that I’ve probably never done since 10^th grade English class: I brainstormed. Now to your average Joe, that may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but to me it’s damn near revolutionary. Nearly everything I’ve ever written has been done in one shot, with no outlining beforehand and no editing afterward. For the formats that I’m most comfortable in (poetry, songwriting, blogging) that’s always been sufficient. Even the two short stories I wrote were written straight through from beginning to end.

But lately, that method of writing just hasn’t been sufficient. My ideas are getting a bit bigger. Not huge, mind you, but just big enough that I actually have to think about things like plot structure and character development. I can’t really bullshit these ideas.

A while back, I came up with an idea for a short story and had written the first couple of pages of it before I was stopped short by the realization that I had no idea where the story was going. For several weeks the story just floated around my head without any real purpose or direction as I tried to figure out what was actually supposed to happen in this story. I was drawing blanks constantly until today, when I finally realized (or more accurately, admitted) what I had to do.

I got a blank index card and wrote “Possible Conflicts” at the top. I then spent the next few hours writing down every potential conflict that could be important to this story, even the ones that were horrible (i.e.: most of them). To my surprise, I actually enjoyed this process. It felt good to just write down ideas without feeling like each one had to be perfect. Ironically enough, by getting rid of this unreasonable pressure I enabled myself to actually conceive of some pretty good ideas.

Realizing that everything I thought I knew about the creative process was utterly wrong should have been a painful process, but it wasn’t. Instead, it felt like a gust of fresh air in a stuffy room. It was as if I was learning how to breathe all over again. It humbled me. I realized that I don’t have the need, or even the capacity, to conceive of ideas that could immediately get up and walk away. In other words, I came to realize that I’m not a gazelle, but a human being. What a relief.

P.S. Index cards have changed my life. That might or might not be the topic of my next blog (It’s more exciting than it sounds, really!)

To everyone who wanted to know why I moved to florida.

Do you ever wish that you could go back and un-make some of those choices that have made you who you are today? Do you wish that you could scrap who you’ve become and completely remake yourself for the better? The good news is, you can. The bad news: only in video games. Very few video games, actually. One such game is City of Heroes, a comic book themed MMO* that I was addicted to about a year ago. In that game, there were certain points at which you could re-choose all of your superpowers, essentially remaking all of your past decisions using the knowledge you’d gained since then. Aside from the idea of actually being a superhero (because, really, what’s cooler than that?) this was my favorite feature of the game, redemption embodied as a gameplay mechanic. The only ting that could possibly;y be cooler than that would be if such a thing could happen in real life. What if I could just pack up all my shit and move to a city I’ve never never been to where I know almost no one and almost no one knows me? What if I could start over, create myself as if the old me never existed? What if I could be new?

I’d jump at the chance.

*Massively multiplayer online game

A shaky start at best

warning: I suck at html, so if my code looks like actual code instead of the hyperlinks and stuff that it’s supposed top be, don’t be surprised.

Well this is my first “real” blog, my previous blogging being in the form of myspace and occasionally facebook notes.  Ironically enough, I don’t have very much to say.  Here, read this while i think of something to say.

. . .

So I was reading some guy’s list of the top ten worst geek films or some bs like that, when I noticed that he had the Johnny Depp/Tim Burton Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on the list. Now I thought that that movie was pretty horrendous but as I read through the comments on the list I saw several people saying that the more recent film was a much truer adaptation of Roald Dahl’s vision than the 1971 Gene Wilder film. As I looked back on my own memories of the book, I realized that I didn’t remember it at all. But it’s pretty irrelevant whether or not the newer movie was a better adaptation because as soon as I began to think about it I realized two things:

a) The only reason I hated the movie was because the Oompa Loompa songs were not as cool and because Johnny Depp seemed to be channeling a bit too much Michael Jackson into the role.

b) If someone remade the Thriller video starring the (1971) Oompa Loompas it would be the greatest thing ever.

. . .

Well that’s all I got. If I still feel uninspired the next time I decide to blog I’ll just write one of those horribly generic “Introduce Myself” blogs. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

edit: the html worked! yay!