Aspiring to Counthood

I’ve returned to the land of college. You never really realize how much you miss a place until you return to it, and the same is true of the people. One month, one twelfth of a year, is a long time to be apart. I’ve been reunited today with so many people. It’s like parts of me are slowly reintegrating into the whole. It is sad though, because most of us aren’t here yet, only the college vanguard has arrived. They’re outside right now, cavorting, gaming, and having a fantastic time. I’d like to join them, but I need to write. I’ve committed to this writing daily thing, and I can’t let things slip this early into the semester.

I’m actually taking a creative writing class this semester. Actually working with an expert in writing is something that I’ve looked forward to for a long time, and after reading over some of the course material, I’m very optimistic.

My friend Jesse and I always ride to and from our hometown and our college town together, and we’ve been listening to my favorite classic work of all time as we go: The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. During the trip that we made this morning we picked my friend Laurel and needed to explain the story to her. During that explanation process I suddenly realized the sheer complexity of the plot of this story.

I think that’s one of the reasons that I really like it. The characters are connected together in myriad ways that are difficult to explain, yet Dumas does an excellent job of communicating their relationships, so that you don’t get lost easily once you’re immersed in the story. I’d really like to know how he does it. That’s something that I intend to look into in the near future: an analysis of Dumas’ style of characterization. From a research paper that I wrote during my senior year of High School I know that Dumas based his characters on some model that he developed from studying the works of William Shakespeare, but none of the sources that I employed for that work were very specific as to what this model was. Could it be possible to reconstruct it?

On a related note, I cherish an ambition to someday become a Count, mainly because of that book.

I feel the need to be with my Boone family now, so I bid you goodnight internet, sweet dreams.

Today’s First Sentence: I’ve never had a first day of class that wasn’t catastrophic, and today was no exception.

Revision, the First of Many

First Sentence: Never having used a record player before, Isaac was astounded when the needle dropped and the silent air was filled with song.

Today’s exercises involve modifying my past writing, which I think I will pull from earlier in this blog. I’m sorry if the material is dull because it is so recent, it’s just the best fit for the kind of editing I’m trying to learn. Now that I’ve written a piece composed of such short sentences, it’s time to look at how necessary that was, and what I might do to improve the piece, even if it means lengthening its parts. Edits (hopefully) in another color.

Regardless of its content, paper burns orange. I watched years of thought consumed. The wisdom of ancients annihilated, and my own thoughts charred black.

I hadn’t been writing long. Only a few years. I was proud of it though. Some of it seemed good, but flames are too ravenous to care for the quality of their fare.

Why did I use candles tonight? The romance, I suppose. I was thinking of ancient writers. I too would work in flickering light. It was a beautiful sight. At least, until the accident. Why don’t I write on computers? Safter, less volatile. I should have migrated months ago. My friends always said so. They’d ask to read my work. I’d mail it to them. It confused them, the mail.

— Why not just email me?

I like the sound too much. Pen scratching paper: rasp, scratch, rasp. The rifling of pages. The paper muffling my mug’s thump. Not the artificial clicking of keys and the cold glare of a screen.

Also the smell: deep, light, rich. My cherished books on the table, lending a more mature musk. The miasma of aged thought. My java permeates all. Until it goes cold, that is. I just sit sometimes. Breathe. Listen.

The candles seemed appropriate. A natural extension of the atmosphere. Flickering lights, adding a new scent.

Why do men have elbows? They swing wide, just reaching across the desk. All I wanted was a sip. It was the coffee’s fault, really.

The candlestick teetered for a moment. It fell impossibly slowly, but my hand was even slower. The flame leapt to the paper. I stood the candlestick back up. Far, far too late. I slapped at the flame. It caught my turtleneck sleeve.

Stop. Drop. Roll. Thrash. Scream. They forgot a few steps in elementary school. I stood again, saw Pompeii: an ashen wasteland of paper. My current short story still burning. I doused it with coffee. The ink ran, distorting my words.

The scents mingled. Burnt paper and black coffee. Bitter.

If you’d like to compare it to the original, you can find that here. I’m not sure if I like all of the changes that I made, I’ll have to go back and compare the two in a week or so, after my brain has time to become objective.

I received a phone call from Santa today. I’m not quite sure how my friend accomplished it, but it was truly hilarious. Somehow Santa knew that I was secretly a Sith Lord and that I wanted a honey-badger for Christmas. It feels great to have friends who will send things like that my way. It makes you feel valuable. Loved. Not the most common thing freshman year of college.

Earlier I finished “Sojourn” by R. A. Salvatore, and I noticed something peculiar about its plot. The climax of the story occurs where you would expect it to, but the falling action seems to end before the book resolves itself. It felt weird, reading the story in a middle ground between the end of the “action” and the actual resolution. I’m not going to say that it was a bad choice, but it threw me.

I’m really looking forward to Creative Writing class next semester. In High School I took a wonderful class on the subject, but it was hard to dig into the meat and bones of Creative Writing simply because it was a High School class full of High School seniors. We learned a lot, but the stuff that I’m doing now goes a lot deeper than the analysis that we learned in that class, and I’m excited to see what other vistas of linguistic nuance will open before me in the coming months.

I had a teacher last semester who talked about defining yourself by what you do. You can write, but not think of yourself as a writer. There’s a level of confidence and ownership in defining yourself by a practice, which he says is often gained by having a mentor in that practice tell you: “You’ve got it.” Simple words. They instill a confidence though, one that I really lack right now. I’m not a writer. I’m currently a computer scientist/knitter who writes. I’m terrified that when I finally do enter the wide world of high-level writing, I won’t be told that. I’m terrified of discovering that all of the stock that I’ve put into my writing abilities over the years due to my friend’s encouragement is misplaced. Terrified of discovering that they were just being nice. We’ll see what happens, I suppose.

Goodnight internet.