Have you ever gotten a creative itch? Have you ever experienced a short period in which you had something you need to say, or an idea you needed to express, and you had to do it immediately, right then and there? I love that feeling. Hell, sometimes, I live for that feeling. To me, one of the greatest pleasures in life is, in the middle of the night, leaving my bedroom, going downstairs, and writing what I feel needs to be written. Occasionally it's just something small, a single sentence, but other times, it's something that works out to be much bigger, like a paragraph, or a story. I live for those moments of lucidity, where all the words on a page just come together, as if you yourself weren't writing it, as if you were simply copying down something lain out before you. You almost feel possessed, as if the words had a mind of there own. Come to think of it, this feeling may have been what the Greeks (if I remember correctly) attributed to the Muse, the being of pure creation from Greek (I think?) myth. The Itch is what really got me into writing, I guess.
I guess I might as well talk about how I got into writing. I started writing recreationally in Grade Nine, when I signed on to do reviews for the school paper. (Which I should probably do soon...) I figured, I enjoy film, games, and books, and I enjoy criticizing people, so why not combine the two, right? Admittedly, my reviews were rather awful, and often turned out to be simple summaries of the subject of the review. Looking back, I am rather ashamed of them. To be fair, I hate pretty much ALL of my work, so that's nothing special. I've continued writing reviews on-and-off to this day, at a very inconsistent pace, which again, I am not proud of. Oh, well. Anyways, the second major event in my life as a writer came only last year, when a story I wrote managed to make it into a Waterloo district writing competition. It lost, quite deservedly, I suppose. Since then, I've been trying to write more often which is... what I'm doing right now, come to think of it.
Who knows, maybe I'll get the itch soon...
Word Count: 385
Time: 23 minutes.
Friday, 30 September 2011
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Write Or Die
You know what I can't do? I can't write. I know, I know, this seems strange, what with me calling myself a writer, and with me taking a Writer's Craft course, it seems odd that the one thing I couldn't do is write. It's not that I'm bad at writing, I've been told I am in fact quite good at it, and the mark I got on my English summative last year seems to prove it. It's not that I'm low on ideas, I think of things to write about constantly. The only reason I can't write is, I simply can't put things down on paper, in a consistent manner.
Luckily, I think I know why this is; I am a perfectionist. Everything I write, I first go over in my head, to make sure that it is worthy of being put on the page. The problem is, nothing is ever good enough. I am unwilling to believe that what I write will end up sounding good, and will simply come out sounding forced, and awkward. I am a person driven by his inner critic, nay, his inner censor. This, my fellow patrons of the Internet, is why I cannot write.
However, I seem to have found a solution to my constant self-censorship, a wonderful web app, by the name of Write or Die. The basic concept of Write or Die is that you have to keep writing. No matter what. This is because, if you stop writing, for a variable amount of time, ranging from "forgiving", to "evil", this program antagonizes you into writing more. This can be accomplished in different ways, such as in lower difficulties, where it plays annoying noises, to the higher difficulties, in which it deletes your Feicking words, at a rate of one word per second. Truly, 'tis an instrument of the devil himself. However evil and horrid it may be, however, the fact remains that it shows results, as evidenced by the fact that I have written the previous 336 words in just under 13 minutes. This, for someone of my output ability, is a Feicking miracle. So, my friends, colleagues, and people whose existence I only tolerate, (You know who you are.) I urge you to, if you have similar problems with fixing word to page, try this horrible, demonic, wonderful, amazing, sinister tool.
I for one plan on using this handy little tool on all of my blog posts, and most, if not all of my school writing assignments. So, from now on, I will be posting the word count of the post, as well as the time it took to write, on Write or Die.
For my third blog post this year, this is Kyle Whittle, signing off.
Link
Word count: 404
Time: 16:10
Luckily, I think I know why this is; I am a perfectionist. Everything I write, I first go over in my head, to make sure that it is worthy of being put on the page. The problem is, nothing is ever good enough. I am unwilling to believe that what I write will end up sounding good, and will simply come out sounding forced, and awkward. I am a person driven by his inner critic, nay, his inner censor. This, my fellow patrons of the Internet, is why I cannot write.
However, I seem to have found a solution to my constant self-censorship, a wonderful web app, by the name of Write or Die. The basic concept of Write or Die is that you have to keep writing. No matter what. This is because, if you stop writing, for a variable amount of time, ranging from "forgiving", to "evil", this program antagonizes you into writing more. This can be accomplished in different ways, such as in lower difficulties, where it plays annoying noises, to the higher difficulties, in which it deletes your Feicking words, at a rate of one word per second. Truly, 'tis an instrument of the devil himself. However evil and horrid it may be, however, the fact remains that it shows results, as evidenced by the fact that I have written the previous 336 words in just under 13 minutes. This, for someone of my output ability, is a Feicking miracle. So, my friends, colleagues, and people whose existence I only tolerate, (You know who you are.) I urge you to, if you have similar problems with fixing word to page, try this horrible, demonic, wonderful, amazing, sinister tool.
I for one plan on using this handy little tool on all of my blog posts, and most, if not all of my school writing assignments. So, from now on, I will be posting the word count of the post, as well as the time it took to write, on Write or Die.
For my third blog post this year, this is Kyle Whittle, signing off.
Link
Word count: 404
Time: 16:10
Tuesday, 27 September 2011
Feicky's Book Club
Out of all of the many books I have read in my lifetime, the one that I would most highly recommend would probably be House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski. House of Leaves follows the story of Johnny Truant, as he slowly loses his mind whilst attempting to edit and transcribe a trunk full of notes left by a dead, blind, old man named Zampanò. Now, this is the part of the story that I can explain while having it still make sense. In actuality, this story is about a man transcribing a critical, analytical piece about a series of tapes which don't exist, about a house that doesn't exist. In short, this book is a complete freaking mindfeick.
So, in order to truly describe this book in a comprehensive fashion, I feel I need to summarize a few things first. I feel the most simple way to do this is to talk about the three main characters, and their relation to the plot.
Firstly, we have Johnny Truant, our drug-using, bar-hopping, primary protagonist. House of Leaves starts out with Johnny looking for an apartment. Luckily, there happens to be an opening in the apartment complex of his friend, Lude, after the previous tennant, Zampanò, passes away, due to an unknown cause. In the apartment, he finds a trunk full of notes, which he becomes obsessed with, and spends the rest of the book copying into book form.
Secondly, there's the closest thing this book has to a primary antagonist, Zampanò. To be honest, little is known about Zampanò, save for he is blind, he is dead, and he is certifiably insane. He wrote the series of notes, collectively entitled House of Leaves, which is an analysis of a series of (nonexistant) tapes, collectively referred to as The Navidson Record, starring our secondary protagonist, Will Navidson.
Will Navidson is a family man, and a photographer, who moves into a house in southeast Virginia. The thing is, this house is different; it's bigger on the inside. This is just one of the many logical and topological discrepencies inherent in the house. The Navidson Record follows Navidson as he explores the ever-changing labyrinth contained within the house.
One of the most interesting things about this book, however, is the authors use, not only of words to convey emotion and meaning, but of text, of letters, of font and format, that gives this story true substance. This also somehow manages to make this book even harder to follow than it would be otherwise.
House of Leaves is a fascinating, brilliant, terrifying, confusing book, and I urge any people reading this blog to get ahold of a copy.
So, in order to truly describe this book in a comprehensive fashion, I feel I need to summarize a few things first. I feel the most simple way to do this is to talk about the three main characters, and their relation to the plot.
Firstly, we have Johnny Truant, our drug-using, bar-hopping, primary protagonist. House of Leaves starts out with Johnny looking for an apartment. Luckily, there happens to be an opening in the apartment complex of his friend, Lude, after the previous tennant, Zampanò, passes away, due to an unknown cause. In the apartment, he finds a trunk full of notes, which he becomes obsessed with, and spends the rest of the book copying into book form.
Secondly, there's the closest thing this book has to a primary antagonist, Zampanò. To be honest, little is known about Zampanò, save for he is blind, he is dead, and he is certifiably insane. He wrote the series of notes, collectively entitled House of Leaves, which is an analysis of a series of (nonexistant) tapes, collectively referred to as The Navidson Record, starring our secondary protagonist, Will Navidson.
Will Navidson is a family man, and a photographer, who moves into a house in southeast Virginia. The thing is, this house is different; it's bigger on the inside. This is just one of the many logical and topological discrepencies inherent in the house. The Navidson Record follows Navidson as he explores the ever-changing labyrinth contained within the house.
One of the most interesting things about this book, however, is the authors use, not only of words to convey emotion and meaning, but of text, of letters, of font and format, that gives this story true substance. This also somehow manages to make this book even harder to follow than it would be otherwise.
House of Leaves is a fascinating, brilliant, terrifying, confusing book, and I urge any people reading this blog to get ahold of a copy.
Tuesday, 20 September 2011
The Lady in the Crosshairs
Well, I figured I'd start off this blog with a short story, so here it is: The Lady in the Crosshairs
A little background on this story:
I wrote this story in March of 2011, for a short story competition throughout the Waterloo School Board. This story was voted one of the two best in the school, in the Senior Short Story category, and thus moved on to face board-wide judging. Sadly, I didn't win anything, but I am proud of this story nonetheless. Lady took me a full week to write, and very little polishing and editing was done. This is one of my first true forays into the realm of short stories, and I am very happy with how it turned out.
A little background on this story:
I wrote this story in March of 2011, for a short story competition throughout the Waterloo School Board. This story was voted one of the two best in the school, in the Senior Short Story category, and thus moved on to face board-wide judging. Sadly, I didn't win anything, but I am proud of this story nonetheless. Lady took me a full week to write, and very little polishing and editing was done. This is one of my first true forays into the realm of short stories, and I am very happy with how it turned out.
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