Booking Through Thursday

I love reading the questions and answers over at Booking Through Thursday, so I thought I'd start participating in them. (Good incentive to keep my reading list active.. Not that I need incentive, but I need new places to find more books to read.)

So today's question is: Which fictional character (or group of characters) would you like to spend a day at the beach with? Why would he/she/they make good beach buddies?

I'm tempted to answer this by nominating either the Gentlemen Bastards of The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch OR Kvothe from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. They're the two best books I've read recently. The Gentlemen Bastards would be hilarious fun to hang out with and we'd probably get up to some ridiculous hijinks on a crowded beach (which would be a great way to pass time as I hate crowded beaches.) But if it was a pretty lonely beach, I'd rather spend it with Kvothe. He's clever and funny and a musician besides. Only thing that makes a day at the beach better is sharing it with someone who can turn it into a mystical experience....

No choices.

I feel like a child saying this, but none of this seems fair. All of the choices left to me are non-choices forced upon me by my situation.

I hate that I'm a more-than-competent worker but can't get hired because nobody knows me. Because I have no "real world" experience. Because the economy is hurting.

I hate that I have to have money to live where I want and be with my SO.

I hate that I can't do what I want for a living because it's not a "stable" job. Or a well-paying one at first. Or ever. Potentially.

I don't like that I don't get these choices.

It's bad enough that I think doing 5th year was a horrible idea for me. I wasn't ready. I don't care about it. I regret the hell out of deciding to do it. And in the end, I don't think I'm going to be worthy of the piece of paper I'll get out of it.

I just feel like anything that matters to me as a person doesn't matter to the rest of the world I live in. That you just have to bullshit your way through life and you can't ever be really happy, you just have to find happiness where people will LET you. That's pretty ridiculous, but that's how I'm feeling right now in this angry and probably immature moment.

I don't want to just exist in the system. Especially when it seems so flawed.

This Emotional Life

"For the INTP, emotions are seen as something mysterious and as uncontrollable as they are unalterable. Hence, the root of the fear of emotions is the fear that they cannot be controlled. Hence, when an INTP does finally respond emotionally to something, his emotions are indeed left uncontrolled, raw and open. However, when witnessing the emotional response of another person, the INTP intensely resists any similar emotion of his own. An example of this is when watching a 'weepy' cinema film in which some heart-wrenching scene is being shown. The INTP despises the attempt by the filmmaker to influence his emotions and is more likely to sneer than cry."

True. However -

"When an INTP female's feeling side does surface, it often does so with an intensity, an outpouring that can be frightening to both herself and others."

An ominous storm is brewing...

I am sitting in the Academic Commons watching the rain pour down. This place has immense windows, so it's a bit like being underwater... Just sheets and sheets of it coming down from the sky. The thunder is rolling fairly constantly. Lightning keeps flashing in the corner of my eye. A little while ago, there was an announcement that there are multiple thunderstorm warnings and a tornado watch here in Worcester. The announcer said "If you have a safe place to go, I would go there."

Ha! Josh and I are sitting here editing and writing because the AC is an oasis of quiet and non-distraction. The weather simply makes it better in my opinion. Now I can't leave unless I want to get soaked. Write, the world says to me, write! Precipitation makes for wonderful writing weather.

I've decided to implement an interesting technique someone mentioned on the Absolute Write forums for getting solid writing down every day. I've made Write Or Die my home page, Every time I open my web browser, I am requiring myself to write for ten minutes before doing anything else. Hopefully this will jump start my goal of finishing a chapter of Face the Flames every week until I get the first draft (all 36 monstrous chapters of it) done.

Imagination

“There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid.”

- Katherine Paterson

Me at 7 in one of my favorite places in the world - Point Lobos, CA

I started writing stories at the age of nine or so and haven't stopped since. I don't remember ever making the conscious decision to become a writer; it just became a natural part of my life. This was probably related to my heavy reading addiction; my parents read to me constantly when I was young, and I picked up the skill easily once I got to school. As much as I am always writing, I am also always reading. Usually several books. (Maybe that's why I can't focus on writing one novel at a time either?)

So there's the reading habit (which my brother and I naturally inherited from our very literate parents) which undoubtedly contributed to my becoming a writer. But there's also the fact that I never stopped living in the land of make believe and imagination. All kids know this land. I think I was just slower to outgrow it. Sometimes I feel like I never left it behind at all.

My younger brother and I grew up Army Brats and never lived in any neighborhood longer than two years until we were in high school. It follows that we became close friends, often the only companion we could rely on in a new place. Because we both had such wild imaginations, we began to build worlds of imaginary games for use in any situation. Outside, in the house, on the playground, during long car rides, on the way to school in the mornings... We had a game for every situation. Toys are material things that break and get lost. Friends move or are left behind. Imaginary worlds built between siblings? They last forever.

We were Californian bandits in the mountains who discovered a tappable source of superpowers. We flew as dragons across vast ice fields. We traveled the Oregon Trail. We built and lived in monasteries where the inhabitants were anything but celibate. We became animals dependent on the annual salmon run. We lived through floods and earthquakes and hurricanes. We performed on television. We worshiped a pantheon of animal gods and carved our weapons to keep us safe from mercenaries. We gathered food as native Americans. We lived as slaves. We got cholera and recovered. We wielded lightsabers and pokeballs with equal vehemence. We played out epic and twisted romances.

I'd been creating characters forever when I finally began to write some of them down. Soon I'd meet other friends who were doing the same thing and we'd begin to write together, feeding off each other's wild creativity to create some truly wonderful worlds and people.

And now it's to the point where I can't think of how to be happy unless this is the primary purpose in my life.