Monday, May 30, 2005
Like Hemmingway, only sober, poor, and remarkably homebodyish.
Many of you who know me, know that I like to write. This blog is just one side of that. I used to enjoy writing short stories, poems, and essays on a regular basis. But, as time marches on, I seem to run out of the precious extra hours that I once used to write.
A lot of the appeal of writing comes from my love for story telling. I am very interested in story telling, and the messages and values we encode in our stories. This is why I can, and have, in the same month read Alice in Wonderland and Guns, Germs, and Steel. My love for writing has mysteriously avoided modern fiction, however. For a person who loves books as much as I do, I couldn’t tell you jack-squat about who is hot now in publishing. I still haven’t even opened the cover of The DaVinci Code. If I am going to invest time in a book, give me a classic. Or nonfiction. Or classic nonfiction. Heck, I have even begun to enjoy Shakespeare.
As I may have mentioned once before, my dream job, which is always changing, always has involved writing. Journalism, novelist, research, anthropological book writer… always writing was involved. A few years ago I started writing a fantasy adventure novel for my nephew. I haven’t given any of it to him, and it is far from finished. As a matter of fact, I have completely restarted it three times, and am currently thinking about doing so once again. Each time it becomes better, but each time I lose a little zeal for the project.
You see, I have a billion ideas for stories and movie plots. But like the high school kid who already has a band name, logo, and first album cover designed, but hasn’t yet bothered to learn an instrument… I too have faltered in taking writing seriously. Even this blog has changed in form many times from day one. Don’t believe me? Go back and read random entries from the first four months.
What I do want to do is share with you all some of my ideas. Write and let me know what you think of them, maybe I will finally start one of these projects;
1) The one I am writing for my nephew is a blend of good old high fantasy and Asian mysticism. I wanted each chapter to be as a serial entry, and I wanted to have a lot of colorful characters that I could bring in and out of the story. I don’t have a pervasive plot, but instead a lot of small adventures. I wanted to be able to write about Jin Te (my protagonist) for years. The problem is that my first draft was too much like Lord of the Rings, and then I realized I had subconsciously stolen many ideas from the Dragonball manga. So, my newest permutation of the story involves Jin as a runaway from a "corrupt" orphanage who is really the son of a king, who was betrayed by his most loyal advisor (the current king).
2) I wanted to write my own version of a heavy-handed moral children’s story. My idea is this; I wanted to write a story about a Gentile boy who was not so wealthy, and was picked on by wealthier boys (including, but not exclusive to, local Jewish boys). On one day, a young boy shows him the grave of a political revolutionary, and the story’s hero decides that seeing this dead body would be a great way to make him popular with the other boys. So he goes and rounds up a small posse of children and leads them to the grave, relaying the tale of the criminal they are about to see dead. When they arrive, the grave is empty, and all of the boys slowly depart and sling insults at the boy. But one visitor arrives to console the boy…
3) Another children’s book I wanted to write is about a little vampire who grows up in a castle. He is never allowed to leave the castle, or be awake during the day. From the castle at night, the world seems unpopulated and dull. But He finds a book about vampires, and starts to wonder if he really is one. His family continues to reassure him that he (and they) are vampires… but he doesn’t have any powers, and they don’t suck blood, and so on. In the end, the boy will find out that he is free to decide what he is, and he is not a vampire, and he runs off into the sun, finding out that the world around his castle is vibrant and full of people during the day.
4) My biggest thrill would be to adapt the Brautigan novel The Hawkline Monster for the big screen. I think this would be a great movie. It could go so many ways, and all of it would be magical and humorous, as well as filled with small nuggets of meaning.
5) My biggest challenge would be to adapt Spartacus into a new story involving slaves in America. I thought it would be great to have a story about one slave that leads a small revolt and begins sacking plantations in the south, trying to get to a boat to escape America (or a similar vehicle to reach the north). The main struggle in the story would be the fight for my Spartacus to keep the slaves from mob mentality; the question would be "are we fighting for freedom or are we fighting for revenge." Some of the slaves would want to slaughter the white men, others would want to set up shop and establish a mini society on a plantation, and yet others would say just leave. The sub plot would be about how the Southerners would be trying to spin the story out of history, trying to save face and get the slaves back dead or alive. Ultimately, the slaves would be betrayed, and their last fight would be epic, and force a change in the makeup of the south’s leadership, but yet they would fail to find freedom. There are so many themes that you could establish here…
6) For my pure adventure story, I want to do a then and now story based on something that actually happened in inter-testamental times. I want to retell the story of the Jewish Temple being sacked, and the brazen sacrificing of a pig on the altar. But in the chaos and bloodshed, I want one man to escape to the desert. And in his bitterness and madness, I want him to become a folk-legend, a sort of violent Jewish Robin Hood. The "Now" part of the story will revolve around an anthropologist who starts to find clues to the truth behind the man, and he will discover that there is a cultish tribe (with some priceless religious artifacts in tow and so on). The main protagonist is the latest in the long line of firstborn sons to be heir to the vengeance and mission of the original Jew. That mission would be one of murder and revenge. I sort of want to have the story focus on redemption, and about finally burying the hatchet… But I also want this to take place during World War 2 (or perhaps a fictional, more modern war), and have the tribe learn about the new evil in the world, and help the Axis to defeat them at a pivotal desert battle. I haven’t though much about the resolution of this one (as you can see), but the parts that happen "Then" are quite vivid, and violent, in my mind. The appeal to me is about a pure Old Testament Judaism being practiced in secret in modern times, and how it contrasts to the Christian message that rules these modern eras. And, of course, it would focus on the role of religion in a society, and how it tends to evolve.
7) My horror story would be about people who are born with a defect that allows them to hear ranges lower than humans normally do. They therefore hear the moans of the planet, and many of them go mad from the seemingly otherworldliness of the sounds. I want the protagonist here to be a woman that is injured, then surgery saves her hearing, but damning her to this new horrible ability. The story would center around a support group that is the only one in the nation for people like this, and how the madness of the group can be contagious to others. There would be a voiced message to the woman, and she will have to choose if she is really hearing the beyond, or if she is merely experiencing audio that she has not been designed/evolved to encode and decode. Wrestling with the choice will bring her to the door of madness, and I have yet to decide if I want her to be hearing the beyond (ala Contact) or if her superstition is unfounded (my preferred message). I want it to be about how we rely too much on our perceptions, and how we tend to deal with things that occur in life that we cannot easily explain away or categorize.
There you go. If you steal my ideas and write your own book or movie, at least have the decency to send me a copy and thank me. : ) What do you all think, should I work on any of these any further? Want to see what I have done so far on the last version of the story for my nephew? Email me and let me know.
Horns up.
A lot of the appeal of writing comes from my love for story telling. I am very interested in story telling, and the messages and values we encode in our stories. This is why I can, and have, in the same month read Alice in Wonderland and Guns, Germs, and Steel. My love for writing has mysteriously avoided modern fiction, however. For a person who loves books as much as I do, I couldn’t tell you jack-squat about who is hot now in publishing. I still haven’t even opened the cover of The DaVinci Code. If I am going to invest time in a book, give me a classic. Or nonfiction. Or classic nonfiction. Heck, I have even begun to enjoy Shakespeare.
As I may have mentioned once before, my dream job, which is always changing, always has involved writing. Journalism, novelist, research, anthropological book writer… always writing was involved. A few years ago I started writing a fantasy adventure novel for my nephew. I haven’t given any of it to him, and it is far from finished. As a matter of fact, I have completely restarted it three times, and am currently thinking about doing so once again. Each time it becomes better, but each time I lose a little zeal for the project.
You see, I have a billion ideas for stories and movie plots. But like the high school kid who already has a band name, logo, and first album cover designed, but hasn’t yet bothered to learn an instrument… I too have faltered in taking writing seriously. Even this blog has changed in form many times from day one. Don’t believe me? Go back and read random entries from the first four months.
What I do want to do is share with you all some of my ideas. Write and let me know what you think of them, maybe I will finally start one of these projects;
1) The one I am writing for my nephew is a blend of good old high fantasy and Asian mysticism. I wanted each chapter to be as a serial entry, and I wanted to have a lot of colorful characters that I could bring in and out of the story. I don’t have a pervasive plot, but instead a lot of small adventures. I wanted to be able to write about Jin Te (my protagonist) for years. The problem is that my first draft was too much like Lord of the Rings, and then I realized I had subconsciously stolen many ideas from the Dragonball manga. So, my newest permutation of the story involves Jin as a runaway from a "corrupt" orphanage who is really the son of a king, who was betrayed by his most loyal advisor (the current king).
2) I wanted to write my own version of a heavy-handed moral children’s story. My idea is this; I wanted to write a story about a Gentile boy who was not so wealthy, and was picked on by wealthier boys (including, but not exclusive to, local Jewish boys). On one day, a young boy shows him the grave of a political revolutionary, and the story’s hero decides that seeing this dead body would be a great way to make him popular with the other boys. So he goes and rounds up a small posse of children and leads them to the grave, relaying the tale of the criminal they are about to see dead. When they arrive, the grave is empty, and all of the boys slowly depart and sling insults at the boy. But one visitor arrives to console the boy…
3) Another children’s book I wanted to write is about a little vampire who grows up in a castle. He is never allowed to leave the castle, or be awake during the day. From the castle at night, the world seems unpopulated and dull. But He finds a book about vampires, and starts to wonder if he really is one. His family continues to reassure him that he (and they) are vampires… but he doesn’t have any powers, and they don’t suck blood, and so on. In the end, the boy will find out that he is free to decide what he is, and he is not a vampire, and he runs off into the sun, finding out that the world around his castle is vibrant and full of people during the day.
4) My biggest thrill would be to adapt the Brautigan novel The Hawkline Monster for the big screen. I think this would be a great movie. It could go so many ways, and all of it would be magical and humorous, as well as filled with small nuggets of meaning.
5) My biggest challenge would be to adapt Spartacus into a new story involving slaves in America. I thought it would be great to have a story about one slave that leads a small revolt and begins sacking plantations in the south, trying to get to a boat to escape America (or a similar vehicle to reach the north). The main struggle in the story would be the fight for my Spartacus to keep the slaves from mob mentality; the question would be "are we fighting for freedom or are we fighting for revenge." Some of the slaves would want to slaughter the white men, others would want to set up shop and establish a mini society on a plantation, and yet others would say just leave. The sub plot would be about how the Southerners would be trying to spin the story out of history, trying to save face and get the slaves back dead or alive. Ultimately, the slaves would be betrayed, and their last fight would be epic, and force a change in the makeup of the south’s leadership, but yet they would fail to find freedom. There are so many themes that you could establish here…
6) For my pure adventure story, I want to do a then and now story based on something that actually happened in inter-testamental times. I want to retell the story of the Jewish Temple being sacked, and the brazen sacrificing of a pig on the altar. But in the chaos and bloodshed, I want one man to escape to the desert. And in his bitterness and madness, I want him to become a folk-legend, a sort of violent Jewish Robin Hood. The "Now" part of the story will revolve around an anthropologist who starts to find clues to the truth behind the man, and he will discover that there is a cultish tribe (with some priceless religious artifacts in tow and so on). The main protagonist is the latest in the long line of firstborn sons to be heir to the vengeance and mission of the original Jew. That mission would be one of murder and revenge. I sort of want to have the story focus on redemption, and about finally burying the hatchet… But I also want this to take place during World War 2 (or perhaps a fictional, more modern war), and have the tribe learn about the new evil in the world, and help the Axis to defeat them at a pivotal desert battle. I haven’t though much about the resolution of this one (as you can see), but the parts that happen "Then" are quite vivid, and violent, in my mind. The appeal to me is about a pure Old Testament Judaism being practiced in secret in modern times, and how it contrasts to the Christian message that rules these modern eras. And, of course, it would focus on the role of religion in a society, and how it tends to evolve.
7) My horror story would be about people who are born with a defect that allows them to hear ranges lower than humans normally do. They therefore hear the moans of the planet, and many of them go mad from the seemingly otherworldliness of the sounds. I want the protagonist here to be a woman that is injured, then surgery saves her hearing, but damning her to this new horrible ability. The story would center around a support group that is the only one in the nation for people like this, and how the madness of the group can be contagious to others. There would be a voiced message to the woman, and she will have to choose if she is really hearing the beyond, or if she is merely experiencing audio that she has not been designed/evolved to encode and decode. Wrestling with the choice will bring her to the door of madness, and I have yet to decide if I want her to be hearing the beyond (ala Contact) or if her superstition is unfounded (my preferred message). I want it to be about how we rely too much on our perceptions, and how we tend to deal with things that occur in life that we cannot easily explain away or categorize.
There you go. If you steal my ideas and write your own book or movie, at least have the decency to send me a copy and thank me. : ) What do you all think, should I work on any of these any further? Want to see what I have done so far on the last version of the story for my nephew? Email me and let me know.
Horns up.
Comments:
I say just start writing and see where it takes you! BTW, give The DaVinci Code a try, it's a great book!
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