Jonas David's Blog, page 18

update–back on the wagon

I’ve fallen off blogging for too long, time to get back into it!

While I’ve been away I have:

Decided to take a break from writing my next novel to writing short stories.
Threw away the short story I was writing and went back to my novel
Enrolled in a technical writing certification course so I can get paid for writing
Mostly quit playing go and started playing chess instead

The most interesting of those is probably the tech writing class. I’m a few weeks into it already, and for my final project I’ve decided to create a how-to guide for new writers, that will detail how to find online markets, and submit fiction to them. I’ll be posting the finished project here, as well as on lucentdreaming.com

Anyway, time to write/read/post more!

Resurrection, by Leo Tolstoy

I just finished this one, my first Tolstoy, chosen because it’s the shortest novel he wrote. The story is about a nobleman in 1880, Nekhlyudov, who finds himself on a jury. One of the accused is a woman he knew in is past, and who he wronged when he was young. While watching the trial he recalls how he treated her, and blames himself for how her life turned out. He vows to do whatever he can to help her out of her situation, as a way to earn her forgiveness.

The story, while well written and engagingly told, is not so much about the characters, but about the politics of the era. Tolstoy uses the story to rail against the justice system, the church, the rich, the prison system, and the way humans treat each other as if they are objects. There are several very eloquently written rants that feel as if they could have been written about the state of the world today.

While I enjoyed it, I probably only did so because it was preaching to the right choir, and I cheered on all his statements about the world. But for someone else not so into political thoughts, it is pretty light on drama and story.

Stories….

turns out the links to the stories on my webpage were broken, who knows how long they’ve been that way! I wonder if they ever worked at all… :s

Well, now they worked! So you can click the ‘stories’ link on the top bar of this page and check out some of my writing.

A clear idea of right and wrong

I’ve been listening to Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, my first Tolstoy, and am enjoying the lack of moral relativism. It’s somehow refreshing to have a narrator with a clear opinion of what is evil and what is good, and a character who also knows this and is trying to be good. All the shades of grey in current fiction, though realistic, leave a bit to be desired as far as inspiration goes.

The story is about a nobleman in 188x, Nekhlyudov, who is on a jury, and sees that one of the accused is a woman he was in love with, and wronged, in his youth. She has since become a prostitute, and he blames himself and the way he treated her for her decline over the years. After at first wanting to ignore the situation, he decides he wants to ask her forgiveness, and help her, and do anything he can to make it right, he will even, he thinks, go so far as to marry her.

The drive to do good, and make things right, and make up for a past error are appealing in a character. And its sort of a spark of light among all the antiheros of the day.

We’ll see where it goes, though, I’m only at the start…

The Castle, by Franz Kafka

This is the first writing by Kafka I’ve read that I haven’t been impressed by. And unlike the Trial, when they say it is unfinished, they really mean unfinished, like it cuts off in the middle of a sentence. I don’t understand why this was published, or why people continue to read it today.

The story is about ‘K’, who arrives in a nameless town, and at the center of this town is a ‘the castle’ which may or may not be an actual castle, but contains offices and officials who may or may not have influence over people in the town. K wants to get into the castle for a reason we never learn, and makes nearly zero progress toward this goal for the entirety of the writing.

I think the point of it was the paranoia and confusion of impenetrable bureaucracy, but I’m not totally sure. Similar to The Trial (which also features a character called ‘K’) K is overwhelmed at every step by incomprehensible rules, but unlike the Trial, in which he is trying to find out what he’s been accused of, or at least be done with his trial, in the Castle we have no idea what his objective is other than ‘get to the castle.’ We have no idea who he is or where he came from, what was his life before.

The only part of the book that I really liked was when the story of Frieda’s father trying to remove what he sees as a ‘black mark’ on his daughter because she did not meet an official who asked her out for a drink. After she does this, every wrong thing that happens to the family, he perceives as being because the officials have them on some kind of the list. He expends all his energy trying to contact these officials in the castle (which he, like K, cannot get into) and spends all his money trying to bribe them, all when they have not even confirmed that the family has any black mark at all.

In the end, I wouldn’t recommend it. There was too many long, seemingly meaningless conversations, and not enough of K being foiled to make it as claustrophobic as The Trial was. Mostly I was just bored.

Scent in writing

I’m reading Perfume: The story of a murderer, by Patrick Suskind, and am impressed with the amount of detail he’s put into describing smells. It is an underused sense, in writing, and maybe that is part of why it seems so amazing, but I’m really being drawn into the strange way this character perceives the world.

Scents are so varied, and so strongly tied to memory and emotion, that it’s a wonder they aren’t more widely used in descriptions. People are just so visual in everything we do, that the other senses get overwhelmed…

Losing momentum

Cause I haven’t been writing every day, I feel the write is just draining out of me. So this is me trying to fill it back up again.

Reading: I finished listening to Heart of Darkness and found it a bit disturbing, and also very well written. It was referenced in Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald, which I loved so much, and that’s why I picked it up. I’m now listening to the Castle, by Kafka, and it’s very similar to The Trial in that he’s overwhelmed by senseless bureaucracy. In this one though, he’s trying to do something (get to the castle) and being impeded, instead of having something thrust on him.  I also finished Burial Rites, and got a bit bored in the middle parts, cause it’s all about what happened, and I don’t really care what happened. I want to know how she feels, what she’s thinking, how it affects her. The details of how she got into the situation are kind of meaningless to me.

I’ve also been wasting a lot of time playing chess, which is distracting me from writing. Oh well, what can I do but follow my interests! I must make it a point to write some today…

Dinosaur Tail

Scientists found one preserved in amber.  And as expected, it has feathers.

Things like this from the impossibly distant past always give me a strange feeling. This is a piece of what was once a living, thinking, feeling being. It lived and thought and felt differently than us to be sure, in ways we can’t rightly imagine, but it existed, it was real and alive, and a part of it still exists, and is in our hands. This is part of a creature from before humans existed.

It’s boggling to think about, and that feeling is probably why some people choose to believe in the fantasy that the earth is five years old, or whatever. Because the truth is so grand and awe inspiring and humbling that they’d rather stick with their own fantasy that existence is only composed of what they can fit in their head.

Thoughts on… Finding Inspiration [by Jonas David]

Check out this post I wrote for Lucent Dreaming on how to get inspired

Lucent Dreaming

Inspiration can come in any form, it all depends on what you want to write.

Personally, I use nature for my inspiration. I read about strange insects or undersea creatures, or I look at pictures of odd landscapes or beautiful plant life. I try to relate these things to how humans might behave with each other. Or I imagine how a human might react in one of these environments or with one of these creatures. It doesn’t mean I’ll write about whatever insect or tree inspires me, often it just sparks an idea or a feeling I want to capture.

 

But I’m inspired by these things because I personally find enjoyment and excitement in learning about animals and nature. That might not match with what you want to write. If you’re writing a romance story, for example, you might be more inspired by reading stories of love from other…

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Thoughts on… Dealing with Rejection [by Jonas David]

A post I wrote for Lucent Dreaming on dealing with rejections (I’m a pro at that by now!)

Lucent Dreaming

Every active writer will be rejected many times in their life. Keeping these few things in mind can help make this painful process pass easier.

 

1. Your story being rejected doesn’t mean it’s a bad story.

It means that the editor of the magazine you submitted it to didn’t like it or they liked it but didn’t think it was the right fit for their magazine. Don’t lose hope. The first thing you should do when you see that rejection email is reread the story. It may have been a few weeks since you submitted it. Now you have fresh eyes, you’ll notice ways to improve it, so improve it then send the story elsewhere! There are hundreds of magazines to choose from, all searching for stories to publish. I don’t think I’ve ever sold a story that was accepted at the first place I submitted. If you don’t…

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