Jonas David's Blog, page 26
January 6, 2018
First story of the year
Not even out of the first week. A good sign!
Damn it feels good to be a writer.
Creation has been slowed due to all the editing I’ve been doing, so it is a much needed brain flexing to actually work on something new.
Now, back to the grind…
January 5, 2018
Trees look like nervous systems
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Naked trees, especially in the fog, make me think of nervous systems. They are kind of creepy looking if you think of it that way. The roots could be nerves too, though we don’t see them. Branches are kind of like air-roots. The tree we see above ground is a mirror of the roots below…
A tree is kind of just a bundle of tentacles reaching out in every direction for food…
January 4, 2018
Oh my God the dictionary!
I started reading it… and am wondering why I never did this before. It’s like walking through a treasure-filled cavern and snatching up any glinting piece that pulls my eye. So many words! I wish I had a randomized version of the dictionary so that all my new words wouldn’t start with A, but here are a few I never knew, and that I especially like:
ab·at·toir (1820) : SLAUGHTERHOUSE
abe·ce·dar·i·an : one learning the rudiments of something (as the alphabet) abecedarian adj (1665) 1 a : of or relating to the alphabet b : alphabetically arranged 2 : RUDIMENTARY
abu·lia (ca. 1864) : abnormal lack of ability to act or to make decisions — abu·lic \-lik\ adj
ace·dia (1607) : APATHY, BOREDOM
And I’m only up to ‘ac’ 
January 3, 2018
Conspiracies… :o
I’ve started reading Foucault’s Pendulum, which appears to be about a group of editors who create a conspiracy for fun, but then end up believing in it themselves.
I’m just at the beginning of it, but already the type of mind to create and believe in complicated conspiracies is captured very well in the narrator. He sees so many connections and patterns between such a variety of things, that it is easy to imagine the kinds of things he might dream up.
The kinds of people who believe in such things are very interesting to me. Any thing can be believed, no matter how few real life witnesses or evidence there is. The creative mind can shift reality to interpret input in whatever way is needed to propagate the chosen idea. But how does the original idea get chosen, when any one could be believed?
It must be some internal deep appeal of certain subjects…
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January 2, 2018
Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Very few books I’ve read can hold so much power in so few words. The ending of this book, in the final paragraphs, performs a tying up of the whole novel that changes the light cast on all the previous pages. The Affirmation had a similar effect in its final page, but this one was, I think, much more powerful.
This novel doesn’t really have a plot, but in the end, you can see the story it is telling.
The title, Rings of Saturn, takes on a new meaning too, once you reach the end. Never in the book does he describe or mention Saturn’s rings, but if you think about what the rings are, you might get an idea of what this book is about.
Very highly recommended for anyone interested in history, interesting facts, and anyone not put off by plot-less storytelling.
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January 1, 2018
The first day
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A brand new year! Feels just like the last one, doesn’t it? That’s because the difference is completely arbitrary! So keep doing what you’re doing, keep working toward your dream, and don’t give up because you didn’t make some fictitious deadline. Write on!
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December 31, 2017
The last day
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This year I finished a novel, wrote and mostly edited a novella, wrote a number of short stories that I forgot to keep track of, made a blog post every day this year, read/listened to 34 novels, and helped start an online magazine. It’s been a productive year for writing!
Best novel I read this year: It was a very close call with Crime and Punishment, but I finally had to give my favorite choice this year to Lolita. Not only for the amazing writing, and memorable story, but because it led me to discover Nabokov, and literature in general. My tastes have completely morphed from sci fi/fantasy to mostly literary this year, and Lolita was the trigger.
Best thing I wrote this year: I believe my novella, tentatively called The Observer, is pretty great! It is the story of an artist and the creation of her greatest work, as told by an obsessed fan who also seems to be a disembodied mind. It’s not sci-fi or fantasy or speculative or horror or any genre really–so I’m not sure what I’ll do with it!
What will I do next year?… I guess I’ll find out tomorrow!
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December 30, 2017
Thought is a luxury we should not take for granted.
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Sometimes we all feel like we have no time to relax and think. But imagine for a moment a field worker or a miner or any other manual laborer, living just a couple centuries ago. Such a person probably didn’t know how to read, or not how to read for enjoyment. They worked day all day with barely a time for a thought, and if they did have time to think–what they thought about was probably how to get food, and how not to die of illness, and other stressful worries.
Today, even a poor laborer working for minimum wage knows how to read, and can read any number of books on any subject they wish. And though they might not have much time to think, when they do have time they have the fuel for that thought right at their fingertips in a library, or on the internet.
Us thinkers are lucky to be alive today. Most other time periods would have either drowned our minds in work and worry, or starved them for lack of access to information.
December 29, 2017
What are your resolutions?
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To write more? I bet one of them is to write more. All us writers tend to make that resolution every year. But the trick to keeping those resolutions is to make your goal something measurable, and achievable.
For example, no nebulous ‘write more’ goals. Pick something solid like ‘write a story each month’ or ‘post a blog entry every day’. It’s also important to make it realistic. If you normally only write a chapter or two per month, writing a novel in a year may not be realistic. If February rolls around and you’ve only written two chapters, you may sense that you’ll never make it in time, and give up altogether.
Instead, pick a goal that increases your pace, but not by so much that it requires you to become a whole new person before you can even start. If your current pace is a couple chapters a month, make a plan to write a chapter per week. If you get into the year and that pace seems not so hard, then increase it further.
Here are some goals of mine:
Get my novella (finished already) out to beta readers, implement their feedback, and find somewhere to submit it.
Complete the second draft of my novel.
Write at least 40k words of a new novel.
Write six short stories worthy of submission.
Read/listen to 40 novels.
While that is less writing than I did last year, it is more editing! And overall more attention paid toward writing.
What are your goals for the new year?
December 28, 2017
Is writing too easy?
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I got this fancy pen from my sister for Christmas, and it’s made me think a bit about writing. Back when this was the most modern tool for creating fiction, writers had to be very careful with what they wrote, had to be at a desk, with ink and paper, and so on, and had to write by hand on paper whole drafts that they presumably would have to rewrite again and again till they were in a nice polish.
Today, I can pop open my document virtually anywhere and type a few sentences in a matter of seconds. But, does this lead to less thoughtful writing?
If you have to painstakingly scrawl out your words by hand, would you think more about them? Make more sure they are worth reading?
Or maybe, you’d care less about fixing them when it takes so much effort to rewrite a page…
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