Jonas David's Blog, page 33
October 29, 2017
Gerunds
I hate them! I am going through my novel and highlighting all of them. Of course, not all are bad all of the time, but I think they are a good indicator of where a sentence can be improved.
Ing, with, still, again, had been, began to, was, etc. Lots of words that can be perfectly fine, but often are not. I see them as red flags. And a lot of red flags in one area means I should probably improve that area…
Chop chop!
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October 28, 2017
Stranger Things: Season 2 Episode 1
[Spoilers]The season gets started with a bang. We are introduced to some new characters, in a car chase, and one of them has mental powers like 11, except this girl 008, is older, and her powers are mental instead of physical (she puts thoughts in minds instead of physically pushing, throwing people)
Then we get back to the kids we’re familiar with, and they are scrounging up money to go to an arcade. It seems desperately important to them. And we get a fun scene of them playing a game 80’s kids will be familiar with…
At school, the kids witness a really cool guy drive up in a muscle car with the scorpions blaring, and step out wearing an all denim outfit, and sporting a shaggy mullet. They all think he looks cool and badass, but it’s really hilarious the way it was shot.
In the end we find that things are not as resolved as we thought they were at the end of s1, there are still bad guys out there, and rifts 
October 27, 2017
Dual mind
Writing takes love, self confidence, optimism, and hope in order to complete anything. But editing, I am coming to believe, takes hate, pessimism, and self-disgust.
A writer has to be two people, two halves isolated from each other–the writing half is an excited person full of energy and love for the words they are creating (ideally). But when its time to edit, you better hate those words enough to slash them to pieces and bury them in an unmarked grave, all while laughing and spitting on them for how terrible they are.
Have I mastered this? I don’t know. But it helps, I think, to imagine the words as someone else’s. Some other me who is a terrible writer and I can scoff at their incompetence and point out every single flaw. Then once everything is highlighted and marked and notated, I can turn back into the creative optimist and fix it all up.
That’s the plan anyway. It is pretty hard!
October 26, 2017
I can’t stop writing
Which may seem like a good problem to have, except I’m supposed to be editing.
Since I finished my novella, I’ve written five short stories, and just signed up to write another… and I’ve only edited, partially, one chapter of my novel.
I know I need to focus on editing, or the writing was for nothing, but it is terribly difficult to stop creating.
So I give in and will try to do both at once! Editing doesn’t take much, if any, creative powers, so I’ll try to write new things and edit old things alternately, and on the same day even… maybe at the same time?
October 25, 2017
I keep laughing
You know it’s a funny book when just thinking about it throughout the day makes you burst out laughing.
Me trying to describe it would not do justice to its hilarity, you just have to read it yourself. But… something about this kind of character is just so amusing–the just smart enough to think they are a genius guy who is actually not so bright, the delusions of grandeur, the missing of obvious social cues, the massive overestimation of their own importance–it’s just, endlessly entertaining.
And the best part is you are SHOWN all this, instead of being told. You have to see it for yourself, and when you do, it’s like ‘oh my god, this guy!’
Read it, you won’t regret it, even just the first quarter of the book is worth it already.
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October 24, 2017
Language is neat
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The ‘sentence’ in that caption, is perfectly clear to young people today (and getting-old types like myself, too), even without the context of the picture. Yet, as little as 20 years ago it would be complete nonsense, and 20 years from now it will probably rejoin the incomprehensible. But we also have classics written hundreds of years of go that people still read with complete clarity today, and books written today that would be easily understood by people of centuries past.
It’s like we have two languages, one solid and long lasting, and another ephemeral and ever-changing. The second language experiments, invents and changes–while the main language stays as strong as it can. This allows us to maintain comprehensibility over the generations, while still allowing for evolution–since the best words created by the second language will make it into the main language eventually.
Creating new words is fascinating and cool to watch–but changing current words kind of grinds my gears. I know everyone on the internet and their moms and dogs have all had their say about how dumb it is that ‘literally’ now literally means figuratively, because people used it hyperbolically so often. The problem with this is that instead of creating a new word, we lost a word. Because ‘literally’ no longer means ‘I am not exaggerating or being metaphorical but am actually saying this.’ Now it means ‘maybe I mean this, maybe I don’t. You have to guess by the context.’ We have lost a word for that situation where we want to make it clear we are being literal. We still have ‘actually’ but who knows how long that will last. ‘Literally’ has lost its hyperbolic power, so now people might start saying “I laughed so hard I actually died.”
A similar thing happened to ‘begs the question,’ which people say when they mean ‘raises the question.’ Though, this was not due to being hyperbolic, but to people trying to sound smart and not knowing the meaning of what they were saying.
This kind of ‘change by misuse’ irritates me. But what can you do? Just be irritated, I guess!
October 23, 2017
All kinds of love
I’ve started listening to this novel, and so far–as the title would imply–it is all about love. The book opens with one character, and we follow from him, to his wife, to his wife’s past lover, and I assume we’ll keep bouncing around like this, in a sort of meandering way through the past. It’s very enjoyable so far.
Currently we’re following Fermina and Florintino, young lovers who communicate with letters only, having only said a few words in person, even though they live in the same town . Florintino stares at Fermina for months before talking to her. It’s a love that is as restrained as it is explosive. And she feels it for him, too, and is tormented while waiting and waiting for him to say something to her.
It’s a perfect portrait of young love, and I’m curious how their relationship will evolve over the years, since we know from the opening of the novel that Florintino professes his love again to Fermina 50 years later, days after the death of her husband.
Engaging story so far!
October 22, 2017
The Orville, Episode 6
And we’re mostly back on track! This week, the crew of the Orville have an exciting (and mercifully short) space battle with the Krill, and find themselves with an intact Krill shuttle-craft. The decide to use it, and some kind of holograph disguise thingy, to infiltrate a Krill ship and find out what makes them tick, specifically, their religion.
Seth is slipping back into his ‘reference humor’ a bit this episode. After making it aboard the Krill ship, Captain Mercer can’t think of a Krill sounding name and introducing them as Chris and Devon. Got a good laugh from me. But later, when they find the Krill temple, and that the Krill god is called Avis, its repeated car insurance jokes for the rest of the episode, because Avis is also a car rental/insurance company in North America, Earth, four hundred years in the past. Half the people watching probably don’t know that. But a space pilot 400 years in the future sure does. Okay.
But, then we get treated with the Krill form of ‘worship’ which involves stabbing a severed human head with a ceremonial knife over and over. Just when this show starts to get too goofy, they throw something dark or serious at you…
Turns out the Krill have a fancy new bomb on board and are going to blow up a defenseless farming planet with it. Ed and Gordon have a plan to stop them, but it will kill every Krill on the ship… and there are a bunch of Krill children aboard. What do they do? Can they kill alien children in order to save hundreds of thousands of human lives?
Well, they don’t have to because they find away to kill everyone but the children, and save the farming planet, and save the one Krill woman that they talked to, and get back to the Orville safe and sound with nothing lost by anyone. Okay.
Yes, it’s a light comedy show, but when you set up the Hard Decision, it’s a bit of let down when they don’t actually have to make the decision.
Looking forward to next week!
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October 21, 2017
Pure genius
I’ve just started this one by Vladimir Nabokov, and already am blown away just in the first pages. This guy is pure genius, and I wonder how he’s not ranked higher than he already is even. I’m laughing almost ever page as I read this, its just so subtly brilliant.
I wonder if as many people missed the point on this one as they did Lolita. It is so difficult for people to look past the surface. They think ‘it’s about pedophilia!’ or ‘It’s about a poem!’ and that’s as far as they go.
Though I’m just at the beginning, this book seems very similar to Lolita, in that it appears to be about a manipulative narcissist with delusions of grandeur who is not nearly as smart as he thinks. Except this one is hilarious and fun instead of dark and queasy.
Loving it and can’t wait to read the next page…
October 20, 2017
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
While I enjoyed the story over all, I found this to be longer than needed, and with too much overblown prose for my taste.
The story follows Pip, as he grows up an orphan, taken care of by his sister. We see him change as he comes into his ‘great expectations’, money and promise of land and other inheritance from a mysterious source. The money and promises of a future cause him to leave his family and friends behind.
The book is a mash of multiple stories that to me, didn’t seem to be related other than on the surface.
We have Ms Havisham, the broken hearted woman who lives in her wedding dress and never lets the sun touch her and keeps all the clocks stopped at the moment her heart broke. And Estella, raised by Ms Havisham to break the heart of any man she encounters, as a sort of revenge on all mankind.
Then we have the convict that Pip meets at the start of the story, who comes back to his life over and over again.
These seem at first to be two separate stories with separate morals/purposes. And at the end we find they are connected, but only by blood. It didn’t follow to me what the two stories had to do with each other, besides than that surface level connection. It’s possible I missed something.
In the end, Pip learns that your family and friends who love you are worth more than money, and advancement in life, and you shouldn’t take them for granted or look down on them–a lesson that seems to have little to do with the main things that happened in the story (Ms Havisham’s story and the convicts story.)
In the end, it came across to me as something written just for the sake of writing, with a story muddled out of it in the process. Despite that, it was enjoyable, and made me laugh and smile and feel on several occasions.
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