Putting Out The Fire
Hello everyone, and welcome back to my blog. It’s nice to see you again. I thought it might interest you to know that I actually have nothing planned for this post – I just felt the urge to write something besides my book, which I’ve been working on for most of the day. I have no idea what is going to happen right now – so let’s just go ahead and see!
Alright, well, since this is a bit of an experiment on my part I guess I’ll cut myself some slack here. I will admit that I used the same method for this blog post as I do with my actual writing projects (novels-in-the-works) – I made up an intriguing title and I’m going to work from there with no idea what I’m going to say. It’s really quite interesting, the way my brain works when I’m writing, because I’ve read a lot about the processes that other authors do when they’re writing, and I’ve never heard of anyone that does the same thing I do. Titles mean a lot to me – they’re the very first thing a reader usually sees.
It’s very cold where I live today (for once it actually feels like autumn), and I don’t know about you, but when I think about the fall time I think about fire. The smell of cooking on the brisk air, the leaves that turn into flaming, sparkling jewels on the trees… I think it’s pretty apparent that autumn is my favorite season, even if it’s usually the one that lasts the shortest. So I try to savor it while I can.
In the book I’m writing right now, it’s winter, and I’ve dropped my protagonists into a world of snow in the very north of their kingdom, so I’m constantly having to describe the chill in the air and the snow on the ground and the frostbite nipping at their fingers. But once I do that for a little bit, I start to feel cold myself, like some of the wintry essence in my writing is oozing out of the computer and taking hold of me. So, to ‘keep myself warm’ while I work, I like to write about fire. My main character’s eyes are golden, and I constantly describe the topaz flames that rage in them – and that’s the reason why I made them amber. Most readers will never guess the little reasons behind every little detail, but no one would ever guess that. Why would an author write things to keep themselves comfortable?
Why do people extinguish their fires?
In a sense, I suppose, everything we do is about ourselves. I think that’s what I’ve been trying to imply all along – even if we’re doing things for other people, our best interests are and always will be in the center of our minds. I think it’s kind of impossible to be truly, really selfless, because there will always be a part in everyone that screams to be put first. You can’t stop it from shouting, but you can ignore it. You can put out the fire, but it always sparks back to life.
Do you feel cold now?
I don’t know. I guess I’m just always assuming the worst about people. That’s one of the things that a person like me is always thinking about – what do all people lie about? What does everyone try to hide? That’s the only way that a writer, or even just a philosophical person, will ever be able to capture the true nature of humans and put that into words. It’s so important to me that everything I write is true in some form, that everything I say has a meaning. Empty words mean nothing. You could have a whole book full of words, but if they’re not genuine, if they’re not blunt, then they might as well be nonsense.
Hmmm. That took a bunch of very unexpected turns. Isn’t that peculiar?
Well, thanks for reading my rant today. I always appreciate it.
