REDEFINE: Rewriting Myself

Hello, everyone. Long time no talk!

Today, I want to introduce a series of three (or maybe more) posts that will span across all three of my blogs. You can find the links to the other parts here:

• REDEFINE: Redesigning Myself
• REDEFINE: Rethinking Myself

Although all parts including this one are standalone, they are part of a bigger “series”, or idea, or whatever you want to call it; that I have dubbed “REDEFINE”. You might notice that all three titles have something in common: they are all about redefining myself in the sense that I am doing my best to not change myself, but to gain some clarity. Hopefully that clarity will come as I continue writing these three posts. So without further adieu, here is the first part: Rewriting Myself.

Since this blog in particular is a lot about written material, whether it be “nobody” or script writing, I thought it was appropriate to talk about what it would mean for me to rewrite myself. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t so much a way for me to change anything significant about who I am, but rather a way to gain some clarity. As you may have noticed, I haven’t written or posted anything here since August/September. That was six months ago. The same six months ago that I said that I would do my best to post on a more consistent basis. Obviously, that didn’t work out too well. Why?

After some serious thinking awhile back, I came to the conclusion that I honestly don’t like finishing anything that I know the ending of, unless the ending is especially interesting. Yes, I’m one of those people that will eventually come to read the end of a book before I actually get there. To be honest, I think I like what I imagine happening in the middle too much to know what actually happens. Now, in the case of some really good movies, I will watch it even if I know what’s going to happen because it’s been long enough since its release that everyone around me has already told me what happens. For example, Disney’s Frozen. I know enough about it from other people that I probably never need to watch it. Usually, I would just Let It Go, but it piques my interest enough for me to see it anyway. But that’s beside the point. Kind of.

In any case, the way I operate is that, for the projects that I embark on, the ending must be unclear for me to remain interested and invested long enough to finish. This is why I am so much more proactive in team projects: I only know my other teammates so well, meaning anything could change at given moment because of their own respective personalities. This makes things interesting and therefore keeps me invested, so long as the project doesn’t go downhill. Similarly, when I start writing things, I love writing in stream of consciousness because a) I hate to plan or outline things in detail, and b) I never know where my mind is going to take me once I start on a topic. In the case of “nobody”, I’ve actually known how I wanted it to end a very long time ago. It occurred to me then, as it has now, that I no longer really care about what happens in between because I can let my imagination take care of the rest. Now, anybody else who is reading doesn’t know what happens in between, and doesn’t know what’s going to happen at the end. So I guess you’ve kind of lost there if it matters to you. I’m sorry…-ish.

What does it mean to rewrite myself?

First things first, it is a personal exploration to see what I can do when pursuing being more active in written word. It entails a lot of other things, but the main thing is script writing. Within the past few months, I have gathered a multitude of ideas for scripts that I hope to eventually turn into viewable media, such as short films. It has gotten me motivated enough to really go for these projects. Furthermore, I have enlisted the help of others, whether it’s asking them for script ideas, or help in writing the scripts themselves. This goes back to the team thing, where I work better when there are other people involved. As it stands, I think to rewrite myself essentially means to endeavor in this “writing” thing a bit longer.

I love stories. When I talk to people, I love to hear stories from them more than anything else. I can talk to you about sports. I can talk to you about politics. I can talk to you about religion, science, philosophy, entertainment, etc. But what I love to do most is to trade stories. Stories from your past, your present, your future, your dreams, aspirations, goals… And I will do the same for you. However it is only when the timing is right do these kinds of conversations even bother showing themselves. So for me to rewrite myself is in some ways telling more stories through the medium of prose. Whether it will be scripts, short stories, lyrics; whatever it is, I will enjoy telling you the story. I will rewrite myself into someone who tells these stories in the most fascinating ways possible. Hopefully.

How does rewriting myself help me REDEFINE myself?

Honestly, I couldn’t tell you for sure how this is going to happen. It’s more of a process than anything else, though, so I’m not worried. I hope that, as I write these stories and share them with the [online] world, that there will come a time when I can sit down, take a look at myself, and really consider what has changed about me. College is a transformative experience, but I’m not quite done transforming yet.

So that’s a brief look into what I hope becomes a lifetime of new experiences. I also hope this means I will post content on this blog on a more consistent basis than I have been with the other two. Toodles.

Stream of Consciousness

I will be the first to admit that I don’t plan many things in my life, regardless of importance or priority. I find a life that is too planned out to be suffocating, and enjoy the uncertainty that comes with every action. As Socrates once said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” But i digress. The point is, I don’t find joy in knowing exactly what is going to happen next in my day, as per my own expectations.

For example, this morning, I happened to wake up earlier than usual, greeting the day at a shocking 10am. As with most mornings, I felt an unbelievable surge of motivation to do stuff. What stuff? Stuff that I could finish. The agenda was simple: go to the gym, write, eat, watch tv, and make fun of listings on Craigslist. (But seriously, which one of these people is actually looking for a strictly platonic relationship?)

Now, on any other day, I would’ve completed maybe two of those activities in a timely manner. Today? Well, the issue was I planned to write the next part of “nobody.” That didn’t happen. Which is precisely why I’m writing this instead.

You see, because I write so sporadically, it just makes sense for me to write only when I feel like it—when I feel that burst of inspiration that just prevents my fingers from stopping whatever spree I’ve gotten on. I have ideas for the next part, but part of me is preventing myself from writing them down because it just doesn’t feel right.

So what is “stream of consciousness”, and what does it have to do with my writing? You can probably find a better, more logical definition of it literally anywhere else (because Wikipedia actually screens edits made to pages now), but I would sum it up like this: stream of consciousness is basically the literary form of ranting. I say this from my experience doing so because, the way I see it, you start with an idea (sometimes a really awesome phrase or sentence), and soon realize that unless you write more, that idea will look pretty stupid just chilling there in the middle of your page, with nothing to back it up. So you write. I am more than willing to admit that more than half of the words on this blog are only here because I had a really cool sentence in my head that I wanted to say, but had no contextual reason to say it. That’s when I write posts like these, that have a passable topic and whatnot.

I really enjoy writing stream of consciousness strictly for one reason above all else: I don’t know what’s going to happen next, either. Now, I suppose this example would work better with a higher viewership, but it goes without saying that when reading something, readers will want to know what’s going to happen next, regardless of literary quality. My example would be the Harry Potter series. Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate it’s cultural value and the impact it has made on multiple forms of media, but I simply did not enjoy the series. Still, I found an incessant need to know what happened next, even though I really didn’t care for the characters themselves.

In the context of “nobody.”, because I am writing it piece by piece and releasing it as I finish, the reader essentially has just as much information as I do about characters and how they’re developing. In fact, the reason why I started this was to also to try to include viewer feedback into the development of the story. Although I know the ending, I don’t know the middle, which veritably makes this a very difficult project. And that’s why it’s enjoyable. Again, this would work better with more viewers, but that’s my fault for not knowing SEO techniques and other advertising skills. But I digress… again.

Ultimately, I find writing in a stream of consciousness to be extremely freeing in the sense that every sentence, every paragraph, even every word is the culmination of everything in that single moment when I am writing it. Words can change in a split second if I can think of one better, or they can just not make any sense because I just didn’t know the correct terminology. One of the most exciting things to happen is to be writing and writing, not really knowing where you were going with things, but then suddenly, your mind subconsciously brings back something you wrote at the beginning and relates it to what you are writing in that single moment. And suddenly, BAM, you’ve gone full circle. I think the human mind is much more powerful in the oddest ways than we could possibly imagine.

For any aspiring writers, English students, or graduate students working on a thesis, do give it a try: writing without knowing where you’re going with your words (like I said earlier, the literary form of ranting) often gives you a kick of sorts back into “the zone”. In fact, I’ve heard that a good technique to get rid of writer’s block is to just write loads of crap until you come up with a thought.

Stream of consciousness is cool.

Peace.

(And to bring things full circle, I definitely could have written the next part in the same amount of time because this about the same number of words as an average part I release. But it’s too late now, and I don’t like to have regrets. Also, my memory is really bad so I don’t really remember anything past the last 10 minutes anyway.)

“NOBODY.” Potential Book Cover

 

(I apologize for the lack of a border… the cover is white!)

This is the working cover I have for the book, should it ever come in published form. You can read through the thought process from a graphics standpoint here on one of my other blogs, Atelier Rising.

I wanted to show this because I felt that an image was necessary every once in a while, or this blog would just be a wall of text. And that can get tiring on the eyes.

The reason why I wanted to have a cover is, I have seen a lot of self-published material out there, and I have stumbled across a couple e-books that are, from what I’ve seen, self-published on sites like Amazon for their Kindle. Now, assuming I ever finish this thing, I would like to put it up for available purchase (assuming I have the funds to do so). So yeah, that’s why I made a cover.

Chronology & Continuity of a Story… Possibly My Story (Part 1)

 

I have been continually interested in the ideas that go into series as opposed to single stories. While the short story and other various works are fantastic at leaving endings open-ended—and therefore leave much to the imagination of the reader—what fascinates me even more is providing an answer to that inquiry. Why? Because the imagination is a powerful thing, and, I find it endlessly interesting to compare what I expect to happen versus what actually happens. That being said, no one said there couldn’t be more and more cliffhangers or the like in every continuation.

Why am I even bringing any of this up? For those of you who may know, and for those of you who do not, the ending to this first project is already concrete. The ending is known to no one but myself, as I have not told anyone else, but it is true that everything that I write from here on out will be to reach the destination I already have set. But what does that have to do with continuities and chronologies? Well…

Continuities

The truth of the matter is that there are only so many ways to write a series. You start with one story, and you later add on more stories to either end of the timeline. Hence, sequels and prequels. However, what is interesting about sequels and prequels is, from what I’ve observed, where on the timeline they occur, and how they are presented.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter  presents the continuity of Harry’s journey very linearly as Harry progresses from one school year to the next. Nothing wrong with that; in fact, it worked very well with the story Rowling was building. In other examples, like The Fast & The Furious series, the story is presented with sequels and prequels in a non-linear fashion. I personally had a problem with that because it was hard for me to really understand what was going on, but I’m going to blame that on Vin Diesel and not the story itself.

So what’s the “perfect” way to present your story? Well, whatever fits. Whatever sounds best. I don’t really know enough about novels or books or stories or written prose etc. to really have a good reason to back up anything I just said, I really don’t. But I bring up this topic simply to introduce what exactly it is I plan to do with this particular project.

If you haven’t picked up on it already, with a good amount of dedication and investment, I plan to make this project into a series of projects, the first of which will be, obviously, the one that is currently in progress. And as readers, I would like to present to you what the future of “The Nobody Project” (which I found out recently is an actual thing, so here’s to hoping no one gets confused) looks like.

Without revealing too much information, the next project, should I ever get to it (and I really hope I get to it) will be a prequel presented in the third person. The main character is unknown, but it will present a look into the world immediately before the pandemic hit was like. It will explore characters both new and old, and their gradual descents into what the world is like in the present timeline. Secondly, it will provide a deeper insight into backstories that may or may not be revealed in the present timeline.

Afterwards, should I get that far, I plan on revealing another prequel. That one is largely unplanned and, depending on where I feel the story is at, may actually be a sequel. Who knows? I don’t. So if you do, please feel free to guest write for me.

Why present it in this order? Why not provide a linear presentation? I thought about this a lot, actually, because I had both the current story and the first prequel relatively planned out before I started writing anything. But as I began to collect my thoughts, I also began to notice that how I wanted this story to be presented reflects two things: how I approach engineering problems, and how I like my psychological thrillers and mysteries. The general approach I take towards engineering problems is getting a basic framework down and simply building off of that rather than meticulously knowing and planning what each mechanism will do before putting it all together. Haphazard? Yes, very. But in the same way, I wanted to provide a core for the story: a general plot and idea that was open-ended and needed refinement through the use of other (unknown) stories. When the framework is complete (or as per the analogy, when the general idea is clobbered together), then I begin to tinker with the edges, filling in the voids where, conveniently, my stupid narrator fails to come through.

What does this have to do with mysteries? Admittedly, very little, but I didn’t think this far ahead and now I’ve dug myself into a hole. Nevertheless, the loose connection I managed to draw was: I like my mysteries almost in a Jeopardy-style presentation. I like to know the situation. I like to know that I have no idea how I am in the situation I am thrust in. I like the idea that, although I may know where I am, I have no idea how I got there. You have the answer, but you don’t know what the answers are for; you simply have to find out what the questions are. Jeopardy. In my story, the flawed perspective of the narrator leaves much to be questioned as he is not present in many situations that are crucial to understanding what is happening in the story (for example, not knowing the contents of the first conversation between Natalie and Officer Ames). These questions can be answered by a myriad of other characters that you, as the reader, unfortunately do not have access to because I’ve locked their subconscious in the black hole that is my brain. Sorry.

But with a prequel, many holes can be filled in. Why certain characters do what they do, why they react to certain situations the way they do, etc. And in a way, that reconciles for me the original comment I made about letting the readers’ imagination provide the answer, because instead of providing an answer, I am simply providing insight. The prequel, I feel, has the power to do that because as a reader, you feel like the prequel is just another clue to come up with answers. At least, that’s what I think.