We went to the dreaded science class today and, low and behold, we were immediately told to get into our little groups. My group number is 5, Erin’s is 6. The outcome, we don’t sit together. The girl that sits next to Erin and I, in the back, joined Erin’s group… I guess she’s not been to class in a while; and the main professors niece was assigned to my group the last time we had to sit together. So, it makes for an interesting group of people.

I also happen to have the notorious booger boy in my group and noticed, after the last interaction, that he decided to remain relatively quiet. In fact, we had a piece of paper that required some level of reading comprehension so I read the paper and then started formulating answers and, eventually, wrote those down to the chagrin of the group. They then discussed, claiming that I needed to discuss it with them. I looked at them and then proceeded to do my own thing telling them what I got for answers after I read through the document and pulled the information the professor was asking for. They took my answers.

It was hard.

Not really.

The day was actually okay. You know, wake up. Shower. Shave. Do things. Go to school. I spoke to my parents today who updated their website. Very cool. Nice to see my mother delving into the world of internet and blogging. I am an advocate of that as a means of communicating with people and, from what I hear, the parentals may add some pictures… reminds me, I need to add a gallery for them….

Anyway, not a lot to report. Jordan drove down for an interview with the guy that does the hiring around here. He told Jordan he would hire him next go round if Jordan will learn some things. So, I have a list of topics to write for my younger bro (and Erin) so that he has a better grasp of the internet and what he needs to know to get along here. Admittedly, it is probably going to be similar to what I wrote him back when I first started here, but then, I look for some opportunities to work through some of those ideas.

Oh, went over a document I have for the Alicia Grey stories. Got to a point the other day where I could move forward, but when I asked Erin for her opinion on a series of events she kept telling me I had it wrong. When I did some websearching and then talked about what I found Erin said, “That sounds like a private school.” So, I started creating an interesting (to me) diagram of what school life would be like in a private school academy place. I think it works. Allows for a lot of time, and as I was writing I discovered some things about the school that seemed… nice.

I wrote a little about discovering things at In Order to Write. I am not sure it says what I want it to, yet; but that is the joy of having a website dedicated to the process and act of writing, you get to explore ideas over and over again in different ways.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two things:

1. Andy, my friend and the guy who was my best man in Massachusetts at the ring ceremony passed the bar. I spoke to him today and he is, interestingly enough, attempting to find a job teaching – which I think is an amazing choice for him. He has, in the past, shared some directions he wants to go and this one seems to fit his personality and skill set extremely well. So… point is, congrats Andy on passing the bar and good luck on teaching.
2. One of my oldest friends, Travis, finished Law School at Boston University some years ago. He married Becca and together they have something like four children. After Law School, Travis moved to California and, while looking for work, ended up joining the Air Force in the JAG corps (Judge Advocate General) as a lawyer. As a result of this, he was sent to Iraq. While in Iraq he was diagnosed with pericarditis, which is an inflammation of the lining of the cavity around the heart (word for word Becca). The outcome was that he was moved from Iraq to Germany and was sent home to recuperate. Apparently, the illness was serious, and has negated his being sent back to Iraq, but was caught and treated quickly enough that he will be fine. My prayers go out to Travis and his family.

That’s it. Thought my world (e.g. family and friends who know one or both of these people) needed to have this update.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This past weekend Erin and I moved around the office at home.

When Erin moved into the house, the intent of that room was to house her brother. As a result, my things, as they slowly got transferred into the house, were… displaced into various areas. The bookshelves went, two of them, into the front room and one into the bedroom and then, even more slowly, the books started making their slow way over the new apartment and onto shelves with the intent that, over time, I would arrange and organize them the way I want. Whether anyone ever notices, there are subtle changes that take place on a relatively frequent basis. The post-wedding process has been to organize things so they work for us.

In the last few days Erin repurposed the shelf for school-related books to actually hold most of our (current) school related books. Weird.

Anyway, when her brother moved into an apartment and we got married and started living together, as married people do, we arranged my desk and the desk we bought for her in the office so that they were side by side. The bed purchased for her brother was along the back wall and we also put in a shortie bookcase next to the washer and dryer. When you looked into the room, it looked like a cluttered bedroom. We kept it clean, but still… it gave off the aura of a cluttered bedroom.

So, last Saturday, Erin and I wake up and move the room around.

We move her desk to the wall where the bed was. We moved the bed next to the door, left the bookshelves alone, moved the DVD’s to the same wall my desk is on and then pulled Erin’s rolling drawers out from under her desk and put the trusty-rusty laser printer on that, and then put the new inkjet color photo printer, scanner, copier on a rolling file drawer that my knitting is in. What this has done is make the room look like an office rather than a cluttered room. As a result, I have started retreating into the office. I don’t really know why. Sure, I can get at my desk and the surface better; but, that doesn’t seem like enough of a reason for me to start retreating into that room when things happen.

The principle example, for me, was Sunday night. The girl that lives upstairs is taking an introductory philosophy class. Apparently, her professor is crap, but then, not everyone can teach that subject material well. Anyway, she calls or texts Erin to let her know she is coming down to review a paper and I wisely retreat into the office, mostly closing the door so I can have privacy while things are discussed out in the living room.

Erin found this interesting.

The logic, inside of me, is simple. The bedroom does not have my computer. Which is important. AND guests who need to use the bathroom have to go through the bedroom, which negates that as a solitary, lonely place. Plus, the kitchen is nice, but the aura of that room has never been conducive to writing and on Sunday’s the only REAL writing I allow myself is journal writing (even though I did one other thing this Sunday to get it out of my head).

The point to all of this is that I have found some kind of work-equilibrium or cohesiveness with the office. It is nice. I feel like it is a place that has been oriented to work in. I like it. It is my new lair.

Barring anything untoward happening, I am actually REALLY enjoying the office as a place to work. When I got up this morning, rather than going into the front room and turning on the TV and then working through the pile of things that still need doing, I found myself in the office, at my desk, using my computer and rotating between writing on Alicia Grey (10500 words, by the by) and working on the dreaded science class homework. We have another test this weekend. For Erin, this is compounded with taking a physical science test to clep out of that class and graduate on time. AND a paper for her William James class, the topics, much like Kierkegaard, seem very interesting AND a Book of Mormon test for a teacher we have decided is a NAZI and other things… well, the point is she is busy on top of which, I have a lot of things that need doing from catching up in professional communications, configuring my computer as a standalone server, and rewriting some short fiction for another professor while also working through the same study material for the science test so that I do better this time than I did on the last test. I passed, it was not great.

My lair has proven to be beneficial for me to allow me to focus on the right things: homework, Alicia Grey, and… you know… stuff. Like I said. Very nice.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last week I wrote about what it means to blog. I’ve actually received some good feedback from that. Though, I think the entry is not totally complete. In that spirit, I add to the dialogue...

Specifically, when going about the internet and reading people’s blogs, there is often a sub-text to the variety of blogs that exist in the greater interwebbythingamajig. These blogs actually interconnect. Not literally, not directly; not in the sense that you can look to the left of my blog and see links to other websites, but rather, in the sense that there is a level of communication that exists between various authors of blogs.

That may not be clear.

Let’s look at books. You may not see it, but there is a dialogue that goes on between authors. This dialogue is what gives people the various genres in publishing. You get general fiction because a lot of people are writing in a very general way… these are, frequently, the books that do not have specific genre defining characteristics.

So, fantasy as a genre. This starts, really, with J.R.R. Tolkein and his Lord of the Rings series of books (to include The Hobbit). This is, effectively, the first fantasy novel, though there are others that also qualify in this genre from the same era; and caused people to look at the genre and write about it.

Writing a fantasy novel, in effect, is a response to Tolkein and other writers who have pioneered the field.

Science Fiction is also relatively new. Fantasy is an offshoot from Science Fiction and, in most bookstores, is filed among the science fiction.

Now, extend this to specific elements. Someone writes a story that touches upon using the American Old West as a setting for effective sword and sorcery rather than medieval Europe. Someone else reads this story and realizes the literary impact of the subject matter, and decides to write a novel along the same lines. One author writes in response to another author.

One more example:

Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian writer. He wrote We. The book We inspired a lot of authors in the west to respond to the idea of Communism and its advancement through literary methods. These authors include George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm), Ayn Rand (Anthem), and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). In each instance, the author in question is writing a response to Zamiatan. They each had their own take on the same subject matter: Communism and Socialism is bad.

Blogs are a similar form of dialogue. Often, this dialogue is a lot closer to home and more direct, but the dialogue exists and is extant.

One of those means of conversation is in the distribution of memes through bloggers. A meme is a series of questions that cover information that is not publicly known about an individual. When tagged with a meme, the outcome is that you are meant to tell the world who tagged you, fill out the meme and post it, and then tag other bloggers with that same meme.

The outcome is a focused conversation on specific subject material.

However, in the blogging world, when you read someone else’s blog and find something they are writing about, you, as blogger, can respond to what another blogger wrote. One dialogue that has been going on, lately, is the secret homosexual characters in novels. This was spawned by J.K. Rowling announce on her U.S. book tour that Dumbledore was homosexual. Fans, of other authors, have asked whether or not they have characters that are homosexual but not in a way that is applicable directly to the plot or story.

The answer to this question, by at least one author, has generated a response in the news as well as among other bloggers.

Does it matter? Not really, personally, I don’t know that I would have read the Harry Potter series of books had I known about Dumbledore early on, personally, I wouldn’t have read the series of books and would have lost out on a well written, very creative, story. Dumbledore, in hindsight, doesn’t change the nature of the story nor does it cause me to rethink the series; his personal choices do not effect the super-story that is taking place with Harry at its center. Harry’s choices matter to me, not the supporting characters. Dumbledore, though prominent, was a supporting character.

That last paragraph was an addition to the dialogue that has been going on.

Lets say, however, that someone who has a website decides to talk about … oh … I don’t know… let’s say, relationships. For whatever reason, the five types of romantic communication strikes a chord with me. Without asking permission, I choose to offer my own take suggesting that a person read C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves and Eric Fromm’s book The Art of Loving as either supporting or dissenting to the original blog topic.

My writing does two things.

1. I get to write my own ideas on the subject at hand based off of what I am reading; and
2. I get to put those thoughts out there for someone else, possible the original writer, to read and respond to.

This is what dialogue is. When you speak to someone else, you expect them to respond. When a person does not respond, they either tacitly agree with you, or they disagree with you and choose not to respond, which then makes the first option true. A response, though, allows for ideas to be shared in such a way that other people can clarify what I am saying, append what I am saying, or contradict what I am saying.

One of the points to blogging is, specifically, to create conversations about different things. Writing is one of the topics I choose to discuss (In Order to Write); I also, when it is applicable, choose to discuss what I’ve written (Alicia Grey, Cassandra West, Clockwork Princess, and others); I also have other discussion sites going.

The blog, then, is a place where you can discuss something that you feel passionately about and want to share with other people. It is appropriate, when reading someone else's blog, to write a post on your own site in response to theirs, and even more appropriate when you link back to that site for emphasis or as a means of pointing people to where you got your idea. This is why I often link to the articles I am reading that launch me into an essay on politics or other things.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, went to bed last night and fell asleep. Which, for those that profess to know me, is not odd. I can, and do, fall asleep almost anywhere if I need to. Sleeping in my bed, in my house, with my wife, in our room makes the whole sleeping thing that much easier to accomplish.

And then, about two hours later I was awake. There were issues I was mentally dealing with that I didn’t know I was mentally dealing with, and I went to the bathroom, which is a perfectly logical thing to do, and spent some time on the porcelain throne that I learned, a few days ago, takes several days to make, the final process of which is about 24 hours in an oven that causes the glaze and paint to adhere, permanently, to the ceramic.

As a result of that newfound understand of the complexities of toilets, I was sitting on one at 2 a.m. wondering why I was wide awake AND why I was not tired… or, at least, didn’t exactly feel tired.

Eventually I went back to bed not seeing an significance to sitting on a toilet that took days to make and 24 hours in a kiln before it was cooled and shipped… or that I carried a load of toilets in a 53 foot trailer from San Antonio, TX to Los Angeles, CA with a flat tire on my trailer which was, I know now, very illegal and very dangerous and could’ve ended in catastrophe. I also learned, on that trip, that when you hit the Ports of Entry to California, the people in the booths don’t want to hear as many variations on toilet (royal throne, porcelain throne, WC, water closet, etc.) as you can come up with when they ask what you are carrying in your trailer.

None of that had anything to do with what was happening with me last night.

I went back to bed. Erin asked, “Are you okay?”

I said, “Yes.”

She rolled over and went back to sleep.

I continued to lay there. Staring at what I could imagine was the ceiling and trying to go back to sleep. At some point I started thinking about the various writing projects that I have going on and what I need to do to advance in some of my goals (a first draft of Alicia Grey by the end of December… you know, earn the Macbook) and realized that I had an entirely different opening set of scenes for Alicia Grey than I’d written back in the summer – and, I resisted getting up and writing them.

After all, Erin stayed up late the other night to study, I went to bed, it was not fun or nice; and though I realize that, to be healthy, we have to learn to sleep when we need to sleep and that sometimes being married and working and living lives and going to school, etc., means that we will, occasionally, have different sleeping patterns.

My desire, when it comes to writing, is to write during daylight hours. I want to be in the mode of writing when the sun is up and when other people are at work so that when other people are no longer at work I have the same latitude to play as they do, but, at 2:40 a.m. all I could think about was how Alicia Grey woke up the first day she was staring school at a) her first high school; and b) a new school in a new town.

The draft over the summer was similar. The chapters were similar; but, as I lay there resisting the urge to get up and spend who knew how long re-writing everything I’d written before I got married. As I lay there with some very clear imagery in my head and this voice telling me what was happening to this teenage girl, I realized that I’ve not, effectively, done anything with Alicia Grey since our wedding because, honestly, I didn’t know what to do.

The summer draft had a prologue that I might go back over, but, at the same time, outside of some interesting (maybe) background information about a character who I thought would make his entrance almost immediately and is now waiting in the wings for his call to come, that got set aside late last night as I finally succumbed to the need to be awake, in front of my computer, and with lights on and a word processor humming (metaphorically) in front of me.

I am not obsessed with humming electric typewriters; I just come across as though I might like them.

(note: my typewriter, which is currently in Colorado at my parents ranch, is completely manual and I would love to get something like it, but smaller, to play with.)

(note2: I prefer the hum of a laser printer sitting on a desk rather than the hum of an electric typewriter. That is just an aside.)

(note3: As I was writing one of these notes I discovered that Microsoft Word will create a smilie if given half a chance and the right key strokes. That was a weird discovery.)

Anyway, aside from all my asides, I sat down in the front room, pulled out the trusty, rusty Macbook, opened a new instance of Microsoft Word, and placed, at the top of the page, the series, working title, and chapter and proposed (working) title of the first chapter. I then adjusted line spacing. Made some other minor changes, grabbed my jump drive, plugged it in, saved the file, and began typing away.

There were no thoughts of time or sleep or anything else. I was a writing fool. I started off with the titles and moved right into the description of what I could clearly see happening in my mind. I grabbed a notebook Erin had sitting on the sofa and tore out a blank piece of paper. I grabbed her pen (which was sitting there since I didn’t want to go find mine) and sketched a quit diagram of the house. Rooms, bathrooms, closets, living room, kitchen, and garage. I continued to write.

Then I had her out of the house and the flow kept going.

She was on a bike riding to school.

She was at school. I had to draw the school. Granted, I drew a replica of the school I knew best, but I drew the school; made some mental changes, I kept writing. I added the second character (first she interacts with) into the mix. I realized a subplot I was working through, the other day, in my head, might still work and be just the right mix for that character. It was nice. The writing flowed, flows.

And then, a couple or three hours later and about 5000 words, I discovered that two of the characters were cousins. At this point I started to peter. My body began to ache. There was some soreness behind my eyes, which is never pleasant, and I was finding myself staring at a screen and realizing I could keep going, but really, that whole tired thing was catching up with me (finally) and I wanted to go back to bed.

The problem with bed, the last couple of nights, has been that I have been sleeping on my arms in a really weird way, moreover, my joints, all of them, seem to be aching in a way that is not comfortable; so, sleep… not exactly the most comfortable endeavor to find myself in. More, Erin told me today that I’ve been trying to sleep with a hand touching her, which, in her estimation, is a partial cause for the way I’ve been sleeping. Regardless, at 5-something in the morning (actually, it was 5:36 a.m. if you want me to be VERY specific) I was back in the room, Erin woke up long enough for me to say, “I had to rewrite the first part of Alicia Grey.”

She said, “You had to rewrite the first part of Alicia Grey.”

I said, “Yes,” and that ended the conversation.

I added another 1200-ish words this afternoon and plan to do a little more writing this evening in between tickets and phone calls and helping other co-workers with issues they are having.

Yes, in case you missed the diatribe, I’ve restarted my novel and taken it, in less than 24 hours, over halfway to where it was sitting before I stopped working on it the other day.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Erin and I slept in. That was the first thing. The second thing was that we got up, prepared for the rest of our day, and then went to the dreaded science class. Woo-hoo.

The second half of that class had us back in our groups. I am stuck with a girl who, by all reason, should have a better sense of what kind of a guy a person is, one of the professors nieces, and the kid we have termed booger boy. Yes, booger boy.

It never fails, this kid will pick, eat, hack, spit, and do all sorts of phlegmy things with mucus coming out of his body. The problem is so severe that Erin actually cannot look forward in the class because he is hacking and spitting into something and then folding it up, carefully, and dumping it into his pocket or backpack. The sad things are:

1. He sits alone because he doesn’t know how to relate to people.
2. He does awkward things and dresses oddly, which only causes him to stand out in the wrong ways even more.
3. He makes uneducated answers to simple questions and over-analyzes those same simple answers and looks for complicated ways to present his solution.
4. He says things that only make him look as though he has never actually been around a live human girl or woman before

One example of this class, for me, is that we were talking about the metastisization of cancer cells and their spreading through the body and causing cancer in other parts of the body. This was specific to breast cancer and the trend some women have of having a full mastectomy to avoid or take care of the cancer problem. What booger boy did was to state, “Isn’t that what silicone is for?”

I turned and looked at him and said, “You are an ass.”

He and the two girls in the group turned to me and asked, “What?”

I said, “You heard me. You are an ass.”

This, of course, caused a rift to take place. I am opinionated, but for someone to be that idiotic to suggest something like that and then to act as though they don’t know what they said that might’ve caused that reaction… yeah: ASS.

I find the class to be frustrating enough, to me, to have an incident like this change a perfectly good day into one where I want to throttle someone because they are so stupid, and yet not stupid, that they cannot fathom that someone might know as much or more than them about something and that an opinion, regardless of naivety in that area, is not necessarily appropriate and will not be put up with.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog: simply, a web log, or an online journal or diary.

A personal blog is a unique thing. The blog should be unique to you, your personality, your interests, the things you want (and maybe feel) shared with the world. This does not mean things that are very private; it does mean the things you are passionate about.

I have a variety of blogs all with different purposes.

For example, there is In Order to Write. This blog is my take on various things I am specifically thinking about when it comes to writing and my various writing projects. I created In Order to Write as a means of fostering the communication of writing to a wider audience – one of the three things I feel are necessary to improve as a writer.

I also run StandingWater Creations (or sw-c.com) as a means of allowing family and friends, who are interested, an avenue into my life. This was a result of a move I made to the east coast (New Hampshire) and the sudden realization that I might not be able to make it on my own, have a cellphone, and be able to keep in better contact. StandingWater Creations was repurposed from a freelance technical and professional writing business to host my thoughts and is hosted through Jack’s server. Even though the origins of the site were to make money, the outcome, and the purpose of the site is as a grounds for my thoughts, the things that are happening to me, a gateway to other websites, etc. that specifically allows me to keep in touch with family and friends. The website holds no other purpose (and it is an important one) than that.

Recently, I started another blog (no link provided … yet) with the express purpose of seeking freelance or contract opportunities to assist others in setting up, maintaining, creating content for, and troubleshooting a specific piece of web software that I’ve bothered to learn, rather well, as well as code and database hacks. The outcome are, specifically, articles that are designed to 1) educate, 2) inform, 3) assist, and 4) attract business. Websites have to have some kind of value added to them - regardless of if they are personal or professional.

All of this means is that I have created a series of sites (to include project specific websites) that are to be used for individual specific purposes. When I sit down to write for In Order to Write, I am not thinking about StandingWater Creations or other websites. I am, first, thinking about writing, my creative writing, fiction, and how I am approaching material both theoretically and practically; and second, what would best help me, in its current form, build the content of the website so that it promotes the three part agenda I have set forth.

When I sit down (pretty much five times a week) to write entries for StandingWater Creations, my personal blog, I am not always thinking about writing; but rather, I am considering what is happening in my life, what I want people to know is going on, some level of communication or dialogue, and finally, how best to express what I think I should be writing in an interesting and personal manner. This consists of books, movies, television shows, personal events, politics, religion, thoughts, actions, marriage, my life, my wife, and the sundry things happening to (and around) me.

Most especially, though, the blog is a way for me to express how I feel about things that happen. Take a political figure. Sure, I can just speak my mind if someone brings up that person and asks my opinion. The problem with that approach is it opens a conversation; and honestly, I don’t care, most of the time, to get into a discussion (read argument) about someone. Most often, when starting a political conversation, the person starting it is following an agenda and I have learned that just stating my beliefs or understanding of an issue or politician is a trap for them to try and refute or counter my points. As a result, sometimes I want to share, and I am willing to listen, but I am not willing to really discuss what is going on.

That is a part of my personality.

When it comes to movies, you know, I watch a lot of movies. This does not mean that I am interested, or feel it necessary, to review every movie that I watch. I think, frankly, that is a rather poor use of my time. With that said, I do think that some movies are popular enough, or I am (or was) excited enough by them to tell the world what I thought. Across the Universe was one of those movies. I liked it. I thought other people might like it. Erin’s mother, Lisa, wanted to know what I thought, and I was planning to write something about it, anyway. The outcome, like many other movies, is that I wrote a review of the movie.

At the same time you get the review, you get what I thought.

Even a review of movies attaches itself to a theme. The theme is storytelling. I like to tell stories. I like to have people tell me stories. The better the story, the more enchanted I am by it and the more I want to talk about it. Stories are told through movies, books, television, the internet, people’s lives, orally, traditionally, and by the choices we each make in our lives. This is important to me. I like story. I like story so much that, when I deal with it and I find something that moves me, I need to share it. Sharing is necessary for me. That is one reason I blog. It is an imperative. That is why I started, as an aside, In Order to Write.

Sometimes, something changes in my life. Two summers ago, I decided to try acting. I wrote a lot about the acting experience. You haven’t read about that (with the exception of Erin and me going up the canyon to be featured extras in a movie we can no longer find information about) because I am no longer (or not at this time) experimenting with that. My life, right now, consists of work, writing, school, work, writing, and… oh, I am forgetting something… yeah, school. Throw in Erin (wife) and the time we spend together and you pretty much get what I am doing. When that changes, I guarantee you I will be writing about it.

What all of this equates to is that you have to like and enjoy and have a passion about what you are writing. When writing a technical document, knowledge (and ability to write) are two factors in the subject material, but actually being interested helps the process. When writing a paper for school, actually being interested in the take on the assigned subject helps write about the subject. This is why people who make academia their life have a very specific focus. For some, it is James Joyce and food. For others it is Emily Post and solitude. For others it might be the statistical anomaly of animals in the Saharan tundra.

The point is not what but rather your take.

If you are writing about movies, what is it about the movies that interests you?

If you are writing about politics, what is it about politics that interests you?

If you are writing about family, what is it about your family, or family, that interests you?

Waiting for something to come along to spark your interest in creating a blog entry or in writing (in general) is less important than simply getting out there and writing about what you have going on around you, about what you know.

Sure, sure, this is generic, grade school advice about writing. I’ve just spent a lot of words telling you to write what you know and to pursue topics that mean something to you; but, really, that is the secret to successful, consistent, persistent, blog entries – and it’s the secret to writing in general. Write what you know and the rest will take care of itself.

If you are interested in writing a blog and don’t know what to pull from, honestly, the first hundred entries may feel like pulling teeth; but as you write you build the ability to write; and as you receive feedback, either orally or through e-mail and comments, you actually build the confidence to write. There is no other way to go about it. You have to do it in order to succeed at blogging. Any gimmick or shortcut is ultimately going to lead to a website that goes static, stale, and eventually dies because you’ve done nothing with it.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 9:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have some goals. I am going to share some of them.

The reason for this is because I feel like I need to make some things very public in order to move on with what I am working on in other areas of my life.

Goals:

• I want to write a book and get it published. I don't just want to write and get it published, I want the first book to lead into a series of five books; which, in turn, will lead to several additional books and, possibly, series of books.
• I plan to be a professional fiction writer and to make my living through writing fiction, specifically novels, and not by working in corporate America.
• I would like to see at least one to movie made from Alicia Grey.
• I plan to write at least one blockbuster movie.
• I plan to travel to Europe with my wife and, someday, children.
• I plan to live in Ireland for a period of time.
• I plan to have one of my websites turn into a money-making machine that will, further allow me to have the freedom and liberty to do what I want to be doing; especially as I finish my degree.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't have the need for a large screen television, or a flat panel TV, or one that is better than what I have; however, I have a want for one.

I don't have the need of a better computer than what I have; but I want a better computer (and yes, for those that are keeping score, better equates to another Mac).

I don't have the need for a newer car, or a different car; but I do want one.

I don't have the need for nice clothing as I already have nice clothing; but I do want to buy clothes when I want to and not have to worry about the cost.

I don't have the need for more books, trust me, I have a lot sitting around; but I want more books, and especially want more books along specific genres and academic lines.

I don't have the need for different pieces of software; and yet I want to own different software suites and programs so that I can play with them and see what I can do with them in my free time.

I don't need to sit around at home playing with software, reading books, and seeing what trouble I can get into; I want to be in a position to sit around, play with software, draw, write, read, and see what trouble I can get myself into.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once upon a time, fairy tales were a very different beast than they are now. Before the Brothers Grimm got their hands on them, before Disney decided to further tame them down, fairy tales had a folk beginning.

What a folk beginning means is that the stories, themselves, were told, over and over
again, by campfires, around hearths, in backrooms… what this amounts to is a way for adults to entertain adults.

And then the Grimm's got their hands on it. And Folklorists started editing what people were telling them. And the world was moving in the direction of stories for children (with a moral purpose) which allowed many other stories to be repurposed to become a moral tale for young children and Little Red Ridinghood goes from being a bawdy tale about a randy girl to a semi-moral tale about a young girl who is told to go straight to grandma's house and doesn't only to be eaten by a wolf and then saved (cut out of the wolfs stomach) by a benevolent woodsman.

I guess it gets to be very interesting, to me, that we look at fairy tales as ways of teaching children how to behave, and to offer the hope of dreams to those that need to have something to dream about. It is not a coincidence that Disney creates an entire line associated with their princess stories. These give little girls the idea that they can be princesses; but, think about it, if the stories originated in backrooms, around campfires, and as entertainment for adults, why are we recreating these stories for little children?

Does it matter?

There is not a lot of effort that has to go into finding examples of the stories that are
repurposed back into the adult environ. Magnates of adult entertainment discover that taking a child's tale and applying the same storytelling techniques, they can have a very real story with real impact in a very immoral way.

However, it is the immorality of the storytelling that is at imperative here. If a fairy tale takes its origins from something that is meant to entertain and arouse; and yet, outside of the original folk tellings of these tales, you get a relativistic moral story that is meant for digestion by children.

The dichotomy of moral and immoral actually proves to be very interesting. Especially
when you consider that some authors, today, share rather adult themes in stories and
books designed for rather young audiences. One, Neil Gaiman, has stated that he believes that you get out of a story what you bring into the story. If, as a young reader, you do not bring adult sensibilities to something that is determined adult in content, will not take away adult themes, but rather will take away a feeling of introduction to a realm they know nothing (more) about than when they started.

In other words, you only take away what you bring to a subject. I tend to agree with this. Especially as you consider the notion that love stories and stories dealing with sexual relations and feelings take on much greater meaning when considered against a marriage relationship (which also denotes a sexual relationship). Because of my religious and personal beliefs, the sexual relationship was not possible (for me) before marriage.

The point though, is that fairy tales were the humor and the bawd that are used, today, in humor, jokes, that touch upon the sexually explicit. Think about Red Ridinghood and her use (originally) of her sexuality to trick the wolf into letting her go. A more passive, and demure Ridinghood makes for a more appropriate moral story than one who is aware of and uses the adult themes the original stories were known for.

Story is important. The plot, point to point elements, of a story is equally important. You can take the same points, a girl is given advice, she leaves with the apparent intent of following that advice, then is tempted to go against the advice (in modern renditions of Ridinghood, go straight to grandma's house), after which tragedy strikes, and that same individual must use her intelligence and ingenuity to escape from the clutches of the trap that temptation drew her into – and, barring intelligence and ingenuity, the intervention of providence and a benevolent hand.

Sure, what I just wrote shouldn't strike anyone as anything more than an outline to a
story. But, in the right hands, that story could be moral or immoral. It is my theory that a moral person will write, inherently, a more story; and an immoral person will write, inherently, an immoral story. Regardless, though, a wide berth of stories can be told from this same basic plot structure that, ultimately, can produce a story appropriate for children with a moral outcome and meaning or an immoral outcome and a tantalizing meaning.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 2:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Erin woke me up this morning and told me not to sleep too long. Asked me what time I needed to be awake to study for the test we both had to take, and then proceeded to call me at around 10 or 10:30 when she thought I really needed to be thinking about being awake to remind me that I had to study for a test. Eventually, I woke up and showered and shaved and then sat down to my computer and the pages Erin left for me on the coffee table that we purchased for $5.00 before we got married.

I started to read.

I realized something. Of everything I’ve ever studied in any level of academia and for any test, this was the most useless bit of information I’ve ever been tested on.

Sure, sure. You who know me know that I love tidbits of useless information; and to that I say, “Thank you.” However, in this case, it wasn’t just useless information, it was clutter. It wasn’t the kind of thing you’d use in, oh, say, a book somewhere; rather, it was the kind of information that you think about on a day that is sunny and cold and wonder to yourself, “Why is that there?”

Useless. Clutter. Crap.

And we are being tested on it.

So, I sit there and turn on the TV and start to read through the material only to realize that the TV is far more interesting to me than the material I am reading. And I am watching what is on the TV, which is normally just noise and not reading the material, which, in turn, means I am not studying. So, the TV had to go off and the papers had to take precedence and I found myself reading things I don’t, necessarily, want to be reading. It, the reading, was sad.

Then Erin came home.

And I had a buddy to read with, study.

And it still sucked because she was tired and just trying to make it through the day, and I wanted the pain to be over with.

We discussed when to take the test and whether or not I would go to the doctor today; and if not going, how do we cancel the appointment with the least amount of effort. Since I was a bit more coherent and my uvula did not (literally) fill up the back of my mouth, we decided to cancel the appointment in lieu of giving me enough time to take the test. This consisted of going to the webpage for the health center, looking up the appointment, and then clicking on the cancel link which asked if I was sure, and then cancelled the appointment. Seamless. Nice.

Then we went back to studying.

Have I told you how useless this information is? Good.

The point, though, is that I was being tested on it and I did need to take the test. I did need to know a sufficient amount of information to pass the test. And then I needed to leave it all behind me, hoping that we are not doing a comprehensive final. I don’t think there will be a comprehensive final; though, admittedly, the practice tests are super fair and the professors literally give you something to take that will, if studied properly, prepare you for the actual exam. So, my assumption is, based off of current evidence, that if they were to give a comprehensive final exam that we would be given a practice exam that would properly prepare us for the final.

Outside of all that, I did get a customer, this evening, who found out that I lived in Utah and told me, based off of no other evidence other than physical location, that I needed to go to http://www.needgod.com. I went. Was not too impressed. I got about a 50% on the questionnaire and then didn’t follow the link to see if God would save me or not. Got to be honest, after reading an interview by the leader of some evangelical group in the United States on the candidates and his answers in relation to Mitt Romney and his description of the LDS church as the fourth Abrahamic church (Judaism is first, Christianity (I think) is second, Islam is third, and Mormonism is fourth) as well as his advice (I agree with him here) that Mitt needs to give a speech about being a candidate who happens to be Mormon, much like Kennedy’s speech about being a candidate who is also Catholic, and the things he had to say about the LDS faith… well, I don’t know that I care one wit for his politics (highly conservative) or the threat of this group to start a third party if Giuliani gets the Republican nomination.

First, I think we are too early to predict whether or not he is going to get it.

Second, I don’t care who runs, I don’t think we have a decent candidate nor do I feel that the issues these candidates are running reflect, at all, what I think this country should be heading it.

Third, Hillary is a joke and (I believe) doesn’t have a prayer in getting the nomination. Yes, I can see a woman president in the next few presidential bids, but I don’t think it is this woman. She is bad for the country. Bad for our image. Bad for politics. And bad in general.

Fourth, I think the political fervor that has taken place has turned a lot of people off, and these evangelicals don’t have the appeal as they are extremely conservative and though this is necessary for the country to keep an even keel (people with political opinions in extremes) this only allows for a centralized opinion to exist.

Anyway, I find it interesting that I can’t just be a person answering a phone or that someone, out there, would just assume that I need God in my life or that I am not living my life in a way that allows me to do what I feel is right. The guy kept telling me that it wasn’t meant as anything, but, in my estimation, the nature of the website was pretty blatant in its message.

That’s about it. Today ended up being a recovery/studying day. I didn’t get any writing done; though, after coming across the six major fairy tale types, I do need to go back, a little, and rework some things (in my head) so I can move forward again.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, woke up yesterday morning and went to Sacrament Meeting at church to learn that it was the Primary Program. This is not fun, for me. My parents went to a meeting in Durango, CO and had an amazing Primary Program meeting. Erin and I had an okay meeting. Go figure.

After Sacrament Meeting Erin took me home, I went to bed, and many, many hours later woke up to learn that she’d gone to Relief Society and spoken to the bishop and a bunch of other things before coming home (not the least, speaking to one of our neighbors upstairs) before climbing into bed next to me and taking a nap as well.

My goal for the day was to finish some homework, assist in working on a practice test we are meant to be taking the real version of tomorrow, and then ending up in bed by 11 p.m. I really feel the need to go to bed earlier – not later. And that with the whole work schedule until 11 p.m. at night. This should prove to be very interesting.

The outcome: We got into bed around midnight. I think. I couldn’t find a bunch of papers I needed to finish the homework assignment. And, well… I slept. Hard. All day. Today.

Yes. You heard me correctly. I got up, turned off my alarm. Went back to sleep. Erin got up. I got up, went to the bathroom. She said something about eating food. I got done in the bathroom and went back to sleep. She threw my bevy of moose, the two bears and a lamb on top of me. I continued to sleep. Erin joined me.

We finally got up around 3:30. I was sent to the showers. Erin went and heated up some soup she made a couple of weeks ago and froze and, as this was going on, I learned that my uvula was swollen. Very swollen. Not uncomfortable. Just large. You know. Big enough to get in the way of breathing, eating, moving too quickly… large. Erin made me an appointment with a doctor. Yay me.

Then I came to work and Erin has been working on stuff. Speaking has not been super hard, though I can feel this large mass in the back of my throat that feels like it’s just sitting there and needs to be hacked out. I did miss an appointment with a professor; and we did not go to our science class.

That is my day.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am painfully aware that I did not update yesterday. Well, I did a crap update which consisted of my finding out what kind of fantasy house I would like to have. Incidentally, Erin tried the same quiz and, with totally different answers, ended up with the same house. It is things like this, and both of us grabbing the BYU newspaper so we could make fun of it. She will, I am sure, share her observations of the newspaper; I will share mine when I get around to writing it.

(HINT: It deals with local politics.)

Anyway, was sick yesterday and the night before. Think it is/was the flu. After sleeping for the better part of two days, I am awake and moving about my life. Doesn't mean I want to be moving about my life, but I am.

Since I have to go to class, and since I have to participate in classes, sleeping one more day, to me, didn't seem like that great of an option. I woke up.

Classes were okay. You know, nothing to write home about. I did critique a couple of my groups site designs and showed them what they needed to do to create a professional presentation for their project as well as how I would make changes to structure that would allow the flow of the sites to work better, especially when it comes to presenting ideas to the audience (professor).

Then we worked on eliminating the halo effect in pictures. We had, like, five minutes to take a pic and do this. Class got over. She said, "mail it to me over the weekend," and I raced out the door. Not wanting to stick around a classroom we were about to lose.

Anyway, science was interesting. I don't go to classes, most of the time, to get to know too many people. Truth told, if Erin wasn't in that class, I probably wouldn't have spoken to anyone outside of the professors. Today, the main professor for the class, or at least, the most dynamic of the three-hundred-million professors in that class, took over and split us into groups by writing a list of Arabic numbers and pronunciations and then having each of us read off one of them. No. I don't remember the name of the number. Anyway, I ended up with booger-boy in my group. It was very disgusting. And no, you shouldn't know who he is... yet.

What made the group good was that they'd done the reading. What made it bad was that booger boy got mad when we did not immediately agree with his assessment of what the correct answer should be. I may not have read, but that does not mean I suddenly died and forgot all of those important lessons from earlier classes I've taken. The outcome of which was that he was, more often than not, wrong and the significant time he was right (and we, meaning the rest of the group) was wrong, he got all annoyed over.

After that class Erin and I went to the health center to pick up a refill on my prescription of Prilosec. Iíve gotta tell you, suffering from several gastrointestinal issues, Prilosec is, quite literally, a god-send when it comes to dealing with issues Iíd rather not deal with. Specifically, in this case, feeling like my throat is being burned from the inside out; or that I always have some kind of gastric juices in my throat; or the possibility (and it has been admitted to) that Erin can smell what I had to eat because, well, the sphincter that closes off the stomach from the throat and mouth doesnít close properly.

Because I can tell when Iíve not taken Prilosec for more than 24 hours, this is a must have addition to my daily regime. And to think I was going to blow off the doctor because I didn't want to add one more thing to my day/diet to think about and worry about. After a month, the problem is not cured, and may never be cured, but it is under control. Now lets all pray for an anti-celiac pill and some kind of procedure to cure acid reflux.

Outside of all that, since I slept yesterday, I did not work on any fiction. I have a goal to have a first draft of the novel (Alicia Grey) done by December, which, increasingly, does not look positive as other things (like school and work) seem to take precedence. Of course, if anyone wants to start asking how the progress is going, including Erin, that would be great. People asking questions will help me progress. However, keep in mind, outside of some general things, I am not directly talking about the content of Alicia Grey.

I am more likely to discuss the intricacies of Cassandra West and, when that short is done, will shop it around. If I don't get any real hits for publishing, I will put it up on the webpage dedicated to that series of stories. Heck, depending on the rights I have to sell, I may put it up there after it is published. I mean, what is the use of a site like that if you can't have content on it. Granted, some of the content will be more character specific and I like using WordPress (though Cassandra West is not currently a WordPress site) as a CMS and discovered that I donít have to have a blog page to run the site; it could prove to be cool... not only for that one but for the other sites I've got.

Hrm. The padres are still working to reporting to their mission. I'd let them update their site, but, you know, I can tell you all. They have been working on my mom's Jeep and, according to today's report, the engine was about back in. The Jeep Grand Cherokee should now be insured and licensed, which means that if Providence is shining upon them, they will have it to drive on the reservation. According to mom today, they were moved from the first area assigned (same as last year, Pinon, I think) to a new place where they need someone's to help with re-activation and leadership. They are good at that.

I told mom that we (Erin and I) would try to come down around the first of the year (between semesters) to visit them in the mission. That always proves to be fun. I liked it last year, though, last year, they had the Grand Canyon in their area ñ even though the majority of my time with them was spent in Cameron, AZ right next to the chapel.

Anyway, I think that's enough rambling, for now. Work, you know, and other things call my name.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 11:26 PM | Permalink

Your home is a Rough Magnate's Manor Your kitchen is someplace you never go, because you "have people for that." There's a Chocolatessen, which is rapidly becoming your favorite room of the house. Having one is also becoming a trend among your wealthy neighbors. Your master bedroom is the size of a small barn, with carpet thick enough to reach your ankles. Your study has hardback editions of every classic ever written, plus a special edition of Rich Dad, Poor Dad with the parts you ghost-authored highlighted. One of your garages holds your collection of ferraris, and is measured in acreage. Your home also includes a guest wing and private quarters for your servants. Your guests enjoy your home theater with hi-def plasma screen TV, and the thrones you watch it from. Outside is your hedge maze and gardens, meticulously tended by a team of world-class botanists. Below is a snippet of the blueprints:

Find YOUR Dream House!

Posted by smokingpen at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up this morning and fell back asleep like I’d not woken up. The reason I knew I woke up, the first time, was because I had to get my phone and turn it off. When I woke up again Erin had, already, showered and was leaning over me to see if I was really going to get up and move through my day. I was, I did, but I didn’t want to. I guess a day, like yesterday, that started way too early (for me) and ended way too late didn’t equate to a great day… or at least, a great morning.

Getting to school, as this semester keeps proving, proved to be a pain in the royal koo-koo-kachoo. They seem to delight (and by “they” I mean BYU’s administration) in making it difficult if not impossible for undergraduate students to park on or around campus. At least we’ve discovered that the one day a week you really have to pay attention to what is going on is Wednesday’s. Pretty much, if you are going to take classes one day a week, Wednesday is it. As such, finding parking in lots that, normally, would be semi-barren the other four days of the school week is like finding a bone needle in an elephant graveyard that the elephants forgot they were using.

Since I have been excused from attending the creative writing class, I still get to school in time for it, but end up sitting in the humanities building while Erin is in her class. She then finds a spot and waits for me to get done with my professional communications class. THEN be walk back to wherever we parked the car that (hopefully) is still a “Y” lot, get in, and drive home for two or so hours.

Today, Erin ate a salad, I didn’t want to eat anything, and she slept until we had to get up and head back to campus to find parking for two cars Erin has class until late on Wednesday ‘s) and then walk to class… late. I don’t mind, so much, the late part of the walk; I do mind the whole parking debacle that campus has become.

Erin’s suggestion, today, for alleviating parking: University President should give up parking space and freshman should not be allowed to have a car on, or near, campus their first year. I think there is merit in having the freshman, without exception, live on campus their first year and then deny them cars. Sure, it feels Machiavellian, but, hey, I am in my 30’s and don’t qualify as a freshman, and have not in this tenure at BYU qualified as such… so, I support, at least, denying freshmen cars.

I also support the torture of innocent kittens, mice, and puppies; but then, who said I was a moral individual.

(In case you really need this, I am joking.)

After a brief conversation with Erin, this morning, about Across the Universe I decided it was time to acquire a copy of the soundtrack to the movie. Several days later and we are still talking about it. Of course, we (not Erin) talked about it amongst the people sitting around me in my professional communications class, too. I think, quite possibly, so far, that this may be one of my favorite films this year. Erin went to her brothers house to hang out, meet his current GF – or whatever she is, and watch part of Transformers since it came out on DVD and, really, I enjoyed the movie once, and I think she did too; but her experience watching it, again, last night was less than desirable, and it was only partly due to the idiot roommate that her brother has and the little (sub-19 year old) girl that was hanging on him and extolling his age, experience, and wisdom. He’s, from what I am inferring, about 21 and sounds like he’s been home from his LDS mission for something like… oh, a few months. Summer, probably.

Since I started the download of the Across the Universe soundtrack, which, incidentally, I am listening to right now, I was expecting the 32 songs to take about fifteen minutes, max, to download. When it was time to get up and go to class, and kiss Erin before class, I was about halfway through the download list. During class, I ran the download all through the class; I got another quarter of the total download done. Then I got home and within three minutes had the remaining songs completely downloaded and, within five minutes, had them transferred to my iPod. Very nice.

I think this is part of what has made my day a bit slow. Everything, and I mean everything, seems to be moving at, about, the speed of dark.

The speed of dark, by the way, is exactly opposite the speed of light. For me, today, here, now, is extremely slow. Very slow. Painfully slow. Even though, as I have stated, it is the exact same speed as the speed of light, just in the opposite direction. I mean, for a moment, think about that. There is a speed to dark, it heads in the opposite direction from the speed of light. Actually, it has to exist at the edge of light which also means that there has to be a clear delineation point between where light ends and dark begins. Sure, we have dusk and, in our existence as well as our frames of reference there is, frequently, a graying point between light and dark. But, what this means, is that there has to be a point where you go from light, any light, to pure darkness where light cannot exist. And that movement, that point, is the exact speed, in the opposite direction, as light.

If I were not who I am, I’d think I was on drugs.

By the time I was sitting in the science class, though, I was already beginning down a pretty solid stew which didn’t bode well for people around me. Erin had to stop a snarky comment I was trying to make to some students. If you profess to be intelligent, which is what the class is meant to do, then you, also, need to speak as though you come from a semi-intelligent background, otherwise, well… I think opening your mouth and proving yourself what you are qualifies in this instance.

What, I think, really set me off, though, was that one of our professors (he runs a archeological dig in Egypt) talked about the magic and alchemy of love and the incantations the ancient (to us) alchemists that would ensure love. He then, after his lecture, proceeded to suggest a lab where these alchemical incantations and procedures were put to the test and pairing up students to test them and then finished.

This encouraged at least one student to come over and suggest that we (meaning Erin and I) would be good at that because we are already married; though, in this context the student (male) missed the point of the comment from the professor and proceeded to, ta-da, stick his foot in his mouth. That stewed for a while, a bit, and then he was talking to some other students (male) and started making up words. I heard one, knew it was wrong, and was formulating what I wanted to do when Erin pointed out it was wrong; which spurned me into verbal action, causing Erin to shut that down.

On a different front, I did, at different points, realize a couple of different characters in the Cassandra West universe. That is interesting. It seems that my mind, and yes, I will blame this on my mind, is inhabiting this universe with some pretty crazy and strange people to fill in for oddities and the magic it is set around. Hoping some of them remain by the time I’ve exhausted what I am trying to do.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I woke up, more or less, with Erin this morning. She was getting ready for work and I was lying there on top of the covers since the heater was on and we get smoked out most mornings. I lay there trying to decide if I was really waking up and whether or not I wanted to be doing things with my day. One thing I always try to get to is writing, when I don’t have a host of errands to run and other things making calls on my time; and, I can thankfully say that I did get to some writing.

However, before the writing, which took most of the day to get to, my mind was cranking over and over again on a new thing that I am working on, in part, to augment the rest of my life.

When Erin and were married, one of the gifts we received, was a registered LLC (limited liability company). The idea of having the LLC was nice, but we didn’t really know what to do with it. There are some factors, such as where I work and what we plan on doing with our lives, that stopped us from using this generous gift.

Regardless, for some weeks now I’ve been considering registering the domain name associated with the name of the LLC; but registering the name doesn’t immediately mean there is anything to do with the name or the site. I installed a WordPress blog in there because, quite frankly, I like WordPress and find it to be a pretty dynamic piece of software.

Which returns us back to my morning: as I woke to a flood of information that, quite honestly, I cannot even begin to tell where it comes from.

However, it has led to a large portion of the day being spent in outlining a model I would like to follow that will allow me to use my interest in, and understanding of, WordPress to potentially generate some money.

While this was going on I decided to go through the movies from Blockbuster Online that we had sitting around, two of which were specifically movies I wanted to see, one of which was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and decided to watch it. The movie wasn’t great, but I didn’t mind it either. It is, essentially, a farscial romp through the universe as you follow Arthur Dent as he deals with the destruction of his house (first) and the destruction of the earth (second) while, personally, mourning the loss of his girlfriend Trillian. He, pretty much, is having one nearly completely totally bad day. And to think, when he woke up in the morning, he thought he was one of the smartest creatures on earth only to learn that dolphins and mice were, by far, much smarter.

Anywho, as soon as I’d updated the blog, once, got a good idea of where I wanted the new website (and potential freelance jobs) to go and how we (by this Erin and I – partnership, baby) would handle our own terms of service, as well as a list of topics to write as article, well… you know, I had WordPress’s comments and the creative writing professor’s comments on the Cassandra West story to consider and read through (the latter again) to discover that Erin wrote a lot more (overall) while the professor and she actually agreed on just about every single major point. The one that, I think, was most interesting was where I changed the nature of speaking for a character with the intent of going back, eventually, and changing it throughout the story only to have the professor tell me he didn’t like the sequence, and Erin tell me that she only started liking it when the way that character spoke changed to how I want him to sound.

She also wants me to describe him.

Sometimes, I don’t get this whole, describe your characters thing. I mean, I can see what the character looks like, how they move, what they talk like… sometimes, as in this characters case, I have to play around with it for a bit to get to where they are communicating properly, but, I’ve got that. I just don’t get, sometimes, why, in the middle of some very nice writing, I have to actually think about what the protagonist or POV character is seeing when they see the character I am meant to describe.

Of course, on a side note, and not too much side at that, I did have to speak to Erin about how women describe women because, as a man, that was how I was describing them. Which, in turn, comes off way to … erm … manly. Yeah. Manly. That word works.

Anyway, did a bout of writing, the other day, where I delved into the beautiful world of introducing a character by walking them through some scenes (and, yes, I am still talking Cassandra West here) where you introduce where a character comes from and how he/she/it/him/her/they/them/there end up wherever they end up. Which proved to be interesting. In one iteration of this story I had her an orphan. In this, and the first, iteration she is the daughter of a wealthy man. This one has her as a (potentially) abused daughter… abused is a bad word… hrm… let’s say overly protected. Her father went through a lot to get her.

Point being, in all of this, I am progressing, slowly, and Alicia Grey really is not going to be shared with anyone until I have my draft done.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was watching Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when Arthur and Ford are being tortured by their captors at the beginning of the movie with poetry, the process of bringing the microphone down to the speakers mouth is a convoluted process of mechanical operation. At the end, a small microphone is removed and the alien begins to recite poetry. However, this is more about the movement of mechanical things.

When you watch a science fiction show or movie, and some kind of technology is used, frequently there is an establishing shot of how the thing works. The item will open and turn, spin, and rotate on a variety of axis that, in turn, end up pointing in some odd direction and doing one of a million things. The outcome is, quite literally, a lot of unnecessary movement that gets the individual from point A to point B by a convoluted route from points C, D, E, F, and down the line.

The outcome is that you have aspects of movement that cannot support the final product. In Hitchhiker's Guide the movement is all in one direction form larger form to small, but at each junction of movement, you increase the chances of failure. The increased chance of failure ends with the object not working properly. In a bad science fiction movie, this would lead to failure and, ultimately, the death of the lackey whose charge it was to take care of the object.

In real life, and as we advance technologically, the truth of science fiction is that a mechanical object with more than one moving part becomes more and more unstable ending in the catastrophic failure of whatever the item was meant to be. However, an object that does nothing on screen has a tendency to be boring to the viewer. For this reason, movie franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars have to have extraneous movement in them to help create interest and suspense in the audience. This movement means that the objects, themselves, will ultimately fail or cannot work properly.

One of the interesting things to (this reformed fan) science fiction is that movement denotes more power. In Star Trek the movement of the nacelles allows the spacecraft to enter warp speed. The need for movement in spacecraft denotes a poor design of spacecraft. Unnecessary movement in weapons denotes a failing point in that weapon and, ultimately, the weapons fails. Imagine, a weapon that requires five different movements to end in a fired weapon and you also imagine yourself dead. One of the reasons the six shooter went from a single action to double action and then you make a semi-automatic weapon that goes fully automatic (all with the fewest number of parts and the fewest moving pieces) comes as a result of the need/desire to shoot faster and more efficiently. A weapon, oh, often like what is in Men in Black does not allow for speed of shot (first) and accuracy (second). The outcome is a poorly designed tool.

From spaceships to weapons to armor and other things, economy of movement is necessary for ease of use. It is also necessary for operational control of an object. A ship designed with too many moving parts, and weapons that require a lot of action before being able to shoot, will not last; a ship with all weapons ready and fewer moving parts allows for a ship that is designed to work well, efficiently, and for longer periods of time.

I think there is a pretty massive disservice done by showing objects that have too many movements and motions of articulation when, in reality, the more there are the more likely it is the articulations and movements will fail. Sure, makes for good viewing, but the reality is that the truly impressive machinery is simple, often easy to use, and doesn't move a lot.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saturday proved to be an interesting day for Erin and I. We woke up, showered, dressed (me in jeans and a nice shirt and Erin in a dress), and then headed out to a wedding/reception in Salt Lake City for a family friend. We were, sort of, crashing the party. The reason was because a family friend was in town who has cancer and he is someone I wanted Erin to meet because of what he has done for me in my life. Not too many people out there that are that special to me, but this man is absolutely one of them.

After we got done there we headed back to Provo (hung out with my parents for a while before that) and changed clothes before proceeding to decide what to do with ourselves. Our choice, go to the movies.

For a few weeks I’ve wanted (along with Erin) to go and see Across the Universe. I didn’t know, when I started to become interested in the trailers and advertisements for the movie, that it was a movie set to Beatles songs. I don’t know if I would’ve had the same level of interest (ever) had I known that in advance, but, you know, I did find out about it sooner than later and still wanted to go, so… couldn’t be that bad… right?

Actually, I really enjoyed the movie.

The movie is pretty much a statement that is anti-war. Jude is from England. He decides to go find his father thinking he is a professor at Princeton. He sings onto a freighter to shovel coal and ends up in America. Finds his father and they, amicably, decide to have nothing to do with each other. Jude just wanted his father to know he existed.

At this point, Jude runs into Max. A upper-middle-class man who is wasting his time at Princeton. Jude helps him escape from some other fraternity guys that are trying to capture and beat him up. They strike up a fast friendship and before you know it, Jude is going home for Thanksgiving with Max where he meets Lucy, Max’s sister, who is in love with a boy who has joined the army and is being shipped off to Vietnam.

He dies. Lucy is sad. Max and Jude end up in New York City in the Village with a singer who is also looking for a guitarist, the apartment becoming the center for a lot of activity. During this Jude starts to draw and, allegedly, pays his way through his art even though he is an illegal alien, Lucy mourns the loss of her boyfriend, and Max is Max.

All sorts of lives criss and cross into each other from familiar figures of the 60’s to songs and events that took place. The movie is set to the songs of the Beatles sung by the actors and cut together in a rather interesting way to bring dialogue out of the various characters making the transition from scene to scene and from character to character relatively seamless.

The point of the movie, I think, is to show the protests of the antiwar movement of the 60’s and early 70’s with the way relatively passive people were drawn into the fighting, were sent off to war, and were made to become radicals, little by little, as loved ones were sent to Vietnam and, eventually, injured in ways that medicine and doctors could not cure. Specifically, Max, as a focal character (though not the protagonist, that role falls to Jude) is drafted into the Army because he chose to drop out of Princeton, and is sent to fight in the war. He is injured, his mind is messed up, giving Lucy more of a reason to fight the battles she chooses to fight; specifically, Lucy begins to work with a student organization for radical democratic reform.

The outcome of the movie is that all of the main characters finally return to New York, Jude from England after being deported because he was trying to get to Lucy after a riot and was beaten (senseless) by the police; Max from Vietnam after being wounded; and Lucy from wherever Lucy ended up after leaving Jude because she felt more about the movement she was a part of and could not see what was happening as a result of it, along with the singer, the guitarist, and Prudence, and girl of Asian decent.

Admittedly, the movie is pretty trippy. There is a lot of drug use throughout and a (in my opinion) extended scene where Lucy shows one of her breasts. Most of the background to the story is the rampant drug use of the era (which in comparison to another movie we were watching this weekend, was handled a lot better) along with the radicalism of the youth who were being shipped off to war. When Max found himself in the recruitment station, the view of the soldiers was very blocky and weird; with the message, in my opinion, that the army created carbon copies of itself in its recruits. The majority of scenes dealing with the army are actually rather anti-military and anti-establishment which, in truth, is not comfortable for me, but appropriate given the era the movie is set in. There are extended scenes where Jude, Max, Lucy and crew are clearly meant to be on an extended drug trip – the most notorious of which ends when they visit a circus where Prudence is performing; but, again, is appropriate within the context of what it is.

The movie could be a little disturbing and, like the extended breast scene, might be construed as offensive. It deals not only with war, but sex and sexuality which, in this area, can cause some problems. Erin pointed out, as we watched, that it was interesting to see about six different people get up and leave at the breast scene. I caught the sexuality message almost from the beginning and I think Erin was pretty much there with me throughout most of the movie, but there gets to be a point where it becomes extremely clear what is happening – though never overtly shown, which, also, could cause some people to get squirmish at the movie.

Across the Universe actually comes off more as an anti-establishment movie toward today’s administration and today’s push for war in Iraq than it probably needs to be; but, at the same time, I think it is interesting to see movies that are like this being made. The last time we explored topics like this was, really, Vietnam where M*A*S*H and Catch-22 and other movies were popular more for their anti-war stance than because of the quality of the movie. The difference here, I think, is that Across the Universe is a musical along the same lines as Moulin Rouge, but chooses to explore boundaries and approaches its topics (war, love, sex, drug use, friendship, family) from an artistic perspective that seemed to really resonate with me.

However, I can see how this movie can (will) cause problems among people and remember a time in my life where I would’ve gotten up and walked out of the movie – and not because of extended breast scenes, nudity, or sexuality; but because the movie, itself, did not fit within what I thought or believed about country, politics, etc. The outcome is that you have to want to watch a movie like this, you have to be patient toward the message, and you have to realize that the material can be offensive, but is meant to share a message that you might not agree with.

From a personal perspective, I think a lot of what went on during the movie and during the era is wrong and bad; but, that doesn’t change the fact that the movie, on its own, is an amazingly told story with great acting and an engaging storyline. If you can handle all of that and want to have you opinion (pro or con) of the war challenged, then you should watch the movie.

I intend to own a copy as it was enjoyable to watch, caused some deeply felt emotions to come pretty close to the surface, and caused me to start thinking about a writing project that is way, way, way down the road. I liked the movie.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 7:51 PM | Permalink |