It is Sunday and the LDS General Conference has just ended. This is the first time in a lot of years that I have not watched or listened to all of the sessions. I do not work, as a rule, on weekends and in coming to New Hampshire I've discovered that this rule, of mine, is neither hard nor fast as I now work Saturday's. In fact, the days off I seem to be getting, at present, are associated with my school schedule and Sunday's. I refuse to work Sunday's.
This leads to a conversation, rather one sided I am sure, on work. Work is what it is: meaning, that I stand for about eight hours a day at a register and act as pleasant as possible to as many people as possible and, at the same time, encourage those same people to purchase as much as possible. Lately, that goal has extended to selling a pair of lightsabers we have on display for $99.99 a piece. Several times a day, when crowds are around, we have the tendency to pull one, or both, down and show the people what they can do. You would think, given the nature of impulse buying that goes on, that it would be easier to sell something like that. So far, within the store, the only person who has been successful in that regard is a rather well endowed blond (meaning she has large breasts and it shows) who is also somewhat personable and has this uncanny sense as to what to suggest to people… guys, and then the ability to get them to purchase that same item. Watching her is both impressive and sad all built into the same mold.
Since I work four days out of seven and my schedule is all weird I don't get a lot of time to sit down and work on other things. My goal for this weekend has been to edit a story I started, and then finish the story, so I can submit it for consideration of publication. Basically, it is a scifi story dealing with a post-dark ages earth where the inhabitants had developed so far that they literally caused the cataclysmic events that turned humanity backward for more than 700 years. The story follows "Ed" who is a survivor of that period and, seeing an end coming, develops a 'stasis' booth that keeps him alive for x-1000 years in a specially built cave in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico somewhere. In essence, he's cheated death and returned to life in a time when technology does not exist, outside of blacksmiths, etc. And those who live near the old cities (or on top of them) believe that the 'spires' and 'columns' and 'blocks' of the old world are haunted and dangerous and therefore lend themselves to a religion (that religion or those beliefs changing on region, area, distance, etc.)
Anyway, 'Ed' is looking for his wife who was supposed to be in the cave with him but was not there on waking and her chamber was also missing. In his searches he believes he's located her, but, at the same time, can't get to her. There are very real dangers that lead to the mythology and folklore that the people, living above the city, have created; and which, only the people who live above the cities can go through - if they had the right knowledge and abilities.
As I've been reading the material I wrote a month or two ago I have discovered that it is not the material I'd thought I'd been writing. This goes back to the philosophy of successful writing where no first draft is ever a good draft. William Forrester in 'Finding Forrester' said, "The things we write for ourselves are so much better than the things we write for others." I wonder if what is meant in this is that the things we write for ourselves, that are intended for 'eyes only' are really only meant for the authors thoughts, not meant for distribution, and therefore are much better as a result.
Since I had written that in the creation of a document meant entirely for my use, purpose, etc. it is interesting to me to walk back through it and think I have thousands of words of useable material to find that I have hundreds of words of useable material and other areas that, in hindsight, need to be fleshed out. I have thousands of ideas and I want to expand on the ideas so much, for this piece, for other pieces, and yet, I am stepping back, literally, and saying, "I can write this much here, this is what I want to do to introduce this world to my audience, and then I will stop for now."
My thoughts have never really worked in the direction of multiple plots/subplots in a story before. Sure, you have the main plot, which is what the story is about, and then subplots, which exist to support the main plot(s), characters, events, settings, and dialogue; but through it all I guess I'd thought that the process was a little less… involved. That isn't to say that I didn't understand that the writing process wasn't involved, but rather that the elements worked together, differently, to form the finished product.
There is a significant difference from reading amateur fiction and fan fiction than from realizing all the parts and how they compliment each other and then, in turn, how they end up creating a full end story. My intent, with the story I am talking about, is to introduce people, and myself, into a whole new world and see where it takes me. There are a couple of other ideas that I want to throw out there, see where they lead, but right now this one will work for me.
Outside of all that, I did get some positive news at work the other day. Specifically, that we are having a 40% off weekend in two weeks on almost everything in the store AND as employees we get to cull the shelves for the next two weeks for items we want. I am buying books on writing and mythological storytelling, finishing some book collections I've got, and trying some new things. The weekend should prove to be expensive but not as expensive as it could be.
As a final note: Having moved from Utah where the majority of people are all of a religion and have missions, church, family, friends, church as a common denominator to somewhere where people know each other principally because they work together or go to school together, they don't know families and they don't go to church together; I've discovered that the common conversation among people is relationships and drinking (as it applies to having sex and relationships). Further, there is a lack of understanding among a certain age group of one person's willingness to be himself in the face of overwhelming peer pressure. The experience is interesting.