Choose Your Own Adventure

Remember those books? I loved them when I was a kid. This one was my favourite:



I even got into the role-playing inspired ones in my early teen years. Sure, they might not have a lot of literary value, but as a kid they were a lot more fun than pretending to be a Hardy Boy or a hobbit.

To segue, I decided to use this blog partially as a place to put my short fiction for the time being, just so that I can practice writing regularly (when I'm not working on novels, that is). I wrote a story today, but I found that once I got near the end, a dozen or so possibilities popped into my mind and I couldn't decide on a definitive ending. Therefore, I would like to leave the ending of the story up to YOU, my (few but loyal) blog readers! I will write a reasonably short ending to the following story for each suggestion I receive, with a limit of one per person. If this turns out to be fun (and if at least one or two people show interest) I will probably do this more often.

Without further digression, here is the first part of the story:

"Doing the Right Thing"

“Brian, we’re going to get fired if they catch us,” Alethea whispered.

Brian ignored Alethea’s feeble protest and turned the key in the lock. “Come on Alethea, live a little.” He didn’t bother to lower his voice. With a gentle tap of his boot, the service entrance to Surplus Supplies lay open.

“I can’t believe they gave a key to you, of all people,” Sara said from behind Alethea. She and Alethea stepped into the stock room behind Brian.

Brian shrugged as he flicked on his flashlight. “You mean you can’t believe they made me manager. Remember, we can’t leave the stock room.”

Alethea crossed her arms and sighed. “Are you sure there aren’t any cameras back here?”

Brian wondered why Alethea had bothered to come if all she was going to do was complain. “I told you, I know where every camera in this store is.” He flashed his light around the room, quickly scanning the box labels. “Now make yourself useful and help me look for the stuff. Mark could have stacked them anywhere.”

Sara took out her own flashlight and began to look around. “Hopefully he didn’t stack the boxes way up high.”

“Relax; I brought the lifter key, too.”

Alethea sat on the floor as Sara and Brian looked around the vast stock room of Surplus Supplies. “You guys, I just realized something. If we get caught, we’re not just gonna get fired. We’re gonna go to jail.”

Sara flashed her light in Alethea’s face. “Did you forget why we’re doing this?”

“But it’s stealing,” she insisted.

“It’s not stealing if they’re just gonna throw the stuff out.”

“Guys!” Brian yelled from across the stock room.

“Shh!” the girls replied.

“I found them,” he said in a quieter voice as he crisscrossed his light on a group of boxes. They were stacked innocuously on the middle shelf. “Looks like we’ll need the lifter after all.”

“Just get the stool, Brian,” Sara suggested. “The lifter is noisy.”

“The boxes are heavy, Sara,” Brian replied. He tossed the lifter key at her. “Go get the lifter.” The key bounced off her chest and jingled as it skittered across the cement floor.

“Fuck you. Get it yourself,” Sara said. “Or quit being a pussy and climb up there like you used to when you were just a stock boy and not a lazy-ass manager who had to use the lifter for everything. It’s not like the stuff is fragile and we’re burning the boxes, remember? Just climb up and shove ‘em off the shelf and we can carry them out to the truck and go.”

Brian began to clamber up to the second shelf. “I’m not as spry as I used to be,” he muttered. “The lifter would have been easier.”

“The lifter would have taken twice as long,” Sara replied. “Start shoving.”
Off in the distance, permeating the silence and the walls of Surplus Supplies, a siren cried out in the night.

“Oh my god, you guys!” Alethea exclaimed. “What if they’re coming for us? We have to go, now!”

“Will you relax?” Brian demanded as he kicked a box bigger than his torso off the shelf. It landed on the concrete floor with a thud, denting one bottom corner. “There’s no way anybody else knows we’re here. Besides, that’s an ambulance siren, not the cops.”

“Actually, it’s a police siren,” Sara corrected. “Keep ‘em coming, Brian. I’m gonna start hauling ‘em out to the truck.” She turned to Alethea, who was still sitting on the floor. “Alethea, since you decided to come you can at least make yourself busy and help me carry these boxes out.”

“But Brian said they were heavy,” she whined.

Sara clenched her hands into fists and tried not to yell. “That’s why you’re going to help me carry them. Sometimes I wonder why Brian even hired you.”

“Mostly for her looks,” Brian called out as he kicked another box off the shelf.

“Speaking of getting fired...” Sara muttered as she lifted one of the boxes off the floor. “You know what? Never mind, Alethea, these are lighter than Brian made them out to be. You can just sit there and whine until we’re done if you like.” Sara left through the service entrance, hefting a box almost as big as she was.

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that in front of others,” Alethea said as she traced a pattern with her finger on the floor. “People are going to think that I...didn’t get hired based on my abilities.”

“Well, you didn’t. Or did you forget your interview already?” Brian kicked the last box off the shelf and it burst open. Baby clothes spilled out of the box and scattered across the floor.

“Nice shot, Brian,” Sara said from the entryway. She walked up to one of the jumpers that had fallen out of the box and examined it. It was white and orange, and the words ‘Drama Princess’ were printed on the chest. “I still can’t believe they were gonna make us throw all these out just because they bore a resemblance to a popular brand.”

“Well, Surplus could get sued for selling them,” Brian replied as he began tossing the jumpers back in the box. “But it’s still too much of a waste. I mean, there are women’s shelters that could use these, you know, and people who can’t afford to buy their children proper clothes.”

“But it’s still stealing,” Alethea insisted as she picked up one of the jumpers and felt the material between her fingers.

Sara rolled her eyes. “Look, it’s not like we’re doing this for profit. We’re not stealing these so that we can sell them, or use them for our own benefit. If we don’t do this, the clothes will get destroyed in the compactor tomorrow morning. This way, they can go to help people in need, and Brian can come in early and claim that he already sent them through the compactor and nobody gets hurt. We’re doing the right thing, Alethea.”

Alethea chewed on a fingernail. “Well shouldn’t we throw something down there, just in case somebody checks?”

Brian and Sara exchanged glances.

“Hmm, maybe there’s more than just a pretty face underneath all that makeup,” Brian said with a smirk. “Let’s just throw this broken box of clothes down. It’s gonna be hard to give away this many boxes anyway. Help me out with this, Sara.”

As Sara and Brian threw the last of the scattered clothes in the box and lifted it, Alethea walked over to the garbage compactor and switched it on. Brian peered to the side of the box to see Alethea staring down the chute.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “I think there’s something down there.”

Concerning Blog Updates and Recent Stories

To begin, I'd like to state for the record that I plan on updating this blog daily, starting today. You can hold me to it if you like.

An explanation might be required. In college last semester, I was keeping a writing journal. The purpose behind the journal is to "mind-dump" all the loose, random thoughts at the beginning of the day...one to three pages or so of it, so that when a writer's mind actually gets down to writing, there's less distraction. The ideas are supposed to flow from the mind and onto the page with ease, but we let a lot of things get in the way: the storm and stress of daily life, random thoughts and feelings, dreams from the night before, not to mention that constant left-brain nagging editorial voice that shuts down most sentences before they ever reach the page.

The process of writing is a fusion of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. From the right brain comes our creativity, our ideas. Our left brain has to translate those into language so that somebody else can interpret our words in the way that we intended them to be read. The trouble is that many left brains are too critical; none of our creative ideas are ever good enough because they don't sound the way the did in our heads. The point of the writing journal is to dump out all the free-floating thoughts, including any editorial negativity, onto the page. This should leave the mind free to focus on coherent writing.

To make a long story short, I stopped using my writing journal after the semester ended and I've discovered that this has led to a blockage in creativity. I even wrote a short story about writer's block; that's how backed up I was. However, instead of deciding to start up another journal, I remembered that I have this nifty blog that I keep forgetting to write in.

As a (not yet) professional writer, it's hard for me to feel free to give advice about writing (especially publishing advice!) and I only want to talk about my own writing a little bit...the magic there is in the finished product, not the process. So I've decided to make this blog much more free-form...random thoughts, non-fiction essays, possible short stories, and once in a while, a little bit of information concerning my journey as a writer. A blog is, after all, just one person sharing their ideas with the world.

Promise me that you'll stop me if I start complaining about my life though, ok?

In tomorrow's blog, I'd like to discuss my most recent writing venture: The Zone (I promise it's just a working title)

-James Funfer

Contests

Writing contests abound these days, either as offerings from publishers or the (nowadays) very popular National Novel Writing Month in November. Currently I've been keeping my eye on Angry Robot Books, a publishing company that seems to have fairly modern ideas. They're offering to read unsolicited manuscripts in March, so I'm definitely gearing up for that. To get back to my thesis, these contests are really great, in my opinion, but not necessarily for the reason that you might think.

I used to look at NaNoWriMo as a one-shot, all-or-nothing deal. I knew that if I could write a story in a month and somehow get it noticed, everything would suddenly change for me and I would become an overnight success. Real life isn't really so simple, but the trouble was that I built up the month to be such a huge deal that it became daunting, insurmountable.

Writing is a slow process, folks. It's like becoming a professional athlete. It takes the brain some time to develop new skills, and even longer to perfect them. The body takes a long time to achieve the apogee of potential. Writing isn't about pouring everything you've got into one story or idea.

Writing contests aren't about creating something amazing in a short period of time. Anything worthwhile takes a lot of time, after all. The point that I've learned from two years of writing contests is that they require discipline. Regulated attention to writing, over time, yields results. It's like practicing making ice sculptures in preparation for a big masterpiece, but you get to keep all of your attempts and mistakes and maybe use some of them. Maybe that's a really awkward analogy, but I guess that's one of the things I'm still working on as a writer.

I'm doing Key Publications' writing contest again this year and even though I'm really behind, it's reminding me that writing is, in essence, a discipline. People gripe about how popular Stephenie Meyer's books are, but the fact is that she writes. The point of having to write 2000 words a day is so that you can discipline yourself to do so regularly, even when you don't feel like it. I can't even cite the number of published authors who will tell you that if you want to be successful, you can't just write when inspirations strikes. You have to do it regularly.

The point I'm trying to make is that writing contests aren't the end-all and be-all. They're just another tool for developing the craft. Whether you get noticed or not, the success achieved is through the effort put in and the skills accrued.

After the Hiatus

Well, it only took me seven months to come back to this blog. I could go through a litany of reasons why I stopped writing the blog, but excuses won't serve anybody any good, so suffice it to say I was gone for a while and now I'm back - hopefully to write in this blog a lot more, just as hopefully I'll be writing a lot more, in general.

2010 was an interesting year for me, full of changes, and it's looking like 2011 is going to be much the same. Last year I wrote a novel, which, although it has been delayed for reasons out of my control, is still looking like it's going to get published sometime this year.

I moved out to Vancouver Island in May of 2010, which was a big change for me. Going back to school has been an interesting experience, and I learned that I'm a lot better at it than I originally thought...when I apply myself, that is. However I also learned that school is very expensive and the government doesn't like you when you move back in with your parents. Which means that I can't afford to keep going for now. The downsides are that I can't afford to keep going to school and have to get a full-time job again, but the upside is that I'll be doing a lot more writing again.

Key Publications is doing their Vicious Novel Writing Month contest again this year and I've opted to try and write another 50000 word mini-novel in January. If anything it'll keep my writing habits going and keep my mind sharp for February where I (hopefully) get started on the sequel to 'Hearts', unless I get wrapped up in this new story idea I have about psychics...

So that's the gist of 2010. My resolution is to write this blog at least once a week, not to mention all of the other resolutions I've stacked on there (most of them to do with writing, of course)! I'll let you know how my projects and ideas are going, and occasionally talk about my personal life, as well. You have to vent somewhere, right?

Well here's to 2011, everyone! It is my goal to maintain the same level of incurable optimism that I've held over the course of my life, especially when it comes to writing. Oh, and wish me luck with ViNoWriMo this year! I'm only 6000 words behind right now...shouldn't be a big deal, right?

On Collaboration

No man is an island, or so John Donne once surmised. Although the phrase is pretty general and can apply to nearly any aspect of the human experience, in this blog I would like to equate the phrase to the process of writing. In other words, collaboration and the sharing of ideas.

"Two heads are better than one" would be the other appropriate phrase to use.

I often think about what Hearts of the Betrothed would look like if I hadn't shared my ideas about the novel with anybody while it was still in the early parts of its development. Certainly it would look different than it does now, in the later stages of the second draft, but can I be certain that the story is better than it would have been if I'd kept it all a secret? Did conference with friends and colleagues improve the overall story, or just save me time in editing?

I'm sure there are writers out there who have the patience to finish an entire piece of work without sharing it with anybody, but I am not one of those writers. Whether it's a need for approval or a just a method of getting free feedback, I have to share pieces of my work with others before it's done. Sometimes they tell me it's good and to carry on.

Other times somebody will say something that makes me look at the story from a different angle.

The fact of the matter is that each of us thinks in a very specific kind of way, and they're all very different. If we all looked at the world through the exact same paradigm, reading would be a lot less interesting. Every narrative would sound the same, because we would all be looking at the world in the exact same way! Some writers focus on setting, others on characters and dialogue, others on action. An effective writer, of course, has a balance of all three in their stories but we all have strengths and weaknesses.

The importance of sharing your work with others is that sometimes somebody else will see a way in which a particular scene could have improved depth, or is lacking a detail or two that would paint a much clearer picture of what is going on, or improve the link between a scene and the overall theme of the story.

Of course if you don't agree with a suggestion, you don't have to use it. You're the writer, after all. Any story you write is your baby; your keystrokes are the Word of God.

A good example of what I'm talking about is the character of Eowyn in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Granted, this is an anecdote that was related to me so I have no way of knowing if it's true or not, but it illustrates my point.

When Tolkien was penning The Two Towers, his daughter complained to him that he never put any women in his stories. Now before somebody mentions Arwen, I will remind everyone that the movies deviated quite a bit from the original story. Arwen was just a shotgun-wedding character thrown in at the end to marry Aragorn. In fact, Eowyn was originally supposed to marry Aragorn in the early drafts...so it's interesting how things can change that way, in this case based on the suggestion of a young woman who wanted to see more than just a bunch of boring old dudes in her father's work. Eowyn became a rather powerful feminine character considering how misogynistic Tolkien's work tended to be.

I know that my own work would not feel as complete if I had not received feedback and suggestions from my friends and colleagues. The collective consciousness is far more powerful than any one individual's imagination. What if Byron, Shelley and Shelley hadn't challenged each other to write horror stories? Frankenstein never would have existed!

On to collaboration. I was recently involved in a collaborative project (still a work in progress as far as editing is concerned) and was discussing other collaborative possibilities with a friend of mine last week, and it got me to thinking about other collaborative works that I've encountered over the years.

One huge thing that I've noticed is that collaborative works seem to require more effort than if you're just writing something on your own. Sure, you've got two or more people motivating each other to stay focused (like a gym group, etc.) but your work is not entirely your own...and that can make it hard to feel like you're putting in your full creative potential.

However, I've noticed some amazing literature come out of collaboration. Anne McCaffrey? Not a huge fan. Her collaborative works? Much better, in my opinion. I've also never been that big on David Eddings, but when he collaborated with his wife on The Redemption of Althalus, the improvement in quality leaps off of the page at you. All it takes is that second pair of eyes and voice added to a project to really give it some depth, sometimes.

An example from my own life would be Dimensions. For those of you who don't know me very well, Dimensions is the table-top role-playing game that I started to develop in high school. At around 15 to 16 I was playing a lot of RPGs with friends, but found myself dissatisfied with the rules systems for one reason or another. As a result, I decided to develop my own. It started as a project in my basement, written out on looseleaf paper. I borrowed the elements of rules that I liked from various systems, and made up the rest. A lot of my ideas I shared with my best friends Travis and Vic during physics class, which got the ball rolling even further.

We started to play the system, to test it out. Needless to say, early forays quickly pointed out the glaring inequities in the system. As a result, I went back and tweaked a little, then tried it again. The system got better, more fair for all players.

Eventually people started playing Dimensions on their own, without me around to 'supervise'. Travis, especially, loved the system and started tweaking it in his own way. We lost touch for a while, but once we reconnected (which had a lot to do with Dimensions, actually) we began to compile the system and hash out a complete rules system. It's still a work in progress, but what was once a casual idea became, with some collaboration, something that has the potential to be published one day. At first it was hard for me to give up complete creative control, but I never could have gotten Dimensions this far without Travis and the other contributors to the system.

When you release an idea into the collective consciousness, it is no longer entirely your own. When you collaborate on an idea, every imagination improves the finished product as a whole.

What does everyone else think? Is it better to collaborate, or hold firm to your own creative ideas until you have a finished product, untainted by the opinions of others?

Collaboration can create unexpected ideas that never would have been conceived otherwise...at least, that's what I believe. I was brought up to believe in the idea of sharing. It hasn't failed me so far.

-James Funfer

A first post (that few will likely read)

I always struggle with denial.

When I was growing up it took me years to consciously accept the fact that I didn't believe in god even though deep down I already knew it to be true. I was in denial about being an adult for a good five years, although I think a lot of my generation struggle with that one. In some ways I'm still in denial about it. I was in denial about my first grey hair. I plucked it from my arm, actually. Out of sight out of mind. Until the grey hairs outnumber the white I think I can get away with that one.

A great showcase of personal denial for me was that strange and uncomfortable feeling you get when you realize that you are no longer as quick to understand technology as you used to be. A new cellular device like a blackberry or internet concept like RSS feeds is presented to you and you actually have to concentrate to understand how it works. Gone are the days when I can simply 'figure something out' by looking at it or fiddling around with it. I'm sure many people my age, or perhaps even most of them can still pick up a new piece of technology and understand it without much of a problem, but it's a matter of proximity and exposure in my mind. I've been out of touch for years, and after a certain age your mind is no longer as mutable as it once was. Now I RTFM all the time now, or use 'wikihows', etc. to understand how technology is out-pacing my understanding of things on a regular basis.

I was in denial about the internet surpassing my capacity for understanding for years. However, I will not take this one lying down. All it takes is a little effort, which I was not until recently willing to give. This is one of the reasons that I have started a new blog and consolidated my internet content into google reader for easier access.

The other reason is to promote myself as a writer.

I am soon to be published through Key Publications (keypub.net for those of you who are interested - best site around for aspiring writers) and it occurred to me that promotion and networking are paramount for a new writer. My objective is to start a blog that people will eventually follow; a blog chronicling my writing process as I finish my first novel and beyond. I also plan on including posts about various writing ideas I have along the way, which may or may not be used at some point.

In case anybody is curious, the book is slated to be called 'Hearts of the Betrothed'. The series will likely be titled the 'Shattered Crystal' trilogy.

For anybody who reads this, I would love to answer more questions about the novel if you leave a comment.

In a nutshell, that's the intent of this blog, in any case.

-James