Pictures as a Kickstarter

I’m sure that this happens with other people, but I feel the need to get this out.

There are times when I’m browsing the internet and I’m not really focusing on anything. There are times when I’ll see an image, and something about it just sets of a spark in my head, and the idea will shoot off like a rocket on speed. Sometimes it’s part of an existing idea, and sometimes it starts a whole new world.

For example, I had to come up with a 10-25 page story for a class last semester, and while I was thinking about it, I remembered something I’d found a while ago (I can’t remember exactly when or where, so this is the existing link to it).

Just by looking at the image, the story almost wrote itself. I still had to physically write it out, but it flowed onto paper much more smoothly than anything I’ve ever written. There’s still some work to be done, as I wrote this under a time constraint, but this is definitely my favorite short story that I’ve done. I titled it after the name of the picture (with the creator’s permission, of course); The Witch’s Son.

This is just one example of me using as a picture as inspiration, but this is definitely the most memorable to me, and it was one of my best pieces, if I could toot my own horn for a minute.

SOURCE

The Impact

I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have gotten the feedback that I have throughout the short life of this blog. I know I switched this up late in the semester, and I know that people were busy with work and midterms, so it means all that much to me that people were still willing to comment.

For the posts about my papers, I got a couple of comments from friends and classmates, and their comments helped me to determine what I would keep and what I would kick out of the papers, which both relieved and added some stress, BUT MY POINT IS that they helped out a lot.

As far as my story ideas(s) went, just getting to hear that people thought it was a cool idea and getting questions about how the world(s) work started a couple more trains of thought that’s really helping in further developing everything.

So to all of those who commented or talked to me in public about it – Thank you so much.

Visualizing Characters

I like to think that one of my skills as a writer is that I have a very good imagination. This comes in handy when I’m trying to create characters. Sometimes though, I need more of a visual helper to help nail out the details. Sometimes I draw in a giant-ass sketchbook I picked up, but I’m not the best drawer, so I tend to resort to a few unconventional (?) methods. 

Survival Story Progress

These are all the notes of ideas that I’ve made so far for my survival story…

Organizing this is gonna be so. Much. FUN. 

This is going to be my big summer project, and I might bring it into my Capstone class next semester.

Music for Writing

I can almost never write unless there’s white background noise: the TV, a show on Netflix, and more commonly, music playing. This is something everybody does, but I’ve recently started doing a little bit differently: I listen to movie and video game soundtracks. 

Paper Details

I’m doing a paper on the sign language/deaf community, and I’m trying to figure out how I should organize it.

What I think I’ll include for sure is the different semantics, the acquisition/learning  of sign language, the history of American Sign Language, the differences between ASL and British Sign Language….can you guys think of anything else I might want to include?

Magical Realism paper

I’ve got a paper due at the very end of the semester for my Contemporary World Literature class. While I do have some time, I’d like to figure out my topic as soon as I could. Even if you don’t know all that much about magical realism, I’d love any input I can get!

It’s an open-ended essay that will need four sources, and here are just a few ideas to start off with:

1. Fighting the encroaching modern world
2. Angels in the Satanic Verses: Similarities in events and religious mythology
3. The effect of the character’s dependence on alcohol
4. characteristics of postmodern fiction and how it works with magic realism

Let me know what you guys think!

Current Idea

So this is an idea I’ve been working on since winter break, and it’ll be the first one on the blog that you guys get to comment on! So here’s the general idea: 

Argument & Exposition

Back in my sophmore year, my final assignment for my Argument and Exposition class was to find a quote that we liked, what it meant to us, why we liked it, and what we thought it meant. I was stuck between more…”meaningful” quotes, and a quote I thought was a little hilarious and fit my personality a little bit better. More to see who would agree with me than get inspiration, I posted my options on Facebook: 

Two were family members, and two were people I’d met through church activities. Needless to say, they (as you can see) all picked 1 with it being the more “golden rule” and being nice to others than a few of the others.

Personally, I liked the other quotes a little more than that first one, I think because they were focused more on the personal aspect – focusing more on yourself. That’s not to say I’m conceited or narcisstic or anything like that. It was (and still kind of is, let’s be honest) more that I’d heard so much advice on how to be nice and how to deal with other people for years, and that I wanted to focus more on my own life and health.

So I picked the third one.

Regardless of my final choice, it still took some deliberation on whether or not I should do what the others had suggested, especially since two replies came from family members that I have looked up to since I was born.

Social Media and My Writing

I chose this for my topic because I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to ask for help when it comes to my writing, whether it’s for a personal project or for a school assignment. I have a number of friends and family who are hours and hours away from me, especially when I’m in school.

That’s where social media comes in. Instead of sending long-winded texts that could jack up our data usage, I’ll post my ideas or prompts or whatever to Facebook or tumblr. That way, multiple people can see and respond to it whenever they’re on the site. The reason I do this is because I like feedback and I’m (almost) always curious to see what people think and how those can start another train of thought.

My idea is to explain the thoughts that go through my head when I see these responses, and how it could/will affect the progression of that story and/or assignment. This does include taking screenshots of the post and the following replies, but I’ll probably black out names unless it’s a specific person (for example, family members) or unless they’ve told me that it’s okay.