A Reflection

    As you may have guessed, considering that this itself is on my blog, this year’s English assignments have been submitted through said blog. Originally I had intended to write random posts as topics came to mind, interspersed with a few of my collected story beginnings, but throughout the first quarter the majority of my posts have been “Unfinished Writing”. I think this is because I have recently had a continuous stream of ideas. In looking over my blog posts, I have found interesting variations in the inspiration for these beginnings, as well as a very different tone from the highly structured essays I have also written.
    My story beginnings are not, as you may expect, inspired by any mysterious and deep part of my soul. I doubt many writers really have one of those. The ideas for most of them came out of nowhere, a thought I had at lunch, or something I read recently, perhaps. Sometimes they originate from characters, which in turn may spring from anywhere. But I think the most common origin is simply when I hear or think of a phrase that intrigues me. Take, for example, The Time of the Plus:

The Time of the Plus: The time in Metronium when all the clocks stop, new buildings suddenly appear where none were before, the Sternix reappear, and the Plus herself comes into power. Once well-known among Metronians, this legend has faded from the minds of all but a few.

This story began when my father said something about “The time of the plus is here”, although I no longer remember the exact phrasing. I do know that there was never any specific meaning to it, and so I began to wonder: What if the Plus were a very powerful person? What if the Time of the Plus were the time in which that person becomes even more powerful? Maybe the Plus is a legend, and maybe there could be clocks in it… So you see, my stories are often just embellishments of other people’s interesting turn of phrase.
    Then there are the stories that begin with a character. The prime example of this is Malt, the novel-in-progress, an excerpt of which I posted on my blog. An excerpt of an excerpt, if you will:

Who was Maxwell Malt?
Oh, everyone had heard of him, of course. You weren’t much of anybody in Eastport if you’d never heard of Maxwell Malt. Some called him a magician, others the superhero of the day, and still others the “people’s hero”, whatever that meant. He had done amazing things. He had saved the city and its surrounding area from bizarre villains countless times, including, once, an army of giant animate teddy bears. Everyone knew it. Most people had witnessed his heroism firsthand. And yet the question still circulated the streets daily.
Who was Maxwell Malt?

Malt is, essentially, about Max and the resolution of some of his identity issues; the story is driven entirely by the character, because he is so vivid in my mind. Maxwell Malt appeared in his entirety in a very strange dream I had involving, yes, an army of giant animate teddy bears. The character was so complete from his first appearance that I knew he had a story in need of telling. To get there, I combined the mysterious air that surrounds everything in dreams with the fact that most superheroes have a secret identity, and this strangeness was the result.
    One of the reasons I feel comfortable posting my weird stories on my blog is that it’s an easily moderated medium. I am often afraid to show my writing to people because I worry that it isn’t any good, and no one likes to be criticized. On a blog, however, all anyone can do is post a comment, and those comments I find offensive or don’t care for can be deleted quite easily. So far I haven’t had to do this, which helps to improve my opinion of this whole blogging thing. Without the blog, I might never have exposed my writing to others, and thus never have gotten feedback of any kind (though, admittedly, my current comments are all from Mr Sutherland). Those comments that have been posted have improved my own opinion of my writing, which is always a good thing in my opinion.
    There is one very big difference between the blog post assignments and other, more structured papers I have written: assignments submitted through the blog are looser. Without a rigid structure, it is easier for a writer’s voice to get through, and people are more comfortable saying what they think. My one truly aimless post is a testament to this:

I think about a lot of weird things in my spare time. I swear this isn't my fault; when my mind is allowed to wander, it comes back with the strangest ideas. But one that I have continuously analyzed and wondered about is this: Is reality defined by a person's perception of it?

If I were to write a structured essay about my tendencies toward existential crisis, it would sound much less like I do when engaged in conversation, and that would make it more difficult for me to get my point across. In fact, in a structured essay I might not choose this subject at all, because of the possible problems with being understood. Also (and I in no way speak for everyone), when writing along very specific guidelines, I tend to come across as excessively stiff and formal. Usually my writing style mirrors the way I speak, and it sounds much more natural. Perhaps this is an improvement, perhaps not.
    As for my goals for my future writing, I need to get better about revising things. My “official” method of writing is stream-of-consciousness scribbling or typing, later to be gone over and all its badly-written parts cut out. Or, at least, I intend to go over it. I often forget about revision and put my first-draft story up on my blog for the world to see. Afterward, of course, I reread it and find it to be severely lacking in some area or other. For example, the first two paragraphs of this story:

There were hundreds of different clans and provinces and other self-governing colonies of dragons in Attria, some of which were constantly at war or just disagreement; others pretended that certain colonies didn’t exist for the sake of peace. Dragons are not, by nature, cooperative with those unlike them, resulting in a tangle of boundary lines to confuse even the most accomplished of cartographers. The colonies were not receptive to new dragons emigrating from other colonies, and their leaders rarely had any kind of meeting because of the everlasting tensions between them.
But Draigfest was different. Draigfest happened in the very center of the valley, where no colony claimed territory, and it was a festival, or possibly a convention, for those dragons that weren’t really concerned one way or another with the misdeeds of their neighbours’ ancestors and were curious about the other colonies. Some, over the years, had even built up long-distance friendships with other dragons.

I believe there are all of three pronouns between those two paragraphs. This is a result of not revising the story; had I done so, I would have realised that the word “dragon” is repeated a tedious number of times. This sort of thing happens far more often than I would like. If I could get better about revision, my writing would definitely improve and no one would have to read the gibberish my mind spews on autopilot. And speaking of revision, reviews from others would probably also be quite helpful; I know of several people who will give me honest criticism and whose suggestions have improved my work in the past. After all, every decent writer needs an editor—and I hope to be more than merely decent.