Monday, August 16, 2010

Research, Rambling, and Katsa beating up Edward Cullen...

I’ll give you this link first, so that you can see the awesomeness that is this website before reading about my latest thoughts about research and nonfiction! (Gasp! Sounds exciting, right?)


http://yafantasyshowdown.weebly.com/index.html

Muchas gracias to Kristin Cashore (amazing author of Graceling and Fire) for posting the link on kristincashore.blogspot.com. You rock!

Now, on to the research-related rambling.

Lately, I’ve hit a stall in my actual writing. Not sure exactly why… I’m in that awkward place stuck between a rough draft I should be editing, a half-done novel I really want to work on but haven’t touched in months (T-T) and various short stories I allowed myself to put out, thus wasting some of my motivation/inspiration/time-ation – and before you say anything, yes I know time-ation isn’t a word. I added the suffix for the sake of symmetry.

I also blame my stall on the fact that I’ve been reading the numerous 30-60 year-old short story anthologies I snagged from my school when they were weeding out all the boring books no one wanted to read. At the time, I figured, “Hey! Free books!” Little did I realize many of them completely ignored all the tips and advice I’ve been reading on writers’ blogs lately.

Not to put down the good old classics – it worked for them! But that was a different era of writing, I think, and all their dead dialogue, info-dumping, and pages of condensed boredom are making it hard for me to get into my own groove. :(

Luckily, I’ve found a way to stay productive during this awkward phase of my work! Among those 30-60 year old books I found some non-fictioney ones that address pretty interesting topics I may or may not use in my own writing.

So I read a book on split personalities, not even skimming at all except for the places that were pure statistics and psychology babble you’d have to be a psychologist in order to even understand! It was interesting, and gave me quite a bit to think about on that topic…

Then I actually managed to start a short piece I need to do for a writer’s group, based on some birdy beings who live in canyons. I tried to do an illustration, and the results of that led me to think about gargoyles… Which led to a possible story inkling. So I looked them up on Wikipedia (forgive my sources XD) and was further interested. Did you know gargoyles are technically in architecture carvings/whatever with waterspouts in them to direct water away from a building so the mortar between the blocks won’t erode? The ‘gargoyles’ that are just for decoration are actually known as ‘grotesques’. :D

Now I’m part of the way through another old book about the Bermuda Triangle…

And I finished watching the third episode of ‘The Colony’, a ‘bold new series’ on the Discovery Channel about an experiment to see if seven strangers could rebuild society after a virus wipes out 90% (or something like that) of the Earth’s population. It’s like hard-core survivor with no prize money at the end and no official ‘challenges’. It’s really interesting, I’ve already learned a lot, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone interested in writing post-apocalyptic fiction. :) I’m gonna tape it to DVD! >.< New episode tonight ~ <3


http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/colony/

(After looking for a proper Colony picture on the Discovery channel website): Aw, FAIL! T-T I just realized I'm watching the SECOND season! Where was the first? Me wants to see it! :'(
Oh, and a couple weeks ago I watched a documentary on giant rats… But that’s just for my novel rough draft, so maybe you aren’t interested on that. XD

Usually I’m not very into research/nonfiction, so this is an interesting stage I’m going though. Who said you couldn’t learn something during the summer? ^^ School starts tomorrow for me though, so maybe I’ll go back to writing once I’m already learning more stuff than I want to there. T-T

Still. I’ve been surprised by how interesting research can be, if it’s something you’re interesting in. I’ve been keeping notes on some things (the Colony, especially >.<) and I know I’ll probably be going back to look at them later. :)

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