Time keeps on running by

Well, I unintentionally took a week off from this blog.  Time just got away from me I suppose.  Last week was full of campus events and club meetings and extremely long reading and writing assignments.  By the time I realized I hadn't posted anything, it was, well...today, at this moment.

Not to worry, though; I've been plugging away at my writing.  It's been haphazard, though--some days I didn't write at all, other days I wrote a ton of stuff in under an hour, other days it took me hours to get a few good paragraphs.  Maybe this is just how I work.  At any rate I feel I've produced a good amount of valuable raw material.  My creative writing class is upping the ante as the semester winds down: at this point I've written around 6 short stories in the past couple weeks.  Admittedly, a couple of them are too short and rushed...but the kernels of interesting ideas are there, and now that the basics are on paper, I think I can work to expand them and make them better.  Work on my long final project is slow going: I've got the (long) prologue down as well as chapter one.  However, I'm extremely excited to finally be writing it.  I've had the idea in my head for over a year, and this class and my independent study next semester give me the perfect opportunity to work on it, and not leisurely but as a necessity so I know it will get done.

The idea is sort of a mish-mash of elements from the Canterbury Tales and the movies 13 Conversations About One Thing and Little Miss Sunshine.  A bunch of people--some closely related, others not so related to the rest--set off on a road trip across the country to go camping for a week.  The core family that started the trip has their own reasons for going, and the seemingly random people that end up going with them all have their own reasons, and the family members that invited them have different reasons for doing so.  In general, they all need a break from reality for a while.  Throughout the trip, they all tell stories (a la Canterbury Tales) to pass the time on the road, at the hotel, when the car breaks down, etc.  It's a story of relationships: how people aren't meant to live in isolation, and how by simply being near other people things tend to change.  It's also about appearances/facades...how everyone has different masks they wear, why they choose those masks, and why and how they need to break.  I still don't know how I'll end it, but am I really supposed to at this point?  The journey is so much fun at this point that I think I'll feel sad when it's over.

This novella (or novel, depending on how long it ends up being) is also a great opportunity to put these last few years of learning to the test.  I've come a long way in terms of understanding what characters are, what or who the narrator is, and different angles of perception and viewpoint in storytelling, as well as the technical methods of writing effective prose (which I would never have thought of without going through this program).  Short stories are good for this, too, but for such a long piece there's way more room to toy around with stuff.  It's really exciting, and I just hope the end product is something good, at least in my professors' eyes.  This is still undergrad, so I know this isn't going to be the next Grapes of Wrath or anything, but I just hope that for me at this point in time it stands as a good testament to my best writing abilities.

I just have to keep plugging away and not get distracted.  It's so easy for me to get distracted...I have what my friends have given the name of ADOS (attention deficit...ooh shiney!).  So I think it's time to get off the 'net and continue being productive.  Good night everyone.