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Text of the page (random words):
ose emotions that won t let you go it s harder yet to think through them analyze them understand them it s such a deadening process even if you can see the end you are not there yet even if you were the end would change the end will change another process will begin understand though if nothing else you will be fuller because of those processes in those processes you experience things and you meet people you wouldn t have otherwise and yes people come and go but when they come cherish them learn from them and let them learn from you and when they go shed a tear if you have to but never forget why they were so important to you why he was so important why she was let the importance become part of you let it shape you for this is happening anyway you are always being created and if you accept what is good and learn from what is not you will become you will inescapably become on being alone posted november 23 2006 filed under life comments 7 i have an itch i want to take a train ride i have successfully idealized this itch like i have many others i would go alone and if possible be gone longer than i could handle being gone but being gone a while is part of the romance i would be alone sitting by the window watching the night sky fly by drinking something requiring the attitude and appearance of age or a driver s liscense to obtain i would feel free i would feel unattached i would act as though i had no possessions only my memories to grapple with and dreams to dream there by the window my story as it were would be reset if i would only let it given the chance would you change your life would you make it exactly what you want when alone the choices you make are your own when alone you could lose everything yourself and mind included and it would only affect you when alone you can become anyone and no one will be the wiser so there i am rolling through the country on a train rewriting and rethinking drinking just to enjoy the pleasure of doing so life as story posted november 12 2006 filed under fiction life non fiction comments 8 in my mind i can see the past vividly and without any sense of reality i imagine the way life could have been and the way life was i don t re imagine the past purposefully my mind goes memory jumping and i am left as a passive observer of false realities i can also see into the future goodness happiness and me working fervently at a computer in an open room with the ethereal sound of rain falling in the city i walk across the hardwood floor and step outside street lights change yellow red green and reflect in windshields and puddles on the sidewalk i breathe deep and go back to my work if i were a character in my own story i would have to ask myself have i reached the point when a character makes his own choices free from the writer s pen and will have i taken on a life of my own or am i following a thrid person omnipresent narration that i will and always have been following regardless of choice or my perception of choice each of us has a story past present future and our stories are pieced together seemingly random piece by random piece it feels like so many pieces are missing it feels like what is happening right now is supposed to and was always going to it feels like you have a sense or idea of control but really you have neither will i end up breathing in the rain maybe but the story could always take a turn the story is inside and out posted november 4 2006 filed under life storytelling writing comments 6 imagine emily dickinson writing most of her hundreds of poems only seven of which were published before her death in 1886 in her second floor bedroom while dickinson is seen as a great poet applying her methods of solidarity seems detrimental to living a full healthy life at one point not so long ago i could picture myself spending long hours cut away from life in an office with the door closed maybe locked and me writing and writing and writing i had romanticized the idea of writing in solitude and in doing so i had swiftly pushed people away to truly focus on writing i indeed need to minimalize distractions but people and their stories are the only chance we have at making our own writing good we learn from professors students friends family and strangers we learn craft we learn methods we learn stories only so much can come from your own head and every now and then you have to get outside of your own realm of thinking every now and then you just have to give your life up let go become detached when you can let go even temporarily you can stop observing yourself and when you do venture into the world as a storyteller you can truly start to observe others and build a repertoire of faces quips and tragedies you can later use when alone in your office this time however the door will be open and i will not push people away rewriting posted october 22 2006 filed under life rewriting storytelling writing writing tips comments 2 whether you call it rewriting or editing it comes down to rethinking the story as it is now to achieve perfection in storytelling you must edit and you must rewrite if the two are any different the difference is rewriting is more intimate and personal i always hear about directors deciding to cut favorite scence or authors scratching beautiful sentences it s always hard but they know it must be done and after they do it the story is better served in max barry s the first draft he says what i d give for the ability to erase my memory after each draft so i could read my own books for the first time again it would all become so clear where the story sagged where the promising leads left unfollowed lay where my characters motivations got muddled and oh god please yes what the core of this goddamn story really is the hardest part about rewriting might be finding clarity being able to know what needs to get cut and what needs to stay i ve said it before you can never get enough perspective on your story but with so much perspective how do you know who to listen to maybe you have a single person you trust maybe a handful but maybe not maybe you are left with the impossible task of finding clarity in multiple perspectives maybe you agree with some ideas and disagree with others maybe you don t know what to do with your story where to take it where it will end maybe you need to clear your mind because you can t clear your memory so you step back and let the story alone for a while but not too long after all you still want to achieve perfection at some point preserving story posted october 12 2006 filed under culture fiction identity storytelling comments 3 when you graduate high school people talk about leaving a legacy what kind of legacy i was never sure yet it s true when we leave part of us stays behind in chuck palahniuk s diar y the narrator says we re all of us immortal we couldn t die if we wanted to the novel is about how we create our stories in every action and how this is inescapable it s about how even after we die we remain alive in everything we did and about how we can t fully die because we ve left a mark jonathan harris is giving us the chance to leave our collective mark in the form of a digital time capsule his yahoo time capsule open now is accepting contributions through november 8 and already includes a vast amount of viewable content people contribute from all over the world hoping to capture the story of 2006 and preserve it for future generations generations have being leaving time capsules for a long while let s see did we bury ours in middle school or elementary faulty memory another reason we need records another reason to keep a diary i remember each student brought an item the item he thought represented him well and dumped it into a big black trash bag then we put it in the ground and covered it with dirt years later we dug it up looking back is more than nostalgic it lets us see who we were and gives us a clue as to who we are today it s different today we have technology harris s proposal you ll be part of history and witness what others are saying and saving you ll have your handiwork presented to smithsonian folkways recordings projected on one of the most famous relics on the planet and then beamed along a path of laser light into space how exciting each of us has the chance to contribute our story in any form image sound writing podcast url but what s really exciting is we can contribute to the collective story the story we are telling together the story that evolves with each individual if something a photograph or quote or whatever represents you it represents someone else too and it should be shared i have a few items in mind i d like to share and while this isn t the legacy they talked about in high school this legacy is far more important this legacy is much closer to the possibilty of leaving something that will actually matter and connect with someone else tell every story posted october 6 2006 filed under culture identity storytelling comments 2 we tell each other stories to relate much of the time though we think we can t do we all have basically the same experiences no that can t be or could it do the same thoughts rotate through each of our heads it s cool to think the answer could be yes but we don t act the same what about multiple realities if we all have the same experiences and we all think the same thoughts then are we the same person living out the same story in different realities a reality here will be defined as perspective my perspective is one reality your s another obviously i don t have the story our story figured out i lack and you lack but in some strange alignment we lack different pieces when pieces start to come together as they always do in ways i could never imagine it feels like we are getting somewhere finally some information is revealed yes information is usually revealed slowly but it should be at a basic level this keeps the audience interested on a deeper level information is hard to digest we can only take so much at any given time we need time to process things especially when new information contradicts previous information the story progresses and we evolve even at the most superfical levels of processing new information as long as new revealed clues find their way to our minds we can examine them examining never means automatic acceptance it simply means we are open to moving the story forward characters in turmoil posted september 28 2006 filed under film noir storytelling comments 2 i set out to know who put her in the spot who put her in front of the gun that was you angel brendan from brick to borrow the phrase you have to put your characters in front of the gun situations have to get dicey you gotta shake things up if you don t if you let your characters sit in their boring self complacency you should ask yourself what s the point why am i writing sometimes you write to explore a deep seated darkness some secret buried so deep in a character s soul that she could break at any moment some darkness she may not even realize is there it s like giving a character a dozen past lives and in each one she did something or experienced something that only burdens her more and more until she s in a turmoil that surrounds her i know that sounds harsh but when you re writing that character and her situations you should make it harsher you should make her bleed let her fall down let her make a mistake or maybe you take this route your character is basically good or at least not as dark as i painted her above this time the darkness comes from outside of her things happen to her that force her to deal force her to examine issues she d rather not force her to dig deep and become stronger for a prime example watch veronica mars or you could do both darkness flows out darkness flows in of course getting too heavy isn t always good yet characters need some darkness that pushes them they need their perfect worlds shattered into pieces so tiny they may not be able to pick them all up they need to be blindsided with turmoil with sadness with pain with because after you ve put them through hell they will emerge on the other side and they will emerge having found truth see from their eyes posted september 21 2006 filed under storytelling writing comments 2 on my cork board above my desk hangs a list of storytelling facets that i try to employ whenever i write soon i will remove this list and print a new one having added this reveal the world from the perspective of others if anyone struggles with length or depth maybe this could be a good bit of invention generally i m a writer of short stories and i mean short 7 pages might be the longest but that length i can t deny suited the story but when i think about creating a story now i try to think bigger and longer expansion expanding description details character actions character thoughts more now then maybe ever storytelling has become about letting the characters breathe letting scenes take on a life of their own thus if i put say four characters in a scene and something happens then i have four different perspectives to draw from one character may leave out details and another character may be able to fill in those details one may interpret the happening this way while another will interpret it that way soon a mystery is born and each character holds different clues a timeframe of the mystery is established by each of the four characters character one wilcot has the long version miranda has a shorter version that falls somewhere in the middle of wilcot s samantha s version might start just before wilcot s ends thus not including any of miranda s and zach s view overlaps miranda s somewhat but doesn t stray beyond wilcot s i ve learned if one wishes to maintain a good mystery one must develop and maintain characters relationships with the reader that is the character must never be so vague or general that the reader doesn t grasp his or her essence think of it this way to have a good mystery one must first ground the reader in something tangible set up a timeframe get characters talking about it through their own eyes and the mystery gets to be mysterious just the way i like it writing as passion posted september 14 2006 filed under character storytelling writing comments 2 i d rather just write maybe i don t know how to organize my time but the way i see it there isn t enough time to organize either way another semester has started and i m already in the thick of it and characters are left trapped on the page the red man is left in his red jumpsuit and red ball cap standing on his roof waving at jonathan as drives to work his car filling with worship songs i call this static motion another character s thoughts exist only in my head i m left with no choice but to plan my sleepless existence the girl i loved the girl who left me she showed up in my doorway in the middle of the night i saw her like you see yourself in the mirror she appeared to me as the ghost ima...