Monday, May 3, 2004

   Insomnia....whoo(!)
NOTE: You probably haven't read the post or two before this. I'd make sure, if I were you.

It's almost 2:00 in the morning, and I can't seem to sleep. I slept a good while this afternoon, which has probably lent itself to this predicament. But also, my chest still hurts whenever I try to position myself for sleep. I can't seem to get into a comfortable position without my chest being uncomfortable.

I think it's safe to say that the problem with my chest is a pulled muscle from coughing. It's not as bad as it was, but it's still a bothersome irritation. (Yay, redundancy)

I suppose I could take some Advil or something, but I don't like taking pain medication when I'm not really hurting all that badly. I save it for when I really need it, so I don't begin to develop an immunity to it. It seems unlikely that such a thing should happen, but my elder sister and her friends take medication all the time for various aches and pains and it is seldom very effective anymore.

Now, since I can't sleep anyways, I think I'll write something. Something with possible relevance or that would keep your attention.

I've been thinking about my book, When Humans are the Enemy. It's not published, nor has it been to an editor or anything. It simply exists. I started a sequel to it, but I'm unable to find it just now. I think some of it may have been lost when my old hard drive was lost to a virus. I have part of it (maybe even all of it) on a floppy disk somewhere, but I can't find the disk.

After reading the story over a couple of times, and having (maybe) lost some of the second story, I've come to think that I should start over. I don't really like the book, to be honest. There's far too many ideas adapted (taken) from books I had been reading at the time, and I put in too many characters that were totally unnecessary.

I was in eighth grade when I started, and I thought that it would be neat to have my friends in the book. Once I had gotten that idea, I extended it to include a few friends of my friends that I knew. Again, none of them particularly relevant. Some of the ideas I came up with, though, I do like. I like them a great deal and I want them to be used.

I started introducing friends from OB in the second book, too. It soon grew to be too much to try and balance. I had three different groups of characters (friends my age, younger friends, OB friends) with nothing really to tie them together except for the main character, who, to my dismay, wasn't fleshed out well at all. His name was Ben, and he didn't have a motive for a single thing he did. He simply did them. I asked myself later, Why? Why did he do those things? What was his motivation; what reason did he have for doing the things he did? The answer:

None.

There was no reason. None of the characters had reason for anything they did. It was totally...just...bad. :p

W.H.A.T.E. the RPG has done well as far as continuity and number of posts go, but there is little in the way of plot. It's been a lot of fighting and little crises so far. Nothing really defines its story yet. I've got to figure out what to do with it. Of course, the people posting in it are great. Solo, Raiha, Boba, and me. Terra was around for a while and her character did a lot, but she left some time ago. Yoda and Neoclone-7 were in at the beginning too, but they both left shortly after the story began. I simply shelved their characters and continued without them.

It's difficult with just four people working on it, particularly with no goal in mind as yet. I introduced a villain a little while ago, a sort of central point for antagonism. I hope that his appearance helps somehow.

Anyhow, back to the book. What I've thought about, and pretty much decided, to do is this: I'm going to scrap the original book and start over.

I'll use it as a basis, of course, as well as ideas fleshed out in the RPG. The first books and RPG I'll use as a sort of database; guidelines for the world of the story.

I'd like to get everything down in writing about this world I've thought of. I imagine things would be much easier if I had things down on paper instead of floating around in my head. A set list of plants, animals, different kinds of clones, etc. Maps would be convenient, too. Having some idea of where things are would be grand. Ah, there are just so many things that I would have to do; and I want to do it.

God willing, I will start the writing this summer. School and things during the school year provide far too many distractions and the wrong sort of outside influences. I will not be taking the names of my friends and inserting them into the story. I will not make the characters (easily) identifiable with my friends. I'm going to write a truly original story, gosh darnit, and it's going to rock.

Reminder: You may not have read the previous post. Check it out to be sure.

There's an old Arabic saying,

"Three things cannot hide: love, a mountain..."

"...and a man on a camel."
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