Wednesday, February 4, 2004

In Utero

Bad Mitch, staying up until 1 AM writing, when you should've been doing your homework in those two-and-a-half hours.

But seriously, magic was happening then. I swear. I started yet another new piece (of the many I've started so far since I've stopped writing poems mostly to start writing stories) and I think it's turning out good. I wish I could post it here, heh. I really felt that it was good, and I was so lost in what I was writing too. I just wanted to sit there and write and write and write, but I had to go to sleep.

Shouldn't be too bad though. I'll be able to do my homework I have left at lunch.

Man, I don't like Chemistry. It's too...math-oriented for me. I'll get through it though. Significant figures, and how to add and subtract and multiply and divide scientifically is an evil little thing. Plus I've never been too keen to measuring things, or measurments. I'm pretty stupid in the math area, and it comes from back in grade school when I was lazy and I didn't give one thing about what we were learning and math. I remember guessing on answer after answer.

It's supposedly common knowledge to know at least some measurment conversions. Like how many feet are in a yard, and whatnot. Well, I don't. I'm stupid in this way. I just don't know how long a foot or feet is, or an inch is to begin with.

An inch is about as long as your thumb, isn't it? Isn't that how that form of measurment was first made? Who knows, and I don't think it's pertinent to what I'm trying to say.

So pretty much, when someone says something's six feet away...I have no clue how far away that distance is. When someone says there's three Liters in this cup, I don't have much of a clue of how big it is, unless I use a measuring device. And even then it means nothing to me. It just doesn't mean anything to me. Measuring something in a quantitative aspect that's precise as well as accurate just doesn't interest me. I don't think it interests many other people, either. Qualitative (meaning, it's not using numbers and is usually guessed. Something like checking someone's fever.) measurment I like better. At least it means something to you, since you can use it every day.

I can't believe I wanted to be a scientist when I was little. Then it was I wanted to be a genticist. Then now it's a writer. I even wanted to be an astrologist when I was little too. Now I realize that while I do like science, too many of the science implement math which is mostly beyond my comprehension. Especially physics stuff; that stuff looks quite ugly.

I like stuff like Darwin's Natural Selection, or his Origin of Species book. I like stuff that's intelligent but doesn't have numbers which mean nothing to me other than values. I like something I can feel; and numbers I can't feel, I can't really get any fun out of them, or any love. Numbers are just cold hard little bitches--cold hard facts.

Geometry has been so easy lately. I love it, and it's actually making sense. All we're doing is similiarity between triangles, and ratios as well as proportions. Easy stuff, and it makes sense. Proportions are the comparison of many things to one another...by numbers, of course, but it makes sense. Similarity, while sometimes I'm stumbling on it, it's easy.

The thing I hate about Geometry is proofs, though. I don't like being forced to think in math, especially math I don't understand well. Thinking in math for me hurts. It really hurts.

I'm just not a numbers guy. I'm a word guy, I'm a guy that likes fiction. I mean, after all, "the difference between reality and fiction? fiction has to be real."

I've never liked cold hard logic and cold hard facts. While they do matter to an extent, common sense, as they say, is much more useful. But you need both common sense and factual intelligence to be smart in some fahion. Common sense is genius dressed in a cordial tie and an urbane suit. Common sense is genius dressed in work clothes.

A lot of my grades seem to be falling. Especially Latin. I need to study that stuff. I need to learn those declensions. I'm so damn lazy, though. What can you do, I just want to read and write.

And that's what I'm doing. I've been popping open On Writing by Stephen King to random pages, just reading things to cheer me up and into a writing mood.

There's lots of funny, entertaining things in that book. The beginning of it has a small biography of his life, which is heavily interesting. Just seeing the big picture is great.

Stephen King's first book to ever be published was Carrie, of course. Most people should know this much about him, if you're not familiar with him.

Well, as the story goes, the way he got the idea for Carrie is story formation at its best. It was the combination of many ideas. He had read an article in a magazing about puberty making paranormal activty, telekinesis or something to it. And he identified that as a good story to write.

And also, there were these two girls, they were dead, that he'd known and were teased in school. One wore the same clothes every day, and so on.

So he wrote the first page, the one about Carrie White having her first ovulation, her first period. And he threw it away, he didn't like it. He didn't like what he'd wrote.

He actually was frustrated all along as he wrote the book to some point. The characters just weren't interesting to him. He thought he was doing a bad job writing.

He was wrong, obviously.

His wife took that first few pages out of the garbage, told Steve he needed to write it, and she knew something. She knew he could do it, and all Steve needed was the encouragement.

There's also many other helpful tips for me as a writer in that book. Don't overwhelm your writing with adverbs. Second Draft=First Draft-10%. Kill your beauties. Write and read a lot.

Lots of good advice. And some really funny stuff too.
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