inspiration – One Thousand And One Parsecs

BOATLIFT

Should have posted this last Monday for the anniversary of 9/11, but better late than never.

I had the craziest idea today while taking a late-night walk around Provo. It’s for the new series that I’m working on, Sons of the Starfarers, and it’s going to take six or seven books to get there, but it’s going to be AWESOME. Unfortunately, I can’t say much about it because the first book isn’t out yet, but I think you guys are going to be wowed.

I still remember the moment when the final PAGE of Desert Stars came to me. I was driving back to Provo from the Salt Lake Airport (alone, fortunately), and when it popped into my head I must have screamed for five minutes straight. The way that Mira’s final observation wraps everything up–both the overarching story her own personal growth arc–it was just awesome.

Those moments of insight are rare, but when they happen, they illuminate everything. It’s as if the whole story is unfolded to you, so that you can see how everything that came before ties into everything that happens later. It also opens you up to the heart of the story itself, so that you can see what it’s all about. As a writer, I live for that kind of insight. It’s one of the most powerful things that makes the whole endeavor worthwhile.

So yeah, Sons of the Starfarers is coming along nicely. The first book, Brothers in Exile, should be out May 10th, with the next two coming out six weeks apart from each other. That’s the plan, anyway. For updates on when those books come out, you can either follow my blog or sign up for my email list. I’ll post a few excerpts in the lead up before and after Brothers in Exile is published.

For April, though, I’ll be participating in the Blogging from A to Z challenge. Every day except Sundays, I’ll have a post for a different letter of the alphabet, all following a common theme. Last year, I blogged about the science fiction genre and some of my favorite tropes. This year, I’ll be blogging about my experience as an indie writer and what I’ve learned from it over the past three years.

I’ve already written and scheduled the first couple of posts: A is for Algorithm and B is for Book Blurb. Beyond that, I’ll be doing stuff like D is for Discoverability, P is for Pricing, S is for Serials, etc. Whether you’re a writer from one of the indie author communities I’m a part of, or a fan who discovered this blog after reading one of my books, I hope you’ll find this behind-the-scenes series of blog posts interesting. I can already tell I’m going to have a lot of fun with it!

That’s just about it for now. This week, I hope to finish up Book II: Comrades in Hope and get ready to dig into Book III: Strangers in Flight. The stuff in that third book is going to set the stage for some major wow moments later on in the series, and I can hardly wait to dive into it!

Decisions suck, writing is awesome

Whew! I just finished revising through almost 9k words in Desert Stars. I’ve only got three more chapters and an epilogue to go, and man, I am so excited about this story! I have no doubt it’s my best work yet.

Of course, I might be biased. 😉

Star Wanderers is also coming along very well. I’ve only got a few more scenes to write/revise before it’s ready to send off to the next round of first readers. Part of me wants to send it off to Writers of the Future right now (and according to Dean’s sage advice, that’s probably what I should do), but I want to get some feedback first just to make sure there isn’t something I’ve missed that would make it better. If all goes well, I’ll probably send it off by the end of the month.

This is the best part of writing process: finishing up a project that you know is good. This is one reason why I love rewriting so much. If I could do this all day, every day, and get paid enough for my work to make ends meet, I’d be living the dream.

Until then, however, I’ve got to figure out another way to make ends meet. One option I’m considering very seriously is selling my contract and driving across the country this Thanksgiving to spend a month or two with my parents before going overseas. My mom was the one who suggested it, and I have to admit it makes a lot of sense; if I’m going to go abroad to teach English anyways, why not spend some time back home?

If this is something I need to do, I’m going to have to make the decision very soon, possibly before the end of next week–and if you know me, you know that I’m terrible at making decisions. However, I have been thinking about it enough to make a couple of lists, and this is what I’ve come up with so far:

Reasons to go to abroad:

To start a new career.
To have adventures.
To experience another culture.
To gain TEFL experience.
To support myself as I write.
To have a change.
To see the world.
To have something to write about.

Reasons to stay in Utah:

To get married.
To focus on writing.
To pursue a graduate degree.
To stay in a predominantly Mormon community.

I decided to list only the positive reasons for making either decision, and not to consider any of the creeping doubts or fears (and there are many!). So let’s break it down:

To start a new career: This seems prudent, especially if it takes a while for my books to really take off. Specifically, a TEFL career seems like something I could juggle with my writing career, and it would certainly offer a lot more satisfaction than a grunt day job.

To have adventures: Perhaps not the most responsible reason, but hey, you’ve got to remember to have fun.

To experience another culture: One of the perks of traveling, for sure. It would probably improve my writing considerably as well, though culture shock and distance from family would certainly pose a challenge.

To gain TEFL experience: In other words, to find out if teaching English as a foreign language is something I want to build a career around, or whether I’m just not suited for it. This is why I’d want to do the TLG program first, before heading off somewhere like Cairo or Amman. And if it doesn’t work out…well, at least I’d know. Right now, I don’t.

To support myself as I write: This is huge. I hear that most TEFL jobs only take up about 20 hours per week, and that if you’re living in a local apartment, it’s not hard to make time to write. In the past two years, I haven’t had any success balancing writing with full-time work, and working part time probably wouldn’t earn me enough to support myself here in the states.

To have a change: Not quite as tangible a reason, but important nonetheless. I can’t quite explain it, but if I stay where I am now, in my current life situation…it’s just not going to work out.

To see the world: I could probably lump this under “to have adventures.”

To have something to write about: Also huge. My experiences in Jordan and the Middle East were a huge inspiration for Desert Stars, and if I’d never gone over there, the novel wouldn’t be nearly as rich. Who knows what else my imagination would produce if I spent some time traveling the world?

Now, for the other side:

To get married: Honestly, this is more of a negative reason than a positive reason. I’ve already decided that I’m only going to marry someone who’s a practicing Mormon, and since Utah is predominantly Mormon, I’m worried that if I leave Utah, I won’t be able to find someone.

Trouble is…I’ve been here for almost six years, and still haven’t found anyone. I could probably put more effort into dating, but the truth is probably that finding a marriage partner is more about your mindset than where you physically live.

Besides, I could always spend a year or two abroad and come back. I’d be pushing thirty and well beyond “menace to society” status, but at least I wouldn’t be a loser who spent all his twenties in Utah.

To focus on writing: This was why I decided last year not to go teach English in Korea. The ebook revolution was just getting started, and I felt that I needed to stay in the states to learn how the market was changing and focus on building my indie writing career.

Now, however, I feel like I’m high enough on the learning curve that I can afford to work on other things. Besides, with the current state of the economy, I don’t think I’m going to find balance if I stay in the states.

To pursue a graduate degree: I’ve largely ruled this one out. I don’t see how an English degree would help me at this point, and I don’t currently have any career aspirations that would justify pursuing an advanced degree. The only reason I’d go back to school is to postpone facing the real world, and that’s probably the worst reason I could possibly have.

To stay in a predominantly Mormon community: Kind of the opposite of “see the world” and “experience another culture,” and it gets at the very heart of the matter. Would it be better to establish myself among people who are more like me and share my values, or should I venture out of the “bubble” and see what else is out there? I have a much stronger support group here in Utah than I’d probably have as a global nomad, but do I really need it? Am I independent enough to strike out and bloom wherever I’m planted?

I don’t know. My thinking is so muddled with doubts and second thoughts that this whole exercise has probably been futile. If I had to make a decision RIGHT THIS SECOND, however, I’d probably choose to go.

If nothing else, it would give me a good two months of writing time. 🙂

Fighting for a Homeland

For the past few weeks, I’ve been brainstorming ideas for my next big novel project. One of the ways I’ve been doing this is to by trawling tvtropes and putting together a mashup of the story tropes I’d like to play with.

By far, the one that’s struck me the most is Fighting for a Homeland. This is basically when a band of displaced warriors is wandering the Earth, trying to find their own promised land. There are a lot of examples of this on the tropes page, but the coolest one is probably this from real life:

The first Czech legion, after World War one. Their country was then merely a province of Austria-Hungary, who started the war and teamed up with the Germans. The Czechs had very little reason to fight for them, and surrendered to the opposing Russians whenever they could. Through a lot of political scheming, the Russians were convinced to raise a Czech legion of 60,000 men to fight against the Austrians.

Then the Revolution broke out, and with the peace treaty between Russia and Austria, and the vicious warfare and politicking in Russia, they would not get their goal, an independent Czechia, so they turned to the western allies. They could not leave the country through the western side, so the allies chose to rendezvous with them in the port of Vladivostok, on the other side of Russia.

They crossed the country in three years, using the railways that they hijacked, joined with the Russian White Army (anti-communists) and the allies, stole the Tsar’s gold, traded it for free passage to Vladivostok with the advancing reds when they lost, and safely sailed home, to the newly founded country of Czechoslovakia.

Isn’t that friggin awesome? What’s even cooler is that I might have ancestors who fought in the legion. My great grandfather emmigrated from Moravia right around that time, perhaps a little before. Man, if I ever write a historical novel…

But yeah, the trope almost perfectly characterizes Danica and her band of mercenaries, who feature prominently in Bringing Stella Home. Their homeworld, Tajjur V, was fighting for independence right before the Hameji conquests began, and the New Gaian Empire put down the rebellion rather forcibly. Later, when the system fell to the Hameji, their homeworld was bombarded and slagged into oblivion, leaving them with nowhere to call their own.

Long story short, the story of the Czech Legions and their epic journey across Siberia has totally inspired me for this next novel. I’m going to make Roman (Danica’s NCO) a major viewpoint character, bring back the old mercenary team, throw in a few new ones (including a character from Desert Stars)…man, it’s going to be AWESOME!

In other news, “Decision LZ1527” and “From the Ice Incarnate” are both available for free from Diesel Ebooks. Genesis Earth is also up there too, so if you feel inclined to post a review, I would certainly appreciate it!

Also, if you REALLY want to help, drop by the Amazon pages for “Decision LZ1527” and “From the Ice Incarnate” and fill out the little form where it says “tell us about a lower price.” I’m trying to get Amazon to offer my short stories for free, but the only way to do that is to make it free somewhere else and get Amazon to price match.

Hopefully, by making them free it will get me more exposure and drive more interest in the novels. Moses Siregar did a guest post on that just this morning.

Also, I think I’ve found a new template that might work well for this blog. What do you think? Obviously, I would tweak the background and header (and possibly the color scheme as well). The main thing is that it has multiple sidebars, which will make more room for my books. But if you have a better suggestion, please let me know.

Story Notebook #5 (part 1)

Alright, time to revisit my old story notebooks and run through some of the ideas there. This one starts in fall of 2009, my last semester at BYU, and ends shortly after my hasty exodus from a miserable internship in Washington DC.

And now, without further ado, here goes:

A super-celibate society that holds that sex is evil and reproduces entirely by artificial insemination.

In other words, what if the Shakers had had our modern reproductive technology? Weird, but not beyond the realm of plausibility.

I suppose that in such a society, the nuclear family would not exist, and children would instead be raised by the community as a whole–kind of like Plato’s Republic. Question is, would this be a happy utopia, or a miserable dystopia? I know how I’d write it…

Shattered glass sparkling in the roadside desert

Okay, that’s less of an idea and more of an experiment with prose. I suppose I saw broken glass on some dusty asphalt and wanted to capture it with words.

The next passage is from an assignment for the wilderness writing class at BYU. We went camping in Moab and hiked up to Delicate Arch, perhaps the most iconic natural landform in all of Utah. Shortly after taking this picture, here is more or less what I wrote:

They say that the arches in this national park are formed by wind erosion. The funny thing is, so is the slickrock. The same wind that carved the gravity defying structure of the arches also wore the rock all around them almost perfectly smooth, so smooth that you feel as if you’re about to slip and fall even as you sit on the edge of a relatively flat ledge.

It makes you wonder: what was here before the wind blew it away? What did the land look like before the wind took out the loose material, leaving behind only the strongest, most resilient bedrock? How many other arches lie underneath our feet, waiting only for time and the wind to unearth the landscape that hides them?

Awesome class; if you ever get a chance, take it. Professor Bennion is great.

A boy born without a name.

Not sure where that came from, but it kind of makes me think of this girl in an abusive household, who grew up to age 14 before learning how to speak. It seriously crippled her intellectual development, so much that she never became fully independent.

Think about it: how would not having a name stunt a person’s growth?

Below them lay the alluvial plains–miles of silt and dirt vomited from the mountains over the passing of countless centuries.

I think I intended this to be a line in the first chapter of Worlds Away from Home…and unless I’m mistaken, something very similar to this passage made it into the book.

The detritus of life from which we extract the fossil record of our memories

Another passage meant to evoke something in the reader. I think I wrote it when I was cleaning out my apartment shortly before leaving for DC. It certainly makes me think of a dirty, junk-filled room.

And that’s enough for now. This basically takes us up to January 2010, when I left for the BYU Washington Seminar program. All the other ideas in this notebook have a decidedly civic/political bent to them, so stay tuned!

Getting back into things

So yesterday, I wrote through 4k words in WAFH 2.0 without even realizing it. I didn’t feel very productive, because I only did about 500 words at a time before something came up and I got distracted, but by the end of the day, ended up accomplishing a lot. That was a pleasant surprise.

In terms of my writing, I’ve been really out of things since Thanksgiving. I finished Genesis Earth 5.0 right before the vacation and started outlining WAFH 2.0 immediately after, but…man, the rough draft REALLY sucks. Like, sucks so bad I’ll have to completely throw out part III and start from scratch.

Fortunately, I think I’ve got a good idea what to do. I’ve outlined about eighteen complete plots and subplots, so that’ll probably help out with keeping things tight. The rough draft has a lot of shotgun writing, which means I have a lot of stuff to cut out–and now that I see where things are going, I know how to cut it.

One thing that worries me, however, is that I don’t have a strong driving reason to write this book–or maybe I do, but I just haven’t noticed it yet. I’m hoping that’s the case, but I don’t yet know, and it’s really bugging me.

For Genesis Earth, it was the first line (“Earth was a ghost that haunted me”) and the cryo scene. For Mercenary Savior, it was the ending, and the way it resonated with an old Western I saw as a kid. With both projects, I got to a point of desperation somewhere between the first and second drafts where I wanted to throw everything out and never work on it again–but with both projects, that driving reason kept me going until I made it work.

With WAFH, however, I’m not sure what it is that’s driving me to write it. For now, though, I’ll just press through until I find out. I really hope I’m not just wasting my time writing this (because the rough draft sucks REALLY bad) but past experience has told me to ignore my own self-doubts at this phase.

Which reminds me: this week’s Writing Excuses podcast is really amazing. I just listened to it an hour or two ago, and the advice this time around was exactly what I needed to hear. Brandon’s advice in particular is very good: he basically says to stop worrying and enjoy what you’re doing.

So do I enjoy all of this? In spite of all the angst I’ve spilled, I think I can say that I do. When you’ve got a good story, and you know that it’s good, and you tell it in a way that moves someone else in a personally meaningful way–man, there’s nothing that compares to that. I look back now on stuff I used to think was absolute drivel, and I’m amazed. It takes persistence and drive and a little bit of crazy, but once you can get to that point, it makes everything you did to get there worth it.

The only thing now is to find out why WAFH is worth writing, and to hang onto those reasons at all costs until the story comes into its own. Wish me luck!

What have you learned from reading science fiction?

While trolling around the new Facebook questions app, I came across this interesting question. Unable to resist, I spent the next hour crafting my answer.

This is what I wrote:

Gosh, what HAVEN’T I learned from science fiction?

Because of science fiction, I do not fear the alien. I do not feel threatened by people of different places or cultures, but take great interest in learning from them. I look at them and love them, because I can see myself in them.

Because of science fiction, I can look out at the vast expanse of the universe and not despair because of my insignificance. I know my place within it, and can appreciate the wonders and endless possibilities all around me.

Because of science fiction, I can look at the world and know which questions to ask. I can see through the lies that society constantly feeds me, and know how to fight against them.

Because of science fiction, I can look to the future with hope. Having seen the best and the worst of all possible worlds, I know which paths to avoid and which paths to follow. With this knowledge I can inspire my fellow men, because I know that nothing is inevitable.

Because of science fiction, I have a deep and endearing love for the world in which I live. I know better what it means to be human, and knowing this helps me to take no human life for granted. I have a greater capacity to love those around me, and that is the most important thing of all.

Science fiction has enriched my life beyond measure. By constantly stretching the bounds of my imagination, science fiction has led me to more truth than any other literary genre–and not only led me to that truth, but helped me to incorporate it into all that I do. So long as I live, I will always be a reader and a writer of science fiction.

Answering this question reminded me of my interview with Shayne Bell a couple weeks ago. In it, he talked about how rich and vibrant science fiction is as a literary genre, and how it deeply impacted his own life. Listening to him speak, I couldn’t help but feel that I was in the presence of a great man.

I don’t think he’d be comfortable with me posting the full audio of that interview, but many of his comments will appear in the article I’m putting together for the December issue of Mormon Artist. Between working full time and trying to finish the fourth draft of Mercenary Savior in time for World Fantasy, I haven’t had much time to work on it, but it’s going to be awesome.

What have YOU learned from science fiction? How has it enriched your life?

Crunch time

Sixty six percent! I’ve officially passed the two thirds mark in the fourth revision for Mercenary Savior–and not a moment too soon. With only a week and a half until World Fantasy 2010, it’s crunch time. I’ll probably quit my temp job a week early in order to devote the last few days of the month to finishing it.

As I’ve been working on Mercenary Savior, though, a fascinating idea for a sequel has been stewing in my head. It was sparked by an online conversation with one of my first readers:

Reader: I was never fully convinced that James felt he had closure
Me: I see
Reader: but I was satisfied with the thought that he would get it sometime after the story ends
he’s still young, so he’s still maturing
even at the close of the novel
Me: yeah
hmm
interesting

It’s true; James does have a lot of room to grow and mature after the events of Mercenary Savior. In that book, his character growth arc (without giving away spoilers) is about him learning to accept change and stop running from adulthood.

Nothing in that arc has much to do with the kind of person James grows up to be, however, or the significant other with whom he comes to share his life. In other words, there’s a whole lot of untapped potential for building James’s character and giving him a romantic interest.

The question that immediately rose to my mind was: what’s the story?

Now when it comes to sequels, I think the best ones take a long, hard look at the first installment and answer the question: therefore, what? Thus, in Star Wars IV, V, and VI (which I believe to be one of the best examples of a trilogy in any medium), the Rebels defeat the first Death Star in episode IV, but find themselves on the run in episode V because the Empire knows the location of their base. Luke uses the force to pull off a last-minute victory in episode IV, but finds in episode V that becoming a true Jedi takes a lot more discipline and self-mastery than he thought.

So I applied that principle to my own work and came up with the following overarching conflict: the Hameji occupation of Karduna is devastating the people of the Colony to the point where they collectively decide to depart en masse and establish a new community somewhere else. It’s a logical conclusion taken from the ending of Mercenary Savior; the people are well enough off to survive, but too poor and oppressed to do much of anything else.

You may not know this, but the first story I wanted to set in this fictional universe was about a group of starfaring pioneers traveling into the heart of a nebula to escape religious persecution and establish a thriving community on the fringes of settled space. That’s right–I basically wanted to set the Mormon pioneer exodus in space.

For various unrelated reasons, that never worked out, but the desire has always been there in the back of my mind. What can I say–I think that pioneers are cool, and stories about colonizing unsettled new lands just fascinate me. I’ll probably write a massive Utah pioneer epic someday.

But anyways, I started playing around with this old idea to see whether I could recycle it. Right now, I think that I can. The idea is that James becomes the leader for one of these emigrant groups, and has to see them safely through to a young planet in the heart of this nebula. They decide to fly into the nebula in order to isolate themselves from the Hameji, since the FTL tech in my universe doesn’t work within a Nebula.

And then something really crazy happened. This scene popped into my head, stronger than any other idea I’d had so far. I imagined that a group of pirates had captured the expedition and refused to let them go unless they gave the pirates three young women to keep as slaves.

Pretty standard conflict, right? But then, I thought: what if three young women of their own free will stepped forward and offered to sacrifice themselves to save the others? What would James do then?

Well, it wasn’t hard to figure that out at all. James would never let them go. He’d fight the pirates, even if it meant risking all the lives of those he’s trying to protect.

This raises some interesting questions of morality. Is it right to risk the lives of everyone in the community when three individuals have already offered to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole? Is it right to deny someone the opportunity to give their own life to save others? Or is James just being stubborn and reckless?

At a first glance, that’s the way it looks. But then I imagined what James would say to justify himself. After what he learns from the events of Mercenary Savior, James would argue that the community needs to stick together–that in order for the whole to survive, everyone has to know with absolute certainty that no-one will be left behind. Once the leader shows that he’s willing to sign his followers over, how can any of them trust him with their lives? Under such conditions, trust breaks down and the community falls apart.

From that, a whole host of other ideas started gradually coming to mind. How does this event tie into James’s romantic interest? Does it tie in at all? What would the people’s reaction be to this decision? Coming from the background of the Colony, would they want to put the issue to a vote instead? Is it ever right to suspend democracy when facing a crisis, and if so, under what conditions?

So anyway, I won’t tell you what I have in mind, but I have a lot of really interesting ideas. It’s gotten to the point, in fact, that I may just write the sequel after I get back from World Fantasy.

In closing, let me leave with this excellent track from one of ocremix’s latest albums, a rearrangement of Donkey Kong Country 2. Believe it or not, this song could be the main theme of this novel. Listen to it and I think you’ll see why.

Good night!

Worlds of our own choosing

Note: All material in this post is under full copyright. Do not use without permission.

About a month ago, I was walking out of the plasma center when inspiration smacked me square in the face. Two character voices, both of which I’d never heard before, started having the most fascinating argument.

Knowing that I would immediately forget everything if I didn’t stop and record it RIGHT THAT MOMENT, I pulled out my story notebook, sat down next to my bike, and started writing. This is more or less what I jotted down:

1st voice: All of us live in the world of our own choosing.

2nd voice: What are you talking about?

1st: I mean that all of us choose the world we live in. All of us live in a world of our own construction.

2nd: That’s crazy.

1st: Yes, but it’s true.

2nd: It can’t be. How can it be?

1st: Because that’s who we are. It’s what we do. We create worlds–if we didn’t, we wouldn’t be human.

2nd: Now you’re just being crazy.

1st: In the world you choose to live in, yes, I’m crazy.

2nd: Look, that can’t be true. We all live in the same world. We see the same things, not different things. I can’t just choose to look out the window and see a red sky, can I?

1st: No, but you can choose whether or not the day is beautiful to you.

2nd: Yeah, okay, but the sky is the same color for all of us, isn’t it? It’s still the same sky. I can’t live in a world without a sky, can I?

1st: Actually, most people never look up to see it. They live in a world where the sky over their heads is irrelevant–as if it didn’t exist.

2nd: Yeah, but look, if we were to take the same exact thing–say, a rock–and look at it under a microscope, we’d see the same elements, wouldn’t we? The molecules and atoms are all the same, right?

1st: Of course.

2nd: Right! So that means we live in the same world, not different worlds. Everything is the same.

1st: My friend, you don’t understand. A world is so much more than the sum of its atoms. Those are just the building blocks–the true essence lies in how they’re put together. It lies in the story we tell ourselves to explain it all. You see a rock and think, “huh, just another rock.” It doesn’t fit into your story–into your world–except as another set piece. A boy, however, would see the perfect, skipping stone; a geologist would see a remnant from the age of the dinosaur. A pilgrim to Mecca would see the rock with which he will smite Shaitan. Different worlds, my friend–their worlds are all very different from yours.

2nd: Okay, maybe that’s true. We attach different meaning to things–I can accept that–but that doesn’t mean that we live in separate worlds.

1st: On the contrary, my friend. You’re presuming that cold, objective reality is more important to us than subjective truth, and that’s obviously false, because none of us–absolutely none of us–can absorb objective reality without fitting it into some kind of story. We cannot observe anything objectively, for in the very act of observation, we attach meaning to what we see, just to make sense of it.

2nd: Yes, but–

1st: This is what it means to be human. We take pieces of the reality we observe and make up stories to explain it. We all tell ourselves thousands of stories every day, simply through the act of living. It comes so natural that most of the time, we barely notice it.

2nd: Whatever.

1st: The tragedy, my friend, is that most of us don’t realize that we choose the world we live in. We make critical choices every day and aren’t even aware of most of them. We each have the capability to change our world by changing the way we see it, yet most of us never realize it. We go on living in a world that makes us miserable, looking for some outside force to change it, when really, change is no further than our mind.

2nd: That makes no sense.

1st: Only because you refuse to open your eyes and see it.

2nd: Yeah–because what you’re saying is impossible.

1st: Exactly! That’s exactly what I’m talking about!

2nd: What?

1st: I’m talking about the impossible–the things that, in your world, could never happen. But what if they’re only impossible because you refuse to believe in them? Because they have no place in the carefully ordered reality you’ve constructed for yourself?

2nd: I–

1st: My friend, if only you can let go of the comfortable delusion of certainty and take one step into the darkness, you’ll soon find entire worlds of possibilities opening up to your view. All you need to do is open your mind and take that terrifying first step.

There you have it. A little rough, certainly, but that’s not important–what matters are the ideas behind it all. And to me at least, the ideas are quite fascinating.

I tried to use some of these ideas in Worlds Away from Home, but I don’t think any of them came across very clearly. I probably have to let the story stew a bit in my mind in order to figure out what it’s really about. Maybe I’ll insert a slightly edited version of this dialog in there somewhere, but I won’t force it.

In the meantime, what do you think? Did any of this resonate with you, or does it sound like so much philosophical hogwash? Tell me–I want to know!

Tag: inspiration

Happy Easter!