Tag: music

Take me to Arabia

Recently, I’ve found myself nearly overwhelmed by the sudden urge to run away to the Middle East and go totally and irrevocably native.  It may pass, but I still want to go back there–really bad.

So I looked up BYU’s TESOL certification program, and figured I could apply in January, start fall of ’11, and be on my way to an Arabian adventure in ’12.

Or…I could bypass the whole certification thing altogether, but I’d probably get a crappier job.  Besides, the certification could lead to other things, like perhaps an actual stable day job.  Who knows?

Regardless, I should probably find some way to actually use my Arabic degree.  After all, why did I get it in the first place?  Better put it to use!

So why am I tripping out on Middle East stuff?  Interestingly enough, I think it has a lot to do with the current novel I’m writing, Worlds Away from Home. I started it in fall ’08, just after getting back from BYU’s 2008 Jordan study abroad program, and the influence is definitely very visible.

Sometimes it makes me cringe a little, though; the fictional culture is patterned after my understanding of and experiences with Arab culture, but…it’s very pseudo Arab, if that make sense.  Kind of like it looks Arab, but it feels more Western.  I don’t know–I guess what I’m saying is that it’s bad (or maybe I just think that because I’m in the middle of the rough draft, when everything I write is utter and absolute crap.  Blegh).

But the thing is, if I try to make the culture truly foreign, I’m worried it will be more of a barrier to the reader than a gateway.  In other words, it’s the classic science fiction problem of aliens: the more you succeed in making your aliens truly alien, the harder it is for the reader to understand or sympathize with them.

But then again, isn’t that why we read?  To be transported to different times and places, experience other people and cultures, and be exposed to new ideas?  To expand our minds and enrich our understanding?  If that’s the case, there’s got to be something good and healthy about immersing the reader in a totally foreign culture.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any easier.

Oh well.  I’m up for the challenge.  In the meantime, I’ll keep reading T. E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and continuously loop all my Arab pop.  Not familiar with Arabic music?  Here’s a really good one:

Track 5

(ps: I’d tell you who wrote/performs the song, but frankly I have no idea.  Unfortunately, copyright doesn’t really exist in the Middle East.  Oh well.  Enjoy!)

Beginnings and title woes

Today, I came off my writing break and started my next novel.  The makings of the first scene have been kicking around in my head for the past couple of days, but today I actually sat down and started it.  I’m not sure how strong of a beginning it is, but at least it’s a start.

I would have started yesterday, but I had a horrible time trying to format the file.  No matter how many times and ways I tried to fix the pagination in openoffice, whenever I reopened the file, it came out wrong.  Finally, I switched the file from .doc to .odt, and that did the trick.

Turns out, that may be for the best.  Because of the proliferation of Microsoft Word, everyone seems to use .doc or .docx, but there are several good reasons why ODF (Open Document Format) is better.  In fact, several international governments have made it a matter of public policy to make the switch.  After all the headaches .doc files have given me in openoffice, I certainly have.  We’ll see how that goes.

As for the novel, it really, really needs a new title.  The old one, Hero in Exile, just doesn’t work for me.  It’s too…cliche, in a generic, meaningless way.  Blegh.

And thus begins another search for a good title.  Do you have any ideas?  The story is about a boy raised by desert nomads in search of his true origins, whose world completely falls apart when he falls in love with a girl who wants him to stay.  I suppose it’s kind of a cross between The Jungle Book and Great Expectations…in spaaace!

Mainly, though, it’s about an upright, noble-hearted boy trying to come to terms with the moral corruption and decay of the world around him.  When he finds that corruption inside himself, it almost destroys him, but before the end…no, better not give it away.

I don’t know–I just know it needs a better title.  Any ideas?

Oh, and before I go to bed, you might find this interesting.  It’s an original arrangement of one of the most memorable songs from the Xenogears soundtrack.  It even has lyrics, written in the language of one of the races of the game.

Wow–talk about a super fan!  I wonder if any of my stories will ever inspire something as amazingly creative as this?  If so, it would be pretty cool–pretty dang cool.

Anyways, night.

Newsvomit

Alright, before I collapse from exhaustion and call it a night, here’s what’s up.

Today, I wrote more than 3k words in the revision of Bringing Stella Home (I’m going to change that title soon–I’ve got a new working title, but I don’t know what I think about it).  The whole time, though, it felt as if I was pulling teeth.  I was constantly distracted with one thing or another, and didn’t feel productive at all.  Blegh.

Tomorrow, all that momentum I built up today will probably start to kick in. Unfortunately, I’ve got so much other crap to do instead.  I’m flying out to Utah early Wednesday morning, so I’ve got to pack, do laundry, get a father’s blessing, finish as much schoolwork from Washington Seminar as possible (aka finish the portfolio)…the list keeps going.  It’s going to be a hectic day.

Anyways.  In unrelated news, Duke beat Butler by a measly two points.  The game was so epic even my parents watched it.  Somewhere in an alternate universe, Butler made the half-point shot as the clock ran out.  I’m thinking life must be a lot more exciting in that alternate universe.

In news unrelated to the unrelated news, I found something awesome on the internets last night: the end theme from Jurassic Park for the game gear!!  

Ah, the memories. The beautiful, 16-bit memories.

In other, somewhat related news (related to the writing, that is), I have a new working title for my novel: Mercenary Savior. What do you think? I kind of like it, but it feels like something is missing–something like Mercenary Savior to a ______, or Mercenary Savior in a _____ universe. I dunno.

My dear, trusted alpha readers, what do you think?

I <3 Lunasa

Lunasa is an Irish folk music band–one of the best that I know. If you haven’t heard of them, you should check them out.

I mean, at the very least, check out Kevin Crawford’s mad whistling:

Crazy!

Sometimes, when I wonder what I should do after I graduate, I get these starry eyed dreams of becoming a celtic rockstar–or, at the very least, a street musician. That would be kind of fun, sitting out in the open air, playing music to the world, waiting on the charity and generosity of strangers. I mean, at least for the first couple of hours, that would be fun–wouldn’t it?

Yeah, better stay in school. In the meantime, though, here is one of my own original pieces. Not anywhere near as awesome as Lunasa, but not too shabby either:

Street musician…maybe I should try it. Or maybe I should wait for the spring first…

Climax (thank you Ennio Morricone)

Just passed the major climax in the middle of Bringing Stella Home.  In a moment that I hope is as poignant to the reader as it was to me, I…well, let’s just say I’m glad I’m not my main character.

I hit the climax doing a 1,765 word sprint, with this song playing on repeat:

So awesome. I just hope that when I wake up from this daze, my writing doesn’t suck.

Next, gotta finish up the chapter, clean up the mess, give the denouement. After every emotionally poignant climax, I think it’s critical to have a good denouement to give those emotions their proper release and bring everything full circle, bring some proper closure. Best denouement of any story I know: the Throne Room from Star Wars IV:

The denouement for my story will not be nearly so triumphant. But then again, it’s not the final climax–there’s a lot more to come, a lot more pain and suffering for my main character to endure.

I’m 2/3rds of the way through this rewrite now. I hope I’m not being too melodramatic, or that the story sucks. They say it’s not enough to be good–to make it as a writer, you have to be brilliant. Does this story have that potential? Gosh, I hope it does. As it stands, though, it sure needs a lot of work.

But still–it’s been awesome writing it.

Battle scenes are HARD

I’m in the middle of revising a major battle scene right now.  This is supposed to be one of the more important climaxes of the book, adding a lot more tension and emotion as the novel approaches the main climax.

Let me just say, writing a good battle scene is tough.  The first version of this one…yeah, it sucked.  Hardcore sucked.  I’m cutting whole sections at a time–five hundred words, eight hundred words–and completely rewriting them from the ground up.  I’m not sad to see these sections go, either–they were BAD.

I think the most difficult thing is to keep the pacing up without confusing the reader.  For that reason, I reconceptualized most of the action here and made it simpler.  I also repeated several times the main point of tension–basically, will we get out of here before reinforcements come and kick our trash?  I hate it when a fight scene is so confusing that the tension just leaks out.  I don’t want that to happen here.

At the same time, I’m trying to filter everything through the viewpoint character.  Too often, I’ll read an action scene that’s just a blow-by-blow of the physical action.  That gets boring REALLY fast.  Without character, you have no stakes.  I want the stakes to be high from the very onset.

Still, it’s hard.  I don’t know if I’m succeeding yet.  I probably won’t until I distance myself from what I’ve written tonight and take a good, hard look at it.

Since I can’t do that until the third revision, I’m not going to worry about it.  Better to write it out now and move on than to try so hard to get everything perfect that I can’t see the story for the words.

On the plus side, I’ve been listening to a LOT of Star Wars battle music while writing this.  That’s always fun!

Busy busy AWESOME day

I had an awesome day today.  Totally awesome.  If every day this semester is like this one, I’ll be dead tired before Thanksgiving but so happy it won’t even matter.

It started at 7am.  Woke up, worked out, read a galley from Dragon Moon Press for Leading Edge while working out.  The book wasn’t that bad, either.

Showered, ate breakfast, read 1st Jacob chapter 1 in Arabic.  Great scripture study.  Read “The false gods we worship” by Spencer W. Kimball on the walk up to school.  Powerful.  President Kimball was a Prophet with a capital P.

Met with Dr. Bowen to discuss the TA job she wants to hire me for.  It’s going to be a LOT of fun!  I’ll be doing all kinds of interesting research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and making a sort of game / role play for the students in the class…and getting paid good money to do it.  Fun fun fun.

Classes were awesome.  I love my capstone.  Professor Christensen is a blast.  Talked about spatial voting and why political parties in America tend to be identical.  Made fun of Provo/Orem municipal elections.  Good times.

After classes, met with Professor Kramer to discuss the other TA job I’ll be working.  He was incredibly happy to have me on board.  Out of the hundreds of papers he read for PL SC 201 last year, he still remembered mine.  Holy cow.  I’m shocked.

Proceeded to run through a series of bureaucratic hoops to get all the paperwork filled out for both TA jobs.  I was so giddy about working I didn’t mind the hassle.  Dr. Bowen at one point said “What’s the other job paying you?  Eight something?  Well, we can do better than that!” Man, I’m going to earn so much money this semester.

Went home, cooked up some locally grown corn and spaghetti.  Mmm, corn on the cob!  Delicious.  Talked with my roommate Ben Crowder about all the stuff he’s done since graduating.  Dude, he is a renaissance man, through and through.  Awesome guy.

Leading edge was a total blast.  The editors threw a start-of-semester pizza party, and we had almost a dozen new people show up to read slush.  Plus, Peter was there–he’s always fun.  Talked about spaceballs and Big Bang theory (the movie), how Arrested Development is funnier than The Office, violence in fiction, crazy story ideas, and all kinds of stuff.  Good times.

So then, after finishing my homework, I was sitting in the library when I realized I only had an hour and a half before the library closed.  An hour and  a half, and I had not written a single word in my WIP that day.  In order to keep up with my self-imposed deadline, I needed to write 1.2k words.  1.2k words…in 1.5 hours.

I didn’t really think I could do it, but I decided what the hell and gave it a shot.  Turned off the music, avoided the email and twitter, and just focused on the work.

An hour and a half later, lo and behold! 1.2k words!  And just as I realized that, the HBLL closing music comes on…and it’s Dropkick Murphies!

Let me just say, there is no better way to end an awesome day than with some good outro music.  So let me end this post with tonight’s awesome outro music, courtesy the Harold B. Lee Library.

That’s the news and I AM OUTA HERE!

Holy crap! 5,373 words in one day

That’s right–5,373. And I was only going for 4k! How did this hapen?

Well, I was revising a couple of powerful, gripping scenes. The way I’d had them before, they worked okay, but when I followed the suggestions from the writing group, it made them ten times better. By midafternoon, I was hooked in my own book–I just wanted to keep writing.

The funny thing is that I never got hyperfocused while I did it. I would write a paragraph, check email, write a few more sentences, delete them, write a few more, cut to google images to do some research, get distracted, come back, etc. At the same time, it all seemed to pour out, so I must have been doing something right.

If only the rest of the book would go like this. Maybe it can! Bringing Stella Home is a lot more like a thriller than anything else I’ve written, so if there isn’t a hook on every page (or at least something to raise the stakes and keep the reader reading), I’m probably not doing it right. And if I’m hooked while writing it, chances are the reader will be hooked while reading it.

In totally unrelated news, check out this awesome Mega Man remix!

Ocremix does a Final Fantasy IV album!

ff4ocremixHey, check this out! Ocremix has just come out with a new album, this time for one of my favorite SNES games of all time, Final Fantasy IV!

For those of you unfamiliar with ocremix, it’s basically a web community with more than a thousand free mp3s of video game music arrangements and remixes. All the music from the classic games you grew up playing…it’s all there, reinterpreted in some awesome ways. The best part is that it’s all fan-made and free! I love it.

I was wondering when ocremix would come out with a Final Fantasy IV album. Nobuo Uematsu is one of the best video game composers, and Final Fantasy IV represents some of his best work. I still listen to the official soundtrack of the game fairly often. It’s good stuff.

When I downloaded the album, I was especially psyched to see that it features not one, not two, but three arrangements from my favorite remixer, bLiNd (aka Jordan Aguirre). Nice! He makes some awesome trance music, and his work on other video game titles is some of my favorite music on the ocremix site.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled about this new album. Awesome stuff! Now, all we need is a Final Fantasy VI album from ocremix–I wonder when that’s coming out?