Ultrasound – 24 Weeks and 2 days

Today I went with my sister to see my niece Courtney Lee via ultrasound. We got some pretty awesome 3d renders of what she looks like. I uploaded them to my Flickr! page.

My New Apartment – aka. Why I have been scarce.

Hello World!

I have missed you all, oh so dearly.  Life struck me the last couple weeks and I have had to move into a new apartment, which I am loving very very much.  I was also pretty sick for a few days but my immune system is winning on that battlefront.  Finally, I’m back into the swing of things and into the normal routines.  So I can write write write again, and get back to the gym.  I’m very much looking forward to hitting the Backpacking Trails in the spring and that requires more endurance training.

I’m working on some GREAT story ideas right now, so look for at least one of those this week.  Also this post wouldn’t be complete without a video tour of the new pad…. 3 – 2 – 1 .. ACTION!

Harold and Hosokawa WIN!

That is right ladies and gents, victory has been achieved.  Hosokawa won on Saturday and Harold won Tuesday of this week.  I’m glad that people liked the stories, it’s the least I can do for the species…. I want to write Part 2 of Harold this weekend, but who knows if I’ll get to it.  Cheers mates!

Character Development Worksheet

For my Week 3 assignment in my Fiction class I was asked to answer some of the most basic questions about my protagonist.   ie.  What is their biggest character flaw? … I was floored.  I honestly could not list one flaw, I  had my idea of who this person was so  diluted, that it made them almost inhuman when in fact they are supposed to be very human.  No one is perfect, and I’m not writing a book about Jesus, so they need flaws.

It was a real eye opener for me that I need to invest more in my characters.  So where does one even start to get to know a person they made up?  It isn’t like you get to spend time with them and meet their family, it is all in your head.  I scoured the internet looking for character sheets, and they all list things that  make you see them as objects and don’t really ask the right “What is this person like?” types of questions.   I sought out some of the questions I felt would be more helpful, and I compiled them into this 12 page questionnaire – complete with box to sketch their portrait.  I’m going to try and use this as a tool to help me, and if you REALLY want to get down and dirty with who these people are in your Stories/Novels, than fill this out.

Download PDF of Character Development Worksheet

Happy Birthday to Me and updates about this and that.

As of about 5:53am this morning I turned 25 years old.  I think this is the first birthday where it just felt like a regular day.  Probably an indicator I’m getting ancient.  Next the memory goes and I will just … wait what was I doing here? … oh yea.

So I’m being challenged to write an Epic Poem in heroic verse using an iambic pentameter with 5 feet.  The kicker is that it needs to be 1000 to 2000 words which I find to be very intimidating but also EPIC should I complete one.

I used to scoff at poetry, mainly because all I was exposed  to were the ancient verses that made no sense and the useless rambles of the emotional self proclaimed poets of my teenage days.

example:

“… The knife cuts, oh so deep

My days blacken into night.

I can not even count the sheep,

Lord save me from my plight….”

Yea… whatever you say James err I mean “Dark Lord Con.”  Real poetry is very technical in nature.  That is the challenge of writing good poetry.  There is also the challenge of people not knowing how to read poetry and appreciating what you have done.  Now I’m rambling – better cut this off.

other notes:

My Week 2 Assignment in my Fiction class unfortunately had me writing a bit for my novel and I’m just not ready to show the world that yet.  So hopefully week 3 will yield something I can share.