Time

The past two days of work have been draining. Not simply because I've stayed almost an hour over my scheduled time both days, but also it's been crazy busy. It also doesn't help that yesterday I cut a near perfect circle into my thumb by trying to use our grommet thingy (that's a perfectly acceptable descriptive word). Do you know how often you use your thumb? Pretty much for everything. Writing, reading, using your phone/iPod, eating, picking things up. The list goes on and on. However, it did give me a great excuse to buy fancy band-aids.

Now, for the purpose of this post.

Y'know what's a crazy conception? Time. We talk about it every day. How it crawls, how it flies. How it cheats us, robs us, lies to us, gives us an extra hour, takes away an hour, adds up. The many things that 'time' does can grow to infinity.

Well, personally, I think time is useless.

Sure, it helps us organize our lives. You know what it also does? It drives us mad. Everything is done by a clock. How fast can you get something done? How quickly can you get from point a to point b? How swiftly can you perform a task before the time runs out? Runs out for what? What, exactly, are we chasing? What do we gain from constantly checking our watches, our phones, our computer clocks?

Now there are logical things people will combat for time's necessity. It helps us mark the sunrise, the sunset. The end of one day as it bleeds into another. When to do something, when to eat, when to sleep. When to work, when to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Who, exactly, set these standards of when the right 'time' is to get these things done? For the most part, we eat when we're hungry. We sleep when we're tried. We move when we're antsy. We breathe when our body says to. Time, this great villain of our lives, doesn't hold us as fast as we seem to think it does.

So why do we let it?

I'm asked why I love the country. Because there isn't as much of a mad dash for a clock to always be glanced at. The world moves and the wind rolls and there's a peaceful movement. A natural movement. I never feel frazzled or rushed when I'm in the middle of nowhere, lying on my back, gazing at the stars. Why is that?

Because for a few moments, I let time be forgotten, and I appreciate the beauty of true infinity.

Currently Writing: Genesis pitch
Currently Reading: Green by Ted Dekker
Currently Listening to: "We Three Kings" by Steven Curtis Chapman

Music

I write what I see in my head. One of the biggest things that inspires those images in my brain is music. Specifically, of the orchestra kind.

Have you ever heard of Thomas Bergersen? I've had my "listening to" music occasionally fall under his category. He's someone who works for the movie trailer music company called Two Steps From Hell. Recently, he released a solo album titled "Illusions". It's a phenomenal selection of music he's composed. You get a wide range of scores across this album and it's by far my favorite among my orchestral playlist.

There's a song on there called "Promise". I adore it. In that one song, I can fully visualize Agerius and Tilion and End Game and a million other things all related to my books. Music has the ability to, if we let it, convey emotions without the use of words. Especially within finely composed orchestral pieces. I know that the sweeping strings of an orchestra can bore some people. Naturally some genres of music don't cater to everyone. In fact, most genres are pretty selective for certain people.

But I think everyone should give this stuff a chance.

See, as a writer, I think the best way we can gain inspiration is when we're in the quiet moments. When music blasts into our ears and through our bodies and lifts us away from reality and to a different place. A place where only our minds can take us. And I think, in those moments, we can truly feel and see our story unfold and the world embedded in our hearts actually take form.

This might be nonsense to some people. But I think everyone can agree to one thing: music moves people. Whether with words or without them, music has this carnal ability to invoke feeling that sometimes words and pictures can't.

It's been an interesting week. I can only imagine what the coming months will bring. 10 books went to homes this past Sunday, 6 of which were complete strangers. I welcome the feedback, by the way. In case any of those strangers happened to look here.

Happy writing (and reading), everyone! Hopefully in the next day or so, I'll have a new fangled website up for End Game. That's exciting.

Currently Reading: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
Currently Writing: Kind of Unity. But not as much as I'd like.
Currently Listening to: "Beethoven's 5 Secrets" by The Piano Guys

Freaking Out for no Apparent Reason

I think I have a problem.

So I'm hammering away at my fifth book. I'm into the twelfth chapter and I think I'm under 25,000 words. That doesn't bode very well. In fact, I'm fairly certain that's not good at all.

Am I not describing stuff well? Or am I just moving so quickly that I forget that sometimes I need to slow down? I don't know what's rightly going on. I'm worried that this book is going to come out to be the shortest of all of them. I thought my fourth book was going to be the shortest and wasn't too concerned when it cracked over 81,000 words. But the last book in a series is supposed to be something profound.

Now, a first draft is by no means what's going off to publication. But I was expecting it to be substantially bigger than the fourth book. I actually thought it would hit over the 100,000 word mark, like my second and third books did. So what'll happen if it doesn't? What does that say?

So far writing the fifth book has been really interesting. Coming to the end of a story I imagine is among the strangest of feelings for a writer to reach. I don't really know though. See, since I've never written a stand alone novel, I don't know what it's like to reach the end. It will be so strange when I write "The End" after the last sentence of my series.

It's both a wonderful and terrifying experience.

It's a little concerning seeing my word count be so minuscule at the moment. Haha, I think my professor would laugh at me saying 25,000 words was minuscule. I'm sure for some people, 25,000 words is a years worth of writing, not two weeks. And somewhere in my brain, I know that if the book is around 30 chapters long, then that means that I'll probably be close to 70,000 words. And considering the fact that my first take at the final battle culminated to 10,000 words on it's own...

Eh, what the heck am I worrying about anyway? I don't even know. I think I just wanted to write so I could tell you what AWESOME song I'm listening to. Seriously. I downloaded it two days ago and I've already listened to it over 60 times. I think that's my current problem, haha.

Happy writing.

Currently Writing: Revelation (chapter twelve)
Currently Reading: Eldest by Christopher Paolini
Currently Listening to: "Idumea" by the Millikin University Choir