Trey picked a winner in his Jambalaya challenge. My entry didn’t win, but I did get the Under-the-Wire Award. I managed to get it to Trey with less then two hours before the deadline.
Congratulations to the winner, Jon, and to the other participants, Melanie, Pam, Rabe, and Gail.
I know I’ve said it before, but I had a blast doing this contest. I hope Trey decides to do it again in the future.
I’ve always been facinated with stories involving false or questionable memories. Movies like Total Recall and Memento used memory as a critical element of their story lines. That’s why I found this article on CNN.com so interesting.
Researchers found that planting false memories, in this case hugging Bugs Bunny on a vacation to Disneyland, was much easier than expected.
More than a third of subjects in the study recalled that theme-park moment — impossible because Bugs is not a Disney character — after a researcher planted the false memory.
The report goes on to say how easy it can be to plant false memories in a subject. Using tactile senses such as touch, taste, sound and smell are the key. Aside from the facinating stories that can come from this are the real life implications. For years police departments have been scandalized about false confessions. Could it be that in some cases the interviewer unwittingly planted a false memory in a suspect? No one knows for sure, but the possibilities are a little frightening
As I’ve mentioned before, I decided to take Trey’s latest writing challenge, Jambalaya. The concept was a simple: write a story no more than 756 words that includes shredded money, chocolate with large teeth marks, and some kind of connection between the Amish and Chinese Jambalaya.
I’m happy to say that I finished the challenge and just in the nick of time, too. I emailed my story to Trey less than an hour ago, barely two hours before the deadline. I wouldn’t call it my finest piece, but it was definitely an interesting exercise. I found myself more than three hundred words over the limit and had to do some chopping. My previous stories have been more sparse, and I’ve had to go back and fill in the gaps.
It’s short and rough, but since it’s not something I intend to try publishing, I’ve posted it here for whoever wants to read it.
Continue reading
This has been a strange winter in the midwest. Summer seemed to persist into November, compressing fall into but a month. Snow arrived just in time for Christmas, and then melted away soon after. January has come and gone with nary a whisper. February is here now, and there are only traces of snow left on the ground – minor pockets of ice and snow that hide in the shadows from the suns warm wrath.
I wish mother nature would make up her mind and pick a season.
I finally succumb to the cold I was fighting last week. The past fourty-eight hours have been full of fever-filled dreams and the smell of strawberry cough drops. I’m still not over the cold yet, but still feeling the effects. Focusing my eyes is an effort and I have a tendency to drift off and stare into space. It was especially interesting when my ears popped and the room spun. Luckily I managed to stay on my feet, else I would have been picking glass shards out of my flesh. The only thing that really helped me was taking supplements after I read these proven pills reviews and purchased them.
I think I’ll have to go into work tomorrow, sick or not. Too many things to do and not enough people to do them. At least the worst of this cold is over. I hope. I’ll be happy to have this behind me and have some energy back. I can’t stress enough how badly I want to finish this story I’m working on. “Temperament” has taken a lot longer than I had wanted. Once I have my schedule ironed out I should be in better shape.
I’m also working on Trey’s Jambalaya challenge – a 756 word story including shredded money, chocolate with large tooth marks, and some kind of connection between the Amish and Chinese jambalaya. It’s a fun little challenge that stretches the imagination. I hope he continues with the challenges.
Routines are good, especially when it comes to writing. Establishing a schedule was difficult at first, but eventually I got into the routine of writing at lunch, five days a week. A good start, but that’s just what it was, a start.
To continue the positive pattern, I’ve decided to build on the routine. I’m setting the alarm and waking up early every morning. I’m starting at six o’clock, and I’ll start at five next week. That way, I’ll have roughly ninety minutes in the morning to write every day, and another fourty-five minutes at lunch. With that, I should be able to finish a short story in under two months, like it seems to be taking me at the current pace.
Several months ago we went to the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. The center is home to a large collection of works by several British authors including C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.
I just found the pictures I took, and I’ve posted them in the gallery.
Admission was free. Naturally, all of these authors works are all protected because of their age-induced fragility. They still have quite the display of literary works, including the writing desks of Lewis and Tolkien, the wardrobe that inspired “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” as was as various personal effects of each author. It was a fun way to spend an afternoon.
I’ve long been a fan of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, so it was a special treat to see the wardrobe, the original map of Narnia, as well as a letter he wrote to a class of fifth grade children. I even ended up buying a nice lithograph of Aslan the lion to hang in my library.
Clarion is one of the most widely known and respected writing workshops in the country. Each year, they accept a handful of writers for six weeks of intense work. Someone once said that the “six weeks of Clarion are the literary equivalent of boot camp.” I would believe it, judging by the comments I’ve heard from members of the group
The process is fairly straightforward. Send in an application with two complete short stories by April 1st, 2003. If accepted, there is a $100 enrollment fee to hold your spot, and the balance of the $1059 fee due upon arrival to Clarion. One nice thing is that this counts as four undergraduate credits from MSU.
Sounds easy so far, right? I think so. The actual difficulty, aside from actually being accepted, is getting out of work for six weeks and keeping my job. At the stage we are at, where I’m one half of our entire development team and we each have a seperate and distinct skillset, being unavailable for that long is nearly impossible.
Perhaps going this year is infeasible. Even with six months advanced warning, I’m not sure I could pull it off. Still, I wonder if I should apply to Clarion anyways and deal with the time issue if I actually get accepted.
An American scholar, Michael Drout, was researching Anglo-Saxon scholarship and asked to see a copy of Tolkien’s lecture on Beowulf given in 1936. In the box of materials he was brought he discovered four bound volumes at the bottom of the box.
“I started looking through, and realised I had found an entire book of material that had never seen the light of day. As I turned the page, there was Tolkien’s fingerprint in a smudge of ink.”
During the summer of 2003, Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, which is thought to have inspired the Lord of the Rings, will be published, along with the his line-by-line interpretation of it’s meaning.
More can be found in this article on C|Net News Australia.
Ironically, I’ve always wanted to read Beowulf, but I’ve had a hard time finding a copy at local bookstores. With Tolkien’s name on this translation, I suspect I won’t have any difficulties finding a copy.
Congratulations to everyone that finished the National Novel Writing Month challenge! One of the other Semi Omniscients, Linda, finished with a final count of 36,923 words.
My efforts at completing the 50,000 word effort fizzled at 4,500 words. I have a solid idea for a novel, but it requires a great deal more research before start on it again. In the meantime, I’ll stick with short stories.