...All other topics of blogliness will be relegated to my other blog, "Someone Get That Girl a Mood Ring"/iwillbitethephonetoproveitsharmless.blogspot.com, and actual fiction writing will be on procrastinator-writer.blogspot.com.
And now, for my first official entry here:
Sunlight. It is my most recent dabbling in realistic fiction writing. Now I really want to figure out what the heck it's about. See, I want to say it's about a young man who learns that he cannot overcome his problems simply by putting all his hope into a single human being. That HE has a part in overcoming the circumstances of his life, that HE is instrumental in working through his grief and pain, that HE may not be able to do that alone, but that the other extreme is just as harmful and painful.
This story really confronts a few of my own fears, and some of my own insecurities, which really aren't much of a secret. My insecurities definitely stem from incredibly different circumstances than my protagonist, but we feel them, in certain respects, just the same. Where I connect to Damir, is that feeling that everyone else is passing you by. That everyone else has it together, and that fear that we never will. It's depressing, but not exactly depressing in the way it actually feels... it's like a desperation, an urgency, and yet an overall feeling of overwhelming, of helplessness almost, where, at least I realize, there is something we can do about it.
You see, I had originally set out to try my hand at intentional romance-writing again, after I'd kind of taken a break from intentionally writing romance stories. And I see now that I've kind of broken off from my old roots and original idealism... taken off the rose-colored glasses, per se. The story then evolved into the issues I'd been trying to sort out in my mind. And this story has so much meaning, so much DEPTH, that could be accomplished, IF, I try. If I try really hard to be 100% realistic, and 100% honest. If, perhaps, I take my research to more than the internet. If. I write everyday. If I practice writing disciplines.
And if I lose my fear.
I WANT Sunlight to cut to the core. I want it to comment on the value of life, no matter how it is. And yet I want it to show real pain, and raw honesty. I want it to hurt to read sometimes, not to hurt readers, but to make them feel an immense sense of empathy with characters in the story, an experience I really value in reading fiction. I want the story to show the complexity of relationships, and their potential dysfunctions. I want it to not be cast in a constant melancholic fog as I usually write, but at the same time, I do, in the sense that I want to have a consistent tone. On the other hand, I also want there to be bright spots, as life often has. I want the story to be believable. I need this story to be meaningful. I need it to say something that resonates with readers, to be something that, perhaps, doesn't have a particular MESSAGE (though I know I'll have my own, in all honesty... but messages and themes or "key points", as I say for my friend, Leah, are all up to the reader's interpretation of a story), but MEANS something to them. It HAS to say SOMETHING profound, in some way.
Not artsy, image-filled weirdness, for the sake of trying to have a particular style. Not graphic accident scenes, or sneaky promotions of mercy-killing and deep, dark views of life's meaninglessness... unless that's what people want to take from it, I guess. I want it to be something original, but not nonsensical. I want it to be something realistic, and possibly really sad, but not utterly depressing and TOO hard to read emotionally. I want it to just be the story I see in my heart and mind. I want it to be the story I'm being led to write.
And I just really, really, REALLY want it to mean something. Something that HELPS people, not hurts them. Or at least something that opens our eyes.
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