The problem with coffee was the caffeine. Decaf didn’t make everyone’s thoughts louder...
Form
So, I thought it would be nice to accompany some ideas along with whatever fiction I post. I used to do it inside of the story posts before, but maybe it’s better to actually separate them to save me the trouble of creating a page for the story for archive purposes. So, for some reason, I really don’t have any real ideas why Jean Clarke Oliver has always been one of those little weird characters that sticks forever in my head. I’ve written scenes and other stories about him or related to him. I guess there’s just something cool about a little robot who is somehow conscious. Now, this last post, “Star,” feels a lot more like the beginning of a longer story, which is usually my issue. I’m absolutely terrible at writing self-contained short fiction, and it’s one of the skills I’m going to try to develop here. It’s […]
on Star and others
Sometimes he wondered what had happened to the students at the university...
Star
A few years ago, before my MFA, I decided to take on a challenge. I wanted to write something every day. The goal was two-fold. I wanted to write for my website in order to get myself “out there” as some people put it. But more specifically, I wanted to improve as a writer. This kind of reminded me of one of my classes, where my professor explained one of the most valuable lessons in my MFA. I had just had my workshop, and I was about to close my notebook where I had taken notes when my professor saw the two pages worth of notes I had taken. They weren’t just any notes though. See, I write extremely small, and it was a regular letter-sized notebook. I had crammed a ridiculous amount of words into the page because I wanted to make the best out of the workshop, as […]
The Future
I recently published a little review of the movie, but I tried to keep out my personal biased thoughts from affecting my review. As I mentioned on it, Death Note is one of those series that I call “foundational” during my teenage years. I read the manga so many times growing up, that I know the story almost perfectly, even now 10 years after having been the most obsessive of fans. And, for the context of this rant, let me say that I never finished watching the anime. Within 5 episodes, I dropped it because I thought it did not do the manga justice. That’s just how obsessed I was. And, as you can imagine based on my opinion on the anime, I absolutely hated this new Death Note interpretation, and it’s because of the same reason as the anime. This movie failed to capture the essence of what Death […]
On Death Note (2017)
Some advice for beginners, or those who have trouble getting a start on writing.
Advice for Beginners
The other day I wrote all about Writing Discipline, which seriously has me thinking more and more about the future of this site. I really want to create that. That’s why I changed that tagline to join me in my journey. And, it’s also why this site is called Raven’s Apotheosis. I want to show my personal journey forward as I make it out there as a writer. In a way, this place is all about me becoming an author. That’s why this is a little unorthodox. This is not about me. Instead, I want to talk about this kid I met in high school that inspires me. Back in 11th grade, my friends initially met as the group we would end up being for the next decade. Originally, we were the weird rejects that played Yu-Gi-Oh in front of the band room. And no, it wasn’t as sad as […]
Norembridge
I had a revelation earlier today as I watched a video on facebook (yeah, I’m that type of person). To be honest, most of the video was unrelated to my realization since it was a politically and racially charged video; you know, the type of videos people share on facebook when you have a liberal group of friends, but I digress. The video spoke about the stereotype of being smart and clarified the line of thinking Japanese people have. I can’t say that the video is 100% accurate, but–according to the speaker who is Japanese–Japanese people believe that discipline eventually overtakes intelligence. That got me thinking about writing as per usual, and I returned to the one advice people, especially big named writers like Mr. Stephen King, give: sit down and write. It’s the same advice I’ve been given countless of time. I mean, the no. 1 advice my writing […]
Writing Discipline
It’s November 7th, which means this is one complete week into NaNoWriMo, and I’ve been writing a lot every day. So far, I’ve managed to write every single day without miss, hitting the number of words just as expected. But, this is not a post to brag about this. No, this is the Not Writing Advice part of the week, where I talk about something shitty about writing. And in this case, it’s word counts. For the longest time, I’ve been one of the biggest pushers for NaNoWriMo (and I still am), but I’ve always been very conflicted about writing goals, especially when dealing with word count. See, the thing is that when I write a lot–and I mean a lot–I start losing sight of the work. At some points, it seems that scenes go on forever and take longer than they should, all because I’m trying to hit a word count […]
NaNoWriMo Day 07 – Not Writing Advice
The funny thing is, yesterday I posted talking about how I had all these plans for my novel. I wrote two outlines over October and got ready to write. But, it seems that after writing two complete novels, I’m still the worst when it comes to planning. Today I wrote about 2,000 words, but none of those words went exactly as planned. The more I kept writing the characters, the more I realized that the two main characters were, well, a little different than I originally planned. I know it sounds weird to say that the character hijacked the story, but I swear I’m not crazy. Online, writers often talk about how characters do what they want to do. Sometimes, some even mention how characters take a life of their own and change things. All of that makes it seems like the writers are crazy, but I think it’s actually […]