It has been the standard occurrence around the house these past two weeks that somehow just about every toilet is clogged or malfunctioning in some other way. This situation is unusual because, well, normally in a span of two weeks the entire house does not have such problems so many times. My parents blame my younger brother and his friends. But personally I also blame my sister's plunging practices. Plunging is not a hard thing to do, you either use it to push or pull depending on how the clog is seated, just takes a few good forceful motions, and bam, problem solved.
But all of this talk and thinking about life and clogged toilets got me thinking about mario. I think he knew what was really going down. See, his princess was taken away and the first place he visited was the bathroom. Smart man. Not only did he go there first (probably to get some thinking done) but he jumped right into the pipes. I can justify that his first action was heading to the bathroom because stage 2 of "super mario brothers" occurs in the sewers/underground after mario squats over a pipe. But in this seeming insanity and tangential offshoot, there is wisdom. Sometimes you just have to wade through the crap of life before you can get to the good stuff. And like swimming in cold water, although your balls will soon become true internal organs jumping in all the way is a better first step than trying to slowly wade in.
Somehow today I ended up with quite a bit more time free than I had expected, and am thinking that it would be good to use towards continuing the book. It's been a while since I've done direct writing, as I have spent the past month or so building thematic modes into the overarching storyline. The first step will be the most painful though, I need to re-write my first few chapters to make them more... reader friendly. If you read my blog then you know that my writing is... long winded at best. And when middle and high school aged kids get a hold of it I'm sure it will grow from annoyingly long to impossibly frustrating. That and I have a feeling that I need to really get working on this. The current state of things is odd to my head. I keep feeling like I am on winter break and will be back at school in a few weeks. But in reality I am done with college and until I return for my masters I have no immediate need to return.
Honestly though I do fear the completion and release of the book. The scene shows CSM Spender's reaction to publishing his first story. The episode carried an undercurrent over its years of depiction that the man was writing a novel series, and the clip picks up right after he reads the first installment he gets published. They changed the ending, after he decided to give up smoking and possibly even his bloody business as a murderer, the chance he has for another life is yanked away. How will I react to criticism, editors, and publishing processes? or worse yet, public opinion. To some extent I fear failure and criticism, but my most present fear is not living up to the high expectations I and others have for me. I bring this up as proof, that in the past month as more and more people learn that I am writing they begin to follow a standard pattern of something like, "You studied medieval literature and folklore in college right, and now your writing a fantasy? Cool so then you will be the next Tolkein, since that's kind of what he did..." Jokes along those lines have also began to spring up.
Not that I have anything against the man, I highly respect his scholarly work and delight in his philological pursuits. But frankly I don't care much for his writing style, or format. He may in fact be more long winded than I, albeit easier to read in many cases. In the past I have had to study his works and frankly although I love the stories, I hate the way he tells them. Granted he is not as bad as Milton, but my classic Tolkein joke is, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit, and this hobbit had many things in his home. In the entry hall alone, among other things, he had a splendid book shelf which held on it many books. These books ranged in size and color but were all finely bound and decorated with golden scrolling scripts and various died color covers. In the first of these books were recorded the events of Buffo Baggins, who happened to be the great-great-grandfather of Bilbo Baggins, and the great-great-great-grandfather of Frodo Baggins and even still the great-great-great-great-great grandfather of Peregrin Took and Meriadoc Brandybuck. He lived his life in Yale and in that time had four children who all had children of their own. Not much happened in his life and no one knows in what year he was born or when he died but most are reasonably sure that he did so. In the second of these books were the collected tales of the formation of Hobbiton. In the third... oh, but where was I... What was I talking about again... Oh yeah, the story and personage of Bilbo Baggins..."
I'm sure sharing my public feelings and imitation of Tolkein will come back to bite me, but those are my feelings. I respect the man and wish to emulate him in many ways (I have followed a similar path of study, from what I know of his life I respect and despise him as I do myself, I understand many of his life decisions and I feel he was a great man who I wish I could have sat with for a time to discuss Welsh mythology, Norse runes, or Celtic poetry), but writing style is not one. But then again I can only hope that someone will one day say the same about me as I have about him.
Well, I have wasted enough time here, my day still holds work to be done and my week will hopefully be full and fun. I have decided to realize that a good friend of mine is in town and we need to spend as much time together as we can before school and work and life gets back in the way. In fact I have several friends on my list to meet with, but one takes prescience over the others.
As another one of my name has said in closing before,
Cheers!
"And if you think you've won; You never saw me change; The game that we have been playing."
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