savagetbone1225

Stephen King once said that he writes about things he sees in his dreams, so I've been waiting to see something significant in a dream.

I had a dream that I was staying at the house of an elderly couple. It was a really large house, almost a manor. It reminded me of my Aunt Hermina's house, the house by the water that I used to visit when I was younger. (Where was that house located?)

When we walked out to the back porch, the porch forked into two paths, one of which was covered by an awning. But between the two paths was a vast area in which a giant cauldron hung. It hung between the water hundreds of feet below and the deck a few feet above. The cauldron was pulling water up from the seaside below until it fell in, and as it went down it somehow generated a great deal of power. Not only was it enough power to account for the water that it pulled up, but it was enough to power the entire large house.

My friend Elliot Mayo was there and also my cousin Jason Lockhart. While we were standing on the covered bridge side of the deck, Jason played with a couple of levers. After he was finished, water began to flow beneath us, and as it did it began to play three distinctive notes. Jason explained that they were the notes to the theme song to The Goonies, but I couldn't hear the connection.

I remember dropping Amy off at work one morning and returning back home in order to get some work done before going to work myself. When Amy left the car, I watched her walk away but forgot to tell her that I loved her. As I pulled away, I thought about the possibility that someone would come into Ella's and hold them all hostage for some reason. Maybe there would be a shooting. A recent mass-murder in my home town made this all seem possible. I calmed myself, knowing that Amy is fully aware that I love her, and that if something like that were to happen there would likely be nothing I could do. But the possibilities haunted me quite a bit.

Laying in bed, I remember reflecting to Amy that Stephen King seems to base his stories around similar what-ifs. For example, there's almost always some sort of car crash involved in a Stephen King novel. Was King actually in a car crash? Or did he have close calls and wonder what would happen if something horrible had happened because he had been drinking or getting a hand job or too sleepy or making a phone call? Amy later noted that she read somewhere that a lot of King's work had something to do with what-ifs.

On Stephen King's wikipedia page, it is mentioned that 'salem's Lot was written largely because King was obsessed with the book Dracula and wanted to know what would happen if Dracula came about in modern-day America. If he came to New York City, King's wife assumed that he would just get run over. But in a small town in the Northeast. Now there was a fruitful idea. The book was originally titled Second Coming, and I would imagine the title had something to do with the second coming not of Christ but of Dracula.

Maybe I should write down more of my "What Ifs" and see if they have what it takes to become a story.

Stephen King explained, in an interview, that he simply writes about things that scare him. Earlier he described that it is harder to write stories that catch you in the intellect than it is to write stories that catch you in the gut. It would appear that King simply chooses something that makes him frightened with the assumption that others would be similarly afraid. And from there it seems that the gritty details are what connect with the reader's gut. Part of me thinks that it is harder to connect with a reader's gut, but maybe that's my fear that I am significantly different from other people and that I cannot relate with them.

That emotion of fear seems to be a good place to start. Conflict often, if not always, requires some kind of fear. Fear is what makes you care about the conflict. Perhaps I would be wise to start thinking: What scares me? What enrages me? What matters the most to me? What pleases me? What makes me envious? It would seem to make sense that the other strong emotions would be equally important, that they need to exist in a kind of Green Lantern emotional spectrum balance in a good book.

Regarding the question of whether or not 'salem's Lot is a real town, Stephen King responded,

It is based on a town in upstate Vermont, that I heard about as an undergraduate in college, called Jeremiah's Lot. I was going through Vermont with a friend and he pointed out the town, just in passing, as we went by in the car. He said, You know, they say that everybody in that town just simply disappeared in 1898." I said, "Aw, come on. What are you talking about?" He said, "That's the story. Haven't you heard of the Marie Celest where everybody supposedly disappeared? This is the same thing. One day they were there and then one day a relative came over to look for someone that they hadn't heard from in awhile; and all of the houses were empty. Some of the houses had dinner set on the table. Some of the stores still had money in them. It was covered in mold from the summer damp and it was starting to rot, but nobody had stolen it. The town was completely emptied out."

It would appear that a great deal of King's story ideas have come from him trying to explain something that was once unexplained. In a way, King is solving X-Files. Therefore, for the sake of my writing, maybe it would be wise to seek out the unexplained and then to write stories in order to explain, or at least flesh out, what happened.

In an interview with Phil Konstantin, it is revealed that 'salem's Lot is one of Stephen King's favorite novels that he has written. Most of the reason behind this is because King believes that it says a lot about small towns. This is something I discussed with Amy both while and after reading the book. Regarding small towns, King says, "They are kind of a dying organism right now." This is interesting because it both suggests that King views the small town as a unit of organization in the scale of life and suggests that King holds the town on a similar platform as one would an amoebum, a bird or even another human being. When I was reading 'salem's Lot I often felt that many of the characters were underdeveloped. Even though I saw this as a serious problem, it is one of my favorite books too. I explained this to Amy as having to do with the fact that King holds the main character of this book to be the town of 'salem's Lot. In that way, the book is brilliant. Since then I've been interested in small towns - the little town of Saranac where Amy does her baking, for example - as an important study toward the craft of writing.

Before I started ritually watching and reading through George R.R. Martin interviews, I saw one that I have not been able to find since in which he says that fantasy writers ought not to think that they need to write stories in which the fate of the world is always in the balance. He explained that he does have "fate of the world" stories in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, but that the genre ought to invite writers to write about personal stories instead, much like other genres have invited their writers to do for some time now. I think it is important to be able to tell a personal story, regardless of whether or not the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

What if every word and thought you uttered, regardless of whether there was anyone to hear it and regardless of whether or not you remember doing so, held power? What I am trying to say is that every time you say a curse or condemnation, that plea is recorded on some metaphysical list, some cosmic suggestion box, and some sort of powerful mechanism of the universe obeys the command.

For example, I went upstairs to get some of my parents' leftover chili. When I saw that the pot of chili was no longer on the bottom shelf above the vegetable drawer, it invoked in me the memory that my parents will sometimes needlessly throw away food that is nowhere near its expiration date. They will throw away food on a whim because they don't think anyone will eat it. And they throw away the food precisely when I intend to eat it. In my mind I said, "Damn you, mom and dad." Taken seriously, I just petitioned that my parents should experience sort of cursed existence either in this life or after this life, depending on ones beliefs. Moments later I saw that there was a small tupperware container with the remaining chili in it and I mentally decided to take back the plea for damnation. I was inspired to write on this idea because I felt that I had filed a cosmic complaint only to wish that I could revoke my cosmic complaint. I pictured myself going to some sort of transdimensional court, waiting in a line and filling out paperwork, just like you would if you got a ticket for not having proof of insurance and got it revoked by bringing your proof of insurance to a teller at the courthouse.

For a lot of people, I don't think this whole idea is all that farfetched. It is almost a given in much of the writings and traditions from ancient times until now surrounding the Jewish and Christian scriptures. A Psalm, for example, is little more than a publication of such thoughts and utterances. When people pray, if they believe that there is a god listening and that the god considers their prayers and acts accordingly, they are wishing or believing in a system of cosmic record and justice. Outside of the big religions, the power of words is incredibly important in the historical practice of magic. To utter a thing's true name is not just powerful in the case of Rumplestiltskin, but also in the case of many far eastern belief systems. While magic often requires the proper combination of words, it also surrounds proper intention. In the Harry Potter books, this is exemplified by the fact that Snape tries to teach Harry to cast spells without speaking. After all, speaking alerts an enemy to your offensive. If you can think or will, if you can intend a spell, then that is even more powerful.

As for me, I'm always the skeptic. While it's an interesting idea, I think it might belong more to the realm of fantasy fiction writing than any kind of nonfiction writing.

A group of girls walked into the dining hall today. The one at the front with the local accent said, "I'm going to teach you English."

"What do you know about English," said the girl at the back of the group in a cockneyed British accent.

A few more words were exchanged about differences between British English and American English. The American girl said something along the lines of, "Full stop... It's called a period."

"Period?" said the British girl. "That's a menstrual cycle."

George R.R. Martin tells his story in A Song of Ice and Fire the way J.R.R. Tolkeinn tells his story in Lord of the Rings. He starts with (nearly) everyone in the same place, splits them up, then brings them back together at the end.

"I've always agreed with Faulkner. He said that the human heart in conflict with itself is the only thing worth writing about." - George R.R. Martin