You'd think that being miserable would make it easier to write about characters who feel miserable.
But mostly it just makes it hard to focus.

There has been an amazing amount of miserable stuff this summer...

Misreading

It's amazing how easy it is to misread the intent of a book. Well, not really. But it is amazing how it can happen on so many different levels.
In high school, we read Metamorphosis - the one where the guy turns into a giant bug.
Basically, in this book the guy used to take care of the family. They all relied on him. And when he turned into a big bug, he just sat in one room, alone, trying not to be in the way. But his family decided that his big bug presence was dragging all of them down, even though he just stayed in his corner. And even though he'd always taken care of them in the past.

Of course we had to write a paper about that book.
The thing that I loathed about high school English XD
One girl asked the teacher something about the book and her paper. She said something about how the bug guy was nothing but a burden to his family. Internally I went "You've got it all wrong! He's not doing anything wrong. His family is the one that turned on him!"
I actually did say something - about how he was always the one that took care of his family, and that he wasn't really in the way.

I suppose this one is easy to understand. The girl was quoting what the book said instead of reading deeper to what the book actually meant.

But last week, someone told me that The Fault in Our Stars is just a story that romanticizes cancer. That comment really made me bristle. I'll bet they didn't read the book, and only saw the movie. And I'll bet that they don't know anything about the author's inspirations behind that book, because John Green doesn't romanticize diseases. He has to deal with his own brand of them. And he had to watch a friend of his - a girl like Hazel - die from cancer.

When someone makes a suggestion like that, it feels like they're saying that a sick person can never be a hero. Because if they are, then the author is automatically romanticizing whatever illness they have.


What? Should we only make perfect people our heroes?

I'm afraid of how people will misread any of my stories.
But like I said, I'm far too sensitive about what people think of me.

C

Thought I'd post this here. This is Fern's horse, C.
I've only drawn her once. Huh. I need to do more with her.

Africa

Although I've hardly worked on this project recently, I've been thinking about it quite a bit.
Ages ago, from the beginning of this blog, I was writing a wyvern story. It was very much like Dragonheart (the main character teams up with a supposedly dangerous dragon in order to overthrow an evil king).


During my trip to Spain and Italy, I had some ideas to rework the story and make it more alive. I don't even know if wyverns will be in it much. I may substitute them with dragons, at least partially, to fit certain aspects of the world.
One part of that I really need to work on it so make the story fit into my world.

When I first wrote the story, I only had a vague idea of the world it would fit into: Soreina. It was a fairly bland and undeveloped world then. By the time Soreina became more developed, I'd already written some stories that took place in it. I'd already started writing Katani's story, for example. The first draft didn't have anything of the Asian culture in it. The culture came about when I started to fit the story into my world.

As for the wyvern story, it will take place in Soreina's version of Africa.
I can't stop thinking about how I'm going to do the culture for this.
Despite my effort to build up Reyu's Asian influences, people were still disgusted with it. And for that story, I even had people who could help me with culture and language and stuff. Although those people aren't around anymore.

But I don't know anyone who's had a lot of experience in Africa.

There's another story I'm working on which is set in Soreina's version of South America. And ditto to that - I don't really know anyone with a lot of experience there. And then there are many other less-developed stories I'm working on, with various settings.

I desperately want to go to these places. I want to see the wilds of both Africa and South America. They're my top two places to visit. But since I hadn't visited them, it's hard to imagine how I'll learn about them. And it's not like there's just one culture. Africa and South America (and everywhere) are made up of many cultures.

Some people seem to think that I'm looking down on cultures when I write about them.
Maybe I didn't understand a part of it, or I didn't portray it the way I was trying to. Which I guess they took to mean that I don't respect the culture.
It's not easy to get a deep understanding of a different culture. What I really want to do is visit these places and spend a lot of time there meeting people and seeing things.
And I hope to do that in the future.
Even that may not be enough though.
I wish there were books that could really help you understand cultures. What the people do, why they do it, and how it developed to be that way. Though I'd still want to visit the places.

Here's the main thing.
Soreina is not Earth. It is a sister planet to Earth (in my stories, there are three versions of Earth on parallel dimensions, and it is possible to travel through them)There are a lot of parallels between these worlds, and they all come from the same root Earth.
But they formed very differently. In Soriena especially, humans only really live on one continent. Each Earth continent really only gets a single country on Soreina. That's a whole lot of cultures packed into a small area.
And because of dragons, there is a lot more mixing of the cultures. This especially happens in the capitol cities, which are huge melting pots of the entire country, and of surrounding countries. Katani's story is mostly set in the capitol, so there's a lot of mixing of cultures.
For another example, Soriena is gender equal (and more equal in many other ways). When you start to apply that, it changes a lot of stuff about cultures. Not just in Asian-based cultures, but also American culture.
In Soreina, your boss is as likely to be female as male. They don't have clothing that restricts the movement of females specifically. There aren't really jobs that are considered "jobs for women" or "jobs for men."

I don't think there would be much complaint of me making these changes in an American-based culture. Since I'm from America (although even that doesn't take into account the American Indians). But people seem offended when I try to apply my world to other cultures.
I understand if someone is making fun of a culture, of isn't bothering to understand it at all.
But I want to be able to develop a world that reflects our world and cultures. Even if it is in a different setting.

And yet there will still be plenty of people who get angry about it.
Considering I'm working to be a published author, I should have a thick skin when it comes to criticism and stuff.
But I'm far too sensitive about what people think of me.
Heh.

Maybe cartoons and movies are easier to do this with, because you can see the buildings and clothing in every scene.

Tedious

It's so tedious doing super-detailed edits of a long story. Probably because it's such slow going. I can work for an hour or two on a single page (or on a single line). Then when I start to move at a faster pace, I that I'm not going deep enough.
But it's also satisfying when you've smoothed a word, or a sentence, or a paragraph out to make it feel really nice.
Hopefully other people think it's nice too, which is the real test.

But maybe I should write something random and shallow, like a fanfic chapter. It would be a nice change, since I don't need to perfect those. And I only need to edit them a couple times.
But I'm so close to finishing this draft that I'm reluctant to take a break to write a fanfic chapter. Heheh. I'll get to it eventually.
I'm actually rewriting the first chapter of my Pokémon fanfic.


I decided to do this mostly because someone wrote a fanfiction of my Pokémon fanfiction. Which is when I looked back at my first chapter and cringed.
It's pretty much written (and has been for a while) but I'm in the process of drawing a picture to go along with it. I finished the picture ages ago, but when I rewrote the chapter I fleshed it out so much that the picture now belongs to chapter two. Which means that I'll have to at least rewrite chapter two, so I can use the picture I drew. Heh.
I don't plan on going much farther on the Pokémon fanfic for now.
But I'd like to rewrite the next chapter of my Midna fanfic. I haven't done that in a long time.


The rewriting of my fanfics is a very low priority, and one I'm mostly keeping for when I need a fun, shallow writing project.

Environmental Plots: Climate Change

Climate change is a confusing topic. Partly because it is affected by so many problems, and partly because it affects so many other parts of the planet.
And of course there are all those weird people that try to convince you that climate change isn't real. They've made it their mission to sew doubt so that they can continue their destructive actions.
And it looks like they've taken this to new levels since this new weirdo has ended up pretending to be a president.

So this will be a pretty brief overview of climate change.

I'd better start with a brief description of climate change. People think it's the same thing as global warming, but they're not quite the same. Global warming is necessary for all life on the planet. It's the reason the planet has air and warmth.
Climate change has to do with the long-term (by long-term, I mean thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years) cycles of heating and cooling that the planet goes through.
It may be true that the planet is undergoing a natural cycle of heating. But humans are speeding this cycle up by a massive amount. The changes we are creating are so fast that many species will not be able to evolve alongside it.
And the more climate change progresses, the faster it will accelerate.


Now, what are the main problems that climate change will bring to our planet? These aren't just going to happen in the future. Some of them have already started.
When we burn fossil fuels (like coal, natural gas, and oil), we're releasing carbon and other materials that have been stored under the Earth's surface for countless thousands of years. In that time, life has evolved to deal with less carbon in the atmosphere. As we continue to pump more carbon into the air, it traps more heat. This leads to a change in the Earth's climate.
Climate change will lead to a greater frequency of weather disasters, and they will be more destructive.

In places where the temperature rises, insect populations can increase and spread, which would lead to disease outbreaks.
Temperature changes can harm countless species, both plant and animal. Some animals might try to move to cooler climates, for example by moving up a mountain toward the snow-covered peak. But there's only so far they can go before they run out of mountain. And there's no way a tree can get up and walk to a better place.

Warming temperatures also melt ice. A lot of creatures rely on ice. The iconic example are the polar bears, which require sea ice to hunt for food.
As more ice melts, the faster the temperature will rise. This is especially true for sea ice. Ice is white, so it reflects heat. As sea ice melts, it leaves behind the darker colored ocean. And that dark water absorbs more heat.
And of course when land ice melts, it causes the sea levels to rise. A lot of people live near the sea.
Sometimes communities try to build huge walls to protect buildings from the sea (buildings that were built far too close to the ocean to begin with). But these walls mean that all of the beaches in front of them disappear. Beaches are not only recreation, but also important habitat.



Let's look at some of the main causes of climate change.
Well, fossil fuels are the best known cause.
Most of our vehicles are powered by fossil fuels. Every time we drive, our cars blow greenhouse gases into the air.
Plane flights use enormous amounts of fossil fuels. Cruise ships are usually pretty bad too. And of course, the vehicles used in farming and mining rely on fossil fuels.

Public transportation, such as trains or buses, are much more efficient than cars driven by individuals. That's why it's so important to have good public transportation systems. Ours sucks pretty badly. But I am in love with the public transportation in Japan.

Agriculture has a number of different effects on climate change. There's the machinery that they use for planting, harvesting, processing, which generally runs off of fossil fuels.
And cattle generate a lot of methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
But perhaps most of all, a lot of agricultural land is located where forests used to be. Insane amounts of rain forests are cleared every day, and cattle and crops are put there instead. All that cleared forest means that there are fewer trees. Trees regulate our climate. They absorb carbon dioxide and send out oxygen. With fewer trees, forests can't process as much carbon dioxide as they should.


Trash is another source of greenhouse gasses.
Whether we burn it or let it decompose, it can release gasses and chemicals which can be bad for the air we breathe, and the rest of the atmosphere.
Other weird chemicals include ozone, which should not be in large concentrations near the ground. It belongs way above the earth's surface.
And then there are the chemicals that actually destroy the ozone layer.

Electricity isn't as much of a problem for greenhouse gasses as transportation is. But places that burn coal are sending huge amounts of pollutants into the air. These pollutants aren't only greenhouse gasses, but also gasses that lead to acid rain.
Burning natural gas for electricity also releases greenhouse gasses, but it's not nearly as bad as coal or oil.

Except the planet only increases its greenhouse gas emissions with each year.
Even if the growth of those emissions were to level off and become steady, that will not solve our problem. Just because the amount isn't increasing does not mean that it has stopped. If we want to stop climate change before it spirals out of control (we're already getting close to the point of no return), then we need to significantly decrease out greenhouse gas emissions.


How Would You Use this Topic in a story?
Some stories take place in the future, where climate change has run rampant (Ship Breaker, and many of this guy's other books). Weather disasters provide plenty of space to work with. Everything from hurricanes to drought.

Other stories show the effects of climate change in the present (Flight Behavior looks at how climate change hurts monarch butterflies). You could focus on any number of species that are harmed by climate change, like the polar bears.
Maybe you want to focus on sea level rise. The movie Waterworld took this to an extreme. But flooded cities, displaced people, all plenty to work with.
Maybe your characters are fighting for less polluting transportation solutions.
Climate change has so many impacts, and so many things potentially contribute to it that your imagination is the limit.

What stories have used this theme?
Ship Breaker (Bacigalupi)
Flight Behavior (Kingsolver)
The Day After Tomorrow
Wall-E
Waterworld

Mapping Out

It's kinda fun to design maps!
I've played around with map design some, but I just did one from scratch today. A big map.
For some areas I have a pretty solid idea of the geography, so I got to iron out a lot of details.
But other regions I haven't developed much since I haven't really written about them. For those areas I just let my hands do what they wanted for coast lines and everything.
I still need to figure out habitats and stuff, but I have the capitols marked as well as a lot of the main rivers and mountain ranges.

It was fun to see details from my stories come together as an actual planet.
When I've gotten a nice final version, I should try to paint my own globe. That would be awesome!

When You're Talking to Someone...

Me: Yeah, I write a lot! I want to be a writer.
Other person: Everyone wants to be a writer.
Me (internally): >: /

(Just a conversation I had during my summer job XP )

Pack Mentality

When you join a new group of people, it's amazing how you can get pulled into their thought process.
It makes sense. Humans are social animals, so we tend to try to fit in, even if it's subconsciously.


Up in Yosemite, I left behind everything from my normal lifestyle. I was surrounded by new and different people. Pretty different than who I'm usually around.

As a silly example: Everyone up there swears like cowboys. Hearing that day after day for a couple months didn't make me swear anymore. At least not in public.
But I do think in swear words a lot more.
Heh.

Home at Last

Whoo, I'm home from my summer job.
Man, I sucked at updating my blog while I was up there.

I never said where I was working, so I'll share that now.
I was a trail guide in Yosemite National Park. I was a professional Cowgirl in the Wawona area of the park.
Here's a couple pictures of Sandy - one with me riding.



Now to get back to writing @_@
Though I'll miss the horses...
And the beautiful views.