1 Year Anniversary

Hey, as of today, I've worked at the zoo for exactly 1 year!

Nothing gold can stay

There's a poem by Robert Frost which ends with the line "nothing gold can stay."
Basically, all good things come to an end.

This echoes a question I've had for a couple weeks now:
Why do the best characters have to die?
I've heard it multiple times that a character was "too good to live."

Okay, getting into the realm of spoilers, so beware.

I'd never even questioned it until I was talking to my friend about Tadashi from Big Hero 6.


He's an awesome character. Really awesome. Probably the kind of guy most people would like to know.
And his end is freaking tragic.
(As a predictable aside, my favorite character died very young as well, though not as young as Tadashi)

I've killed the "best characters" too. In Evva's story, my favorite character dies. He's not a human, so I felt like I could get away without giving him a lot of human faults.
And I knew from the start that I would have to kill him off because he was too good.

But why is that? Why is it a given that the best characters don't make it to the end of the story?
What are we trying to tell ourselves by killing them off? Do we think that no one that good could survive in a messed up world? Do we think that no one that good could even exist? Are we telling ourselves that we don't deserve to know (or even be) people that are just great and awesome?



I mean sure, we can't expect everything to last for ever, but that doesn't mean that everything good in the world will vanish before we do.
Maybe some things gold can stay.

It's been fun taking a little fanficton break XD
I've done so little of that lately.

Naming Pains

I mentioned earlier that I've been trying to give names to some magical phenomena in my stories.
So far, I've just been using basic, boring phrases to refer to these things. But some of these things deserve a name of their own.

I have two tools to help me in cases like this. They're both huge fat books.
One is called the "Word Menu." It lists different categories of words. Like words involving landscapes, or music, or religion. It's great for brainstorming. Though there are a couple subjects that it is very lacking in.
It has brief definitions too, to help with more obscure words.

The other is a big "Synonym Finder."
Pretty much a thesaurus.

Both of these help me find more poetic words relating to certain subjects.
It only took me several weeks... I thought it would take less than a week. --_--
But I finally finished!

1.
First of all, in my world there are two methods of "teleporting." One is to open a sort of doorway through the air. I've always just been calling them doorways. But that can get confusing if you're thinking about a normal door in a house. Plus it's boring. So now they are called "driftways."
That was the easiest. I figured that out in one night.


2.
In Evva's story, one character damages her magic. Like someone can sprain their leg or ruin their confidence, magic can also be damaged if it's used improperly.
"Rivven magic."
A sort of twist from the word "riven," which means to tear something.

3.
There are corrupted spirits in the story. I had a couple phrases for them, but they just ended up awkward and clunky after a while. I wanted something better to describe a corrupted spirit.
It was over a week before I had an epiphany.
I was trying to distinguish the corrupted spirits from demons, which are the generic "evil spirits" in the world. But then I realized that most demons used to be normal spirits until they were corrupted in some way. So there really wasn't any need to distinguish them.
So, this one didn't get a new word. I just fell back on an old word. Now they're just demons. Although they became demons only very recently.


4.
And finally for the last one. This took me weeks to figure out. It was a pain. But it's so important in my stories that I had to get the right phrase.
The mages have animal partners which help amplify and stabilize magic, and so much more. I didn't want to use the term "familiar." That has too many connections with the "witchcraft" of our world. Plus it doesn't really convey that intimacy I want between a human mage and their animal partner.
I've always just called them "animal partners." But that's so dull.
I filled a whole page with brainstorm names. In small print. Nothing clicked.
Then I started thinking about other languages. My mom knows a few Sanskrit relating to yoga and meditation, so that was perfect. I needed one relating to energy, or the heart, or anything along those lines.
And I think this is what I'm going to go with. "Anahata." It's the Sanskrit word for the heart chakra.

What Comes Next?

Figuring out taxes. Oy.

So, as I said, I just finished the first real edit of Evva's story.
Right now I'm taking a break with a bit of fanfiction XD

I write my fanfiction so rarely that I get totally out of sync with it @_@

But this begs the question, what is my next writing project?
I probably need some space from Evva's story. So I guess that means I'll finally be starting a new story.
I think I know which one I'm going with. I even wrote the first chapter, but that was a long time ago so I probably have to rewrite it.
Crud, I wonder how long it will take me to think of a title for this one.

Give your Writing Time and Respect

So, a couple days ago I finished rewriting Evva's story.
As I've mentioned a few times, when I wrote the finale in the first draft, I was rather distracted because I was in the beginning stage of my Coco obsession.

This time I was more... focused on what I was doing. Which means that I finally got sucked into the emotion of the ending. It's rare that I come close to crying while I write XD. I don't think I've ever actually cried while I'm writing...
Anyway, I found myself wanting to write through the climax without pause, so I could get sucked in and feel the full force of it. But I had to stop myself. It's my job to stop and polish the writing, not just blow-through it.
I wonder. After I've rewritten this ending a couple dozen times to make it as good as possible, will I still get emotional about it? @_@

Old Music

I'm going to write about something different today.
It's a music group that started in the 1960's called Peter, Paul, and Mary.

I first heard of their group in college. During our honors class, we had a lesson about music. And one of the songs they played was called "Blowin' in the Wind." I almost never get attached to a song unless I've heard it many times. There are only a handful of exceptions, but this is certainly one of them.
The loveliest line is this:
"How many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand."
And, "How many roads must a man walk down before they call him a man."

But there are also the powerful anti-war lines such as
"How many years must some people exist before they're allowed to be free."
And "How many deaths will it take till he knows that too many people have died."

I tracked down that song and put it on my computer. After that, I didn't think any more about those singers for many years. At least not beyond that one song.
About three years ago, I was visiting my Portland family when my cousin put a CD in the car player. One song caught my attention. It's called "Where have all the Flowers Gone" (If you haven't heard it, go look that song up so I don't spoil the ending for you. It's lovely).


The song goes, "where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them every one. When will they ever learn?"
And I rolled my eyes, thinking of people ripping out all the beautiful flowers until they've taken the beauty from the meadow (typical environmental studies student reaction).
The song continues:
Where have all the young girls gone? Gone for husbands every one.
Where have all the husbands gone? Gone for soldiers every one.
Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards, every one.

And I groan and think about how depressing this song had suddenly become. So when the final verse starts, "Where have all the graveyards gone?" I brace myself for the worst.

"Gone to flower every one."

I think my mind exploded. I went, "Whoooa, that was amaaazing!"

I kept listening to the CD, duly impressed.
Then all of a sudden "Blowin' in the Wind" comes up, and I realized that all of this music was by the same people who wrote that song I loved from college.
Some of the songs I'd heard elsewhere, like "If I had a Hammer," and even "This Land is Your Land." Though I don't know if they wrote all of them, or if they were singing their own versions.
The song "Lemon Tree" somehow seems to fit very deeply with Kvothe from "The Name of the Wind" book. I always think of that as his song now.
And then when I was watching through old family videos of when I was a video, I found a video of my cousins singing a beautiful version of the song called "Bamboo."

Their music has popped up all over the place. It's certainly gotten its hooks into me as well.

I've spent a few weeks now trying to think of a title/phrase to represent something in my stories. It's starting to drive my crazy. --_--
I'll let you know whenever I finally have a final name (there are actually four magical phenomena I'm trying to give a title to, but I think this is the hardest by far. Hopefully the others won't be this crazy).

One of my best friends has gone through some crazy stuff.
I spent most of the day composing a reply in my head, and a couple hours writing it.
I hope my words have the power to make someone feel better. That's all I ever want with my writing.

It's hard to believe when an ex-best friend turned all my words to poison.
It feels like anything I say can be turned against me.

This is how I know I've left a story alone for too long.
I'm editing the final couple chapters of a story. It's the final confrontation between heroes and villains, and the hero is captured.
And I was surprised to hear how the villain had captured the hero.
Yeesh, I couldn't even remember how the bad guy had gotten the upper hand. I'm glad I wrote it back then, because I was preparing to write something less interesting XD