On Surviving a Bane of Sleep

This is torture.

The cacophony rises and abates all around me. I cannot think, I cannot forget, I can only clench my teeth as the pain drills into my head.

This anguish is more than any should ever bear. It is ceaseless, it is agony personified, and it is going to drive me insane. I don’t know how long I can hang on. My eyes are open, but I see nothing.

And after the awful day I had spent, this was the only way it could have gotten worse.

Medieval Research: Titanic Trebuchets

I am a lover of all things medieval.

Uh, let me rephrase that for those people who tend to take things too literally. There are certain things about the medieval times that I do NOT like. Plague, rats, high taxes, the rampant lack of hygiene and the overall negative attitude towards people like me who didn’t ride or swing swords around (i.e., nerds). Those things sort of turn me off.

Also the fact that ladies were considered weak and helpless and et cetera. Not that I’m only saying this because I’m afraid of getting yelled at by certain people, no. It sucks that ladies were not respected back then. Just saying.

But other stuff you can’t help loving. The flashing blades, the sound of the trumpets, the pounding hoof beats of a thousand horsemen charging down on a host of men in steel. The drawing of a bowstring, the hum of arrows.

And the weapons of siege.

On Winning The War of Words

You read a good article in the newspaper, a good story in a book, or a good post on a blog, and you might feel better after it. You would probably marvel at the way the writer managed to keep you interested, or the way you actually managed to finish the whole piece.

And even if you don’t go to those depths of contemplation over what you just read, you’ll probably be all, “Well, that guy has a way with words. He probably does it with his eyes closed,”.

At this point, the writers who are reading this here will know that I am most definitely not talking about the thoughts of another writer up there. Darn right I’m not.

Unless you have actually sat down and tried to write something, you have no idea what the average author goes through. And when I say author, please be advised I use this in a loose sense. For all I know, what I’m going to say now might even apply to the guy who makes up the medicinal information in that tiny scrap of paper you find with any bottle of cough syrup.

We writers know that there is a wide, wide category of things that stand between an empty page and a work of art. Life pretty much invents things to throw at you while you work up the mood to get writing. Be it work, college, school, chores, family or kids; probably greater than any battle ever written about is the battle that’s fought to get it written down in the first place.

But to those of you who think that it’s all milk and cookies once we get to the page with the pen in hand, I have one word for you:

Hah.

To Horizons That Beckon

This is the tenth post that I have published here since I began.

This is indeed a milepost if there ever was one.

(See what I did there? I could have said milestone since that’s what people normally call it, but I said milepost, because this is a post, and well… you know what, forget it)

It began at the beginning, and the beginning was on the 12^th of January, a little over a month ago. Back then, I wasn’t sure what I was really doing, and what I wanted to write about. All I knew was that procrastinating wasn’t getting anything done for me, which, thank you, I know is a very astute observation on my part.

But a couple of weeks and three posts later, I still wasn’t entirely sure where I was going, and whether or not I should continue. Hits were dismal, and I was losing confidence. My best friend, N, kept urging me to keep writing, and even though the few other friends who knew about it didn't stop encouraging me, I wasn’t too sure whether or not I was wasting my time.

Still though, I kept pounding away at my keyboard, maybe through sheer determination and supreme will power. But knowing myself the way I do, I would probably bet it was just simply because I didn’t have anything else to do at the time. In all honesty, what must have happened was me going “Meh, what’s the worst that could happen?”

To Scale The Block of Doom

Yeah, I know, enough about mosquitoes already. I’m fed up of them too.

I was minding my own business yesterday when all of a sudden, without any provocation, I sat up and thought to myself, “Time for my next post,”

And that’s when it hit me, like a slap to the face. Or mosquito.

I had no idea what in the world was I going to write about next. And as I sat there, realizing that I was having no idea what in the world to write about next, something else hit me.

I had just realized that I was having writer’s block. An actual, almost tangible, writer’s block. Like a literal wall in my mind that’s blocking all thoughts from moving on to a better place.

Well, to be honest, it was probably more like a wall with this tiny gap where thoughts are being charged a tariff to get through. This is the modern age, after all, and capitalism is contagious.

But still, the flow had slowed down to a point where my thoughts didn’t seem to be making any sense at all. I wondered whether I should do some other research topic. Spiders maybe?

Research: Monstrous Mosquitoes

             After the mosquito encounter, I thought I might as well read up on the critter and see if there were any facts I could dig up that I didn’t know before. Turns out, it’s a good thing I did.

I didn’t believe it when I read it, but this first fact kind of took me by surprise. Did you know that mosquitoes are useful?

Yes, you read that right, and no, it’s true. This stuff comes from Wikipedia, so, well.

Anyway, how are they useful? And how useful are they?

Good questions.

The Slap of Victory

I am at war.

The enemy is right there, glaring at me, leering at me through its tiny compound eyes. It is gloating, sadistically savoring its repeated triumphs over me, taunting me with that maddening hum.

I grit my teeth as I cradle my wounded, crippled pride and I swear upon my honor… this mosquito will never live to see the sun rise again.

The Trials of One Who Wields The Pen

Well, no, this unfortunately isn’t the first chapter of The Legend of Charezahn.

I have to admit I sort of underestimated the amount of work that the whole thing needed before I began. Well, really, totally underestimated it. Sure I had the general idea and the first few chapters already penned down, but one thing I hadn’t factored in was… myself.

So there I was, with the blank screen in front of me and my fingers doing the salsa on the keys when I suddenly stop and have one of my moments. I decide that I needed a new backstory.

I hold off on the first chapter, and started thinking up new events that lead to this point. I’m writing down random points when I realize that I needed more backstory to the facts I was writing. Believe it or not, halfway through that, I realized I needed a new history for the new history that I was already thinking. And then, well, you can guess how it went from there.

Pretty soon, I realized that maybe this wouldn’t take just a week, as I had thought. I had counted on me making a few changes, tweak it a bit here and there, but hey, this was just the first chapter, so no biggie. Goes to show how wrong you can be. It kept dragging on and on and even now, I honestly don’t know how long it will take.