This is still as true today as it was last year!

Seriously, why, right? (Hehe… get it… why write, why right?) What motivates people to write? It seems to be the pursuit of a number of things: a pursuit of communication, a pursuit of art, a pursuit of drama, a pursuit of the tale.

For me, I think it’s been a desire to pursue effectively communicating through art and a desire to tell a story that I like. I feel like I have to be careful with what I mean by effectively communicating through art: I’m certainly not implying that I’m going to sneak something to the readers through the guise of art.

Rather, I feel like art naturally communicates — whether its the value of friendship and honor in the Lord of the Rings, the concept of sacrifice in the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or the intertwining destinies of the Wheel of Time, these are themes that the reader percieves in the art the author has created.

That’s what I’m seeking to do: to tell great stories that reflect true themes, themes like friendship, honor, and the value of learning.

But, it’d all be impossible if I didn’t like the story. I feel like it’s worth telling. It makes a difference. During a few off months, I’m quick to admit that it was a lack of love for the story that caused me to not forge ahead. But having come back around, every night when I open the files that I’m writing in, I get a little excited about what I’m going to write. That’s a great feeling. I can truly say that it is its own reward. Who knew?R

I’m headed off to a Writer’s Conference, so you’re going to be subjected to some “hits from the past.” This was an early blog post that served as a good reminder to me this morning of how a schedule can help.

Some days nothing seems to go your way. I’ve posted thus far about my writing habits and how effective it’s been to have a word count goal and to be structured about my writing life.

Then along came Tuesday May 19th. It kicked my butt, that’s for sure. Baby isn’t feeling well — mom and dad become emotional wrecks.

Then, right as I move to make my transition from working on learning some rudimentary web design skills into writing, the router decides that it doesn’t want to play nice with the cable modem any more. (For what it’s worth, the router says that the modem started it. I sent them both to bed.)

45 minutes later, I’m sitting her trying to motivate myself to write. It’s times like this that I remember some great advice I got in college: “Have a schedule that is set in stone. That way, when something goes wrong, you at least can see where you’ve lost and where you might be able to make it up later.” Sometimes the best thing to do is to cut your losses and try again the next day.

Tuesday, May 19th, you’ve beaten me temporarily. But, I’ll be back. You may have won the battle… wait, I’m trying to avoid cliches.

“What worries you, masters you.”

- John Locke (the real one, not the character from Lost).

That’s an interesting thought.

This time of year, deer in the yard are not uncommon. But, when your garden is in that key “starting to flourish, but needs protection” stage, the last thing you want to see is deer. Well, rabbits and birds aren’t fun either, so I guess it’s a bit of a toss up.

Anyway, we do things to try to scare deer off like yelling, clapping, and occasionally shooting at them with our woefully underpowered bb gun. The problem with this is, after the first time, being shot with the world’s weakest bb gun at 300 feet away is not totally useless, but mostly useless. The deer react like they’re being bitten by a mosquito.

So, we’ll have to find another tactic. It’s been pointed out to me that the natural antagonism of a dog might work, but then, dogs also take work. I dunno. Maybe I could serve them some bad salad or something, to scare them away from this establishment. I’ve got to do something. If Bambi eats my tomato plants, I might lose it.

“Mommy, I need some farmers on cheese.”

We took some serious time to figure that one out.

Parmesan Cheese. Yep.

I’ve got nothing… but thankfully, Ron Block has a great post about faith over at the Rabbit Room. You should go read it.

“Science will never be able to reduce the value of a sunset to arithmetic. Nor can it reduce friendship to formula. Laughter and love, pain and loneliness, the challenge of beauty and truth: these will always surpass the scientific mastery of nature.”

- Dr. Louis Orr

Saturdays this time of year are filled with grass to be cut, gardens to be hoed, races to be run, balls to be thrown, breakfasts to be eaten, grills to be started. I love all of those things. I’m reminded of the joys of summer vacation, really, when we have a great Saturday. I don’t know how my parents ever got anything done on those days – It really is tough. But totally worth it!

So, it’s not so bad when your two-year-old starts climbing into the bed with you in the middle of the night.

But yeah, it’s pretty bad when he starts tickling you in the middle of the night.

Or an advert, if you’re British. But, chances are that you aren’t. So there.

Sometimes it really does feel like everything is an ad. I listen to the radio, and beyond the obvious ads, the DJs are talking about their favorite products (Tivo! Burgers from X! TV Shows!). Product placements on TV have gotten worse. (did the man in black from Lost use an Apple computer in the last episode? No. He didn’t. But it would’ve been funny if he had.)

Of course, you go to the store and it’s that way too. Every chance they get to remind you of how unfulfilled you’ll feel until you buy! buy! buy!

We consume. We’re expected to consume. Consume and throw away. The more they convince you to consume, the better off they’ll be. I think it’s important for us to remember that. That’s how they pay the bills.