Wednesday, December 8, 2010

A little ramble through Never Never Land...

Well, I submitted my info for the Createspace copy of my NaNo novel. We'll see what it looks like when it gets here. *nerves*
December 8 – Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.
(You know what I love? Coincidences. Coinkydinks. Lucky manifestations of fate. Times when you  have something in mind and then that thing pops up, like say, in a prompt for your blog.)


I wonder sometimes about myself and how people in general can view the world in such different ways. A perfect example would be Princess Tutu (obsessed? me? what would make you say that?). If you were to look up a review online, one of the first things people will say is that it's weird. Like, apparently, really weird. 


I didn't notice. Sure, there were some unusual things going on (like animals in clothing, a duck who turns into a girl, an incorporeal dude ranting about a story), but I didn't find it "weird". It seemed perfectly normal within the context of the story. I wasn't confused. I wasn't put off.


Similarly, Neon Genesis Evangelion. The series has a reputation for being a strange, strange thing. The last few episodes in particular, as they suddenly devolve into surreal, abstract navel-gazing. Again, I didn't have a problem with it. So many people talk about what a mind-screw the whole thing was, but it made sense to me. Don't ask me to explain it, but I understood it. 


So yeah, things that apparently are supposed to be confusing make sense to me. Just don't ask me to explain them.


Also, dreams. My dreams tend to follow a story. The story may not make much sense and the premise may change several times, but it's a story nonetheless. And I'm the only one in my family that way. Everyone else gets little moments they remember, or they don't remember their dreams at all. I have epics going on in my head every night.


I didn't think this was too odd until my prof mentioned dreams in creative writing class. He was talking about how dreams literally have no limitations, so they are the strangest, most random things. Unless, he said, your writerly brain works out a story to put them to.


So, do writers and storytellers have a different way of dreaming from other people? Do we take all the little tidbits and force them into a story, even subconsciously? This is something I actually really want to know, or whether it's just me.

2 comments:

  1. I'm not sure how to format my novel for the Create Space thing, but I fully intend to submit last year's NaNo novel for it when I've figured it out ;)

    Interesting thought, that dream thing - I tend to have some pretty out there dreams too. Recently I had a nasty dream and when I told people about it, they suggested it could be an idea for my next novel - a murder mystery psycho thriller, sadly :P

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  2. Formatting's not actually so bad. A quick run-down of how I did it:

    - In Word, resize the page to 6x9 and make sure that the pages are the way you want them (for instance, if you want chapters to start on the right, make sure the page breaks are correct for that... it can take a little finagling)

    - save as a PDF file in the "save as" menu

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