What if life was as interesting in real life as it was in my head?

So, finals have been over for a week, and I should start ramping up the posting more and more often. Classes start for me in a few days, so posting here is a great way to not do work. The outside world has been great. Spent time with family and seeing 90's bands and spending time with friends. Life doesn't get better than that.

But what if life was more interesting?

Interesting isn't always better, or worse. Its different than "better." I see better as things are relaxed, without headaches or pressing worries. Interesting, however, is different. Interesting is a puzzle, a mystery, a game or a maze. Interesting is when something happens that will be the seed of a story. Interesting is when people come up to you, and with all earnestness and speak to you in a foreign language, and then walk calmly back to their car and drive off.

See, things like that are interesting.

See, the wife (more on her later. We aren't legally married, but will be soon. Its just easier and well, right, to call her that). The wife and I were out eating outside on Sunday. There was a music festival here in our city, so there were people from all over, so when a car pull up to us, I wasn't shocked. When a young girl came up to me, I was put off just a little, but smiled and waited for what I thought would be a request for directions. Instead, she looked at me and said, "De Shall Mal."

See, interesting.

It drove me insane for twenty or thirty minutes strait. It wasn't a language I could remember hearing, it wasn't one I recognized, and Google failed me. So what do I do when something interesting happens?

I think up a story about it.

What if a man heard something she shouldn't? What if he heard something that brought him into a world of spies or magic or aliens? What if the message wasn't for him,  but his interference changes worlds? What if that change was for the better? For the worse?

See, that's why I write. These are the "what if's" that drive me to the keyboard.

So, I think I am going to post the story that was born by a lost girl's question. Its a what if that's just to good to pass up.

Wow, I was an arrogant bastard

Wow, creating this blog lead me to figure something out. I was (and may still be) an arrogant bastard. In 2008, I created a Constitutional Law Blog. It linked up to this account, so to burn time, I just re-read some of my post. God Above, I was cocky.

Not just cocky, I was an over-absorbed boob with nothing original and nothing important to add to discord.

Now, I'm a bit more mellow. I keep my shit to myself. I may be a cocky ass, but I wont be arrogant. I know exactly how little I know, and how much farther I have to go before I can claim to be something so mundane as "informed." God Above, I am not even sure about my grammar  and I want to write for a living. Hell, I had a typo in my last post!

But, that cocky bastard that was I not five years ago, he's gone through some seriously interesting shit. He's made friends across the pond, and has decided that being political is for people different than him. At some point, Jonathan P. Martin became JP, who became Jon who became Jonathan again. The faces I have taken between 2008 and today scare me a bit, but its okay.

I'm still a bit of a cocky bastard. He, and none of my past selves have gone away, they have just helped me become me. And for that, I am sorry. I can't get rid of the bastard.

He is too useful pissing people off and making my friends laugh.

And So it Begins

Hello all of you out in computer land. I should really be studying right now, tearing my soul apart bit by bit as I learn all there is to know about the law regulating families (at least, all I need to know to pass the bar exam). but I'm not. Not only do I not want to, but I don't truly care about Family Law. Don't get me wrong, I love the Professor. He's a true hero and fighter, and his war stories make my skin prickle. But I am not that good of a person, or will I ever be. It takes some incalculable restraint not to beat six colors of living hell out of child abusers and molesters. I don't share that level of restraint. I don't even come close to it. I am more of a "hey, let me introduce you to the prison crew who are serving life sentences with nothing to lose, and they are going to teach you EXACTLY how fucked up you are. While they do that, I'm going to video tape it. Then, I am going to play it on a perpetual loop in your 4 feet by 4 feet sheet metal cell in the middle of the Sahara desert."

No, what I care about, academically at least, is writing  Not this nonsense  No, today and the post to come are my pressure release valve. No, I want to WRITE. I want to create a world as beautiful as Tolkien or  Rothfuss, or play in this world as well as Butcher or Hearne. I just have no idea how.

Yesterday, as luck so has it, I got advice. I went to get Name of the Wind and A Wise Man's Fears signed by Patrick Rothfuss, and to listen and ask him questions. He was honestly as funny as Damian, my brother (who I am sure will make regular appearances here) and he was full of wonderful advice. the best advice he gave was to stick what I know when I make my world.

So the question to ask, what do I know?
(Here comes the rambling typing of a stressed out law student. You've been warned.)

I know law. Not a great much of it, but I do understand it. Joy. Not much potential in writing a fantasy novel using law as a basis.

I know Physics and Science. That has potential, if I was writing about spaceships and ballistic trajectory.

I know family, but we ALL know family.

I guess the only thing I really know is the pursuit of these things, the cumulative sum of all of it. The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowing. I know the loyalty of a brother and the pride of patents. I know what it is to love, lose, love again, and lose again. To give up on love and forget about it, to find that most ridiculous and wonderful of feelings in the most unlikely of places. I know hate, and how I am hated. I know what it is to be different  I also know how good things on paper are bad ideas, and how one man's speech can be another's hell. I know how the world works, and why it doesn't work other ways. I know Bullshit, how to see it, how it sounds, and how to make hole cloth out of the strands of Bull I pull out of thin air.

I also know that I want to write. That I CAN write. Maybe I'm not the best, or even good. But I can write, and I WANT to wright. I guess that may be all that matters.

And writing here gives me ideas. Ideas on what to write.

And maybe, next time I post, I can talk about what I want to ask. Because the next great gem of advice given by Patrick Rothfuss is that in writing, you have to answer a question, and in Fantasy, you have to answer "What if..."

I'm heading back to the books. Talk to y'all latter.

Jonathan