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