The Strongest Muscle

What I hated most throughout the great year of fourth grade was the phrase "follow your heart". Not because I thought that following my heart would be foolish, but because I hated cliches.

I wrote a short story for a Young Author's Convention about, well, a post-apocalyptic setting. Apparently my fourth grade teacher found it deep or something, whether for its, erm... maturity or because it was nothing like what any one else wrote. That's not to say my story was unique. It followed a pretty basic pattern: Aliens attack Earth. Two weeks later, many parts of the world struggle for their survival against impossible odds. The Americans win. You know, fairly basic stuff. Japan fights with a wide arsenal (giant robots included) but is almost completly wiped out. China is simply "glassed", otherwise, melted. Europe erupts into chaos when Italy chooses to join the Alien menace. (at age 10, I didn't realize this particular irony)

Why do I bring this up? Well, for one, I had to get myself started with something. I never thought of myself as poetic or even artistic, and yet I was commended for my creativity for a couple of the stories I wrote while in this grade. This was the time in my life when I actually wrote. The seven or eight short stories that I penned that year actually meant something. Plus, STU, on the playground, now had a definite plot.

I was in a groove, my heart was in it. And it made so much of a difference when it was. Now, though, my mind is in it. I think out the details. I "plan", I "question", I consider. I contradict. Much more often than I would prefer, I chalk out maybe two paragraphs a month.

Fluidity is what I wish I could regain...

Origin of Worlds - Part 2

- Who needs another introduction? Let's try direct continuation.

By age 10 I was actively involved in two "games" that had become very important to me. The core storyline was building up to what I now consider as the "climax" - The Gian War* - while my storyline, Save the Universe, had now split into two separate campaigns which I would alternate between weekly. (Those I would later name "The Battle of Quirillva" and "Project Danerus") STU was almost a second life of mine. I had picked up two more regular members as Caleb left the game: Paval Neimeyer and Aaron Wham. I had by now created a full, living universe. The game was deep with recurring characters, (NPCs, I guess) their character arcs, subplots, plot-twists, and inside references. Looking back on it now, I'm surprised that I managed to do all of this. But that's another story for another time...

I eventually left public school and therefore the recess game STU, but not before reuniting the main players for the epic showdown with Xzhar and an actual conclusion to my long, ridiculously drawn-out story. (That final battle is still very fresh in my mind and I plan on recreating it as best I can in one of my eventual books) "Xzhar is really dead this time, guys," I told them, and they seemed satisfied enough.

When Josh was about 14 or so, he tried to start writing novels about the primary Terra Eversio saga, but never made it very far past a few prologues. But through his bursts of writing, we established firm finalities that began to set in stone what Worlds was. Names of characters and planets as well as a real timeline of events were beginning to settle with more permanency than whatever had been established before. (Which was a lot, but nothing was definite) Our universe continued to grow, now at a quicker rate than ever. (Although sometimes, it shrank, as we'd occasionally forget things) As he continued to try write things and, more commonly, take breaks from writing things, I eventually thought to myself, "I can't let STU die."

So when I got my shiny PDA at the age of 12, I started to mess around with the handwriting recognition on Pocket Word. I found it was really fun to write with, and soon I was writing a series of short stories called "The World Ends Now". But that has nothing to do with Worlds, so... after a few months of putting STU off, I just sat myself down, summoned the old recess game memories from my mind, remembered the characters, and proceeded to change their names, but that's, again, another story for another time...

It took me about one year to write the first two chapters, and almost two more to write the next two. This slowness only slightly bothered me, for I still had all the information in my head, and had quite a bit written down on paper. During a year-long lapse from any major work on my book, Alex Ashley, (or Alex Clayton in my mind, bad habits) who was an old friend of Josh's, returned to Washington for a little while, and apparently brought with him "connections" to a major media studio. With this, he and Josh saw an opportunity to write a pilot for a Worlds TV show. (a story for another time) Do you know how much we wrote?

If I had to make an estimate: about one half of one page.

A TV pilot is still a plausible idea in our heads, but I think that we've come to a silent realization that none of us really had a clear understanding of what Terra Eversio is. Or, was. Or, whatever. With all the establishments that we have written down or recorded in some sort of form, it still does not compare to what we haven't. So, in order to try to remedy this, Josh created the Worlds Divided Wiki, which made it a lot easier for us to stay coordinated and connected with all our loads and loads of [potential] lore...

I don't really have much more to say on this topic right now, and I'm tired of it and want to move on, so I guess this concludes (for now) the "Origin of Worlds".

Pfft. Took me long enough.

*Oh, I forgot about this footnote. Yeah, I consider The Gian War as the climax, instead of the destruction of Earth. Although, when you think about it, in an ongoing universe like this, there really isn't ever one "climax", now is there?

Origin of Worlds - Part 1

Before I start to confuse any who'll read this blog with random insights and stories that might seem to have no connection to each other, I decided to prologue a smidgen here and liberate what I have never put in writing before: How Worlds came to be. It's kind of a jumble, though. Not so very high-caliber journalism here...

Once upon a time there was a little three-year-old boy with an abundance of imagination and a lack of available imaginative friends. To that boy, this wasn't at all a problem, for he simply created a world in which he'd have friends and adventures any time he wanted. (my parents didn't worry about this because it's actually very common in young children) The boy, myself, had an older brother who soon "joined in". My brother, however, had slightly different interests than I did. While I had one imaginary comrade that was an elephant, one that was a vacuum, (whom I so obliviously named "Suck-Up") and one that was made entirely out of wood, (but would light himself on fire to scare away bad guys) Josh's characters were, I guess, more realistic. (Although the Hirah, one of his first official species, originally had spider-man-esque powers.)

Josh and I would team up on many occasions to fight against a common enemy. Names like "Quirillian", (had not yet seen Star Wars) "Mya"(didn't know a lick about ancient civilizations), and "Xzhar" popped up in this stage as we slowly developed a basic storyline. Those names, which I had come up with, (and even spelled!) weren't really used in "The Game", as it was called, but I still held on to them for future use. We were at a very early stage in the development of our growing epic universe, and later on we'd realize with age how preposterous some of our ideas are, and we'd reform and change them.

When Kindergarten came I found real live friends who weren't girls and didn't live in another county. It was there I met Braydon Newiadomski, the only other Jehovah's Witness in my grade. We had dinosaurs in common, so of course he became my best friend. Another kid, Caleb Chase, also became a fast friend. Recess was now an opportunity to Save the Universe, and I soon found myself having to translate what made so much sense in my head to other people. Thankfully, even at age 6, they somehow understood concepts such as atmospheric pressure and radiation poisoning as well as I did, which alleviated what could have been confusing scenarios to a point where I only had to explain what I was talking about on rare occasions. Otherwise, I'd just say where we were, what our mission was, and who we were fighting and we'd basically be all set to go.

Now I was playing two games. At home, Josh and I, (and eventually Mac and Zach Comstock) continued to flesh out what I've always felt is the "core" storyline - what would later be titled Terra Eversio. At school, however, I had a created a relatively isolated storyline that involved completely different species, locations, and government.

This post is taking too long to write, so I decided to go ahead and split it into two or three parts. In the next part I will explain how my game became my book, and where Worlds, as a whole, is heading now...

To Begin...

I thought I already had a blog. Actually, I'm quite positive that I did, but lost it within two weeks/month/years of creating it due to the usual neglect...

But THIS blog will be different. Oh yes indeedy. It will have a purpose. Because my flashdrive has been "accidentally" wiped on more than one occasion, I've decided that using it to store written ideas is most likely not the best idea. Sure, I've created back-ups, but something always ends up getting lost in the mix...

Okay. So here be me blarg...