Young Writers Society

Hello, cruel world cool world! Stranger here, and I have another bogus thread idea.

I was at a debate tournament last month, and while there, I was introduced to the poet Charles Bukowski. I am familiar with his name, but since I don't like reading poetry (ironic but true), I never checked him out. The first poem I read was blue cheese and chili peppers. The first words out of my mouth?

Holy [EXPLETIVE], this sounds like something I would write. Except, better!

After countless nights of crying into my pillow and throwing knives at printed out pictures of Bukowski, I realized something. I have a habit of looking at music or poetry or books I enjoy and wishing that I had written that. Hopefully you guys have felt the same, so I will pose the question.

What are things you wish you wrote?

I do wish I wrote something so creative as Mark Z. Danielewski's 'House of Leaves' or something as fun as Ernest Cline's 'Ready Player One'. Or something as realistic as the screenplay to Kevin Smith's film 'Chasing Amy' or something so brilliant as Charlie Kaufman's 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', though all of his writing impress me beyond express.

I also read every new poem @Lumi publishes, and I wish I could write like that.

+1 fun thread

When it comes to poetry there are far too many to name. lol
As for novels I can only think of two. Howl's Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones and The Last Dragon by Silvana de Mari.

I find that there are also times when I wish I had thought of a certain idea/plot not because I really like the specific book, but because I've fallen in love with the concept's possibilities. For example The Selection by Kiera Cass. How much I would love to write about a selection from the prince's point of view.

I was thinking of starting a thread like this the other day, so I'm glad you did!

In terms of books - The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay, Where the Stars Still Shine by Trish Doller, If I Stay/Where She Went by Gayle Forman, and All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. I thought the ideas were brilliant and they were executed so well and my brain explodes every time I read them.

And Harry Potter. Because HARRY POTTER.

In terms of lyrics - right now I'm loving on a bunch of country lyrics because of the stories they tell and the execution of that story. Burning House by Cam, Girl Crush by Little Big Town, Die a Happy Man by Thomas Rhett, Beautiful Drug by the Zac Brown Band. They kind of make me melt when I hear them on the radio because the words are just so good.

This list is definitely going to be ongoing.

I remember when I was quite young, about seven or eight, I had a very vivid dream about a girl who, whenever she read stories, would bring the characters to life and she herself would also somehow end up wrapped up in the story's plot. I told myself that it was a brilliant idea, one that captured my love for books and fantasy all at once, and that I would hold onto it until I was older and a more experience writer.

You can imagine my horror when, a few months later, I found out about Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. My mum actually really enjoyed them so I gave the books a shot and thought they were terribly boring and that I would have executed the storyline in a completely different way. I was hugely disappointed because I felt that a delicious story had been completely butchered by some other writer. I even picked up Inkheart awhile ago with the intention of properly reading it, but I still find it to be one of the most boring books ever. Perhaps my bitterness has stayed all these years, but I kind of doubt it. It's just a really boring book.

So, long story short, I wish I had written what is essentially Inkheart but differently. Not to say that my way would have been better because I don't doubt Funke's talent, but my childhood dream was basically smashed to smithereens because now the general idea was used and therefore tainted.

Agh, young Lavvie was a bitter one, wasn't she?

Gore Vidal's stuff.

I still pretend to be him from time to time

I'm totally on that Harry Potter boat (or train?). I must have read each book at least 10 times each by now.

Only reason I wish I wrote those books is because then I would continue writing them non-stop until I'm a crazy old man who's writing about Harry's great great great great grand son, Norbert Dumblesnoot Potter Juniour the Third.

I wish I'd written Terry Pratchett's books. That man was a genius.

Anything and everything Shel Silverstein.

But really though, most anything that Shel Silverstein wrote (mainly the poems, but the shorts were good as well. ).

Oh, and Lois Lowry's awesome quartet (The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, Son). That was an amazing time in my life. <3

I don't really mind not having written it, but I've always loved this segment of poem by Lord Byron and wished that I could write as powerfully:

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Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past -they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power -
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not -what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows -Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow? -What are they?
Creations of the mind? -The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep -for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.


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Especially this part:

They pass like spirits of the past -they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power -
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not -what they will,
And shake us with the vision that's gone by,
The dread of vanished shadow