Young Writers Society

For the next three weeks I will not only be doing midterms, but I will be leaving the country to do a class in Israel, so yeah, I'm gonna be busy. I'll be taking notes and ideas for Keep it Cool the entire time, though, so it's not a total loss of time. I just have too much work in front of me to be able to manage to write anything right now, that's all.

But thanks for asking. I appreciate it. Keep it Cool is in the Advanced Critiques section if you're ever interested in reading it. I have yet to keep putting new chapters up because the story is being largely ignored, save for Angel of Death, who's been nice enough to read a few chapters already.

Dark times and moods have struck again and again lately. I have not written anything for Keep it Cool since two weeks ago. I just can't think, can't even prioritize what' important in my life besides school, my faith, and my own personal wants and needs in life.

I'm hoping my trip to Israel over spring break will shake up some inspiration, but we'll have t see. I won't be bringing my laptop along, so I won't be on YWS for the next week and some starting Monday. I'll have to take notes in a pad or something, I suppose. I'm hoping that getting around Hebrew culture and Muslim culture will only be a positive effect on my inspiration and ideas. I've been coming up with dark ideas lately, due mainly to depression, and these foggy moods that permeate through my life every single day for the last few months. I'm not sure I understand where all of this bleak negativity is coming from, but I know it's not helping in any way, shape, or form. The only thing it's doing for me is helping me to come up with some horror ideas, and that's it.

We'll see what the future holds. For now I'm not content with much, nor am I pleased with myself.

Over in Israel, I came up with a plot, or a basic concept. I want to put it down here, as a preview as to what will most likely be coming after Keep it Cool is finished. Hope you all like it. This is the prologue:

- Bryan McPherson, Historian, 2037. Recorded in the Book of the City:

For three hundred years, the City has stood, a monolithic titan over barren wastelands, extinct plots of the world that have died from the disastrous nuclear wars of the past .Throughout it all, the City has stood strong; first against the two civil wars between political powers, and again when the Manicia disease spread and covered half of the world in a flesh-rotting, mind-disintegrating panic that caused the death of almost a fourth of the City’s population.
The City is all that stands now, tall, proud, still as beautiful as it was the day it was built. There is no other city in the world now; all have been either cast down or rebuilt to join to the City, like an appendage being sewn onto the body. All that exists beyond the City’s length is the lands of desolation, where only wild animals dwell. The City is in a time of economical greatness; every man has a job, and a home as well. Every family has all they need to be happy.
There is no strife in the house, and there is no trouble with the administration that is in power now. They are good people, running an efficient ship. There only are the dissenters; a group of minorities within the gradual population that has difficulty submitting to authority and joining the rest of us in peace and prosperity. They travel in packs, and have caused several riots on the streets. Despite these moments of anger, there has been no true disruption. All is well.
(There is a smearing of ink all over the page. Turning the next page, the date is labeled “2041”and the ink is now blue, not black.)
“Times are no longer peaceful, and there is much fear in the world. The dissenters have rebelled, and taken more than a third of the City’s civilians with them out into the deserts, doing who knows what. They are heretics; they have no further aim than to destroy the City, and all that it stands for. Even now, they attack the gates, bombarding the City with small bombs, ambushing patrols, and taking prisoners when they can…
They have spies within the walls, and even our proud President and his administration are starting to get worried about the situation. This is a war that cannot go on. Extreme force may be necessary, if only to keep the heretics from breaking what’s left of the Will of the people.
I have confidence in our President; Ambarchi has not led us into hopeless defeat. He will make things right again.
(More stains of ink, and another date, “2042”.)
Times have changed. The government is a well-oiled machine, and its people are tools used to do nothing more than completely annihilate the heretics from the face of the planet. There is no fear anymore. There is only anger and hate. Some day, I will have children who will not know what this war was about, and I can be at peace, knowing that they will never understand this terrible time of blood and death. We live in an age where there is no time for understanding. There is no time for mercy, or time for peace. Both of these are weaknesses. The City will hold on, and we will never die. Our legacy will be cast on the walls forever, written with the blood of heretics as the ink.
(The recording ends, and McPherson’s signature is scribbled at the bottom.)

Interesting. I must sad I did hit a bit of a spark myself on my 21st birthday (on March 21st), fairly interesting that the two concepts of your plan and my plan share a common thread, except for nuclear war, mine is more magical.

Nicely done with the political side, few writers detail those critical figures. Though the 2042 part contradicts the 2037 date it was published.

Do you happen to listen to Rhapsody aka Rhapsody of Fire? The ending part sounded similiar to a line from Lux Triumph about how blood writes its own trajedy. Rhapsody has powerful lyrics that just jump out at me when I read something that comes close to their stories.

Can't say I've heard of Rhapsody. The artists that inspired this prologue were the ones in my signature haha.

Today I've written 1792 words for Keep it Cool so far. I hope to get more done today, because school's not bearing down on me yet tonight. I've just been far too busy for anything. I look forward to this summer, because I am determined to do a few things that will help my writing I hope get a new influence into them.

For starters, I won't be doing any school. I will stick with a full time job, and see if I can make some money in doing so. More importantly than that though, I am planning on starting boxing, and eventually (way down the road, of course,) getting some fights. I have been sitting on the sidelines, away from participating in any kind of sport, for the past two years, and it's driving me insane. The competitive urge within me has developed into a hungry animal, and I need to unleash it. Hopefully, this will lead to new muses and whatnot. We won't know until the summer, unfortunately.

It was lame April fool's joke posted here, so let us forget I posted it in the first place.

Things are getting better; i'm going home for the weekend, so I'll see if I can get some writing done then. We'll see how it holds up.

Having trouble with my laptop, so I'm on my parents' computer at home, listening to the album Painter of Dead Girls by Pig Destroyer while I'm going to take notes down here on the new novel Idea that will be taken up after Keep it Cool is finished. It's a shame that I have no time to work on it; I'd very much like to get rolling on this new idea, but i'm determined to get Keep it Cool done. I need a long vacation in which I do nothing but write. Unfortunately, the older you get, the less chance you'll get of getting an opportunity like that...

But I digress. Here's some notes for the new novel. I'm putting it down here so that I can past and print it when I'm on my laptop in a few days.

Setting: Alexandria, VA (Possibly)
Modern times, 2009, Spring

Concept: Man's primal side, and his addiction to self-destruction
Protagonist: Several unknown characters so far; only one real protagonist sticks out.

Name: N/A
Age: Somewhere in his twenties.
Tall yet wiry, ugly face mutilated from multiple fights, missing a pinky finger.
Insteresting facts: Arrested and convicted for battery, sentenced to seven years in prison, but let out on good behavior after six. Doesn't like to talk about the incident.
Very interesting facts: Although not religious, attends a Christian church out of confusion, looking for a meaning in life. Friends with the pastor.

Antagonist time. This is an old character that I wrote a story for, but I decided to get rid of the story and rewrite this guy. He still has a lot of the traits he did when I came up with him in 2005, but now he's gonna be even better.

Age: A year younger than the protagonist.
Average height, built like a bull. missing two teeth, and has a 'glass eye' (Ocular prosthesis replacement surgery) for his left eye. Also scarred, all over his body. PCP abuser.
Interesting facts: Born into a wealthy family that he absolutely hates and rebels against in everything he does. Attends church when his family doesn't, doesn't attend when they do. Hardly worked in college because he didn't want to be there.
Very interesting fact: Wants to be a world leader and change America. I won't say much more, because you will learn more about this guy's intentions as the story progresses.

The problems that are set up against the protagonist:
Drug abuse
Cult following
Powerful and Influential enemies
Confusion between organized religion and pure spirituality

...and this is just the beginning. The general idea is that Alexandria is turned upside down by riots in the streets, church burnings, and violence as a single man is bent on forming the country for his own political agenda, starting with Alexandria.

I hope this is an interesting idea for everyone; I know I can feel adrenaline pumping through me as I think about writing it. (Or maybe that's just the Amp energy drink I drank earlier, and the fact that I'm listening to Pig Destroyer right now...but who knows.)

I'll come up with more when I have time; which may be a long while. Stick around.

Not bad, sounds like it is coming along. ^-^ I'm still doing research for a fun short project while I am waiting on my computer so I can restart work on Gaea. I have a job now so that is definately getting in the way of my writing. I work at Krispy Kreme. Yay.

Things have once again changed up. I have thrown out almost all ideas that I had going save for Keep it Cool. Keep it Cool has almost 72,000 words written for it, and yet, I feel like I'm never going to finish the thing. I don't even know if it'll be done by summer time. There's just so much I need to include in the story, it just feels like it's almost ridiculous. But I know that once it's completely done it will have been worth it.

Started a new idea up to maintain my writing even if I'm not working on KIC. It's a lyrica poetry challenge for myself. Whenever I can, I pick one song for the mood I'm feeling at the moment, at any part of the day, and I listen to that song, playing it on repeat so that it just keeps playing, and playing, and playing...

I then write a poem to the first image that comes to mind when the song starts to play. I write the mood, the image, etc. I've done two poems so far, and both have been posted on here in the poetry section: One is called "Look Up" and it is in the Lyrical Poetry section. The other one is called "The Swine Giveth, The Swine Taketh Away" and that one is my first forray into the Narrative Poetry section...so if you're interested in my work go ahead and read it. I don't expect any kind of critique for these; then again, I've pretty much assumed most of my work, if not all of it, will probably go ignored here on YWS anyways, so it doesn't matter.

But I'm digressing again. The poems are up for your enjoyment. I will try to write KIC today, but I also have an essay to write, and a paper that are both due by the end of this week. We'll see what happens.

With every day that passes by I get new ideas, and new areas of life to explore. Unfortunately, this means that Keep it Cool is still not being completed. I am working as hard as I can on it, but I just finished a paper, and tomorrow I have to deal with housing for the next semester.

Meanwhile though, new notes are flying through my brain all the time. An idea that I'm willing to explore is to try writing another contemporary novel like Keep it Cool, except that it will most likely end up being a novella, not a novel, because the story in my head is not as long as KIC's is. The premise is around another young student, who decideds to live in VA Beach instead of living at home for the summer. What happens while he is there is that he meets the wrong few guys to befriend, and things blow up from there.

And yet, while I want to try this idea eventually, another urging has been pressing me; the desire to combine sci-fi with adventure, and some fantasy in between. The idea spins wildly around about a future where multiple worlds are colonized, and some are teeming with hostile inhabitants. One particular world is where a group of colonizers and are headed, but they aren't there for colonizing; rather, they are searching for a precious artifact that has been found on the planet that is worth their own lives. Acting as a guide and body guard for the leader of the group is a character who I have yet to decided whether he is the protagonist or the antagonist. He is a former Marine, a war veteran, and is mostly of Cherokee blood (like me, haha; except I don't have a ton in me. I just know I'm Cherokee.). He is part of a clan of similar soldiers for hire, and they decide to send an attachment to retrieve him, and the story gets wilder from there....

These are basic ideas worth pushing around. I'm expanding my musical palete (Don't know how to spell that exactly) around once again; giving the japanese artist Merzbow a try. His 'music' hurts my already-damaged-ears, but it's worth it so far. As it is, like I always say, let's see what happens in the future...

Well, I'm three days away from having finished two years' worth of college. It's an interesting feeling, I guess. But all that time spent studying is time that I wish I could be using to write Keep it Cool. That's not happening. In fact, nothing seems to be happening. I've had a lot of false starts over the last few weeks, and a lot of ideas that seem to pop seemingly from nowhere. One idea I now have is what I call "Violence-Gone-Gonzo" Which is an obvious reference to Hunter S. Thompson's style. It's almost more of a cartoon i'm writing than a full-blown novel. But so far that's what it is, and I refuse to change it. The other idea was one I've posited in the Rate This Idea thread; a future in which America is beyond saving, and the world is filled with constant abuse of drugs, responsibility, etc. Unlike A Foggy Glass, this one isn't going to be so politically driven; instead it's more about the frustrations of the protagonists rather than point out what's wrong with the world.

Ideas keep coming, and Keep it Cool still ain't finished. This is getting on my nerves. I can't' wait til Thursday, when I"m finally free, and I will WRITE.

It's been three days... so... YAY! DONE WITH COLLEGE!

Keep at it. And post some here. I've been waiting over a month for a bit to read.

This week has been a very, very difficult week for me. I start work tomorrow, and boxing training has been going great so far. But as far as writing has been concerned, I had to sit down and make a decision that's going to hurt for a little bit. Keep it Cool was a great story to write, but at the moment I'm stuck, and I realized as I've been sitting around the last few weeks, I'm never going to finish it. My heart's just not in it anymore.

So the decision made was this: Keep it Cool is done for the forseeable future. It may be finished one day, many years from now. It may never see the light. Either way, I just knew that I wasn't feeling the love anymore. No matter what I wrote, teh story just seemed to get buried underneath all of this muck that was making me realize that it wasn't as greaty a story as I'd originally planned, and the most it would become would be a teenager's diary for expressing his thoughts and feelings. I didn't want that, so I've decided I'm done with Keep it Cool.

Does it suck? Surely, but you know me. I'm already working on two different stories. ONe involves a character that I have called my SUPERVILLAIN. His name is Rosko, and one of my finest novellas was written with him as the bad guy. The title of the novella was even after the villain, ROSKO. But after a bit of thinking, I realized I wanted to see what he'd be like if I made him a good guy; so this new novella/novel is going to be about a man named Sanders (Rosko eventually) who's working as a bounty hunter. THrough a set of events that include him killing a man he was supposed to arrest, Rosko finds himself in a situation with a powerful familiy who wants his head.

The other story is this. The main character of Keep it Cool, Chad Palma, is without a doubt one of the most colorful, creative characters I've come up with yet. My one regret with Keep it Cool being killed is that I don't want to get rid of Palma and a few of his friends, who were based off of a few of my real friends. So instead, I've brought them back, and they're going to be the centerpiece of a new kind of novel i'm trying out here. It's an untitled set of novellas, short stories, etc., followingn Chad Palma once agian, a younger, high school version of Chad, along with his buddy Jessie Portwood. Essentially, these stories will be about Chad's take on humanity, the culture of teens in America right now, the degredation of American politics, etc. This was greatly influenced by my hero Hunter S. Thompson (Who Chad is pretty much a younger, less insane version of.) and most of this will be very similar to the gonzo journalism that Thompson created. I'm not copying Mr. Thompson here though; I should stress that. None of what's happening in these little stories happened in real life.

And so there you go, that's how I've been lately. Life is weird right now, but I feel like a weight has been taken off of my chest after giving Keep it Cool a complete rest.

You can do it, Krupp! You've overcome this dreadful week, now things are going to just gets better! I'm supporting you all the way

Good news for a change. Work on the Rosko idea has gone under - no surprise there - and I've decided to do something I've talked about doing for a very long time; rewriting the first novella I ever wrote, the Walkway. It's a book that's sorely needed to be rewritten because it has some of the most memorable characters I've ever written, and it had a depth to it that I can't forget. The whole story was inspired by Fight Club and was essentially a copy of it; but now I've got enough ideas that I want to try to rewrite it and make it into something more, something better.

The essential idea to start out with here is a new title: The Walkway was the name of the main setting where all the characters hang out. Now the new story title is The Walker, and it's a reference to the protagonist, Travis Bane, a runaway who's lived in several states, and has fled his past for a very long time. He moves in with a drug dealer in Chicago, looking for work, and ends up helping the dealer with his sales. Eventually he becomes addicted (Either to cocaine or heroin yet, I'm not sure. Still debating.) and has to fight through that before it kills him. He soon runs into several interesting people who lead him to a philanthropist who's using a small part of an old neighborhood in Chicago to lend aid and care to abandoned or abused kids who need help getting back on their feet. Travis' struggle through this life of petty crime, drug addiction, a march through an underground bare-knuckle boxing circuit, and a dangerous feud with a powerful man all slowly take their toll on him; will he become the man that he's always desired to be? I don't know. That's what we'll find out, hopefully.

I'm also working on Chad Palma's adventures still, though that's something I'm taking time with right now. The Walker is more important to me for the moment.