New Ideas, Old Ideas, { and not enough brain space}

This post is a sort of comanion to this post, made by my fellow author Danielle. We both have a lot of Avaria homework to do, and I also haven't posted much about my writing on SSOoA recently, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and follow up my last mini-update with a major-update.

First things first: COLLEGE SEARCH. Bottom line: Covenant's campus preview weekend was amazing, I loved it, but I'm still not sure if Covenant is where God wants me. There: easy to explain, not so easy to decide. Oh well. I'll keep you posted.

On to writingness!

Avaria homework: basically my homework was to go through the entire series and make a list of absolutely essential characters. The others may or may not get cut. To be perfectly honest, this is kind of killing me. One of the best things about writing Avaria was creating characters. I think I took it to an extreme. There are a LOT of characters in Avaria. Most of them are underdeveloped; a few of them lot of them are just unnecessary. I've grown fond of them, however, and cutting some of the minor characters is going to be tough. But with every character I cut, Avaria's story gets stronger and more concrete. It's a labor of love; the "kill your darlings" kind of love (in reality, I think it kills the author more than the darlings, but that's just my own opinion).

In other news: The Thirteen Tales of Solomon Wise is petering along. I'm plotting right now, trying to sure up some weaker parts of the story while exploring my new characters' different stories and motives. I'm also trying to wrap my mind around the idea of time travel. It's pretty hard when even the concept of time zones doesn't make sense to me. I'm trying really hard not to mess it up or get lazy and settle for a mediocre explanation. I'm also trying to figure out just how time travel will work in a Biblical worldview; can people go back in time to right wrongs they did and be the masters of their own destinies? I don't think so, and  that's certainly not how I'm planning to portray my take on time travel, but there's going to be a very fine line I'll have to walk when I finally start writing. Still, it's exciting to be working on a new idea.


And finally (speaking of new ideas) I've really been playing around with a dystopian idea lately. I'm not exactly sure where it's going, but I'm relying heavily on the concept of Farenheit 451 (which I have yet to read). I, for one, can't imagine living in a place without books which are free to the public, and I think it would be interesting to create a world where this is reality, and explore what it would mean to the society in which the characters function. Also, one of the things I loved most about The Hunger Games was the huge influence Collins showed the a corrupt government can have, even to the point of making children slaughter each other while facing very little resistance from the general population. In The Hunger Games, the Capitol was a very real and vicious villian, having the face of President Snow but consisting of something much larger and more deadly. I'd like to explore a sort of "government villian" for this idea without suggesting anarchy or anything extreme as an alternative. Again, another fine line to walk. Gah.

That's about all I have for you, though I did write a short poem I figured I tack on to the end of this post (since technically this is a writing blog and this will be the first piece of writing I've posted in a few months). I hope you enjoy and I also hope you had a blessed Easter with family, friends and the breathtaking reality that WE have come to life through Christ's rising from the dead!

~Elisabeth

Blue

Come swimming, come swimming

Come swimming in blue

For I’m still your true love

And have searched far for you

I went sailing, went sailing

Went sailing on blue

And I said I’d be back

Said I’d be back for you

It was storming, was storming

It was storming deep blue

On the night that I died

Died thinking of you

I was floating, was floating

Was floating in blue

In celestial light

Where the soft seaweed grew

Now I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming

I dream all in blue

But I’m still your true love

And dream only of you.