Reading makes you a better writer

When I started writing, I sort of took a break on reading, which sort of sucks. It was good at first, because it was like I was still reading, but I was in control of the story and it took me wherever I wanted it to go. For the last few months (about six, I guess), I haven't really written anything new. I finished editing my novel A Shapeshifter's Memoir, book two if my Lycanthropy Journals trilogy, but I had not written anything new, short story-wise. I thoroughly enjoy writing short stories just as much as I like writing novels. Novels are more of a commitment, and require quite a bit more work. It's easier to write a short story, because it is not so hard to figure out where to take the characters and where to end it, because the story doesn't keep going on. But novels, they tend to require a lot more research and planning. Not that I can't write a novel easily, I wrote Whirlwind start to finish, including editing, in about four months, but I miss the writing part of it all, and then I realized how much I missed reading.

Before I became a writer, I was hardcore into reading. I had to always have some book I was working on, or I felt like my time was wasted. It was like that from the age of eighteen on. God, I have read so many good books. Classics like Lord of the Rings and Dracula, as well as newer books by Stephen King and Dean Koontz. And when I went to Korea for a year, separated from my wife and children (an experience that sucks worse than anything else if you are not single or not a cheating asshole), I determined that I would use that year to be productive, to do new things I had never done but always wanted to. I finished 25% of my first Master's Degree. I learned to play the guitar. And most importantly (to me, that is), I wrote my first novel, and realized that I love it. Since then, so much time went into my writing, that I got to the point that I stopped reading, something that I now realize was a crucial mistake. I write, I've had my stories published (not my novels, unfortunately), but eventually it got to the point where I felt like I was not improving, not growing in my craft, not evolving. And the reason why, is because I stopped reading.

Every writer has their own style, their own way of doing things, and by reading a variety of different things, from a variety of different authors, one can see things that they like or that they do not like in certain styles, and as a writer, it can and naturally does fuse into one's own writing process. So if you are a writer, a necessary way to improve it to read a lot. And not just from one author. Expand and diversify your interests and see what the professionals have to offer you. After all, they've made it, so they must have done something right. If you are not a writer, read something I've written. I have books on Amazon, and some older stuff for free on the internet. Or message me on any interests you might have on my stories or novels. Check out my website for more details. It's http://www.jonathandnichols.com.

Got creative with my son.

Movies break their own rules and ignore it

Sometimes I wonder if movies assume the viewer is stupid. It all depends on the movie, but sometimes they establish rules that are virtually ignored, such as Terminator 2 or The Matrix, and then sometimes they expect the viewer to be lacking in practical common sense. Case in point:

Back to the Future:

Marty McFly takes a DeLoreon (a car which ironically only lasted a few years because the founder was into cocaine) into his past where he accidently alters the events that result in his parents coming together. This very significant detail regarding the impossibility of changing things in the space-time continuum will be ignored in here. This article's focus is on another relatively important detail that the entire plot and the success of its protagonist focuses on.

 

"It says here that a bolt of lightning is going to strike the clock at precisely 10:04 pm"

But how many seconds, dumbass. Marty Mcfly drives that damn DeLoreon 88 mph into a cable, expecting the power to surge into his time machine at the exact second his speeding car makes contact – at 10:04 pm. How much do you want to bet the newspaper reporter at that time in the 60's did not take into account the seconds, not just the minute, when the clock tower was struck. There is an entire 60 seconds of leeway time before the clock is struck and it doesn't change from 10:04 to 10:05. So marty speeding down the road with a hook extending from the rear of his car would have most likely ripped the electrical cable out once it made contact, and twenty to thirty seconds later, Marty would have watched the lightening strike, not sending him back in time, and him mumbling "shit" to himself. Yeah he might have saved his parents' marriage only to cause divorce later on when his father realizes that his firstborn son looks very similar, or should I say exactly, like his wife's former high school fling.

Only an idiot of a father would jump to the assumption that a high-schooler befriended an eccentric mad scientist, accidently travelled back in time when said mad scientist was shot to death with a machine gun by terrorists from which he stole uranium to power his time machine, accidently disrupted his parent's first time meeting, and caused a interference at their high-school prom. Logic states that she had an affair and her first born looked exactly like her lover on the side, not like George McFly.

Either way, back to the point. His car would never have hit the cable at the exact time as the lightning strike, so even though this makes for a dramatic ending to the movie in 1985, he would have failed and Marty McFly would have had to adjust to life in the 60's.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day:

I have briefly pointed out this problem, but the first Terminator sets forth one very specific rule: nothing non-organic can travel back in time. This prevents the machines from going to the past, bringing a nuclear bomb, and destroying everything before the robot revolution. Terminator 2 is awesome. Robert Patrick is a badass, especially when he does his cameo in Wayne's World 2, but yet his very existence defies the rules of the first movie. The original Terminator was a robot wrapped in living human tissue, so the humans had no choice but to send a human back in time to fuck Sarah Conner and impregnate her with his seed and give the gift of John Conner to the post-apocalyptic world. But a liquid metal terminator, one that has no organic tissue, goes against the very basis of the rules established in the first terminator movie. I got nothing else to say about that. The movies provide no explanation on this, only state of the art special effects for a movie made in 1991. Either way, Terminator 2 should not and could not have happened, according to the rules of time travel.

The Matrix:

In The Matrix, if a person is plugged into the matrix somebody on the outside has to disconnect them via a phonecall. If they are unplugged any other way, they die. Yet somehow cypher finds a way to go into the matrix and meet with the agents whose existence in limited solely to the matrix. He makes a deal with them and betrays the resistance. But how the hell does he go into the Matrix to meet with said agents, and how the hell does he get out of there alive? No explanation is given, he never leaves the ship The Nebuchadnezzar to find some other entrance into the matrix, yet somehow he betrays everyone and kills all but Morpheus, Neo, and his lover. Pretty big plot hole if you ask me.

Now, it's midnight, I've been drinking, so I have no guarantee that any of this typing is in English. If I've fucked this blog entry up, let me know. Leave comments, not just on this, but on any blog posts you read, and let me know that somebody aside from Daryl Allen (btw, your awesome. Thanks for the feedback), is reading what I write. Also, if anybody who reads my blog is interested in any of my actual writing (novels and short stories), let me know. In all honesty, I think my stuff is pretty damn good, just waiting to be discovered. I'll send you stuff if you ask for it.

Either way, happy midnight to all, and to all a good night.

Is Hollywood lazy, or are they just giving us what we want?

So I get into a conversation with somebody day before yesterday about the fact that there are no more original movies, and everything these days are remakes, sequels, etc. Yeah, we’ve all heard it before, I hear people saying it all the time, it’s a worn down topic. But the thing is, at the time I was having that conversation, my wife was at the movies with her mom seeing The Age of Adaline, which just so happens to be one of those original movies that everybody says no longer exists. Now judging from what my wife said about the film, it sucks monkey balls, but regardless of quality, it is still an original movie. So this gets me thinking – when I saw Avengers: Age of Ultron on Saturday, what movie previews did they have before the film?

They had the two upcoming Marvel comics films Ant Man and the Fantastic Four remake of a remake, but they also had Tomorrowland and Pixels, neither of which are based on anything as far as I could tell.

Both of which look entertaining.

I looked up Tomorrowland and learned that they decided to take the name from an attraction at Disneyworld, sort of like they did with Pirates of the Carribean, so I guess in a sense, this doesn’t count as an original movie. I mean, the script and story was original, but it was based on, or should I say inspired by, Disney’s Tomorrowland, so that one’s out. Then there’s the movie Pixels, which looks stupid, just another Adam Sandler retarded film from his production studio Happy Madison.

The studio that brought us these classics.

I go to look that one up, and it is based on a short animated French film. So the two possibly original movies I saw trailers for aren’t original at all. This seems to strengthen the ever so popular argument that original films are dead. But then I get to thinking that I heard somewhere that the majority of the movies that won Oscars last year had never been seen or heard of by the majority of the population.

Before I go any further, I guess I should change my definition of “original”, because technically nothing is absolutely original, the idea has to come from somewhere, or is inspired by something, so for argument’s sake, I’ll just go with sequels and remakes/reboots.

I looked it up and the highest grossing movies of 2014 were Transformers 4 (sequel), Hobbit 3 (sequel in a series, and the series itself is a prequel), Guardians of the Galaxy (original-ish. Part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and all of these movies are related in one way or another, sort of sequels, to each other since one leads into the next one), Maleficent (Remake? Reimagining? Not sure what to call this one, but it counts as unoriginal), Hunger Games 3 (sequel), X-Men…7? (Days of Future Past, a sequel), Captain America 2 (sequel), Spider-Man 2 (or 5, depending on how you’re counting, and a sequel to a remake), Planet of the Apes 2 (sequel to a reboot), and last but not least, one original movie – Interstellar.

So then I looked at the award winning movies for that year: Golden Globes, Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, BAFTA Awards, and Critics Choice Awards. Looking down the list, I noticed an interesting trend – not one, not a single movie listed that won an award matched up to the list of unoriginal money making box office smashes for that year. Movies like Birdman (original film), The Imitation Game (original film), The Grand Budapest Hotel (original film), Boyhood (original film), The Theory of Everything (original film), Selma (original film)… the list goes on. Nobody’s heard of half these films, so either they aren’t being advertised (part of the problem, I’m sure), or nobody’s going to see them, which is clearly a part of the problem. Everybody says there is nothing unique or original, but when its time to go to the movies, what do they go see, one of the remakes, reboots or sequels. Hollywood’s just feeding the public what it is clear that they want. I’m guilty myself. Just saw Avengers 2, plan on seeing Jurassic World and Mad Max, so maybe we’re all part of the problem. Hollywood is giving us what we are paying for, so if we didn’t all fork over our money to see Dumb and Dumber To, maybe they’d feed us an original movie we’d all like to watch.

Nothing in particular

Okay, so I haven’t written in my blog for a week, but in my own defense, I haven’t had a computer. Yeah, we have three laptops in the house – one for me, one for my wife, and one for my kids. The one for me was sitting on the bed when it got kicked off the bed while my wife and I were distracted from… other things. Either way, one of us kicked it off the bed accidentally (it was worth it), but I had to order a new hard drive after the computer hit the ground and continuously gives errors after restart.

So I’ve been drinking some Jim Bean, a little drunk, watched the new Avengers movie a little while ago, and my typing is shit (due to the drinking), but thank God for spell check.  I really don’t have a particular topic to write about, so I’ll go with the google image of my house:

I didn’t take that picture – Google did, and at the perfect time, during Halloween when I had the yard decked out to represent the zombie apocalypse. Honestly, I think it’s pretty awesome that my house is captured for at least the next couple of years with an image of my badass holiday spirit. Next year it’s going to be chicken wire ghosts (look it up. They look pretty sweet). I’m probably going to have a couple of ghostly girls doing jump rope, maybe have a ghost kid sitting on the roof, who knows. Either way, I think I’m going to finish watching “The Babadook” and go to sleep. Happy May to all, and to all a good night.

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