John Hattaway

The time is going on 4 a.m. and I am, currently, awake. I guess it is a good thing that because of how I felt most of yesterday I have no intention of going to work; on top of which, I need to be in Salt Lake for a bit picking up a tuxedo for the wedding on Friday and I am getting married on Friday.

However, this does not change the fact that I am awake at four in the morning. I am awake. I am awake. I am awake. Hey! Erin, I am awake.

I’m finding this life change to be interesting in how I react to the change that is coming down the pipe. Instead of sleeping like a baby, I can normally sleep through anything, I am awake tonight. Last night I felt like I had a raging fever. I don’t, exactly, feel a lot better at the moment; but, truth told, I think that I am just suffering from some kind of anxiety.

Problem is, I don’t know where the anxiety comes from. I know that I am meant to marry Erin on Friday. I know that we are meant to start our lives together. I know that we love each other, and that she really, really loves me (and I her, in return); but I am awake.

Which is fine, I guess. It means you get a more train of thought entry than I normally do. Normally, I sit and stare at a computer screen, I consider what it is I am going to write. Sometimes I sketch out a brief outline of the thoughts, occasionally I just sit and stare at a few lines for a couple of days, with the outcome that, eventually, I write whatever I feel like writing.

Of late, that has been about writing.

For example, I was visiting my friend Lewin and his wife (and child), finishing up a CD with music on it for the reception at the Springville Museum of Art, and Lewin handed me a grant proposal paper that a potential employer asked him to read. There were some editing mars on the paper. That is not what is important. What is important is that when you write, more often than not, you should be writing in a left leaning manner.

Left leaning is where you place your subject in relation to what you are writing in a sentence, paragraph, and paper, piece of fiction, etc. The subject of a paper should normally, and naturally, orient to the left (we read left to right). However, in the proposal the original author had his subjects in paragraphs and sentences stuck anywhere. The outcome was a paper that lacked in cohesion and coherence.

I stated that the paper lacked that particular point of cohesion and it confused Lewin. His wife, thinking she understood where I was going, pointed out, “Left brain, right brain,” and I said, “It could be looked at like that, but that’s not quite it either.” And then proceeded to see in my head a box with lines drawn in it and red markings showing what I was meaning. When you read a sentence, the subject of said sentence should be close to the beginning; however, as you build more complex thoughts and start to add different marks like the semi-colonm (;), the colon (:), full stops or periods (.), and other marks, you begin to obfuscate where, exactly, the original subject is. This is why paragraphs, also, are left leaning.

The subject of a paragraph shows what the objective of that paragraph will be. If you are talking about writing and you are changing topics without changing paragraphs you have just obfuscated the purpose of the greater thought. In essence, you are in need of starting another paragraph rather than following the (not) hard and fast rule of four sentences per paragraph with the first sentence being the subject and all other sentences supporting that subject.

To understand this is to further improve the craft of writing; and yet, this should never be something you have to consciously work on, otherwise, the outcome is something that will never appear to turn out right. That is a lie. You, as writer, do have to consciously work on writing, on the various aspects of what you are writing. The objective, though, is to get to the point where, when writing, you create a structure that the order of words, sentences, paragraphs, and ultimately thoughts, lines up from left to right.

If you don’t understand any of that, I return you to the super-idea that this is a matter of train-of-thought writing and it is much closer to 4 a.m. now than it was when I started writing the entry.

So, I am getting married on Friday. I am absolutely looking forward to this. Reading Erin’s blog, from yesterday, it would appear that she is looking forward to Friday as well. Her mom told us (me) today that she was happy the wedding was in the morning. Her reasoning for that was because the temperature, in Utah, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. was exceptionally hot and that she never felt well during that time. Since we are getting married at 10 a.m., she doesn’t have to worry about the excessive temperatures that Utah is known for (dry temperatures, too). The outcome, Erin’s mom is happy with the time we are getting married.

According to Weather.com, the high, in Manti, on Friday will be 83 degrees Fahrenheit with a 50% chance of rain and thunderstorms. Erin, some months back, said she would actually be happy if it was raining (or threatening to) that day as it would make the day cool. Don’t know how serious she was, but, hey!!!, she got her request. Hopefully, starting at about 10:20 a.m. (the ceremony lasts about 20 minutes give or take) it will be dry enough for us to be outside taking pictures. We are looking forward to having Melanie come and take them (Melanie did our engagement pictures).

Which reminds me. There are some things that I think are totally lame.

1). Bachelor parties. There isn’t an excuse, in my life, for this party, leave it to those who want one.

2). People decorating cars. I think it is annoying and, honestly, will take affront at this being done to the car Erin and I take to the reception here or in Massachusetts, though, admittedly, the car in Massachusetts will be her brothers – it is still asinine and stupid. Nothing is going to change that. To me, it’s along the lines of balloons except, I won’t even appreciate the gesture.

3). People wondering who the best man is or why they were not asked to be the best man. In an LDS temple wedding, kind of a moot point, but, hey!, we mimck the world around us.

Apparently my best man is supposed to throw me a bachelors party and since that individual does not live in Utah and is the best man at a ceremony (a week later) where a best man actually makes sense, and since I think the tradition is a load of crap, I believe that suggesting there should be one, especially after I’ve stated (for months) a total lack of desire for one, to be… weird.

That’s really it.

Back to writing for a moment (see, train-of-thought), Alicia Grey has taken a short holiday, in the writing sense, as I am dealing with last minute aspects of getting married. You know, tuxedos, parties, work, driving all over creation for a variety of things, etc. The outcome, of this, is that I am actively thinking about and wanting to work on the book, and will get back to it soon enough, but, in days, have added no appreciable word count to the actual text of the book. However, in the form of notes and supporting material, I have increased the basic plot description to several of my ideas, further sketched out where the scope of the stories will be told, and brought in some supporting characters and mythologies to further compliment her and her adventures. None of this means that I need to go back to the drawing board (figuratively) to rework things (well… actually, I probably need to do some additional work on one scene, but in my rewriting for coherence I’ve not made it to that scene yet), I think that the book will begin to move forward, at a nice clip, here in another week or so and look forward to having an aggregate word count increase to report in future updates.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Bond. James Bond

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This entry was posted by smokingpen on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 3:57 am and is filed under On Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.