Picture
Above is a bridge (of course!) that went over a little wet spot they may have once been called a "creek."

To the right, was another place I was at, a real lake.











Picture
Oh, here's the other half of the lake, hehehe, wonder how that got cut in half... 

Picture
But this is where I wasn't at.










And, The United States of America, oh, wait, I was there...

 
I've been away far too long, far too long.  SIX days! can you believe it! well, I'm back now and I've got a LOOOOOOOONG list of ideas for really "revolutionizing" my website.  I'll list a few, my new thing I call an, E-Log, E-Journal, a bunch of new short stories, my second novel, pink caterpillars...  and the list goes on.  Seriously though, I was away camping and I saw the strangest of things...

So, I'll be posting TONS from now on because I have TONS of new ideas, plus, I'll be giving away a short story I call Second Chance very soon, I'll give a few sneak peaks and all that exciting stiff until it is fully ready.  Upcoming events on the Random Writings page, The Weekly Wars posts, and, I would also like to know if you want another list of riddles and jokes, that was assembled in my free time for fun, but, I could make another few if you wanted.
 
These are all original (or at least I think they are, you never know if you really did make it up first!)  Note: please do not read the answers before the joke or riddle.  (Get it?  what? you don't think that was funny? okay, whatever.)

Jokes
If I ever die (which isn't likely) I will die because I have been trying to finish the last paragraph of my novel for three weeks nonstop, then I'll die from starvation.

What do you call a Bison who is stuck out on a leaky boat in the middle of the Atlantic ocean?  A Water Buffalo!

Jay crossed a street, suddenly a police tackled him and took him to jail why?  He was J Walking


What's just as bad a drinking coffee?  Chewing on tooth-picks!  It'll stun your growth!

What is round, angry with itself, and big.  Earth




Riddles

It is everywhere and nowhere.  It lives within itself yet does not live at all.  It is the very substance of all that lives.  What is it?

air


I am that what you dread.  I live and yet not live.  I die and yet cannot die.  I am the very thing that existed since the beginning.  I cannot be harmed nor helped.  I cannot see nor hear nor feel.  I am that does not live.  What am I?

Death
 
WOW! That's all I can say.  Writing The Traitor's Tale was harder, more educational, and certainly a lot of eye opening experiences.  I didn't go anywhere, just each day (some anyway) I heaved myself out of bed.  Gulped down some breakfast, maybe wrote a little,  later I'd start to write more in the afternoon and such.  So, I didn't really go anywhere eye opening... except my room.  It has taught me many things, one of them, as I like to say it.  "Keep you eyes on the screen and your fingers on the keyboard, and soon you'll have a book in your hands.) okay, okay, I just made that up.  But anyway, I found that I personally need to be more descriptive and more interesting in just each sentence I write.  I may be boring you now, but if I suddenly started talking about ...  The Best Way To Kill A Zombie.  That may have opened YOUR eyes a little bit, why would I start talking in my novel of how to kill zombies, well, that would be senseless, but I probably got you to pay a little bit more attention to what I'm saying, so, before I loose you again... tell me what's the best thing you can do to improve you writing?

Okay, I didn't really give you any real advice there, but now I will.  Personally, like I said, I need to become more descriptive and interesting.  but what about YOU.   Write something, however short, it can vary from five-to-ten pages or more, but write about whatever, about yourself, about one of you friends, about the even that you sure is going to happen.  Maybe just make something up about how you can't write.  Now, wait maybe a week or two, just to get your mind off of it.  Then, read it, and see what you need to improve on.  Sometimes it's not easy, but what do you think you need to improve on your writing, not just a few changes here and there, but I mean what is missing in your writing.  Description?  Flowing from one sentence to the next? Even the entire plot of the story?  Something that helps me with making a plot, is thinking of something that's never been done before.  Most stories that aren't supposed to be horror or something else, end up with the "good guys" beating the "bad guys."  So, I you still want it to have happy ending, yet it be different than other stories, then have the "bad guy" escape, or, the initial intent of the main character fails.  You never know what's rattling around in YOUR head, until you explore it.
 
A few people...well, one person asked if I was going to publish my novel The Traitor's Tale.  I don't know, since I'm a fairly amateur writer/author, I don't think that a publishing company would publish my novel, I try not to brag, so sometimes I understate things, my novel is okay, but it's not amazing.  I wrote it in 107 days exactly so I'll tell you the story of my novel, the first ten days I wrote and finished the first draft.  But the first draft was nowhere from complete.  After a while I started in on my second draft, well, actually my first draft if you call the first draft the rough draft.  Anyway, I was slowly beginning to be bogged down by the amount of writing I was doing, I seriously mean about 3 to 5 hours a day.  Yeah, I really like to write, but I was doing it to fast.  Now I realize if I slowed down and put more thought into each sentence, then it would be a LOT better.  So at the moment of finishing the rough draft it was only about eighty pages, not quite a novel, I forget the exact word count but it wasn't the 40,000 that signals the beginning of a new born novel.

About my third draft I really was slowing down.  A lot of days I didn't even write at all.  So the progress was really bad.  But eventually I finished the third draft and was into my last draft, the ominous, the terrifying, the FOURTH DRAFT!

The first while of the fourth draft was just as slow as before.  I had read it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and...well, you get the point.  And I hadn't just read it, I thought about it for hours, I wrote it, and then I read, and read it, and read it.  Now that it's done, I see I shouldn't have rushed myself, but I'm not going to write a fifth draft, why?  My novel would have to be completely rewritten to make it better.  But still, I am proud of my work! 

So yeah, I'm going to wait a while, but I may or I may not publish it, I you'll have to see, meanwhile, I'll still write and post things up here.  There's been a short story I've been working on.   It's called, Second Chance.  It's about A grandfather and his Grandson that live up in the Alps, and in the Alps, there is a war, not of death, but a strife between a Grandfather and his Grandson.
 
Repeated words are wasted words.  If they are repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated, they loose their intended meaning.  Like cliches, they were at first a new saying, but as they were used over, and over, and over, and over, again, they lost their original meaning.  Wasting words occurs in many novels I have read, especially those big, 500 to a 1000 page books, they have some good material, but a lot of it is drowned in unimportant things.  That is why there needs to be more editing and revising.  And some books that are really long just have a lot of things to write, but still words are valuable, and although their are hundreds of thousands of them, make sure to use the right amount, at the right times.


oh, and I have a idea of what the cover art for my novel will be, although, because I don't know how to draw very good.

I was going to have a picture for this but I couldn't get it to work.
 
I wanted to finish my novel (TTT) by my birthday (august 17) and I finished yesterday!   So I can finally announce the title of my book, it is;  The Traitor's Tale.  Notice, it is spelled tale, NOT tail! :)
 
Four power hungry commanders send letters to their master, hoping that each could persuade their lord to promote them a step further.  The commanders are:  Rilivan, Pengor, Merdoth, and Kalis.  As they fight for power in literary form, the lord, must decide who is the best commander to be promoted by the first of December.  Let the literary war begin! 


See "Random Writings" page for the Letters.
 
Picture
So, I made up analysis type thing, only it's for writers.  What it is, is an analysis to see what you are best good at when you write.  I'll demonstrate it.

A:  You are okay with making plots and writing about the characters and making them almost real.

B:  You can really make the characters  
come to life and be "Human-ish" but have a hard time figuring out the plot.                                                                                               

These are not my glasses by the way.
C:  You can make really good plots, but can't make your characters real.
I am a C, kind of writer.  That means while I can easily make up plots, it's harder for me to develop the character as a real person.  Once you know what type of writer you are, focus on making your weaker parts stronger, like reviewing your characters, or plots, over and over.
 
As a kid author I like to see what other kid writers are doing too.  http://ironwyvern.blogspot.com/  is one of the coolest I've seen, mostly because it's so funny.  Go to it and you will see what I mean.  Anyway, I just wanted to post this link because even though I don't know who the three creators of the blog are, it's still a hilarious blog.