Writing Excuses

To say that this is my favorite podcast would not be fair. It is the only podcast I listen to. I've tried others but they all miss the mark. What mark is that you ask, well I'll tell you.

When perusing the vast expanse of itunes I sought out writing podcasts. Specifically a pod cast with a emphasis on fantasy writing. It was pretty slim pickins I'll tell you that much. I tried listening to Grammar Girl. Which isn't to bad except her show is really short, and it deals with the actual nuts and bolts of English, you know the mechanical stuff. All that is very important but it wasn't really what I was looking for.

A bunch of other podcasts that had a fantasy orientation seemed to focus on the casters story. I didn't really feel like listening to someone talk about their story and why it worked or didn't work.

Then I found Writing Excuses. It was nearly everything I could have hoped for. It consists of three hosts, all of which are established professionals. Brandon Sanderson is a fantasy writer, Howard Tayler is a web cartoonist, and Dan Wells is a horror writer. They get together once a week and produce a fifteen minute program about writing. They specifically target genre fiction. That includes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and the like. It's a really great show, though sometimes I wish it was longer than just fifteen minutes. I happily recommend their podcast to anyone interested in genre writing and even fiction writing in general. It can be downloaded from itunes for free.

Space Pirates anyone? Bettered only by Space Ninjas.

So I am currently working on a story for my sister. She has a birthday coming up and I thought a story would make a great gift. It will be great because she helped come up with the idea for it.

We were texting each other a couple months ago and somehow we started making up characters. We were influenced by Disney’s Treasure Planet.

So basically it's a story about space pirates. She has no idea I'm working on it. I'm having a blast getting it ready. I've been more productive with this idea than any other idea I've ever done. I think that this is due largely because I am operating under a deadline. I’ve never had a deadline for my creative stories before. I mean I’ve set deadlines for myself but they’ve always fallen through. That’s because there’s no real penalty if I fail, and no reward if I succeed. But now I have one. The penalty will be giving a mediocre store bought gift instead of a awesome homemade adventure. The reward will be her shout of joy (and there will be shouting), and her bright smile.

So that’s what I’m working on. I still have a ways to go and it’s beginning to get into crunch time. I still want to get some people to proof read it and get feedback and then adjust it. That and I wanted to illustrate it. So I have a lot on my plate. If worse comes to worst I can save this project for Christmas. But I really want to make it for her birthday.

Now onto some side notes. I can whole heartedly recommend Treasure Planet. It’s a great adaptation of Treasure Island. I tried to read the book when I was a kid but I was too young and the book was out of my depth. Since then I have seen several versions of this story. There was a Disney live action movie, a Chipmunk tv episode, the Pagemaster version, and a Muppet Treasure Island.

Now *SPOILER ALERT* (although this book, and the movies have been around for forever so if you don’t know the plot then where have you been hiding?) In the end Jim Hawkins lets Long John Silver escape. Long John was a pirate who betrays Jim and I never understood why Jim lets him go. It never made any sense to me. Not until I saw Treasure Planet. If you want to know why I understand it now then you’ll have to watch the movie.

Nextly, although the inspiration for this story was drawn from Treasure Planet it is an original tale. It would be more accurate to say that it just shares the same flavor as Treasure Planet. And because it is meant as a gift I don’t know if anything more than that will come of it than that. Will I be able to get it published? I don’t know, I’m not sure if I’m even going to try.

Yet it just goes to show that inspiration can come from anywhere. In this case a movie and a text conversation. Maybe it wont be a story that I can get published but I’ve learned things from it. I’ve learned that deadlines help me. I’ve also learned that I can be funny with my writing. This is a skill that I once thought was completely beyond me. Now I know that if I work on it I can make people laugh. I may not be Terry Pratchett (he’s a funny writer, hilarious actually) but I can get a chuckle here and there. I think... well I hope anyway. The point is, if your reading this, that it’s important to make use of your inspiration. You never know what you might learn or what you might accomplish, all you have to do is try.