Fish in Trees

Like me; if I were to be judged by my sense of direction, I would be classified as a complete idiot.  I can't count the number of times I've walked out of a public restroom and immediately turned the wrong way because I have no recollection of how I got there in the first place.  I have zero navigation skills.  Yet I can write an ethnographic comparative study on bilingual education with no problems.  And then you have Clint, who can't spell to save his life, yet troubleshoots and solves mechanical challenges as if they're mere baby blocks.  It really does seem like everyone has their own little inner-genius.  But I have to ask, if the fish can't climb a tree OR swim in water, then are we allowed to call it stupid?  Because some of the people I've come across in Wal-Mart....I'm just sayin'......

But seriously, I love this quote.  It reminds me of the artists in my classroom.  I get them every year--those students who are so amazingly creative, who have imaginations as tall as Mount Everest, yet are hopeless when it comes to memorizing the difference between a conjunction and a preposition.  These kids end up suffering perpetual inferiority complexes because the kind of intelligence they possess is never tested nor validated.  The academias, on the other hand, constantly get their egos groomed with 'A' papers and high test scores.  Funny how the ability to correctly fill in a bubble seems to hold more value in today's society than the ability to create something unique and beautiful.

Not to change the subject (I don't get that transition because every time someone says that, they are changing the subject), but I keep neglecting my blog.  For some reason, I tend to leave my poor blog high-and-dry every summer.  I will say that I've been working on my manuscript a lot lately.  I still can't believe how long it takes to write a book.  I wish I could hurry up and finish this one, because a) I want to see it done, and b) I have other plot lines in mind now for other stories, but I feel like I can't start those ones until I finish this one.  Here are a few more quotes from the story.  These first three are from one of my more scholarly characters, Mr. Chronos.   

“For the people who thought the world was flat, it was.  For them.  Because that was their reality.”

“I’ve learned in all my time that words have power.  But only if someone believes them.”

"Visiting the past is like studying a history book or gazing upon old snapshots.  Our desires for it, our joys, our regrets, accomplish nothing.  We can’t change the past.  Not in this timeline.  But the future is different.  It is malleable, a constant work-in-progress, represented by many possibilities, countless timelines.  It is perpetually being molded by our current choices.  You must realize it’s impossible to see the whole picture of something that has yet to take shape.”

The dude's really growing on me, even though he does condemn his own daughter to a terrible curse.  

This last excerpt is the main character's internal thoughts, and ironically, might be edited out of the story due to a conflict it presents.  So I guess you might think of this as a potential deleted scene.

Like rich soil absorbing the morning dew, realization seeped through me slowly, little by little, until I was thoroughly nourished with this new knowledge.  Yes, I had believed him.  At that last second, right before I brought the bottle down, right before the pain ripped through me, the smallest flicker of belief had alighted within me.  And it was just enough.  It was the tracest amount necessary to force the invisible—yet potent—hand of the Laws to bring down their gavel upon me.  I had become a threat to the rules of the universe, and now I needed to serve time under Stryder’s curse.  Stryder’s curse was now my curse.

Okay, that's it for now.  If I put up anything real, my sis will start hyperventilating.  She really is a helicopter parent when it comes to my story.  ;)

I will say that trying to write a book is definitely not all sunshine and roses.  I wasted about four hours writing what I thought was an awesome half-of-a-chapter, but then discovered later that information from this new chapter completely clashed with information from a previous one.  I ended up having to scrap the entire thing.  It was pretty devastating.  I handled it with a lot of maturity though and didn't throw a temper tantrum at all, or scream and pout that I was never going to write again (nope, I would NEVER do THAT).  Eventually, after the temper tantrum I never had, I felt better and moved on with life.  Now I'm keeping all of my screw-ups in a separate folder, so at least they're not gone, gone.  Maybe I can put them all together someday and title it Jodi's Book of Random Oopses.  Or, better yet, Fish in Trees.