Remnants 3 - ay, where's mah creativity at?

So lately I've been working on a really long mix, but beyond that I feel like I'm not having any ideas of my own.

Assigned Blog Post 04 - Bindleton? Milderweicht? Luza Bay City?

So...names for our version of Winesburg, Ohio. Bindleton sounded like a good name for a kind of mellow town with a humdrum sort of life. I guess by having an underlying mundane nature for the town I figured we could have fun unmundane-ifying it. Milderweicht just sounded cool, and apparently it means "mild softened" in German.

Assigned Blog Post 03 - Quinn Marksley

Quinn Marksley was a bit odd, or at least his fading mother definitely thought he was. She was in her mid-90's, and although she sometimes took a while to figure out who Quinn was, who she was, and how they were related, she would always remember he was messed up when she did get that all worked out.

It was a complete mystery how she could possibly survive so long with a son like Quinn. As far as she could remember (about 4 days if she concentrated really hard), he was essentially some strange man with the soul of a six year-old who lived in the basement of her home reenacting scenes from the Pokémon TV shows using his infinite collection of Pokémon cards. No, really, he lived there. He feared all people, even his mother at times, and thus he never left that basement (he shut her up in some tiny room; it wasn't hard because she couldn't move at all beyond random twitching). He had no job but the one he made for himself, and those reenactments didn't exactly pay . . . at all, but the family had enough food in the basement to last through a nuclear holocaust followed by an ice age (and that wasn't counting whatever sustenance may have been upstairs).

Sometimes people would ring the doorbell for who-knows-what, then after a few seconds without reply, they would leave. One time, however, someone was able to pull off a whole 17 minutes and 3 seconds, at which point Quinn Marksley had become so distracted that he couldn't even emulate Rattata's battle cry. So Quinn actually went up the stairs and opened the door.

In front of him was an upright mop. A mop dressed in a gargantuan sport coat with a fake-looking golden nametag. On the tag lived an impressive collection of grime that probably would have taken a normal person a lifetime to gather, but through the smudges Quinn thought he could see the outline of a few words. From what he could tell after staring at the tag for a little over a minute at point-blank range, they said: Oswin St. George, CEO. He looked up and noticed that what he had been staring at was not, in fact, a mop. It was a person whose hair could have passed as the long-lost brother of the tattered stick that Quinn's mother used to use to wash down what she could reach of Quinn's room (when he still lived in his own room). Quinn staggered back in fear as the mop's face revealed an otherworldly void which, given a larger body on the other end, probably could have consumed Quinn in under five minutes. From the void came a sound that Quinn instinctively interpreted as a battle cry.

Assigned Blog Post 02 - Me, Myself, and not I [m' style and me - info]

As I'm sure you're now well aware, I'm not everyone else. In fact, if I had to say, I'm probably everyone. My personality, I think, is fairly dependent on who's around me. Sometimes I'm that kid in the corner just staring at the crowd, listening to whatever seemingly important chatter comes out of the others' mouths, analyzing and evaluating everything. I'm a part of the crowd, laughing at all the little things that (don't) count in life. I'm the one that waits until it's almost time, just so I can have the thrill of having something I'm supposed to do, even if only for one moment. I'm too good, the jerk who would rather ignore the inferiority of the crowd than fix it. I cry for the happy-ending love stories, then scoff as others do the same.

Yeah, I'm a mixed bag, and when I write, I'm never sure which one of me is the one that's writing. Whatever gets written reflects that, in plot, concept, and character. My writing is abstract, because I don't totally know what it is I'm writing about. I make it up as I go. I come up with things to write based on how I feel about what I just wrote. Sometimes I'll know how I want a story to end, but I've yet to start it, then I struggle in filling the gaps to reach that end. Other times it's the opposite way around. I see my inspiration in one facet of my soul, and I follow it deep inside to nothingness, then end up popping out of some other facet. In my mind, life is twisted. I have to twist myself and my writing to fit it.

Remnants 2 - Why "Remnants from the Blender Lid"

Short answer: Because it sounds random.

Mix 3 - through life and death [he found that head girl]

He sat in the food court of the mall, not to eat, but to work. That's the kind of person he was. Once he started something, he had to finish it. He didn't care about sleep, he didn't care about sustenance, he didn't care about people or what they had to say about him.

Assigned Blog Post 01 -The Convergent Realities Collectively Known as Truth

When we write fiction, we present to the world our own personal reality. Whether this reality is a representation of the truth or an almost completely implausible figment, it is always undeniably influenced by the truth. While as individuals we each hold our own views and emotions, we inevitably interact with each other, even if only on the level of simply perceiving others, and these interactions taint our individual realities until we formulate what we decide to call the truth.

New Challenger Approaching: INGREDIENTS 1 - SAGASHIMONO

Made a joint decision with inx to create a new kind of post.

• Ingredients - Small explanations on what kinds of things went into the making of a MIX. They will be sort of similar to REMNANTS, only they'll be focused solely on what inspired a certain MIX. There may be spoilers, but hopefully I can make those available upon button-click.

Anyway, as I said in REMNANTS 1, MIX 2 was originally written to go with the prompt "looking for something lost." The first thing I thought of when I heard that prompt was a very short girl wearing a large coat and a backpack with tiny wings, running around a city in the afternoon, holding a paper bag filled with red-bean-paste-filled pastries that she accidentally didn't pay for, and attacking hugging childhood friends that she hasn't seen in seven years.

Mix 2 - SAGASHIMONO [oh, i am a s-song?]

She understood there was something she was supposed to look for, but that was as far as her knowledge stretched. For a while now, she had been sitting in that dark, metallic box, trying to think of what she could possibly need to search for. Was it something worth money? Did it hold some kind of priceless sentimental value? Was it even tangible? She knew not the answers to these questions. She could not know the answers to these questions; she simply did not have any means to find them from within that box. Thus she was forced to leave the box.

Remnants 1 - Looking for Something Lost

I wrote this short with only a vague idea in mind at the start. Really the only thing I visualized at first was the image of a child digging for worms. From there I pulled the classic saying, "Leave no stone unturned." After that I just let my heart write through my hands. As I wrote, I filled in the rest of the idea, and (clearly) changed it multiple times before reaching the end. I feel like this was a great exercise in writing fiction. Not only was it fun, it also taught me a ton of things about myself and my good and bad points when it comes to writing.

In my next post I'll publish the story I wrote for another idea I had for the prompt "looking for something lost." If you'd like to read the story behind this post, just send me an email.

[ thus concludes this collection of remnants from the blender lid. the first collection of many to come. ]

Introduction & Mix 1 - 4635 [rove the fires u fix]

So I'm not totally sure how this blog is going to turn out, since 1) I've never kept a blog before, 2) I hardly ever read blogs because I absolutely HATE reading stuff from those people who try to have perfect spelling and grammar, then end up with ONE little mistake that completely ruins it (ask people who know me, they know), and 3) I generally don't write much, especially fiction. Hopefully the things that end up on this blog are worth reading. And with that, a little explanation of what will end up on this blog.

• MIX - Basically if I find something interesting about life, I'll make a statement about it, and then scramble the letters into a different statement upon which I write a story. As you'll see later in this post, these are almost certain to end up really weird, but that's okay (probably).
• REMNANTS - These posts will contain reflections and revelations about my writing and my life. They'll probably hold a little more meaning and relevance than the Mixes.

I look forward to mixing up life in the blender, and hopefully you'll stick around to pick up the remnants. And now for the first Mix - 4635 [rove the fires you fix] . . .