I suck at sticking to things.

Yep! I still remember this exists. Weird, right? I know! Writer's Block is only showing up in spurts now, which is good, and I'm realizing I'm not as good at things as I thought I was, which is...enlightening, I guess. Not writing: I'm still perfectly vain about my writing. Other things not so important. Aye. So...yeah.

Well then...

So...for those of you who take the time to look at my posting dates, I haven't even been on this blog in about 8 or 9 months to even look around. I completely forgot it existed, letting it sink into the recesses of my mind until the only thing I remembered was the name "Character," and only because I've been writing so very infrequently that I needed to remind myself that I was making characters, and not flat, two-dimensional pieces of cardboard that pranced around on paper.

In fact, having taken such a long hiatus from this blog, I was moderately surprised to find that, coming back to it, what I have written down in two blogs is much less pompous than I had originally thought. Sure, the attitude could use some work, but then again, my own attitude could as well.

I have found this blog again after such a long absence because of another blog by someone named Casca, who writes the story The Life and Times of Caughlin Mare, a fantastic My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan fiction (yes, I am a shameless brony), and a link to his blog, here, on blogspot. When I tried to comment, I had to pick an account to log in on; Character was the default. Followed the links, led me here.

But enough of that; I know that if you've read and liked my other two posts (pompous or not) then you aren't here for my life story.

However. After such a long absence from this blog, I have a confession to make: I have a serious disease. This affects anyone who lives in the way I do. I have contracted...

Writer's Block.

Serious, story-halting, character-flattening, writer's block. The kind that makes you stay as far from a keyboard as possible because you hate the shit that you see plastering what you would call your work. I haven't actually contributed to my story in a little over three or four months now. It's been sitting on my flashdrive, burning (ha! it's about fire beings) a hole in my pocket for a long, long time. I probably have more data on my flashdrive as pictures than I do as literature, by twenty fold or so.

However, (and I owe this to the aforementioned Casca) I recently began reading quite a bit more. With the reading came more ideas, such as theocratic city-states ruled with--but you don't need to know that.

What you do need to know is that I actually intend to bring my own writing back up to snuff (and hopefully make this a legitimate blog in the meantime!)

The Story

I am typing for all the writers, wanna-be novelists, and people who just happen to stumble across this page when I say that the story under construction is a baby. If you quit work on it, you have lost a child. While you may not feel quite that way, understand that there are points in the process of writing a book when you will feel disgusted with yourself for writing something; perfectly natural. If you don't feel like an asshole for giving a character a traumatic background, you are an insensitive person. There are also times when you will feel so proud of an idea, you almost cry. An example of the former:

In a story I am writing, the main character is blinded by a madman with a knife. At age seven. At age twelve, his uncle kills his mother. And father. And chases him out of the house with a knife. And puts a bounty on his head. His uncle forced him to live as a thief, when he had spent his entire early life as a prince. And in that city, bad thieves didn't stay thieves longer than they stayed six feet under in unholy ground. Nor did the necromancers let them stay underground more than a week.

The point of that? That you don't have to be kind to your characters. They don't have to live perfect lives, in perfect homes, with a perfect family and perfect friends, all living in a perfect city, in a perfect country, with only a small skirmish going on in the far corner of the planet the thing that disrupts the beauty. You can make your character's lives a living hell, from having friends die to family members, from having a papercut to having a limb slowly sawn off by a blunt dagger. But if you don't feel like a terrible person, an asshole that doesn't deserve to live, a right bastard after doing that, you don't know your characters well enough. Your characters should be your friends, whether they are the kind of people you would befriend or not.

Not only do the characters speak to you, however; the story should as well. If you have difficulty writing a scene, and have tried five times without success, you can do one of two things: 

Change setting--if you are having trouble writing something in a particular setting I find that the setting ends up pushing you into a rut of bad writing. The story doesn't like that setting. Nor does it like jerky acting by the characters.

WAIT--if a change of setting doesn't help, the story isn't ready for that part yet!!! So simple, isn't it? Maybe put another chapter in, or two, or ten, but don't try to force it out. It makes for bad writing.

You see the theme here? Bad writing=bad. Quite simple, hmm?
It will happen to everyone at one time or another; however, if you do not correct it when you are able, you are the one at fault and not the story or your imagination.

Greetings

Yes, greetings. As a first post, that must be the most adequate. To start, let me introduce myself.

I am a student at a school, a black belt in a martial art, an amateur writer of a genre, and, most important, a Character in a story, hence my name here. The story is known by no-one, not even myself; the plot is unknown, the events undetermined, and the length unforeseeable. The only thing I know is that I have been written into it and have a part to play; for what amount of time no-one will know until it is done.

The above paragraph is vague, sombre, and true. It is true for everyone in the world we live in, whether they know about it or not. In an attempt to reconcile myself as a person and not just a collection of corny sayings, here are a couple other things about myself. As I said, I am an amateur writer, not yet gifted with the ability the stories I have been working upon call for to be completed at a level satisfactory to themselves. I will happily take tips, criticism, and insights about writing, reading, relationships, just life in general. I am a shameless joker, most of my jokes falling flat on the linoleum floor of the bathroom they got drunk in before wandering into my head. However I intend to keep most of that out of this blog. That will be kept in real life and on my deviantArt; the name of which I will give to those who ask. Instead, this blog will hopefully be kept rather serious, but I often can't resist a well placed joke, especially if I'm instructing about something. (my qualifications of doing so being dubious at best)

Before anyone asks about the name of the blog, let me explain it.

The phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword" is one that you are no doubt familiar with, the saying itself having been around since the eighteen hundreds, it's origin even further back than that. The concept is that no matter what a sword can do, the pen is able to evoke a greater response. The idea behind the Penned Sword is just that, with a rather more easy description. A sword that exists in reality is always sharper when written about, if the writing is created well. It gives the sword a feeling of being more of a sword than if you were to actually hold one.

I say created instead of done because a truly well written piece of work is made, not done. Done is an adjective that means "to have finished", and no work of writing is ever completed. The story goes on past the pages, and, while perhaps not as engrossing or exciting as the piece is, it exists just as well. 

My goal for this is to give help for those new writers who stumble across here, and to receive the same from those writers who have been at this for a long time, and, in turn, to pass that on.

To finish up this blog, as I have rambled as much as is my right, I leave anyone who reads this with a quote I picked up from someone on deviantArt that perfectly embodies how I want my story, not the story I write, but the story of me, to end:

"I am not afraid to die. I am afraid to be forgotten." -- R (name abbreviated)