Back on the Horse, but Found It's a Donkey

I wrote 569 words tonight. Despite not meeting my goal of 1,000-infinity per night, I am glad that I have started to write consistently again.

Once again, I must give props to classical music. I was listening to one piece on 96.3 in New York. It was kind of a combined regal and foreboding piece with lots of climatic flashes of brass. If I had to describe it in somewhat modern terms, I would say that it is the type of music one would hear as Godzilla rises out of the water and starts to destroy Tokyo. Anyway, as I was listening to this piece, I began to think of a chess game, specifically the power struggle involved. I imagined the king pieces commanding all the others and this led to a story idea. (For the uninitiated, I rarely reveal my actual story ideas, due to a vague paranoia that they will be stolen or more likely a morphed version of them unintentionally usurped.)

Once again, classical music saves the day. I was lucky enough to remember the idea when I got home and write it down. However, I think from know on I will keep a cassette recorder in my car, to record these ideas as they come, then write them in my journal when I get home.

Which leads me to my next topic: journaling. My writing professor, James Lasdun, reminded me and the rest of my class of the importance of keeping a journal. Thus, I have started to keep one once again. I at first intended it to just be a repository of story ideas, but I have found myself writing any weird philosophical thoughts that spring forth from a wrinkle in my brain. I am also trying to write down the details of my dreams because I think they are a great source for story ideas.

I will leave you all with a topic that my girlfriend and I were discussing yesterday. We had gone to visit Duke Gardens in Hillsborough. J.B. Duke a tobacco king and hydroelectric tycoon, among other things, purchased 2,700 acres of farmland and built it into his own natural Xanadu. He had over 100 species of trees imported, along with lichen-covered boulders. He had hillsides and lakes created and his favorite European statues reproduced. He basically reshaped and repopulated the whole tract of land. My girlfriend and I were kind of jabbing at ol' J.B., saying that he most have had quite an inferiority complex to go to such lengths to mold his creation and to control every facet of it. He designed a whole world. I then commented that myself and other writers do the same thing in our writing. So now I am stuck with the looming question: Do I have an inferiority complex? Am I a control freak to J.B. levels? Hmmm . . . it might explain the whole chess idea.