Frustrated writer...

As I've talked about before, I would love to write a book. I love to read. I guess you could say I'm a bit of a "late bloomer" with the reading love. It wasn't until I was stuck with tons of free time on my hands, finding the internet extremely boring that I picked up a book and said, "why not?" Now I can't stop. It's the last week in February and I'm on my 5th? novel of the year. And this is while busy with school and teaching guard. 

The current book of choice is Next by Michael Crichton. This is the last book he published before his death (though I'm really anxious to see if the last novel he was working on is published later this year, as rumored). I'm about 45 pages in, and so far it doesn't disappoint. Without a doubt he is becoming my favorite author. Next is a lot like Jurassic Park so far. It's all about genetic experimentation. But I'm only just beginning, so who knows where it will end up. I made it one of my New Year's Resolutions, which is just what I'm calling the list of arbitrary goals I have made recently, is to read every Michael Crichton novel. There are tons of novels for me to get to, this is only my third. Of course, I'm going to try to finish with his most well known novel, other than Jurassic Park and The Lost World, The Andromeda Strain. I'm weird. I have heard nothing but good things about that novel... I'm weird...

And that was actually a digression because I began this blog talking about writing and I ended up talking about what I was reading... similar, but not the same.

So about writing... yeah, that's all I have. I want to write so much right now, but I am so brain dead because of school and life that I can't think! I actually started, barely, doing research for a story I'm thinking about. I've mentioned this story before. It's my version of Cinderella, which I playfully named Cinderfella. Right now, it's going to take place during the Civil War. You would think, I'm a US History major, I should know a lot about the American Civil War, right? Wrong-o. It's really sad that I haven't taken an US History class since this time last year, let alone a class about the Civil War (for the record, I only took one class, 19th Century American History, that dealt with the Civil War, and that was Winter Quarter my first year!). So today I started reading an article on the life of soldiers. I don't know if I want him to be from the Union or Confederacy yet, so that will define a few things for me when the time comes to write or not write this thing. I want to work on something so much but I have no clue what to write about.  I just want to write. That's part of why I'm writing this blog, and any blog/bulletin I write for that matter. I need to get words out of my head. I mean, I could have easily spent the last few hours contently reading Next, but I just could not fit anymore in my brain (willingly). This is the part of writing I suck at, which I shouldn't since I'm a history major; research! Everything about writing I've read talks about doing the research for your story before you write it and how important it is, but I don't have enough patients. I know things I want to write already, but I need to know my context first, use the right language, and things. 

Sigh... oh well, I need to get to class

Bon Chance.