Stephen King

 I am currently reading The Stand by Stephen King. I have vague memories of the movie (mini series?) from my childhood. Mostly these vague memories consist of snapshots in my head of black crows, the scene where the car crashes at the gas station, Mother Abigail on her porch, Nick walking down a deserted street, and Nadine Cross (played by that one actress who was in Pretty Woman, I believe) under an overpass, perhaps? Maybe surrounded by cars. I think arguing with a man ... 

I don't know. I was about eight when it was made, so it's kind of foggy. Not that I didn't watch it again at some point, but ... I feel the movie/story was always a little beyond my remembering for some reason.

That's why I decided to read it. I'm a Stephen King fan, I figured I may as well read it since I owned the complete and uncut edition.

I'm 75% done with it, and I like it. It's ... you know ... Stephen King. While he is a really smart guy who creates some really great stories, he also rambles. A lot. Forever.

Kind of like me, it would seem. I feel I ramble.

The Stand is good. It started out awesome, I couldn't stop reading. The flu, all these dead people, government trying to cover it up ... Then BAM! You're hit with a whole lot of freakin' religion. Yawn, yawn, delusions ...

Yeah, a lot of writing can be considered delusions. After all, apart from biographies and such, stories are made up. Created using imagination. Similar to delusions, I would think. But ... people actually believe in religions, which are, I believe, delusions. Not always delusions. A lot of it is upbringing and the comfort of thinking something more powerful than you is there and loves you ...

Yeah. Or it was a way for the few at the top to control masses of people and keep them in order before there really was a system in place with laws and police and such.

Wow ... did I really take this off into a whole other place than it should be ...

Enough about my negative views about religion (and PLEASE, Stephen King, be over the religious part of this damn 1,439 page tome!) ...

And get past the politics part, too ...

Needless to say, it would have been an amazing story if he'd stuck more to the horror of the world falling apart because of this superflu, maybe make The Dark Man not a religious symbol of Satan or his freakin' imp, but rather some evil thing that just IS. Without trying to liken it to religious symbols and characters.

Doesn't mean I don't like the book. I love the characters, mostly. I enjoy seeing what becomes of them. And he writes well.

Part of me is ready to be done with it, though. Need something less wordy, more lively, and maybe full of dragons.

Also, I don't want it to be over. The struggle is real.

Not quite accurate, but still found this image amusing. Mostly because it can be true at times in his writing, and also because I am still a huge fan, despite my criticisms. I'm not saying I'm any better, just so you know. I think I suck at writing, and I can sometimes ramble along with the best of them.

Saying that, I will never stop writing. I haven't written much in the past year, and one would think that with all that is going on in my life right now, I still wouldn't be writing much ... but lately I've been wanting to. I feel a small shiver of my old motivation humming along under my fingertips. Tickling somewhere deep in my brain, in my heart. My stories want out, my fingers want at the keyboard of my computer.

Of course, I want to work on all the stories at once, but I have to force myself to pick one and stick to it. For a moment I couldn't decide between Landoth (the sequel to The Cottage) or Rain's book (the sequel to Shattered).

Shattered won. I added a new scene yesterday (or today? At the moment, my days all run together, an endless blur of stress, house hunting, emails, cleaning, packing, taking stuff to Goodwill ...). I can't wait to see where this book goes.