So here’s my grand adventure in short story writing. When I saw my friend Jason’s blog a couple weeks ago, it contained something interesting. He was discussing something totally novel (pun intended) to me – National Novel Writing Month. I thought the idea was interesting, so I took a gander at the website. The catch phrase I really remember was, “the power of deadlines”, which is so undeniably true in life. I spent a great deal of time discussing that with some of my fellow graduate students. How, sometimes, our huge projects – experiments, qualifying exams, and papers – take forever to get done because they just don’t have strict deadlines. That’s why I think I’m such a list maker, I strive under deadlines and the idea of needing to get things finished. 


Anyways, back to the point here. I decided that I’m not terribly capable of writing a whole huge novel – especially without it getting old and boring in the first 20 pages. An idea struck me, I think I’d rather just write a collection of short stories. But, then the problem was what the bananas to write about. My terribly interesting life does not seem to translate well to paper, and I don’t have the suave “master of funny” skills that Jason does. As I pondered over whether or not I wanted to undertake this writing adventure, another idea popped into my head. Why don’t I write about music? Or rather have music influence me in some why. There is a beautiful song called Painted Blue by 5591 (Justin Furstenfeld – lead singer of Blue October) that contains the line “I talk to God, but only musically”. I thought that was a perfect way to describe how I feel about music. I’ve been playing music since I was eleven years old and feeling it for longer. I’ve been dancing to the music since I was about six and there is still something about it that moves my soul. There is not a day in my life that I don’t listen to music or get up and dance to it. Sure, it can be silly tap dancing, which is what I am best at, but other times, it’s a heart felt movement to the words and core of the song that I move to. Some songs just touch you in such a way that you can not help but be forced to move to them. 


Now, I have taken that idea and put it into written form. I have already danced it out and won awards for it. I have and am currently playing it out loud for others to hear. Finally, coming full circle – I am going to write out what music does to me. The idea is to take my favorite indie (independent) bands, most of which are from Texas (that being the great state I live in) and write about their songs. Specifically, each day and new chapter get a specific song that inspired them. Sometimes the story will obviously about the song or related, but other times, it may just come into play. I have a couple of stories mapped out about instances in my life, but that will not always be the case. Most of these stories will at least have some truths or characters from my life, but I have had only so many grand adventures that are worth chronicling. Needless to say, it should be a grand adventure just getting the end and all in all – let’s hope it’s worth it.