About Writing (Part 1).

I’m not sure I really have a right to write about writing (hardy har har). I mean, I am only 18 years old. But then again, age hardly limits opinions, though it often reduces the truth in them. So! I shall continue with my rambling about writing because I can. And because I really want to write something but I can’t write anything big, because I’m really supposed to be writing about how I feel about three stories I read for writing. Yeeeah. I’m not too thrilled about that. 
    I mean really? I’m not a person who shares their “feelings” about something, let alone on command. That’s like having breakfast with someone, and in the middle of it saying “drop and give me 20 push-ups!”. You could certainly do so (well; I could do at least ten real ones), but to do it just seems completely forced and out of place. Which! Brings me to my first point.
    I cannot speak for anyone else, but I do not think that good stories are the ones which are built and forced to fit around a few key characters, and their lives, surroundings, and events are custom-made to make an emotional journey for the reader. This bugs the sticky tar out of me.
    Let me explain. And let me use an example of Twilight. I know, I know, many maaaaany people love twilight, and I certainly understand why-- it gives people a doorway into a perfect life that is quite exciting to think of belonging to. But anywho. 
 Okay. Take Twilight. You have a girl who moves to a kind of foreign city (she hasn’t lived there in years) to live with her kind of foreign father. She’s previously from Arizona. Sounds pretty good, right?
But where are all her friends from Arizona?
You’d think that with the way all the popular kids in Forks flock around the  flouncing fair foreigner, she’d have felt the feelings of forlornness from fleeing from her former fields of friends. (Yeah. I need a life.)
But nay! You soon find out that she prefers books to the pesky punks who try to pander to her preferences in the persnickety place called high school. (On second thought, I do have a life.)
    Never once are any friends called or involved from her old abode in ardent Arizona. (Okay, “ardent” is pushing it a bit.) And as the story unfolds, it gets better! She finds out that a uniquely attractive man (vampire) who is a mind reader, is uniquely attracted to her, an unreadable enigma with vampire crack for blood.
    I could go into the dozens of examples in which the story of Bella (which just happens to mean beautiful, even though Bella herself thinks she’s rather plain, even though everyone else unfailingly tells her she’s gorgeous) is shown to be just that: the story of Bella.
    Now, perhaps I’m being a bit unfair. Meyers does throw in some history about the vampires, and werewolves, and all that jazz (which I did find interesting and probably the best part of the series; yes, I’ve read all four books. In 3 weeks. Okay, I guess I don’t have a life). But all the Volturi’s rules and history comes to naught when it comes to Bella and renesmee (*shudder*). No one (important to Bella’s complete and total happiness) dies in the entire series, when by all logicality  they all should have died.  Now, I’m not saying that Meyers should have done a Shakespeare (or in this day and age, a “Rowling”) or anything of the sort, but really? Telling someone you’re going to kill them and then not following through is suspenseful only so many times.
    I didn’t mean to turn this into a Twilight rant. I really didn’t. But it’s such a perfect example of so many literary failings, like continuity, context, and being true to characters’ attributes. But anyhow, I’m moving on.
    Worlds/surroundings/settings tailor-made to a certain individual is not the mark of a genius, but in my opinion is the mark of laziness. There’s a reason why Tolkien spent a lifetime working on Middle Earth (though it would be more accurate to say Ëa); it’s because he never was just telling the story of Frodo and Aragorn, or of little Bilbo Baggins. He was telling the story of a world.  (He never finished telling the story, either; though really, you can never tell the whole story of a world.)
    I am a complete, unashamed, ridiculously ardent (it works well there!) fan of Tolkien. I was watching videos of fans meeting Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez today (it’s better not to ask why), and I found  myself thinking, “Wow, the way these people are acting is ridiculous. They’re crying, screaming, and acting like idiots just because they met another human being who just happens to be famous.” Well…. I’m a bit of a hypocrite, because I just realized that if I met J.R.R. Tolkien in the flesh (it’d be a bit hard to do right now), I would definitely burst into tears, or something equally ridiculous.
    Why? Because he and I are kindred spirits (that’s what I tell myself to help me sleep at night).  But no, really, it seems like almost every quote of his I run into resonates with me. Except the one about pipes and smoking jackets. that one’s a little out of my er, league.
    You see, Tolkien didn’t just make stories. He made cultures. He made languages, civilizations, histories, futures, and everything connected to those things. And that just makes me (g)eek out.
    Just like Frank Herbert. And George Lucas (though he got other people to pitch in on his world making). I think that’s why I have such a high respect for the great fantasy writers: because they don’t just create stories, they create tapestries, and pick a few bright threads to contrast and stand out from the rest.
    Well. I’ve now procrastinated a lot for my writing assignment. I supposed it’s time to start writing about how I really feel. :P But I’ll definitely finish this. Even if it kills me. Now… If Twilight fan girls come and hunt me down for saying such dreadful, honest things… well. I want orange roses at my funeral.