Insidious Rodent: A Biography

I know I'm way behind on posting. I promised you an entry earlier this week and I didn't follow through. I'm sorry if DMC4 happened to come out the same day I promised a blog entry. Today found me stuck in DMC4 but STILL unable to blog because I'm inundated with a shit load of homework. So I figured I'd wet your proverbial whistles with a little Journal Entry I wrote for Creative Writing chronicling the meaning of literature and my life as a creative mind. Sound exciting? If so, this is a MUST read:

Literature serves many different purposes in both the world of academia and the world of entertainment. Essentially, people read for different reasons. Some people read because they like it. Some people read literature because it is informative: you can learn a lot of seemingly useless information from reading a book. Others read because they are required to for work or school. Whatever the reason, hundreds of people are reading every day and are better for it.

In order to get a firm understanding of what is literature and what is not, one must first have an understanding of what literature is. Dictionary.com defines literature as “writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.” What this means to me, is that any written work with a cohesive thought can be considered literature. With a definition this broad, I would argue that this world is chock full of literature. The average human probably exposes himself to some kind of literature everyday.

I was first introduced to Literature at a very young age, probably even before I could talk. When I was an infant my mother would often by me children books and read them to me while I nodded off in my crib. Even a children’s book, as simplistic as it is, is an example of literature in the modern world. I think this heavy emphasis on reading at a young age helped shape me into a child with an affinity and appreciation for the written word.

Some of my earliest and most profound memories are of family members reading me my favorite books. I think at that age I learned most of what I knew through reading. When other kids were busying themselves learning their ABCs and numbers, my family was teaching me about dinosaurs, science, and history through books.

As the years went by and I got older I began reading on my own. My interests in reading shifted from nonfiction to the more surreal and entertaining fiction genre. I’ve always loved characters and the way they interact and play off of each other. It is my personal belief that a story is only as good as it’s characters and that is why I think literature is such an interesting medium of expression. Through written word, you can really get inside a character’s head in a way that can’t be done in a movie or play.

So I developed this fascination with narrative and characters. I was always watching action television and reading comic books and making up my own adventures for the characters to go on in my head. My fascination with fantasy and my imagination knew no bounds. These “in my head games”, as I called them occupied most of my free time during my elementary school years.

Then came middle school, and the discovery that would change my life more profoundly then anything else has to this date: the internet. At this time of my life I was thoroughly obsessed with Saturday Morning action cartoons that were mostly, though I did not know it yet, from Japan. Dragonball Z and Digimon took up most of my time and money. The internet provided me with a way to share my love of this cult market with other people with similar interests via chat rooms and message boards. It was the people I met through this that taught me how to “role play”. To role play is to engage in a text based fantasy game. You develop a character in the universe that you are role playing in and take on that character ‘s persona as your own. I would role play nearly everyday when I was in middle school.
When my role play interests were at their peak I began to write short ammeter stories called fan fictions about my characters. This was my first exposure to any kind of “pseudo-formal” writing and led to my first ever “original work”. I would write a weekly “story” in role playing format in the style of a 25 minute television show heavily inspired by anime (I now was fully aware of what this was). A couple of friends and I would upload our work to the internet under the pseudonym Gadzooks Animation.

It was around this time that I decided what I wanted to do with my life. My series had a cult fan following. Fans would often email me in anticipation of an upcoming episode, telling me they liked my work and were in suspense in waiting for the next one to come out. Reading this fan reaction made me feel good and motivated me to finish my work. It also made me start to think there was some value in my writing, and that the characters in my head that I cherished and developed for my own entertainment might actually be able to make me a living.

Throughout high school I would write stories whenever inspiration and time presented itself. Though my preferred media was still a loosely formatted screenplay like style, I would often write prose during this time of my life as well. If there was one thing I learned through writing in high school it was the important of an outline. Outlines are a good way for me to organize the “big picture” of the story I’m going to tell and help me decide what part of the story I want to reveal what revelations about characters and plot.

In closing, I’ve used this journal space to define what literature meant to me. In doing so I explored what literature was universally, how I nurtured my literary creativity through out the various stages of my life, and what basic elements of literature are important to me as a writer. I hope I can use this as an invaluable reason to better my writing prowess in the future.

There you have it: more about me than you ever wanted to know. :C
Insidious Rodent.