{"id":77,"date":"2015-01-27T17:15:30","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T22:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zachbarnesonwriting.wordpress.com\/?p=77"},"modified":"2015-01-27T17:15:30","modified_gmt":"2015-01-27T22:15:30","slug":"numb-and-number-yay-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2015\/01\/27\/numb-and-number-yay-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Numb and Number (Yay, English!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Storytelling is pretty cool. \u00a0You’ve got the whole English language at your disposal, and with that pile of words, you couldn’t\u00a0not<\/em> come up with a story, right? \u00a0It’s like a deck of cards. \u00a0If you shuffle a regular deck of 52 playing cards,\u00a0statistically<\/em>, you’ve just created something completely original. \u00a0Something that the universe has never seen.<\/p>\n

Those are cards, not words, but the same concept can apply. \u00a0It’s why we’ll always have more stories. \u00a0Sure, people say that there are only two stories ever told, or maybe three or five and that all other stories are just those \u00a0two\/three\/five recycled. \u00a0But can that possibly be true? \u00a0Because the words and the voice and the intent change, are made individual just by a new person creating them. \u00a0Like shuffling a deck.<\/p>\n

Is this an excuse to go re-write Star Wars and call it Spar Doors and say it’s a different story because you’re not George Lucas? \u00a0Well, of course not. \u00a0That’s dumb. \u00a0Why would you do that?<\/p>\n

What I mean to say is that your voice is unique to you, and you shouldn’t be worried about telling your own story. \u00a0Unless you make a point of blatantly copying someone else, word-for-word, your product will be your own.<\/p>\n

Well, I meant to write this post on Orwellian prose and purple prose, but it isn’t really that at all. \u00a0Oops.<\/p>\n

Oh, and as an allusion to the title, I was writing a very cold scene where the main character’s hands are slowly freezing. \u00a0I wrote that his fingers were getting number. \u00a0I blinked at my computer, deleted the word. \u00a0Wrote ‘more numb’ which sounded more dumb. \u00a0Reverted to number, but number is like number, and that’s just confusing. \u00a0So….. I ended up trashing\u00a0the line entirely.<\/p>\n

English, what the\u00a0hell<\/em>, man?! \u00a0What did we ever do to you?? \u00a0But thanks for being cool.<\/p>\n

Signed, Zach<\/p>\n

\"Rockies\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m on facebook at:\u00a0https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/zachbarnesonwriting<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

And Twitter: @ZacharyBarnes4<\/p>\n

Like or follow me if you enjoy\u00a0the blog!<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t steal\u00a0my words. \u00a0They\u2019re mine. \u00a9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you shuffle a regular deck of 52 playing cards, statistically, you’ve just created something completely original. Something that the universe has never seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"amazonpipp_noncename":"","amazon-product-isactive":"","amazon-product-single-asin":"","amazon-product-content-location":"","amazon-product-content-hook-override":"","amazon-product-excerpt-hook-override":"","amazon-product-singular-only":"","amazon-product-amazon-desc":"","amazon-product-show-gallery":"","amazon-product-show-features":"","amazon-product-newwindow":"","amazon-product-show-list-price":"","amazon-product-show-used-price":"","amazon-product-show-saved-amt":"","amazon-product-timestamp":"","amazon-product-new-title":"","amazon-product-use-cartURL":"","amazon_featured_post_meta_key":"","_amazon_featured_alt":"","amazon-product-template":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[21,27,52],"tags":[65,90,140,151,179,204],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":162,"url":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2015\/03\/26\/the-bloggeth-returneth-glorious\/","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":0},"title":"The Bloggeth Returneth. Glorious!","date":"March 26, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Needless to say, juggling the two roles is going to be difficult. They're two sides of the author-coin. Why, cruel world, do you insist I use both hemispheres of my brain?!?","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"Business\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1300,"url":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2016\/06\/16\/cussin-and-bigotry\/","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":1},"title":"Cussin' and Bigotry","date":"June 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"No matter what you think about self-censorship, I believe that it is very important to at least have thought about the issues and be able to provide a reason to back up your stance. Without overemphasizing the scope and reach of our work, we writers need to understand how our\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"Censorship\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":934,"url":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/2016\/04\/18\/workout-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":77,"position":2},"title":"Workout Time","date":"April 18, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I'd like to borrow a tired chich\u00e9 from my music education experience, which is that the \"practice makes perfect\" mantra is misleading. Practice makes permanent is more often true. Only perfect practice makes perfect. Which raises the question: how does one practice writing?","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"Advice\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zacharybarnes.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}