Sunday, October 16, 2011

Today is my Birthday

My party, while I didn't mean it to, had a theme. The theme was pirates. I had pirates on my cake, pirate cupcake paper things (you know, the paper cup things), pirate flags in the cupcakes, the party favors were hand made pirate themed necklaces, and I was wearing a red and white tie with skull and crossbones on it.

But I did not mean for this to happen. I decided last night to buy some pirate figurines to put on my cake and the cupcake liner things I had seen at work for weeks and just wanted them. I decided on the tie this morning when I found it tucked amongst my stuffed animals on my bed. The necklaces were decided on a week ago. I just picked the different things and threw them together for my birthday. My friends were all like "Why didn't you say there was a theme to the party? We would have worn something piratey!" And I was like "There is no theme..." And they were like "There's pirate themed stuff everywhere. It's a pirate themed party!"

I do the exact same thing with my stories. (You thought this was going to be a post about my birthday, didn't you?) I never mean to have a theme or a message or symbolism. I take some characters, I put them in a situation, I make them do certain things. Normal things. And I normally come up with these things at different times. Like I'll think of a situation that would be interesting to explore (like my delicious cheese cake). Then some time later, I'll think of characters (pirate figures FTW!) for that situation. And sometimes, I'll have a basic plot in mind already (cupcake thingies) and just need to use it. Then I put it all together in a story and BAM! Awesomeness (sometimes, lol).

Then I send it along to my betas and they come back and they're like, "Jesi, you have a theme here! You  have a message!" And I'm just like "Huh?"
I didn't put that there. I didn't even think of that!

Sometimes, I'll even get to a scene and be like "Wait! That links with with something that happened/is going to happen!' And I didn't even think of it that way til I wrote it. Then me and my characters are just like 
Like, my latest manuscript, I had originally thought it was about peer pressure. At least when I first thought it up (it changed so drastically since then). I scraped that thought quickly and just typed away. I sent it to my dad and he comes back and tells me I've got a theme going on here. I don't recall what he said it was (he told me on the phone rather than writing it into my critique or something, so I can't recall what he said in my somewhat tired and burnt out state. But I'll edit later when I have the chance to ask him) but I totally didn't do it on purpose! It just... happened. (Sadly, the theme in my story was not pirate themed).

Does this ever happen to you? How do you react to it? 

Here are some pics from my bday!
The party favors sitting in the cupcake thingies
Cupcakes!
Pirate cake. That's a dead guy laying down right there
Me and the cake
Me and my best friend trying to get all the candles lit(there's only 23 but it looks like a bonfire!)
Blowin' out all that hard work
That guy that's blurry, his face caught on fire. Looks like his face got shot off by that cannon
Laters!

2 comments:

  1. Happy birthday! Those are cool decorations and such. :D
    And yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's so weird when that happens. But it's pretty cool, though!

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  2. Well, I'll go ahead and bum you out in public LOL: I don't remember (at least off the top of my head) what I said the theme was either, or I'd post it. My brain is a little fried, too.

    On the other hand, I'll tell you what I suspect happens. Because you and I write seat-of-the-pants, we leave it to our subconscious to plan everything out. And, just like going on a journey, we don't see the sights until we get to where they are. We have an idea, but then our characters take off and do things on their own. Plus, I think our communication with our subconscious is imperfect, so we sometimes misinterpret things.

    But, hey, there's not fun in knowing everything beforehand. I lose interest if I do.

    And thanks for putting Dean from Supernatural on here. He's a good actor (whose real name I can't remember LOL).

    Gil

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