GENEROUS GAVEL (Gen Gavel, Author)

iGen writeblr // new YA author // INFFFJ \\ deep stories for a bold generation // Color GENius // idea GENerator //#iGENuine short stories on my website // gengavel.com

[generousgavel-blog]

My man just got us AMAZING tickets to the Bandito Tour for my birthday! My heart almost stopped when he said he “just bought the gift to beat all gifts” because this man is a GOOD gift giver. I just knew. And that little smile...;) It was the “I know you so well” smile. So, yeah, I guessed right and that’s why it’s not a surprise anymore. November 16 will be incredible!

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Writblr Introduction

Hello to everyone. I started this blog a few days ago, because I finally wanted to set up a Writblr. 

My name is Johannie; I don’t really have a nickname so if that’s not always easy to remember so you can refer to me with other names if you feel creative. I’m 22 and I recently graduated from university for Creative Writing. The fact I am done is why I finally decided to get my stuff in gear and make this writblr. 

I’ve been into writing since I was about second grade, fell out of it for awhile in middle school and settled back into writing in high school, eventually choosing it as a major. 

I tend to prefer more fantasy and science fiction genres, leaning a teensy bit more towards fantasy.

Do I have WIPS? Well, that’s sort of a yes and a no. I have ideas with things attached to them, but I don’t have really one WIP. I’m sure of course that will change the more I’m free.

I also draw too, so you might see you drawings of characters I’ve fathomed up for ideas. 

Please reblog if you are apart of Writblr community as well! (I’m very shy and not the best at starting a conversation, but I’m willing to make friends however I can.)

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The brain is the new brawn

I hate how hard people are on what they call “millennials” (which is now actually a full two generations of people dealing with the new world we’ve created: the internet)

We are not lazier than previous generations. Or more entitled, or greedy, or soft. We are constantly processing more information than literally any other generation has ever even imagined having to process.

I’m not going to even begin to try to categorize this as good or bad. It is as mixed as humanity itself. As mixed as your every emotion. I simply won’t applaud or shame this shift in our culture, but I want to highlight it.

So much, I want to highlight it.

My own mind is a massive and ever-adapting database or millions of images, opinions, facts, fake facts, feelings, interpretations, jokes, horror stories, inspirations, songs, ads, faces, names, requests, desires, and demands.

And before you say “just shut it all out” or “quit Facebook” or “what this generation needs is more time outside” or the ever-insensitive “kids are living on their phones these days,” remember this:

This age of information is the new reality. Hiding from it won’t make it go away. Hundreds of millions of people are interacting with each other online at any given moment in all the ways that humans interact in person. For good and evil and everything in between. This is where business is happening. And politics and social service and proselytization and ministry. Authentic life is happening online and shaming the generation who is face-to-face with it will literally do no good.

Instead, grace! You see a young adult’s eyes glass over at work? You can almost know for sure that their mind is a storm of information and right now, processing this one physical moment is taking a back burner to processing the inner world.

Of course we all could learn to be more present, but are you demanding something of a generation before understanding how different they are from all the generations before?

We are stretched to our emotional limit right now. We are trying just to be healthy and balanced in a sea of opinions and fears. Don’t assume we have our heads in the clouds before you’ve had your own head filled to the max with the voices of your peers and the needs of so many friends.

Please, even now with me, don’t label and shame, judge, and try to solve this strange phenomenon. Embrace it. Run with me into the future. Fearless.

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Some people shut me down just by entering the room. I’ve learned they have no room for my opinions or, rather, my questions. They have no desire to be challenged or to see me challenged. Sometimes we are all afraid of being made naked by the removal of assumptions, but I hope we can all love each other well enough to be that vulnerable. I don’t want any other kind of friends.

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Full time constant mood right now.

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The part of me that is a creative genius is very happy right now. I just created an all new novel outline technique that WORKS. (Please don’t tell me this is the effect of the ONE single beer I had tonight. Please.)

[generousgavel-blog]

J. D. Salinger and the Reader/Writer Connection

 J. D. Salinger wrote Catcher in the Rye as, more or less, a middle finger salute to the elite of his day. You could say he “saluted” society at large, and perhaps that is what he intended, but the youth of 1950s America were… how do I say this?

Anything but offended.

Shane Salerno’s 2013 documentary, Salinger, makes it explicitly clear just how the youth of his day responded.

With adoration.

It was a love affair. A rapid-spreading fire that completely overwhelmed the author.

 Infamously, he hid himself away, ignoring thousands of love-letters from smitten fans and hundreds of their frantic pleas for validation, approval, and even relationship advice.

He’d written a real winner. And he hated it.

My guess is he didn’t really love his readers. I don’t even think he particularly loved Holden. I mean, maybe he did, when he thought he’d created a ravaging new character who defied all expectations and proved him, the author, an incredibly unique individual, with the ability to see all the woes of society while, himself, being quite outside of it.

But he missed something. He was, despite himself, a perfect representation of post WWII America. And he was a voice for the masses, not the anomaly he wanted to be.

But, apparently, the adoration he received practically killed him. And he quickly retired to the woods, staunchly refusing to share the rest of his work until after his death.

What almost any writer would have died for, suffocated Salinger.

 And the reason is caught up in the universal fact that, perhaps more deeply than anything, we all want to be known.

Not just seen. Not just listened to. Known. Understood at a heart level.

In their now iconic "Iris" lyrics, the Goo Goo Dolls sing, “I don’t want the world to see me. ‘Cus I don’t think that they’d understand.”

We love that, right? We get it. Some of us just hide away for fear of being misunderstood. I’d say many people do, at least to some degree. And we all hide our most fragile thoughts, the ones we know but can’t explain. The ones we can’t even put into words.

 So a book-- wow. A book that does that for us, that articulates the every nuance and facet of our own inner lives… dynamite.

You can start a fire with that.

And that’s what Salinger did.

So why not revel in his surprising popularity? Why not appreciate the fire he’d started and add to it?

My guess is he wanted to be known so badly that his popularity made him feel common. If everyone was suddenly observing the errors in posh society, if everyone was now sticking it to the man, who was he?

Because we also want to be unique.

Salinger wanted to be known for being Jerome David, keen observer, wounded soldier, rare human being. Maybe even oddball. Anything but ordinary. It wasn’t even love he was looking for. Just understanding.

Fame itself does not satisfy. It did not satisfy him and I kind of love him for his melodramatic response, showing the world a truth we rarely witness.

Connection satisfies. We want to share our thoughts and have the reader return to us and say, “you are incredible. You thought of that?”

And when we read, we are really asking for our souls to be put into words. Our uncommon, oddball, reclusive, and rare souls.

Sometimes the masses can be touched with one book, like Catcher in the Rye, but most often it is one person at a time.

So, who do you read? Who gets you?

 EXTRA CREDIT: have you ever met a favorite author? Were they how you imagined them? Tell me that story. 

[jxsminewrites]

reasons to not quit writing:

your writing is a skill, not an inborn talent (unless, yeah, maybe it is). not everyone can do what you do and love

everyone says they want to write a book. everyone has what it takes to write a book. not everyone does it anyway. you be the small percentage of success you read about

your writing will always seem brickshit horrible because you wrote and read it a million times

you love this writing thingy. quitting it will be like cutting off your fingers one by one.

someone out there will want to read what you wrote.

someone out there wants to know what is on your mind. 

someone out there appreciates your art. they will share it with their friends. they will share it with their loved ones. they will share it with their future self because maybe what you wrote saved them.

if you give up now, you know you will just come back to it again, whether it’s years from now, months, or next week. you love writing, that’s why you planted the seed of thought that you are going to write this book, and whether you come back to it or not, your unwritten stories will come back to you.

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“Write a Sentence as Clean as a Bone” And Other Advice from James Baldwin

"Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance."

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Duuude whut, I blogged! For, like, the first time in eons. But the bigger news is I blogged on my own proper WEBSITE! www.gengavel.com

Check it!

https://gengavel.squarespace.com/news/2018/8/18/look-up-write-upside-down

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Onomatopoeia dictionary

A dictionary of onomatopoeia and words of imitative origin

Needed some valid sword sounds that wouldn’t be awkward af. FOUND