Not amusement. Not entertainment. Not a brief little flicker of happiness.

I’m talking joy. That effusive, overwhelming feeling of delight and pleasure that makes it impossible not to smile. The kind of emotion that brings a little mist to your eyes because you are just that happy. Elation that lifts you up to the tips of your toes because you feel so light and free. Pure bliss.

I’ve heard it called passion before. But passion has a different flavor – thicker, redder, more driven and focused. Joy is liberated from any kind of ambition and sense of progress. Joy blows with the wind, gusts into you to fill you up until you’re flying, and can be exhaled in one breath if something – internal or external – takes your mind back to what some people call ‘reality’, where worries and stressors and problems dwell.

Personally, I’m not a fan of a ‘reality’ without joy. Mine includes it. Mine thrives on it.

On the long drive to work this morning, as I was waking up, I decided to eschew the thoughts of the stress that’s plagued me lately. I’ve run into a lot of unexpected issues at work; J is sick with H1N1; money is always a concern (especially after a summer of not working); and we’re probably going to be moving in a few weeks – if my job proves stable. I’ve had all of that and much more on my mind, but today, I chose not to dwell on it.

Instead, I fired up the ole cauldron and began simmering ideas.

I thought of Into Fang Wood. I thought of the upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which is looking to be epic. I thought of the directions I want to take this blog, the people I want to reach out to and connect with, the kind of awesome geofiction resource I hope to create with Oh, The Inhumanity!. I thought of past creativity and future potential.

And I felt that joy bubbling up just beneath my collarbone, pulsing in my lungs.

Creating is my passion and my joy. What’s yours?

Today, we’re taking a break to introduce you to the wonderful souls who share my living space.

First of all, my partner-in-crime and my love, J. (You can’t tell it in this picture, but his hair goes past his waist.)

Secondly, the furballs who call me kin. From left to right: Orion, a female shih tzu runt, Mary, middle-aged aunty, and Kitsune, female fox-spirit tabby.

Thirdly, the purrboxes J brought to the mixer. Terror is on the left, and Nicodemus (Nikki) is on the right. (Sorry for the low quality; my camera broke shortly after I arrived in Nevada, so this was taken on my phone.)

And, a new addition, our long-term houseguest, Kali Vicious! (Also known as Deathcat or Bitty.)

Th-th-that’s all, folks!

If you’re not familiar with the National Novel-Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, please allow me to introduce you to one of the most awesome things to happen to writers since ballpoint pens.

NaNoWriMo is a caffeine-addled, plot-fevered, ever-growing group of people who bridge geographical distances to write a novel in each other’s company. It espouses “exuberant imperfection,” quantity over quality, speed over strength, and the end of the “one day” novelist. (“One day, I’d like to write a book…” Trust me, your ‘one day’ will expand into thirty, and they are fast approaching, my friend.) NaNoWriMo begins at 12:00 AM on November 1st and ends at 11:59 PM November 30th. In those sweet, mind-boggling, too-short thirty days, you are going to write an original work of fiction of at least 50,000 words – 175 pages in your average Word document.

Writing so much in such a short time is bound to produce a crazed heap of scribbling, and NaNoWriMo’s founder, Chris Baty, acknowledges this – and encourages it. You can’t write the story lurking in your head if you’re too afraid of churning out terrible fiction to even pick up the pen or turn on the computer. NaNoWriMo gives you the excuse and the freedom to write whatever comes to mind in whatever fashion you choose, so long as you hit your word count goal by the end of the month. There is no competition – everyone who crosses the 50,000 word finish line is a winner.

The prize? Being able to tell everyone who asks (or doesn’t): Yes, I wrote a novel.

In a month.

Signups have started, and there’s more information waiting just a click away. Come join the madness!

(If you doubt it’s possible to succeed in this epic quest, let me reassure you – it is. I’ve participated six years in a row and won five of them… while working full-time jobs, and once while attending school and still holding down a job. You’d be surprised how easy it is to make time for something crazy in an already-busy schedule.)

Shikin haramitsu daikomyo.

Dai kipt ese psh daes esh e dai lun byst te kA dayo d’ft.

Know what they mean?

The first is a real Japanese phrase meaning, very roughly, “every encounter holds the possibility for enlightenment.” The second is Kalash, a language I’m designing to be the common tongue of dozens of sentient races on Lavana. It means, very roughly, “I would be well but for the circumstances around me.”

I mentioned conlangs, or constructed languages, in my last post about worldbuilding. I am most assuredly a fan of language in general, and I can’t resist the concept of creating my own language – with vocabulary influenced by the speaker’s culture and a range of sounds determined by the shape of the speaker’s usually-inhuman mouth. I’m also a great fan of privacy and have made a few cyphers (or conalphs – constructed alphabets, consistently trading one letter for another) for use when I don’t want anyone but the recipient to read what I’m writing.

Singing a cypher-encrypted song is also rather fun. Especially when the cypher in question changes the syllable pattern.

My first cypher was Khraenian, a one-way cypher made as the primary language of Khraen, a planet I co-designed with my sister. A one-way cypher is a little more difficult to manage than a two-way, at least as far as memorization is concerned – for example, going from English to Khraenian, B becomes D, but D becomes K, and K becomes T, and T becomes R. In other words, B = D, but D =/= B. Slightly bogged down by this bulkier method of cyphering, I created Kommu (aka Dannu) as the epitome of simplicity. It’s a two-way cypher: D = T and T = D. It has a prettier sound in general, doesn’t change the syllable count as often, and sounds good when spoken or sung aloud. Besides, you can make language translators with two-way cyphers very easily.

Conlangs, however, are not cyphers. Conlangs have syntax, grammar, punctuation, a written script/alphabet, vocabulary, and often a set of sounds that the human mouth may not be able to pronounce correctly or at all. You can develop a conlang in relatively little time if all you need are a handful of words with a consistent look and sound for judicious use by your story’s non-humans, or you can spend a lifetime creating a real-size language with history, dialects, a writing system, and a mathematic system that isn’t base 10.

Myself, I tend to dabble in both extremes. Kalash currently consists of a handful of phrases and words, very little sense of alien syntax, and the growing idea that it’s a pidgin tongue drawing from three or four main roots of other, as-of-yet undesigned, fictional languages spoken by a few Lavanian species. On the other hand, Uhjayi is the native tongue of the inlanlu tahori with a syllabic root system, a written phonetic script, and a syntax considerably different from that of English. Uhjayi is undergoing major revamping currently, but I’ll happily showcase it more thoroughly in the future, when it’s ready for prying eyes other than my own to ogle it.

What about you? Have you ever messed with strange alphabets, cyphers, or even conlangs – either for pleasure or for storytelling?

I’m debating on starting a series of worldbuilding creature development posts, using one of my own species as an example. The pros on this are the resource it would create for you, my reader, and the fun I’d get to have in exploring Olashi history and culture; the con is how inconclusive and patchwork it might be. To mitigate the con, I began doing a little bit of research on worldbuilding and discovered that my methodry is actually geofiction. Wikipedia describes it as “a hobby where people design imaginary cities, countries or entire worlds, including placenames, culture, social and political structures and even constructed languages (conlangs), primarily for personal enjoyment.” (You and I will talk about conlangs later, I promise.)

In my leisurely digging, I found several excellent worldbuilding resources to share with you, but most of these seem to assume that you’re working with a human or humanoid race. I haven’t found much talk about methane-breathers or wholly underwater sapients, except as monsters or figures of myth. Perhaps a little miniseries exploring how to go about expanding and deepening the culture and developmental history of your non-human race would be useful after all, eh?

While I continue my research and possibly begin outlining such a series of posts, have some worthwhile worldbuilding resources.

• Worldbuiling on Wikipedia – A standard, fairly thorough explanation of what worldbuilding is and how to do it.
• Fantasy World-Building Questions by Patricia C. Wrede – A good series of questions to ask yourself during the worldbuilding process, including a few about sapient culture development.
• 30 Days of Worldbuilding – A great miniseries from a NaNoWriMo enthusiast with thirty days of fifteen-minute exercises to broaden your world. The same author also produced the Magical World Builder’s Guide.
• Science Fiction Worldbuilding – A slightly sparse guide to building up a believable scifi setting.
• World Builder Projects – A well-organized list of worldbuilding resources, including forums, names, languages, and general guides.
• Fantasy Worldbuilding Resources – The biggest resource I’ve found yet. The page scrolls forever and has links to a multitude of useful sites, books, and images.
• Physical Geography – If you want to make a geographically-realistic world, check out this online resource on geography and make your world with real rules in mind.

I find designing worlds and their inhabitants – flora, fauna, and sapients all – to be the most enjoyable part of writing. What do you think about worldbuilding? Do you use any kind of tools to help you design, like a map generator, or do you go at it freestyle? Feel free to share links to resources on world-building or any aspect thereof!

It was 2 AM on a Saturday night (although some would consider it Sunday morning at that point) in early September in Nevada. I was in a bad spot and really needed some company, so I tossed myself into my car and started up the highway towards J’s work, thirty minutes away. He works in a 24/7 animal hospital as an emergency tech, and it was a quiet night – no emergencies and no coworkers. I would be safe to hang out with him a while and lend a hand where it was needed.

There’s a ten-mile stretch of empty highway between one town and the next. Just as I started down the lonely pass, I spotted a hitchhiker thumbing at the few passing cars. Like everyone else, I drove on, shivering as the night breeze seeped into my bones. Bloody desert – it can pass 90*F in the day and drop below 50*F at night. I don’t like the cold.

The next thing I passed was the sign that said I still had nine miles to go before even glimpsing civilization again. I frowned and thought of the hitchhiker. Nine miles is a long way to walk in the dead of night. I passed a few branching dirt roads where I could have turned around. My thoughts continued to dance around with stress and emotional upset from earlier that evening.

After about three left turn lanes had come and gone, I swung into the next one and rode the brakes to a smooth, swift stop. (Let it be known I love my car for her ability to not send me through the windshield.) I headed back the way I’d come, trying to remember which stretch of highway the guy had been on so I didn’t U-turn too soon. I wound up going back to the north end of town to turn around, just to be sure I didn’t miss him.

As I drove north again, I wondered if I’d find him at all. Maybe he’d gotten picked up already. Not two minutes passed before I spotted him in my headlights, empty hand jutting out.

I pulled over and rolled the passenger’s window down, watching him half-jog, half-run up to my car. He stooped down to peek in the window, and I took a glance and a breath to inspect him. He smelled like cigarettes but not alcohol, seemed to be a clean middle-aged man, and had a look of immense relief and gratitude on his face. I invited him in.

He collapsed into the seat, thanking me profusely, and I pulled back onto the highway. “Where ya headed?” I asked.

“Oh, I dunno. Utah. Maybe Colorado,” he replied.

I blinked. “Uh. I’m headed into south Carson, but I could get you as far as the north end… Probably not farther than that, though.” A pause. “What takes you out there?”

He asked to be dropped off in the middle of town, where this road intersects with an east-west highway. It would take me a little ways past my destination, but I didn’t care. Helping someone who seemed like he needed it was easing my internal turmoil, and I had no regrets about lost time.

The hitchhiker introduced himself, interspersing his sentences with continued thank-yous, and said he was leaving everything behind him. Twenty years at the same job and in the same marriage, a house in a nice suburb (ironically, where J and I live) and a couple of cars. He brought nothing with him – no phone, no cards, no cash, no supplies. He’d left just a few hours ago and had been walking ever since.

He was done, he said, just done with it all. “I’m not afraid,” he told me. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going to start a new life from scratch. And I know I can do it.” He spoke with intelligence and clarity, and agreed with my observation that he probably should have gotten some cash from the ATM on his way out, but he had no regrets. I advised him to avoid trying to walk across Utah – that state is even more dry and barren than Nevada. He mentioned going to Canada as a possibility, and we talked about roadtrips (of which I’ve done many) and the crazy turns that life sometimes takes.

When we got to the intersection of highways, I pulled over at a gas station. “Hang on, bud, I have somethin’ for you,” I told him, parking and popping my trunk. I handed him the sleeping bag I kept in there – only used once – and a nice brown jacket that my dad had given me not a month earlier. It fit him much better than it did me.

He was surprised, and grateful, and told me that karma would repay me for this. I smiled and said I knew it would.

“Can I hug you?” he asked, and I nodded. We hugged and I wished him the best of luck, and I watched him walk east as I got back into my car.

Life as adventure. You always have a choice to change what you don’t like – and a choice to do some good.

Last night, I asked my partner, J, to give me ideas for blog posts. He mentioned a few stories he wants me to write, which I pointed out were not quite what I wanted. (I mean, a herd of feral, ghost-powered, steampunk motorcycles in the desert? Yeeeah. I’m not letting that one go. But he likes reminding me himself – especially since it was his idea.)

He eventually proposed that I write about drawing inspiration from the people and situations in life. I joked that he just wanted me to write about him.

He has a valid point, though. I’ve always drawn a lot of inspiration from those around me and the experiences I live through. (The ones I don’t live through probably make better stories, but rigor mortis makes typing rather difficult…) And while I chase the story’s tail to find its face, talking plot points and characters out with someone helps me avoid tripping over my feet and catapulting into a steaming pile of drivel. More than once, I’ve not had a clue where the story was going, and discussing my friends’ reactions to what they’d read so far helped steer me onto the right trail.

In fact, I’m not entirely sure how The Demon-God of Jubagh would have ended if I hadn’t been chewing the fat with a certain British gentleman.

(You know, you don’t often see ‘chewing the fat’ in the same sentence with ‘British gentleman’. Mixing regional phrases is fun, kids.)

Life inspires me. People inspire me. Situations and circumstances inspire me. Media – other fiction – inspires me. Everything I think, see, hear, smell, touch, taste, say, and do inspires me. It’s not necessarily a constant stream of vivid and original ideas, but flashes and new angles can strike at any time with varying frequency. For me, storytelling is a form of communication, of taking what I’ve lived and presenting it in a new format so that other people can, in some way, live it too. I’m driven to write because the story needs told and shared.

What inspires you?