FA 100 - Creative Acts Part Five

I have talked a little bit before now abot the novel I have been working on. This novel being about an experimental procedure called "Fabricated Identity Transplant" that takes a person's memories, replacing them with extremely well fabricated ones. Thereby replacing their "Identity".

I had hit a wall not to long ago. I had a decent story, but it was completely stand-alone. I very much enjoy the kind of story that has a lot of side stories that all interlock and solve each other in the end. What would I do for something like that? I was stumped.

I talked to a friend of mine in the Theater Department. I told her about my main story, with a man who had been changed by F.I.T and was not exactly happy about this. I finished my talk, leaving her with a thought provoked look on her face. She said to me;

"Why not have a woman who was in love with him before the test?"

It felt so obvious, once someone had told me.

I began to work on the story. My first creation was pretty similar to what my friend had told me. It was a Woman named Catherine who had been in love with the protagonist before he was changed. Because my Protagonist used to be a violent criminal, I toyed with the idea that She would have had no idea about his crimes. Perhaps when he met this woman it sparked within him a desire to change, making it all the more immoral that these scientists had changed him. He had the desire to change, to become better! And they effectively destroyed him. This would also produce some drama from Catherine, having not known who this man really was.

I also toyed with the idea that Catherine would not be alive at the time the story was taking place. My Protagonist Ethan was changed, but his story was that the procedure was flawed, so he began to remember who he really was (A process I imagined to be physically very painful). What if he began to remember this Woman, who he loved and hid his true self from, and the events in a story before resulted in her death?

Also a thing to consider. Just that little comment by a friend of mine, and the ideas started to flow.

In the end, I decided on a combination of these ideas. Perhaps, during his shenanigans before F.I.T took his life, Ethan Jones met a woman named Catherine. She was kind, sweet, and innocent, and Ethan loved her. So much, he was afraid that she would leave if he revealed his true self.

They were taken in by people whom Ethan had hurt in his past. Over time, they realised the connection between the two of them. These people were so enraged with Ethan's crime that they tied Caterine up, telling Ethan that they were going to execute her. They would use her pain to make him suffer, as Ethan had done to them so long ago.

Ethan tried to escape their clutches, but he was unsucessful, and Catherine was killed right in front of him. Enraged, he fought with a new vigour, defeating his captors and killing them. He returned to his prior life, never forgetting the girl who almost made him good.


My thinking for the delivery of this storyline was to have the Post-F.I.T Ethan have periodic memory flashes. Very painful to experience, and also very confusing. He does not remember doing these things, but they seem more real than the life he does remember.

Of course, that's because they are more real, but all the same.

Through the course of the story, Ethan would continue to put together the story of the man he used to be. The details of Catherine's death would reveal themselves at the time of a great emotional climax for the Post - F.I.T Ethan.

Dark stuff, but immensely intruiging to me.



If I had to describe the process behind creating this, I would fill my sentences with a lot of "Errr..."s and "Ummm..."s, because it is fairly difficult to describe a feeling. as with my acting, I still don't know how it happens. Maybe I overanalyse these things, but I have little to no clue how I create. Usually I get a hint... or a little nudge in the right direction... and the rest just flows.

I have not really considered the audience, in regards to this story. Mostly I feel like writing for myself. I enjoy a damn good story, so I try to create damn good stories. Hopefully I suceed. Hopefully I suceeded.

It's still a work in progress. Perhaps you'll hear more about it in the future.

FA 100 - Creative Acts Part Four

For my Creative act this week, I started something that will last a long time.


One of my favorite pasttimes is cycling. Long distance stuff. Last summer I rode up and down the Haida Gwaii (Formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands) with my dad. This summer I'm planning on starting at my hometown (some 300 Km away from Haida Gwaii) and riding to a place called Rose Point (The northernmost tip of the islands).

Something I have wanted to do for a while now, is bike a place called the "Nullarbor Plains". Spanning the entire south side of the continent of Australia, I hear that it's gonna be a pretty brutal ride. When my Father visited the country some twenty five years ago, driving across these plains was tantamount to suicide unless you had several gerry cans of gas. The trouble being that if you ran out, you would be stuck in harsh Australian terrain with no sign of human contact for several hundred kilometers. You would likely die trying to make your way back.

Scary stuff.

Of course, it is different now. There are several stations along the way to make things easier for truck drivers and the like to get across the plains.


Getting back to the actual act, I am thinking that I would like to write about this ride. Things I did in preparation, whatever I did to get myself into the shape to make this work, and then (once it is done) the actual ride in question. What ran through my mind? What drove me to go on a ride that is quarter of the width of Canada, with a lot fewer stops, much less Human contact, and terrain that harsh?

I have been developing some themes in my mind. Themes of whimsy, themes of improvisation, themes of rising to terrible challenges. It would take my entire life to explain them properly here and now, but I want to get these things out to the world. This peice of writing would allow me to do that. I often say jokingly that if people lived according to their whims, the world would be a much better place.

It sounds silly when I explain it like that, but that is a major part of this thing I have developed. This thing that has become my life philosophy.

My audience for this creation spans the world, or those who would care to receive my advice. I would even say it would change the way those people live their lives. These views certainly modified mine.

Work has started.

Keep an eye out for the book.

Creative Acts - Part 3

This week was a tough one for me. I had my act, but I struggled as to wether or not it could be considered creative. The problem being that on the surface, my act did not appear to create anything.

I'll explain further. I have been thinking for a very long time that I would like to just up and go one of these days. Spend some time in the wild, then come back. No preparation, no planning. Just grab a fistful of whatever I could carry with me and forage my way forward.

I grabbed a tent, along with a little bit of food. Just enough to sustain myself overnight (I did not have a lot of time to do this). I jumped on my bike, and headed along what the map on my wall called the Trans Canada highway. Pick a direction and go, see?

I found a suitable place to lock up my bike, and continued on foot untill the brush on the side of the highway looked suitably wild. Once it did, I foraged my way in.

I admit I got a bit lost, but that ended once I ran into what I beleive was Thetis Lake. I stayed out overnight, looking at the sky, disapointed that it was mostly overcast. There was a lot of wind. But I was at peace (I'm not cut out for a city, really.).



I decided to use this as my creative act for one reason over all. In the many readings we have read, one thought stuck out in my mind, and that was that creativity is "Being aware of your inner and outer worlds". I took from that that creativity is not what you feel comfortable with. Staying comfortable limits creativity extremely, or at least that is the impression that I got.

Therefore I decided that using my trip into the forest as a creative act was acceptable. I had been thinking of that for weeks, but I had always been too damn uncomfortable with the thought. The potential problems were quite staggering.

But I faced that. And through that I beleive I created something, though I do not know the specifics. I faced something that made me uncomfortable. I tried something new. Perhaps this was a birth of a new capability in myself. The birth and/or exploration of wanderlust.


The social and politcal ramnifications of this were slim to none. My audience, none but myself. This was something I had been wanting to explore for a very long time. A very personal journey, no? I am blogging about it, but all the same. Personal.