"In order to graduate next fall, you need to take chemistry and computer science this summer." These were the words I dreaded. But even still, they were said. My academic advisor just condemned my summer to a summer full of the world of Georgia Tech I've been living in the last few years.

In retrospect (even if it is just going on week 2 at this point), it was a very useful sentence placed upon me. Even though I'll have to miss out on a lot of summer activities, my summer isn't wont for boredom due to the assignments due. So far, for example, I've actually enjoyed the work I've done in my CS class. Chemistry? Well, I could do without that necessary evil.

Now, this might seem like a "woe is me" type of post, but it's far from. In fact, it's more of an encouragement. Even though it can be annoying, tests are hard, and it's constant school, It's a blessing I get to be able to take these courses, and if you truly want to succeed in life, sacrifices have to be made. But in the long run, what's 8 weeks out of your life if it saves you a semester that takes up 4 months? Not a bad trade-off in my opinion.

But so far, it hasn't been too bad, grades have been good, and I am optimistic. I only pray my persistence pays off this time, and I don't burn myself out for the tough lineup I have for this upcoming Fall semester. I learned my lesson on how you can truly hurt yourself (even if you try to make that not happen... Life happens, you move on), and just deal with the pain involved. After that, you suck it up, and try again where you failed before. I just don't want a repeat on that pain in ANY of my endeavors for my future.

I guess I just wanted to get some thoughts out there. Ultimately, this post is about priorities. If you want to succeed, if you've failed, keep pushing on. That's all that it takes. A little time in your life is nothing compared to the fullness of a persons life. Suck it up, deal with it, push on.

"I want to write a fantasy book! It will have magic in it!"

These are words that haunt me now. Why is this so? Because magic. SCREW magic (well, not really). It's awesome some of the things you can do with it, but it can be painfully annoying to flesh out the rules of magic systems. Why you say? Because balance. Everything must have balance. Let me explain...

Say you have a magic system where heat is your main source of energy (oh wait! that's VERY similar to what I am coming up with! But not fully). Well, you can say that you can get heat from basically anywhere. But to really throw things for a loop, why doesn't the magician just look up at the sun, and draw his powers from that?

Well, this is where balance comes in to play. Having a magician gain basically unlimited power from the sun (as described beforehand) causes a few issues.

1. The magician has a basically unlimited source of power.
2. The magician is instantly overpowered, causing for cheap writing.
3. There is no air of mystery to how the magic system works.

There are a lot of other problems involved with this, but these are some of the primary problems you face. It seems like with every brilliant idea on how things interact, instantly 50,000 problems arise that lead to overpowered magicians, cheap loopholes, etc. As a writer, one must KILL any, and all of these loopholes so the reader later on doesn't have the thought "well, why didn't the magician just do this or that to get around those issues?"

One of the things I have learned in life (and this applies to myself), is when you are writing fantasy, you get die-hard geeks who read these books. These geeks are from every walk in life. As such, typically, these die-hard fans DISSECT EVERYTHING. Thus, this entire idea of balance becomes almost as important as the story itself (as half the story is the main character's development or interaction with these magic systems). In some ways it feels as if I am programming a video game. One character in the game might have some awesome ability, but unless if you want the game to be lopsided, you want it to be balanced, so you give the other characters certain abilities to counteract this one character. This is my problem.

But, as much as I say this problem sucks (and as an over-analyzer, it truly annoys me how much I think of loopholes), it's also fun because it means that what I come with, I can truly write a fascinating story with some great interactions. So, balance then becomes a necessary evil.

On a side note, there might be the possibility that I'll be having two more people work on this project. More information will soon be posted regarding that.

Until next time!
-Ryan