The title is in honor of Canyon River Rapids at Hersheypark.  It caught my attention when I put in rapidly and how things change.  Fond memories at that ride, more riding them less working them. 

Now that I'm two years removed from Hershey, I do have fond memories of the place from time to time.  Needless to say, leaving Hershey was the best decision I ever made.  Not because of working there, and all the drama and stuff that surrounded it, but because leaving, combined with two other more important events, ended one chapter of my life.  I call it the "Hersheypark Era."  When you get a job and your fifteen, did you ever think you'd be working there when you were 21?  I never gave it a thought when I was 15. 

I digress.  Things change, rapidly.  That has nothing to do with Hershey.  It has everything to do with my story.  I want to write something that's science fiction, yet can reach a broader audience.  Or perhaps a wider spectrum appeal.  Maybe I should read American Gods again.  It's been years now... but I've got other books on the list. 

Anyway, I've written something new for the first time in four years.  In fiction writing.  I've written plenty of new articles for The Fourth Estate (and two for The Keystone).  And what I wrote was a decent start.  I was going to write a story starting towards the end of my concept.  That's approximately 7000 years from now.  That's all fun and good, with the concept of time being more Dune-like than Star Trek-like, but it reaches a rather narrow audience. 

When Episode Three of Star Wars came out, there was an unfounded rumor that Lucas was interested in doing another trilogy, except this one based a thousand years before Episode One, where you learn of the founding of the Old Republic and how Yoda comes into being. 

This is now the approach I'm taking.  Except take out Star Wars, insert my ideas.  I'm going to start at the beginning this time.  Then I can break out and do other stuff later.  I think starting at the beginning is more suitable to what I want to write anyway, as things in the present time I like to write about by transposing them to the future.  It doesn't work very well, thus I think I have a hard time writing it.  I think I can make it work well, but this route will be better. 

I've only written two pages.  That's okay.  For anyone who is going to read this, I doubt you know how productive I was back in the day.  Over one summer, in 1998, I wrote nearly fifty short stories.  Not like they were good, or had a whole lot of substance, but that was productivity and creativity.  Between then and 2001, I had continued writing, but focused on particular ideas, expanding them. I converted a novella I wrote into a war series (that I never finished, and for good reasons).  But, once high school was finished, the creative juices went away. 

I did take Creative Writing 1 at HACC, but I mainly worked with my old ideas, trying to convert that into a novel.  I learned from what I wrote, but that was the wrong path to take. 

This, I feel better with.  I wrote something creatively.  I wasn't sure I could get that back.  It's a confidence builder that I wrote a page and a half.  I know people who wouldn't be able to pump out a half page. 

Good times, and all that.  More in the future. 

Alright.  So, I went to my third (and last of this summer) Dave Matthews Band 2008 tour concert yesterday.  This is my fourth overall.  I saw them in Pittsburgh on 05.30 and then in Scranton on 06.10.  Increasingly better per show, in my opinion.  The music in Scranton was the best of the three, but Dave was a riot on the 06.27 Hershey show. 

I have made a little progress in my writing.  I've progressed from a basic time line to people now.  Not specific characters I might write about, but historical figures that would be the equivalent of people like Churchill and Lincoln, Franklin and Washington, as well as musicians and actor, even television personalities. 

I think just having that kind of background structure will help give myself a better picture of the human side of what I'm trying to write. 

That aside, all else goes well!