  Action/Adventure
This week: What Devil Drives You? Edited by: Legerdemain  
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What Devil Drives You?
19th-century British explorer Richard Burton once said that the reason he tempted death in searching for the source of the Nile or by penetrating the inner reaches of Arabia disguised as a Pathan was because “the devil drives.”
When you ask your friends to name an adventure, many of them would come up with "climb Mt. Everest". If you think about it, the physical and the metaphorical coincide with that adventure, when you reach the pinnacle of your goal, you've reached the peak of the mountain. If you ask those same friends how much they thought that trek would cost, not many could guess. I researched it - $65,000 USD for a three-week guided trek. That doesn't include airfare to Kathmandu or the cost of all the gear you must bring.
Unless you're wealthy, that could seem like an insurmountable chunk of change. Unless the "devil drives" and you find corporate sponsors, help from friends, family and donations from the sofa cushions of everyone you know. Some of it can be earned back in honorarium for talks after the trip, but for the most part, the desire has to burn strong and long to fulfill such a dream.
The good news is, while your achieving your financial goals, you have plenty of time to physically prepare for your adventure. To qualify for an Everest climb with the company I researched, you have to pass some mountaineering and ice climbing courses and complete smaller climbs. Each of those climbs in the Cascade, Olympic Mountains or Alaska Range cost between $1000 - $2600 USD.
In the meantime, spend more time on the Stairmaster and let the devil drive to you to your next adventure in writing.
What pinnacle would you like to reach?
Send in your reply below!
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Excerpt: I stared at the mountaineering brochure in my hand. 'Learn to climb a mountain', it claimed. Jezebel and I needed to find something we could do together, and this looked like it could be fun. I flipped through the brochure. It was kind of costly, but there was a package that would set us up with all the gear we needed and would teach us how to use it, and by the end of the weekend, we would be able to climb a mountain by ourselves. That's what the brochure declared anyway.
Excerpt: Jon peeked through the dirty window of the cabin watching it, considering its strange behavior with a tightening in his throat. He had seen it move before while gathering wood: large mounds of it, sliding a couple of feet at a time, and closing in like a pack of hungry wolves
Excerpt: From our room, even with the door closed, I can still hear the heavy laughter of my older sister April as she sings along to The Sound of Music for the hundredth time that day. I stick my iPod headphones into my ears, hoping they would dilute the sound, to no avail.
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#1358187 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Till the white men came to his village, Bundoc never knew about this special day the white men called Christmas. He wondered why the happy fat man gave gifts to children. He could not think of anything he wanted, so Santa gave him a pair of Reeboks. The shoes were of no use to him. He preferred to feel the earth beneath his feet; and when climbing trees, he could grip the bark better with his calloused toes than rubber soles.
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Excerpt: It was the tallest mountain he had ever seen. So high was the mountain, he couldn’t even see the peak. His stomach wasn’t just turning somersaults at the thought of the ascent, it was actually performing an entire floor gymnastics routine, complete with impossible twists, cartwheels and back flips. He didn’t know if he was strong enough. He didn’t know if he was agile enough. He didn’t even know if he was brave enough. All he knew was he had to try, or else his pride would suffer the consequences.
| |  | The Return (E)
A band of mountaineers who search for lost technologies make the journey home.
#1676329 by TColeG  |
Excerpt: Everything that drew breath was greeting the sun in its own way. Some stared with dumb, thoughtless eyes and lumbered out onto the surface of a flat rock. Others skittered further into the shadows to avoid losing the daily chase. And yet others whispered prayers of intercession to their various gods and ancestors. Regardless of station, they all collectively pondered the victories, the failures, and the uncertainty of the coming day.
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#1326256 by Not Available. |
Excerpt: Today’s case was a young one. She hated those cases. They always fought, right up to the end.
Janelle got the details and set out for the remote cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. The setting sun cast golden beams over the brightly colored trees, and the air held the chill of mid fall. Indeed, the path Janelle traveled would have made a beautiful painting in a cozy den.
| | What Women Can Do (ASR)
Real or unreal? You decide. A short story for Kim Marie's Truth or Lies Contest.
#1206458 by Joy  |
Excerpt: One of the most photographically reproduced Alps is Matterhorn with the village of Zermatt at its feet. As the snow blankets mountains, rocks, boulders, ridges, and crags, people need to deal and work with hard things, sharp things, puzzling things, to soften the edginess inside themselves, especially when the mountain's magnetic draw pulls them deeper and deeper, and forces them to create something --anything-- for a feeling of elation and a pride of accomplishment.
Excerpt: After a lot of debate and discussions, we in our wisdom, decided a Sunday hike through some “up and down terrain” would do the trick. Our tickets have been booked, our arrangements have been finalized and we leave in six months. Plenty of time to get ourselves fit enough for a hike up a mountain.
Excerpt: During one of my last visits with my father, before the cancer took him away, I learned he was capable of raw emotions he had never before displayed. We sat in his third floor apartment; the open windows allowed street noise into the room. He cradled a box with a tenderness I had never seen. When he lifted the lid I saw a mound of photographs, all of them black and white, some were faded. A few pictures were banded into small bundles, others just a single picture, disorganized. As my father lifted a scallop edged picture he looked at me with sorrowful eyes, his hand shook as he passed it to me.
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This month's question: What pinnacle would you like to reach?
Last month's question: Which trope was your favorite? Have you used these?
A thinker never sleeps replied: Another funny newsletter. The paper-thin disguise trope reminds me of Red Dwarf doing a Reservoir dogs homage. :)
adw189 answers: The 'Big Bad'- as known in the stated website, is a trope ever present in my writing as well as every movie I watched. Hey, that website is really useful and I almost died laughing and weeping reading the tropes. But tropes are essences of every adventure ever written, isn't it? Too bad that most people have a pretty good idea about them. Is there anything that can solve the trope problem?
Fiona Hassan responds: I have no clue which trope I like best -- I like laughing at all of them :P
Lothmorwel sends: I read a book by Diana Wynne-Jones a while back, the A-Z of fantasy writing (or something similar). It was basically a comical look at the things and events in typical fantasy stories in an encyclopaedic style. Highly amusing, especially when I realised I'd written some of the cheesy cliches into my stories. Then I figured they wouldn't ruin the story, but to be careful where and when I use particular phrases and items!
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Action/Adventure: June 29, 2011 Issue [#4480]
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