A lot of things are coming to head as the semester comes to a close. My life feels drastically different in these short four months of the semester. I have become someone I almost don't recognize. It seems like my life used to have a certain degree of unpredictability, the future unwinding at an alarmingly random pace. Now my future feels warm. It doesn't feel predictable, but it feels more slow and gentle. I used to think that change could only happen slowly over a long period of time. I am proving myself wrong. Even if I change I will still struggle with the same issues, but how I push myself will show because I pick myself up when I fall, instead of dragging myself at the knees, burring myself deeper into the sand. It's realizing that your knees are beginning to be buried, stepping out before your legs are powerless. I've begun to lift weights. Not just for physical strength, but for myself and my emotions. Lifting the weight of the world feels like less work the stronger I get. This week I have felt my future shifting in a thousand directions. From 2 complicated relationships, to the end of this semester, the daylight strikes many angles. Sometimes I see clarity, other times my shades are rose colored and hazy, smoke eroding my eyeballs from what's right and real. Because future is such a strong theme in my life right now, I am going to write about "The House of the Future" from Maps to Anywhere.
The future is always bright, never bleak. We see ourselves as better human beings, setting unrealistic goals that are never achieved. It holds iridescence instead, changing with different angles of light, the way oil looks in a pool of water. The pink and green melding with blue, swirling in and out while changing the angle you're looking at. This is how the author feels about his future. His brother is going to die; he has no control but the color of his control is ever changing. As he matures and detaches, the blue becomes more of a bronze-gold. The future isn't really the future, it is a continuation of the circle you have already chosen to stick yourself into. You change your present because time has no boundary, no stopping point or past. That is a rather difficult concept for humans to conceive, none the less it's important for us to grasp in order discard this "better future" idea. In "The House of the Future", the author is obsessed with futuristic architecture and the idea of the future. He is adopting this idea because he needs to detach himself from his brothers death. He saw time as a bridge to happiness and perfection: "Time was the road that led to utopia-or so I believed-and life, prolonged, would be nearly perfect, human kind molded like plastic til virtue and peace and pleasure prevailed" Future is the answer to his brothers pain and suffering. It reminds me of believing in the tooth fairy as a child, fantasy that feels more real than it should. The act of him writing this memoir was his realization of how future is just a continuation of now, something you can't wait for. You have to act in now how you would act in your future. I hate watching people wait for their future. If you wait you are going to remain in exactly the same state as you were in. This is the biggest thing I learned this semester. You can't wait to get better at something, you have to get better RIGHT. NOW. Or else nothing will change.
This book was life changing for me. It has helped me see my life in a different, more detached way. I see much of my childhood and young adulthood as trauma and suffering, but after reading this novel I can see how you can easily look at a situation in your life and find beauty in even the worst things. You can morph it into something beautiful. Life has so many stages. Not every stage has to be enjoyable. I am finding more solitude and comfort in my skin as I age. Perhaps that's something every human being enjoys the older they get, but I think the transition point in my life is just as valid as any other. The author uses descriptive details and imagery that turn things I would be upset about into works of art. I have since incorporated this into my writing. I want to write about some of the things I have experienced growing up, but I want it to be a little bit more artistic and detached like his writing is. Writing in itself feels kind of like a detachment, allowing the author to feel the barrier between fingers and keyboard, screen and web browser. I can feel it developing itself on its own now, brain and fingertips less connected than ever before. Sometimes I feel like that's the best way to write, semi conscious and uninhibited. I want to show the bad in my life as something good, because that's largely how I've been able to come out so clean. I take what I get and turn it around. I use the bad for good. So many people continue letting their knees become paralyzed in the sand, unable to move in any direction. My protest is pulling myself out before it's too late.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Blog Post 10: 4/2/15
As a class we have begun to read Maps to Anywhere by Bernard Cooper. The book is situated as a bunch of essays about different memories the author has about his life. They are beautiful and untamed, the way I would like to write my life story. They are thoughts and descriptions of troubles, joy, and just life itself. I have begun to really love the language that holds itself between the pages. His descriptions are vivid and evoke emotions of my own life. The sensory detail is wet on the tip of my tongue throughout every essay. His descriptions of his father are some of my favorite parts so far. Today I will talk about some of the sections in the novel that I like so far and why. I may also include an exert from an essay I have begun to write that imitates a section of the text.
When I first started reading Maps to Anywhere, I had no idea that the essays I was reading would somehow all meld together and make sense of themselves. I really had no idea that the whole thing was almost a complete memoir of the author's life. The surprise of this is wonderful to me. He is creatively writing about his life in a tasteful and artistic way. I want to some day do something similar about my life, because I believe this way is the most pleasing to the eye. As much as I love reading autobiographies of people's lives, the way Bernard Cooper expresses his life is fresh and unique. The first section of writing in the text that I took particular liking to was on page 6, titled The Heralds. This section of writing is very descriptive in regards to a multitude of religions. His writing is so beautiful it almost takes my breath away. I really liked the lines "Once, Life magazine featured "The great Cathedrals of Europe," and what I saw, or tasted rather, after turning the pages and licking my index finger, was the bitterness of ink, a flavor that matched the photographs of expressionless death masks, prostate statues, apothecary jars (more ornate than our pharmacist's) in which slept silvers of the saints." I feel like I can taste the ink from the magazine and know exactly what he means. After these lengthy descriptions of religions comes his own opinion. From what I gathered, he isn't religious. I got from this that he finds beauty in religion, and likes the idea of it, but he can't see anything more than that. The last part from this section that I want to mention emphasizes this perfectly; "Sure, I've got work enough for a legion of angels: insurmountable personal fears, a vendetta against international evil, friends to raise from the dead. Why, just yesterday I was lamenting all these things when I saw a stream of black birds soaring over the city. Endless they were, like winged pieces of letters, like a moving sign in Times Square, heraldic and quick and colossal. Except that a message never appeared. Their transmigration riddled the sky." To relate this to me, I am not religious, but I still have riddles of hope and curiosity of the unknown afterlife. I still wish that i'll get to see my loved ones when I die, but these thoughts don't hold true to what I really think. I think he feels the same way. It's a curiosity in the unknown. He sees this in the birds, but is quick to react because they aren't really angels.
The next section I am going to talk about is on page 45 titled "Sleeping With My Father." This section was almost completely about the author's father. There are snippets of little memories that he has about his dad, especially about the different phases his father goes through. After his mother died he got remarried, and then the marriage ended badly when she went a little crazy. After this his father entered a new stage of quiet reflection about his life, and a realization of his own loneliness, in my opinion. His constant story telling and fragments of life lead me to believe this. He is constantly thinking about all of the things he went through in life. A section that I liked was on page 48; "During my boyhood and his marriage to my mother until her death, my father was a man wracked by an excess of energy. He never seemed to sleep. His was not the insomnia that results in indolence, bags beneath the eyes, stifled yawns. When he was awake he was wide awake, jumping at the slightest noise. No exertion, regardless how back-breaking, could exhaust him." I feel very connected with his father in this section. I experience this kind of insomnia all the time. I feel wired no matter how tired I am, and I try to sleep but my mind is active and ready to learn new things, or clean my room. I have to wait through periods like this until my body can't take it anymore and I pass out for long hours. This section is showing his fathers intense personality as well. The memoirs bring to life his personality bit by bit. The other section that I want to mention is on page 50; "I came to him in his bedroom. He was sleeping in the center of a double bed. The room was suffused with blue light. It was dusk or dawn, I don't know. On the dresser, statuettes of Moses and Jesus over saw our assignation. I stroked his shoulder. My father awoke. "Dad," I whispered, "are we getting older?" "Here," he said, lifting the blanket. "Here," he said, patting the bed." This section hits close to home for me. I can smell the pillow cases that I would smell for hours in my dad's bed while he slept next to me, TV blaring. The comfort of your father is unlike anything else. It's different than being next to your mother, who you are used to being held by. My father would always let me lay by his side when an episode of insomnia struck. I can't describe why it always helped me sleep. The smell of his pillow cases always comforted me, I can't forget their smell.
I chose to write an imitation of the essay "Sleeping With My Father". I've been including lots of little things in all my writings about my father. Him and I have gone through a lot so far in my life, and a lot of it is hard to talk about. Instead of talking about some of the harder, more negative memories of him, I wanted to write about some of the areas that capture his personality and different situations that we actually bonded over. Throughout most of my life he has not exactly felt like a father to me, more of a friend who I could tell every secret to. I never felt uncomfortable telling him anything I did that was bad, or asking for advice about inappropriate subjects. This bonded us tightly, but also kept him from being a role model to me. Here is a short exert from my essay: " He cooked us a lavish meal complete with an endless supply of pepperidge farm cookies of our choosing. He always had them in the cupboard for as long as I could remember. Now that I think about it, his house always had the best food, and his cooking skills were to die for. Josh, my boyfriend fell in love with him instantly, forming a bond similar to the one my father and I share. " This piece is still a work in progress, and this part may even change. I like it because it shows his personality a little, and also the relationship we shared in my past. Writing about myself is really hard, but I want to do it to try and heal from my past woes and troubles. I think writing is one of the most powerful retrospective tools. You can teach yourself a lot by reading the words you have written on a page. Maps to Anywhere has really taught me that everyone's experiences are relative, and everything you go through is an experience, no matter how someone else is going to interpret it. That's how I feel about my life. My experiences are different than how someone else might experience what I go through. But everything is experienced.
When I first started reading Maps to Anywhere, I had no idea that the essays I was reading would somehow all meld together and make sense of themselves. I really had no idea that the whole thing was almost a complete memoir of the author's life. The surprise of this is wonderful to me. He is creatively writing about his life in a tasteful and artistic way. I want to some day do something similar about my life, because I believe this way is the most pleasing to the eye. As much as I love reading autobiographies of people's lives, the way Bernard Cooper expresses his life is fresh and unique. The first section of writing in the text that I took particular liking to was on page 6, titled The Heralds. This section of writing is very descriptive in regards to a multitude of religions. His writing is so beautiful it almost takes my breath away. I really liked the lines "Once, Life magazine featured "The great Cathedrals of Europe," and what I saw, or tasted rather, after turning the pages and licking my index finger, was the bitterness of ink, a flavor that matched the photographs of expressionless death masks, prostate statues, apothecary jars (more ornate than our pharmacist's) in which slept silvers of the saints." I feel like I can taste the ink from the magazine and know exactly what he means. After these lengthy descriptions of religions comes his own opinion. From what I gathered, he isn't religious. I got from this that he finds beauty in religion, and likes the idea of it, but he can't see anything more than that. The last part from this section that I want to mention emphasizes this perfectly; "Sure, I've got work enough for a legion of angels: insurmountable personal fears, a vendetta against international evil, friends to raise from the dead. Why, just yesterday I was lamenting all these things when I saw a stream of black birds soaring over the city. Endless they were, like winged pieces of letters, like a moving sign in Times Square, heraldic and quick and colossal. Except that a message never appeared. Their transmigration riddled the sky." To relate this to me, I am not religious, but I still have riddles of hope and curiosity of the unknown afterlife. I still wish that i'll get to see my loved ones when I die, but these thoughts don't hold true to what I really think. I think he feels the same way. It's a curiosity in the unknown. He sees this in the birds, but is quick to react because they aren't really angels.
The next section I am going to talk about is on page 45 titled "Sleeping With My Father." This section was almost completely about the author's father. There are snippets of little memories that he has about his dad, especially about the different phases his father goes through. After his mother died he got remarried, and then the marriage ended badly when she went a little crazy. After this his father entered a new stage of quiet reflection about his life, and a realization of his own loneliness, in my opinion. His constant story telling and fragments of life lead me to believe this. He is constantly thinking about all of the things he went through in life. A section that I liked was on page 48; "During my boyhood and his marriage to my mother until her death, my father was a man wracked by an excess of energy. He never seemed to sleep. His was not the insomnia that results in indolence, bags beneath the eyes, stifled yawns. When he was awake he was wide awake, jumping at the slightest noise. No exertion, regardless how back-breaking, could exhaust him." I feel very connected with his father in this section. I experience this kind of insomnia all the time. I feel wired no matter how tired I am, and I try to sleep but my mind is active and ready to learn new things, or clean my room. I have to wait through periods like this until my body can't take it anymore and I pass out for long hours. This section is showing his fathers intense personality as well. The memoirs bring to life his personality bit by bit. The other section that I want to mention is on page 50; "I came to him in his bedroom. He was sleeping in the center of a double bed. The room was suffused with blue light. It was dusk or dawn, I don't know. On the dresser, statuettes of Moses and Jesus over saw our assignation. I stroked his shoulder. My father awoke. "Dad," I whispered, "are we getting older?" "Here," he said, lifting the blanket. "Here," he said, patting the bed." This section hits close to home for me. I can smell the pillow cases that I would smell for hours in my dad's bed while he slept next to me, TV blaring. The comfort of your father is unlike anything else. It's different than being next to your mother, who you are used to being held by. My father would always let me lay by his side when an episode of insomnia struck. I can't describe why it always helped me sleep. The smell of his pillow cases always comforted me, I can't forget their smell.
I chose to write an imitation of the essay "Sleeping With My Father". I've been including lots of little things in all my writings about my father. Him and I have gone through a lot so far in my life, and a lot of it is hard to talk about. Instead of talking about some of the harder, more negative memories of him, I wanted to write about some of the areas that capture his personality and different situations that we actually bonded over. Throughout most of my life he has not exactly felt like a father to me, more of a friend who I could tell every secret to. I never felt uncomfortable telling him anything I did that was bad, or asking for advice about inappropriate subjects. This bonded us tightly, but also kept him from being a role model to me. Here is a short exert from my essay: " He cooked us a lavish meal complete with an endless supply of pepperidge farm cookies of our choosing. He always had them in the cupboard for as long as I could remember. Now that I think about it, his house always had the best food, and his cooking skills were to die for. Josh, my boyfriend fell in love with him instantly, forming a bond similar to the one my father and I share. " This piece is still a work in progress, and this part may even change. I like it because it shows his personality a little, and also the relationship we shared in my past. Writing about myself is really hard, but I want to do it to try and heal from my past woes and troubles. I think writing is one of the most powerful retrospective tools. You can teach yourself a lot by reading the words you have written on a page. Maps to Anywhere has really taught me that everyone's experiences are relative, and everything you go through is an experience, no matter how someone else is going to interpret it. That's how I feel about my life. My experiences are different than how someone else might experience what I go through. But everything is experienced.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Blog Post 9: 3/19/15
This week has been very filled with insomnia and sleep. The yin and yang of life sometimes. I find that when I go many days without sleep, my writing becomes a haze of nonsense that I can only begin to decode after the crash happens. I write and write and write no matter what, just to keep myself flowing through life, and then make sense of it all later when I am more coherent. I have found that it's interesting to write in all different states of consciousness; when tired, when awake, drunk, mad, sad, happy. I produce such drastically different pieces of writing in each different emotional state. Playing with that helps me figure out what kind of writing style I have so I can easily transfer thoughts from each state into different pieces of writing. I guess it's a perspective thing. This week was the bathhouse event. Unfortunately I couldn't go because I had to work and I really wish that I could have. Instead of going, I looked through both of the featured poet's writings and explored them a little bit. Today I am going to talk about each of the poets.
CA Conrad is a very intersting fellow, with even more interesting pieces of work. He has completely lived off his writing, which I find really amazing. Most writers must get a second job because writing can't ALWAYS pay the bills, but CA Conrad has done just that. He has forcefully immersed himself into the world of writing and creating, and I think he has been rather successful about it. One of the most interesting things I have come across with him, is his use of SOMAtic writing exercises. These exercises intertwine the body and the mind and ask for a lot of strange actions. The idea is to connect the mind with the body and for you to use the experience of doing the exercise as a creative outlet. He also gains creativity from writing the exercise. It's like a complete process from start to finish. I read an interview about these exercises, and a lot of what he had to say was really amazing. He finds inspiration in everything, and his creativity is a form of his own protest. A quote that he said that I really liked was: "Creativity is our only true revenge. Being creative is the revenge against all the bastards trying to break the spirit of our fellow humans." This is so true to me. Being creative is also being comfortable. Allowing yourself to give in and caring less about the judgement you may or may not receive. Creativity should have no judgement.
Dawn Lundy Martin was the other poet speaking at the bathhouse event. I also really liked her poetry when we read some in class. Her style is one that I really like. Intentional breaks and lots of spacing. In the one of the poems called 'The Morning Hour", she uses brackets in between some of the lines. I like this because it is sort of an intentional thought space. It shows how she developed her poems and what kind of thoughts took place. I also think it goes nicely with the poem because it is about the morning, when our thoughts are often jumbled and out of focus. This whole poem really reminds me of the morning. Even when she is talking about things that don't relate to the morning. There are two sets of lines that I particularly enjoyed. One was on page 32; "What is familiar is the warm spice of a girl oiled in lavender". This line has so much imagery and I can almost taste the spice of the lavender on the tip of my tongue. It reminds me of my grandma, who always smells of lavender, and of the balm she would rub onto our cuts and bruises when we were little. I love imagery of scents, because they seem to stick in your mind better than any thought. It's like tasting something you haven't had in a long time, it takes you back to the last time, and you can remember like it was yesterday. The other set of lines I really liked was on page 33; "The footsteps are wet. Desire is wet. Is going step by step- the ash trail is wicked. The thicker wept." I love the way it flows when you say it out loud. It really flows, and the rhyming gives it really good dynamics. I also like the sentence 'Desire is wet'. It's the truth to me. Desire is something that makes you salivate. You want, you crave. Desire is there to hold you and not let you go. It is what you don't have and will make you sweat until you do have it.
This week was a challenge for me, but none the less challenge makes you a stronger person. Therefore, my writing is strongest in the toughest times. I want to develop my writing a lot more. It all feels really incomplete, so hopefully I can grow and be able to let my pieces grow with me.
CA Conrad is a very intersting fellow, with even more interesting pieces of work. He has completely lived off his writing, which I find really amazing. Most writers must get a second job because writing can't ALWAYS pay the bills, but CA Conrad has done just that. He has forcefully immersed himself into the world of writing and creating, and I think he has been rather successful about it. One of the most interesting things I have come across with him, is his use of SOMAtic writing exercises. These exercises intertwine the body and the mind and ask for a lot of strange actions. The idea is to connect the mind with the body and for you to use the experience of doing the exercise as a creative outlet. He also gains creativity from writing the exercise. It's like a complete process from start to finish. I read an interview about these exercises, and a lot of what he had to say was really amazing. He finds inspiration in everything, and his creativity is a form of his own protest. A quote that he said that I really liked was: "Creativity is our only true revenge. Being creative is the revenge against all the bastards trying to break the spirit of our fellow humans." This is so true to me. Being creative is also being comfortable. Allowing yourself to give in and caring less about the judgement you may or may not receive. Creativity should have no judgement.
Dawn Lundy Martin was the other poet speaking at the bathhouse event. I also really liked her poetry when we read some in class. Her style is one that I really like. Intentional breaks and lots of spacing. In the one of the poems called 'The Morning Hour", she uses brackets in between some of the lines. I like this because it is sort of an intentional thought space. It shows how she developed her poems and what kind of thoughts took place. I also think it goes nicely with the poem because it is about the morning, when our thoughts are often jumbled and out of focus. This whole poem really reminds me of the morning. Even when she is talking about things that don't relate to the morning. There are two sets of lines that I particularly enjoyed. One was on page 32; "What is familiar is the warm spice of a girl oiled in lavender". This line has so much imagery and I can almost taste the spice of the lavender on the tip of my tongue. It reminds me of my grandma, who always smells of lavender, and of the balm she would rub onto our cuts and bruises when we were little. I love imagery of scents, because they seem to stick in your mind better than any thought. It's like tasting something you haven't had in a long time, it takes you back to the last time, and you can remember like it was yesterday. The other set of lines I really liked was on page 33; "The footsteps are wet. Desire is wet. Is going step by step- the ash trail is wicked. The thicker wept." I love the way it flows when you say it out loud. It really flows, and the rhyming gives it really good dynamics. I also like the sentence 'Desire is wet'. It's the truth to me. Desire is something that makes you salivate. You want, you crave. Desire is there to hold you and not let you go. It is what you don't have and will make you sweat until you do have it.
This week was a challenge for me, but none the less challenge makes you a stronger person. Therefore, my writing is strongest in the toughest times. I want to develop my writing a lot more. It all feels really incomplete, so hopefully I can grow and be able to let my pieces grow with me.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Blog Post 8: 3/12/15
This week we read two new short stories, and worked some more on creating our own. We were given some postcards of different places and told to write about them, and then create a story from that. I wasn't here during the day we were given the postcards, so I chose some off the internet that I liked. The one I chose to write my story about was from Wichita, Kansas. I'm going to talk about the short stories that we read, and one of the stories I created.
The first short story we read was from Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo. The story follows a little girl who likes to play the fiddle in her own way. She refuses to get lessons because she likes the way it sounds when she plays random sounds in her own way. Her mother is not fond of this and doesn't allow her to play in the house unless she has proper lessons. This doesn't stop little Indigo and she keeps on teaching herself how she wants. She ends up finding success in this, and plays at a local business her own tunes. When she plays songs written by other people, she never gets the same reaction that she gets when she plays her own made up songs. She is also African American at a very bleak time period. She realizes through her experience with the public that it's tough to grow up when you are African American. This makes her want to get rid of her dolls so they don't have to grow up and experience what she deals with. The story really shows her character and what kind of person she is with very few details. We know from how she refuses to learn the fiddle properly that she is stubborn and stuck in her ways. We also know that she has a very strong personality, based on how she interacts with other children her age. Her mother can see this, and I think in the story it is sort of implied that the mother is the same way. She is harsh and set in her ways about her daughter getting the lessons she needs. I like this aspect of the story because it feels very much like real life. We learn and mirror our parents, so it makes sense that she would be this way. This story really gives good character details as a whole, without actually describing. I'm starting to get used to this when I write my own stories. It's just so much more effective if you want a captivating story.
The other short story we read was called Night Women. It is about what we assume is a prostitute mother who works at night in her home while her son sleeps. The house is described as small and damaged, and we can tell she is dependent on her work for survival. Her son is also assumed young based on many of the details in the story. There are a lot of sexual references, even on things that wouldn't necessarily be seen as sexual. There are a lot of things you can tell about her character in this story. She talks about love in a very abstract way, so I can tell that she doesn't have a traditional view on love and marriage. Also, you can tell by the way she describes her life that she doesn't like what she has to do, but also feels kind of ok about it because she knows she is doing it for the right reasons, as in having a son. There are lots of poetic "magical" images as well, which to me show that she is kind of in a dream state with her life. She wishes for better and can imagine better, but it doesn't seem to ever be there unless she is with her son or telling him about life. It's almost as if she believes what she is telling him. I liked this story a lot, because the stark details were very beautiful. Even if something wasn't particularly 'good', the way it was described was vivid and imaginative. I was particularly captivated by a line on page 86 "My fingers coil themselves into visions of birds on his nose. I want him to forget that we live in a place where nothing lasts". To me this describes the story's meaning as a complete whole.
I wrote a story about a girl who has a damaged mother who moved to Wichita, Kansas to get away from all of her problems, including the girl. She is left with all the blowout that her mother left her. Her father left long ago and she doesn't know where he is. I haven't gotten too far on the story yet, but I want it to be her journey to her father. I added lots of little details about the mother without saying too much. I described her lifestyle, and how it affected the main character. There's so much I can do with this story, so I'm hoping in our small groups I can get some more ideas. I choose to write about hard situations because i have a lot of experience in my life dealing with hard times, so it feels good to be able to write out on paper how it feels. It's very different on paper than in your head. I feel like you can't really effectively write about something you haven't you yourself experienced. You might be able to capture a little bit of certain elements, but it won't feel real. There are certain little details that you see and feel when it is actually happening to you. I can't wait to get through this story and try and take it somewhere.
This week was very powerful for my writing. I didn't get very far, but the ideas are really flowing and I can finally see how to develop a character without listing out details. I think by the end of this class I will just be getting started as a great writer. To me that's a very good thing. I want to feel very improved by then.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Blog Post 7: 3/5/15
This week we were asked to write and share our own stories, and to read a new one called "The Girl With The Blackened Eye". As we are moving forward with fiction and all of the elements to a good short story, I am really starting to see how best to put my ideas to use. I never really thought about how to write a short story, I always just went with my gut. This can be good sometimes, but I am really liking knowing some different techniques. When we were asked to write a story, we used a fiction exercise to get our ideas flowing. I am also getting really good ideas from the various short stories that we have been reading. They have shown me that a story has many different definitions and ways it can go. The Girl With the Blackened Eye was very different from what I am used to reading, but I really enjoyed it. It's really weird to me that something painful sounding and terrible could be so good to read. I'm going to talk about the short stories I have been working on and "The Girl With the Blackened Eye".
The fiction exercise that we did in class asked us to describe a place, emotion, and thing without saying what it is. This was way harder for me than I thought. I liked it though, because it gets the brain in the habit of using show instead of tell to describe things. It also really got a lot of ideas in my head about what kind of story I was going to write. When I did the exercise, I sort of wrote each thing in some form of prose instead of doing it 'high and dry'. I love poetry, and feel like I can't write a story without at least a little bit of it. I'm hoping it will help me be able to extend what I wrote, because of the two stories I have, they are both extremely short. The first little buds of a story will hopefully be translated into something more developed. I chose to describe anxiety as one of my emotions because I suffer from it. It's so hard to describe, but because I feel it everyday, it is a bit easier. This emotion really gave me good ideas for character development as well, because I could use the emotion of anxiety to describe the person. Not saying 'anxiety' also really makes for good development. I'm really interested to see where I will go with these two stories. I feel like they are in the middle of a story instead of having a clear beginning, middle and end, so hopefully I can work on this.
The Girl With the Blackened Eye was a really powerful story. It had a lot of terrible images, but perhaps that's why I was so enthralled in it. I couldn't look away the whole time I was reading it. I had to know what was going to happen, even though I knew the main character was going to survive. The imagery played into this a lot. When an author is good at describing stuff, it doesn't really matter what the story is about, as long as it is done effectively. Everything we have read has played into this, which further reinforces me to write like this in my own stories. There was a line in the story that really stuck out to me on page 207: "When you give up struggle, there's a kind of love." For some reason when I read this I knew exactly what she was talking about. Giving up struggle is relieving in some ways. Even if it means the end is near, that struggle is no longer there to bother you. I've dealt with this a lot in my short life so far. It's difficult to describe. It's like an idea that you feel really strongly about or something you are constantly fighting yourself about that finally comes to you just letting it go. Realizing that you have no control. Then you are satisfied, even if the end result is not getting what you want. It's strange to feel satisfaction in failure, but I think that's exactly what the person in the story is trying to get at. It's not love, it's a wave of relief because you don't have to defend yourself in some way. It's acceptance in your situation. She talks about how she didn't really know how long she was gone, she just lived. Night and day didn't exist to her, it could have been 80 days for all she knew. That is the most raw form of living life to the fullest. She did even thought it wasn't for good. Her life existed as a mono day and night. Survival was a blessing, the next minute she was alive was a relief. I can't imagine any of those feelings. I feel like we as humans live our lives for the next day. We think about what we need to do for the next day instead of the day we are presently in. It's so frustrating to just want the days to pass instead of being able to enjoy every moment and be grateful that the next one came.
This week was really intense for me as a writer. My stories are starting to come alive the more we read and do fiction exercises. I really can't get enough of them because I truly want to create something great. I know it takes time, but I want the effort to show.
The fiction exercise that we did in class asked us to describe a place, emotion, and thing without saying what it is. This was way harder for me than I thought. I liked it though, because it gets the brain in the habit of using show instead of tell to describe things. It also really got a lot of ideas in my head about what kind of story I was going to write. When I did the exercise, I sort of wrote each thing in some form of prose instead of doing it 'high and dry'. I love poetry, and feel like I can't write a story without at least a little bit of it. I'm hoping it will help me be able to extend what I wrote, because of the two stories I have, they are both extremely short. The first little buds of a story will hopefully be translated into something more developed. I chose to describe anxiety as one of my emotions because I suffer from it. It's so hard to describe, but because I feel it everyday, it is a bit easier. This emotion really gave me good ideas for character development as well, because I could use the emotion of anxiety to describe the person. Not saying 'anxiety' also really makes for good development. I'm really interested to see where I will go with these two stories. I feel like they are in the middle of a story instead of having a clear beginning, middle and end, so hopefully I can work on this.
The Girl With the Blackened Eye was a really powerful story. It had a lot of terrible images, but perhaps that's why I was so enthralled in it. I couldn't look away the whole time I was reading it. I had to know what was going to happen, even though I knew the main character was going to survive. The imagery played into this a lot. When an author is good at describing stuff, it doesn't really matter what the story is about, as long as it is done effectively. Everything we have read has played into this, which further reinforces me to write like this in my own stories. There was a line in the story that really stuck out to me on page 207: "When you give up struggle, there's a kind of love." For some reason when I read this I knew exactly what she was talking about. Giving up struggle is relieving in some ways. Even if it means the end is near, that struggle is no longer there to bother you. I've dealt with this a lot in my short life so far. It's difficult to describe. It's like an idea that you feel really strongly about or something you are constantly fighting yourself about that finally comes to you just letting it go. Realizing that you have no control. Then you are satisfied, even if the end result is not getting what you want. It's strange to feel satisfaction in failure, but I think that's exactly what the person in the story is trying to get at. It's not love, it's a wave of relief because you don't have to defend yourself in some way. It's acceptance in your situation. She talks about how she didn't really know how long she was gone, she just lived. Night and day didn't exist to her, it could have been 80 days for all she knew. That is the most raw form of living life to the fullest. She did even thought it wasn't for good. Her life existed as a mono day and night. Survival was a blessing, the next minute she was alive was a relief. I can't imagine any of those feelings. I feel like we as humans live our lives for the next day. We think about what we need to do for the next day instead of the day we are presently in. It's so frustrating to just want the days to pass instead of being able to enjoy every moment and be grateful that the next one came.
This week was really intense for me as a writer. My stories are starting to come alive the more we read and do fiction exercises. I really can't get enough of them because I truly want to create something great. I know it takes time, but I want the effort to show.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Blog Post 6: 2/19/15
This week in class we focused a lot on fiction writing, and what makes a good short story. We read another packet of short stories and a couple passages from writers about short stories. So far I really like everything we have read. I particularly liked the Lamont piece that began with Polaroids. The short fiction stories that we read were from around the world, which was really interesting. I really like the concept of looking at story telling in a global way. Every culture has a different view on what makes a good story, yet they all hold the same basic elements. I will talk about my favorite short story, and the Lamont piece today.
My favorite story by far in the second fiction packet was called 'The Falling Girl' by Dino Buzzati. This story is from Italy, and is about a girl named Marta who falls from a large building in the city. In class, we were asked to write about one story from this packet about how character is emphasized or expressed using show, not tell. The details of the story are what develops Marta's character. The author doesn't tell us about her life or why she jumps off the building, it us up to us as readers to infer from little things that the author would like us to know about Marta. There are lots of hints from the author about her wardrobe that suggests she is poor, as well as self conscious about her appearance. She talks about looking at other girls with better dresses and the price of hers being on sale. Her comparison of others really shows this to me. Self consciousness also suggest a history of depression and anxiety. The shivering and heart throbbing that is described also illustrates this. Also the fact that she jumps from a building is a pretty good indication that she suffers from some form of mental illness. Her being so young, but also at the age when you start to gain your own independence could also suggest that she is going through a rough time coming of age, like so many adolescents go through. Maybe I saw this story as an outward display of anxiety and depression because I also suffer from both, and my experiences shine through allowing me to see it in others. Or maybe this is truly what it is about. I like how the story is really up to your own interpretation, because maybe she really isn't falling to her death literally, maybe it's all in her head, as anxiety often is. I looked at this story from both points of view, and it worked either way.
The Lamont piece captured my attention really well. It began with a chapter called Polaroids. I really liked this because it talked about how a final piece of writing does not happen the first time you write something. It develops like a Polaroid. There are things you notice and realize need to be added as you go. I like this way of looking at a piece of writing. I think it really illustrates this point. Practice makes perfect. and adding detail takes practice and careful examination. The section on character was also especially interesting and made a lot of sense to me. It talks about how character development is something you show, not tell to be effective about it. You drop in hints about their life in subtle ways that show specific characteristics that tell more about a person than one detail you could tell. This also gives the reader a little more flexibility to take the story where they want. To me, it allows the reader's own experiences to shape their idea of the character, it humanizes them. This is important if you want to write a good story. You don't want to hear "he was tall, arrogant, and knew how to tie a good knot". These details only give us specific details that we don't need to use our imagination to decide how he is as a person. The author of this passage also talks about how you can use your own experiences and ideas about what you like in a person to develop a character. You can also use yourself and the qualities that you possess. This is really effective because you are using real evidence and the person in the story will really appear real and believable. This passage really gave me some good ideas about how to really effectively create characters for my stories. I am going to start by listing off traits, and then from those traits, showing them without saying them. I think this will really help me come up with some good story ideas.
This week really got me motivated to start writing some short stories. I feel like I have the right tools at my disposal to create something beautiful and full of real life. I want my stories to feel like you just experienced what the character did. I want you to taste the ice cream they just ate, or feel tired from the lack of sleep they experienced. After reading about how to do this effectively, I'm pretty sure something good will come out of it all.
My favorite story by far in the second fiction packet was called 'The Falling Girl' by Dino Buzzati. This story is from Italy, and is about a girl named Marta who falls from a large building in the city. In class, we were asked to write about one story from this packet about how character is emphasized or expressed using show, not tell. The details of the story are what develops Marta's character. The author doesn't tell us about her life or why she jumps off the building, it us up to us as readers to infer from little things that the author would like us to know about Marta. There are lots of hints from the author about her wardrobe that suggests she is poor, as well as self conscious about her appearance. She talks about looking at other girls with better dresses and the price of hers being on sale. Her comparison of others really shows this to me. Self consciousness also suggest a history of depression and anxiety. The shivering and heart throbbing that is described also illustrates this. Also the fact that she jumps from a building is a pretty good indication that she suffers from some form of mental illness. Her being so young, but also at the age when you start to gain your own independence could also suggest that she is going through a rough time coming of age, like so many adolescents go through. Maybe I saw this story as an outward display of anxiety and depression because I also suffer from both, and my experiences shine through allowing me to see it in others. Or maybe this is truly what it is about. I like how the story is really up to your own interpretation, because maybe she really isn't falling to her death literally, maybe it's all in her head, as anxiety often is. I looked at this story from both points of view, and it worked either way.
The Lamont piece captured my attention really well. It began with a chapter called Polaroids. I really liked this because it talked about how a final piece of writing does not happen the first time you write something. It develops like a Polaroid. There are things you notice and realize need to be added as you go. I like this way of looking at a piece of writing. I think it really illustrates this point. Practice makes perfect. and adding detail takes practice and careful examination. The section on character was also especially interesting and made a lot of sense to me. It talks about how character development is something you show, not tell to be effective about it. You drop in hints about their life in subtle ways that show specific characteristics that tell more about a person than one detail you could tell. This also gives the reader a little more flexibility to take the story where they want. To me, it allows the reader's own experiences to shape their idea of the character, it humanizes them. This is important if you want to write a good story. You don't want to hear "he was tall, arrogant, and knew how to tie a good knot". These details only give us specific details that we don't need to use our imagination to decide how he is as a person. The author of this passage also talks about how you can use your own experiences and ideas about what you like in a person to develop a character. You can also use yourself and the qualities that you possess. This is really effective because you are using real evidence and the person in the story will really appear real and believable. This passage really gave me some good ideas about how to really effectively create characters for my stories. I am going to start by listing off traits, and then from those traits, showing them without saying them. I think this will really help me come up with some good story ideas.
This week really got me motivated to start writing some short stories. I feel like I have the right tools at my disposal to create something beautiful and full of real life. I want my stories to feel like you just experienced what the character did. I want you to taste the ice cream they just ate, or feel tired from the lack of sleep they experienced. After reading about how to do this effectively, I'm pretty sure something good will come out of it all.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
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