okay, I kind of tried the "forgetting myself" exercise; and I think it's a good exercise. maybe my inspirational juices are just REALLY dry right now.
what I came up with for myself (I'm not sure how) is an imaginative take on clips that I've probably seen on Meerkat Manor advertisements. you know how meerkats do that standing-on-their-tiptoes kind of move when they're curious about something? well, it starts with that, with them being run off scared by a bigger, more ferocious animal, but then coming back and taking stance like nothing happened. if that makes sense. kind of like how my chihuahua Pippin tries to hold her own against these beagles that my parents have, but really, she doesn't really do anything other than bark and dart around when they try to catch her, and then she struts around afterwards in an "I knew you couldn't take me on" fashion.
is it bad that I liken myself unto my chihuahua? my wannabe gangsta, white chihuahua? don't judge!
I don't think this is going very well.
I don't know where to go from there, so to abruptly change the subject to a more relevant topic, the last time I made serious attempts at writing I was in elementary school, actually being fairly certain I would be a professional writer when I got older. my talents grew from making a Thanksgiving turkey picture book in kindergarten to writing the melodramas of a seven-year old girl who thought of killing this girl she didn't like in school because she stole her favorite necklace (true story five years into the future, except this heinous girl I speak of also stole my favorite Jewel CD and was just a horrible person in general anyway). with the exception of a few anime fanfiction projects I did in middle school that never got further than the first five pages, that's about what my resume consists of.
I really don't write much of anything at all now, but was inspired to pick this hobby/childhood dream back up after reading Sundays at Tiffany's, a particularly gag-inducing romance novel that James Patterson put his name on to fool people into thinking it might be kind of decent. I got so irritated reading it that as some sort of abstract revenge against the genre I vowed I would write an equally horrible romance novel to make fun of the awful clichés and writing that I've always come across when reading romance. I guess there could be some better reason to write a book, but I take what I can.
I've actually started writing this horrible novel (or at least the first page of it), and I've already realized that I can't make myself go through with writing it as planned. Reading through the garbage I'd been writing and recognizing the fact that I'd be re-reading it a million times over in the process of making it longer kind of scared me away from it. but going off of what I'd already written, I managed to salvage what I'd like to think as a likeable, entertaining Tina Fey-esque main character I can play around with in some potentially interesting situations, so I guess I'll be writing a shitty romance novel after all; just not the one I originally intended to make. :)
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Danger in Africa
The title of this post is an admission of sorts that I want to get out of the way immediately. It was the title of my first novel, which is now very appropriately buried in a blue bin somewhere in my basement, never to be unearthed again. I wrote it in junior high and high school, while begging my writing comrades to read every miserable word of it. I'm telling you this because you are about to become my new writing comrades, and I want warn you of what that entails. I also thought I'd bring it up so we never have to talk of it again. It will now on be referred to in Voldemortesque terms as "The novel that must not be named." It's a part of my past. I think writing it helped me understand the discipline and determination required to finish a novel. But I am very happy to have it behind me.
Although I have written every format and every genre out there, my true passion is fiction. I went through a phase of pure insanity during my last year of high school and first few months of college where I thought I wanted to be a journalist. I wrote a lot essays in college while I studied literature. I even write bad poetry when I get too frustrated with fiction. But when I'm in a good mood and reasonably mentally balanced, I write fiction.
Right now I am working on a novel called Chalk. Chalk is an urban fantasy story about a telepathic girl and her punk-rocker, ass-kicking best friend who take on a bunch of polygamist tyrants in an effort to save God and country. It's a young adult novel for ages 15 and up, and I've been working on it in some form or another for four years. It's not perfect, and it's not the next great American novel, but it is something. My goal is to finish it by the end of the year.
As for my writing story. Well, you can read about it in the anthology My Writing Life which is slated for publication sometime this fall, if you like. The short version is this: I was a very awkward looking teenager (as a few of you know) with no social skills, and I wrote to cope until I grew up and spent a few months estranged from my parents due to my inconvenient Atheism, then managed to write again after meeting my husband, who I very unwisely put on an impossible pedestal until he cheated on me with multiple women a few weeks ago (that last part was omitted from the published version, as it hadn't happened yet when I wrote it).
So, yeah. I'm not exactly feeling like self reflection is a healthy idea right now. But I like all of you and I like to write. So if you don't mind a somewhat deranged and scorned woman in your midst, I'd like to participate in the ever-life changing experience of turning a phrase with a group of interesting women.
There is quote by Isaac Asimov that I find might describe my situation a little more cohesively: "I write for the same reason I breathe-- because if I didn't I would die." There's nothing like a bit of artistic drama to set the mood. Let us click our heels, take a sip of coffee, and get started!
Although I have written every format and every genre out there, my true passion is fiction. I went through a phase of pure insanity during my last year of high school and first few months of college where I thought I wanted to be a journalist. I wrote a lot essays in college while I studied literature. I even write bad poetry when I get too frustrated with fiction. But when I'm in a good mood and reasonably mentally balanced, I write fiction.
Right now I am working on a novel called Chalk. Chalk is an urban fantasy story about a telepathic girl and her punk-rocker, ass-kicking best friend who take on a bunch of polygamist tyrants in an effort to save God and country. It's a young adult novel for ages 15 and up, and I've been working on it in some form or another for four years. It's not perfect, and it's not the next great American novel, but it is something. My goal is to finish it by the end of the year.
As for my writing story. Well, you can read about it in the anthology My Writing Life which is slated for publication sometime this fall, if you like. The short version is this: I was a very awkward looking teenager (as a few of you know) with no social skills, and I wrote to cope until I grew up and spent a few months estranged from my parents due to my inconvenient Atheism, then managed to write again after meeting my husband, who I very unwisely put on an impossible pedestal until he cheated on me with multiple women a few weeks ago (that last part was omitted from the published version, as it hadn't happened yet when I wrote it).
So, yeah. I'm not exactly feeling like self reflection is a healthy idea right now. But I like all of you and I like to write. So if you don't mind a somewhat deranged and scorned woman in your midst, I'd like to participate in the ever-life changing experience of turning a phrase with a group of interesting women.
There is quote by Isaac Asimov that I find might describe my situation a little more cohesively: "I write for the same reason I breathe-- because if I didn't I would die." There's nothing like a bit of artistic drama to set the mood. Let us click our heels, take a sip of coffee, and get started!
I am death's mourner
Cosette is dying. If death should so choose to spare her, with all of my watering efforts . . . then, I shall think twice before again applying a name, and a gender, to my houseplants.
When I was between the ages of 10 and 12 I bred gerbils. It began as a money-making endeavor with my two best friends. Pooling our own meager resources, we acquired a female gerbil named Scratchy, a male named Midnight, a cage (from Sierra's garage) with a pretty torn-up lid, a water bottle, food, and cedar-chip bedding. The scent of all this combined will forever bring back countless memories whenever I walk through pet stores.
Somehow, despite my owning a cat, I was designated as the keeper of the gerbils. It was supposed to be a money-making endeavor because we knew enough about the birds and the bees to assume that if we put a male and female in the same cage, eventually there would come babies, which the pet store would then be willing to purchase for about $3 each. Laura and Sierra had both lost interest before Scratchy became pregnant for the first time. I will never forget the feel of her growing belly in my tiny hands. Yes, I am now jaded enough to know that these precious baby gerbils were re-purchased for snake food. But also I was so shaped by this experience that this thought is not as traumatizing as you may imagine.
This eco-system in my bedroom taught me more about the "jungle out there" or the "dog-eat-dog world" than any textbook ever could. When gerbils died, the others ate them. When the smallest members of a litter could not fight the crowd for food or water . . . too bad. There was no such thing as incest either, and when male children grew to a certain size, they could no longer be kept in the same cage as their father, if there were other females as well. Each time I tried to force this eco-system to be slightly more fit to my human interpretation of how the world should be, I was thwarted miserably, coming eventually to learn that they were animals . . . and, that I was as well. Each of those gerbils had a name - and a personality. Every single one was different! I remember standing in front of their cages and marveling that they were so small, so different from me, and yet that I could learn so much about individualism, and nature, from them.
And now you're wondering about writing! Well, I am a poet. I am certainly not claiming to be a spectacular one! But if any of you have read a small children's book about Frederick the mouse, that explains my identification quite well. I can be death's mourner - for gerbils, or houseplants, or stolen bikes - so feelingly that words come out unrestrained onto paper and that, whether it turns out to be intelligible to anyone else or not, is how I define poetry. Luckily I'm not only a morbid poet. The incredible wonders and joys of this life and world tear poetry from my core as well. I believe I identify as "a poet" because I generally can't help what I write. I don't tend to draft. I tend to think, and when thoughts roll around enough in a certain way, I grab madly all around me for paper or word processor and, out the words come. I want feedback here because we are all writing such different genres, that it will be fascinating to see what everyone's interpretations will be. When I do edit, or "help" what I write, I only am that much more in love with what it was that spilled unrestrained onto my paper. That helping process, is what actually feels creative to me, and that is what I am looking forward to cultivating.
When I was between the ages of 10 and 12 I bred gerbils. It began as a money-making endeavor with my two best friends. Pooling our own meager resources, we acquired a female gerbil named Scratchy, a male named Midnight, a cage (from Sierra's garage) with a pretty torn-up lid, a water bottle, food, and cedar-chip bedding. The scent of all this combined will forever bring back countless memories whenever I walk through pet stores.
Somehow, despite my owning a cat, I was designated as the keeper of the gerbils. It was supposed to be a money-making endeavor because we knew enough about the birds and the bees to assume that if we put a male and female in the same cage, eventually there would come babies, which the pet store would then be willing to purchase for about $3 each. Laura and Sierra had both lost interest before Scratchy became pregnant for the first time. I will never forget the feel of her growing belly in my tiny hands. Yes, I am now jaded enough to know that these precious baby gerbils were re-purchased for snake food. But also I was so shaped by this experience that this thought is not as traumatizing as you may imagine.
This eco-system in my bedroom taught me more about the "jungle out there" or the "dog-eat-dog world" than any textbook ever could. When gerbils died, the others ate them. When the smallest members of a litter could not fight the crowd for food or water . . . too bad. There was no such thing as incest either, and when male children grew to a certain size, they could no longer be kept in the same cage as their father, if there were other females as well. Each time I tried to force this eco-system to be slightly more fit to my human interpretation of how the world should be, I was thwarted miserably, coming eventually to learn that they were animals . . . and, that I was as well. Each of those gerbils had a name - and a personality. Every single one was different! I remember standing in front of their cages and marveling that they were so small, so different from me, and yet that I could learn so much about individualism, and nature, from them.
And now you're wondering about writing! Well, I am a poet. I am certainly not claiming to be a spectacular one! But if any of you have read a small children's book about Frederick the mouse, that explains my identification quite well. I can be death's mourner - for gerbils, or houseplants, or stolen bikes - so feelingly that words come out unrestrained onto paper and that, whether it turns out to be intelligible to anyone else or not, is how I define poetry. Luckily I'm not only a morbid poet. The incredible wonders and joys of this life and world tear poetry from my core as well. I believe I identify as "a poet" because I generally can't help what I write. I don't tend to draft. I tend to think, and when thoughts roll around enough in a certain way, I grab madly all around me for paper or word processor and, out the words come. I want feedback here because we are all writing such different genres, that it will be fascinating to see what everyone's interpretations will be. When I do edit, or "help" what I write, I only am that much more in love with what it was that spilled unrestrained onto my paper. That helping process, is what actually feels creative to me, and that is what I am looking forward to cultivating.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Introductions
I thought perhaps our first post next Sunday could be our "Introductions" as Lindsay mentioned, and, these can come in any format people are interested in, really. But, as I was looking for a first Writing Exercise to post, I came across this one: Take it or leave it! As mentioned before, anyone interested in the Writing Exercises can do them, or even try them and not end up posting that attempt but post something else, or just decide entirely to do their own thing ... that's the joy of writing!
One Plus One Equals a Mercedes-Benz
I always tell my students, especially the sixth-graers, the ones who are becoming very worldly-wise: Turn off your logical brain that says 1 + 1 = 2. Open up your mind to the possibility that 1 + 1 can equal 48, a Mercedes-Benz, an apple pie, a blue horse. Don't tell your autobiography with facts, such as "I am in sixth grade. I am a boy. I live in Owatonna. I have a mother and father." Tell me who you really are: "I am the frost on the window, the cry of a young wolf, the thin blade of grass."
Forget yourself. Disappear into everything you look at - a street, a glass of water, a cornfield. Everything you feel, become totally that feeling, burn all of yourself with it. Don't worry - your ego will quickly become nervous and stop such ecstasy. But if you can catch that feeling or smell or sight the moment you are one with it, you probably will have a great poem.
Then we fall back on the earth again. Only the writing stays with the great vision. That's why we have to go back again and again to books - good books, that is. And read again and again the visions of who we are, how we can be. The struggle we go through as human beings, so we can again and again have compassion for ourselves and treat each other kindly.
-Natalie Goldberg
This exercise came from a book called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It's one of the shorter ones! But if I do more from her, I'll take out fun pieces from them, just to get us thinking. When I was around 10 years old, my father bought me this book and we began, once a week, to read one "exercise" and then put our pen/pencil to the paper for 10 - 15 minutes, timed writing. Don't pick up the pen from the page. If this piece ends up being some sort of "introduction," great! You can tone it/edit it later, and post it next week. If it just gets you revved up to write something else - anything else! Then, that's great too. We're just here to write!
One Plus One Equals a Mercedes-Benz
I always tell my students, especially the sixth-graers, the ones who are becoming very worldly-wise: Turn off your logical brain that says 1 + 1 = 2. Open up your mind to the possibility that 1 + 1 can equal 48, a Mercedes-Benz, an apple pie, a blue horse. Don't tell your autobiography with facts, such as "I am in sixth grade. I am a boy. I live in Owatonna. I have a mother and father." Tell me who you really are: "I am the frost on the window, the cry of a young wolf, the thin blade of grass."
Forget yourself. Disappear into everything you look at - a street, a glass of water, a cornfield. Everything you feel, become totally that feeling, burn all of yourself with it. Don't worry - your ego will quickly become nervous and stop such ecstasy. But if you can catch that feeling or smell or sight the moment you are one with it, you probably will have a great poem.
Then we fall back on the earth again. Only the writing stays with the great vision. That's why we have to go back again and again to books - good books, that is. And read again and again the visions of who we are, how we can be. The struggle we go through as human beings, so we can again and again have compassion for ourselves and treat each other kindly.
-Natalie Goldberg
This exercise came from a book called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It's one of the shorter ones! But if I do more from her, I'll take out fun pieces from them, just to get us thinking. When I was around 10 years old, my father bought me this book and we began, once a week, to read one "exercise" and then put our pen/pencil to the paper for 10 - 15 minutes, timed writing. Don't pick up the pen from the page. If this piece ends up being some sort of "introduction," great! You can tone it/edit it later, and post it next week. If it just gets you revved up to write something else - anything else! Then, that's great too. We're just here to write!
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Schedule
So, it has been decided that this blog will be the place for weekly posts of various natures.
For those interested, a weekly writing exercises will be posted by Elaine, but can also be posted by other parties who are so inclined. Just contact Elaine. Responding to these exercises can be a form of post, or you can simply post a section or whole of your latest project instead.
I propose Sunday as the day for posts, as well as the day for putting up the following week's writing exercise. Elaine will post the first exercise tomorrow, and everyone's first posts will be on August 31st.
It also seems that the monthly meeting is a popular idea. Because it might be complicated to do it a night when the library is open, and Sunday nights don't work for various reasons, I'm proposing that this shindig happen the first or last Saturday of every month. Friday evening is also an option. What works for everyone?
Just as a fun introduction, it would be cool to have everyone post a blog about their writing experience and current projects so we can all get to know each other and get jazzed about the upcoming quality writing.
For those interested, a weekly writing exercises will be posted by Elaine, but can also be posted by other parties who are so inclined. Just contact Elaine. Responding to these exercises can be a form of post, or you can simply post a section or whole of your latest project instead.
I propose Sunday as the day for posts, as well as the day for putting up the following week's writing exercise. Elaine will post the first exercise tomorrow, and everyone's first posts will be on August 31st.
It also seems that the monthly meeting is a popular idea. Because it might be complicated to do it a night when the library is open, and Sunday nights don't work for various reasons, I'm proposing that this shindig happen the first or last Saturday of every month. Friday evening is also an option. What works for everyone?
Just as a fun introduction, it would be cool to have everyone post a blog about their writing experience and current projects so we can all get to know each other and get jazzed about the upcoming quality writing.
In Which a Silly Idea is Exploited for Intellectual Value
So, I'm proposing that we actually do this thing. The question is: what is this thing?
We could use this blog in a few different ways. We could use it to take turns posting a writing exercise a week, which all writers could try with varying levels of success and post their results. Or we could post a project a week for feedback. For instance, Elaine could post a poem or a witty observation about France, Stephanie and I could post a chapter or a page of our novels, and Bailey could post a list of ideas for her next fantasy adventure. Or whatever.
Or we could only use this blog to commiserate with each other when our characters rebel and end up killing random people with box cutters, or fall in love with someone they're supposed to despise. Or we could use it to boast about publishing contracts and the like.
I also like the idea of having an actual concrete meeting once a month. We could go to Alchemy or Beans and Brew where Stephanie and I can get coffee, Elaine can get Chai, and Bailey can get a frozen chocolate drink of some kind. Maybe there will even be cupcakes involved.
I don't know. Do any of these ideas sound appealing? What do other people want? I'm game for anything.
We could use this blog in a few different ways. We could use it to take turns posting a writing exercise a week, which all writers could try with varying levels of success and post their results. Or we could post a project a week for feedback. For instance, Elaine could post a poem or a witty observation about France, Stephanie and I could post a chapter or a page of our novels, and Bailey could post a list of ideas for her next fantasy adventure. Or whatever.
Or we could only use this blog to commiserate with each other when our characters rebel and end up killing random people with box cutters, or fall in love with someone they're supposed to despise. Or we could use it to boast about publishing contracts and the like.
I also like the idea of having an actual concrete meeting once a month. We could go to Alchemy or Beans and Brew where Stephanie and I can get coffee, Elaine can get Chai, and Bailey can get a frozen chocolate drink of some kind. Maybe there will even be cupcakes involved.
I don't know. Do any of these ideas sound appealing? What do other people want? I'm game for anything.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Do You Jest?
Well, yes. This is a jest. But it's a half-way serious jest that may involve a bit of real writing.
Any ideas?
Any ideas?
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