Ramblings That May or May Not be Consequential

The trouble with home...

2011-10-25T16:59:00.000-04:00

Is that it's too easy to settle into the same old routines and to never look forward. Home is backward-looking, reminiscing about the past and reliving experiences day after day. As a writer, I feel like this is not a good thing, which is why I hope to move on as soon as possible.

It also doesn't help just being me. I'm a creature of habit, and once I settle into a habit, time goes by without me noticing. It's been a few months since I was laid off from my job as a news reporter/photographer at my local paper, but it feels like barely any time has gone by at all. And what have I done with that time? Nothing. Well, not much. I wrote a little, but mostly wandered around the house in a daze punctuated occasionally by Giada de Laurentiis saying "mozzarella" sexily from my TV and my mom asking what I want for dinner.

Don't get me wrong. Getting laid off from that job was probably one of the best things to happen recently. Again, it comes back to the habit thing. I was miserable there, but it was a good-paying, steady job. I kept telling myself I had to get out, to get on with life, but knowing me, if I hadn't gotten a kick in the butt I probably would have stayed there far longer, complaining and being miserable, but doing nothing about it.

Working there did help my technical writing skills -- for example, I've learned to tighten up my prose quite a bit and not dilly dally with flowery words or overly long-winded introductions -- but it lacked the creativity I thrive on. Sure, I could be witty or clever with my choice of headlines and introductory sentences, but other than that the writing was very standard, very by-the-book. Also, working on a computer that, in the tech world, might as well require carbon dating to assess the age of, and working in an old, drafty, dusty, smelly, leaky building wasn't much fun either.

But it just wasn't me. It was kind of fun getting to tell other people's stories, their real stories, but the limitations on creativity and imagination were too stifling for me. Now, after several months of just kind of wandering about, loafing around and generally being useless, I'm starting to get back on track, I think.

I'm in the process of sending out more applications for MFA Creative Writing programs for next fall. I feel more confident this time around, because I'm applying much more widely, and am really taking a good look at the programs themselves to make sure they're right fits for me. Also, I'm applying much earlier than I had before. Although most programs say they'll consider everyone equally as long as they apply on time, I don't buy it. I have a feeling some of them have a slight bias to applications that come in early. So, hopefully I'll have a better shot this time; not to mention that I'm using fresh (as in new) writing samples.

I'm also signing up to do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starting in a week. I'm hoping this experience will help me with a couple things: one, to get over my perfectionism and just finish a damn thing instead of revisiting the same chapters over and over; and two, to get my brain juices flowing toward new stuff again. For the longest time, I was just tweaking and rewriting old stuff, but now I am actually going to follow through with one of my other ideas that has never seen the light of day.

I'm pretty excited about this idea. It's basically a family drama set in Victorian era London. It will have elements of romance and mystery, sort of like a weird mixture of Charlotte Bronte and Arthur Conan Doyle. At least, that's how it seems in my mind. I won't go into plot details here. With this one I'm not concerned so much about being totally new or original. I just want to spin a well-written, thought-provoking, page-turning tale. I'm not interested in whether people can pick apart the deep themes or layers of meaning; I just want people to be able to read it, enjoy it, and have their thoughts provoked by it.

I think, above all, with this project I'm trying to go back to a time before my Literary Theory, Advanced Composition and Literature classes to a time when, as a writer, I just wanted to be a storyteller and spin an interesting yarn. So, we'll see if any of this works. But for now, at least, I'm back in the game.

Newspaper-writing sucks

2010-07-15T13:05:00.000-04:00

So I'm working a full-time paid internship with my hometown newspaper. I'm filling in for a young lady on maternity leave/vacation for the summer, and doing all the things she would normally do (which is a lot.) She had been in charge of the "Hometown" page, which is where things like weddings, engagements, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, local concerts/events, etc. are posted. People come into the office and drop off photos/info for me, or they call and ask if I can come do a story on some little event. Whenever I get the chance, I write up these little reports/stories for these people and fiddle around with the photos and lay everything out on the page (we use Quark to do this).

But I'm also a reporter/photographer for the front page/page 2. Since I'm new at this, I've only been writing local human-interest stories for the front (memorial gardens, etc.), nothing really big, and only once in a while. But now that I'm not so new anymore, my superiors are having me cover more things and more often.

Working at a newspaper--even a small-town one like mine--is just as hectic as you'd think it is. Every morning we rush around trying to get that day's paper written and assembled before the 12/12:30 deadline. In addition to the actual news stories that we write in the mornings, we also have to take care of less interesting reports/releases, like obituaries and such. And depending on how fast or slow the town's culture is moving, I may be over- or underwhelmed with material for my page, so I'm scurrying to get that done as well as whatever else I'm supposed to do. And there are always little things that go wrong--the coffee burns, I drop the coffee spoon on the floor, hit my head picking it up--or I get some little piece of information wrong in a report and have to re-do the whole thing 5 minutes before deadline. It can be pretty stressful.

After deadline/lunch, I spend the afternoon writing up stuff for the next day's hometown page, or scrounging for stuff if I have nothing, or going out and about interviewing people/taking photos for stories. It's a very social job, and it makes me extremely uncomfortable at times, but I know it's good for me because I'm expanding my horizons.

All in all, I like this job. I have good camaraderie with my coworkers, and it's fast-paced and just varied enough to not be boring. But one thing I cannot abide is the actual writing itself.

Now I don't know how it is at large/famous newspapers, but at least here there is a set way for writing everything--a specific formula for the most miniscule police reports to the largest news stories. And if I or anyone else dares to write or arrange anything differently than it has always been done, everyone freaks out and makes the writer change it. There's no room for creativity or innovation whatsoever, not even in feature-style human-interest stories. It's quite frustrating.

And with the long hours and hard work I put into this job, I come home utterly exhausted of all energy and at best might read a book--but I really haven't had much energy or motivation for my own creative writing, not even for revising old stuff. This is bad!

And what's even worse is the paper has offered me a full-time position: better pay with benefits. If I were like any sane, sensible recent college grad, I would snatch up this opportunity for solid employment, considering how bad the economy/job market is. BUT, I really don't want to stay here any longer than absolutely necessary, I really don't want to do this type of work long-term, and besides, I don't know if I could handle it. Way too much stress! And if I continue working like this, my drive/motivation for creative writing will continue to wane until I'm afraid I might never get the inspiration ever again.

While it's true that this job has given me new perspectives on a lot of things, as well as a plethora of story/character ideas, the truth remains that it drains me to the point of almost hating the physical act of writing--of typing words into a document or even writing a letter (which is partly why I haven't updated this in so long).

Whatever happens, I need to find some strategy, some way of getting back my creative spark, or at least gaining back some of my lost energy so I can get back on the creative writing bandwagon. If there is a way, I haven't seen it yet. All I can do is hope!

What Next?

2010-05-16T15:33:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm now a college graduate. I graduated from Geneva this past Monday at 10 am. I really feel like I accomplished a lot during my time there, socially, emotionally, spiritually and academically. Those were my favorite 4 years of my life thus far. It's exciting to be done, but extremely sad that I'll never be an active part of that community anymore. There will always be alumni stuff to do, and I can always go visit my friends who are still there (which I plan to do a lot this fall), but still, a major part of my identity has been lost, or at best altered irrevocably.

I definitely grew a lot as a writer there. From actually learning the nitty gritty details of English grammar and syntax and how to manipulate those things for rhetorical/emotional effects to learning just what characters ARE and what they do and how they do it, I really feel like I've become a "writer" there. Not just a person who likes to dabble in writing, or a person who likes to discuss it, not even just a person who likes to practice the craft--I feel like I gained the title of Writer as my main identity. It's like I gained a lifestyle, not just a set of skills and competencies. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the amazing professors I had there, and my wonderful fellow writers who went through the same journey with me.

Since I won't be going to grad school till at least next year, I have some choices to make about what to do in the meantime. For the summer, I landed a nice internship at my local newspaper as a reporter/photographer ($8-9 an hour [not sure yet], 40 hours a week plus possible overtime) and living at home. After the summer I plan on getting a place with a friend back in Beaver Falls, but I don't have any good jobs lined up yet; therefore much of my summer will be spent trying to find jobs down there, preferably doing editorial/reporting work for a paper, or copyediting or something. If it comes right down to it, I'm willing to get a mundane job in something not in my field for a while.

I'll use my off-time this summer to continue writing (finish the 1st draft of a novel I started as an independent study, work on short stories and poems, and maybe start a scholarly paper I've had in mind) and to visit friends and do vacation-y things. (Like a possible trip to NYC to see Wicked on Broadway, and going to Texas for a week or so to visit my beautiful sisters, and a weekend camping trip with old friends.)

I'm still sad over my identity change. It feels like someone took the fabric of my identity and tore it up into pieces, and now I have to pick them up and try to make something new with them. I really learned to open up at Geneva; I learned to let people love me--that I am, in fact, worth loving--and I learned to love them in return, and I learned that I really do love people, and that my friends are probably the most amazing people I may ever know. I'll be writing a lot of letters to them and my favorite professors, whom I've also befriended on a personal level. Like I told my Geneva friends in a lengthy note, I don't really believe in "goodbye." Maybe "so long," "see ya later," but not "goodbye." I think "goodbye" is just an accidental byproduct of relational neglect.

Before I go off on a long rant about relationships and identity unrelated to writing (though those things ARE, in an indirect sense, related), I'll just finish by saying that I'm sad it's over, but I'm also excited about what the future might hold. As a writer, I think every experience, negative or positive, builds character and gives infinite more material for my writing. So my goal is to be open to all experiences but still be connected to everyone and everything I'm "leaving behind." Life should be like a rolling snowball: it just gets larger and larger, and everything that came before is just as much there as the new accumulation. A tree, as it grows, doesn't become hollow, or lose any of its rings--what came before is the foundation for what is to come.

Moving On

2010-04-03T23:41:00.001-04:00

I recently emailed the English Department chair at UAF to ask again about my status, since they've been delaying like mad in getting back to me. He gave me the news that I will most likely not be accepted, since the majority of the MFA admissions committee agreed against recommending me for acceptance. The final decision lies with the dean, but since most of the committee turned me down, my chances are pretty much shot. However, he was kind enough to mention that this year's pool of applicants was particularly competitive, and that they had to turn down a lot of qualified candidates (however he failed to mention whether they deemed me one of those 'qualified' candidates--not that it really matters).

This news hurts a lot, seeing as how a lot of my time lately has been spent daydreaming about Alaska and stuff like that. But I always knew, in my head, that the odds against me were tremendous. I knew the chances of me getting in were slim to none. But my head has no control over my heart, and my heart decided to hope. The feeling when I got the news was kind of like how in some movies when, confronted face to face with the bad guy wielding a knife, a good guy knows in his head that he's going to die but he probably hopes his would-be killer would change his mind. This didn't sneak up on me and slit my throat from behind: it's been standing in front of me the whole time, holding the knife, telling me that it may or may not kill me. And now the knife has been thrust, and it struck home.

Yes, I'm incredibly upset. But I'm no starry-eyed fool. Since my head knew so well what would most likely happen, it gave thought to some contingency plans. Fortunately, I'll be able to return to my old summer job at Chautauqua, so I have something of a buffer before needing to get a more secure job. I don't know what will happen after the summer is over. I imagine myself in my own apartment somewhere in western PA (hopefully Pittsburgh), working as a copyeditor or somesuch for a newspaper or magazine. But, we all know how my imaginings tend to turn out, so it's best to ignore that vision. All I can hope for is that I'll have some sort of substantial income to allow me to pay my debts and also live, simultaneously (a tough feat for the modern college graduate, I know).

The thing is, I really wanted to go to Alaska. I've always wanted to go to Alaska. As a nature-loving, sensitive, spiritual, adventurous, outgoing person, Alaska has always had a strange hold over my thoughts. Part of it is just because it's so alien from what I'm used to. I love expanding my horizons, and "different" places have always drawn me in. I think every type of location has some sort of intrinsic beauty: cities and wilderness, deserts and glaciers, etc. Part of that stems from my spiritual beliefs, that God created all of it and so all of it reflects his divine nature somehow, the ultimate reality of which lies beyond our feeble brains, but is still edifying to ponder. The faces of a crowd inching down the streets of New York; a Navajo hunter stopping to watch the sun rise over the desert; wind bending pine branches in a summer storm; all of these things and more hold spiritual and aesthetic significance to me, and I want to experience as wide an array of experiences as possible before I die. I was hoping to add to that list watching ice fog settle over the spruces, experiencing first-hand the Iditarod race and Fairbanks ice festival, writing stories in my apartment or cabin and discussing them with other like-minded artists at UAF.

But don't get me wrong, I never thought this would be easy, or even fun all the time. I knew going to Alaska would be a challenge, possibly the most challenging thing I'd ever done. Moving around 3500 miles away from everyone and everything I've ever known, getting accustomed to the strange and extreme weather patterns, and establishing friends and connections on my own? That all sounds really hard! But that's exactly why I wanted to go. I want a challenge. I don't want the easy and familiar. If I did, I could've applied to safe, traditional places like Penn State or something. But that's not what I want for my life.

Yes I'm upset, but I'm not giving up. I have chosen to go to grad school for an MFA so I can become a better writer and also be able to teach writing at the college level, which is something I really am passionate about. I know I could go somewhere else to get this MFA, and I know wherever I'd go I'd have fun and grow as a person. But Alaska is the place I choose to be, and so I will reapply next year and hope they accept me. I know that it's not because I'm unqualified or something; it's just really competitive, and, I believe, it really comes down to luck. Perhaps I'll retake the GRE and try for higher scores. I'll definitely work on writing samples and my resume. And in the meantime, I'll attempt to obtain employment where I can use my writing skills and continue developing as a writer. And I will continue writing creatively and attempting to get published. I won't let my life stop because of one let down.

Also, as a Christian, I have to sit down and reflect on why God might not be allowing me to go to Fairbanks yet. Perhaps I'm not ready, emotionally or socially, for that kind of move. Perhaps if I did go this year, I'd break down, or get really sick and not know what to do or who to talk to or where to go. Maybe I'd end up getting really bad grades and losing my TAship or something and then be in a whole mess of financial trouble. Or maybe He has something for me after college that will end up being even more beneficial and edifying than grad school. Maybe I could pursue my ideas of the Peace Corps, or at least gain more life experience simply by living more on my own and doing all the things graduated people do. I don't know, I can only hope, and trust.

Also, I need to look at the positives. If I stay in the area for a while, I can still visit my friends who are still in school, and I can reconnect with old friends who still live at home but whom I parted ways with when I left for college. I could get more involved in local arts and culture by joining the community writer's guild, and I could be more involved in my church. Some friends from home are talking about trying to open an art studio, for painters, musicians and writers to get their supplies from and such. Maybe I could help with that. There's always something to do, something new to experience, no matter where I am, and I can take those things into myself and become more fully myself and continuously gain writing material from the real world. I've just got to stay positive.

I'm not giving up on myself or my dreams. I will keep living and not dwell on things. I will try to get into UAF again next year. I will keep writing. I will keep exercising and taking care of myself. I've inherited most of the traits from my mom's side of the family, which is a generally brooding family full of troubled artists struggling with depression, apathy and addiction. When things don't go the way I want, or when bad things happen to me, my first instinct is to stop my personal timeline and basically wallow in fruitless misery like some kind of disgusting old pig whose legs are so weak that it can't even crawl out of the filth it's drowning in. Well, I'm going to fight that and continue with life. Keep writing, keep living, loving, breathing, and everything will be okay. Moving on!

Welcome Back, Myself

2010-03-21T18:59:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I posted on here. I've been extremely busy with school and life in general--so much so that I looked at my calendar today and realized I'd been so busy that I stopped marking off the days. According to my calendar, it isn't even February 6th yet.

I've written lots of essays and research papers for school on many different topics, none of which were creative. These projects all seemed to collide at the same time, and I struggled to get everything done by the due dates (even though I know some of my profs would be a little lax with the due dates, I decided to force myself to get things done on time, like a good student). Also, I've been really (happily) busy with some clubs and such that I'm a part of. Consequently, I've been run-down and exhausted. Even if I did have the time to write creatively (I know I could have--maybe given up an hour of sleep to write, or bringing lunch back to the room to write and eat instead of eat in the dining hall with friends), but the thought hadn't much crossed my mind. At the end of the day I was so shot that all I could do was collapse in bed.

As a result, I've fallen a bit behind on my independent study novel. I plan to write really hard this week (since there's a lull in projects) and get caught up. Still, sometimes I have to question my drive/motivation. I know I COULD have had time, in retrospect, to write creatively. The question is, would it have been worthwhile, or would it have just been sloppy second crap, all my mental juices previously squeezed out in school projects? Also, would it have been healthy? I'm a bit under the weather--sinus infection, cold--due in part to the changing seasons and in part to stress. If I'd've made myself write creatively, would I have made myself even more sick? I think I probably would have, because at that point I'd be writing from a sense of obligation, and it would really just be another stressor on top of everything else. So, even though I regret falling behind, I think it's better for my health that I took an unintentional break from it.

It also doesn't help that the end of my time in college is in sight, and I still haven't heard back from UAF. I sent an email over Spring Break asking if there was something else I needed to do or something, and I got a response back that I've done everything I needed to do, and that I should expect to hear something by the end of March. (Even though I was originally told to expect a response in the BEGINNING of March.) I'd really rather not hear a rejection notice in May when I'm graduating. So, I'm trying to work out some fallback options. For the summer I'll be returning to work at Chatauqua Institution in some capacity, so that's at least a little buffer. I'll either go back to my old job in the Ticketing department there, or I might get accepted onto the Daily staff (the newspaper there), which I really hope will be the case (sent my app. a few weeks ago). Regardless of which job I work, I'm really looking forward to summer at Chautauqua again. Among many other awesome speakers and events, I'll get to see Salman Rushdie, Roger Rosenblatt and Ken Burns, so either way it'll be a good summer.

With time moving on and still no word from Alaska, I'm really trying to explore all my options. I've been dead set on this course of action, but if I don't get accepted I'll have to do something else, and I refuse to live with my parents longer than necessary. I love my family to pieces, but I need to get out on my own. I've actually grown strangely comfortable with the idea of not going to grad school, at least right away...if I don't, I could try for the Peace Corps (which I really want to do someday), or any number of other things. But I really do want to teach, so eventually I'll need at least an MFA (I want to get the PhD afterward, possibly in rhet/comp or lit). Anyway, it's an exciting and scary time right now.

Hopefully I can get back on the creative writing bandwagon this week. I guess we'll see what happens. Gotta keep my mind in the present!

Steps in the Right Direction

2010-02-04T00:23:00.000-05:00

So, a few days ago I got yet another rejection notice from a lit mag. However, this time it was different than usual. Instead of the form rejection "thanks, but no thanks" thing, I got a personalized rejection. The editors told me that although they "don't have a place" for my piece in this issue, they fould "much to like" in my work, and encourage me to submit again in the future. Upon telling this news to some family and friends, I got responses like "Aw shucks, not again," and "maybe next time." But then I had to tell them no, no, no, this is a good thing, a very good thing! In fact, when I read the letter I proceeded to laugh and hop around my room like a caffeinated rabbit, I was so excited. Yeah it's not an acceptance, but it's a "we like it, send more in the future" which is like a pre-acceptance, or something. One more step on the road to publication, and after dozens of outright rejections--followed by second-guessing my abilities and whether I'm even in the right profession--this feels like a ray of light and a heavenly chorus.

Also, all my application materials got to Fairbanks (except 1 letter of recommendation...I'm not sure if it HAS gotten there and they haven't filed it in yet [which happened with the other two letters]) and my application is undergoing the reviewing process. I'm extremely nervous but glad that at least something went right. I just hope the lack of 1 letter by the 1st of February doesn't discount me for consideration for a TAship :-/. I guess we'll just have to see. I'm excited and nervous about the outcome of all this. Even rejection is a concrete answer, and after finding out about it I can then (somewhat) comfortably move on without waiting around. Although I really really really hope they accept me. (Crosses fingers)

I've also been getting a ton of positive feedback about my work, from peers in the major and from my profs. This is awesome since I'm a pretty self-defeating person by nature. I almost never take what people say at face value: if someone says they like my work or they think it's great, I automatically think they're just humoring me. But with the positive rejection and overwhelmingly positive feedback (accompanied by protests to my self-doubt of "yes, we really mean it") I'm starting to actually think I might be on the right path after all and not making a huge mistake. It's a nice feeling, realizing that you might not be sabotaging your own life.

My novel for my independent study is coming along nicely and I'm really enjoying what's happening. I spent the majority of tonight revising and editing shorter stories of my own and critiquing some submissions to the Chimes, our literary magazine here (of which I'm assistant editor). I feel I've got pretty good momentum and drive. Now let's see how long this lasts.

Sources of Inspiration

2010-01-20T23:11:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking lately about where my inspiration for certains stories or poems comes from. Sometimes I just get a feeling and then a thought follows that, and that thought births other thoughts and then there's a big thought family that I have to excise from my brain in textual form before these thoughts commandeer all my other brain functions. But why/when does this happen?

Well I've figured out two of my inspiration sources: nature and music. I grew up in a nature-loving, musical family, and so--whether by genetics or conditioning or both--I grew up to love both in my own way. I grew up going on family camping trips and hikes, and roughing around my best friend's farm: rafting down his creek, riding his horses, leaping around in the hayloft. I came to appreciate nature in all its shapes and forms, finding beauty in all things small and large which many people would dismiss or even find repulsive. And then once I started thinking more deeply about things, I saw connections in what I found in nature with things in real life. And thus most of my poems were and still are formed.

My Mom was a music ed major in college. She heads our church choir and she gives lessons in piano, guitar, and voice (and she still has a pretty good voice and piano hands herself). My sisters both sing, and one plays piano and clarinet. I sing and play the trumpet, a little piano, and recently picked up the tenor recorder. Even my dad used to play trumpet, and still knows stuff about music. All my exteneded family have some musical abilities. It's in our blood. I get a lot of (vague, preliminary) inspiration for stories from listening to instrumental (especially orchestral/symphonic) music. It has to be wordless, because I'm an advocate of the old adage "where words fail, music speaks." I still love my indie rock bands and local acoustic groups for their deep, poetic lyrics and quirky sound, but that's more for entertainment's sake than deep reflection or inspiration. When I listen to instrumental/symphonic music, I tend to hear it as a soundtrack, and a vague narrative tends to form in my head depending on what the music sounds like. Many people experience the reverse of this: they see a movie, love the soundtrack, then purchase the soundtrack: then when they listen to certain tracks, they can "feel" what's happening in the movie even though the movie itself is nowhere to be found. It also happens that, since I'm a pretty melancholy, pensive fellow by nature, a lot of the symphonic music I like is that way also, and so a lot of my stories end up that way. Sort of calm, introspective and bittersweet. That's what I strive for; also I strive to make my prose have an emotional depth, since that's what I respond to. I can't write funny prose...it's just not in me. When I do I kind of scare myself because it's so out of the ordinary.

My two favorite songs of late are October by Eric Whitacre and Persis by James L. Hosay. October is a gorgeously melancholy piece with powerful full-ensemble swells that really get at the heart of October and the Fall season...it captures (for me) the sights of autumn in sound, and on a deeper level that sort of bittersweet fading feeling of things passing away and time moving on. Persis is one of those totally epic songs that's really long and sweeps through a huge variety of emotions, from fear/adrenaline, excitement, deep contentedness and extreme emotional distress. It has an exciting beginning, and a sweet, melancholy oboe solo in the middle followed by a slow crescendo of building emotional intensity, more instruments adding their voice, and the middle section climaxes in this hugely epic emotional peak that never gets old. The song ends with a fast-paced interweaving of all the musical themes that came before: you have the relentless drums, the frantic woodwinds, and the desperate brass all vying for attention and the whole ending is just phenomenal. I want my stories someday to be able to evoke those emotions from readers.

I also get a fair amount of inspiration from people-watching. Like yesterday, I went to the coffee shop alone to read and think, and I saw out of the corner of my eye a frantic college girl rushing out of the shop talking on the phone, and she dropped one of her red gloves and left it behind, totally forgotten. I couldn't stop looking at and thinking about that lovely red glove, and how she seemed so intent on it before she got whatever desperate call she got and then totally forgot about the red glove, leaving it on the dirty floor. So I made a note of it to see if I could do something with it later, and sure enough I wrote a poem about it.

But anyway, I've talked enough. What do you, anonymous readers, think are your sources of inspiration?

Reading, Reading, Reading

2010-01-14T10:53:00.000-05:00

My last semester here at Geneva is a reading semester. Kind of a new change of pace, considering the last several semesters have been dominated by writing. But this time I'm taking mostly lit classes, and an independent study in novel-writing (and the novel doesn't even necessarily have to be finished, just what I have has to be well-written and coherent) so most of my time will be spent reading.

I'm taking a class on C.S. Lewis, Masterpieces of World Literature, Old English literature, Political Science (required for the core), and Cinema (my favorite class so far...we get to sit around and listen to a quirky flower-child professor talk about film techniques, then we watch an interesting movie and talk and write about it. That's it!). Over the course of the semester I'll read most of Lewis' philosophical works (The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, The Screwtape Letters, etc.), and The Iliad, all 3 parts of Dante's Divine Comedy and the Brothers Karamazov, and lots of Anglo-Saxon poetry (I even get to learn to speak Old English). Oh yeah, and that poli sci stuff...theories and whatnot. Not so looking forward to that.

I know I'm going to have a great time reading all these things (and thinking and writing scholarly papers about them too), but all this will leave me with much less time to write creatively (except for working on that novel...funtimes!). But I know I shouldn't complain, since even my greatly reduced time is still a lot greater than a lot of people's time in the real world. So I guess I should count my blessings.

And besides, reading the classics will (or should) help me in my own writing. Now that I have a writer's eye--an eye for little semantic details and grammatical nuances--reading all these things might help me in finding my own style. And after the frantic writing of earlier semesters, I think this relaxed, almost leisurely novel-writing experience should be pretty restorative. I was starting to get tired of writing, because I had to do it so much at regular intervals that the magic seemed to fade away. But now I've got a new lease on the writerly life and I think it'll be fantastic.

Now to go hit the books!

"Adverbs suck," he said angrily

2010-01-04T00:54:00.000-05:00

http://www.users.qwest.net/~yarnspnr/writing/adverbs/adverbs.htm

This article got me in a tizzy at first, but when I continued I saw that I agreed with (some of) the comments made. However I don't think adverbs are totally evil and unnecessary. I think a well-placed adverb can enhance a passage of prose and actually make it tighter, especially when discussing abstract concepts or feelings, things that aren't easily or succinctly translated into concrete language. Like "he gazed at her coldly." Is that bad? Cold has a ton of definitions, most of them abstract things like "dispassionate" or "unfeeling." So, in this sentence the word coldly could mean "in an unfeeling manner" or "dispassionately" (another adverb!). If someone told me to get rid of that adverb because it's too vague or something, then I'd ask them how would they convey this feeling? "He gazed at her in a dispassionate manner?" How is that any better? Or it could be longer and even more abstract, like "He gazed at her, feeling nothing in his heart but a sterile chill like the frost that clung to his bedroom window." (Okay, maybe that was over the top.) In some circumstances something like that might be good, but what if I'm trying to make this particular passage go quickly, like it's an argument passage? To me, either of the latter two would feel too long--put too much of a pause in the action of the scene, which is supposed to be quick and snappy. I could just leave that out, let the readers infer what they will into the passage. But what if they think he's angry or sad, when I really want them to feel that the speaker feels *coldly* toward the woman he's gazing at? I don't know, maybe I haven't studied enough/ lived enough/ written enough yet to understand.

I mean yeah, I don't think adverbs (and adjectives for that matter) should be used prolifically, or that they should carry the full weight of power in the prose. But I feel the negative response to over adverbifying (complete rejection of ever using adverbs ever) is not a good solution. Instead we need to think and learn about how to use them properly in the right situations. They're part of the language for a reason; they have a function. And sometimes I don't know what I would do without them. Maybe that says something about my noviceness as a writer, but oh well. What do you all think, you who might be reading this?

Consistency and personal preferences

2009-12-28T00:36:00.000-05:00

Lately, as I've been submitting my applications to MFA programs, I've been thinking about my writing process/style. I've gotten better at being consistent with my writing, as in writing more frequently. But I've found that there are some days when I just can't get anything to come, and there are other days when the floodgates open and I write for hours and hours. After those sessions I tend to not write anything for a couple days. Thinking about grad school, this sort of worries me.

It took me forever to drum up a good work ethic as a student. I coasted in high school, and also the first couple years of college. Hit and miss: an A here, a C there, the occasionally D. A GPA hovering around average, sometimes rising above and dipping below. But after some bad experiences sophomore year--regarding the outside questioning of my academic integrity and some inner struggles--I forced a work ethic out of me. I transformed into the student/writer/thinker I knew I really was inside, but until then I'd never been able to reconcile my lackadaisical lifestyle with my academic interests. But I finally bucked up last year (junior year) and now I've gotten straight A's every semester since.

The thing is, it took me forever to come to those internal epiphanies, and even now I'm still lazy quite often, not writing because "I don't feel like it" or "I'm not inspired." I know this needs to change, and this semester's been good for that, since I've been forced and forced to write and write and write, especially when i didn't feel like it, and I found out that I could do it, even though it was painful. I just hope when I get to grad school--wherever I end up going--that I can find the energy and willpower to write even when I don't want to.

I'm just so lazy. Call it lackadaisical, call it carefree, call it quixotic, whatever--it usually ends up boiling down to the pure desire to not do anything except what I want to do at any certain point in time. Gotta kick that habit, or at least keep it on a leash, only letting it go when the time is appropriate (i.e. when I don't have a deadline looming or projects to start). Never before have I considered my contented laid-backness as a bad thing. Gotta work on that before I continue with life. Gotta write consistently even if that means writing when I don't want to.

No one ever told me when I was in third grade that being a writer meant hard work. Sigh.

Able to Breathe

2009-12-19T01:06:00.000-05:00

Finals are done, the semester is over, and now I'm home. I love this feeling. There's just something about sitting on the home couch wrapped in a homemade blanket drinking homeground coffee while reading a collection of Steinbeck stories--which happens to be a gift from the previous Christmas.

In the last 2-3 weeks of the semester, I used up 2/3rds a ream of printer paper and almost an entire ink cartridge. A little bit of that was for the 1st grad school app, but most of it was for school papers/stories. I swear my fingers still hurt from typing. After I handed in my final papers, I never thought I'd want to see anymore printed text or put pen to paper again for at least a week. But somehow I just can't get away from writing.

Last year in my advanced composition class (given by a prof w/ a phd in rhetoric and composition), we did lots of tedious things that most people would find really boring. Sentence imitations (semantic and semiotic, NOT just semiotic, else the prof would have our heads); learning greek words for writing techniques (synecdoche with a little polysyndeton, anyone?) as well as learning how to use and recognize said techniques; reading a book called 'Rhetorical Grammar' (awesome...basically teaches you the rules AND how to break them effectively). I and my classmates complained about the 'busy work' of the class while we were in it, but now that I'm done with it I find myself coming back to what I learned time and again, despite wishing to forget about the intellectual pain that class put me through.

Imagine my horror when, while wrapped in a blanket and reading Steinbeck, I read a particularly awesome sentence and instantly thought "I must imitate it!" By the time I was halfway to my journal and pen, I stopped and realized what I was doing. Dear God, something a professor taught me actually stayed with me and influenced how I see/think about writing! Shocking. (I'm still trying to imitate that sentence...it's incredibly complex on a semiotic and a semantic level.) Oh, and I actually brought my copies of Rhetorical Grammar and Literary Criticism back home for pleasure reading when I'm bored. I think the transformation from indifferent student to obsessed academic is nearly about complete.

Point is, now that I'm in a relaxing, informal environment--with barely any obligations--I actually want to study the writing of authors I admire and work on my own stuff. During the semester I lived for the end of the paper so I could go to the bar with my friends. (By the way, Great Lakes' Burning River ale is fantastic.) Sometimes I feel bad about this, that I would rather write when I don't actually have to. Maybe it's just a psychological college student thing..."This is an assignment with a deadline, therefore I don't want to do it" type thing.

So, the actual point is...it's the holidays! Yay for a much lighter load of responsibilities and obligations! Go to the bar with your friends and reconnect with your family, but in the cracks don't forget to jot down that story prompt or poem idea while you have the time. And late at night or early in the morning when you're alone or the only one awake, instead of succumbing to the urge to watch mind-numbing late-night TV (and believe me, I'm an advocate of mind-numbing late-night TV), maybe spend some quality time with a favorite book or a favorite journal and pen. The holidays--especially Christmas, since it's usually the longest--are some of the only instances when we actually have spare time to write. Take advantage of it!

Hope everyone has a merry Christmas!

Themes in Poetry vs. Themes in Prose

2009-11-29T09:58:00.000-05:00

I've been writing a lot of poetry this year, and most of it tends to follow along the lines of a certain theme. These themes are not things I decided to write about, but after a time I noticed a similarity between my poems that I had not intended, like my subconscious mind made its concerns known through these poems. I think I've identified at least three broad themes in my poetry: shadows and light and the interplay between the two; the changing of seasons and individual seasons and the symbols/metaphors attached to them; and snow and ice. This last one could be wrapped up in the seasons, but it's not always necessarily about winter.

I deeply enjoy writing poetry, but I don't think I could ever teach it; it's just too personal and ambiguous. Have you noticed how NO ONE can agree on a single definition for poetry? Even poets can only give poetic definitions of it. It's very subjective, and I don't think it would be fair to teach my personal views to students. I would rather teach prose, since a) I've learned more about this than poetry in school and b) prose (except journals/diaries/) is generally written for the purpose of having other people read it. Myself and most other writers I know tend to just write poetry for their own satisfaction, only showing it to other poets or to close friends. It's like prose writing makes up the bricks of a house, and poetry fills up the cracks that prose is too dense and large to fill. Switching between poetry and prose keeps me balanced.

Poetry is personal for me: it's cathartic and useful for exercising my imagination. I might see leaves falling from a tree and think that it's sort of sad that the trees are losing their beauty, but then bare trees have a sort of spare beauty in themselves, and then I'd start thinking about decay and renewal and relationships and how there's a time for everything and then go write a poem about this vague idea. Afterward I'd feel better, as if I'd just had a good conversation with a friend where I let go of all these things on my chest. If the poem is good, that's good. If I still like it a week later but don't think it's as good as it could be, I'll try pruning it and nurturing it. If I come back to it and realize it's a piece of crappy writing spilled out in a blindly sentimental burst, then I'll just leave it, forget about it, or even delete it. It doesn't matter really, since I just write for myself and for whoever else might care to read it.

But prose is different. I--and most other people, I assume--write stories and novels for the purpose of being read by other people, and in some cases, to try and send a message to readers. A message about life, about relationships, about happiness, what have you. Or, most of the time, prose writers just have a ripping yarn in their heads that they're itching to pen down. Or, in rare cases, both things happen: a riveting tale with a careening plot AND deep characterization and psychological/philosophical messages. When I write a story, I try to pay really close attention to detail, and if a word doesn't fit I'll spend as much time as needed to find what I think is the right word. I really do want other people to read my stories, both to get their feedback and see if it's a good, realistic story and all that stuff.

Thing is, I know what themes dominate my poetry, but I'm still not quite sure about what themes are holding my stories together, or what themes/motifs I want to infuse in my stories. As a follower of Christ I'm really interested in the idea of grace--in the strictly Christian sense, that we receive totally undeserved love and favor from God and that He will do good things for us for no other reason than to show his love, and in the more secular/general sense, that good things, good turns of events, will happen to us seemingly for no reason and with no pattern--like a more benevolent version of fate. But grace isn't something so easy to write about without being religiously didactic, which I do NOT want AT ALL. Honestly I despise most Christian fiction because it's boring, predictable, filled with cliche 1-dimensional characters that exist solely to embody a virtue that no human can possibly possess to perfection. So, what sort of themes should I have in my prose? I don't know.

Perhaps I should just keep writing my stories and then see what comes out, like I did with my poetry. Shadows and light and seasons could certainly be themes in prose, but in general prose is about people and relationships. I, for one, have never read a story with no characters. Maybe that's where the difference between prose and poetry lies: poetry is about the individual poet and how he/she sees and interprets the world, and prose is about other people, and maybe humanity in general, and how they relate to each other within the world. Well, before my rambling becomes any more disjointed, I should stop and try doing something more productive. Good day, everyone.

Thanksgiving Eve random update

2009-11-25T22:24:00.001-05:00

Well, I took my GRE this morning. I did badly on the math, but I expected as much. Got a somewhat-above-mediocre score on the verbal (570) which I am not happy about, but will take it for now. Even after studying and widening my vocabulary (which wasn't even narrow to begin with) a lot of the questions threw me off due to their tricky nature and use of words that I believe no living person uses. Argh.

I did better on the more intuitive questions, like the sentence completions and reading comprehension. I just don't use big old dead words very often. It's frustrating. As my friend Kristin, who's studying for her PhD in English at Ohio State University (I think) said, "The GRE is the most annoying pointless test ever." Well said.

I do feel a bit confident about the essays; I just hope the readers think I did a good job. I believe I addressed the issues coherently and with sound structure and arguments. *crosses fingers*

I was a bit depressed afterward, but then I remembered what everyone ever has been telling me about applying to MFA programs: the writing sample is the most important thing. Besides, the programs I'm applying to don't SEEM to have minimum GRE score requirements. It's time to continue polishing my prose and then pick which piece I want to submit. I'm quite nervous. That is all.

Hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving!

Trying Something Different

2009-11-22T20:38:00.000-05:00

I've been having a lot of trouble staying focused on my writing tasks this semester. I partly attribute this to the fact that my writing for school leaves me barely any energy or motivation for personal writing, but then I realized two things:
1) My school writing assignments are creative in nature and should be sparking my interest just because they're creative and I have free rein, and
2) I've always been doing my writing the same way: on the computer, which also has internet access, all my music, and Instant Messaging on it.

So, I've decided to revert to writing by hand in notebooks my assignments--at least the rough drafts. I used to write by hand all the time in high school and earlier, and I wrote a lot more personal creative pieces back then, too. I think I've realized that by always using my computer to write, I've associated my writing with the impermanence and whimsically speedy activities of surfing the 'net, chatting with friends, and listening to music. When I wrote by hand, I had a much earthier, permanent, direct-link feeling between me, my hands, and what appears on the page. It's not so easy, especially with pen, to crank out a huge amount of words and then obliterate them all even faster than they were created. I write slower and more deliberately by hand, knowing that if I make a mistake or don't think carefully about what comes next that I'll have to laboriously erase or scribble out the text: no copy-paste fuction here!

So I've been working on short stories for class (now, toward the end of the semester, more full-blown stories are being assigned, rather than outlines or snippets) by writing them out in notebooks, alternating between pen and pencil, whichever I have with me at the time. I tend to deliberately use pen when I can tell I'm starting to get distracted; since pen is much more permanent, I have to concentrate harder to make sure what I write is what I mean to write. Of course, the stories have to make their way into the computer, since my professors don't accept hand-written anything; and well they don't, since my hand-written stories inevitably end up framed in doodles and peppered with scribbles, circles, arrows and marginalia (I love that word).

So I end up transferring the hand-written stories into Microsoft Word, which works well for my process since I end up editing them as I transfer them, so by the time they're all digitalized they're much nicer than they would have been if I'd written them on the computer in the first place. And even though it takes me twice as long to get them printed, they're much better for it. I think I've found a permanent method, as long as I can give myself enough time to do it properly.

And on paper I can doodle when I get bored....can't do that on the computer. If anyone saw my inked-up rough drafts they'd probably think I was a four-year-old. Well, time to get back to the grindstone. I have four more stories to write (!!) before Tuesday. I just hope they don't suck. Good night.

Time keeps on running by

2009-11-16T16:25:00.001-05:00

Well, I unintentionally took a week off from this blog. Time just got away from me I suppose. Last week was full of campus events and club meetings and extremely long reading and writing assignments. By the time I realized I hadn't posted anything, it was, well...today, at this moment.

Not to worry, though; I've been plugging away at my writing. It's been haphazard, though--some days I didn't write at all, other days I wrote a ton of stuff in under an hour, other days it took me hours to get a few good paragraphs. Maybe this is just how I work. At any rate I feel I've produced a good amount of valuable raw material. My creative writing class is upping the ante as the semester winds down: at this point I've written around 6 short stories in the past couple weeks. Admittedly, a couple of them are too short and rushed...but the kernels of interesting ideas are there, and now that the basics are on paper, I think I can work to expand them and make them better. Work on my long final project is slow going: I've got the (long) prologue down as well as chapter one. However, I'm extremely excited to finally be writing it. I've had the idea in my head for over a year, and this class and my independent study next semester give me the perfect opportunity to work on it, and not leisurely but as a necessity so I know it will get done.

The idea is sort of a mish-mash of elements from the Canterbury Tales and the movies 13 Conversations About One Thing and Little Miss Sunshine. A bunch of people--some closely related, others not so related to the rest--set off on a road trip across the country to go camping for a week. The core family that started the trip has their own reasons for going, and the seemingly random people that end up going with them all have their own reasons, and the family members that invited them have different reasons for doing so. In general, they all need a break from reality for a while. Throughout the trip, they all tell stories (a la Canterbury Tales) to pass the time on the road, at the hotel, when the car breaks down, etc. It's a story of relationships: how people aren't meant to live in isolation, and how by simply being near other people things tend to change. It's also about appearances/facades...how everyone has different masks they wear, why they choose those masks, and why and how they need to break. I still don't know how I'll end it, but am I really supposed to at this point? The journey is so much fun at this point that I think I'll feel sad when it's over.

This novella (or novel, depending on how long it ends up being) is also a great opportunity to put these last few years of learning to the test. I've come a long way in terms of understanding what characters are, what or who the narrator is, and different angles of perception and viewpoint in storytelling, as well as the technical methods of writing effective prose (which I would never have thought of without going through this program). Short stories are good for this, too, but for such a long piece there's way more room to toy around with stuff. It's really exciting, and I just hope the end product is something good, at least in my professors' eyes. This is still undergrad, so I know this isn't going to be the next Grapes of Wrath or anything, but I just hope that for me at this point in time it stands as a good testament to my best writing abilities.

I just have to keep plugging away and not get distracted. It's so easy for me to get distracted...I have what my friends have given the name of ADOS (attention deficit...ooh shiney!). So I think it's time to get off the 'net and continue being productive. Good night everyone.

Cosmetic Touchups vs. Ground-up Construction

2009-11-03T23:54:00.000-05:00

Today I didn't write anything new. Instead, I spent my allotted hour touching up various small projects. Tightening a poem here, adding more characterization to a story there...that sort of thing. All in all about a dozen poems got facelifts and tummy tucks and a couple stories got a revitalizing spa treatment. Although I didn't write anything new or expand on as-yet unfinished poems and stories, I feel pretty good about the revisions I did on already finished work. It was like re-laying the mortar between the bricks in a flimsy wall, or stripping old paint off a house and applying a new coat. It was fun and relaxing.

I also sent a batch of recently finished poems off to Bateau Press. It was easy and enticing because they're one of the print journals that has adopted a snazzy online submissions manager. I feel pretty confident that the five poems I sent are my best work so far and that they represent the widest range of my interest in poetic forms: a couple free-verse poems and a couple tightly structured poems, including my first sestina--which I wrote last year and to which I've been applying continuous poetical TLC. I still haven't heard back from the Barn Owl Review yet (I sent a few poems over a month ago), and, honestly, I can't remember which poems I sent them. All I know is that they're not the same ones as I sent to Bateau. Not good, I know, which brings me to my next point.

In addition to my revisions, I also spent some time tidying up and organizing my computer files. Before this, all my text files were sort of strewn haphazardly in random corners of the general My Documents file. And as the essays, poems, and stories (and drafts) have piled up, the worse the clutter has gotten. So I finally set up a system of folders within My Documents for easy and quick access to all my poetry and prose, creative and academic, along with a Submission Tracker document (which I'll update continually with Active, Rejected, and Accepted Poetry and Prose submissions) as well as folders specifically to keep Word documents that contain specially collected poems meant for submissions to certain journals, so I'll never forget what I sent where, and when I sent it, and whether it's still under review, has been accepted or rejected. (I'm starting to accumulate a nice drift of poetry rejections.)

All in all I believe it's been a productive day, and these revisions and other considerations helped me to momentarily lower my constant stress level as the GRE date approaches as well as final project considerations, graduation requirements, and grad school apps. I'm still torn about whether I should pursue an MFA in Poetry or Fiction. I write Poetry on a more regular basis, but I'm still not at the level of understanding about it that I can say whether each poem is good or bad, and more often than not I'm not sure if a poem needs revision and much less HOW it should be revised. On the other hand, I write prose less frequently; but when I do, I slave over it, revising draft after draft and picking it apart word by word until I think it's much better than before, and even then I still think it isn't that good. I DO have lots more short story ideas, and I'm working on a novel this year for an Independent Study...I just need to get the motivation and creative juices flowing to write the stories. I'm leaning heavily toward fiction despite my recent burst of poetry.

I'm also making myself accept the idea that I may not end up going to grad school as soon as I want. Maybe my GRE scores won't be so good, or maybe my writing sample will still need some work, or maybe my undergrad transcripts won't be sent out in time (a flaw my school is notorious for). I'm still not sure exactly what I'd do in this situation...I've always wanted to do the Peace Corps; maybe that would be a good thing to do if I don't get accepted to grad school. Anyway, I guess I'll sleep on it...sleep always helps. It's like my second drug of choice, number one being coffee of course. Good night everyone.

Finding Energy

2009-10-28T21:30:00.000-04:00

I've not quite yet logged an hour of creative writing today, and the writing that I have done consists of an assignment for a class I'm taking (Special Topics in Writing: Narrative Voice & Character). It was a fun assignment: we've been modeling our assignments off a story outline in one of the books we're using (13 Types of Narrative, by Wallace Hildick) which involves a young American soldier on leave in Britain who's going up to the top of a cathedral tower to take pictures for his uncle back in the states, and he runs into a young but grossly obese British man on the stairs who--unknowingly for the American--plans to jump off the cathedral, ending his miserable existence. This week we looked at diary narratives, so our assignment is to write the diary entries of the fat man for six days prior to the day of the tower incident. I must say it was a lot of fun to write, and before now I'd never really considered the artistic/stylistic/narratorial merits of doing a story like this. This class is great because it's helping me break out of my 3rd-person-omniscient storytelling mindset. Who knew that a complex, emotional story can be delivered artfully and meaningfully through diary entries or simple letters? I didn't.

But anyway, despite how fun this assignment was, it didn't kick me up to an hour of writing. Did I have a really busy day, you ask? Well, no...not really. I had to take a make-up test in Astronomy (I missed the test because I stayed home late from Fall Break due to illness), so I studied for that (and despite my efforts I'm pretty sure I didn't do well on it...my brain's not wired for complex interstellar geometry). After the test, the introvert in me decided it was time for a nice, relaxing, energy-boosting break. Only, the energy never came back. I didn't "feel" like writing much today. If I hadn't forced myself, I probably wouldn't have written that assignment until tomorrow morning. (But since I took the time tonight, it's much better than it would have been in a 5-minute pre-class writing session.) This is bad. Just because I lack energy is no excuse for not writing. I wish there was some sort of magic creative-energy-giving potion that would set me on fire for verbal creation...like Gatorade for writers.

But now I realize there is such a thing: it's called "reading." I have been reading more lately (except for today, which might be my problem). Another class I'm taking is the writing/English majors' senior seminar: this semester's sem is on James Joyce's Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. We've been going slowly, deliberately, through the Dubliners stories, so we have time to take them apart and absorb them before moving on. I must say, I love this book of stories. I've heard this prof gush about Joyce's style in other classes, but didn't think much of it till now. As writers and lit nerds, I and the 2 other students in the class (we meet in his office for class with coffee and tea prepared for us :-) pick the stories apart--after the initial wave of awe and emotion has washed over us--to try and figure out WHY these stories are good. We've hit some good points: he has great sentence structure, amazingly appropriate diction, perfectly spare yet evocative descriptions, and he chooses carefully what information he has the narrator impart and what is shown through dialogue. I want to share one of my favorite sentences from his story "A Painful Case" (which is also my favorite story so far): "He lived his spiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his relatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they died." It made me laugh, yet it was also a profound glimpse into the sad state of mind this protagonist has been in his entire life. I think I like this story so much because it's completely devoid of dialogue but still manages to be an amazing story.

But anyway, there's still a mysterious X factor in these stories that makes them good that we still can't figure out. Hopefully by the end of this year if not this semester I'll have gotten some more clues into knowledge of the X factor, that mysterious process of literary alchemy that some people seem to just have a knack for. Reading Joyce's short stories has been the catalyst of my desire to read more short stories. I've owned the complete collections of Flannery O'Connor's stories, Ernest Hemingway's stories, and O.Henry's stories for a while: maybe now I'll actually read them all on purpose. (However, I am struggling to get through For Whom the Bell Tolls and, honestly, I really don't like it very much. Maybe I'll like Hemingway's short stories better.) I also have a wish-list for short story collections from people like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Virginia Woolf, and Anton Chekhov. If I get my wish, I'll have enough books for a small library of my own.

My recent reading renaissance has catalyzed my desire to write for myself: these stories are so amazing, so beautifully written and presented; the characters so fresh, their dialogue so real and vivid; the plots so organic-feeling that they seem to have grown naturally from the characters' situations, instead of being forced into reluctant existence by a money-minded Steinbeck wanna-be. Through my interesting classes and recent burst of reading, I've come up with some new (hopefully fresh) story ideas; now if I can only muster the willpower to put thoughts to paper, I'll be as good as gold (or at least iron: sturdy, flexible, and dependable).

Time to Start Being Something Real

2009-10-19T00:20:00.000-04:00

So I like to call myself a writer. I realized recently that--the way I'm living now--I am not, in fact, a writer. I am, however, a day dreamer, a deep thinker, an optimistic pessimist, and an avid reader, learner, talker, and music-lover. Does "writer" fall anywhere in there? No, not really. Oh yeah, I'm a poet...I write at least one new poem a week toward my Independent Study in Poetry (the end result of which will be another--bigger, better, prettier--chapbook. But I call myself a writer. So does that make me a hypocrite? That I call myself a writer and don't actually write? Well, I do, just not very often--only when I feel like it. I do have a few short stories (some written for a class and some just because), but are they any good? No, probably not, since most of them are either first or second drafts with little to no revision. I do have outlines and research which are the slowly sprouting seeds of a novel I've had in my head for a while which I'll be fleshing out more concretely next semester for a second, final Independent Study. Oh, and I have almost 150 pages of a fantasy novel (the first of a series) that I've been working on and off on for the past several years. At this point I haven't looked at it in so long I'm afraid I've forgotten some of the characters' names; a sad state of affairs, especially for a story that I can't stop thinking about. I hope I can find my old outlines...I really don't want those 150 pages of effort to fall into the void. After examining my life as it is, I must say I need to stop calling myself a writer, even though I'm a Writing major and plan to go for an MFA and PhD in the field. Wow, I must be the most retarded person on the planet.

However, I really really REALLY want to BE a writer. And, for a time in my life, I was...I'd excitedly jot down ideas and trigger phrases at 3am after having a bizarre dream; I'd spend hours fine-tuning a certain sentence in a story; I'd agonize for days over a single word-choice in a poem. So the question is...what happened? Where'd my fire go?

I'm sad to say this, but I think that my Writing major classes have stolen that fire. And I don't mean that the flames were diverted from one aspect of writing to another, that my zeal and passion--unabated--changed direction...no. It's more like someone caught my creative lightning in a jar and turned it into a smeary yellow lightbulb hanging by a wire from the ceiling of some sterile retirement home's cafeteria. All my writing focus has gone to academic papers, research papers, and teacher-assigned story prompts (skeletal plot points that I myself would never write or think of reading). At the end of the day, I'm not even exhausted: I'm bored, bored to the point of tears, bored so that even the thought of doing something interesting seems boring. I'd rather, after class, just sit there and do something mindless like watch TV or read Twilight (yes, I said it, and for the record, I haven't read the book and don't intend to). Also, after all that, I need to cough up a new poem for the Independent Study. I love poetry, don't get me wrong: since they're so short, I can scratch up a crappy sonnet or villanelle in under an hour, sit on it for a couple days, come back and realize it's crap but that I still like the central metaphor, so I'll change it to be better, either by changing its form (maybe even to free verse...gasp of dismay) or changing the diction or rhythm.

But my real passion lies in story-telling. Not that you can't tell a story through a poem, but poetry is different...there's limited space and possibly one of the biggest aspects of poetry is that the best of it is entirely suggestive, capable of presenting a vague concrete idea--and sometimes not even that--but with infinite layers of possibility, depending on each reader's personal poetics (everyone has one!). Now, good fiction has great suggestibility too, but even the most suggestive short story has a lot more concrete information than a poem. Most poems don't have "characters," for one. It generally takes a lot longer to write a good short story than a good poem; but, for me, the satisfaction of writing a good short story is way better than writing a good poem. All the levels of complexity...narrative voice, character voice, plot techniques, characterization, rhetorical/grammatical techniques...it's like, to me, a poem is a work of obscure yet completely idiosyncratic modern art, whereas a story is like a piece of classical landscape or portrait art, conveying a clear surface meaning, but then as one delves deeper into the specifics of the painting--the composition, materials used, techniques used, perspectives, positioning, the use of shadows, light, color--then the viewing of the painting becomes an individual experience for each viewer, and each person, depending on his/her taste, temperament, background, and sensitivities, might come away with a completely different emotional response or interpretation. It takes skill--mad skill--to pull off a piece of art, visual or verbal, that can do all those things.

I feel since I've been so engrossed with poetry that it's taking away from my prosaic abilities--despite the simultaneous need for good prosaic ability for certain other classes. Also I'm just lazy...extremely lazy. I make excuses like since I'm an introvert I need at least a couple hours of "down time" (aka doing nothing of any importance at all) to regain my "energy" (which mysteriously never returns but just keeps seeping away). What I really need to do is come to grips with one fact: that being a good writer requires work--hard work, and lots of it. I don't want to be a hypocrite: a couple of my peers in the Writing major are those pretentious, snobby types that talk at the speed of light about their intricate projects and ideas and whatnot, and yet never seem to have anything to show for all their talk. "Well, it's on my computer and I don't feel like wasting paper," or "I'm still revising it and don't want anyone to see it yet because it's not my best work" are just a couple lame excuses I get from them when I ask if I can read and possibly critique their work. I may not be a writing machine, but when I do write I really try to make it good and am not afraid to tell people the details or give them drafts to look over. Despite their pretention, these writers are pretty good--from what I've seen--and I value their input, and any input, for that matter. But if I don't want to be a hypocrite for thinking badly of them not actually writing, that means I actually need to get writing myself.

I've decided that I'm going to force myself to write everyday. My favorite writing professor--an old-timer with lots of industry and teaching experience--thinks that it's good to have a length goal for each day; after all, he says, 1 page a day equals 300 words a day, therefore 1 page a day for a year equals 109,500 words: a more-than-average length for a novel. But I, personally, don't think a length goal is the right thing for me: I mean, sure, I can shell out several pages a day, but they might be crap or about nothing, and I'd just delete them the next day. What's the point of that? I mean yeah, it would be "practice," but I know from experience with papers/stories for school that sometimes I sacrifice meaning for word count just so I can say I fulfilled that goal. No, I think I'm going to go for time goal: 1 hour of personal writing a day. That means my own work, my own ideas, not related to school assignments. I think an hour is reasonable, since I need other time each day to work on stuff required for school. I'll even log my time, and maybe, at the end of the month, if I've managed to say loyal to myself and my professed lifestyle choice, I'll reward myself. How? I don't know...maybe with an extra special drink at wing night instead of the standard 1$ Yuengling lager, or a special outing with friends or something...I'll come up with something. I think this personal scheduling will be good for me, since I'm such a free spirit...so free and lackadaisical that if I don't have a schedule, I won't do anything at all. I'm serious. If I don't have anything to do, nothing scheduled, I will seriously do absolutely nothing, which either entails just that--nothing, just sitting there daydreaming or even sleeping--or doing something mind-numbing, like computer games or surfing the net or reading books by Christopher Paolini (that's right, I said it...his Eragon books are poorly written, genre rip-off cliches filled with fantasy archetypes that might have been interesting when they were original but now have lost all their flavor, like a single piece of gum chewed obsessively for an entire day). I've made up my mind: I NEED to write, and every day, or I'll never get better, and no journals will ever accept my stuff.

I also plan on being more proactive and interested when I submit things to journals. So far I've only submitted to journals that offer online services, because I'm too lazy and miserly to take the effort to send stuff to more reputable and accessible journals by mail. I'll start sending stories, too, not just poetry. So far I've been leisurely sending off random samples of what I think is my best poetry to random journals, one at a time, with the vague hope of seeing my name in print. I'm a senior now and I think I need to start being more proactive with my own life. Up until now I feel like I've been on a ride for my own life...stuff just happened and I simply reacted. Now, soon, things won't just happen at all unless I make them happen. This might as well be a New Year's resolution, because from here on out I'm living a different life: the life of a WRITER, and not someone who wishes TO BE a "writer." Maybe I'll celebrate the anniversaries of this decision. Who knows?

Seasonal Musings and a Metaphor

2008-05-22T01:39:00.003-04:00

I love nature. A lot. I've been frequently asked what my favorite season is, and most of the time I can't really think of just one. I love them all for different reasons. But recently I've been thinking about Autumn. I kind of miss it, maybe because this spring so far has been cold like Autumn usually is, but without the beauty. It's just been cold and gray and rainy. I think the earth is in the transitory stage between spring and summer. Most of the spring flowers have come and gone, and even the delight of the leaves having blossomed has lost its lustre. Now nature just looks like a big heap of old, water-logged moss. I just want a sunny day.
But anyway, I was thinking about all the reasons I love Fall and why I look forward to it again this year.
On any nice Autumn day, the air is crisp and fresh, and every time I take a breath it feels like my insides are being scrubbed clean and cool, and the sunlight is a pale splendor that filters through the crimson leaves like some sort of liquid gold, and the leaves dance and flutter as they fall, looking from afar not unlike raindrops of glittering diamonds and rubies.
In the calm dark of the night, which wraps the land and all in it in its silent, sheltering embrace, the wind sighs through the bare branches, and the moon peeps out from behind a glass curtain of slow moving clouds; from behind that wispy veil it looks rather like an eye, the giant and weary eye of God gazing down on the shadowed land with contentment in its depths. The cold of the autumn night—only a forebear of the harsh bitterness of winter that’s yet to come—caresses my body and nips at my ears and nose, causing a slight sting that snatches me away from the dungeon of my mind. It gives me just enough pain to let me know that yes, I am still alive; that I have a life to live and a chance to live it.
Yes, I love autumn. Something always stirs inside me when this time of year comes around; there’s something deeply tragic and poetic and beautiful somehow, about the sunset of the year. The land grows cold; nature loses its luster, and the leaves of its youth fall away to reveal the twisted and withered branches within. Everything is laid bare; there is no more hiding for anything. No more illusions, no more masks, just stark and bitter reality. It’s a time of judgment when what is good and strong in nature shall remain steadfast through the coming trials, and all that is weak or impure passes away. The world seems to slow to a crawl, and everything trembles in anticipation of the coming darkness, a cold, sharp darkness in which a thing—if it doesn’t perish—emerges stronger and sharper than before. It’s all very symbolic. I think it would be cool if Christ returned just when winter is about to turn to spring, like how Aslan did in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
All this thinking I’ve done recently has led me to rethink the metaphor I have about life. I used to equate life to a road: you’re walking along it, and sometimes you might trip on an unseen rock or hole, only to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward. There are countless deviations from the path, and once you take one, the one you were just on becomes lost to you, impossible to return to.
But now I’m starting to think of life more like a river. The river is Time itself, and you are just a little speck on this huge river, holding onto your pathetic little log for dear life. At times the water seems to rush ahead at an alarming rate, crashing and careening and throwing you around until you’re beaten and senseless, and other times it seems to just flow gently and peacefully or even slow to an agonizing crawl. And yet you are not alone in the water; there are many other people flowing alongside you, sometimes they pass you by quickly and sometimes you rush past them. And sometimes you can get close enough to someone that you can converse with them and hitch your rafts together for a while. And someday you meet a very, very special person who, when the rapids of the river threaten to pull you apart, you grab hold of and pull onto your own raft so that you can never be separated again. That’s marriage.
Sometimes a storm comes over the river. This could result in many things, like crashing trees and branches falling into the water all around you, or of someone else’s raft being crushed to pieces and then they are lost in the waters. But whatever happens, when you’ve emerged living but shaken from the storm, you have all this debris around you, and you take it and build your raft up bigger, stronger, and more spacious than it was before. By surviving the trials of the storm you have gained more building supplies for your Life-raft and, by building it up, stand a better chance of surviving even more horrific storms with confidence, and you have more room on the boat to let others into it. This is like getting more confidence in your life and expanding your horizons so you can let more people into your life, let them get closer to you without being afraid.
Sadly, some people just can’t take the ride of life and feel like they have to stop and get out and take a break. For most people, when this happens, they just go onto the shore of the river and stand there, watching the waters pass them by. They would explore, but they are too afraid of leaving their raft for fear of never finding it again and not being able to get back in the water when they want to. Yet others, tragically, cannot take the ride at all and simply abandon their rafts in favor of the water’s icy embrace.
For those people that weather the choppy ride and survive the storms, eventually, in the fullness of time, their rafts will have grown into mighty ships and unconquerable vessels, patchwork galleons of mismatched memories and experiences: experiences of love gained and love lost, and love made invincible by the passage of time; of church outings and school plays; of vicious arguments between friends, and the reconciliation of such arguments, performed with such bursting floods of love that they were almost glad that they had sinned against each other; of sharpest pain and deepest joy as words cannot describe. These mighty vessels sail on, uninhibited by the crashing waves. However, not even the biggest and strongest ship can sail on forever, nor can the grizzled navigator of such a prize continue on forever; there must be a stopping point, a place of rest and ease.
Some people find this place, the lucky ones—the lucky ones who know where to look. But most people end up just sailing on down the river; down and down until the ancient navigator collapses from weariness, and his boat breaks apart on the rocks and lets loose its master into the cold depths, alone. But the lucky people, the people that knew where to look—they knew something that those others didn’t. They knew that all along it wasn’t they who decided where their boats would sail, or whose boat would crash and sink and whose would flourish. For they had seen glimpses of that power which had wrought the river’s winding course from the beginning, the entity behind the very motion of the waves which tossed them to and fro. The very same God who had let loose the storms’ vengeance upon the hapless mariners, and who decided which of these souls would emerge from the maelstrom unscathed. He had revealed himself to them not in times of thunder and lightning, or of crashing waves; He made himself known in the softness of a warm summer breeze and in the chilly caress of moonlight on a sorrowful winter’s night. He had made himself known in the silent moments when thoughts are soft and hearts are open. And yet only those hearts that were open, rent open from the blades of life’s joys and sorrows and purged—only the hearts of those souls which were at their lowest, humblest, and most willing—only they could hear His still, small voice in the silence. And henceforth they were unafraid, for they knew that a power stronger, deadlier, wiser, and lovelier than anything their feeble minds could comprehend was watching over them. They gave control of the wheel into the hands of God—those perfect, firm, unyielding, faultless hands—and their lives were blessed.
And so, at the end of their long voyage, that still, small voice led them to a secret cove, on the shore of which He stood, waiting with open arms and tears on His face. And the lucky mariner stepped wearily out of his ship, and onto firm, hard ground. And, leaving the river of Time and the Life-boat behind, his loving Maker led him through the forests of Eternity into that place where shadows die and the past doesn’t matter anymore, a place of which not even the most gifted word-smiths could ever paint a picture of. And there they lived for the rest of Eternity in quiet peace, far away from the chaotic calamities of the river of time.
We need to start trying to sit back in those silent moments and quiet our hearts and minds and just listen for his still, small voice. Good night.

Divinus Silentium

2008-05-22T01:36:00.000-04:00

I am weary. I don't mean a physical or mental tiredness; what I feel is deeper in the depths of my being: I am soul-weary. It's as if a cancerous darkness has slowly seeped its way along the path of my life, entwined itself around my body and soaked in through my pores. It's down in my bones now, weighing me down.

I'm just tired, tired of everything. I'm tired of school and all the work and stress that come along with it; I'm tired of people and their caprices and vices and unfaithfulness and ignorance. I'm sick of all the noise and worry and rushing and meaningless chatter; it's like the babbling of monkeys, or the clanging of cymbals…just a harsh, clattering dissonance that deafens my heart and numbs my soul.

I was reading A Wizard of Earthsea today, and I was totally wrapped up in the author's beautifully simple yet elegant prose style, and every various appeal to the senses was so well done that I really felt like I was there. I think that's why I love writing: a good writer can seize the reader in an iron grip and swing him around in a rhetorical whirlwind of catharsis that leaves the reader breathless and entranced. It's like magic; the magic of words. But…I digress.

The powerfully evocative language of this book made my heart ache for a simpler way of living. I feel like I would be totally happy just leaving everything behind, running off into the forest and becoming an isolated mystic, communing with nature and God with no external distractions like money, cars, McDonald's, or the internet. I'm not sure if I would—or could—get lonely for people when I'm just enjoying God's presence and appreciating and living in the midst of His glorious Creation.

Above all else, I think, I yearn for silence. Not just physical, external silence, but a deep inner silence that runs through my heart, mind, and soul, when I would be completely open and vulnerable to God and be able to hear the whispers of His truth coming at me from all sides through his Creation. I love the silence of a heavy forest snowfall in winter, when the wind is completely calm and all is still; it's like the world is asleep, and God is tucking it all in with a blanket of soft, icy splendor. The snowflakes would just be floating down together, slowly and gracefully, like wandering drops of crystal starlight finally coming to rest. And all throughout this massive exodus of heavenly wonder everything is completely, solemnly silent.

I also love the silence of a summer morning, when the ground is covered in silvery dewdrops, and the air is cool and fresh and smells like damp earth and apple blossoms. Then the sun comes up and illuminates everything—from horizon to horizon—bathing everything in liquid gold, and the dew blazes like starlight and everything is made clear, even the wispy gossamer threads of a spider's web. At that moment I experience such a catharsis, such a purging of my heart and mind that I feel at one with God; I feel the heartbeat of His Creation, and it is one with my own.

It's as if the world holds its breath in awe at this special event which mankind brushes off as a simple annoyance in its frenetic quest for meaning and purpose. I really think man might discover more truth just by stopping, falling silent, and observing and listening to the world around him than by reading self-help books, attending seminars, and shelling out his life savings to attend step-by-step courses about how to bring fullness and joy to his life.

Honestly, it's in these moments of silence and solitude that I feel the happiest, the most peaceful and complete. The good feelings I get when I get a good grade on a test, or when I just ate a really good meal don't even compare; those are just temporary things. I just wish that I could make people understand how this feels. I wish I could make them understand with words how weary I am of all this struggling, all this turmoil and noise and movement. It's like mankind is traveling as fast as he can through this life in hope of…in hope of what? I really don't get it. Even Christians seem to be careening through life at breakneck speeds in their quest for Heaven. Yes, the world is fallen; however, that doesn't change the fact that God created it. For all the evils of the world, there is always a kernel of good, a speck of something truly beautiful and lovely: the mark of an omnipotent and benevolent Creator. Sure, we need to strive for Heaven, but I don't think that means we aren't supposed to take delight in the world He put us in. I just want silence and stillness. Is that too much to ask?

(P.S.--the blog title is latin for "divine silence"....or at least I'm pretty sure it is)