Point Taken

Part of this post is about feedback so, first, to the 2-3 people who take time to read my posts...HI! And thank you. It's nice to hear feedback. One friend recently pointed out that my last few posts have been deviating from the my other posts and have been more emotional and just a little crazed. (My words, not my friends). So, to return to my initial goal: create a blog that shares with others what I learn about writing. I've been putting pressure on myself lately to write every day and that pressure has actually been driving me crazy. I mean, I feel like I'm standing too close to everything and that I'm writing without a purpose. It won't be fun to write a ton of stuff for Guardians and then to have to delete large chunks because nothing ended up fitting. So it's time to return to my roots. When I first started writing Guardians two years ago (wow) I didn't do a lot of writing. I diagrammed, outlined, and just generally brainstormed. It wasn't formal outlining (though I did some of that) but rather me writing of bunch of plot ideas that quite frequently had a question mark after it. A few days ago I returned to that notebook. It was amazing to read whole passages that never made it into the first draft of Guardians as well as sentences that were in it verbatim. Looking at the notebook helped me to return to my roots and start to brainstorm for the first part of Guardians as well as develop later plot points. More than rejuvenating me though, the experience helped me realize how far I've come and how much I have learned since I started this process. This blog is proof :)

Desire Revisited...and a Look at Twizzlers

Like most people, I cry more than I'd like to admit and I never admit it when I do. But recently, as I've been trolling author's blogs, reading about new books being published, and basically just stalking the literary world, I've felt the tears curl into my eyelashes. While they aren't sad tears they are pretty annoying. Because let's face it we're taught that crying makes us look weak and that we shouldn't succumb to the emotions that flow out in salty tracks down our faces (couldn't resist getting poetic). In reality though, tears are indicative of strong emotions: sad, happy, or otherwise. The tears I've been crying recently fall into the otherwise category.
Last year I wrote a post about the power of desire and how it's the driving force behind anything we do. I wrote about the shortcomings of desire and the need to actually DO something instead of just wanting it. Now though, think about how overwhelming and almost paralyzing desire can be. Think about how scary it is to accept the possibility of failure and realize just how hard it will be to achieve your dream. Still, this desire is a good thing. My tears let me know that I haven't lost my love of writing and that I haven't become a dried up shell. Writing is still important to me and I hop it always will be.
Enter twizzlers. (Spell check wants me to write twirlers. What if there was an evil regime called the Twirlers They could suffocate their victims with ribbons made of steal. Maybe the heroes are people who can freeze time and stop the Twirlers. Think about it.) For a few days I've been getting all these great new ideas and I've been worrying that I won't get back to working on Guardians. This is where twizzlers come in. I love twizzlers. For me, they are the ultimate candy, even better in some ways than chocolate. As I was eating one I remembered that someone had once told me that twizzlers tasted red. BAM! Oh hey inspiration thanks for coming back. Don't ask how but that idea that twizzlers tasted red not only sounded a bit like something Rafi would say, but helped me to enter a place in the story that I was trying to get to. And instead of just trying to start writing it, I was lucky enough to have events in my every day life to inspire me. 
To read the excerpt that my favorite red candy inspired go here

String Theory

I've been on a role lately so why stop writing? This blog I mean. And the endless papers that every college student gets at the end of the semester. And my stuff...? Not one word added to Guardians in a while, and nothing written for a week or so. So what will I talk about today? I think it's time to reveal some of the slightly inane, but still wonderful fragments of inspiration that I deem worthy enough to make it into my little blue notebook. At random flipping through the notebook this is what I have found.

It was at once perfectly descriptive and told nothing at all

If you were to trace my thoughts lines would sprout into hedgerows

I'm in a different book so I can be a different character

Everything was just slightly crooked. She wasn't whether that was a comment on her character or just the fact that she was lazy

She focused on the little things. Dinner tonight, errands she still had to run and the weather. Always the weather.

She's not moving. How can she with books strewn around her and the fog in her brain at least an inch thick?

These fine specimen are a rare breed of writing: stuff that I like and can't place. Normally I write lines I don't love but need to fit somewhere or on rare occasions I write that perfect line that fits neatly after the preceding one. These lines though, are ones that I like, that may spawn something at some point, but don't quite have a place right now.  Eventually they'll all get strung together to form a story. But for now, in the spirit of actually WRITING something instead of just posting, for you're reading pleasure here is something that I will write using one of the above lines.

It was at once perfectly descriptive and told nothing at all. Sure, it was just a street sign but Robin Road could mean any number of things. Well, Jason amended his thought, it could mean any number of things. For one thing, it was definitely a road. He could see the houses lining the pavement and kids playing whiffle ball in the cul-de-sac at the end. But Robin? Why Robin Road? Bluejay Avenue was much more creative. Or Cardinal Lane. Robin Road felt a bit too generic to him.

So that's the beginning of something. I'm not quite sure what though. Obviously there's some quiet suburban life to destroy but how? Right now I'm thinking birds that guard genie lamps. And Jason will find one of course. I haven't decided whether or not the birds are going to like that yet. They will talk though. The birds I mean. They have to in a fantasy story. I mean come on. Did you really think that this would be a normal story? 

Follow Up

I often get into debates with my math/science friends with about the useful of my major (shocker it's English). The most recent quip I've heard it, "so basically you want to be unemployable." Great, fine, laugh. Let's ignore for a moment my Education minor and plan to become an English teacher. Let's also ignore the amount of hard work it's going to take and the amount of rejection I'm going to face, before I will hopefully be published one day. Instead, let's focus on what literature can give to the world. As I said in my last post, fantasy provides me with an escape. All literature does that. Literature reveals how humans think, how they react to each other and how they view the world at large. It helps us to work through social issues in the world and face injustices that may exist. Literature is an invaluable tool for sharing ideas and interacting with others because let's face it, not everything can be parsed down into 140 characters or less on Twitter. More than this though, it's the fact that literature is fiction that is so appealing. While this seems obvious, when I read fiction there are times when I get cynical. There is no way that some of the things that happen in books could happen in real life. (Even excluding books with unicorns or dragons) It's easy to look at fiction and feel disillusioned because there is no way in he** that some of the happy endings could happen. And yet we continue to read these books anyway. Why? Because we hope that one day maybe we'll have our own happy endings. And maybe things might not work out the way they do in books but if we make our own happy endings things will work out somehow. And maybe that sounds cliche. But maybe it doesn't matter. And even though I've used the word maybe too many times I think the point of this rambling post (why break tradition?) is that fiction has its place in the world and it might not cure cancer, but we need it anyway to give us hope while we're looking for the cure.

Fighting Reality with Fantasy

One of the reasons I love writing so much is that it gives me the ability to create my own world and be in control of a new reality. When life seems so chaotic it's nice to know that I can retreat, as I like to put it, into my own imagination. The reason I specifically like writing fantasy is that a) who doesn't love magic? and b) because it's a way to make even hard topics seem bearable. With fantasy you can get so caught up in the magic of the story that you can miss serious topics the first time around. One of the reasons I love to reread is to pick up on things that I missed the first time, especially the heavier themes. Any fantasy I've written so far though hasn't tackled anything super serious. Guardians talks about friendships and what it takes to make them work, not judging others, and reminding people that they don't have to have everything figured out. Those themes are things people think about on a regular basis and interact with every day of their lives and that's what hopefully makes my story relatable. This past weekend however I decided to tackle something a bit more challenging, though it still comes from my life. While this story still has magic in it and my voice is still the same, I hope that I've written something that help other people going through the same situation as I am. For a while I've wanted to write a piece about this topic but I've never known how to approach. Then I realized: why should I change my style just because I'm changing my subject matter? Now more than ever I should stick to what I love so that I can share this particular story. 
Look for the story Slight Movement in the new Short Stories tab!

Taking a Breather

Normally when I post I focus on the act of writing itself. I don't talk about anything else partially to limit the focus of my blog and partially because I hope that people who read this blog get to know me through my posts and my writing itself. Whatever the case may be I think that I need a break from tradition. I'm sitting in the same room where I finished the first draft of Guardians and where I wrote a large chunk of my research papers last year. Thinking about it, my body gets a visceral reaction: my stomach clenches, my chest tightens, and I can feel my breath getting shallower. I'm not here to write about my stress level though. As any college student knows, school is hard work, every assignment seems to come all at once, but everything always gets done. And I think this message, rather than any physical manifestations of stress, is the point of my post. 
More than the assurance that things will get done, I want to remind everyone that whatever we're doing, no matter how stressful, there is a point to it. As a person who is drawn to the Humanities my classes naturally have many papers that somehow seem to all be due at once. The thing is, as tough as it is to continually knock out five page papers, when I go back to reread them I remember that I actually like what I'm learning about. I chose to come to school for a reason: to do what I love. 
Writing creatively takes the same mentality in some ways as writing a paper does. It can be stressful, full of self-doubt, and nerve-wracking, but in the end it always gets done. More importantly however, I love to write fiction, even more than I enjoy finding that perfect quote or creating connections between two texts (I'm an English nerd I know). Yes sometimes things can get tough but in the end I love what I'm doing and I need to remember that every day.
As school goes into the final push and we enter finals I think that we all need to remember that we're working hard at whatever we're doing for a reason. There is an ultimate goal be it an outstanding education, a job in your desired field, or even to be able to one day see your books on the shelf of a bookstore. The point is that even though complaining is natural, pervasive, and even part of the college experience, it's not the end goal. We're here to achieve whatever our personal end goal is and eventually we will.
P.S. I have been doing some writing, check out the Guardians section for the newest excerpt!