11 posts tagged “writing”
1. Eldest children really do have it harder. Please pity me :) Birth-order studies always interest me, because I find they are fairly accurate when it comes to Patrick and me.
2. I'm going to enter a writing contest. Yeah! I entered about a year and a half ago but I felt the story I submitted was a dud. (I didn't win, obviously). I think I will enter two stories this year. I wrote one of them during my creative writing class last semester. My teacher gave it a good review; I don't think it's great, but it's not as bad as the one I submitted last time. I'm writing another story to enter. I think it has a good premise, I just have to do a lot of cleaning up. I've written maybe 25-50% of it. Writing short fiction is hard! You have to condense so much into a certain word count, make the plot interesting and engaging, and really make those characters jump off the page. I just have to make my character believable, since we don't have similar backgrounds and life experiences. I hope I succeed; there's nothing worse than reading stilted writing.
3. So today someone complimented by driving. I know, right? I was about ready to start laughing too. She's a coworker and it turns out she lives in the same apartment complex that I do, so she was following me in the parking lot. "Wow, I'm really impressed by how you actually use your signals," she said. "I don't see a lot of people here who do that, good job!" I'm surprised she was complimentary, because as I was driving, I was so sure that she would be cussing me out. In parking lots, I drive like an 80-year-old grandmother on Quaaludes (parking lots + parking garages = Jenny's worst enemies). But hey, I'll take any compliments I get :)
What's holding you back from your dream job?
Submitted by Question of the Day.
Laziness.
Okay, so I have a great job already. I'm an environmental engineer and I really enjoy what I do. I'm still new so I'm not saving the world or anything, but I am working on two neat projects right now. It's the best job I've had yet.
But, when we talk about dreams...I want to be a writer. Ever since I was seven or eight, I knew that I wanted to see my name in print. The only problem: mix up some general laziness and a fear of rejection, and you have a very stagnant writing career.
I didn't have this problem when I was younger. I was exceedingly confident that I was a good writer when I was little. My first book was in first grade and was called, Sara, Lost. It was a story about a girl who gets lost in the woods. It was really random-like in the middle of the story, Sara has a birthday party (?) But my teacher loved it.
When I was in middle school and high school, I got really excited about writing epics and thrillers. When I was twelve, my Texas History teacher discussed how the Vice President and President are protected by the Secret Service, and that if something happened to the President, the Vice President would take office. I raised my hand. "What if," I asked, "the Vice President got the Secret Service on his side and then plotted to take over the office?" "That's very devious," my teacher said. But I took it as a compliment and got to thinking. I had a great political thriller in the works. It would be about the evil Vice President trying to take over the office, and it would have a lot of intrigue, action, and the line, "Because you can't add apples and oranges!" (My advanced math teacher used that phrase to help us remember that we couldn't add fractions with different denominators. I thought it would work wonderfully in a dramatic context.)
I got as far as two paragraphs. You know how my riveting novel started? With the president arguing with the First Lady while their daughter played on the White House lawn. Clearly, I knew what it took to write a political thriller. I think I realized then that I was out of my league then and gave up.
Other novels I started in high school included one set in the Elizabethan times, one about the Irish Potato Famine (there was probably fourteen kids in the family for that story...I think I was just having fun thinking up Irish names), and a novel about the Titanic. I never finished any of them. The one I did finish was my sophomore year in high school. I wrote it during English class because I had a terrible teacher and I was bored all the time. It's definitely not publishable.
Over the years my confidence at my writing decreased. I still think I'm a decent writer, but it's hard for me to get the creative juices flowing like I did when I was younger without thinking, this is a really stupid story. Most of the writing I do is on here, so I suppose technically I do write every day. But I'm not going to give up. One day I will be published. I know I will because once I set my mind on getting something, it usually happens. It's just something I have to work hard on.
...for the next ten years, at least. Something tells me I will be a student again, someday in the long run.
My last class was really fun. My creative writing professor invited us to her home for spaghetti, wine, and a poetry reading. She had a really nice home. I envied her humongous bookcases teemed with books. Y'all, my dad may want me to get a flatscreen TV so that he can play XBox 360 whenever he visits, but my priorities will lie in my library.
Anyway, each student was required to give a reading of his works from the semester. I was pretty nervous about mine, because I'm very protective of my writing. I chose what I felt were my strongest pieces and read. I even resurrected a poem I'd written back in high school called "my brother is drowning." My brother detests that poem because I completely dramatized this incident about ten years ago, when we went swimming and he got tired and was going under the water. I called a lifeguard because Patrick was pulling me under with him and the whole ordeal lasted all of 45 seconds. I played it up for dramatic effect in my poem and it always shocked people (the last line is, "then, i had to let him go.") I revised it though, because it reeked of high school writing. So badly.
I really like writing humorous pieces, because they are the most fun. I read a poem about my sad, sad love of Oregon Trail II, and one about the hilarious conversations I'd had with my family after I told them I was moving out (I believe I posted the gist of them to the 'hood). I got a really big laugh out of the line, "I tell her that if I live with her until I get married, then I'd be living with her forever." That made me happy. It was a good experience.
Most of the class had pretty interesting pieces to read. I'm sure I'll be hearing from some of them in the future. One of the students had this interminable, depressing story about her dead grandparents. Every time I thought she was finished, she turned another page where there would be more writing, front and back. Meg and I avoided looking at each other. It was very hard not to burst out laughing.
I'm glad I took this course. Though I still have a lot to work on as a writer, I feel like it really bolstered my confidence. I'm going to meet with my professor and see if she can recommend journals for me to submit my poems to!
It hasn't hit me yet that this was my last class, but it was a really enjoyable one.
This morning, when I woke up, I had "Stuck In a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" in my head, which says something, as I usually hate that song (it's so slow and repetitive.) But I really feel like that song describes my situation right now. I'm in a rut. I don't have any motivation for anything, and even though I have a lot to be doing, I don't want to be doing it. Thank goodness I really have only a month left for school. I can't wait to go back to work. I thrive in a work environment. I'm so organized at work and I don't even procrastinate (yes, really!) I find that I procrastinate when I really, really do not like the work I'm doing, or I'm afraid of failure (which is dumb, right? But yes). Academia is not for me. Kudos to the people that do it. I have no interest. I'm just burned out. How people can stay for 5+ years for a PhD is beyond me.
The class I'm grading for is frustrating me for stupid reasons. I'm not even going to go into it because part of the problem is that I don't care anymore. I place a higher priority on the jobs I have to complete for the people who hired me, so I'm still helping the receptionist and cleaning the labs. I guess I'm doing a good job because my advisor keeps on telling me I'm doing great. I constantly feel like I'm not doing enough.
I'm not going to talk about this stuff anymore, because it's boring, and it's not like I'm the only burned out student out there. Like I told my brother last week, as he was describing similar symptoms, it's that time of the semester when nobody gives a shit anymore and just wants Thanksgiving break.
Writer's strike, eh? That's interesting. I want to see how it turns out. I think that they deserve more money, as they don't get the recognition they often deserve. I'm technically upset that new episodes of The Soup, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report aren't being produced, but it's been so long since I've watched them that it doesn't really make a difference.
This morning I wrote more for NaNoWriMo. It's a really fun idea, and why not try to get my novel pumped out? I'm writing a young adult novel about the perspective of three siblings (high school, middle school, and elementary-aged) whose parents are going through a divorce. No, it's not an original idea, but it's all about the presentation, right? And I'm writing outside my own experiences, because unlike the characters in my novel, my own parents have been very happily married for 24 years. I have 3100 words so far. You have to have 50,000 at the end of the month to "win" NaNoWriMo. If anyone is interested in signing up, you can friend me here.
In creative writing class on Thursday, the class was talking about their childhood experiences. It was so fun; we have some older students in the class, but it's really amusing to think about the 20-somethings saying things like "Kids don't play outside anymore." My teacher told us of her childhood, when she and her friend got kicked out of the Girl Scouts for selling cookies during Girl Scout meetings. She and her friend were so bitter that they gathered a group of girls for an anti-Girl Scouts club, where they had badges like "Tattoo," "Shoplifting," and "Arson." It made me wish I could write a whole book on that experience, except I'm not entirely sure of the legality of that. It also made me wish I wasn't such an ardent goody-goody when I was a child. At least I can make my characters mischievous.
I found this one site that is absolutely hilarious. This person pretty much hates/rants about everything and his rants are really funny. I'm guilty of some of the things he rants about (wearing red lipstick, placing a lot of links in my blog entries), but obviously if you are easily offended or don't like raunchy/politically incorrect humor, then don't read it.
Well, writing this out actually made me feel more motivated. I'm going to prepare for Wednesday, do some work, and then maybe head to Barnes and Noble. Have a great weekend, everyone.
Eff, how did this week go by so fast? Just last Friday was my field trip.
Today was, as my old roomie Rabia would say, "crazyness." This "grown-up" business is overrated sometimes. I didn't get a lot of sleep last night because I was so pumped for the week ahead of me. Just for a day, I would like to return to when I was eight or nine and could just read, play, eat lots of candy and get my brother hyper, and not have to worry graduation, jobs, and other boring matters. Eh, I have no reason to complain. As scary as this all is, at least it's exciting and strangely fun. I'm going to shut up now before I sound whiney.
Last night, I realized that I had to get a suit. I know it sounds weird that I did not consider this sooner, but in the city I grew up in, business casual = dressy. So this morning I woke up at 6:30, showered, dressed, and headed to Target right at 8. I picked up a suit, but it wasn't quite what I was going for, so I returned the jacket this afternoon in favor of a more traditional jacket. My suit is black, one of my favorite colors.
I somehow managed to write the three poems I needed for class tonight within two hours or so. My procrastination skills are so awesome. I wrote a terza rima (which was so, so awful), a tanka, and a haibun. I really liked the haibun, which I chose for workshop. I wrote it about Mt. Vesuvius. The voice in the poem is an adult me telling the younger me what to expect. Meg got a kick out of it, because apparently it reveals that, even as a child, I was OCD and safety conscious (when I visited, I was worried about the volcano erupting. I was nine; I can assure you that if I visit it now, this will not be a concern). To which I say: just because I am safety conscious does not mean that I won't take risks; I still want to go skydiving one day, if I build up the courage and find someone crazy enough to go with me. ANYWAY. The workshop was a success and I got some good feedback.
So now I am at home, trying to complete other chores. I am doing my laundry. Man, I wasted money and laundry soap because someone could not take two seconds and place a note saying "Out of Order" on a washing machine. I was not happy. I placed this note on the machine:
I doubt the RAs or any of the ~ladies~ are going to let that stay up, but we will see. Jenny: rebelling against small, meaningless rules since birth.
Man, I would like to return to swing dancing sometimes soon. Does anyone have a suggestion about yummy desserts I can eat while I'm waiting on this stupid injury to heal? I am such a sugar fiend, and since I can't run, I'd feel better consuming something healthy rather than loaded with sugar. Hypothetically, I was going to give up soda, but today I cracked. I think I'm going to give up jelly beans, too. I know. It's a sacrifice. I really want to start eating more natural foods. I know I say this about every six months and don't actually do it, but it's a nice thought.
So much to do this weekend. So much. This is the busiest semester I've ever had. Yay for F.E. exams and professional papers and directed studies work to do in two months. I'm awesome. I can do it.
I will open my post with some of this:
The last couple of days have been good. My poem was really well-received, which made me so glad. I mean, when English majors tell you that your poem is "great," you take that and run with it. I wrote more poems this past week than I have since high school. I finally found an idea I liked (swing dancing), and played with that. The workshop was really helpful and offered great feedback and critiques. The "worst" critique I received was someone who didn't like my title, but screw that, because I like it.
Went dancing Thursday night, and then I spent much of yesterday trying to get the labs organized. I like my new job. It's fun trying to get something organized and trying to figure out what to do with the hazardous waste the labs accumulate-perfect for the environmental engineer AND the OCDer in me. I am amazed how we still have chemicals in them from pre-1991. And is it so hard to label your chemicals when you had received/opened them?
I went shopping at Target. I spent about $20, which is still okay ($20 Friends DVDs are still out). They finally stocked up on The Office goodies, which I grabbed:
My back has still been bothering me periodically, so for the sake of my back, dancing, AND fashion, I broke down and bought these:
Those of you who know me IRL know that I never wear flats other than sandals. (I'm about 5'7" but I still have been obsessed with looking much taller since I was in high school.) Hence, I wear heels practically everywhere. It also doesn't help that my own heels-obsessed mother disparages the flats craze and refuses to wear them. But I know flats are in, and this is the first pair that does not make me look like I have clown feet. Reader, I bought them.
Last night, I went with some friends to the Rec to watch Surf's Up (a cute movie), and to eat some pizza. The weather was fantastic-we watched the movie by the outdoor pool. I have a feeling the weather is not going to be as nice today.
Well, there are a lot of items to check off my list today. And I still would like to walk to Barnes and Noble if my back feels better (in tennis shoes, of course). Have a great weekend, everyone.
Oh, and Happy 24th Anniversary to my parents!
Today was so beautiful. The weather was nice and cool, an anomaly for this time of year. I wish it will last, but something tells me that tomorrow is going to be humid and gross again.
I just got off the phone with my daddy. I talk to my mom every day (sometimes multiple times), but I don't get to talk to my dad every day. I decided that this must be remedied tonight, and we had a fun conversation.
Today I went to Target, and I spent not even six dollars. Or, as Meghan said, "I still can't believe you made it out of Target in 30 minutes and with only 1 bag." Yes. This is monumental.
I felt bad for getting paid as a TA when there wasn't a position available for me yet, so I emailed my advisors to see how I could be of help around the office. I am now a freelancer of sorts for the environmental engineering division. My first activities are: making sure the labs comply with the inspection results, redoing one of the group websites, and helping the receptionist out with odd jobs as needed. The website job will be fun; I used to mess around with HTML back when I was in high school. Even though my website then was laughingly amateur, my dad is a freelance web designer so...yeah, I can definitely ask him for advice when I get stuck. (Seriously, if you click on my brother's old website, you can see that he made a website that was better than mine...and he was in middle school.)
Today, filled with the zeal that only comes with being back to work, I asked the receptionist how I could help. She showed me a box full of old papers for me to shred. I started putting a page at a time in the shredder. The receptionist shook her head. "You can add a lot more paper than that," she said. "Just experiment with it." So things were going swimmingly for about thirty minutes, when one of my "experiments" jammed the shredder-badly. It wouldn't even go in reverse. I spent the next two hours trying (unsucessfully) to get all the paper out of it. By 6:30, with stiff fingers and a hungry tummy, I figured that there was no way I would get the shredder unjammed tonight (if, um, ever). These sort of things happen only to me. So much for an auspicious start.
I think it's time for me to go write my poem. Writing a post-modernist poem is even harder than writing a modernist one. I wasn't really happy with my poem last week, so I want to make this one better (especially since it's being workshopped). I suppose I could turn in complete gibberish for my poem, but I hate that form of poetry. This is an excerpt from a Pierre Joris poem we were given:
construaimo u-naaaaaaa I love to build on declensions
out of the east where the sun has entered the ass of
the bone monkey the squatting monkey hands out its
asshairs a rectum swallows it all back up ur-mouth
ur-fear sun-eater Schreber Herr Docktor father
father father tetanos bone money bone-setter
Seriously, how the fuck is that art? Pierre Joris might as well defecate on canvas and call that art, too.
I am off to watch The Office. My DVD is no longer scratched since I took it to Hastings today, which makes me happy. I need to rewatch the rest of the series before Season 4 starts. Yes, I am a huge nerd-shut up.
Happy Patriot's Day, everyone.
I really, really enjoyed my creative writing class. I think I am going to create good pieces in there. I shouldn't have been so worried about my classmates. I was neither the best nor worst writer in the group, which is good enough for me. While the talented writers stood out, the class overall is not something that is going to be over my head. Other people stood out in, um, different ways. One guy who looks like Stephen King wrote a story about how his cockatiel masturbates, and that he stops the cockatiel by spraying him with a Supersoaker. You can't make up stuff like this, guys.
So my awesome friend Megan got me this for my birthday:
So today I readded Wetland Ecology, since it turns out I won't be needed as the Surveying TA. Without going into details, the girl who originally couldn't be a TA now can. It's okay. I'm not upset since I was not familiar with the material. I still get to keep my job as a TA; I'm not sure what my new assignment is going to be.
Today I went to the mall. I didn't buy anything (I'm being good and responsible.) I was really looking forward to checking out the new Charlotte Russe store and Steve & Barry's, so that I can view Sarah Jessica Parker's line Bitten. I was disappointed with both. Charlotte Russe had way too many floral prints for my liking. It was full of too-trendy clothing that will be out of style in another month. Not even the sales rack could get me interested.
I've been reading for awhile how many fashion bloggers were disappointed with Bitten. I have to say that they were right. SJP prides her line on being affordable clothing for women. Well, yes, plain t-shirts shouldn't have to cost much. There isn't much diversity in the line. It's just some plain and striped t-shirts, and your basic jeans and capris. There was nothing I would be willing to pay for.
My friend Andres gave me a compliment today when he said that he has never met a girl who has a handshake like I do. Ha! I remember my Decathlon coach in high school wringing her hand and telling me to be gentler with my handshakes. I didn't take her advice, especially since some men I meet seem hellbent on crushing my hand.
I have no class tomorrow, yeep. And I get to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood tomorrow! Who's Line Is It Anyway alums FTW! Have a good Friday, y'all. In keeping with my promise with trying out new tag lines with this journal:
Keep kickin' it, yo.
This weekend was tax-free weekend. Ugh. I hate shopping around crowds. Not even finding Friends dvds for $20 was enough to get me into that long Target line. I'll wait until tomorrow, when all the suckers are at work.
This weekend was relaxing. I just spent time with everyone since (eek!) I have only a week left before I head to school! I made pancakes this morning. They were okay. They mostly looked like pancakes are supposed to, with only one or two (three) reject looking ones. My mom made hot chicken wings tonight, one of my favorite meals. But it was a quiet weekend, considering all that is going on over in Italy.
I have some goals I would like to accomplish this semester (y'all know that I love making goals.) They are as follows:
1. Have a completely relaxed semester and not get stressed out over the small things. This is easier said than done, but I do not want a repeat of last semester.
2. Be a better swing dancer. I didn't dance all summer, so I'm going to make up for it this semester.
3. Get a piece published. More on this in a minute.
4. Be a more fluent Italian speaker. More on this in a minute.
5. Save money. I do not want to empty my savings on my shopping whims.
6. Find a job for after graduation. Probably the most pressing item on this list.
My mother brought up a scary idea-God forbid something should happen to her, who will be the voice of communication for my family in Italy? Neither my father nor brother speak Italian; it would be up to me. I understand it and can speak a little, just not enough.
As for writing-I'm turning off my internal editor and I'm just going to write. I have several projects in the works that may/may not be promising. I hope my creative writing course this semester will help me. I'm not afraid of rejection if that's what it takes to get into the business. I already have several rejection letters from my writing ventures in my teens-unfortunately, I was writing really terrible stories (I'm not kidding-they were awful) and sending them to more prestigious magazines. Yikes! I hope the editors were able to discern how young I was. And I hope my internal editor is much more finely tuned at this age!
I watched Dead Poet's Society a couple of days ago. It was a really good movie, I enjoyed it. The final scene kind of had me choking up; but I didn't cry since I was watching the movie with my dad and brother, and didn't want to cry in front of them. I'm glad I was by myself when I watched Million Dollar Baby. I don't think any movie has made me cry like that one.
I hope this hurricane peters out. I guess we'll see.
Well, I'm going to go. Ta-ta.
Today I read this article about a new clue in the Amelia Earhart mystery, and the seven-year old inside of me squealed with delight. I was obsessed with her at that age. I read every book on her, watched the Unsolved Mysteries segment about her, and spent time trying to convince my second-grade teacher that since they interviewed people on the segment who reported seeing her alive as a captive on an island, then it must be true. I was a strange child.
Today was productive. I exercised, spent time working on a major project, and headed to Barnes and Noble. I was longing for the walk, since today was gorgeous. I wanted to buy a book on writing. Back in my creative writing course I took in high school, we had to write every day. It was magnificent. I wanted to buy a book that would mimic the everyday prompts we were given in class. That's the ultimate laziness, right? But some of the best stuff I've written comes from those days. I've learned that it's best to start small, so I ignored all the books that dealt with publishing novels, and avoided the cutesy creative books with prompts like, "Do you remember this (fill-in-the blank) from your childhood?" Because seriously, I talk about my childhood all the time on here, I don't need to be prompted to. I then found the perfect book:
I can't believe tomorrow is April. Shee. Which means that, combined with the fall semester, I will have five months of school left EVER (well, for now at least). Fantastic.
