You.

You are beautiful. And talented. And incredible. Very, very incredible.

I am so proud of you.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you, be surrounded by your energy, read your words, hear you story.

You are all amazing.
with gratitude,
your TA,
indigo

Yay

Yay for the last group meeting on Tuesday...I wonder what everyone's project is going to be like? I'm still stumped, but I'm brainstorming...I only have one more weekend to pull it all together.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday!

Cristina

Warning: Grumpiness ahead (Or: a desperate cry for cheering-up help!)

Note to self: warn all Mills friends and acquaintances not to take Video I in the same semester they are writing their theses!!! Ridiculous classes that take hours and hours and hours of precious time getting frustrated with ridiculously complicated computer software are not good things to involve oneself in when one needs that precious time to WRITE. Especially when one has no plans whatsoever to do anything remotely related to that stupid video technology later in life. Stupid minor requirements...grrrr....

Okay...cool your jets, Kelsey...

I'm starting to get worried. I haven't worked on my thesis at all this week, and I still only have 20 pages. I did have reasoning behind that, to a certain extent, other than the fact that this stupid video class is owning my life... (1) I'm stalling a little bit until I get everyone's feedback on Tuesday (IF we even get to me on Tuesday, seeing as how I'm dead last, my own stupid fault), (2) I have every intention to do some hardcore writing while at home for thanksgiving, where I'll able to focus, and won't have access to that stupid video software and therefore won't have to worry about that. I don't doubt that the thesis will get done on time....I know it will, although I wish I still had a lot more time to work on it. But I'm really excited about what the next few weeks hold for us as a group...especially that party at Elmaz's!

And I can't wait to meet Brewster!!!!

So I guess at this point, since I'm too tired and frustrated to have anything very enlightening to say, I will throw out this question to you... What keeps you going when you get worn out, frustrated, fried, and totally unmotivated? How do you push through the fatigue and the stress and the just wanting to quit? When it just gets you down, how do you get back up?

Really....I want to know! Maybe I'll go make some cookies to cheer myself up...or watch an episode of NCIS before I do my econ homework (which is the other thing I'm hating right about now). Bleh...

Sorry guys...didn't mean for this to be such a gloom and doom blog post. I didn't know what I was going to write about this week, so I decided to just go at it blindly and see what would happen. And now we can all tell what a fantastic mood I'm in right now!

However, I'll be better by Tuesday, I promise! I love reading y'alls writing...that's what gets me going!

Reading

The reading was interesting. There were certainly a lot of different styles and different people with those different styles, and it was my first time doing anything like that, really, so it was an experience, to say the least.

On another note...

Don't you hate it when you're drinking hot tea, but it's not really hot at all and in fact it's so cooled down that it's actually quite cold, but you don't realize that before you drink it, and then you do drink it and it's disgusting so you spit it out and accidentally get it all over yourself?

Yeah, just happened to me.

CAN YOU GUYS BELIEVE OUR THESES ARE ALMOST OVER?!

Unbelievable.

Cristina

Soundtrack

-Not sure what our official assignment is for this week. There might have been one, but I can't remember. Well, I'm behind one so I thought I'd steal another group's blog idea for last week.

Now, I don't really listen to music while I work. I can't usually listen to music without dancing. I also am spacey enough without distraction. However, I am a huge music fan and it inspires me a lot. So here are some song that inspire me with ideas. At least for now.

"Green Onions" by Booker T. and the M.G.'s (This song inspired an entire story!)

"Reverie" and "Pagodes" by Claude Debussy

"Gnossienne No. 5" by Erik Satie

Talking Heads' album "Remain in Light" and also their album "True Stories"

R.E.M.'s album "Automatic for the People"

"Get up offa that thing" by James Brown

"Respect" by Otis Redding

"Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafonte

Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker

"Crying" Roy Orbidson

"Wouldn't it be nice" by The Beach Boys

"Everyday" by Buddy Holly

I've recently been obsessing over musicals like Oklahoma!, Top Hat, Singing in the Rain, and Wizard of Oz. Also over Bollywood musicals like Pakeezah, Om Shanti Om, Dilwale Duljania Le Jayenge, etc. I like songs that come with dances.

Everything by The Beatles

Pretty much everything composed by Arvo Pärt and everything by Radiohead

and Björk who was my first love!

Here's something else that inspires me:

my soundtrack...the UN narrowed down version. sorry El

the songs listed are songs that will be in the soundtracks. LOL. I plan on breaking my story into at least two books if not three. These songs would be the songs played in the film of these said books if I adapt them into movies. Some of the songs are ones I listened to while I wrote, but most of them remind me of scenes in my story (some of which I have submitted or am going to submit to the class this semester) or of characters in my story. If/when I narrow down the list it will be to have less/no repetition of musical artists.


Tom's Diner by Suzanna Vega & Art of Noise

Saga by Basement Jaxx feat. Santigold

Come Back When You Can by Barcelona

This Is Not The End by The Bravery

True Believer by Dragonette

I Just Died In Your Arms by Amerie

Stupid Grin by Dragonette

Runnin by The Pharcyde

I Get Crazy by Nikki Minaji

I Can Transform Ya by Chris Brown feat Swizz Beats and Lil WAyne

Creator by Santigold

Baddest Bitch by Nikki Minaji

Passing Me By by The Pharcyde

Morenamia by Miguel Bose feat Julieta Venegas

All The World by Fauxliage

Enjoy The Silence by Anberlin

Pony/ Love Save The Empty by Erin McCarley

That Girl/ I Drive Alone/ Fastlane by Esthero

Sunday Morning by No Doubt

Never Again by Kelly Clarkson

Cosmic Getaway by Electrasy

Com As You Were by The Bird and The Bee

My Own Worst Enemy by Lit

Aways Strapped by Birdman

No Hay Nadie Como Tu by Calle 13

Dont Look Back by Telepopmusik

Fantasy by Timbaland feat Money

Tell It To The Sky by Tracy Bonham

You Wouldn't Like Me/ I Wont Be Left by Tegan and Sara

Whether You Fall by Tracy Bonham

Naked by TRacy Bonham

Instantly Gratified by People In Planes

Copasetic by Local H

Ashes to Ashes by David Bowie

The Fear by Lily Allen

Burning by Whitest Boy Alive

In The Dark by Dj Tiesto

Hawaii by Meiko

Now I'm That Bitch by Livvi Franc

Girl And The Sea by The Presets

Ignorance by Paramore

When You're Gone by The Cranberries

Beauty In The Dark by Mads Langer

Fight Song by The Republic Tigers

Most Beautiful Plague by Say Anything

I Belong To You by Lenny Kravitz

Brightest Hour by The Submarines

Mouthwash by Kate Nash

Plastic Jungle by Mike Snow

Makeup Blog -What I see in a book...

Here's the blog I was supposed to write for last week, but didn't because I am a forgetful loser.

I like writing that teaches me how to write and also something I can relate to:

"In July my father went to take the waters and left me, with my mother and elder brother, a prey to the blinding white heat of the summer days. Dizzy with light, we dipped into the enormous book of holidays, its pages blazing with sunshine and scented with the sweet melting pulp of golden pears" (The Street of the Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, 25.)

When I first read this it changed my life. It changed my writing. Nothing was ever the same again. That's Schulz's first paragraph of that story. Sucks you right in. He writes about color and smell like I could only dream of. I also like his writing because I feel like I can relate to him, both culturally and personally. He was a pale, bookish guy who kept to himself and he was a Polish Jew. I'm Jewish and my family is from that part of the world, so I feel like I really understand his cultural perspective. He unfortunately didn't get a chance to write much. While in a ghetto he was shot by a S.S. officer. Supposedly he was working on a manuscript called The Messiah, but it was lost.

Something that blows my mind, opens my doors:

e.e. cummings' "pity this busy monster manunkind" poem (look it up, it's great!)

When I first read this poem I was blown away. Both by the content and the writing, but especially the latter. e.e. cumming's taught me that it's okay to break the rules. He breaks the rules and does it WELL.

Something that shows truth:

Colors magazine, issue #20 Beijing you can see some of it here:

http://www.colorsmagazine.com/issues/70/index.php

This was another life-changing experience for me. All it is is photos of various people and things from Beijing and little monologues of the people in them. Reading it was like walking down the streets of Beijing and talking to whoever you ran into. The photography, the writing has influenced me so much! The first time I read it was two summers ago or so and I still pick it up and flip through it. Every time is like a new time. I strive for the same kind of realism in my writing.

Underground by Haruki Murakami

Murakami was interested in individual accounts of what happened during the Sarin Gas Attacks on the Tokyo subways in 1995. After an agonizing search, Murakami triumphed and was able to transcribe the first hand accounts of victims and even members Aum Shinrikyo cult. How Murakami writes the accounts is amazing. It is like true voice but in writing. I really admire this. I also admire how Murakami turns the sterile statistics of a newspaper into a tangible reality for the reader. I WANT to do that so badly. Also, it was a real challenge to get this done in the first place. Japan, as a whole, has a very unique behavior towards victims of disasters, etc. they usually keep to themselves and do not want to talk about it, sometimes they are even ostracized. So, yet again another complex cultural perspective that you don't see done so well that often.

Tokyo a certain style by Tsuzuki

I've already gone on and on about this one in class, but now you can actually look at it for yourselves:

http://books.google.com/books?id=wB8UKJuGw_gC&dq=tokyo+a+certain+style&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=-ecAS4WIPIHesgP5jvC9DA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

It's not just the pictures for me (even though those are a huge part of it for me) I also love the brief yet extremely evocative little tidbits the photographer gives you about the person who lives in the apartment and about what's in the photograph. It's usually barely a sentence yet it is just so PERFECT! Gah!

Soundtrack

The unofficial soundtrack to my story thus far is as follows:

Jay Chou: Secret (entire album)

Kwon Bo Yong: My Wish

Paramore: Decode

Loveholic: Crazy

Cecil Brooks III: I'm a Fool to Want You

Dido: Thank You

Flyleaf: So I Thought

Meg & Dia: Roses

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: Cat and Mouse

Sugizo: Synchronicity

30 Seconds to Mars: The Kill

These were the songs I listened to most while I was compiling my work. The beats helped me visualize actions and exchanges, and even helped bring out appropriate emotions for my characters while I was writing.

Thanks to the talented artists out there who inspired me!

Cristina

Holy Cannoli, I'm on time.

I'm not sure what the blog is supposed to be about this week so I'm just writing about whatever I want, which is to say, my thesis.

I think that it's definitely coming together in a way that no other collection of mine has done. Although I'm still having issues articulating the thread of my collection of work I think that it's there and that it will reveal itself to me as I continue to work on it. I feel like every poem is a step closer to the revelation of some grander meaning, like every piece rounds out the collection as a whole so that each part is a commentary on the whole.

At the moment I think the whole thing is best articulated as a collection of pieces that deal with perception, and specifically on moments in life (my life) that have shifted my point of view of the operations in the world.

I think that's the most concise way to put it. I've been talking to people outside of Mills and outside of academia about it and that's really the best way to explain it. However, I found that it's also useful to describe my influences, which I made up retroactively. Kind of. I think that Beth Lisick and Miranda July influenced my work because of the following two reasons:
1) I was reading/ went a reading of their work in the time that I was developing and writing my thesis

2) I think that the way that they deal with the day to day is really interesting. Mundane things become evocative. There are interesting and even twisted views of their lives that are hilarious, terrifying, and beautiful. I like that. I want to do that.

Bonus Reason) They're both from the Bay Area and I really like to rep that.

The major issue in my thesis at the moment is mainly: having the time to do it! and the conspicuous lack of sex. If I was doing a deconstructive criticism of this thesis I would say: Why is there no sex? Is she intentionally avoiding sex? The answer is Yes, I was.

I think the idea was that I could just create a piece of work about my shifting perspectives on the world without being bogged down by the topic of sex. I think that I succeeded to a point. I think that by leaving sex out, I also left out a bunch of relationship poetry without leaving out romance. I didn't want to write about relationships or emotional others because I didn't want to go on about it forever as I tend to do when I get on to that facet. In other words, I didn't want to get stuck on poems about how much I loved or hate my ex-boyfriend. Still, I think that I touch on romance in my work and I tried to do it in such a way that it was the kind of romance that is not specific to me.

I don't really know how to bring the sex in, but I think that it will work it's way in if I keep writing. We shall see.

when I read

I love twists. I like when I'm reading a fictional action novel and there's a romance amidst the blood and horror and endless list of supernatural creatures that amaze me. A FEW books I've been able to reread over and over again. stargirl by jerry spinelli, demon in my view by amelia atwater-rhodes, the alchemist by paulo coelho, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the things they carried by tim o'brien, Kushiel's legacy, American Gods and Good Omens by Neil Gaiman, Hold Still by Nina LaCour, Confessions of a Teenage Vampire by Terry M. West and Steve Ellis . I like when I read a book and can tell that the author did research to back up his fictional claims. I love reading something that moves me by the way it is written as well as by what it is saying as I read it. I love pulling out quotes that move me while I read a novel, be the quote funny or serious. I love reading about characters that seem real, not in a physical sense but in personality. I like reading and believing that the conversations or how the conversations are carried out could actually happen and that a person or creature would actually act like that. I was just talking to a friend of mine about films I enjoy the most being the ones where the characters are most believable. I love reading a book and dreaming about it later, wishing my life could just be placed into the center of the story so that I can get a better view of what's going on and be a part of the plot. So ... I'm going to stop rambling and leave it at that. If I remember something more I'm sure I'll blog again ;)

Tell me something good

I spent most of my day on Saturday thinking about who is my favorite author. Just kidding I only spent about five minutes. What I decided was that I don't have a favorite author. However the qualifications, or rubric, that I was judging these people on pretty much determines what I thought was "good" writing.

Over the last few years I've really got into reading series books, and I think that's because I fall in love with style. I read a bunch of Salinger toward the end of high school and he beginning of college, I think this is because Salinger has a very distinct voice. You can always tell when you're reading Salinger, his lines direct your reading. When lines are long it's meant to emphasize the short lines. But I've already discussed Salinger, we know I'm a fan.

So, the next series I read and liked a whole lot was the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Why did I like that? I think mostly because it took a very strange look at something I thought I knew very well, organized religion. The story was told from the point of view of a child which I don't usually like because kids tend to irritate me (I'm sorry but it's true). However, I think that the form fit it's function because I understood that I should be discovering the multi-verse with wonder and curiosity not strange twisted desire. If you have read the series the previous sentence made sense to you.

I guess mostly I think writing is good when I can see the mechanics of it working for the betterment of the piece. The form and the rhetoric come together in such a way that the craft and skill of the author are apparent but not so much that it's pretentious. The author is trying to tell me something about the life they experience, and make it sound awesome also.

Lupe Martinez

Looking Looking Looking...

What I look for in a good piece of writing are the same things that inspire me. I need intensity, adventure and a message that speaks to the greater good. I love stories that are on an epic scale because stories that are about someone making a huge difference or fighting to make the difference really speak to me. I like stories that have a much grander underlying story to them. When you read about a character who is faced with tremendous odds and responsibility are easy for me to get attached to and really root for.

I also like stores that have beautiful descriptions of the scene and setting. Oddly enough, that's what I'm currently struggling with the most in my novel to perfect. I really love reading about different places, expecially when the descriptions are vivid and visceral so you can completely imagine it in your head.

intersection of land and violenc

I don't think I ever read and set out to find something in that reading; I just read and allow myself to discover whats there and if it inspires me, then I read and reread like a banshee.

I keep re-reading Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country because he makes the land of South Africa into an achingly beautiful character that slowly erodes from page one. For me, the land is more important than anything else (without it, how can anything else be? even the interactions between people occur? and yes, the slander hippy applies to me), and I'm trying to learn how to write the land into a presence that isn't cheesy, especially as the story that I'm working on exists upon and within the earth.

For similar reasons, I've reread Blood Meridian twice, but the violence keeps me from rereading it again, though I keep turning back to Cormac MacCarthy (I read The Road eight times in two weeks and if I could tell you why, then I'd've begun this blog with that) to learn how to be ruthless with language and judicious with violence (with all my problems with Blood Meridian's violence, none of them are because its gratuitous: its the reality of the US-Mex border) because the subjects that I'm obsessed with are ultimately integrated with the land and defined by violence.

Take a Look, It's in a Book

Couldn't resist throwing in another pretty Catalina picture - this one's on the boat and that's the island way out there! Okay, done with my tangent now... on to the real point of this post!

When I was younger, some of my favorite books to read were those good ol' Nancy Drew mysteries, and there was one big reason why. Every book used the same technique to leave you dangling at the end of each chapter, on the edge of your seat in suspense, unable to put the book down because you have to find out if your heroes make it out alive. The chapters all end something like this:

* Nancy rounded the corner to find herself face to face with [insert name of bad guy], and he was pointing a gun straight at her head!

* They burst into the room and gasped in horror. Dr. Drew was gone!

* Nancy, Bess, and George bolted toward the exit, only to find that the door was locked. They were trapped!

Exclamation points and all, these last lines help the books accomplish what all good writing should: they make you want to keep reading. That's what I look for when I read: suspense. Not necessarily oh-my-gosh-the-bad-guy's-about-to-chop-my-head-off-what-will-I-do suspense, but the kind of suspense that comes from not knowing what's coming, and makes you desperate to get to the next page and see what happens. I don't so much enjoy books that are bogged down with back story or paragraphs-long chunks of a character's thought process. I like action and dialogue and adventure. I also like catchy beginnings - I've learned that every story should have a good 'hook' so you're drawn in immediately - and I don't have any good examples of this that come right to mind, but I love to open the book, read the first sentence, and go, "Whoa!" I also love books that can make me laugh, where the humor is woven into the narrative and the characters so it's not blatantly obvious that the writer's trying to make jokes.

How ironic is it that the things I like best in the books I read are the things I have the hardest time writing myself?

Other things I like in books: sensory detail, believable interactions between families and friends, characters who change for the better, beautiful settings, characters who help each other, clear, snappy language, well-crafted dialogue, descriptions of people, unique/quirky characters, rescues, reunions, epiphanies, dangerous missions, nail-biting climaxes, problem-solving, heroes and heroines, journeys, changes of heart, growing up, mending relationships, secrets, hidden pasts, quests, humor, joy, relief, writing that makes you feel as though you're right there in the story and you forget about everyone and everything around you, likable characters, animals, plot twists, happily ever afters.

Good Writing

A good piece of writing to me is something that captures my attention. I have read "good" pieces of literature that I find so, so, so boring. Though to the rest of the world thinks a book is a piece of art, it won't be in my library.

When I read, I look for well rounded characters. If the characters aren't dynamic or interesting enough, then the book is lost to me. I like to be able to fall in love with characters when I read, and when I can't do that, my interest wanes.

Also, if the author cannot coherently explain him/herself (i.e., the book is just too damn hard to read), the book is lost to me in that case, too. Basically, I just like to know what's going on.

The works that inspire me are works that have distinct narrative voices, works that tell a story in a comprehensible fashion, and works that have characters in whom I can become emotionally invested. It always helps when there's a scene or two to which I can relate (it makes the whole "emotional investment" aspect of reading that much stronger), but that's not always necessary.

Few books have made me cry, but those are the books that I treasure.

Cristina

A Thesis In Pictures

"Dana's" Condo (actually the condo my family always stays in, belonged to my grandparents
Avalon Harbor, with the Casino (no gambling involved)
All the condos on the hill overlooking the ocean - this is Dana's "neighborhood"
Front Street (the shops are all facing the ocean)
Best. Bookstore. Ever.
Corner Drugstore (the funny thing is, I'd forgotten that the drugstore and the bookstore were actually right next door to each other, which works nicely for my story!)

when you read, what do you look for in a piece of writing?

when you read, what do you look for in a piece of writing?

Fiction and non fiction

• Surprises. (plot twists, turns of phrase, slang, rhythms, jargon, cadence, dialogue, description. (Dawn Powell. Zora Neale Hurston. Penelope Fitzgerald. Peter De Vries. Edwige Danticat. Charlaine Harris.)
• Fluid grammar (Jamaica Kincaid. Tim Winton. Flannery O'Connor. Roberto Bolaño. )
• Or, if not fluid, distinctive. (Henry James. Hemingway.)
• Strong moods (The Long Goodbye. The Bell Jar. The Bible. Sula. Woman Warrior. The Ripley novels. Rebecca. Bubbeh. Jude The Obscure.)
• Beauty —wow, what does that mean, Gigi? Craft inextricable from mood, emotion and statement. Something mysterious, like the overtones generated by a perfectly pitched chorus. Something transcending the combined powers of author and reader.

Plays

(if it differs across genres, do tell)

• Revelation (ways the writer reveals info - plot or character info)
• Tension (Can't tell what's coming next. When it comes, you can't tell where it will lead)
• Pace
• Surprise

and what kind of writing inspires you.

Funny, witty, pessimistic, stylish, careful, crafty, splashy essays about clothing, couture, about odd things, like how Maria Callas lost her voice, and how this was interpreted or sold to the public. Cultural critique, I guess...

Novels no longer inspire me to write. They inspire me to obeisance.

Thread (or OMG catching up on blogs pt 2)

I think the overall thread of my thesis has to do with perception. That is, my perception of my place in the world and how far I’ve come since I left my family. When I say “how far I’ve come” I don’t really mean geographically but more how my world has shifted as I’ve taken on more and more responsibility. I guess it’s sort of like my transition into a adulthood, or what should be adult hood. The last collection of poetry I wrote had to do with my transition to a non-sexual child, to a teen losing her virginity, to romantic escapades as an adult, and really a lot of my work in the past has skirted around being in love and all that comes a long with that. I do sort of address romance in this collection but I have tried to stay away from that topic in this collection. The only work that is really overtly sexual is “Spawning” which isn’t really meant to be sexual. It’s mean to be gross. That is, gross in that there is no real emotion attached to spawning, it’s just physical pleasure, the body, etc; and not in a positive way.
My focus has been mostly on the thoughts in my head that I don’t really want to reveal to anyone, not even to myself. That is the things that I would be embarrassed to admit. One might say this is an airing of my flaws, but not my insecurities per-se. More like my arrogance, and the fact that I rush through things, my mistakes, all of the things that we would rather not talk about and forget. Furthermore, I’ve focused around my family more than I ever have before in my work. Although I have mentioned them in some work previous, before this year I really didn’t want to show any of that to the world. I’m not exactly sure I do now which makes the process of writing about them slow going, but I may just give them all fake names and say I made it all up no matter how similar to my life it may actually be.

Lupe Martinez

inspiration (omg catching up on blogs pt. 1)

What inspires me?

The thing that continues to inspire me is the city of Oakland and the community therein. Not specifically the Mills community but rather the city as a whole. It’s not like my writing focuses on Oakland as a main topic, or even my experiences specifically in Oakland, it’s more like what the city brings out in me. It’s the thoughts that come to me while walking down the street which I then need to write down immediately. Or it’s the smells and sounds that trigger memories of being a kid. I think that most of my work might be posturing, that is posing. Most of my poems are reflections on how far I’ve come from when I started becoming self aware. I think I try to show this in the small instances where I discuss children. Sometimes it’s me, and sometimes it’s me chilling with a little kid and trying to understand the world. That is, my world. Not the whole world, that would be crazy and impossible.
But I digress.
I think in this last year, more than any other year in my life, I have met a lot of people who have changed my view of things. Philosophically speaking, these people have influenced my very perception, not always in ways that they themselves were aware of. I think that’s what I want to capture, how people have changed me without their knowledge; the thoughts in my head that form there in the moment and also my reflection on it later when I take some space away from them. I think so far I have shown this the best in Fight the Good Fight because I put myself on the street with this guy and I am taking in the whole of my surroundings.

reading

HI everybody,
I am going to read some poetry in the bender room at 5:30 tomorrow. I know at the same time there is another really great author talking in Mills Hall. But if your around and you want to be supportive or wrangle my litle boy so he doesn' t pull me of stage that would rock. I figured if I am changing ny thesis to peotry it would be good to get some experience reading it for an audience and it will help give me incentive to gather my stuff to together. I noticed on the line up another classmate so support your friends or steal free food before class or both.
Suki

sorry for the lateness...not sure what the blog topic is suppose to be...I guess I shall WING IT ;)

First I hope everyone had a great END of October weekend.


Writing as a group again proved productive. I'm slowly weeding in the editing that was suggested to me while still coming up with more for my story. I thought I could keep writing and just do all of the editing when I was done, but if I let myself, I'll just keep writing and run out of time to do the editing sooo I figured I should work it in while I add more to my story. During our next group writing I think I'm going to have to force myself to do more editing than anything else. If I finish editing what I've already turned in to you all, then I can stress less about adding more.

Inspiration

Well, when I write creative non fiction my inspiration has just been life. Surprisingly it doesn't always start with my own, I will hear a person tell a story about thier life and it remind me of a story of my own. I also find that larger themes about culture, injustice in the world and mistreatment of groups, people or indivuals inspires me to write. I also like movies particularly documentary, and books get me inspired. I have been advised to change ny thesis to poetry. This idea is a little daunting becasue poetry just comes to me I like to pepole wathc for inspiration but i have never been a big planner and I have never thought of myself as a poet . So if anyone has any advise it would be much welcomed. Elmaz said what I was writing was just filled with rage. Don't get me wrong I trust Elmaz big time but I also don't think I am ready to let go of it completely. So I would also like to hear your opinion about what I ahd shared in class so far. I might have to put it away for now. But if it was all just rage then I would want to put it away indefinelty because i don't think the world needs anymore rage and I certainly don't want to be a person supplying that.Kathy since you are the most exerienced poet I know and I have mad rescpect for you I would really like to know what you do to put a body of poety together.
take care all i miss you.
SUki

??!

Well.

Happy Daylight Savings!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Samhain!

Happy...other end of October/beginning of November holidays!

Um,

Writing together was fun again. I got about 2.5 pages done, but I came in super late so that's alright. It's basically a scene, so it works, yay.

Rough drafts are due this Tuesday right? Good times.

(...We're supposed to post every week but I really don't know what to say this week...I tried anyway.)

No difficulties in writing, really, just working on revising what I already have and working my way to that 50 page point.

...So...

Looking forward to writing together again this Tuesday, and reading everyone's rough drafts.

See you then~

Cristina

. . .

The critique last week was mostly helpful. I think the hardest thing for me right now is creating a narrator. I hate telling my readers what to do... I like showing them and creating characters and situations that are likable and at the same time easy to hate or disagree with. I am trying to figure out where to add a bit of factual information about heaven and the reason why angel are unable to do certain things in heaven but able to in Cecity. I've got all the suggestions, but this weekend I spent more time adding on than editing just because I didn't want to lose anything that was in my head.

I have a feeling all of tuesday night will be me testing the suggestions out on my completed draft. I have to say I felt that there were a decent amount of comments that were a bit unnerving for me (mainly the nit-picky ones or religion based ones), but I guess everyone has their opinion and I'm glad I'm in a class where everyone feels comfortable speaking up about things. Because whether I agreed with them or liked them all the comments I got were helpful in one way or another in that they told me what was and wasn't working for everyone...let me know what to clear up for some readers or take into account for others.

I have to say I'm a bit discouraged with the narrator edition to my piece only because it almost means rewriting the whole piece, it's such a new aspect for me, but I know I can do it if I think of it in a better more positive light. New is just unknown for me, but never bad. I love trying different things and different approaches on my work. Thanks class for all the hidden help ;) As much as I complain I appreciate it bunched.

Thinking about Thinking about Writing

Workshop, workshop, workshop...It's been almost two weeks since my piece was critiqued, so I had to look back at Elmaz's e-mail to remind myself of the particulars of who said what, but something I know for a fact, without having to refer to any messages to jog my memory, is that I left class that night feeling victorious, and extremely relieved to know that I've FINALLY found a direction to take this piece, and it's working! That hurdle has been jumped over and is way behind me now - YAY!!! I also walked out of that critique feeling truly, incredibly, amazingly, grateful.

Being a Creative Writing major I have, naturally, taken many writing workshops at Mills, and I know that there are times when I take for granted just how amazing these classes are. But as my piece was being critiqued, I sat there thinking: I am so blessed that ten other seniors who are all just as crazy stressed about their theses as I am, four incredible graduate students who are probably more stressed about their theses than I am, and the most amazing teacher, mentor, role model, and cheerleader I could ever have asked for, have taken time out of their hectic schedules to read my work and have invested time and energy in thinking of ways to help me make it better. To be surrounded by such a genuinely supportive and caring group of colleagues each week is an incredible gift, and my critique made me stop and remember what a rare privilege it is to have that level of supportive collaboration in one's writing. So I have to say to each of you ladies right now: Thank You!!!

OK... What else did I feel after my critique? I know I was slightly overwhelmed; I always feel overwhelmed after my pieces get critiqued, but fortunately, once I'm done with my initial freak-out, that overwhelmedness usually takes the form of a challenge: after a critique, I've been given all the tools I need to go forth and conquer. I got extremely frustrated when I opened up my chapter afterward and realized a serious logistical flaw that I'm still trying to determine the best way to fix. I think I've decided, though, that the solution to my frustration is to let that part sit for awhile while I skip ahead a little bit so I can keep the story moving. Then I'll come back and link the pieces together. I've also decided that I need to outline. It can be a bare bones, not much to it outline, but as someone who is a very visual learner, I think that if I write down the sequence of events - this happens, then this, then this, and it switches perspectives at points A, B, and C - that seeing it written down will help me to have an easier time of realizing it in a logical way without leaving out important details or making more logistical mistakes. It sounds so basic - you'd think I'd have figured it out a long time ago - but I'll do it now, and I think it will help. I hope it will help... (And I wonder why I've never figured out to apply those concepts to every other paper I've ever written? Hmmm...)

I'm grateful for every single comment that every single person made about my piece, and I'm eager to incorporate as many of those comments as I can. It just makes me nervous thinking about the huge amount action I have left to write and how little time I have to write it! Eek!

Critique

I really appreciated everyone's comments. I felt that I left the critique with lots of substantial suggestions to help me better my piece. Especially comments about exaggerating characters, and differentiating the voices between the writer and the pianist. I find it difficult to revise my own work after working on it for so long, so I appreciate the fresh perspectives. I definitely intend to dive into exaggerating characters and their voices, priority number one.

Thank you all for your suggestions. I can't wait to look over what I've done with a new revisions in mind.

And now for the part about what I will not change. It's an interesting feeling to actually announce what it is that I will not change in my story.... Usually it's easier to just not change it, and let the critiquers roll their eyes when they realize my decision.

The transitional shift between the meeting of the writer and the pianist, and the actual establishment of the relationship:

Yes, I will try to stick a transitional sentence or two to make the shift more fluid.

No, I will not elaborate on how they got to that point. They just kind of do.
I mean, the fact that everyone was so curious as to why in the hell the pianist likes the writer so much, that's exactly what I'm going for. The writer doesn't even know how, exactly, she got into this relationship, but she did. The pianist is the only one who really knows how it happened, and since the narrator is more of a close third to the writer, well... I hope you see where I'm going with this.

Anyway, thanks again.

Cristina

Reaction to Critique

I have to say I was surprised and sort of embarrassed by some of the compliments I got about my stories. Especially the one about comparing me to some film directors, because I love movies a lot and they are a major inspiration. I have to say that I didn't really know who the directors were. I have only seen two Coen Brother's films (I love the Big Lebowski) and I don't know the other director people talked about at all. Argh, I seem to have lost Elmaz's email, so if someone could tell me the other director's name (it wasn't Terantino, who I don't like very much) I would love to add some new films to my "to-watch" list!

Another thing I appreciated was how much people were laughing over the two humorous stories. I love making people laugh and I've always enjoyed comedy. Comedy is really hard to pull off, so I always feel really proud when I get it right. Laughter is very contagious for me, so it was hard to read with everyone laughing because I couldn't hold back either.

Also, I really appreciated some of the suggestions and tips for where I could go with the stories I submitted. Especially ones people point out about details. Someone pointed out that they were wondering where the bathroom was where Nigel found the dead body. I love suggestions like that! Very helpful. I love it when people tell me what they were wondering about the story, that way I know what to do more. If someone is getting what I want them to get for the story, then I know I need to fix something. Or if there's something I have overlooked (like the location of the bathroom, which is a GREAT idea) that's great as well.

I've decided to expand the one about Nigel and to make some changes to the fox spirit one...

I just hope I gave some helpful advice to other writers, too.

Thank you so much everyone!

How do you stay inspired?

This is a really, really hard question for me because it's so true: I'm constantly distracted all the time - especially recently when I just moved in with my friends who are constantly partying and all these people who come through to our house, also constantly partying, and then classes throughout the week, a job I hate, and the constant need to balance myself not to mention relationship bullshit.

so how do I stay inspired?

I suppose I take time for myself. I make sure I get enough ME time.And I'm constantly on the lookout for a poem idea for something I can change into writing. I heard once that if you don't wake up every morning thinking about writing then you're not a writer. I thought this was a bit extreme until this semester - when I actually began to think of the world as my canvas - the entire world, not just the beautiful and political but everything in between. Case in point: this may be TMI but here's a poem I wrote in my head just this morning, as i lay in bed extremely frustrated:

perils of dating a 19 year old boy:

maybe
if i was an xbox
your hands
would never leave
my body

obviously not the most amazing thing written but hey! it's the start of something! A slam piece maybe? or just a little poem? Who knows!

Another way I remain inspired is by constantly re evaluating memories etc and watching my own personal growth and trying to see how I can put that into poetry. Beyond that, I mainly draw inspiration from my every day life. Luckily for me, poetry is the best and easiest medium for that, in my opinion.

My World of inspiration

I find inspiration everywhere. I find it when I wake up as I remember my dreams from the night before.
-teeth shattering
-bloody axe battles
-hovering over the ground
-hostages in the grammar school gymnasium

I find inspiration from colors and the shadows that find safety on patches of them...other things that can be seen:
-shadows from the plants under the porchlight
-street lights flashing
-walk signs
-lit windows in dark houses
-golds and greens
-mowed grass with lines from the lawnmower
-rainbows
-colors watering into each other
-text messages

Movements are inspiring:
-like running a hand down the inside of my forearm
-washing my hands in the sink over the dishes
-rubbing my fingers together
-running my fingertips across the walls or bushes as I walk past them
-running or walking through puddles
-running through waves...swimming

I create character personalities from observing animal behaviors:
-the cat lounging on my lap
-the energetic squirrel testing its luck crossing the street
-my rabbit nudging me with his head then nibbling on my nails


Beats and rhythms and sounds
-in songs as well as the poetic lyrics give me inspiration
-Music on tv shows
-purring
-humming

Quotes..television lines...lines said on the shows, from novels, from mangas, from movies, from people, from myself:
-you dont name your friends or they stop doing favors
-whatever cause u want. wrap it around whatever piece of legal doctrine helps u rationalize it
-so let me get this straight.you want me to violate his god given civil rights in the name of some murky sense of the greater good. is that the gist of it gentlemen. okay i'm game. just dont plan on it sticking for long
-u were doing your job the way it best served you
- you're at war with the whole world. its not gonna bring anybody back.
-no i'm at war with this, this broken thing. this thing that brought you and i together
- the larger picture still alludes you
-so this is ur life now? that u can just live forever with your head buried in the sand?
-i wont just hand over the world to you...peace under an illusion is not true peace.
-I don't care if your memories have been erased or not!!If you ever forget your fear of me....I'll just pound it back into your body!
-"one" is not the same as "none"
-then i will bite you to death with my full power!
-no, please!"thank you" isn't something i can eat!
-in art as in life
-color me shocked
-The trouble wtih the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.
-well as a writer i guess i can live with that
-some lies are easier to believe than the truth
-that which yields, is not always weak.
-happiness limits the amount of suffering one is willing to inflict upon others
-just clothes detective? clothes are civilization clothes are what separate us from animals.
-You cant live on me forever ...(I told this to a cat)

touch:
-soft plushie items
-smooth surfaces
-edges
-air
-snow


smells:
-seasonings
-cooked foods
-flowers
-the air before it rains
-puppies breath
-babies skin
-snow

I find inspiration everywhere. the world is a toy box waiting to be played with and rearranged the way I so desire. My list could go on...but no one wants to read all my inspirations at once. Where's the fun in that? Then there's nothing to look forward to discover later.

My Inspiration

My inspiration comes from three main sources. Nature, Music and my Dreams.

A mix of my dreams and people I meet/my friends are who generally inspire a character for me. There are characteristics my friends have, certain experiences they have been through or silly quirks that will sometimes stick out to me and I'll want to attribute them to one of my characters. Presently, my character Orion from my thesis class is based on one of my old best friends from when I was in high school. Their physical characteristics are similar and their personalities are pretty spot on. I also have a lot of random dreams about random people in random places that usually inspire the characters I write about. My character, Sasha, originated in a reoccurring dream I used to have about a beautiful Indian (not Native) girl who was blind which made her eyes a pale gray/blue color. Her general stubborn personality I derived from one of my friends, Manasi, who lives in Indian and is very hard-headed.

Music is always really inspiring for me when it comes to creating and writing a scene. Every scene in my novel has a certain song that narrates it. I usually combine music and nature inspiration together 6 mornings out of the week when I am on my way to Crew practice at 5 in the morning. I have a playlist of songs that I listen to on my way to practice as we drive through rural roads through dense trees and rolling green hills. I will usually close my eyes, listen to the song and then visualize different music video-esque scenes to get inspiration.

Rowing on the reservoir that my Crew team practices on is very inspiring, also. There is a very specific cove with a small peninsula that I row past at the start and end of every practice that is very special to me. It's shaped like a mini-hill in that it is very domed. Its edge is filled with reeds and then has grass covering it all the way to the top where there is a small cluster of bent trees making a protective canopy. This is the setting for a scene in my story where three of my main characters (Sasha, Orion and Mahti) finally get the chance to act like kids and create a make-shift rope swing to jump off of and into the water. Whenever I pass it, I can visualize my three characters jumping into the water and splashing each other while their tents stay nestled carefully in the protection of the overlapping trees.

I see, I like, I get inspired

It's hard to write about feeling inspired when one feels so...uninspired. I was so jazzed about delving into the story a few days ago - what happened?

On the topic of inspiration (and hopefully putting this out there will help me get re-inspired) I spent this weekend at my grandparents' place, and am reminded of a source of inspiration that resides with them. My grandma and grandpa have a cabin in the woods, inherited from his father who built it, where they spend the winter months buried under multiple feet of snow. My grandpa builds a roaring fire from the mountain of wood he has cut and stacked, and they sit before it, him with his used paperback thrillers and sudoku books, Grandma with a jigsaw puzzle spread out on a card table before her. We visit them quite often, to play in the snow and enjoy Thanksgivings & Christmases, or to visit just because we feel like it, and something I've done for as long as I can remember almost every time we go there is peruse the bookshelves.

In one of the bedrooms is a large set of bookshelves that spans an entire wall, filled mostly with romances, crime novels, tales of adventure and mystery. Most of these books were bought at used bookstores, garage sales, or obtained from a friend or relative, and they are all at least twenty years old. However, what draws me to these books each and every time is not what's in them, but rather, what's on them. I've spent who knows how long pulling these books off the shelves for no other reason than to become mesmerized by the illustrations on the book jackets. I pull one book out at a time to stare long and hard at the picture on the cover, to imagine who the people are and what they are thinking, saying, doing. Mostly they are pictures of beautiful women, often in the arms of handsome men, wearing long, beautiful dresses and fancy jewelry - I like to imagine the steamy affairs and dying vows of everlasting love that surely take place in those novels. Or they are just women's faces - one gazing deeply into a mirror, another peering from behind a peacock fan.

Once Grandpa went through and removed a large quantity of these books to sell them and make room for new ones; much to my annoyance, he took many of my favorites. Several of these depicted buxom wartime heroines with their hair flying in the wind, standing next to their tall, muscular, military beaus; one of my all-time favorites now lost to me forever was a volume wrapped in a shiny emerald green book jacket that depicted two beautiful Indian women with feet of shiny black hair. One of these women was leaning over an unconscious caucasean man whom I liked to imagine was her lover. I think the story I'd come up with was that he'd been slain by her jealous older sister, the other woman on the cover. The title of this book was Wild Jasmine, so the pretty younger sister who'd lost her lover was, of course, named Jasmine.

This is just one example of the ways that my creative mind is sparked by the visual things around me. I mentioned in the artist statement I read at the beginning of the semester that I used to get inspired by pictures in books, by the porcelain figurines my grandparents kept on their coffee tables, by all sorts of things that I could look at and imagine the story behind. I still do this, albeit less frequently, which is frustrating because it means that things don't seem to trigger ideas as often as they used to. However, I love the exercises we've done in creative writing workshops where we pull a picture from a stack of random images and must write the story that goes with it. Writing from an image is one of my favorite ways to work!

For this reason, I'm very excited that in just two weeks, I get to visit the place where my thesis happens. I get to go back to Catalina Island. I can't wait to take pictures of all the places that are in my story - Sugarloaf Books, the condo in Hamilton Cove, Leo's Drugstore, and more that haven't made their way in yet, but surely will! It's great to imagine how inspired I'll be after having gone there, seen everything again with fresh eyes and then, with a fresh memory and a host of pictures, be able to sit down at my computer bubbling over with inspiration. I can just imagine it!

Inspiration

My inspiration comes from that exact business of everyday life.

It can be pretty random...I'll be reading a book for a class--literature or history or something random--and I will like a scene or circumstance or character so well that I imagine my own characters taking part.

Or, I will be writing an essay for one class, and an idea will just pop into my head. Ctrl + N for a new page, and I start typing away.

Maybe I have a conversation with someone, and that person's words or opinions inspire me to create a scene.

Or maybe I'm just daydreaming, and suddenly a brilliant idea comes to mind. I haven't had much of a problem with inspiration itself, but getting a change to write it all down is a different story.

Most of the time, though, I find myself rereading what I've written so far, and I realize that some parts need to be expanded, or something needs to be explained at a later date, and so forth. So, sometimes, my inspiration comes from just reading what I have.

I tend to write when I don't want to do anything else. When I'm tired of reading textbooks or writing essays or planning presentations or balancing my finances, I tend to take out some drafts and revise, or just continue writing.

Sometimes, writing just makes me happy, and that's good enough for me.

Cristina

the inspiration we live in

In my experience, inspiration is everywhere. As long as I keep my eyes open, as long as I’m looking—really looking—at everyone and everything that comes into my life everyday (is the word “every” losing its impact in this paragraph?), there is an almost overwhelming amount to write about. I keep a list of characters, I keep a list of places, I keep a list of things… like how, on a pouring-rainy day, like last Tuesday, the first really wet day of the semester, you see ants everywhere, and your thickest socks are bound to get wet, and how can a bright white sky be so dark? and if I stop moving even for a minute, all I want is to get under blankets and drink hot chocolate (more warm than hot, so it isn’t hard to hold, more melted marshmallows than drink) and watch something long and made by the BBC.

For inspiration, please watch this brief movie on one of the Good magazine blogs, by Kenneth Chu, asking 50 strangers in Brooklyn the question, "Where would you like to wake up tomorrow?" God, people are so gorgeous and amazing. Those are all characters, kick-in-the-head-excellent characters, but if you don’t want them, ask your character that question. Or even just ask yourself. It’s pretty revealing. This question blows my protagonist Emma’s mind, like thinking about the never-ending nature of the universe, so much so she can’t form an answer it. It made me realize how much the essential question of my novel is, “what happens after high school? How much can you, or should you, plan the rest of your life?” So Baxter’s definitely going to ask her that question eventually.

I also recommend writing when you’re not inspired. It will inspire you. This is along the same lines of the advice, "write a bad novel (/story/poem)" which someone mentioned getting or taking on the first day of class. Setting out to write a Great Novel, I think, is impossible and more frustrating than anything. When I pull from fresh inspiration, I know I’m often setting myself up for disappointment. I’m not going to do anything with those descriptions of a rainy day for a while because the experience of that rainy day is too fresh and the feeling of realizing those quintessential aspects is too good. Nothing I write will live up to it.

Late Blog + Inspiration Blog

The Late Bit:

Our writing in class gig was fantastic. Before I took this class, the idea of writing with other people in silence never even occurred to me. I always thought writing was something solitary and broody, like something you'd do on a dark and stormy night while wearing a veil or something (bad joke!) Anyway, I really like this idea (the writing together idea). It helps get me passed a lot of things that get in the way with my writing:

1. Distractions: homework, computer, movies, music (I can't write while listening music usually... usually...)

2. My restlessness: One of the many reasons why I have trouble assigning myself a certain slot for writing is that I have an overabundance of energy and sitting down for a long time can be really hard. Being with a group of people, in a quiet, thoughtful atmosphere helps me concentrate! Like osmosis!

3. Support -the fact that I'm with a whole lot of other people who are also writers and are taking writing seriously really helps me realize that what I am doing is legitimate work that deserves recognition and respect! For example, if I am at school I always have this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I have HOMEWORK to do -agh! So disruptive! Also, when I am at home my parents just barge into my room and disturb me any time they feel like it... because they are parents and they don't understand that I need to be left alone and for it to be quiet while I am WORKING!

Our class writing session made me realize that I need to develop a strong writing habit before graduation in order to insure my survival as a writer! Because once I am out of school I will not be around other writers and will be completely on my own -so I need to be prepared to be my own disciplinarian and not rely on other people alone to get me through writing. I've got to build up my confidence and determination!

I hope anyone else who feels this way will also work towards the same goal, because it's really important that none of us every give up, because too many people give up. Don't let yourself fall into a rut that you will only regret later (that is one of my worst fears!)

The On Time Bit:

I am not really that picky about what inspires me. I am very influenced by sensory things: like visual things (like light, especially the lights that come out of people's windows at night) and feel (like paper bags, the way they feel when you crumple them up in your hand) and taste (like the tangy taste of a coin in your mouth or the bitter taste of a rubber band or the taste of sand in dry air.) Many things inspire me, almost too many things; it can get a bit overwhelming.

I am inspired by colors (especially bright colors and gold), light; houses, the way people decorate their houses: what they do with their laundry, how messy or clean everything is, all of their mementos, family pictures, couch textiles, wallpaper, wall hangings, television sets; postcards (I love postcards), knick knacks, movies, music, sounds, sleeping, cinematography, photography; scraps of paper: left over wrapping, paper bags, receipts; plastic things (especially water bottles), stuffed animals, toys, empty tins, stamps...

Also, people -the weirder the better: assholes, people who curse in public, people who talk on cellphones in grocery store lines, drug addicts, religious fanatics, politicians, criminals, the depressed, the lonely, the invisible, people who don't sleep at night, people who look out of windows, prostitutes, forgotten children, talkers, smokers, walkers, nuns, homeless people, hoarders, agoraphobics, mean people, shouting people, rude people, reclusive people, people who cut themselves, people who cut others, murderers, elitists, art snobs, music snobs, fashion snobs, hip snobs, pretenders, fakers, liars...

I like the challenge they give me. It's hard to write about people who are so different from you that you barely have anything in common. It's hard to write about the "unfortunate" without being sappy or preachy. I don't do sappy. I don't do preachy.

final conclusion re: inspiration

The thing is, conditions will not always be right. So I don't depend on them, I adapt to them however I can.

How do you stay inspired?

I get "uninspired" when I back off a challenge. "Uninspired" usually means I'm scared by my limitations and don't believe I can overcome them through practice, no matter what experience shows me. Boredom is a cover for something else, usually. Or maybe its just a lousy idea and its dull. But mostly, its a cover.

"Uninspired" means there's no progress to interest me. But if I write an hour a day, in a month there's a lot of stuff to work with.

I like working alone -secretly, actually. I like the secrecy-this inspires me, the feeling that its Mine All Mine, something secret to return to when the day's obligations are through.

But then, once I'm done with that part of it, getting together with people who write regularly is really good for morale and inspiration. I like to hear what they've changed and how they changed it. The weekly revisions, tenacity and growth inspire me.


The bad moods pass, a good mood comes, I see how much progress there is in an hour a day. I keep going.

this has worked through: Family, money and housing struggles, jobs/no jobs, breakups startups foulups..I just use whatever works at the time...

Tuesday night writing

What I like best about it is that the time is already blocked out. No scheduling anxiety—it's already set aside, and no one's going to interrupt us.

What I like least (No reflection on the group; just personal preference) is writing in a big group of people.

On the other hand, I grew up in a big family in a small house— we shut out whatever was going on around us in order to write, practice guitar, read...

And on the other hand—more "hands" than an octopus—the energy of concentration multiplied by 15 or so is very strong and feels good.

So, overall, I'm grateful to have the time and place to write when I ordinarily wouldn't have it.

Last Class ... my babbling brook-ness

I loved writing as a group. I was a bit disappointed that all I could squeeze out were 5 and 1/2 pages double spaced. Before class I was a bit worried that the silence would drive me crazy. I find it impossible to work in utter silence. I usually play music or have a film running on my computer while I write and/or do homework. When the first ten minutes started I was a bit tempted to pull up sidereel.com and have an episode of Castle playing while I hand wrote/thought of what to hand write...then the fear of Elmaz ran through my mind and I decided that that was a horrible idea. So, instead I had music playing to fill the silence but not overpower my thought process.

I tried to spend a decent amount of time thinking up one visual scenery for each chapter. I sketched a few places so that I will be able to describe them within my story better. I just finished watching The Sound Of Music to cheer up a friend whose grandmother just passed and I now feel like my story needs a cheerier interior...

I'm a bit worried that by the time I've started the conflict and after I've introduced all of the main characters, I'll already be at least 50 pages in. I'm worried that the story/novel that I want to finish, I want it to be long, but I feel the way I am approaching it is making it so that what I get done in thesis is going to be like a long introduction.

At the beginning of the semester I was talking to Anna, and she said "During the semester we do our thesis, we shouldn't have to take any other classes." This is the point in the semester - midterm season - where I really, really agree with that more than I ever have up to this point. It's so frustrating, because I finally have a story that I feel I can make work, and the pieces are starting to come together in a somewhat sensible way, and instead of being able to focus all my attention on this wonderful piece of work, I have to write an economics paper... and a literature paper... and do a video project... and... and... and...

Sorry. I won't bore you with any more bitching and moaning (although I won't deny that it IS frustrating). I will, however, say that I really, truly enjoyed our group writing session the other night, and hope we get to do that again. Honestly, I'd almost rather do that every third week than meet in our peer groups without the instructors.

I also realized something else that night, before we even got started. I realized that listening to other folks talk about their writing, reading it, listening to them read it, is something that really gets me jazzed and makes me eager to do some writing myself. So before our writing session, I went to Works in Progress. I listened to the four graduate students read their work, pondered over the fact that it could be me up there sharing my work at WIP someday, and got enthused by the broad range of great works. This was a purposeful strategy: my hope was that if I went and listened to these folks read, I could get juiced up, and then head into our writing session and write my guts out. It worked...sort of... I didn't write a ton (I did 7 pages), but I think I ended up producing more than I would have if I hadn't gone there first.

That said... I think my main challenge now is to keep up enthusiasm for this new storyline, to have faith in it, that even though I don't know everything about where it is going just yet, it will all come together in a way that works eventually. I need to improve the parts of the story that need work without sacrificing the elements that are already working. I must tell myself to push past the frustration and delve into all the good stuff I have to work with. I need to believe that what I create will be good. I need to believe in myself as a writer. Heck, what a challenge!

Writing Together

I have to admit that I was really skeptical about writing together how we did, but it worked out so well that I hope we can do it again!

I've never timed myself writing before...it was rather surprising to find that I only got six pages in 2 1/2 hours. I suppose that's about average, but considering I can read a full page in a minute or two...I felt a little...strange. Like...cheated somehow. Hm.

But anyway, it was nice to just sit down and write, after all. I started and completed one scene, and finished a previously unfinished scene. Yay, progress. Now all I have to do is make the scenes flow smoothly together...which is certainly not as easy as it sounds. But doesn't everyone have trouble with transitions? Maybe not everyone. But it is a common...concern. Or so I've heard.

Cristina

in class writing and creatice non-fiction

I don't know if we have an assignment for a blog or not . But I wanted to talk about writing tonight in class. It seems to work for me. I was thinking that it was the first time I had written in a large group or in class some real shit. But, I lie to myself or get mixed up all the time. Because the piece "Broken" I read in our class, I started in class with 60 other students around. I was scared and I started writing before I got in class tonight, but I started with this skeletal idea and then wrote and came back and wrote and came back to flesh out each little thing that I put in there.
I think unconsciously I kept asking my self why did I put that in there? and then I go back and write the why. but I have to keep going back to the why because it gets bigger and bigger For example I was writing just describing what I looked like at this particular moment in my life At the time of the story I weighed close to 110 which on me looks like I am dying. But to I could write the description of how thin I was and with out the why it is hallow. Because the why; takes me to a moment, that lead to another moment, and so on until all of these moments, create my experience, that creates the me, that creates story. And it doesn't feel like a choice right now. I feel like if I don't finally get my story on paper and make it make sense and be useful I won't be able to breathe. And its a story I don't really want to tell not if I have to share the why. Because to share it I have to look at it and I don't really want to look at it. But its bubbling up to the surface and on to the page whether I want it or not. For me it just happens to be non-fiction. But I think the same thing can happen for fiction writers where a character keeps rearing its ugly head and to be true, to really reveal that character you have to go place inside yourself that you would really rather not go. And I think when my writing really sucks or when I have total writers block or lack of creativity it is just because I have consciously or unconsciously said to that character or my self," No! You don't get to tell that story because it is too painful, uncomfortable, shameful, or just embarrassing." Elmaz said to me once about a piece, " Where did you go? Why did the girl get on the bus?" and I ask my self that now when I write its my metaphor for the why.
Suki

Voice - Salinger's Once a Week Wont Kill You

Lupe Martinez

http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/killyou.html

In this short story Salinger uses a lot of insinuation and restraint. These techniques build the tone of the story slowly so that the context of each action is revealed as the character does more. Although one could say that’s true of all plots, I think that these techniques are particularly useful in this piece because Salinger is using the pacing of the story to show the mood of his main character.
He begins with the very simple action of packing; his main character is serious and brisk but not necessarily urgent. He is formal, almost business like with the woman in the room although eventually we learn that he is his wife. The reader sees a different side of the main character when he is with his aunt, there is a tenderness to the moment that was absent with his wife. What does this mean? I think it’s meant to show that the Young Man has more respect for his aunt than his wife She is more mature than his wife who has never stopped speaking to him in “italics”. Moreover, Salinger bluntly describes the aunt as having “an intelligent face” while his wife seems more childlike because she had been married (?) with him for “three years and she had never stopped talking to him in italics” that is, she never stopped putting emphasis in her speech. His wife also specifically puts emphasis on terms like “horrible” and “anything” that are reminiscent of the adolescent view of concepts in infinitives like “forever” and “always,” a sort of exaggerated sentiment.
Still, Salinger’s voice comes through most in his syntax. His sentences are generally short and are used to describe. When Salinger describes the young woman’s arms he says “They were brown and round and good” and when he describes the house Salinger says “a flight of wide, thickly carpeted steps.” His sentences contain small details that, I think, are meant to make the things he describes common place. This situation happened to everyone; many sons, and husbands, and nephews went away to war. Moreover that it also happened to anyone. In the details of the story he describes a young man who owns a house and has a hired cook, and can support his aunt, all of these things seem to imply a an upper class. The main character and his family are people of means. Salinger does not reveal the character’s names he lets them identify each other. The narrator only refers to the characters as “the young man” and “the young woman” and “the aunt” and “the nephew” so that each character is identified through some kind of quantifier. I think this is because Salinger is trying to imply that this situation affected these types of people and those who are relative to those people. I think this is furthered by the fact that the characters identify and name each other, we learn that the Young Woman is Virginia because her husband calls her name, the Young Man is Richard because his aunt identifies him and the Aunt is Rena because her nephew identifies her. They are important to each other, to the narrator and to reader they are just people living in war time.
I think Salinger’s use of insinuation is also part of his voice. The insinuation does two things for the story. The first is that it implies that war is understood, the characters see war as inevitability. This is shown mostly when Richard’s aunt says “I knew this would happen two years ago…” Not only in her statement but also in her use of emphasis, in that she speaks to him in italics, it’s something that the women share, knowledge of the inevitable. The second aspect of the insinuation is that this is how Salinger is communicating with the reader. Salinger mentions Sousa marches on the radio, George Washington the first American general, March 1944, and “the last one” all of which eventually lead the reader to the realization that Richard is going off to fight in World War 2.
Restraint comes with the insinuation but it does more for the tone than for the insinuation. The tone reflects the character’s feelings. He speaks in short sentences to his wife, small curt responses to his wife’s ramblings. On the other hand, he speaks tenderly with his aunt and tells her a story about his college days. This shows not only his feelings at the moment before he leaves for way but how he wants to leave each of the members of his family and consequently this builds the reader’s understanding of the character’s personality.