. . .

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.

My Place

Group 2 Writing Assignment on The World of My Novel

This assignment was exceptionally difficult for me, especially since this is the biggest problem I’ve been having in my novel so far. I’m struggling with setting up the world of my world and even knowing what the rules are, myself. This took me a long time to get down and was daunted by coming up all the rules of my vast world, so I decided to go by different places my characters will be. Then, I plan on molding them together to create the over-all boundaries for my world (which I haven’t even named yet).

The Camp (Where Fehlandt and the Bandits live) – this is a constantly moving habitat, but it does have a standard layout. It is always set up in a circular structure. The center is where the large fire pit is located, surrounded by larger stones to keep it in place. Close by is the wagon that all of the food supplies are carried. Beyond that, the inner circle of tents belong to the youngest children (usually 3-5 in a cramped tent, depending on how old they are) and the outer circle has the older teenagers. All the tents are a miss-match of whatever they could barter for or steal. Most are made out of a heavy canvas and are pretty dirty. There is a oil they rub onto the tarps to make them waterproof when it’s rainy (ingredients to be determined). Five main tents make up the outmost perimeter that are evenly spaced that belong to Fehlandt, Orion, Asher, Tarun and Jayce as a defensive barrier. They and the older teenagers of the caravan take turns keeping watch at night.

The Lake (Training for Sasha with Orion and Fehlandt) – A small lake set in the back of the woods up against a cliff-face. A waterfall is set at the back up against the stone off the cliff that reach up into the small mountain range to the east (NEED A NAME FOR MOUNTAINS). The waterfall is about 70 feet in height, 6 feet in length and spills into the small pool of the lake. The water is bright blue and very clear in the early part of the day but grays and darkens as the sun starts to set over the trees to the west. The bottom is made up of smooth rocks. They’re a little painful to walk on, but not sharp so they wont cut up the bottom on your feet. The water starts off shallow and comes up to Sasha’s mid-thigh (or Orion’s knees) and gradually depends as you get closer to the waterfall. The pool is ringed with larger rocks and then blends into the thickness of the woods.

The Forrest (that they’re in for the beginning of the story) – A vast but young forest. There aren’t many fallen or dead trees and they are spaced enough to comfortable ride horses through. Some people have made cabin-like houses in it along the multiple tiny rivers that run from the eastern mountains.

Mahti’s Forest – much older forest than what Sasha is used to. The trees are large and have gnarled bark and roots. Many fallen and rotting trees throughout and it is very dense. It’s much more difficult to navigate horses through. You can’t take much of a straight path and, instead, have to weaving your way in and out of dead logs and tangled roots. It is a darker forest since the trees branches are so long and bushy, there isn’t much sunlight that can get through. Uninhabited (minus Mahti) and is filled with a lot of wild creatures. It is set upon an island in the middle of a large river. The current is strong so it is very difficult to get across. The water goes a bit beyond 10 feet deep at it’s deepest point and has a lot of sharp rocks.

criticism...the terrors of letting pple butcher your babies. (lol...sort of)

It helps to read through your own work critically first so that you can already spot a few places that could use work. If you're already in the mood to critique your own work it will be easier to accept other people's criticisms of it. You can't take the advice personal. Yes, what is being looked at his something you've personally written, but it is not personally YOU. Everyone is only trying to help...hopefully. I usually find that the most helpful feedback is always the little stuff; the grammatical corrections and the words changes that help to convey a point more smoothly. Even the comments on confusing parts in my work that I should try to make a bit clearer.
I find that the feedback I usually ignore is what I take as personal: comments about just overall not liking my work or vague points on that I should change something, but not accompanied by any words on how. If an idea sounds out of place to me after I read it, then it usually is. I usually read/listen to all comments that come my way and try to imagine the corrections or actually implement them to see how they look/sound within my work. But if the criticism sounds wrong from the beginning I usually will run the idea by another pair of eyes and see if they agree with it.

In the end my choosing to receive or ignore feedback all depends on the mood I am in and the attachment I have to the work I've put out to be criticized. I feel like every blog post I've posted thus far is my attempting to flush out a specific answer to one question only to find in the end that there is no set answer for that question. I'm hopeless(ly indecisive when it comes to structure), I know.

The Voice Dilemma

Our cluster group's assignment this week was to look at pieces (ours or others) and determine how the language informs the voice. Considering that voice is the one big thing my thesis is currently lacking, this seems all too appropriate (go Shel!).

When initially thinking about this, I was reminded of an instance in Beginning Fiction Workshop with Cristina Garcia a couple of years ago. Our in-class prompt was to write a scene using only dialogue to convey two completely different characters; we needed to differentiate between these two individuals using only their voices, which is WAY more challenging than at first it may seem. I don't think I quite understood the intent of the prompt; my approach was to distinguish between my two characters simply by giving one of them a lisp, so that when we went around the table and read our pieces aloud, it would be obvious to the class that two different people were present in my little scene. The result was that I became completely embarrassed, blushing furiously (something I did on a regular basis in Cristina's class, and which she has yet to let me live down!). But thinking about it afterward, I realized that I kinda missed the whole point that she was trying to make with this exercise.

When we discuss character voice, we mean more than just the sound of one's physical voice as they are talking (duh). I still get stuck on the character vs. narrator thing from time to time, which trips me up, but I know that voice, at least the kind that I need to find for my thesis, is the way that a character articulates his/her thoughts, the type of language they use, the diction and vernacular they may employ, basically, how their thoughts become words, and the way that these words convey those innermost thoughts and feelings. Since readers cannot see these characters for themselves, the characters need to have strong voices to support the personalities that we as authors give them. Voice is one of the only tools we have to really make a character's personality stand out.

In the case of my own thesis, I think what I am facing is a difficulty in separating myself the author/narrator from myself the character. I've talked about my dilemma in figuring out what age to make my character, and I think what I've done is avoided committing to a certain character age - and thus the mindset that goes along with that age - by reverting to my "journalist voice". I use big words and complex sentence structures when trying to write in the voice of a little kid, because I haven't quite decided whether I really want to be in the voice of that kid or in the voice of the adult looking back, so I try to hang out somewhere in between, which doesn't work. I need to pick a character and a voice and commit to it, and I need to remember that writing me as a character is no different than writing any other character when it comes to the rules of voice. However...

I've been bouncing around another idea in my head all week, and I need other opinions. When we sent out our pieces for critique among the groups last week, one of our classmates suggested that I might consider changing my piece to fiction, to make it more dynamic (and this could possibly help with my voice-creating issues). I haven't been able to stop thinking about that suggestion, because it made me wonder whether it would be possible to mesh the two distinct ideas I had at the beginning of the semester into one narrative.

What I mean is this: you will recall that I was debating between the nonfiction idea I've been working on, and the fiction idea based on a piece I started a few years ago in a YA class. This was the piece about adoption and the fantasy of being reunited with one's birthmother. Well, when my classmate suggested switching my piece to fiction I thought, what if I take the basic adoption premise, and use the Catalina idea I've been working with to move that narrative along. As in, the story is set in Catalina, and I use my experiences to shape my character's story. Gah, I'm having a difficult time explaining this. Basically what I'm getting at is that the adoption/reunion story could in theory be perpetuated by the Catalina narrative. The birthmother and daughter could have a mutual connection to Catalina Island (I've had this opening scene in my head all week where the birthmother as a teenager is sitting on the balcony of the condo in Catalina, on vacation with her family, and she has just found out by taking a test she bought at the beachfront drugstore that she is pregnant). I can see this being a prologue, and then the story jumps to the "present" as the narrative shifts to the daughter at, say, age 16, as she searches for her birthmother and Catalina Island is somehow what brings them together. I can totally see this daughter character as being like a fictional version of me, only in an imagined reality, and I feel like it would be much easier for me, since I have so much more experience writing fiction, to give her a distinct voice that way.

The only problem with this is that I have no idea where it's going, and I have only so much time to figure it out... but I can't get the idea out of my head. I can't help but think that there's something to it that merits acting on... I need other opinions. What are your thoughts???

Cluster 2's assignment was to describe a place that exists in our thesis. Mine became much more of a scene--it's a scene I've been avoiding writing, so it's always nice to be forced out of procrastination. This fits about 60 pages in, so most of you are missing a lot of back story, but I think the most important thing is: Talley is the narrator's stepmother, Baxter is Talley's son.


“This is our last house in town in town,” Talley says as she parks in front of the third house.

Wellfleet stretches for miles in all directions, but it's mostly forest and marshland and beaches and ponds. A lot of houses are nestled in trees, far enough away from other houses to seem private amongst beautiful views of all that nature. The main town is only about ten square blocks, with all the stores and restaurants, the library and city hall.

Dad and Talley haven't said so, but I think they're hoping to live in this area, close to the shop they're going to open. I know I'd prefer it. There's no way to mistake this sleepy marketplace for New York, but at least something is happening here.

And this house is apparently our last chance at it. I can tell as soon as we get through the fence that it isn't the One. It's perfectly cute, a single story ranch, but Talley's face says it all: not exactly Barbie's dream house and Dad and Talley aren't going to settle for less than their total dream come true, plus skylights and granite countertops.

Thank God! I've never thought of it until now: if Dad and Talley don't find what they're looking for, then they won't move here! How likely is it their dream house is in this little town? Settling for less in New York is much easier than moving and settling for less a few hundred miles away. I skip up the front path of this house we won't buy, consider whistling, because their hopes are so high that they're bound to come crashing down into little pieces of some silly, wasted weekend. We're not moving!

A very short woman in a banana yellow pantsuit meets us at the front door. “Hello! Hello, hello!” she says. “Are you here for the open house?”

“Um,” Talley says, “no. Not exactly. We're looking all around today. But if you'd like to show us the house—”

The woman is squinting at Talley. “This house isn't for you. I'm Lacey Letson. Your house is in this town, we just need to find it.” You can see Talley melt—literally, her shoulders dropping down as she takes Lacey Letson's hand. “What are you looking for, Ms—?”

“Munro, but please call me Talley. This is my partner, Tony, and our kids, Emma and Baxter.”

“Hello!” Lacey Letson gives each of us a quick, vigorous handshake. “You two must be twins or Irish twins at least, right?” she says, eyes darting from me to Baxter. “Am I right?”

It's not uncommon for people to think we're actually related even though we don't look that much alike. We just have the same coloring—dark hair, blue eyes, pale skin—and we're both taller than average.

“He's my stepbrother,” I tell her.

“Actually, our parents aren't married yet,” Baxter says which starts Talley off.

“We started dating and moved in together six years ago, but he proposed last week—” She goes on about the ring, from Tiffany's I find out, and their store owning ambitions, and the house in Boston her grandparents used to live in, and how she's always wanted a vegetable garden.

Lacey Letson listens and offers us wine, cheese and fruit in the front hall. When Talley's finally done, Lacey says, “I know exactly what you want and exactly where it is. It's not on the market yet, but I can get you in to see it.”

She flips open her phone, presses a number, and calls, “Jimmy! I need the key to Cheshire House.” Talley give a little giggle at the name and Lacey Letson winks.

Cheshire probably reminds her, and most people, of the cat in Alice in Wonderland, and isn't that charming? Everyone always forgets how terrifying the Alice books really are. Cheshire is actually a county in England famous for its cheese. We're going to see Cheese House.

I can't think of how to articulate this flaw to Dad without rambling, so I just say, “Cheshire is—cheese.”

“Isn't that fascinating?” Talley says. “We all love cheese!”

I bite my lip to keep from grousing that's not the point!

Jimmy on the phone is very helpful and Lisa Letson takes us to Cheshire House right away. She gets on a little white vespa and we follow her a few blocks northwest from what I hoped was our last chance. Wellfleet's not big enough to have neighborhoods, but this street is one of the nicer we've seen, as pretty and polished as a movie set.

Lacey Letson turns into a driveway that goes under a huge balcony that wraps arount eh whole house. It takes me until we're parked underneath the balcony, bright light filtering through the honeysuckle vine on a huge trellis wall, for me to realize where we are.

This is the house. It's the house Mom, Dad, and I used to look at when we came here on vacation. I have had my room picked out in this house since I was six-years-old.

“Holy cow,” says my dad. “Em, do you—”

“Yes,” I say. “I remember.”

Lunchtime's satisfying fullness hardens until my stomach feels packed with heavy paperweights of dread. I hate this house. I hate that it's still here after all these years and I hate that it was never built in Manhattan, nothing like it, not anywhere. I hate that their hopes weren't too high—they were on a cloud, with this house, protected by angels.

“What?” Baxter says.

I unbuckle my seat belt and open the car door. The smell of sun-heated honeysuckle is stunning. “The compromise is officially over,” I tell him. “We're buying this house.”

//

It's impossibly perfect. Except that it's not impossible because it's right here. The house was built in 1865 or 1870, Lacey Letson can't remember, and it's the beach's answer to the classic Victorian. Freshly painted pale blue and white, below the wrap-around balcony is a wrap-around porch, lots of columns and gingerbread accents.

It would be beautiful no matter what, but there is also a massive front room, accessible from the front door, disconnected from the rest of the house by sliding doors, a big bay window right in front. Add a cash register and some kites and it's Talley's store.

Inside, there's a fully modernized kitchen, hardwood floors, lots of windows looking out on a big, flowering burst of a garden. Every room upstairs has a door on to the balcony. The old maid's room is twice as big as the master suite in Dad and Talley's apartment in New York.

“This amazing,” says Talley at the end of Lacey Letson's tour, as we walk back into the upstairs hallway. “It's like a dream. Is this fated or too good to be true?”

“Too good to be true,” Baxter says, kicking at a intricately carved door frame. “For sure. This place has to have a murderous, inbred family living in the basement or the ghosts of hundreds of abused children or something. Do you want to put us in a horror movie?”

Lacey Letson's eye twitches at Baxter, but Talley isn't even a little fazed. “It's an adventure, cookie,” she says, like maybe he's right, but it's sure to be one of those horror movies in which the family perseveres—except for maybe the annoying brother—and the sun is shimmering to delicate music at the end.

I've been chewing on my lip this whole tour, but now my canine breaks through a tender spot and blood rushes into my mouth. I suck my lip under my tongue to hide it. The copper taste is nauseating as I swallow it down, but my stomach's still too hard to turn.

“We all need to discuss before we make any decisions,” Dad tells Lacey Letson, putting a hand on Talley's shoulder.

“Yes,” Talley sighs, looking longingly at the claw foot bathtub in the bathroom—the only bathroom, as I'll be sure to mention at our discussion.

“It won't technically be on the market until Monday,” Lacey Letson says, “and I promise not to show it to anyone else—you know this place is going to go fast. But you have a little time. Here's my contact information.” She takes a pink card out of a silver case and then another one out of the back of her slim leather binder. “And here's Al Howard's card—he's the only home inspector I'll vouch for and if you mention I recommended him, he'll survey Cheshire House for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Talley says, taking the cards and shaking Lacey Letson's hand. If she keeps it up, Lacey Letson might end up a bridesmaid at the wedding.

Criticism

How to accept bad criticism:

First off, you must, must, must make sure you are in the proper mood for receiving criticism, negative OR positive. If you are floating on a cloud of glee, thinking that your piece is fantabulous and everyone in the world would love it...that is not the best time to read other people's opinions of your work. You need to be receptive to constructive criticism in order to get the most out of comments.

*Note: If you are on a time constraint, or you tend to float on your cloud of glee for extended lengths of time, perhaps you cannot afford the luxury of waiting. For this, I do apologize, but I have no better advice at this time.

Once you are in the appropriate state of mind, take each critique one at a time. Typically, a bunch of people tend to love your work for the exact reasons others don't like it at all. You can't please everyone, so remember the most important thing about writing: for whom you are writing. Whether you are writing for yourself or for an individual, or even if you are writing for a specific audience, consider how the person/people will enjoy your work, and edit according to that alone.

Also, keep in mind that not everyone will like your style of writing. Goodness knows there are authors out there where I would sooner stick a hot poker down my throat than read their work. But a couple people must like these authors, because they did get published, after all...and to my horror, are being taught in school curriculum. Yet, like I said--some people love a story for the same reasons others hate it. What can you do?

So, in conclusion, take criticism with a grain of salt. Even if you receive a criticism that is purely negative, try first to take anything remotely constructive from it, a side comment that could potentially better your piece. But don't take negativity too seriously. Like I said, think back to those horrible, published stories you were forced to read during school (because I doubt everyone enjoyed every single story they were ever told to read). What would you say to one of the authors if you could critique their work?

If you can see a new angle of your work from a negative critique, great. If not, well, your critique-r can save his or herself some agony and find something else to read.

Cristina

Small Town Description

I won't tell you about the house because it is a mess, with a stained carpet and a sink full of unwashed dishes in a kitchen that smells like over ripe banana. There is all kinds of laundry scattered in the hall. The whole house is framed by a lawn scattered with mushrooms, dandelions and a few brown spots. It's not like the house next door. The house next door has a nice, trimmed lawn with wood cut-outs of angels hand-painted by our well-dressed neighbor.

Down the street there is a little man-made lake that is supposed to be a lake, but it just looks like a big puddle. Sometimes there are ducks that float around in it. Usually there are just mud hens pecking around or a goose that bites if you get too close.

A few miles away from the lake is a supermarket. I love the supermarket. When we go I usually get a candy bar if I'm good. My brother never lets me go to the supermarket by myself because behind it there lies a field where all the huffers go to breathe in their stolen goods. I wouldn't go to the field. I've never stolen anything, ever.

A few miles away is my school which looks like a prison. It's a big cube in the middle of a whole lot of space, surrounded by a chain link fence. It's not a bad place to have to go everyday though. I always wanted to go to a school where all the classrooms were in the same building, in a school that had stairs, just like on T.V.

My brother always picks me up from school in his smelly, noisy truck which is embarrassing. He usually stops at the gas station a few miles from home to fill 'er up or to get some cigs or to buy a lotto ticket. He always leaves me in the car though so he doesn't have to get me a candy bar. He's not mean about it though; he always leaves the air conditioning on.

Behind the gas station there is a whole cat family. There are at least five cats in the cat family. I know because they sneak out sometimes, between the cars and cross the street to go explore around town, and I keep track of every one of them.

In town there isn't much. There are a few empty buildings. There is a bar that has no windows and a big sign that says COCKTAIL that lights up at night into a scary pink. There are always a few cars there even when the sign isn't lit up. In the middle of all of it is a huge store that has everything: clothes, snacks, T.V.s, chairs, soap. We go there a lot.

There is also a library, but I've never been into the library. It's just a clean, new building with an American flag tinking constantly against its pole.

My favorite place in town is the Sunny Diner. Sometimes my brother takes me there for breakfast. I always have pancakes with lots of syrup, eggs and bacon and orange juice and milk. The same woman always asks me the same thing, "And what would you like, sweety?" She has bright white hair and always wears dark makeup around the eyes. She has no boobs, but she lets her shirt be unbuttoned very low. She always wears big earrings.

When I eat my pancakes and my brother drinks his coffee, I always look out the window and whatch some of the cat family smoothly sneak around all the parked cars.

Locations

The assignment is to write about a landscape or place that exists in your thesis using tangible details - this is supposed to help me link my poems possibly. So here we go:

There are three locations throughout most of my poems: The Marshall Islands, Hawaii, and Oakland. Mostly, it's hawaii and the marshall islands. But I'm trying to do a bit more on Oakland.

Marshall Islands is a cluster of atolls in the pacific that are all tiny, with no mountainous landscape just flat all the way - it's kind of like someone steamrolled our islands that's how flat it is. The island I live on - Majuro - is a skinny little thing with only two roads and the ocean is on either side of the road that's how narrow it is. Like everyone's backyard is the ocean. There's salt everywhere the wind is salty the clouds are probably swollen with the salt from the sea. There's a lot of coconut trees. When my dad drove the truck home at night i'd lie on the bed of the truck and stare at the stars between a fan of coconut trees. The night sky is insane you can see the milky way at times - the houses are low and small for the most part and there's no traffic lights so it's not as bright as the cities out here are. There's sand everywhere. You have to drive slow cuz kids run across the street all the time - chasing some runaway ball or chasing each other. When you go towards town ( I don't live in town people call where i live the country because people are more spread out) that's when it gets a bit more packed. This is supposedly the most developed area but it's also the most fucked up part because it's where all the houses are packed together and too much concrete that doesn't fit well against the backdrop of the ocean. There are a lot of buildings that are falling apart and completely useless. There are dust clouds every where - from all the cars from people's slippers kicking up the dust it's dust in cracks and in your wheels and in between your toes. If you drive at night there's a lot of teenagers and men by the side of the road and sometimes also hella kids like a cluster out of nowhere. I drove by a pair of men fighting by the side of the road once. It looked like they were doing some sort of awkward slow dance - they were both drunk so they were clutching eachother and gripping each other's neck falling real real slow to the ground.

Hawaii is a city. But it's also an island so it doesn't necessarily move at the pace of a real city. It's way faster than marshalls - there's highways but even on the highways people drive slow - you'll see a lot of bumper stickers that say "slow down this ain't the mainland" the mainland is america. There's a major consensus that "mainlanders" (and this is always said with some disdain) move too fast and are arrogant and take up space and uptight and rude. There are mountains here - most of the time dotted with what looks like little houses but are actually mansions. There are so many rainbows - marshalls might have the best for stargazing but hawaii wins with rainbows. I've seen triple rainbows while beads of rain cling to the windows of our car. There's a lot of buildings everywhere but there's also so many trees and it's pretty and so green everything's so green and lush and beautiful it's ridiculous. No Waikiki is ridiculous. It's packed with hotels big hotels little hotels HELLA people and restaurants and big swanky stores that have bouncers in slick suits that's how serious the shopping is.
Waikiki was the playground of my teenage years. I remember attempting to surf there - and i remember all the fine local boys chillin with their surfboards and their surfboard abs whipping back the salt in their hair. The ocean was peppered with surfers beginners experienced it didn't matter and i remember pearl diving (falling off the front of your board) all the time and bein like man fuck this i want a hamburger. i remember one time my friend showed me this spot where we basically had to sneak into some huge hotel ( i forget which one but it was huge) and climb the fire escape until we got to the roof. it was night time and you could see the entire waikiki from there with all the lights glittering so bright and to the side was the ocean, black it was so black the sea was right there like an animal that kept bowing its head to the shore - you could see some surfers were out there still too.

the bay is the city. so many people! and here's where the concrete is everywhere. when i think of the bay i think of the city lights - i think the city lights here are so beautiful. i used to hate the sky out here at night because you couldn't see any stars but then i realized the city was the stars and the sunsets here are also beautiful in their own ways with smog drifting and the bridge in the background. this was where i saw my first red sun - it was deep red like almost bloody and it scared the shit out of me. i also saw hail here for the first time - it was when i was late to tennis practice with my friend lisa and coach was pissed at us so he made us ran laps and as we were running these big chunks of ice were hitting us and i couldn't believe it was hail!
the bay is walking around with thai iced tea at the ashby flea market it's buying swishers at the corner store and climbing to the top of the parking lot complex to share a blunt with some boys with their bright skateboards and bright nikes. it's bart rides grinding against blackness and it's a lot of walking honestly in the sun and even at night. its concerts and dancing against sweaty shirts and screaming drunk down shattuck or through the mission and coasting along freeways on the bus with mariachi music or erykah badu blasting on my head phones.
the beaches here depress me though. it's too cold and gray and dirty and everytime i go i'm disgusted by the way people treat it. actually that's in a lot of places. even in waikiki sometimes i'll see a plastic bag floating in the water or especially in majuro where people leave broken beer bottles all over the beaches. i recently went to ocean beach at night though - my friend drove me to see it because i realized i missed the ocean and i needed to stop being prejudiced.it was nice. the lights were right on the other side and it was very cold but still pretty and there was a hint of salt in the air which i found comforting.

What is the language contributing to the piece?

Here’s some dialogue from "Bug", by Tracy Letts .

The language creates class and race, for me - white, working or working-poor, and drug-addled - the tone and style ring pretty true.

Letts brushes in their characters and backgrounds by degrees. The action introduces these three people - freebasing, smoking, drinking, Agnes and R.C. kiss goodbye . When Peter says "I pick up on things." and Agnes asks "What things?" the scene draws in tighter. Peter is revealing something about himself, something secret. Agnes might be curious, or she might be humoring him, or both...but in any case, she asks. She doesn't change the subject. it's a small turn, but she is going to be a real mess by the end of the play, and so is he. It starts in this scene, with these small words.

Agnes and Peter's vocabularies are close but not identical. Peter's words and sentences are usually more complete than Agnes's. He sounds more polished than Agnes - of course she's half in the bag, but still. Agnes refers to Jeanne Dixon, the no-longer-famous psychic - by giving her that, Letts shows us Agnes's age group - and when Peter responds with who's that? you can read that he's younger than Agnes.

There's all kinds of hell gathering in the corners, but its not obvious how much hell. He has a lot of control, and great timing. Copying this was interesting, because you have to go slow. You can see better. Here in this little bit, I see short words + many actions = tension.

A little background:
Agnes is freebasing in a motel, with her friend R.C. and some guy named Peter, who've just come from a party. Also, Agnes’s violent ex-lover of two years has been calling her at the motel - he shouldn't know she's there. She's worried. R.C. gets a phone call from her girlfriend, and leaves to pry her out of some trouble she got into at the bar. Peter stays behind.



(R.C. darts out, pulling the door closed behind her. AGNES and PETER take each other in.)

AGNES: You want one last drink? PETER: I guess I’ll go then.

Quick beat Quick beat

I should get to bed Yeah, I could have another Coke.

Agnes: Help yourself.

Peter: Thanks.

(Agnes tidies the room, dumping some empties, cleaning an ashtray. Peter gets a Coke from the fridge and wipes the top of the can with his shirtsleeve.)

You've known each other awhile.

AGNES: Few years, I guess.

PETER: I just met her tonight.

AGNES: Why'd you change your mind about the party?

PETER: I don't know. It just didn't seem like my cup of tea.

(He opens the Coke)

AGNES: Have a real drink, for Crissake. People who don't drink make me nervous.

PETER: I make people nervous anyway.

(The air conditioner cuts off.)

AGNES: Why's that?

PETER: 'Cause I pick up on things, I think. That makes people uncomfortable.

AGNES: Pick up on things.

PETER: Things not apparent.

AGNES: That's a talent.

PETER: Mm-hm.

AGNES: What do you pick up from me?

PETER: You're lonely. I know that much.

AGNES: Doesn't exactly make you Jeanne Dixon.

PETER: Who's Jeanne Dixon?

AGNES: She was...y' know, that psychic, told Teddy Kennedy that Jack'd get shot.

PETER: Oh. You live here?

AGNES: Yeah.

PETER: In the motel?

AGNES: Yeah.

PETER: That's weird.

AGNES: Why is that weird?

PETER: I don't know.

Beat

Can I put on some more music?

AGNES: Yeah.