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.