5 random things I am really, really bad at

1. Using semicolons
 This is truly one of my greatest foibles. Of all the things I do poorly and all the things that cause me severe amounts of angst, this is at the top. I have had teachers tell me repeatedly how to use these mysterious comma period combinations and I when I read the comments about using semicolons on my papers I feel like I understand.  However when I sit down to actually write, it seems that any newly discovered (or rediscovered) semicolon knowledge goes out the window and I just; start haphazardly; throwing them in; wherever I feel like;;. I also neglect to put them in the places they belong. At this point I’ve decided to give them up all together and spend large amounts of time working around the dreaded semicolon. However, if someone wanted to buy me this poster I might be willing to give my least favorite punctation* another try.

2. Waving
This may seem like something really simple but it’s something that consistently eludes my grasp. People have tried to help me wave; teaching my their preferred form of waving or attempting to shape my hand into an acceptable waving posture, but they’ve all given up on me and considered me a lost cause. I’ve tried all sorts of different forms of waving: cute little waves right by my face, the princess wave, the one where you just fold your fingers into the palm of your hand repeatedly, that thing where your  fingers sort of ripple.  It would seem that no matter what I do I end up looking like I’m still trying to learn basic motor skills. In fact, the best way to really describe how I wave is to show you a pretty good likeness, starting around the 25 second mark (although I probably dance like this too):

3. Not Getting Lost
My father and I share a similar sense of direction, or in our case a complete lack thereof.  It’s not just getting lost in a new city or neighborhood, it’s everywhere, even places I’ve been before.  I have a GPS on my phone and a strong attachment to Mapquest, because otherwise I’d miss everything.  I’ve gotten lost coming out of elevators if I got into one on the wrong side of the hall. Because of this I try to just let other people go first in order to avoid looking stupid. For instance, when I go to the mall (the same mall I’ve been going to for as long as I can remember)  and I step out of a shop, I am rendered unable to figure out which direction I was coming from when I first entered that particular store. If I’m with someone I find some excuse to step back and let them lead.  If I’m alone I usually stand in the doorway indecisively  for a moment and then take off in whatever direction looks least wrong. I then have to  walk until: a) I’m sure that I haven’t already been that way, or b) I pass some sort of landmark (store, sign, bench) that I know for a fact I walked by already, and then turn around and hope that nobody notices that I just got lost, inside the mall.

4. Crossing My Eyes
This was truly one of the great disappointments of my youth. I was sure that this was a necessary skill for my chosen career: super famous and hilariously funny sitcom/variety show star.  I knew that I could never be the next Carol Burnett or Lucille Ball as long as my eyes stubbornly refused to meet in the middle. But alas, I was never able to make it happen. I once videoed myself to see if I was even coming close and it turns out that I get really close and it looks like it’s almost going to happen and then my eyes suddenly bounce back and stare in the correct direction. So, I had to let go of my dream because I just could not overcome the thing standing in my way (my not being very funny clearly had nothing to do with it). As a side note, my littlest sister is six and she can cross her eyes with little to no warm up.**

5. Cutting Fruit/Vegetables***
This one may seem like a copout to avoid helping with dinner prep, but I really am a menace to myself and society when wielding a cooking knife. My mother refuses to watch me cut things for fear that she’ll witness the moment I lose a finger instead of just hearing about it later. It’s not that I can’t cut the vegetables I just look really scary while doing it, and am usually assigned a different job in an attempt to avert disaster. When I try to cut an apple I end up completely destroying it to get the core out and I have to cut it into way more pieces than is strictly necessary in order to eliminate all of the seeds and other mostly inedible parts. My siblings now request their fruit whole because they don’t like waiting so long and then receiving only like 3/4 of an apple.

That’s it, this is a pretty comprehensive list of the things I have trouble with. Aside from the items mentioned I’m essentially perfect.

*The fact that I have different levels of affections for different types of punctation clearly establishes my nerd status.

**As soon as I asserted that she didn’t have any trouble crossing her eyes and asked her to do it for a picture she suddenly couldn’t, which is why she’s holding her finger up to get started.

***I’ll admit I was having a hard time coming up with one more thing that might be somewhat interesting so if you skimmed that last one. I understand.

Poetry Class Assignment #1: A Poem Based on a Picture

Was he alone?

 They both asked, without exactly asking.
Worrying about a baby who is no longer so young, in a void that isn’t empty anymore.
Neither one quite able to reconcile this boy looking so tiny
with our big twelve year old brother, who nowadays rarely looks small at all.
Watching as he makes his own footprints in the footprint left by the machine.
Wearing a coat but no shoes, his hands and face poised in concentration.
I should have shown them the words on the back, the ones written in blue pencil
proving that babies in this family are not allowed to travel alone.
Someone took the picture, I told them, someone watched him while he walked.

A lonely moment is harder to capture.

The 5 Stages of Revision

Last month as I was trying to finish up all of my classes I put off what I needed to do for my last class as long as I possibly could.  But finally I had no finals left to study for; no tests left to take and it was time to tackle the dreaded short story revision that was required for my Creative Writing class.  I had two stories to fix based on critique from my teacher and my classmates.  After two rather painful days the stories were ready to be turned in to my teacher and I had made a discovery; one that only furthered my idea that revision is an extremely painful process.  I had realized that the process of revision closely resembles the five stages of grief.  These, are the five stages of revision.

1. Denial  You may find yourself saying things like: “This story is finished already, it’s perfect!  I really shouldn’t change a thing, I deserve some chocolate just for having written it!”  and “I in no way should even think about touching this masterful work of art that was clearly born out of my extreme intellect and some ethereal gift that was handed to me.”   This stage passes fairly quickly into the second stage of  revision.

2.  Anger Revision caused anger is indiscriminate and may direct itself towards a variety of different subjects.  Here are some possible recipients of revision based wrath.  Yourself: “Ugh, why did I even have to write this in the first place!” Your teacher: “I cannot believe that my evil teacher, who clearly only wants to ruin my life and crush my creativity is making me do this.” Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for writing better stories than you, and even your little brother for finishing the milk  and eating the last of the chocolate without asking your permission.

3. Bargaining   This stage may seem somewhat implausible when not revising for a class but only for your personal edification and character growth.  However, when you have reached the appropriate level of desperation you will start to think things sort of like this: “You know, this story is taking way longer to revise than it did to write in the first place.   So, if I just quit revising this story I can write a whole bunch of much better stories!” if this doesn’t work you may try bargaining to try to motivate yourself to write the story. “If I fix these three pages I get to eat that chocolate. Well, that’s asking a lot, perhaps just the two next two pages… or this page. Ah, heck I’ll just eat the chocolate now so it won’t distract me anymore.”

4.Depression This stage is the one that has earned writers a reputation as brooding and emotional.  I find it to be the longest and the most *ahem* dramatic, for example “Why, why, why did I think this story was a good idea, what insanity had gripped me?” or something along the lines of “How could I ever think that writing was a good idea, I am the world’s worst writer.  This is going to be the story that the real writers sit around and mock.”  Then you probably spend some time sulking in some corner somewhere listening to the saddest music you can find while eating large quantities of chocolate and wallowing in your own miserableness and perceived idiocy, until finally you reach stage five:

5. Acceptance  Eventually you will run out of stalling mechanisms and be forced to face the necessary evil of revision.  In the beginning it may sound something like this “Well, I’ve already poured so much effort into this crummy story I might as well finish it so that I can wash my hands of it forever.” As time goes on though you may be forced to admit that it is not in fact as you thought before a disgrace and not even worth the paper it’s printed on, and could possibly, some day even be a not horrible story.

There you have it, if any of this sounds familiar to you, you are probably suffering from revision.  If in fact you are afflicted with this curse on writers everywhere stop reading this blog, finish revising your story and reward yourself with some chocolate!*

*You may have noticed that chocolate was mentioned an inordinately large number of times for one blog post, but chocolate (and the eating of chocolate) is in many ways the most important stage of revision, and one that runs continuously through the entire process, which is why I can’t spend all my time revising or I’d be one very round little writer.

“Come in! and know me better, man!”

This:

is the ghost of Christmas yet to come.  He’s a menacing sort of fellow, in fact Dickens says that “Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.”  Not really someone you want to spend a lot of time with.  I realized a couple of months ago that subconsciously I tend to view God this way.  As though he is a silent intimidating figure following me around, pointing me towards my doom as I stand there waiting for the other shoe to drop, and that in this case, I should clearly spend my life cowering like Scrooge is doing in the picture above.  The bible clearly says otherwise however; in verses like

Psalm 34:8 - Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

Proverbs 10:22 – The blessing of the LORD brings wealth,
without painful toil for it.

Romans 5:8 – But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us.

This is a God who gave his life to save us from death, rather than condemn us to it.  The more I thought about it the more I realized that God is really more like this guy:

This is the Ghost of Christmas Present.  He is warm and welcoming, and when Scrooge first enters the room he calls out “Come in! and know me better, man!”  And when I think of God like this, knowing him better is exactly what I want to do.

But…she’s not a superhero

Bear: What are you going to be for halloween?

Me: Lois Lane.

Bear: She’s not a superhero, she doesn’t have superpowers.

Me: I know.

Bear: Don’t you want to be Batman, or Superman so you can fight?

Me: But they’re boys.

Bear: Oh that’s ok you can be them.  Lewis* Lane can’t fly.

Me: I know

Bear: You could be Wonder Woman she’s cool.

Me: Yeah.

Bear: So you be Wonder Woman or Lewis Lane?

Me: Lois Lane.

Bear: She’s not a superhero.

*No matter how many times we explain to him that her name is Lois, he calls her Lewis.

“How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!” – Jane Austen

Reasons I should not be a fiction writer:

1. I have never read Moby Dick.
2. I do not really desire to read Moby Dick.
3. I am fond of plot.
4. Sometimes when I see a fish in a story I think it is really just a fish and not symbolic of the fisherman’s need for approval and acceptance, which stems from his father’s rejection of said fisherman’s high school choice to play the cello instead of football.
5. I like happy endings.  You know where the characters actually end up happy.
6. I also appreciate endings where all the answers are provided ( I think this is why I liked Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; they gave you the answer before the end of the first book).
7. I sometimes find revision to be about as pleasant as poking my eyes out with a fork. (This is a lie, it should probably say always, or at the very least often.)
8. I am clearly attached to bulleted lists, this is generally not an acceptable form in novels and/or short stories.
9. I’m not angsty enough.
10. Even my blog writing is somewhat spotty.

Reasons why the above reasons are irrelevant:

1. Whenever I’m wondering if I should continue with writing I feel like writing about it will bring resolution.
2. No one is looking to hire a grammar ninja (which was my fallback).
3. I’m not interested enough in/good enough at anything else.
4. I have favorite words like some people have favorite colors. (Right now they are perspicacious and non-sequitur.)
5. Changing your major is really a pain, and I feel like I’ve already received so much flack for being an English major that I’d hate to see it go to waste.

Confessions

In an attempt to blog more often, even now on an uninspired Monday, I’m doing a list (shocking I know) of the things that I would not openly admit in public (so I’m posting it on the internet, yes the logic is flawed, but just go along with it)

1. I have an unhealthy attachment to Glee.  Seriously it’s bad news, I have their music on my iPod and we TiVo it, but worse is that I actually know what’s going on with the storyline.

2. Freshman or Sophomore year in high school I read the vast majority of the Babysitters Club books. Someone gave us a whole bunch of them and rather than flee I picked one up.  I discovered I could read at least one a day so I read them, and read them and read them.  But I was not proud of it even at the time.  I sort of hid them if anyone other than my family saw me reading them. “That’s not my book, I’m…holding it for a friend.”

3. I remember an absurd amount of completely unimportant and ridiculous things.  The other night my sister, dad and I sang sitcom theme songs on the way home from somewhere.  We remembered enough that it actually took us the full 45 minutes home.

4. There are certain words that I consistently and rather embarrassingly misspell.  Words such as, consciousness, and acquaintance. But if I keep writing about these words I figure eventually the way they’re spelled should stick.

5. About half the time in Creative Writing classes I only pretend to understand the supposed deep and hidden meanings that everyone else finds in these apparently fabulous authors.

Well, that’s all I’ve energy to come up with.  Happy Monday!

Fly-On-the-Wall

Since I’m still recovering from the first week back at school, and I’m supposed to be doing homework, I’m posting the first assignment we had in my creative writing class.  The assignment was to objectively describe five items on our desk, we had to describe them well enough to give the reader some insight into the owner without actually letting our emotions or thoughts creep into the paper, so here it is:

The man dressed all in black stands in front of the desk.  He reaches up to adjust the mask covering his face.  First he grabs a mason jar, painted white with pink, blue, and purple hearts stamped on it. Some of the hearts are smeared and some look as if the stamp didn’t have enough paint when it was pressed to the jar.  He winces at the jingling it makes as he picks it up.  It’s less than a quarter full of change, almost entirely pennies and nickels, and one sewing machine bobbin, half threaded.  He sets the jar back down and pushes aside a black and white framed picture of four teenage girls.  All of the girls in the photo are smiling and hugging two of them revealing braces across their teeth.  The frame itself has been sprayed with something to make it shiny and on each side are carefully embossed flowers. His hand brushes an orange silk rose.  It is dusty and the petals are starting to loosen and unravel, it smells slightly of a floral perfume.  He glances down and spots a letter.  It is written in some language other than English, but there is a translation following the original.  The writer is thanking the recipient for the support and asking for prayers for school.  On the back is a crayon drawing, of a little girl with stick arms and legs and ears that are far too large. He reaches for the jewelry box rifling through the five drawers.  Each drawer is decorated: one with flowers, another with strawberries, and three with different bugs.  It is painted in bright girlish colors.  The jewelry inside is somewhat more mature than the box but there is nothing much of value, mostly cheap earrings and a few buttons with clever sayings, as well as the occasional friendship bracelet.  He closes the final drawer and moves on to more profitable pastures.

Getting to know you

In an attempt to blog more often, even at the end of an uninspired weekend such as this one, today I’m writing a list of lesser known (or maybe not) facts about myself.

As evidenced by the title of this post, lyrics from musicals sneak into my life all.the.time

I have never shot a man in Reno, to watch him die or for any other reason.

I have seen every episode of the Dick Van Dyke show, including the not very funny, original pilot starring Carl Reiner.

Proofreading puts me in a good mood. This is completely true, if I was going to make things up about myself they would be a lot cooler than this.

I am completely brainwashed by Disney, as evidenced by the fact that when my sister mentioned that her friend’s sister just got engaged to a guy named Eric my first question was “Is her name Ariel?” (It wasn’t)

I eat watermelon like they’re going to stop growing it.

My favorite music is Frank Sinatra, Steve Lawrence, Bobby Darin, etc. (I can’t figure out how best to classify this genre, Big Band? Vocal Jazz? Wiki also says traditional pop.) This, combined with my affinity for show tunes makes me pretty uncool in the music department.

I like watching the Next Food Network Star but, almost never actually sit down and watch the cooking shows that come out of them.

My actual name (it’s really not Sweetanlo, you’re shocked I’m sure) is from the Lord of the Rings, and I’m technically not even named after a person.

Several years ago when I was in a play I really didn’t like I used to spend the extra time in rehearsal writing poems to email to my best friends.  They were really terrible poems, and sadly  also the most productive thing I did that semester.

And last but not least, I’m really not very good at endings as you can clearly see by this fact, which is doubling as a final point and a rather abrupt ending.

Cookies these days

The other day at dinner my mom and I were lamenting the lack of actuall fortunes in fortune cookies.  While it’s true that most of the fortune have always been cheesy and/or rather unbelievable, at least they used to hold genuine predictions.  Things like:

“You will take an unexpected trip.” (In t.v. and comic books this never meant a journey, and always meant a fall.)

“You will meet a tall dark stranger.”

“You will receive an unexpected windfall.”

Nowadays the alleged “fortunes” tend to be more proverbs/cliches for instance:

“If you are wise you will do well in life.”

“Do not waste time dwelling on the past.”

and sometimes their meaning is rather, well vague

“If you walk a mile in the path of a beaver, you might have to build a dam.”

or obvious

“If you are good to the people around you, they won’t think you weren’t”

So I decided that if I were to write fortune cookies I would skip the eloquence and the veiled meanings and instead go for the straightforward abundantly clear and helpful fortunes.

“After the tip you left, the waiter’s spitting in your food next time.”

“You will walk into a pole while trying to text.”

“You will wake up with a huge pimple on your face the morning of school pictures.”

I leave you with a few fortunes I would like to receive (and actually see come true)

“You will never receive a rejection letter, and will be able to afford actual wallpaper for your bathroom.”

“You will have the opportunity to eat your weight in chocolate and not get fat.”

“You will be filthy rich.”

“The girl who gave you all that trouble in high school will end up weighing 200 pounds and working at the local walmart.”

Goodnight, and good fortune