Yay! I'm on time this week!

So, I am particularly proud of myself for actually posting some fiction writing on Friday, just like I planned! I have been working on a few things and some things have been developing better than others.

The Alice in Wonderland inspired story isn't coming along too well, but maybe if I leave it be for a while and come back to it I'll have some better ideas.

On the other hand, this story that I just started working on is coming along nicely. Although, the drafts are very rough and there are only pieces of the story. I have a little bit of a beginning, some part of the middle and maybe an ending done. So, very rough.

The Evergreen

Jemma visited the tree everyday on her way home from school. It was about eight feet tall and had branches that stuck out five feet at the bottom and just a few inches at the top. Her mother had helped her plant it when she was five-years-old. Jemma had won it on Arbor Day at school in a coloring contest. They had planted it in the furthest corner of their yard, about five feet from the white picket fencing that was no longer there.

Jemma walked to school now and the evergreen that her and her mother planted fifteen years ago was a mile off the path. In the summertime she’d sit and read in the shade of the tree, in the fall she’d make a pillow of leaves and take a nap. In the winter, she’d make two snow people, one was just a few inches taller than the other.

Jemma and her mother used to build snow people together on snow days. Her mother was stronger than her so she could roll bigger balls for the body of the snow people. Jemma would stick vegetables, animal crackers, and other food she didn’t finish at lunch into a baggy to make the facial features of the snow people. Sometimes, she would save a brown and split it into two parts for the eyes and apple slices shaped into a half moon for the mouth. Jemma’s mother always bought a bag of coal and saved some carrots from the garden so they’d have them for snow days.

Jemma’s mother died in a car accident four days before Jemma’s eleventh birthday. She’d been out shopping for luau decorations. They were harder to find since Jemma’s birthday was in the middle of January.

Pajama daze.

Lesson of the day: sleeping in and hanging out in your jim-jams is quite relaxing (and productive even).

I slept in this morning, well I slept later than I do every other day of the week anyways. It felt so good to not have to wake to an alarm, although I woke up at 8:26 am and thought that I'd overslept and missed the bus for school. Don't worry, I fell back asleep for another two hours.

Between 10:30 am and noon I folded two baskets of laundry, did the dishes, invoiced some customers and read twenty pages in The Scarlett Letter. They were probably the most productive two hours of the whole week. I'm feeling pretty good about today so far. I hope I can keep the productivity up.

I think after I shower I am going to put jammies right back on, I think they are the key to productiveness.

FICTION FICTION FICTION

So, I have been on a roll with writing lately. I just keep coming up with ideas upon ideas. Sometimes I feel like a writer and sometimes I don't. I feel like sometimes I could be a writer and other times I could be a Writer. The first one not so professional and the second more professional and there is monetary rewards. 

So, the following is a new beginning to the story that I had been working on. I guess I am still working on it - the story with the girl who gets shot at the bus stop. 

“Isaac!”

“Yes, my love.”

“Will you please come here?”

“Um, I am kind of busy at the moment.”

“Seriously?”

Jordan is five feet and five inches tall and has trouble reaching the top shelf in the cupboards. The stepstool was missing in action so she needed some help reaching fixings for dinner.

“Isaac, will you please help me? It’ll take you like five minutes.”

“Fine.” He closed out of the windows he had open on his computer and shut it off. He figured he should spend some time with Jordan before she left for work for the night. He’d be asleep by the time she got home since he had to work early the next morning.

“I just need the spaghetti noodles and the olive oil,” she told him as he walked into the kitchen.

“Spaghetti again?” He bit the inside of his cheek and squinted one eye.

“Would you like something else?”

“No,” he said, “spaghetti is fine I guess.”

 Jordan set the pot of water on the burner and turned it on. She went to the fridge and got the meat and the onion out. She wore a surgical mask while she cut onions so she wouldn’t cry. Her mother tried teaching her the trick to cut an onion without crying but she never remembered it.

Isaac sat down on the couch and turned the game on. It didn’t matter who was playing, it was always more important than anything else.

“How long until its ready,” he asked.

“It could be done faster if you helped,” she said. 

A little something, something.

I've started a little writing project, not sure if it will fully mature but it is kind of fun.

Maggie’s Quest

Maggie sat at her desk that faced the window. She could see the playground with all the other kids playing on it. She wished she could be in Tommy Johnson’s place sliding down the red swirly slide or like Molly Wingrove who was swing on the banana swing. Maggie couldn’t though. She had recess detention. Recess detention is the worst kind of detention because you had to watch the other kids playing on the playground.  

Maggie was a creative and adventurous child. Her teachers mistook this for troublemaking and mischief. Today she had detention for slaying a dragon. In Maggie’s world, the dragon was her fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Jackson. She was the oldest, meanest and ugliest teacher in the whole school. 

Intera..what?

I sincerely apologize for the lack of a Fiction Friday post this past Friday. I was so busy all day because my wonderfully charming boyfriend was coming to see me. I had class, work, dinner to make and a hockey game. 


I know, I know. I should have prepared something Thursday night, or anytime earlier in the week for that matter, so I could have posted something on Friday. I just wasn't thinking that far ahead last week. Sorry.


Anyways, today was an interesting day. It always felt like it was morning, no matter what time it really was. It felt like 7 am when I woke up at 7 am, it felt like 7 am after my 9 am class, it felt like 7 am while I was processing textbooks at 2:30 pm. It just felt odd. Now that I am home, it feels like it is late. It's only 3:15 pm and it feels like it's almost 7 pm. What is up with my internal clock?! 


Ooh, I have something to tell you. This ?! = this ‽. It is called an interabang. It used to be more often but it is sort of being phased out. I love it though, it is now my favorite punctuation mark. 

News flash: Marxism.

Lesson of the day: I am not a unique individual with unique thought. I am a socially constructed being.

In my Methods of Literary Study class, we are reading from The Theory Toolbox. Chapter 6: Ideology, explains how the "self" and the "subject" are influenced. We'd like to think that we are all our own unique individual with individual thoughts and ideas but the truth of the matter is that we cannot escape cultural impact.

So, if you think that you've thought up a wonderfully new and unique idea, you haven't. Everything that you produce is a byproduct of what you have learned from the environment around you. I was slightly depressed this morning after class. It is so heart-wrenching to hear that there are people who believe that you don't really have a unique self. I always like to think that I am an individual with feelings and ideas that are just mine.

Argh...onto a lighter note though.

My Writing Fiction teacher gave me props today for my short story that I've been working on. She told me it is "a great skeleton" and "you have good momentum throughout the story." Essentially, she told me I am on my way to being a writer. After my draft conference I was filled with ideas for my story. I realized that I started my story in the "middle" of the story. I have so many ideas for a real beginning to my story.

Readers may want to know more about the characters and their relationship before the real juicy stuff happens. I still don't know if it will be my favorite story that I write or even make a top five list. It will be the first short story that I do more than one draft of, so that is exciting. Well, to me anyways. I feel like it makes me a better writer to go through a story multiple times. I guess it makes you think more about how you write and how you can say things.

I was going to work on it tonight but I ended up not having the motivation to do it since The Theory Toolbox interrupted me. I hate reading about being a socially constructed being with no unique or new thoughts.

Fiction Saturday.

Seriously, Fiction Saturday is just as good as Fiction Friday, right? Even though there is no alliteration in the title it's the actual post that counts.

I've decided to take a break from posting more on the Bus Stop/Shooting story and am going to move on for a little bit. I need to do some more work on that one before I post more. My Writing Fiction professor has us do exercises to expand our writing abilities and work on certain elements of writing stories, so this week she had us eavesdrop on a conversation and turn it into a scene with dialogue. 


Here's the preface: I went to the coffee shop on campus to work on some homework and to try to listen in on a conversation. It was rather interesting. 

Thanks to the Barista

Reluctantly Molly walked into the coffee shop; she had seen him in there and had been avoiding him. She desperately needed her caffeine fix. Mondays are the worst. She kept her head turned away from him and tried ordering her coffee with a British accent so he wouldn’t notice her voice.

“I’m sorry,” said the barista, “what did you want.”

“A tall mocha with a hint of mint,” she said, abandoning the accent.

“Trying something new,” he asked.

Molly turned in his direction; it wasn’t in her nature to be rude. “I guess I am just stuck in character,” she said.

“How was your weekend?”

“It was fine. How about yours?”

“I didn’t drink at all this weekend I had to start a paper Friday night and on Saturday I volunteered to be a sober cab.”

“When is that paper due?”

“Next Tuesday I think.”

“Oh good, I have time to start it then.”

“Anyways, on Saturday we went out and I was the sober cab. My roommate, he’s diabetic so he shouldn’t be drinking as much as he does. Seriously, he can do a 24 pack in a day. He was so drunk on Saturday night. He ran up the stairs in our apartment and I heard a loud crash and when I got up the stairs I saw him on the ground.”

She rolled her eyes and folded her arms across her chest.

He continued. “I had to pick him up and literally carry him over my shoulder.”

“Oh my gosh, really.”

“Yea, he just kept falling and falling and I had to pick him up every time.”

“It is kind of fun to watch people when you’re sober,” she said.

“I hate watching people when I’m sober. I can’t stand being the only sober one.”

“Why?”

“Because they want you to drink and they won’t give up. They always want you to drink and they don’t care if you’re driving later. I’d like to but I know that I can’t drive after a beer.”

“You should have gone to a closer party.”

“We wanted to go see some people who came up from the cities. I was the only one with a full tank of gas since my parents give me money for that.”

“That’s nice.”

“One time, I told my friends I was pregnant so they would stop harassing me to drink.”

“I can’t believe you’d say that to get out of drinking.”

“I told them I wasn’t the next day though. I really didn’t want to drink.”

“Traditional mocha with a hint of mint,” the barista called out.

“That’s me, gotta run.”

“Catch you later Molly,” he hollered after her as she was walking out the door.

Re-read.

Lesson of the day: re-reading your writing is very helpful, or should I say insightful.

Right now, haha, write now. Sorry, but I am in that kind of mood. Right now I am working on re-working my story that I have been posting for Fiction Friday. Now that I am re-reading it, I have to say that I am not as proud of it as I was before. There are plenty of spots in the story that need more elaboration and some spots that need to be tossed out all together.

I can't believe I turned this in today, well the rough draft of it anyways. I am so thankful for the "It's only a rough draft" excuse though. In the next two weeks I have the opportunity to polish it up for the second draft. After that, I'll have another few weeks to make a third and final draft.

Writing is fun, I don't think I am going to make a living from it yet but maybe in the future. Who really knows?

I have been accused multiple times of writing from a semi-autobiographical point-of-view. I refuse to accept that I can't make up an original character. All of my characters are as original as they can be, I mean they are taken from everyday people who ARE originally themselves. Now, that I have re-read my story with this knowledge of the accusation, I will fess up to being a little semi-autobiographical. I guess I do use people from my life for characters and I do use the events that I witness or experience for inspiration in my stories that I write.

NEWS: I had an idea today for another story. I am going to write a spin-off of Alice in Wonderland. I can't give away the exact details because I wouldn't want anyone to take any of my ideas...I'm a hoarder in that way.

Ciao!