Freak Thoughts

Since our class started working on our short stories I have had trouble finding that one thing that makes the story work, that makes it worth reading. On the fourth draft I believe I have finally found it. The magic has come to my story after five drafts.

I had been having trouble finding it since I do not view myself as a good writer. But after five drafts it seems that the story that I have written surprises even me when I read it. The magic must come after months of thought and preparation, something I usually do with years. It must be a thing of time and determination, not apparent skill. Can it not be that, while writing a story I have found my characters voices at last? That, since I started my short on the story and nothing else, does that mean that I needed to only find my characters voices? The visuals I get when reading it bring me into the story, the writer, the one who finds it difficult to take his work seriously.

Can it be that my story is finally complete?

By the way, The Cold is mine. I dont know what happened, but it got published up on the top bar for some reason.

It is the first day of exams and that means that school is almost over for the semester. I personally can’t wait for the last exam on next wed.  I had my frist exam this morning at 8am for my psychology of evil class (the class i asked for help on with my paper, which by the way i got an A- on, so thanks for the help!).  I was actually late for that exam because my dad’s car got a flat tire and it’s a hybrid and it doesn’t have spare tire in the back.   but luckly my teacher is cool and understood. 

anyways, I wanted to say goodbye to everyone, and thank you for your help on my stories,  i really appreciate it.  I wish I could take the class agian next semester because I really like it (it was my fav. this semster), but this semster was the second time I took a creative writing class.  But I will continue to write nonetheless.  

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, or a Happy Hanukkah (or whatever you celeberate or do not celebrate), and have a good break!

I was reading the New York Times today, and found and interesting story about the price that literary magazines have been putting on electronic short stories. According to the article, one magazine, The New Atlantic Stories, decided that shorts would not be included in their monthly print publications. Instead, the stories can only be obtained via e-readers, such as Kindle. They also decided that each story is worth $4.00. I find this to be fascinating since an entire novel, purchase through the same medium, costs less than ten bucks. I don’t want to be cynical, but I’m thinking the authors aren’t paid as outrageously as the magazine.

                                                                                                                     Cindy Kickland

(By far, the most dreaded words of movie goers.)

Here I am, revising my story, bouncing away to the sound of Balls of Fury playing on the TV in the living room, and then Rock of Ages by Def Leppard comes on..and then disappears.  Sad day.  I looked it up on itunes, and of course they’re like, “what is this Def Leppard of which you speaks?”  And so I turned right back to my story and the “Revising playlist.”

Continuing on, though.  I can’t believe the semester is almost over, and the new one is heading towards me at full speed ahead!  I am super excited about the classes I’ve signed up for next semester: Art classes, here I come!  And British Lit as well, and I’m considering adding a anatomy class…. But for this semester:  I’m almost done revising my short story, and I’ve been looking at publishers who publish other stories and books about Asperger Syndrome, and have been coming across some luck.  Or I’ll possibly send it to the Yale Review.  They have like a 75% rejection rate according to duotrope, but who knows.  maybe I can make mine just that good.  Maybe I’ll just make a book out of mine.

Speaking of books about Aspergers.  I’m counting down the days until I get to meet my favorite author!  The author of “Look Me In The Eye” is speaking at University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, and my mom and I are going to hear him speak and hopefully meet him!  I am so excited!  It’s only 121 days away….(April 20th).

So, Creative Writing class Fall ‘09:  Good Luck, and it’s been awesome being in class with you guys!

I’ve hit that wall when it comes to writing. I know what I need to do with my story, but I can not find the motivation or the inspiration to make it happen. Is anyone suffering from serious writers block?

How do you guys get past it?

GAH!!!!

Last weekend I watched that Julie and Julia movie.  It was really good, but I thought it was especially interesting because it was about writing a blog, which is what we are doing.  The girl, Julie, who started writing a blog, ended up getting offered all these book deals, etc. because she had so many readers that liked her blog.  It’s a true story, so ultimately she ended up with a movie too.  I thought it was interesting because she just started doing it on a whim.  She wanted to be a writer but wasn’t making any headway, so on a whim she began a blog about cooking.  So aside from a blog or journal etc. being a good way to actually get yourself writing on a regular basis, it can actually have other benefits too if enough people like what you have to say.  And it doesn’t have to be the best writing in the world, as long as people can identify with and relate to the writer. It’s also a really funny movie though, if anyone is interested in seeing it.

I was hoping to get some input on the format of my story for a revision.

I wrote The Cylinder, about the old guys who blew up people. The story contained phonograph cylinder recordings which were time-coded in a transcript-like format. Tom had asked me in class how/why such a large amount of time would elapse between each piece of dialogue in the transcripts, which were coded like this: [1:36] Alistair: Dialogue.

I think I was running under the assumption that people would know it was Minute: Second and not Hour: Minute because of the fact that people don’t pause between sentences for minutes on end. I actually recorded every piece of dialogue to my computer and then I checked how long the files were and that’s how I made the time stamps. So they’re accurate, but if the reader isn’t going to understand this then it’s fairly useless.

I was thinking about doing it where the time stamp is Hour: Minute: Second but it looks kind of convoluted.

[0:13:46] Alistair: Dialogue.

Is that better or worse? Any input would be great because this is a pretty big flaw. Well, that and the fact that you couldn’t even record on a cylinder for more than a few minutes but that isn’t exactly common knowledge. :p

The other day, I just submitted my first ever manuscript!  I’ve entered writing contests before (which unfortunately, I’ve always lost), but I had never actually submitted anything to a magazine before.  I didn’t submit the story I wrote for class because I spent a lot of time on that and now I am being a chicken about sending it out somewhere.  I will soon though; I just haven’t figured out where to send it yet.  The piece I submitted I didn’t spend as much time on, so I guess I am not as attached to that story and so wasn’t as afraid to send it out.  I was just playing around and thought I would try to write flash fiction because I had never done it before.  It’s actually a pretty difficult thing to do, but writing flash fiction is also fun.  It takes a lot of editing though, and it’s hard to develop something in such a limited space.  I think my story turned out pretty good though.  Supposedly their response time is about two months, so I won’t know anything about it for awhile.  I am pretty comfortable with the fact that Iwill probably get rejected, but it’s still exciting to know I actually have something out there.  The cover letter we did in class came in handy.  They had a specific format they wanted writers to follow for submitting, and it was almost exactly the cover letter we learned in class.  I would suggest submitting to anyone because although it is a little nerve-wracking, it is also kind of exciting.

A friend of mine found this and linked it to me on facebook – it’s someone who looks at two major scenes in Looking for Alaska by John Green from a writer’s perspective rather then a reader’s.

http://acrowesnest.blogspot.com/2009/12/reading-like-writer-looking-for-alaska.html

From Books:

“The millions are awake enough for physical labour; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.”

-H. D. Thoreau, Walden

“Refuse to write your life and you have no life.”

-Patricia Hampl, Memory and Imagination

“To be continued?”

-Alaska Young, Looking for Alaska (John Green)

“Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”

-H. D. Thoreau, Walden

“Every path but your own is the path of fate.”

-H. D. Thoreau, Walden

“We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows.”

-H. D. Thoreau, Walden

“In coming to a fixed determination to run away, we did more than Patrick Henry, when he resolved upon liberty or death. With us it was doubtful liberty at most, and almost certain death if we failed. For my part, I should prefer death to hopeless bondage.”

-Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

“In that direction my windows commanded an unobstructed view of a lofty brick wall, black by age and everlasting shade; which wall required no spy-glass to bring out its lurking beauties, but for the benefit of all near-sighted spectators, was pushed up to within ten feet of my window panes.”

-Herman Melville, Bartleyby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street

“On errands of life, these letters speed to death. Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!”

-Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street

“We shall not cease from exploration / and the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.”

-T.S.Eliot, Little Gidding, part V.

“Their strength is secret. They send ferocious roots beneath the ground. They grow up and they grow down and grab the earth between their hairy toes and bite the sky with violent teeth and never quit their anger. This is how they keep.”

-Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street

“Among the forces which sweep and play throughout the universe, untutored man is but a wisp in the wind. Our civilization is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life – he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free will, his free will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance. He is becoming too wise to hearken always to instincts and desires; he is still too weak to always prevail against them. As a beast, the forces of life aligned him with them; as a man, he has not yet wholly learned to align himself with the forces. In this intermediate stage he wavers – neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free will. He is even as a wisp in the wind, moved by every breath of passion, acting now by his will and now by his instincts, erring with one, only to retrieve by the other, falling by one, only to rise by the other – a creature of incalculable variability. We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth.”

-Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

“No great discovery was ever made in science except by one who lifted his nose above the grindstone of details and ventured on a more comprehensive vision.”

-Albert Einstein (1879-1955) in Morris Cohen, the Meaning of Human History (1947)

“what remains is to break down the resistance to change”

-Julia Kristeva, Women’s Time.

Not from Books:

“How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”

–Simon Bolivar

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

-François Rabelais

“Ya’ know what though, I don’t mind. I mean if my muscles ache, it’s because I’ve used ‘em. It’s hard for me to walk up them steps now, its ‘cuz I walked up ‘em every night to lay next to a man who loved me. I got a few wrinkles here and there, but I’ve laid under thousands of skies with sunny days. I look and feel this way, well cuz I drank and I smoked. I lived and I loved, danced, sang, sweat and screwed my way thorough a pretty damn good life if you ask me. Getting old ain’t bad Ben. Getting old, that’s earned.”

-The Guardian (2005)

“The important thing is this:

To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

-Charles Edouard du Bois (1847-1885), an American Painter

“A lesson to be learned from this puzzle is that it is not necessarily the pieces which seem to fit satisfactorily that decide whether or not the picture to date is correct, it is the pieces which don’t fit that really decide the issue.”

-Peter Warlow, 1982, English Physicist & Author

“The origin of thinking is – perplexity.”

- John Dewey (1859-1952) American educator & Philosopher

“So don’t let anyone tell you you’re not worth the earth

These streets are your streets, this turf is your turf

Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve got to give in

‘cos you can make a difference, you can change everything

Just let your dreams be your pilot, your imagination your fuel

Tear up the book and write your own damn rules.”

- the King Blues, What if Punk Never Happened

“it is of the essence of a nation that all its individuals have lots of things in common that they have forgotten.”

-Ernest Renan

“One is not born a woman, one becomes one.”

-Simon de Beauvoir, philosopher