Aaron gave me a creative writing exercise to stimulate my writing. I wasn't originally going to post anything with profanity, because, well, who knows if my Dad will randomly decide to re-visit my blog on a whim one day. Don't want to shock the old man!
But as those odds are pretty slim and as my creative writing almost always contains profanity (the exception being my fairy tale of course), I've decided to just surrender it to the fates and post my creative writing.
Tonight's task- write a story that contains the following three things:
A Non-domesticated animal
A book
Non-mechanical tool
Here's what I came up with!
*Disclaimer* These creative writing ventures are rough-drafts, impromptu and just off-the-cuff, they will never be perfect, they are 'rehearsal' for writers.
************************************************
Squirrels.
The bane of the yuppy casual summer gardener. Those fidgety furbags, those brazen bastards, those sneaky sons-a-bitches.
See squirrels aren’t too much of a problem for seasoned veteran gardeners, oh no, because a seasoned veteran has long since passed that moral threshold of what is and is not considered ‘humane’, at least when it comes to mother-fucking squirrel mother fuckers.
But yuppy gardeners, the novice weekend warriors who decide to go as green as popular trend dictates, the ones who nod emphatically at Oprah’s assurance that growing their own produce will be better and taste better and make them feel better about their white, suburban guilt? Those are the same folks who are careful to buy organic, emphatic about fairly-traded, and who obsess about “cruelty free”.
They refuse to live off the tortured souls of their animal brethren. They devote their bleeding hearts to bleeding their pocket books dry in the endeavor to be eco-conscious and kharmic-ly ahead-of-the-curve.
Until they meet and square off against one of mother nature’s cutest looking douche-bags and general ruiner of your positive energy output. The god-damned squirrel.
Somewhere in the back of their habitually aloof yuppy brains these casual first-time garden dabblers made the comfortable assumption that squirrels eat nuts, frolic about in bemusing squirrely ways and bring bemused smiles to one’s face as one sips chai on the back patio, curled up in the sunshine with the latest vegan cook book under one’s all-natural canvas sun-brella made by Himalayan nuns, the profits of all sales going toward the upkeep of their blind-children orphanage somewhere near Nepal.
But squirrels are not some dewey-eyed, fuzzy cuddly incarnation out of a Disney film put on this planet to gambol about adorably for the purposes of our wistful viewing pleasure.
They fuck things up. They fuck up your plans, your hopes, your dreams for your grand summer garden. They eat everything you want the most. They purloin your strawberries, abscond with your tomatoes, contaminate your pumpkins, thieve your prettiest blossoms, shit in your lettuce, trample all the basil (and you were going to make a caprese salad for brunch today!), dig holes in your snap pea beds and generally wreak all kinds of havoc everywhere.
But they don’t stop there! They won’t be satisfied until they somehow tear a hole in your way-too-expensive all-natural canvas sun-brella from the nuns for the orphans in the mountains, until they knock over your over-priced artisan garden ornament purchase at your local non-profit fundraiser, harass your high-strung miniature pure-bred carry-around-in-a-faux-leather-handbag-dog into fits of frenzy, and inevitably find any and every way around all your clever squirrel-proof bird feeders and eat not some of, but every single morsel of organic, fair-trade, all natural bird food purchased with the hope of having a story-book like population of larks and chickadees and bluebirds flitting around your summer haven. They’ll also tweak off the sweet nectar in your hummingbird feeder- for which you overpaid, because do you know what that special nectar is Yuppy Gardener? It’s sugar water with red food coloring.
But the yuppy gardener will inevitably be impotent in their rage. They will fume and feel vaguely betrayed by these cuddly little cuties—not believing that they could be such complete assholes, but left with devoured strawberry patches as irrefutable evidence to the contrary. And the yuppy gardener will inevitably ask themselves “but how do I stop them?”- it will seem a task not dissimilar to stopping a wave from breaking upon the shore.
Because the answer isn’t pretty.
Oprah and Martha don’t get into the nitty-gritty of gardening. They focus on all the exciting bits- the planting and the sprouting and then the harvesting and the delicious recipes for your bountiful yield! They never seem to caution: Oh, and watch out for those jerk squirrels, they can be real mother-fuckers!
No. This yuppy will be ill-equipped for the task of “dealing with” meddlesome squirrels. They will want to, in their barbarian heart-of-hearts, they will want to take a club or an axe, or a hammer, or any other primitive tool and bash the little fuckers into proverbial smithereens. But they will not, can not bring themselves to violence. They reconcile themselves to the truism that “that’s just what squirrels do.. heh heh heh, that’s just squirrels being squirrels I guess!” and with a fixed but too-tight smile they will go out and buy some yuppy gardening book to seek answers. Cruelty-free, liberal, progressive answers that somehow persuade the squirrel to abandon their crime-wave against the garden and turn to more useful and productive occupations.
When the book fails to yield results they will buy expensive sharper-image type gadgets, high priced, high-tech and highly rated online, designed to dissuade squirrels but never harm the squirrels.
When this endeavor too, inevitably fails, the kharmic-ly balanced, compassionate vegan will begin to resent and loathe and fume and plot violent things against the squirrels. They will fantasize about the hammers and knives and also poison and traps and they will salivate.
And they will do none of it. They will surrender their harvest to the bullies, having wasted hundreds of dollars in seeds and fertilizers and pots and trellises and shovels and god knows what else Martha stewart convinced them was essential for their garden, and they will invest an equal fee into shopping at their local farmer’s market instead and get their caprese salad that way.
But they will never again smile at the precious caprice of frolicking squirrels. They have been bested and that wound will sting for a long time to come.
Fucking squirrels.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Wizard
It’s been my endeavor to write a little every day. Sometime creative, sometimes just getting my thoughts down blog style. Today I’m just going to say a few words and then select an excerpt that I’m particularly grooving on from my unearthed fairy tale.
The few words pertain to where I am in my life right now. If you’ve been following (hi Danielle- lol), you know I’m more than a mite confused and often disheartened about where I am and where I’m supposed to be and blah blah blah. But I’d like to say this- I’ve seen three theatrical events in the past three days and guess what- I think I feel the faint stirrings of something inside me. Something dormant and crippled and half-starved down deep in the dungeon I tossed it in somewhere midway through student teaching.
I enjoyed all three experiences in different ways and to varying degrees. Maybe I’ll write more about them, but for now the pertinent information that needs to be gleaned is this: I have a director’s eye and a director’s heart, mind, soul and blood. Perhaps I should be trying to direct more? The downside to that is that I also have a near paralyzing fear of directing and failing and that’s why I don’t direct more! Ta Da! Welcome to my neuroses!
But there it is. Food for thought. We’ll see how it pans out if I ever get a christing job.
I also should get a reel together and start really pushing for Voice Over work but whatever!
Ok, as promised, a little creative writing to brighten your day?
This is the introduction of a major player in the story and is from those first three chapters that need revision\rewriting. But I like a lot of the imagery here. And I like that he isn’t Anglo. I need to write more ethnically diverse characters…
**************************************************************************************
The Wizard was a tall, tanned skin ancient with long silver-blue hair tied ceremonially at his nape and a symbolically trimmed beard that curled some 6 inches off his jagged chin. A wisp of a shining scar curved through the coarse beard hair, making a path from his left earlobe to the prominent cleft in his angular chin, and causing the silver-blue facial hair to grow on either side of it, as a wood parted by a snaking river.
Long had scribes and sages held sway at the court of Moonglory, counseling, guiding, sometimes healing- but none had managed solutions for the king as the drought stretched on. This wizard was something apart however.
He had met the King and his bride on their wedding night, coming across them as they strolled (deeply in love) through their moonlit south garden. Dressed quite strangely for the cool weather and modest style of the region, and with ritualistic body art unlike any either had ever seen- the young couple’s initial response was one of alarm.
Yet, something about the sonnance of his voice, the light lilt of a far-of accent on his kind, reassuring words, and the glow that lit his eyes and face from within, seemingly independent from the stars and the moonlight, captivated and assured them…
The few words pertain to where I am in my life right now. If you’ve been following (hi Danielle- lol), you know I’m more than a mite confused and often disheartened about where I am and where I’m supposed to be and blah blah blah. But I’d like to say this- I’ve seen three theatrical events in the past three days and guess what- I think I feel the faint stirrings of something inside me. Something dormant and crippled and half-starved down deep in the dungeon I tossed it in somewhere midway through student teaching.
I enjoyed all three experiences in different ways and to varying degrees. Maybe I’ll write more about them, but for now the pertinent information that needs to be gleaned is this: I have a director’s eye and a director’s heart, mind, soul and blood. Perhaps I should be trying to direct more? The downside to that is that I also have a near paralyzing fear of directing and failing and that’s why I don’t direct more! Ta Da! Welcome to my neuroses!
But there it is. Food for thought. We’ll see how it pans out if I ever get a christing job.
I also should get a reel together and start really pushing for Voice Over work but whatever!
Ok, as promised, a little creative writing to brighten your day?
This is the introduction of a major player in the story and is from those first three chapters that need revision\rewriting. But I like a lot of the imagery here. And I like that he isn’t Anglo. I need to write more ethnically diverse characters…
**************************************************************************************
The Wizard was a tall, tanned skin ancient with long silver-blue hair tied ceremonially at his nape and a symbolically trimmed beard that curled some 6 inches off his jagged chin. A wisp of a shining scar curved through the coarse beard hair, making a path from his left earlobe to the prominent cleft in his angular chin, and causing the silver-blue facial hair to grow on either side of it, as a wood parted by a snaking river.
Long had scribes and sages held sway at the court of Moonglory, counseling, guiding, sometimes healing- but none had managed solutions for the king as the drought stretched on. This wizard was something apart however.
He had met the King and his bride on their wedding night, coming across them as they strolled (deeply in love) through their moonlit south garden. Dressed quite strangely for the cool weather and modest style of the region, and with ritualistic body art unlike any either had ever seen- the young couple’s initial response was one of alarm.
Yet, something about the sonnance of his voice, the light lilt of a far-of accent on his kind, reassuring words, and the glow that lit his eyes and face from within, seemingly independent from the stars and the moonlight, captivated and assured them…
Friday, February 26, 2010
Maybe I need some flaming arrows?
I don't like revision. In high school and even college my first drafts were always strong enough for top grades so I never had to go back and revisit my writing, take what was there and re-arrange it, re-invigorate it, make it stronger. Other than punctuation, spelling, and grammatical errors I absolutely HATE re-working a piece I've written.
It wasn't until the upper levels of screenwriting class that revisions and re-structuring were demanded of me. It felt like failure. All my education to that point seemed to indicate to me that my "first drafts" were pretty flippin' stellar and if I had to go back to something, go back and CHANGE what I'd written, well that meant I had done a lousy job. It was UN-WORTHY. A wasted effort.
Now cosciously I know this to be a false assertion. I understand that drafts and edits and things of that nature are designed to nourish and strengthen a piece of creative work. I mean Jesus, as an actor\director I fully expect to rehearse and rehearse and rehears and try ALL kinds of different approaches to the material before finding the best way to perform it. As an actor\director I relish this organic process and HATE when people stick with the first and easiest instinct they had because there is almost always a better choice waiting to be discovered and nurtures and developed into greatness.
But as a writer? Stop the presses! It feels like a slap in the face, a punch to the gut a steel-toed boot to the groin if anyone ever suggests edits and revision.
I managed to do it for screenwriting though and believe for the most part that it produced an improved product. Often I felt like I had a unique vision and they wanted to conform it to a more comfortable hollywood format but I get it, and for the most part they understood where I was coming from. Except my last screenwriting teacher. What a cliched asshole. I mean absolutely. He wanted all my characters to be these stereotypical puppets and the plotline to be closer to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or something. He just would not see the story for what it was, dismissed all the work my previous professors and I had put into the efforet and basiaclly decided that in screenwriting 4 (the penultimate level of screenwriting) that I had to start from scratch.
It was one of the more frustrating experiences of my life, and maybe it was compounded by the fact that he wasn't a very adept online professor. He struggled with the medium and to tell the truth? I don't think he liked to read much. I would so these revisions and he would give the SAME comments back- Um Hello? I ALREADY fixed that issue. I started highlighting my revisions so he could more quickly scan thorugh the work and pinpoint the changes, but this only made him more surly and confused. And ultimately he decided I needed to start from scratch.
*sigh*.
I was so heartbroken and frustrated and utterly lost that Aaron took it upon himself to follow the teacher's instructions and write a very BLOCKBUSTER sort of historical adventure epic. The story got pared down to its barest essentials (a thing a history nut like me is really almost incapable of doing, motivations no longer made much sense but he made up for it with over-archetyping the characters. The King was no longer weak and ineffectual but scheming and well, a bit of a rapist-- very dislikeable, just how the professor seemed to want it. The Bishop was now more subservient to the king, which was more comfortable for professor McTritepants, but really not very interesting or deep. The queen's sex appeal was amplified and her general bent oscillated between "oh poor me" and "I'm going to seduce my way to the top!"-- what had once had the potential of being one of the most compelling female characters ever written was reduced to almost every hollywood female construct in the book. She went from a role for Cate Blanchette to one for Angelina Jolie or worse- scarlett johanssen or something atrocious like that. And Henry- the Duke of Normandy? One of history's most compelling creatures? Well, imagine Chris O'Donnell plays him now; all earnestness and heroics and wounded pride and puppy love.
Aaron really did a great job with it. It was very tongue-in-cheek and so reminiscent of real hollywood stuff that I gaped when I read it. The part with the flaming arrows and the buckets of lamp-oil? Inspired. Just what my film needed. special effects and a big band of an ending. It actually would have been kind of exciting if I weren't so sick over what a monster my story had turned into.
It was a parting F-U to the professor who never believed in my vision or trusted that this story really had something compelling and quality about it.
I won't lie. He didn't go as crazy mad over it as we had anticipated. I think he sensed from the complete about-face that I may, just may, have been flipping him the bird and mocking everything he stood for. It got a B, I think. Maybe a B-. And some stern words about following directions and being open to change and all that.
I thought for a long time about lodging a formal complaint since he really was an abysmal teacher. I wasn't the only one whose story he totally eviscerated, and not the only one who found him obtuse and arrogant and block-headed. We were a small class of about 5 and all of us struggled to understand what he wanted from us, made every effort to make the edits and revise where he instructed, and all 5 of us came up frustrated, confused and generally disheartened by the whole ordeal.
But C'est la vie. I never filed the complaint. He's probably making some other poor soul miserable this semester. I wonder if their story will end up with flaming arrows and killer taglines.
Wow this post got a hell of alot longer than I wanted it to be.
I have re-writes on my mind because of the fairy tale. I'm almost afraid to re-write it because I despise revision so much. But it feels supremely wasteful to just shelve all that effort.
Plus? I don't actually remember the whole plot outline and details about where the various quests would take our heroes so continuing on seems a bit ill-advised unless I can find all that junk tucked in a box in an attic or basement somewhere- and do I want this bad enough to did up a corpse that might never be anything but decayed and disfunctional??
Stay tuned.
It wasn't until the upper levels of screenwriting class that revisions and re-structuring were demanded of me. It felt like failure. All my education to that point seemed to indicate to me that my "first drafts" were pretty flippin' stellar and if I had to go back to something, go back and CHANGE what I'd written, well that meant I had done a lousy job. It was UN-WORTHY. A wasted effort.
Now cosciously I know this to be a false assertion. I understand that drafts and edits and things of that nature are designed to nourish and strengthen a piece of creative work. I mean Jesus, as an actor\director I fully expect to rehearse and rehearse and rehears and try ALL kinds of different approaches to the material before finding the best way to perform it. As an actor\director I relish this organic process and HATE when people stick with the first and easiest instinct they had because there is almost always a better choice waiting to be discovered and nurtures and developed into greatness.
But as a writer? Stop the presses! It feels like a slap in the face, a punch to the gut a steel-toed boot to the groin if anyone ever suggests edits and revision.
I managed to do it for screenwriting though and believe for the most part that it produced an improved product. Often I felt like I had a unique vision and they wanted to conform it to a more comfortable hollywood format but I get it, and for the most part they understood where I was coming from. Except my last screenwriting teacher. What a cliched asshole. I mean absolutely. He wanted all my characters to be these stereotypical puppets and the plotline to be closer to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or something. He just would not see the story for what it was, dismissed all the work my previous professors and I had put into the efforet and basiaclly decided that in screenwriting 4 (the penultimate level of screenwriting) that I had to start from scratch.
It was one of the more frustrating experiences of my life, and maybe it was compounded by the fact that he wasn't a very adept online professor. He struggled with the medium and to tell the truth? I don't think he liked to read much. I would so these revisions and he would give the SAME comments back- Um Hello? I ALREADY fixed that issue. I started highlighting my revisions so he could more quickly scan thorugh the work and pinpoint the changes, but this only made him more surly and confused. And ultimately he decided I needed to start from scratch.
*sigh*.
I was so heartbroken and frustrated and utterly lost that Aaron took it upon himself to follow the teacher's instructions and write a very BLOCKBUSTER sort of historical adventure epic. The story got pared down to its barest essentials (a thing a history nut like me is really almost incapable of doing, motivations no longer made much sense but he made up for it with over-archetyping the characters. The King was no longer weak and ineffectual but scheming and well, a bit of a rapist-- very dislikeable, just how the professor seemed to want it. The Bishop was now more subservient to the king, which was more comfortable for professor McTritepants, but really not very interesting or deep. The queen's sex appeal was amplified and her general bent oscillated between "oh poor me" and "I'm going to seduce my way to the top!"-- what had once had the potential of being one of the most compelling female characters ever written was reduced to almost every hollywood female construct in the book. She went from a role for Cate Blanchette to one for Angelina Jolie or worse- scarlett johanssen or something atrocious like that. And Henry- the Duke of Normandy? One of history's most compelling creatures? Well, imagine Chris O'Donnell plays him now; all earnestness and heroics and wounded pride and puppy love.
Aaron really did a great job with it. It was very tongue-in-cheek and so reminiscent of real hollywood stuff that I gaped when I read it. The part with the flaming arrows and the buckets of lamp-oil? Inspired. Just what my film needed. special effects and a big band of an ending. It actually would have been kind of exciting if I weren't so sick over what a monster my story had turned into.
It was a parting F-U to the professor who never believed in my vision or trusted that this story really had something compelling and quality about it.
I won't lie. He didn't go as crazy mad over it as we had anticipated. I think he sensed from the complete about-face that I may, just may, have been flipping him the bird and mocking everything he stood for. It got a B, I think. Maybe a B-. And some stern words about following directions and being open to change and all that.
I thought for a long time about lodging a formal complaint since he really was an abysmal teacher. I wasn't the only one whose story he totally eviscerated, and not the only one who found him obtuse and arrogant and block-headed. We were a small class of about 5 and all of us struggled to understand what he wanted from us, made every effort to make the edits and revise where he instructed, and all 5 of us came up frustrated, confused and generally disheartened by the whole ordeal.
But C'est la vie. I never filed the complaint. He's probably making some other poor soul miserable this semester. I wonder if their story will end up with flaming arrows and killer taglines.
Wow this post got a hell of alot longer than I wanted it to be.
I have re-writes on my mind because of the fairy tale. I'm almost afraid to re-write it because I despise revision so much. But it feels supremely wasteful to just shelve all that effort.
Plus? I don't actually remember the whole plot outline and details about where the various quests would take our heroes so continuing on seems a bit ill-advised unless I can find all that junk tucked in a box in an attic or basement somewhere- and do I want this bad enough to did up a corpse that might never be anything but decayed and disfunctional??
Stay tuned.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Ultimatum?
I want to get a few thoughts down. I read through all the material I had on my fairytale last night and this morning. My initial gut reaction to the abysmal writing was honest and fairly accurate, but I will say this for it: it gets better. The first three chapters are very highly stylized, like the stained-glass beginning of Disney’s Beauty & The Beast film. There’s a certain distance, a detatched sort of almost biblical simplicity. Have you read the bible? Good stories, not too exciting from a writing (or reading) perspective.
So I think I get where I was coming from, and there are, believe it or not (I was surprised), some nuggets of good stuff in there. Then from chapter three on, when we’re done with the ‘origin’, done with the mystical history of how we got where we are now in the story, the writing, the characters, the whole thing sort of vaults into action and it is pretty fun.
I was disappointed when there was no more.
But I’ll tell you this: this isn’t a fairy tale. It is most definitely a novel. A novel for young adults, maybe young readers, but it is not a fairy tale. Its an adventure story, a quest, and it doesn’t look like it will be very short. So far the chapters are small but hell, we haven’t even left the castle grounds yet and If I remember my plan for the story arc correctly there’s a whole wide world out there and lots of obstacles await before our heroine even meets the mate of her soul and saves the world.
So. I have a couple options. First & Foremost option: Throw it out. I know this seems extreme and feels a little violent and unnecessary, but sometimes a purge is better for the creativity than trying to re-construct, re-design, and fix-up an ailing patient with no guarantee for quality of life after surgery.
Second: Use the spirit of it, use the idea but simplify, simplify, simplify. Write an honest-to-goodness fairy tale. A picture book with a few words here and there and be done with it. Some upsides to this plan is it might help me really clarify my vision for longer stories and there would be a product to show for my efforts instead of a bunch of chapters with no hope of completion. I might get several done and then could return to trying my hand at the novel form.
So. There we are. The last option is to take the hint the universe is dropping on me and forget about writing. Some people aren’t meant for it. I can’t tell you how many people in acting school really shouldn’t have been there. Oh that sounds terrible coming from a future theatre-educator. And honestly- some of those people whom I believed should give up go home and do something else- some of those folks have found a great deal of success in the business and are very happy because they have the passion and the relentless persistence to go to audition after audition and make the odds favor them even if god-given talent does not.
I was ‘smart’ about the whole thing. I realized I wasn’t supremely cast-able despite my talent, and I also realized that even though I had a great deal of skill and talent I still wasn’t SO amazing that it would overcome my detractions. I wanted a family and did not want to gamble all that on whether or not I could finally make a big break. So I finished school and more school after that and what do I have to show for it?
Ok. This blog isn’t a bitch fest so I’m going to stop there. I’m just saying- before I go chasing another unlikely artistic endeavor maybe I’d better just nip it in the bud, suck it up and work a damned 9-5 like I was obviously meant to do. Maybe it will come down to taking prescription medication again in order to maintain an equilibrium and avoid the deep, sinking depression that always rears its head when I’ve been away from the arts too long. Well, if that’s what it takes for me to lead a real life, a normal life, then so be it.
I have an amazing husband who has sacrificed so much for me. Parents who have given me everything and now are struggling to live. I need to get over myself, make steady money and help those who have done everything to help me.
Why does that sound like a death knell? What kind of selfish person feels grief over doing what they should and must do?
If we weren’t so poor I think I’d finally see somebody.
When I get a real job with real insurance I plan on making an appointment.
So I think I get where I was coming from, and there are, believe it or not (I was surprised), some nuggets of good stuff in there. Then from chapter three on, when we’re done with the ‘origin’, done with the mystical history of how we got where we are now in the story, the writing, the characters, the whole thing sort of vaults into action and it is pretty fun.
I was disappointed when there was no more.
But I’ll tell you this: this isn’t a fairy tale. It is most definitely a novel. A novel for young adults, maybe young readers, but it is not a fairy tale. Its an adventure story, a quest, and it doesn’t look like it will be very short. So far the chapters are small but hell, we haven’t even left the castle grounds yet and If I remember my plan for the story arc correctly there’s a whole wide world out there and lots of obstacles await before our heroine even meets the mate of her soul and saves the world.
So. I have a couple options. First & Foremost option: Throw it out. I know this seems extreme and feels a little violent and unnecessary, but sometimes a purge is better for the creativity than trying to re-construct, re-design, and fix-up an ailing patient with no guarantee for quality of life after surgery.
Second: Use the spirit of it, use the idea but simplify, simplify, simplify. Write an honest-to-goodness fairy tale. A picture book with a few words here and there and be done with it. Some upsides to this plan is it might help me really clarify my vision for longer stories and there would be a product to show for my efforts instead of a bunch of chapters with no hope of completion. I might get several done and then could return to trying my hand at the novel form.
So. There we are. The last option is to take the hint the universe is dropping on me and forget about writing. Some people aren’t meant for it. I can’t tell you how many people in acting school really shouldn’t have been there. Oh that sounds terrible coming from a future theatre-educator. And honestly- some of those people whom I believed should give up go home and do something else- some of those folks have found a great deal of success in the business and are very happy because they have the passion and the relentless persistence to go to audition after audition and make the odds favor them even if god-given talent does not.
I was ‘smart’ about the whole thing. I realized I wasn’t supremely cast-able despite my talent, and I also realized that even though I had a great deal of skill and talent I still wasn’t SO amazing that it would overcome my detractions. I wanted a family and did not want to gamble all that on whether or not I could finally make a big break. So I finished school and more school after that and what do I have to show for it?
Ok. This blog isn’t a bitch fest so I’m going to stop there. I’m just saying- before I go chasing another unlikely artistic endeavor maybe I’d better just nip it in the bud, suck it up and work a damned 9-5 like I was obviously meant to do. Maybe it will come down to taking prescription medication again in order to maintain an equilibrium and avoid the deep, sinking depression that always rears its head when I’ve been away from the arts too long. Well, if that’s what it takes for me to lead a real life, a normal life, then so be it.
I have an amazing husband who has sacrificed so much for me. Parents who have given me everything and now are struggling to live. I need to get over myself, make steady money and help those who have done everything to help me.
Why does that sound like a death knell? What kind of selfish person feels grief over doing what they should and must do?
If we weren’t so poor I think I’d finally see somebody.
When I get a real job with real insurance I plan on making an appointment.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Was I on drugs?
SO I just unearthed my fairy tale. It was dated ’04. Where the hell did my life go?
Anyway I remember it being at least a little bit good. It isn’t really. It is like a junior high schooler wrote it.
EEEK. I’m going to make myself read through it all though, unapologetically. I did that earlier this week with a piece of writing from screenwriting class and while the writing was forced, rushed, hackneyed and scattered, the story at its heart and the characters were compelling enough for me to keep reading without too much wincing.
I even found a few surprises (pleasant ones), which is a nice feeling to stumble upon when reviewing your own writing.
But so far I’m about a page into my lengthy fairy tale endeavor of ’04 and am not looking forward to all these looming chapters.
Was I on anti-depressants that year? I remember going through quite a rough spot before I decided to attend AMDA- a time where working retail and taking anti-depressants and writing alternative lifestyle fairy tales all blend together in a blurry mess. I also dabbled with bridgewater state college for a hot second. The most memorable thing that came out of that doomed venture was my Native American style vision quest that I undertook for anthropology class in lieu of writing a final paper. It was april. And far beyond too cold to be vision questing in the woods of cape cod. But I did it.
Anyhow- wish me luck as I dive headlong into this terribly embarrassing experience. I’m hoping it will help me decide whether or not I should follow this “I wanna be a writer” fancy that’s taken hold of me lately, or just abort it before I get too attached to the idea.
Anyway I remember it being at least a little bit good. It isn’t really. It is like a junior high schooler wrote it.
EEEK. I’m going to make myself read through it all though, unapologetically. I did that earlier this week with a piece of writing from screenwriting class and while the writing was forced, rushed, hackneyed and scattered, the story at its heart and the characters were compelling enough for me to keep reading without too much wincing.
I even found a few surprises (pleasant ones), which is a nice feeling to stumble upon when reviewing your own writing.
But so far I’m about a page into my lengthy fairy tale endeavor of ’04 and am not looking forward to all these looming chapters.
Was I on anti-depressants that year? I remember going through quite a rough spot before I decided to attend AMDA- a time where working retail and taking anti-depressants and writing alternative lifestyle fairy tales all blend together in a blurry mess. I also dabbled with bridgewater state college for a hot second. The most memorable thing that came out of that doomed venture was my Native American style vision quest that I undertook for anthropology class in lieu of writing a final paper. It was april. And far beyond too cold to be vision questing in the woods of cape cod. But I did it.
Anyhow- wish me luck as I dive headlong into this terribly embarrassing experience. I’m hoping it will help me decide whether or not I should follow this “I wanna be a writer” fancy that’s taken hold of me lately, or just abort it before I get too attached to the idea.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Hidden Agendas and Veiled Symbolism
So I want to write a fairytale. Or several. A series of tales really. But I’m having a hell of a time with it. I’ve now taken so many children’s lit and theatre for young audience classes that I feel entirely bogged down in “what message am I sending?” and “Is that symbolism too sexually explicit?” and “is this a healthy message for young girls?” and “am I going to mess up vulnerable young psyches????”
All I see when I look at media for children, be it tales or books or tv or movies or even songs, all I can see is hidden agendas:
This book series is sending a CHRISTIAN message and that book series was written to counter-act that one and is decidedly an ATHIEST book series. This princess has an abusive-ralationship complex and stays with a man who has overt anger issues and hopes she can change him eventually and that princess can only win the man if she gives up her voice and changes everything about herself and gives up her entire culture. This story has little to do with princesses and dragons and more to do with having her first menstrual cycle and being ready to bear children. Everywhere I look I see sexual disorders and kinky messages like beastiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, fettish sex, incest, misogyny and masochism.
No as a decidedly liberal adult I find much of the above to be at least a little intriguing and believe all the legal stuff to be fine if it floats your boat, and recognize that the illegal stuff is repulsive, but makes for compelling drama and has since the dawn of storytelling.
However- should it be there in a children’s fairytale???? Can it be avoided? SHOULD it be avoided?
Something tells me that if I’m writing it all kinds of messages and naughtiness will be imbedded in the writing no matter how hard I try to neuter or child-proof it.
Well, this is all besides the fact that I mean to write with an OBVIOUS agenda too! I want to write alternative lifestyle (hate that term!) fairytales so that children can have more than hetero-normative happily ever afters. I want to teach them that you love who you love and that gender isn’t a factor in love and soulmates.
Told you I was pretty liberal.
It’s the way I plan on raising my children, and I would like there to be OPTIONS on their bookshelf. So if they are gay or bi they won’t feel marginalized from the very start. And if they are straight (even though I hope they will all identify as BI), I hope having the options there on the shelf alongside Cinderella and shit will at the very least cause them to be open-minded and not discriminatory toward other sexual orientations.
I was more than halfway through with my lesbian fairytale before I realized that her entire quest revolve around finding all the stones needed to complete a magical amulet. It was about jewlry. I mean, ok, it wasn’t ABOUT jewelry, it was about courage and problem solving and independence and friendship and responsibility and destiny and love, but for real? I was playing right into a disgusting female stereotyp without even realizing it.
Of course maybe there’s no harm in it. Maybe it isn’t as sexist as it struck me that day. Sometimes an amulet is just an amulet.
But when examing my man-friendly, lipstick-lesbian heroine and her quest for jewels (no matter how altruistic or imperitive) I suddenly felt like I was sending a very sexing-the-city message and just stopped writing.
LOL. I was afraid of what damage I might unwittingly do next when my fingers hit the keys.
So I sat down and tried to write the male-male story and ran into all kinds of difficulties. Of course the first quest object I thought of was a sword. Groan.
Then I had trouble even thinking-through the story because I would get distracted by imagining their first kiss and the playful budding sexual tension between them on their quest. It was suddenly not as sweet and innocent and innocuous as a fairytale ought to be. It was erotic and steamy and very very real. I was too turned on to write that with Mr. Rogers-like grace, so that one was aborted before it even got to the story-outline phase.
I guess the problem inherent in the situation is this: I am focused on sexuality. Sexuality is not a factor for young children. I need to bland-ify it up, not get into specifics of flirting and akward glances. In the other fairytales the prince and princess kiss, they marry, they live happily ever after-- we don't need to know how he won her heart or what about her made him fall in love it simpy IS. A matter of fact. A thing that happens, as natural as breathing.
And so the princesses wed and ruled the kingdom in peace and lived happily ever after. the end. we don't need to reconcile how or if they ever adopted children or whether or not the church ever sanctioned it and all that baloney.
And with that kiss the lowly stable-boy became a prince, the two were married and ruled the land, becoming the most beloved kings in a thousand generations. They lived happily ever after. No need to know which was the top, not necessary to know how they came out to their parents and all that. This is for kids. Its just fact. They love eachother so they get married. Done.
While the falling-in-love is vitally interesting to me, one of my favorite aspects of the human story, it is almost always reduced to basics for fairytales.
Maybe if I were writing for young adults, all twilight-style or Harry-potter, but for littles? All they need to know is: And that's the way it was!
In any case. I have two young nieces now with another niece-or-nephew on the way and my best friend is also having a baby and I feel this moral imperative to write my stories, but I am a little gun-shy.
I think I’ll brainstorm tonight and see if any of my first draft can be salvaged…
Sigh.
Maybe I’m write fairytales for adults instead… delicious.
For the record folks- Belle totally falls IN LOVE with the beast while he is a beast. It is only the last-minute co-incidence that turns him to human form at just in the nick-of-time to avoid the beastiality. She was going to marry the BEAST, not the prince.
All I see when I look at media for children, be it tales or books or tv or movies or even songs, all I can see is hidden agendas:
This book series is sending a CHRISTIAN message and that book series was written to counter-act that one and is decidedly an ATHIEST book series. This princess has an abusive-ralationship complex and stays with a man who has overt anger issues and hopes she can change him eventually and that princess can only win the man if she gives up her voice and changes everything about herself and gives up her entire culture. This story has little to do with princesses and dragons and more to do with having her first menstrual cycle and being ready to bear children. Everywhere I look I see sexual disorders and kinky messages like beastiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, fettish sex, incest, misogyny and masochism.
No as a decidedly liberal adult I find much of the above to be at least a little intriguing and believe all the legal stuff to be fine if it floats your boat, and recognize that the illegal stuff is repulsive, but makes for compelling drama and has since the dawn of storytelling.
However- should it be there in a children’s fairytale???? Can it be avoided? SHOULD it be avoided?
Something tells me that if I’m writing it all kinds of messages and naughtiness will be imbedded in the writing no matter how hard I try to neuter or child-proof it.
Well, this is all besides the fact that I mean to write with an OBVIOUS agenda too! I want to write alternative lifestyle (hate that term!) fairytales so that children can have more than hetero-normative happily ever afters. I want to teach them that you love who you love and that gender isn’t a factor in love and soulmates.
Told you I was pretty liberal.
It’s the way I plan on raising my children, and I would like there to be OPTIONS on their bookshelf. So if they are gay or bi they won’t feel marginalized from the very start. And if they are straight (even though I hope they will all identify as BI), I hope having the options there on the shelf alongside Cinderella and shit will at the very least cause them to be open-minded and not discriminatory toward other sexual orientations.
I was more than halfway through with my lesbian fairytale before I realized that her entire quest revolve around finding all the stones needed to complete a magical amulet. It was about jewlry. I mean, ok, it wasn’t ABOUT jewelry, it was about courage and problem solving and independence and friendship and responsibility and destiny and love, but for real? I was playing right into a disgusting female stereotyp without even realizing it.
Of course maybe there’s no harm in it. Maybe it isn’t as sexist as it struck me that day. Sometimes an amulet is just an amulet.
But when examing my man-friendly, lipstick-lesbian heroine and her quest for jewels (no matter how altruistic or imperitive) I suddenly felt like I was sending a very sexing-the-city message and just stopped writing.
LOL. I was afraid of what damage I might unwittingly do next when my fingers hit the keys.
So I sat down and tried to write the male-male story and ran into all kinds of difficulties. Of course the first quest object I thought of was a sword. Groan.
Then I had trouble even thinking-through the story because I would get distracted by imagining their first kiss and the playful budding sexual tension between them on their quest. It was suddenly not as sweet and innocent and innocuous as a fairytale ought to be. It was erotic and steamy and very very real. I was too turned on to write that with Mr. Rogers-like grace, so that one was aborted before it even got to the story-outline phase.
I guess the problem inherent in the situation is this: I am focused on sexuality. Sexuality is not a factor for young children. I need to bland-ify it up, not get into specifics of flirting and akward glances. In the other fairytales the prince and princess kiss, they marry, they live happily ever after-- we don't need to know how he won her heart or what about her made him fall in love it simpy IS. A matter of fact. A thing that happens, as natural as breathing.
And so the princesses wed and ruled the kingdom in peace and lived happily ever after. the end. we don't need to reconcile how or if they ever adopted children or whether or not the church ever sanctioned it and all that baloney.
And with that kiss the lowly stable-boy became a prince, the two were married and ruled the land, becoming the most beloved kings in a thousand generations. They lived happily ever after. No need to know which was the top, not necessary to know how they came out to their parents and all that. This is for kids. Its just fact. They love eachother so they get married. Done.
While the falling-in-love is vitally interesting to me, one of my favorite aspects of the human story, it is almost always reduced to basics for fairytales.
Maybe if I were writing for young adults, all twilight-style or Harry-potter, but for littles? All they need to know is: And that's the way it was!
In any case. I have two young nieces now with another niece-or-nephew on the way and my best friend is also having a baby and I feel this moral imperative to write my stories, but I am a little gun-shy.
I think I’ll brainstorm tonight and see if any of my first draft can be salvaged…
Sigh.
Maybe I’m write fairytales for adults instead… delicious.
For the record folks- Belle totally falls IN LOVE with the beast while he is a beast. It is only the last-minute co-incidence that turns him to human form at just in the nick-of-time to avoid the beastiality. She was going to marry the BEAST, not the prince.
Monday, February 22, 2010
The itch to do something creative has been nagging lately. The need, really, the imperative. As an artist an\or creative individual life gets very dark and restless if creativity isn’t happening. Mood swings double, triple, quadruple. Negativity multiplies. Hopelessness bleeds into dire pessimism and nothing in life seems much worth doing. Regret takes hold and choices\decisions that had heretofore been cherished, accepted or even revered, become suspect, sordid, folly, and mistakes.
I stopped blogging months and months ago. It feels like a lifetime ago.
One of the experiences I had most wanted to catalogue went largely undocumented and I regret that somewhat. I did keep a hand-written journal to keep from imploding, to help me vent or bitch or whine to some venue without forever turning my best friends and husband away from me permanently! But I recognized even then that I was sounding like a miserable broken record and had the good instinct to keep all the crazy bullshit out of the blogosphere.
Maybe I’ll look back through all those notes and publish some gems. Probably not though.
Anyway, student teaching kicked my ass. And my spirit, and my passion. As I predicted before I began I ended up liking and doing very well in the classroom- I’m a fairly competent teacher- but the surrounding ridiculousness has soured my taste for ever working in a school setting ever again. Which is more than unfortunate because I now hold a graduate degree in said field and will soon be certified for such a career and will have to suck it up and get over myself and go teach.
Fun attitude to have while entering the job search eh?
Anyhow, I stopped blogging because I realized it had become one big bitch session and I didn’t like that. I started blogging to find my voice and whining is not a voice I want to define me!
My resolution now is to continue the quest to find my voice, refine my perspective, express myself, and get the creative writing going. It is enormously terrifying.
I’ll be honest and admit this: I am lost. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing anymore. I know what I’m qualified to do (on paper), what I need to do, and what I should do. I also know that all of those truths make me physically sick to my stomach and the idea of living that life is soul-crushing.
So I need to figure a lot of things out and I don’t have the luxury of wasting time anymore.
This is one step I’m taking to try to work through what’s going on in my life—instead of running away from all the complicated stuff I’m going to start picking through it, sorting it out and holding it up to the light of day.
Sometimes the blog will be personal, other times I give myself license to use it as a writing tool- do little writing exercises like I did in college only this time I will actually be the author and not have my talented husband ghost write them for me so I can pass a class.
My writing will never be as compelling as Aaron’s, but I do think I have something to add to the world and it is my endeavor to discover what it is and deliver.
I promise a lot of it will be unreadable. Painful. Embarrassing. But I am pledging not to delete or edit any of it. No matter how dismal and amateur. Every book on becoming a writer tells you to “just Write” and not focus on perfect or even good. Just effing write already!
So that’s the plan. I can promise it will not be incomparable. In fact it will probably compare unfavorably to many hackneyed writers and student works. But it will be better than nothing. Better than a collection of sighs and shrugs and “maybe someday”s.
And who knows? Maybe there will occasionally be a gem or two amidst the shit.
Aaron revealed to me last night that before the Zombie job came along he had started a blog as a writing exercise. It was a secret blog meant to catalyze him into writing. It is great so far and I sincerely hope he gets back into the habit. What I love about it is that he makes no promises to tell the truth- that he intends on using it as an exercise in writing so fact and fiction will blend and mix and be largely irrelevant.
Mine won’t be quite like that, and because my writing is of such a different style than his I think it’ll be clear when I’m ‘journaling’ and when I’m doing creative writing, but I’ll label them just in case. HOWEVER, I’m kind of hoping that since it has been so long since I blogged that this little corner of the internet will remain unvisited for a while… And perhaps I’ll keep some off-line writing going too?
Today I have to get a resume and cover letter (I almost typed headshot) together for a position teaching English at a high school. I am qualified for this position. I feel like a fraud applying, however, and wonder what the hell I’d do if I got the job. But I am very much qualified for the position.
I stopped blogging months and months ago. It feels like a lifetime ago.
One of the experiences I had most wanted to catalogue went largely undocumented and I regret that somewhat. I did keep a hand-written journal to keep from imploding, to help me vent or bitch or whine to some venue without forever turning my best friends and husband away from me permanently! But I recognized even then that I was sounding like a miserable broken record and had the good instinct to keep all the crazy bullshit out of the blogosphere.
Maybe I’ll look back through all those notes and publish some gems. Probably not though.
Anyway, student teaching kicked my ass. And my spirit, and my passion. As I predicted before I began I ended up liking and doing very well in the classroom- I’m a fairly competent teacher- but the surrounding ridiculousness has soured my taste for ever working in a school setting ever again. Which is more than unfortunate because I now hold a graduate degree in said field and will soon be certified for such a career and will have to suck it up and get over myself and go teach.
Fun attitude to have while entering the job search eh?
Anyhow, I stopped blogging because I realized it had become one big bitch session and I didn’t like that. I started blogging to find my voice and whining is not a voice I want to define me!
My resolution now is to continue the quest to find my voice, refine my perspective, express myself, and get the creative writing going. It is enormously terrifying.
I’ll be honest and admit this: I am lost. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing anymore. I know what I’m qualified to do (on paper), what I need to do, and what I should do. I also know that all of those truths make me physically sick to my stomach and the idea of living that life is soul-crushing.
So I need to figure a lot of things out and I don’t have the luxury of wasting time anymore.
This is one step I’m taking to try to work through what’s going on in my life—instead of running away from all the complicated stuff I’m going to start picking through it, sorting it out and holding it up to the light of day.
Sometimes the blog will be personal, other times I give myself license to use it as a writing tool- do little writing exercises like I did in college only this time I will actually be the author and not have my talented husband ghost write them for me so I can pass a class.
My writing will never be as compelling as Aaron’s, but I do think I have something to add to the world and it is my endeavor to discover what it is and deliver.
I promise a lot of it will be unreadable. Painful. Embarrassing. But I am pledging not to delete or edit any of it. No matter how dismal and amateur. Every book on becoming a writer tells you to “just Write” and not focus on perfect or even good. Just effing write already!
So that’s the plan. I can promise it will not be incomparable. In fact it will probably compare unfavorably to many hackneyed writers and student works. But it will be better than nothing. Better than a collection of sighs and shrugs and “maybe someday”s.
And who knows? Maybe there will occasionally be a gem or two amidst the shit.
Aaron revealed to me last night that before the Zombie job came along he had started a blog as a writing exercise. It was a secret blog meant to catalyze him into writing. It is great so far and I sincerely hope he gets back into the habit. What I love about it is that he makes no promises to tell the truth- that he intends on using it as an exercise in writing so fact and fiction will blend and mix and be largely irrelevant.
Mine won’t be quite like that, and because my writing is of such a different style than his I think it’ll be clear when I’m ‘journaling’ and when I’m doing creative writing, but I’ll label them just in case. HOWEVER, I’m kind of hoping that since it has been so long since I blogged that this little corner of the internet will remain unvisited for a while… And perhaps I’ll keep some off-line writing going too?
Today I have to get a resume and cover letter (I almost typed headshot) together for a position teaching English at a high school. I am qualified for this position. I feel like a fraud applying, however, and wonder what the hell I’d do if I got the job. But I am very much qualified for the position.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
The wrong map.
Once upon a time is hard to recognize when you’re in the thick of it, living it, surrounded by it. Happily ever after is worse. Ever After is a time that never seems to arrive while you’re living it. These little clichés, these curious phrases are labels applied from a safe and comfortable distance, by people who aren’t involved in the events or the lives of those within the quotation marks. They live outside the elipses-- as observers, voyeurs.
Our own fairy tale never seems to materialize even while we pine for Once Upon a Time and Happily Ever After. We can’t see our stories evolving, can’t recognize the events which shape our little mundane lives into myth and epic. The people in our lives remain people in our eyes, never characters, villains, heroes, ogres, or fairy godmothers. Extraordinary incidents seem remarkable but largely separate from the everyday routine of our existence and we never attach undue import to them nor probe the event for symbolism or foreshadowing.
We exist. We live. We move through days without a real sense that we are protagonists or maybe antagonists in an evolving tale. Instead we sit in dark rows and watch the adventures of others flicker and fade before our eyes. Surely we are selfish or at the very least self-centered and we see through the lens of a first-person narrative. We cannot know what a third person omniscient would know and so we don’t feel special or enchanted or heroic or motivated to undertake quests or slay dragons or rescue princesses. We do what we do, hope someone takes notice, hope to make our mark on the world but never can see with enough perspective to know our own plot, our own story arc, our hero’s journey.
Maybe that’s why so many of us feel a bit at a loss and a bit lost. Why our jobs feel like dead ends and all our efforts seem small, humble and pedestrian. Why we restlessly change our majors in college, shift careers and cycle through partners and feel vague guilt over every ‘dead end’. It always feels as though there is a certain path we’re supposed to be on, a plan we should be following, a formula for that happily ever after, for that prince or princess, for that enchanted once upon a time.
But trying to make our story fit the mold of someone else’s journey will only ever lead to folly and unhappiness. We aren’t Cinderella, we aren’t Luke Skywalker, we have our own odesseys to navigate, our own wicked witches to evade and our own share of “your princess is in another castle” moments to deal with without trying to be someone else, without seeking out their adventures their problems and their victories. We may not be able to spin straw into gold or rub a lamp for a genie’s aid but we do have talents and skills and special powers perfectly equipped for our set of challenges and obstacles. If we stop trying to get to Mordor or Olympus or to grandma’s house or to that damned ball maybe we’ll finally be going in the right direction for our own goals.
We’re using the wrong map, listening to the wrong words of wisdom and looking for the wrong key to the wrong kingdom. But are we capable of taking hold of our own stories? Of wresting our lives out of the firm grasp of media saturation, popular culture constructs and the relentless tide of habit and tradition?
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