My Writing Process Now: an autobiographical novella

When it comes to me as a writer in general, this class has significantly calmed me down about the task of writing. I was talking to two high-school friends the other day about how my English class "de-Fleury-ized" me. Our former English teacher is named Ms. Fleury, and she's the woman who taught me to write essays. It's not that I don't like her, it's that she put terrible constraints on me as a writer by forbidding me from using first person and discouraging "being" verbs and other ridiculous things like that. I was taught to write very dryly. I made up for all the arbitrary restrictions I had as a writer by increasing my technical vocabulary and contorting my syntax; sadly, this was encouraged by my teachers. Overall I feel like I've had a large object removed from my ass.

I don't strain myself as much when I write now. It comes as naturally as before. Because of high school, my analysis and argument papers felt very familiar, but I was more focused on my ideas than on how to avoid first-person and fit into the boundaries of "topic, example, discussion."

I enjoy the method of "reading like a writer" we were taught. It fits into the larger idea of simply being aware of myself as a writer rather than doing things "right" or "wrong." For one, I enjoy workshopping now; I can look at someone's work and accept their qualities as a writer as their own, and view what I have to say simply as being my perspective as a reader. When I write, I hardly think about mechanics or guidelines anymore. I just look at what's written and examine what the writing is doing. That's a skill I've always thought I've had, but I've actually just newly earned it.

You have to learn to look at your writing and not think "this is good enough." I think most people do it subconsciously, because I was never aware I was doing it when I used to write, but I was. I even would think I was just a naturally good writer so what I was doing could be trusted, which is even worse.

So most of my development as a writer has been maturing. I've also taken a creative writing course this semester with another teacher who's made me aware of my strengths and weaknesses. The work in both of these courses has been humbling, and I'm glad because I've become noticeably better because I have to hold my standards high.

I'm not a perfect writer. This is true much more-so with my creative writing than with my academic, casual, and technical writing, but they often spill together. I am actually becoming a skilled poet now, and can look at a poem and notice a mixed metaphor, or actually know why I'm enjambing a line and how words sound and images fit together. But in anything artistic I still write I'll often leave phrases in the work and read the piece over and over to myself and not question them, not realizing what a confusing or melodramatic thing is sitting there. I still have to learn to "question everything" as far as writing goes.

I've also been noticing this problem where a lot of my work takes on a similar pacing and tone. My big brother from the fraternity I'm pledging, a creative writing minor, proof-read some of my poems and told me it was like reading "one long poem." This has often been the case in my prose. While I don't think it vital that the body of my academic writing explore different paces and tones as long as it's effective, it's important for that of my creative and casual. Even Facebook statuses. I don't want all my Facebook statuses to sound the same.

As for the whole "two writers" thing I talked about in my first blog, I think they've kind of met each other. I didn't realize it was an issue that my creative writer and essayist were split entities.

Pape revizzle

I'm going to revise my description piece. In the practical sense, I have analysis and argument down, and I get synthesis and just don't really want to go back to that paper because it was boring and I got a B+ on it anyway. I feel in control of all those modes except for description, and my description piece is the one I feel I did the biggest disservice to. It would give me warm fuzzies if I wrote it well, and I would hug myself and treat myself to a hot cocoa.

I'm just gonna start the paper over. Same subject, same story, but I'm gonna stay chill about it. I've had a huge creative development recently, actually really abruptly, which I guess I'll talk more about in next week's blog. I didn't realize before that maybe I wasn't even writing in my own voice. My waxing poetic works half the time when I'm writing poetry, but I personally think it's kind of ugly when I'm writing about smoking a cigarette with Shanna.

I remember being told the "you learned something but your reader didn't" thing about the paper. I think the fashion in which I "showed" instead of "told" contributed to this. I didn't make myself clear enough. I'm going to be simpler in this draft; say what's on my mind. Often, I show too much and don't trust the reader to feel what I want them to feel. The way I've been writing recently is to tell in a way which shows; that's how I describe it. It works better for me.

As for the structure, I think I can focus on the same scenes, but pour over them less. I may give a less chaotic description of how we met. And since I found out I can go over the page limit, I'll add in the background details I watered down in the original draft and display my actual impressions of her classmates. I know not to drag it out too much, but I'm not gonna be afraid to go over five pages if it means bringing the paper to full body.

And this time I'm gonna have a venue in mind. This hasn't mattered in my last two papers, but if I thought of where I would see this paper it would help me put it down on the page in the right way. So, the way I predict it's going to play out, I'm gonna imagine it's going into one of those literary magazines that is just a little more popular than all the underground ones. Its title will be THE LANIARD. On its submission page it'll talk about how it wants real work, from real writers.

Thanksgiving

I woke up at noon because my mom woke me up. I was still sleep-deprived and I had that feeling that my limbs were full of cement, and I wriggled around in the bed and thought about how much I hate merriment because I can never sleep during it.

But as I ran to the grocery store two times, driving around alone in my mom's car, I felt a city-girl romantic-comedy kind of giddiness. The sentiment of like the brunette girl from Sex and the City driving around singing with the radio cranked up because she just had a successful date with some great guy. Nothing like that had happened, so I can't really say why I was in such a good mood.

There were a lot of points where I forgot it was Thanksgiving. I feel bad that I didn't stop and have more grateful thoughts throughout the day. I do remember, just before dinner, as we got our food and prepared to sit down at the table, hoping my mom wasn't about to propose we say grace, because that seemed like something she might do. Because I would've made some snappy comment like, "I think we should be thanking you." She didn't end up saying anything about grace. So I just kind of felt like an ass.

It turned out to be the best food I've ever eaten at Thanksgiving: wheat bread you make by putting a packet of wheat-bread mix into a bread-maker, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, really good stuffing, this cinnamon pecan yam shit (I usually hate sweet potatoes but it was like the season of autumn in my mouth), steamed broccoli and cauliflower, a Tofurkey (which was store-bought but whatever). There was also turkey, which I didn't eat, but I assume it was good. It's not that any of this, except the yam shit and the Tofurkey, isn't eaten in like every American household at Thanksgiving. It's that she's a badass at making food, even when she's been sipping at a pool of red wine for hours. Now that I think of it, we probably didn't say grace because she was proud of her work.

She was the only biological family member there, actually. There was her, then some guy-friend she invited over because he just went through a divorce and didn't have anywhere to go, then Mitch and Lexie. Before dinner Mitch and I sat in the living room with the game on, him pointing at metal bands on a list and telling me which ones to download while my mom banged around in the kitchen with a wine-glass in her hand talking to that guy about how her ex-boyfriend's dog went with him to Florida this year. These interactions would not have happened if the day were not a holiday.

Argument

I unfortunately didn't have time for this one, so it'll end up being the one dropped from my grade. I realize that kind of screws me for the actual paper, but I'll take that for myself. This week's schedule was terrible for me.

Weed should be legal and abortion is morally reprehensible

I have recently been interested in the idea of making bullying illegal. I look to Lady Gaga as some kind of moral icon, but she has recently proposed the idea of making bullying illegal, and even spoke to the president about it, and I can't say I completely agree that making it illegal is the best course of action to ending it. This was after the suicide of Jamey Rodemeyer, a huge fan of hers.

Obviously, the issue has current relevance, as Jamey's Law is trying to be passed, beside the fact that teen suicides due to bullying have become a large topic in the media in the past year.

One reason I would be interested in arguing a side of this issue is that the public response to it is almost at stasis; I have found as much media supporting the idea as I have opposing. More importantly, I myself have not taken a side on it yet.

I saw an article a while ago that discussed why illegalizing bullying is a bad decision. And check this out. I also am generally aware of the cliche that bullies only bully because they're insecure, and the general knowledge that many bullies come from very dysfunctional households. In this Cracked article, the author, who has dealt with a history of bullying, is consistently aware that many bullies gain their physical dominance because they have to learn to physically defend themselves from their own fathers. What kind of message would it send to turn bullies who deal with such abuse into criminals? When I think about morals I always try to think about how "evil" is always more complicated then being purely bad. I think to illegalize bullying might be an insultingly simplistic way to deal with the issue.

And what about other root causes? Homophobia? Prejudice in general? Fixing these problems would certainly fix bullying. Laws already exist that ban most aspects of bullying, like assault and harassment. Bullying continues despite that for a reason.

But then part of me reminds me that fixing widespread problems is never easy, and to do so in the "bottom-up" way most people dream of would mean a complete reformation of society. I did at first wonder why Gaga would want to so simplistically victimize bullies through a law when she's all about love and understanding, but simply waiting for society to ride the tides of love won't stop the suffering of the bullied in the meantime. Laws are our "short-term" fix to such problems as murder and rape and bullying despite that they don't stop them, and they affirm that the ultimate power of the government is against them. I also view illegalizing bullying as a type of "tough love," telling society that, no matter what your pain, you cannot turn it into harm for others.

I was told by my friend who is very interested in politics that anti-bullying programs in schools are generally ineffective, so that would complicate the argument. How else should we deal with the problem if not to illegalize it? Also, many policies I view as regressive exist in some high-schools, such as the "policy of neutrality," which denotes that teachers must remain neutral in dealing with homophobic slurs because they may be part of religious conviction. Bullying is bullying regardless, and a national law would punish it when it reached a certain level of severity, regardless of whether it is of religious conviction. The law could be a way to counteract much of this bullshit.

So, that is what I understand as the two sides of the argument. I'll turn it over in my head and determine which one I figure to be ultimately true. In the end it'll be a slight but significant win and I'll be glad to portray each side as strongly as it should be.

Blog 7: Cybil as a motherly character in the game Silent Hill

[This will be my late post for the semester.]

As a foil to Dahlia Gillespie, the character of the police officer Cybil Bennett is a vehicle of benevolent motherhood throughout the game's plot. From the beginning, Cybil vows to be an active part in Harry's search for his daughter. In one of the moments that decides the game's ending, Cybil has just agreed to go alone to the Amusement Park on Dahlia's strange warning that she must get there before Alessa does. As Harry, the player must travel to the park to find her, and upon doing so she appears glassy-eyed and drugged and stands up to aim her gun at Harry, triggering a boss fight. Stripped of her character, Cybil becomes one of the many forces assailing the father in his search for his daughter: another monster. At this point, the player may choose to use the “red liquid” on her, triggering a cut-scene in which Cybil keels over and vomits a worm-like, seemingly parasitic embryo. Now purged of this creature, Cybil is conscious again. As Harry acts as an impediment to Dahlia's “plans,” the turning of Cybil against him creates not only adversity but insult; a character who has consistently devoted herself to the search for an endangered child is not only negated but reversed in intention, suddenly a danger to Cheryl's last hope of being rescued from the hell-world of Silent Hill and Dahlia's obscure plots. Her possession is represented by a parasite, which draws intriguing connections between the motivating forces of the monster-Cybil and that of the plot's ultimate evil-doer: Dahlia Gillespie, acting ferociously on her religious devotions to the point that she abandons her compassionate instincts as a mother. One can further examine the physical similarities between the parasite that possesses Cybil and the wriggling growths on the backs of the possessed nurses in the hospital; the hospital was a key part in hiding the terrible abuse Dahlia exerted on her daughter as part of her “plan.”

If Cybil is saved rather than killed, the player is treated to a cut-scene in which Harry explains to her that he is not Cheryl's biological father, but took her as his daughter when he and his late wife found her on the side of the road. He concludes that he will not give up his search for her, and Cybil promises to help him until the end. Perhaps one of the most powerful details pertaining to these characters' sense of parenthood is the unconditional treatment they give it; their parenthood is undefined by genetics, whereas Dahlia's seems only to be a condition of genetics. In Cybil's case, the lack of condition is even stronger, as she has never even met Cheryl, yet gives motherly devotion to saving her life. Here is a concrete point of distinction between the motherly archetype of Cybil and that of Dahlia, who is Alessa's biological mother.

Week 6: Bitchin' and bellyachin' about poetry

Reading most of the new contemporary translations of the poems "Poet in New York" ("Poeta en Nueva York") by Frederico Garcia Lorca, one would hardly assume they were all about New York. That's the ultimate power of poetry, the sincere manipulation of reality, which is often forgotten in learning about the gritty mechanics of sonics, meter, diction, and imagery.

The community at the Poetry Free-For-All likes to teach that a poem is not good because of its subject, and because they're so intent on their method of "tough love" in training inexperienced poets (which is more like "condescending discouragement"), this rule is stressed to the point where the subject and atmosphere of a poem are inadvertently pushed to the background by all the things real poets do, such as imagery, elegant lists of household objects, and the mentioning of flowers most people haven't heard of.

Not to say the poetry published in today's most prestigious magazines isn't skilled. But what is skill if it's nothing to read? Look at the poem "Soundings" by Robert Wrigley, a poem randomly selected from Poetry Magazine: The birdhouse made from a gourd is wired / to a flanged loop of steel and screwed to the southeast post / of the shack. Very fluid and exact description of a birdhouse. But two and a half lines were just expended on a description of how a birdhouse is hanging from a shack, an amount of detail of questionable importance to the poem.

Who would read this poem? Not even old people would read this poem. Old poets would. It's not up to anyone but Robert Wrigley to criticize who Robert Wrigley chooses to write for, but poems such as this fit the standard of what Poetry and the other most prestigious publishers of English poetry publish. The most esteemed contemporary poets sound nothing like this. Ted Hughes is sharp, atmospheric, poignant, and, most importantly, adored by the poetic community. Billy Collins is simple, fluid, and ponderous and he's one of the most popular poets alive today. So why, when new poetry must be published, is there a lack of, or even a rejection of, poetry that pushes boundaries?

This post really isn't meant to conclude anything, but to finish off, Lorca can be brought back into focus. In "Poet in New York," Lorca creates a body of poetry that culminates into its own grim, breathtaking, and inherently mysterious atmosphere. Great Depression-age New York is transformed into several images of Hell. Not only the general tone, atmosphere, and imagery have this power, but the language itself. Stumbling onto my face, different every day. / Murdered by the sky! he writes in "Back from a Walk." In "Dawn," he writes Dawn in New York / has four columns of filth / and a hurricane of black doves / splashing in putrid waters. He brushes the edge of sensationalism but has already characterized a dirty setting in four lines.

Lorca takes the real and morphs it into his emotions. He creates a universe through verse. And his words get to the damn point instead of lingering over their own sense of significance. What one can question is why poetry is not encouraged to be more like this: clear and emotionally moving rather than built on its own obsession with the craft. To quote Nietzsche, "Deep people strive for clarity; people who wish to appear deep strive for obscurity."