melting

So this week we found and signed a contract for an apartment which I am rather stoked about. Our car also announced it's impending death which I'm not so excited for. Guys, being an adult kind of sucks sometimes. The temperature has also been steadily rising this week, topping out today around 98 and we're supposed to be over 100 all weekend, which basically means it will take great incentive to even get me out of the apartment. There's a long-lived debate about where summer is worst between Utah and New York and while NY has humidity at least it has these cool things called clouds and trees. I swear, there are no clouds in the summer here. Going outside is like being under a constant and inescapable heat lamp. My body is not equipped to handle this gracefully  : P

I found out today at work that our library is doing a summer reading program/competition with weekly prizes and a grand prize at the end of the summer. I cannot express the childish glee I felt when I was told that, yes, I could enter. You just have to report books you've read [they have to be over 100 pages] and I immediately reported the last 6 books I've read which is not cheating, by the way, because I finished them all within the last week. I have seriously missed reading this much.

One of the books I've inhaled recently is Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier and Anthea Bell [Anthea is the translator as the book was written in German]. Our heroine Gwyn suddenly discovers that she has inherited her family's time-traveling gene instead of her cousin who was expected to have the ability. Gwyn must now navigate the dangers of uncontrolled and, slightly better controlled time travel without the benefit of the life-long training her cousin received and, to top it off, she must do it in the company of a really obnoxious but, obligatorily good looking guy. All in all, I enjoyed this book for the most part. It has many of the usual pitfalls of a YA romance with fantastical powers thrown in. There's even a pretty intriguing mystery thrown in that Gwyn must get to the bottom of which makes her question the motives of the people she is being told to trust. I felt like I was able to see past the unnecessarily repetitious descriptions of Gwyn's extended family and the many ways in which they are annoying. I even managed to shove down my indignant disbelief when Gwyn puts off telling her mother about her sudden genetic revelation for two days based on really flimsy excuses. The one thing that really got to me and may well prevent me from reading farther into the series is the romance. The premise is classically predictable with Gwyn and her man loathing each other at first and then suddenly finding that they love each other passionately. If it's so average, what's so bad about it? This whole transformation occurs in the three days the first book covers. Three days. Now, if anyone's read farther into the series please feel free to insert delicate hints here about how Gideon's feelings might not be completely honest, with the potential of serious betrayal hiding in the wings. Such a hint would be redeeming as, at this point, the unrealistic turn around involved in this relationship is making me gag on my adolescence.

where do we go from here?

Spring term officially ended yesterday [meaning Summer starts on Monday. what?] with a written final in my sewing class and a pizza party for my writing class, as it should be. I honestly think all of the creative writing classes I've taken have had food parties at the end of the semester. Writers know how it's done.

My professor also used the time to talk to us about publishing, especially the inevitability of rejection because, let's be honest, it will happen. He told us about a friend he has who's decided that he has to be rejected at least 3-4 times before someone will accept his work for publication. This way, when he gets rejected it's not as soul-crushing as it could otherwise be. Instead, it's just a step in the right direction. I thought there was something profound in turning such a negative experience into something positive [also learning more about the various reasons you might receive a rejection that have nothing to do with your writing]. I'll try to keep that in mind in future, haha.

So that's it. My last [official] writing class. So where to from here? Well, I'm going to miss the work-shopping and the due dates enforced by other people but I am coming away with a short story that, with a little tweaking, is ready to venture forth on my first publishing adventure. Also, I have pretty well cleared up which POVs I'm most comfortable working in which calls for edits to most of what I've written on my WIP novel but I'm actually excited about that. I think it'll help me get closer to my MC which will fix a lot of the issues that have been making it clunky up to this point.

In other news, since getting out of Winter Semester, it appears that my reading addiction has come back in full swing. Basically, my mood is literally affected by whether or not I am currently in the midst of a story. This being said. I officially need more books. Badly. I love the ones I have dearly but I've read them all at least 3 times and a girl hungers for something new to sink her teeth into once in a while. Any suggestions?

goodness!

It's been a bit of a whirl-wind week that promises to carry over the weekend with finals coming up in the next couple of days. I've been working like a mad woman on my fourth project for my sewing class, an adorable poke-a-dot skirt that I was this close to finishing today but good heavens that skirt has a huge hem! To give you a rough idea, there is enough fabric gathered in the skirt to go around me more than twice if it was flat. I've also got major revisions to do on my second short story thanks to some really helpful questions and suggestions from my class during workshop on Wednesday.

On a side note, I think that Gorilla Glue should come up with some more easily accessible containers. I am, at this moment, trying to fix a flip-flop which would not be a difficult procedure if I could actually get at  the glue I'm trying to use!

I don't have many writing words this week since I've been spending more time sewing than writing, unfortunately. One thing keeps getting stuck in my mind though, something a classmate said during one of our workshop days a little while ago. We were going around and reading bits of what everyone had so far and most people had either been asked or just mentioned that their piece related at least a little bit to some real-life experience of theirs. This didn't seam unusual to me at all but a classmate had a different opinion. When we got to her turn to read she, very pointedly, said "my story doesn't come from personal experiences, just something I made up in my head. like most fiction." Can you feel the burn?

I think I understand what she meant, but I also wonder if she misunderstood what everyone else meant when they said they'd drawn, at least in small part, from real life. Sometimes people really do take an experience that happened to them and rework it to make a story. The stuff that genre fiction is known for, however, generally doesn't exist/occur in the real world [even though I would love to have a pet dragon]. But just because a writer may not work the first way doesn't mean that their life experience doesn't get written into their work. In fact, as I'm pretty sure I've said before, it's just the opposite. We can't help but incorporate our experiences, relationships, and feelings into what we write. If we didn't, if we really, honestly, just made everything up from scratch, I don't think our writing would feel real or relatable which would be a shame.

In other news, Tim and I finally saw Iron Man 3 on Wednesday night and I actually really enjoyed it. I mean, it could only improve from the 2nd one, right? But really. I was very impressed with RDJr's portrayal of anxiety attacks which were pretty much spot on. I've really enjoyed his character arc through all three movies and loved that they didn't totally ignore Avengers here [something I was kind of afraid they'd do]. It was an amazing follow for me because in Avengers Iron Man just blows the whole thing, including the almost-dying bit, off in typical fashion so it was great to see him actually struggling to cope with it in the aftermath. Overall, I thought the writing was fantastic and kept up with the witty tone we have come to expect from Iron Man. Also, can we just agree that Pepper in the suit is one of the most bad-a things we've ever seen? That all being said, there were a few parts and some characters that I felt were flat or didn't really get explained the way they should have but you're going to run into those problems with any movie, especially those concerning super heroes.

On that topic, has anyone seen the new Super Man movie? They have been pushing advanced ticket sales for that like crazy here in the last two months and while I've been somewhat intrigued by the story's approach [from what you can see in the trailer, anyway] I'm hesitant to even see it so if someone has any feedback on this new release please let me know!

an up and down week

In my world of writing this has been a bit of a crazy week. My first short story was due in class on Monday and, as I didn't get time to workshop it last week, that was the first time I read it for my class and professor. I won't go into details, but let's just say that I was not prepared to be ripped to shreds first thing in class, especially when I was surprisingly proud of the story I had written. On the bright side, that day I also got a major breakthrough for the story I'm writing right now with some helpful ideas from my husband! The week is ending on a brighter note, though, as we got our stories back yesterday and my professor's comments were almost the exact opposite of those expressed on Monday [which may go to show that you shouldn't judge a story solely by the first 5 pages]. I'm not sure if my short story just makes more sense when you've read the whole thing or if it just doesn't translate well when read aloud vs. just read, but whatever the reason, I can safely say I was more than pleasantly surprised.

So, thoughts for the week?

Don't give up on a story until you know more about it. For our short story assignments we're given prompts and I didn't like any of the ones my professor listed for this last assignment. Like, at all. Everyone knows it's hard to write about something you don't care about so writing the first 6 or so pages of my story was really difficult because, while I found the character I'd created interesting enough, I just wasn't invested. But then I finally realized how the story needed to end and the last 4-5 pages were phenomenal to write! This was an assignment I had to do for class but I know that sometimes I'll start a story in my own time that I'm excited about but then lose my steam for part way through. What I need to remember, and encourage you to do as well, is that sometimes the story just needs to work itself out. Writing isn't always rainbows and roses but the work that you put into developing a story will always turn out for the best in the end. Maybe it won't become something you publish, but it'll be something you can be proud of.

Outsource! I absolutely love work-shopping and tossing ideas around with people informally, especially when I feel like I'm stuck. I think some writers might feel like the suggestions and ideas given by other people  shouldn't be used in your work because it's not your own original idea but I disagree. Sure, the whole story shouldn't be written for you by other people, but criticisms and suggestions are what good editors give you so why not build a cooperative writing community that helps you with these things as your work is in progress? Also, in my experience, any time I have run with an idea someone else has suggested, I always end up changing aspects of it as I see fit for my story, sometimes in ways that make it nearly unrecognizable. Most often, it's not the ideas themselves that make work-shopping and brain-picking so helpful for writers, it's just getting a fresh take on your work. We stare at our own writing for so long that we can box ourselves into a corner and have no idea how we got there or the best way to get out and talking things out with someone else, as with most problems we encounter in life, can help make a confusing situation easier to solve. So go ahead, be brave and ask someone for their opinion, ideas, suggestions, critiques. You never know how it might affect your story!