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!