Back when you had to get up to change the TV channel…

Who here remembers the 2001 VMAs? Anyone? Okay– Britney Spears on stage with a snake. Remember now? It made all kinds of headline news as a “shocking” performance, suggesting a whole new level of skankiness allowed on TV.

I wish we could go back to such innnocent days.

Not to sound like my mother or anything, but what the heck is with kids these days? Back when I was a kid, this is how things went: we had our staple boy bands (Nsync, BSB, etc) and female vocals (Britney, Christina, etc) and then a bunch of fluff all around them (98 degrees, Jessica Simpson– big deals, but not in comparison to those formally named). Nowadays, there are no staples that remain in the public eye constantly– everyone is famous now. No one quite to the extent of those famous in the early 2000’s, but they are famous nonetheless. Apparently there’s only so much fame in the world, and it’s being socialized across the music industry right now instead of a few individuals having a monopoly on attention.

Back then, people like Britney Spears would do things like show up on stage with a snake around her neck to see how far she could go to push the envalope and still be accepted (apparently getting married and divorced twice, being an insane mother, going crazy, and shaving your head is generally when people stop accepting you).

It’s a whole new ball game now. If you don’t push the envalope, no one knows who you are. We have created a society where media doesn’t care about you unless you’re writhing around the VMA stage with fake blood draining all over your almost naked body. Speaking of, anyone see Lady GaGa’s performance?! What the hell?

It doesn’t matter that her songs are completely void of meaning or genuine vocals, it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t write her own music, it doesn’t matter that she has a lifestyle your mother would be ashamed to know about– she is willing to do W H A T E V E R  I T  T A K E S to be famous. Which is why she hasn’t worn a pair of pants in twelve months. Which is why she openly tells the media that to keep herself satisfied, she sleeps with her band members whenever she wants. Which is why you should not be shocked that your seven year old daughter tries to go to school in a bikini and doesn’t understand why it’s not acceptable– “but that beautiful singer on TV does!”

Good job, America. Let’s keep up the awesome role-modeling!

Let me explain why your soup tastes like leg hair…

After working 11-8 without a break, I decided I deserved an evening doing absolutely nothing except sitting in front of my computer watching a movie and just unwinding from a day spent serving fake smiles, breaking in new shoes, and dealing with co-workers that make me want to stab myself. I picked up a couple of fifty cent rentals and went home to relax. I put on house clothes (read: shorts and a t-shirt), put the movie in, and settled down to fold laundry and become engrossed in some horribly trashy poorly directed film. As I’m folding, I notice the glimmer of light coming off my legs. <i>Glimmer of light coming off my legs?</i>

Oh right.

That would be my leg hair reflecting light– it’s so long now that PETA members have started throwing red paint on me. It might do me some good to shave; after all, my boyfriend is coming over later and if I shave, maybe he’ll start thinking of me as his hot girlfriend again, and not that chick in house clothes with legs comparable to Ron Jeremy’s.

Here is where I reached quite a predicament. I really wanted smooth, silky feeling legs that I could rub up and down for hours on end, appreciating the new found softness… but I’m in the middle of a movie I want to finish. There is no convenient way to set up my laptop in the bathroom while shaving. Not only that, but my roommate is in bed and the bathroom is right across from her room, given the poor insulation in our bathroom, I’d be sure to wake her up. Especially after I undoubtedly drop my laptop once or twice, then cuss loudly about dropping my laptop once or twice. My poor laptop is covered in more dents and scratches than Princess Diana’s limo (tasteless joke, much?).

As I sit on my floor pondering my situation, a vision from my middle school days suddenly floats into mind… My friend Becca is from a family of seven with two bathrooms: one in her parents room, and one to share with her three brothers and one sister. Being the resourceful person that she is, Becca figured out how to shave while preserving bathroom time. I distinctly remember sitting on her futon doing homework when Becca appeared in her doorway, razor, towel, and shaving cream in hand. She plopped down on the floor and began shaving right then and there, no sink or bathtub around. I thought it was the oddest thing ever, but hey, her legs her smooth and silky in a matter of moments, and no one yelled at her to hurry up in the bathroom.

I decided to pull a Becca. Except to avoid some serious razor burn, I was going to need a basin of water. Not just a cup or bowl full of water, but a serious basin that I could pretty much stick my whole leg in. The hunt began.

I scannd the entire kitchen, going through every cabinet and drawer multiple times, hoping that a giant basin would magically appear. The problem with my apartment is that it’s furnished by two college students– what’s the rule of college students? Only the necesity, and only if that necesity comes cheap enough. Translation: no way is there a big basin any where in this damn kitchen.

Alas, something catches my eye. The giant wide-mouthed pot abandoned on the stove that hours earlier held my roomie’s dinner. Should I? Would she notice?

Nahhhhh.

So I put it off the stove, washed it out, filled it up with warm water, and went to work on my extremities.

I sit here now, mere moments later, relishing in the glory of silky smooth legs and the secret that I put the pot right back on the stove without washing it out. A fairly thorough rinsing sufficed.

I’m going to have to remember not to try any soup the next time she makes it….

Thrive with five

I skipped four, shh, I’ll come back to it later…

I was running the number five through my head over and over again, trying to figure out how to relate it to writing. I was lost– what does five mean to me? Nothing in writing, everything in my life. Five is the number of children that danced in my mother’s womb. Cameron, Amy, Tegan, Laura, Brenton…. Five blond haired, blue eyed Spragues. So I’m going to talk about it.

We’re all really different, like those images Leslie showed us in class a week or so ago….

Cameron was born in 1982, the baby that my mother so desperately wanted. The first month after marriage to my dad in December of 1981, my mom cried because she wasn’t pregnant yet… but eventually, to steal words from FML, she was totally plump with dad’s seed. Cam burst onto the scene October 8th, 1982, forever changing the lives of my parents. With the mind of an engineer, Cameron spent his childhood building things with blocks and Legos, taking things apart before reassembling them, writing complex plays and recording them with a seven or eight pound Kodak video camera, and reading the entire Hardy Boys collection and Star Trek Magazine. Cameron is now an electrical engineer who does reserve work as an Officer in the Air Force, still calm and quiet with the occasional outburst. He loves to tell you that you’re wrong, he loves to beat you in whatever game you’re playing, and he loves to suddenly become Serious Christian Man when you need advice.

On April 17th, 1984, Amy joined the Sprague trio with her bouncy blond curls and vibrant blue eyes. Talking before she was walking, Amy handled every word in her mouth like it was a crystal vase, carefully and slowly articulating every syllable. She loved to knock down Cameron’s towers. As she grew older, she caught the eye of every guy she knew and spent a lot of time shopping, flirting, and generally enjoying time with her girlfriends. She’s sassy, stylish, and loves to be entertained.

Finally, there was quirky Tegan, born in February of 1986, the end of the Sprague children, my parents decided. Tegan is vivacious, bubbly, outspoken, outgoing, and doesn’t always know when to keep her opinion to herself. She loves to tell people what to do, loves to always come in first place, and is always in a secret competition with Cameron.

Surprise, my mom decided she needed more children, even though she wasn’t sure if they could have any more. Desperately, she prayed, and in September of 1989, the little bundle of joy known as ME! entered her life. I can’t imagine Tegan was especially pleased with this, but she was content to have someone else to boss around, so we always got along fairly well. Similar to Tegan, I’m determined, outgoing, and don’t always shut up when I should. I’m calm like Cam with the expressiveness of Tegan, leading people to believe I’m a lot more emotional and passionate then I actually am.

And then, in March of 1991, Brenton came along, the final page in the story of my siblings. Clearly the baby of the family, Brenton can whine or charm his way into anything with his fingers around my mother’s heart. Most similar to Amy in personality, Brent likes to be up on trends and seen as cool, is the most athletic of the family, and doesn’t really know how to be shy.

It’s weird reflecting on all of this, but the idea of unity really came to mind when thinking about all of my siblings– like the photo collection, we all initially appear different. Upon closer inspection, however, you can see extremely similar qualities in us. The most obvious is our appearances– naturally, we have lightly pigmented skin, sandy colored hair, blue eyes, and medium sized frames (some of us chose to color our hair a bit though… Tegan is a red-head, Amy has white and red streaks, and I’m kind of all over the map). In personality, we are all incredibly stubborn, er, determined, and usually stop at nothing achieve what we want. We’ve never been accused of being shy, charm our way through situations, and never trust any one else’s opinions… not even each other’s, at times.

In the end, our differences align with our similarities as the five of us are in fact, the five of us. The Sprague kids. When we were younger, we would enter our father’s office complex to choruses of “its the Sprague brigade!” or “head for the hills, it’s the Sprague invasion!” and proudly interlocked arms, a family of friends.

1 + 3 = 4?

I believe I bypassed number one, but I’m going to incorporate it since I believe it is fluid with the writing I am posting today.

In case my previos post did not shed light on this, I am using 1-5 to explore writing as I know it, 2 referring to the two most critical elements in my writing: character and setting. What I failed to mention was number one, the inspiration that gives way to these things.

I cannot write anything without inspiration, inspiration being completely different from a prompt (exercise, paper topic, etc). Inspiration comes at me in any given form– the picture of a human living their life, a phrase that catches my ear, or the way a coffee cup is perched on the edge of a table. Whether direct (a writing about a coffee cup perched at the edge of a table) or indirect (how our lives are so close to a ceramic mug on the corner of a piece of fruniture, how how it ended up there, etc), it will somehow serve to influence an entire work that will spill out of my head.

First comes the idea. I am usually captivated by a single phrase that I just have to incorporate into the piece somehow. I then unconciously choose a character and ponder hard about a setting, imaging the scents filling my nostrils, the sights to my eyes, the sounds resting in my ears.

My inspirations are brilliant. My follow-ups are poor. I wish I could write down a single phrase and it would hold as much meaning to the reader as it does to me. It would save me to task of filling in words around it to explain the importance of that single phrase. But alas, humans are different, and read into things with different points of view, so we must explain where we are coming from to show why a phrase is meaningful to us in hopes that we can make it important to other people too. I always come back to this, but Starbucks is a good example– for my mother, Starbucks is where she can get her fancy venti chai latte with three pumps of chai, no water, soy, no foam, extra hot fill. For my friend Ally, Starbucks is where she gathers to socialize with her friends. For me, Starbucks is where I sit to write, capitalizing on the dozens of persaonalities that grace the building. To each of us, this coffee shop serves an important function, but with different meanings. In order to understand, appreciate, or even realize each other’s uses for the store, it might take some explaining.

Likewise, a random phrase, oh, I don’t know, such as “frozen in your touch,” holds way more meaning than you may realize upon initial inspection. Each of us can look at it differently– the lover sees time standing still in a moment, the victim sees a prison, the patient with peripheral arterial disease sees cold hands. As a writer, it is my job to tell you what exactly that phrases means to me and should mean to you. I want you to know what you should take away from that phrase by writing a love peom around it, a thrilling action story, or a medical description. Otherwise, what function do I serve?

I am inspired by a phrase, frozen in your touch, and so I have the first part of my poem done, the hardest part, the beginning, the reason for writing in the first place. I’ve found the idea I want to communicate it– now how do I do that? I create a setting to give it more meaning– why not a warm, summar day, two lovers walking through a park, ignoring the damp heat as they appreciate the warmth they have for each other? Wouldn’t icy imagery be ironic in the summer time?

Next, I choose my character– is the narrator a third person, watching the romance take place? Or is it someone intimately involved in the scenerio? Here, I choose the male as my narrator, foregoing the cliche of a woman being frozen in the grips of her lover.

I have the first few stages of my writing done– the beginning, the meaning, the setting, the narrator and characters, but now come the more difficult steps. Piecing it all together, line by line. Here, my number three, is where writing becomes a work. Here, I must apply thoughtful details in a reader-friendly way, deciding on word choice and literary tools to use and depth of the piece.

More to come, I promise (i gotta go to work!)

Number two

There are two things crucial to every piece of writing that I am in a constantly battling: the character and the setting. Minimal assets to the work, I know.

When it comes to choosing a character, will it be in the first person or in the third? Will the individual be a friendly body, or simply a narrator? Will they be recalling memories, passing advice, making new friends or thoughts, or pondering life? Will this character be strongly biased with my opinion, or will I explore a completely different perspective? If the character has traces of me, how much will be truth and how much will be fiction? Is this going to be an original character, is it is a voice that I have used before? Why am I choosing to use this voice again? What new information can it share with my audience? What new revelation will it stumble upon?

Usually, I don’t ponder my character in this great of detail before beginning… I just start writing and see what happens, letting my brain surprise me with the twists and turns that jump out of it. Sometimes it does not surprise me at all and I am graced with my familiar, comfortable sadistic character who is been through trials but remains inwardly positive while outwardly dark. I know and love this character very much, because she is a dramatized version of myself, and I know me…. I’m pretty easy to write. I do not typically review my character until the revising process, those few times I actually force myself to go through the revising process, but by then I feel like it’s too late to change anything because there is some aspect to my character that I love. The character has set the tone for the poem, and I could not possibly forfeit that!

The setting, another serious element of writing, I possibly put more though into than anything else. For me, I believe setting the scene is the more important way to grab the reader and pull them into what I am writing. I want them to be able to close their eyes and be in exactly the same spot in their head as I am in mine. I explore every sense– sight, sounds, smell, touch, and sometimes, taste, in as vivid detail as I can and put it into words, hoping that the reader will interpret my words and be in the scene with me. I don’t know why the physical setting has so much meaning to me, but it does. There is a possibility that above all, I feel like one of my strongest abilities is to describe things in detail (whether this ability is real or perceived) and therefore I should describe senses, writing with my strengths.

I constantly run into a problems here: vocabulary and new settings. In regards to vocabulary, I believe my array of colorful language is growing quite stale as I find myself beginning to fall back on Laura-cliches, that is, phrases or words I tend to use a lot in my writings. In the interest of staleness, I also think I remain too fascinated with specific scenes and find myself wanting ot use them in every piece– I love writing things on dry, hot summer days, and thanks to Joyce Carol Oates’ Where are you going, where have you been? I love the idea of kitchens. Who knew a kitchen could symbolize so much? I’m learning to expand my horizon… bathrooms, front porches, trails in the woods (or lack thereof)… but I feel like my fallback is always surrounding a miserably hot day that my character is accustomed to, sticky heat and stale air. It annoys me that I still love it.

Referring to an earlier post, I think my problem could be solved if I simply started reading more. Whether it be a dictionary, anthology, or just a book I happen to pick up somewhere, I need to involve myself in something other than the 1400-page Foundations of Nursing Theory or Pharmacology for Nurses, which seem to only encourage repetition of the most boring words in the English language.

I live, therefore I write

I wish I could say writing is coming easily to me. Inspiration sure is. God, I keep getting these brilliant ideas, but then every time I try to write something down and I read it (assuming I actually pull enough words out of my head to put onto paper) I read it back to myself and it is complete crap. I need a bigger vocabulary.

At the beginning of this class, I hadn’t really worked on writing anything in months. Every time I encountered an inspiration or wrote a good sentence, I tucked it away in my brain or just forgot it, figuring I’d never actually complete the train of thought. After a few days into this class, I attempted to find a character in everyone or a story in everything, hoping to churn out work after work. At this point though, writing is really starting to get on my nerves because I’m finally finding inspiration in just about everything, but my stupid brain is useless at writing it down. I swear, I only know like ten words and variations of such words, and at this point, everything I ever write looks the same to me. It’s no longer awesome or thought-provoking, it’s just used up and uncreative.

I’m barely even writing a blog entry here. So far all it consists of is pathetic whining and self-pity. Maybe I’m just annoyed at myself overall at this point.

I have three weeks to write and write and write. I want to write differently. My writing typically consists of stale, dark, or uncomfortable characters who find some resolution in the piece… pretty boring after awhile, right? I want to learn to capture different images, I just don’t know how. I would love to write about children, because they have so much energy and joy and just adorablness, but I have no idea how to write kids. I’ve never written kids before. I should find an author who writes a lot of kids and study their stuff… at this point though, I seriously think it’s just that my vocabulary is too narrow. I typically only read nonfiction literature, which leaves me with a fairly dry assortment of words and images. Journalists who write books aren’t really into flowery speech.

I think at this point in my writing adventures, I need to actually start reading.

Meta-writing

So remember when we were supposed to explore our writing processes? Okay, well here I go, a week late. I know I mentioned it in class (somehow the phrase “in class” doesn’t fit what it is when we are all together). Whoa. I just realized there isn’t an automatic spellchecker on wordpress. Mozilla is failing me. This sucks. Anyway.

Adam didn’t get to hear it, so I should get to go into more detail, right? After all Adam, this class is totally centered around you, given our meeting time and all (totally kidding, b-t-dubs).

I do not have a cookie cutter process, by any means. I do not have an established process, by any means. I do not have any rules, by any means. I write. The end. Sometimes, I am sitting in bed watching a movie and a line really strikes me. Sometimes, I am at the grocery store and I see a really odd person and it strikes me. Sometimes, I am at Starbucks and a see a woman named Jenn who will not stop staring at me, and it really strikes me. Something strikes me, and if I have the means (laptop, notebook), I will immediately begin writing. If I do not have the means, I will categorize it in my head and sincerely hope I will not forget.

I usually do.

For the times that I file it away on paper, I have a folder organized by year, style, and how far along the work is (completed, is missing a line or two, or scraps of words). Yeah, I’m that sweet.

On my computer, I have folders that are, once again, organized by year and style…. how far along the process is is a lot more subjective for me on a computer, for some reason. I have really weird hang ups about poetry on my computer– it never looks right to me unless it’s hand written. It gives the poetry more character and meaning, in my opinion. Prose pieces are all saved in Word. Poetry is saved in RTF or on Journler. Word is too formal for me… It’s where I write my eighteen-page research papers on abortion or the history of Jews for nursing classes. It’s where I write letters to people in the corporate world for Technical Writing classes. It’s where my resume is saved. Word is too formal for me. It’s silly, yes, I know, but I simply cannot separate the two in my mind, and therefore cannot write poetry in Word.

I like first-drafts. I hate changing things. I always save first drafts. I have a folder for them. It’s only been a recent thing in my life that has brought me to the ability to edit poetry. Prose works, I’m fine editing. Poetry is closer to my heart usually, and is therefore more difficult for me to change. If I wrote a line and I was really feeling it, and meaning it, I don’t want to change it, ever, even if it doesn’t fit. It’s too hard for me! I’m starting to grow up though… I can [usually] edit my poetry now, though I still clutch the first draft in my left hand the whole time.

The more I write, the better I write. As in, if I write everyday for a week, things begin to flow a lot better. Exercises tend to open me up the best, otherwise I feel forced. Not that the exercise turn out anything great, but they certainly get the creative juices flowing and open my mind to new inspiration.

I should do more exercises, I think.

And listen to more Regina Spektor. Her songs are so ridiculous. I always wonder what she was thinking when she put those lines onto paper. What she thinks now when she sings them. Absolutely ridiculous, and somehow, beautiful.

Found spellcheck. You should be very thankful.

on Writing

I think life is composed of both planned events and accidents, meshed together to form whatever we are currently living in. Somehow, I ended up with the title “writer.”

In all honesty, I’m not sure how much I deserve this.

I think, truly, that anyone can be a writer, but somehow, I am called a writer. As in, hey, that girl? She has been acknowledged as someone who can wield a pen with experience or talent or knowledge or all of the above. I feel like a cheater when I refer to myself as a writer.

I don’t write.

Not anymore, anyway. Not on my own, really. I don’t journal anymore, I rarely blog, my poems are crap and my lyrics never fit right with the music.

Sitting in a room of Writers, I feel a little fake– God gave me a present. He said “hey, Laura, I’m going to inspire you occasionally to write this amazing piece that moves all kinds of people… but not all the time. K, go be born now.” That’s why I entered the world crying. I was completely pissed that I wasn’t an official writer. Just someone who is good with words and sometimes writes good art.

I don’t read other works, I don’t try to improve my technique, I typically only read poems that teachers assign to me, I don’t journal anymore. I don’t know about writing at all. Not even a little bit. I just do it. As dumb as this may sound, I can feel it when I hear it. I write something down, I read it back out loud, and I just know. I know if it’s right and I know if it’s wrong. I can change it, sometimes, to be right after a lot of trial and error, but I never know what I do. I just write in search of that feeling.

It’s a pretty relative feeling too, because sometimes people read my stuff that feels completely right and go “uh…” and other times, they read what feels wrong and go “fantastic!” It doesn’t make sense to me. I once had a teacher tell me, as she stood in front of my class, leaning against her desk: “Good emotions make bad poetry,” quoting a professor of her own.

I don’t know how else to write but in search of a feeling… Or in attempts to purge a feeling. Everything else just feels wrong. I don’t know how else to write but through emotions. Granted, I was taught that semester to put a bit in my mouth and mostly control the outpouring of emotions, but what if I’m writing to feel an emotion?

I write, yes. I am a writer, maybe. I am undeserving, completely.

I am scared shitless, totally.

Submitting work doesn’t scare me at all. I could send out a million works and get rejected a million times and just be upset that I wasted postage. It’s okay with me if what I write doesn’t totally grab everyone around me, most of the time. I just want to write until I feel like it’s right. My mom, and English major, told me that when you write, you are always writing for an audience. Otherwise, there is no point.

Look at me, mom. I write chasing emotions to satisfy myself.

I am not a writer.

I am one who writes and participates in the world of writing. I know no rules, no limitations, no rights, and no wrongs. I know what I feel, as if I actually know what feelings are!

Well, maybe I am a writer.

I’m going end this abruptly and go write.