hot garbage.

hot garbage is quite an interesting blog. the author certainly knows how to keep his readers guessing and coming back, for that matter. the blog is a mixture of several things–videos of random things in his life, stories he’s written, observations he’s made. brian, the author, uses a great deal of humor in his blog as well, which i think is very important. humor in writing keeps the readers’ demeanors lighthearted and jovial–his blog is a fun read, and his writing style is kind of right up my alley.

one of my favorite blogs he has posted is his entry on Friday, January 30, 2009. he simply describes six occurrences he’s noticed in the last seven days (from Jan. 30 and back). the post is hilarious–he talks about everything from one of his co-workers realizing that his neighbor is a prostitute to build-a-bear workshop’s severe lack of creativity (and real necessity, in my opinion). i recommend it–its a fun blog that incorporates fiction with every day life.

the bichy witch.

i recently came across a very strange blog called the bichy witch. it is exactly the kind of writing that i hope every writer tries to avoid. a friend and i read through some of the author of this blog’s poetry, and laughed a great deal. sure, anyone can write. the Internet makes it possible for everyone to be writer–sign up for a free blog and see your name in print! i think that the fact that everyone has the opportunity to write is wonderful and beneficial. however, (and that is a big however) just because everyone has the opportunity does not mean the everyone should take advantage of that opportunity. some people should not write because they have the need or tendency or want (or whatever!) to be overly dramatic and sentimental–pouring your heart out and letting it bleed all over the paper is not attractive! readers want the truth. they want to know what is real–that’s why readers flock to authors like alice munro and lorrie moore. they understand the intricacies of some aspects of human nature. i’m not saying they have everything figured out, but they have the ability to make us relate to what they write. just for kicks, i’m posting a poem from the lovely bichy witch called shave it. its completely inappropriate and vulgar–a perfect example of how not to ever write. also, it is not cute to misspell words on purpose. just to throw that out there.

I wake up in the morning
wipe the sleep from my eyes
stand up look around
let out a few short sighs

grab my favorite towel
head into the bath
start to brush my teeth
smell my own breaths wrath

I slip into the water
cleaning every inch
shaving just my legs
that part is a cinch

I think about my day at work
and the date I have tonight
I hear him saying “please shave more”
and I said “alright”

so grab the razor again it is
and see if can shave
I make it bald I make it smooth
just like a little slave

why do men make us to this
and why don’t do the same
when was the last time you met a man
who shaved before he came!!!!!

art through the eyes of a writer.

writing can be inspired by anything. a very good friend of mine, angela cox, loves photography and modern art. she uses a great deal of watercolors and abstract ideas in her own art, and takes amazing pictures. her blog moves me to tears, sometimes. art and photography can certainly be an inspiration for literature, especially poetry. i wrote a poem called cocoon for a poetry class that was inspired by a water color painting called polka-dot, by misty bennett. it is so interesting to look at a piece of art in terms of literature–it is eye opening (pardon the pun). i enjoyed the experience, however, and the poem is below.

The sun sets—blues, greens, and golds
surround the changing worm.
A single golden dot is visible
within the tiny sac.

The worm twists and squirms,
struggling to morph.
Time fades in and out,
rising and setting on a new creation.

A young man passes,
his eyes scanning the surrounding colors.
His gaze lingers on the wriggling cocoon
for a moment longer than he would’ve liked.

The sac implodes,
and a flash of purple bursts forth.
Tears sting his dry eyes,
and he continues on his way.

publish me.

i hope to be a published author someday. i take my craft very seriously, and i think the fact that i am so immersed in my own writing at times, i don’t want to see the rigors of what it takes to actually be published. so few writers ever see their names in print, and i think that having my writing praised in college classes has romanticized my view of the publishing world. i have this idea that i’m going to graduate from college, get my master’s degree and perhaps my PhD, and that my writing will be published whenever i want it to be. that is certainly not the case. i have been researching publishing houses, however, and there are many journals that do not serve a huge readership, but that are still published journals. i hope to begin with those such journals.

i follow a blog that gives advice and ideas to people trying to get short fiction published, and it has proved to be helpful. if you write and hope to one day be published, its a a good idea to follow blogs like writing fiction, the blog that i follow. everyone should stay abreast of the latest publishing news and advice–everyone that writes, at least!

epiphanies.

one of my favorite authors is james joyce. i have read his collection of short stories, dubliners, and it just increases my respect for joyce. he uses free indirect discourse a great deal in his writing. free indirect discourse is just a type of narration that combines elements of first-person direct speech with the third-person narration. joyce is said to have kind of coined this technique. joyce is certainly one of the most renowned fiction writers of our time, and his collection, dubliners, does nothing but prove this.

joyce uses the epihphany a great deal in his writing. an epiphany is when a character in the story or the reader have a sudden realization of some truth about his/herself or the world. one of joyce’s most famous epiphanic experiences is in his story, araby. the protagonist, a young boy, has a romanticized view of the world. he believes that he can play the knight on a white horse role and win over a girl that he “loves.” he is very young, and this type of view of the world could be said to be typical. however, he comes in contact with three adults, two males and a a female, at a bazaar called araby. he listens to them flirt shamelessly and defame love with their words. he is bitterly distraught about his realization–the world is not full of love, and a boy cannot win over the girl (most times).

chase sullivan.

kathryn white, whose blog i have linked to a few times within my blogs, recommended one of her friend’s blog to me. chase sullivan’s blog is a very interesting read. he writes in the short short form, as do many authors, and while his techniques are sometimes jarring and surprising, his writing is good. he reminds me of stephen king and chuck palahinuk a great deal. these authors are not necessarily my cup of tea, but to each his own. he’s a good writer–worthy of a read. his concentrations in school are journalism and psychology, and for a journalism major to be able to write fiction this well is saying something. as i said in previous posts, its quite difficult to move between non fiction writing and fiction writing smoothly.

non fiction vs. fiction.

i think its important to be able to write fiction and non fiction. fiction writing is hard to accomplish on its own–i understand that. its a process. revision after revision is necessary, and a piece of writing is never truly finished. there is always something more that can be done to any piece. when a writer can move between fiction and non fiction, he/she is truly skilled. it is very difficult for me to write non fiction without my voice sounding forced or too much like research.

i follow a blog in my reader called backhand stories, and it is a sort of compilation of many authors that write creative fiction, non fiction, and essays. it is quite interesting to read–the thing about non fiction is that the author has many of the same advantages as the fiction author. it is all about voice and tone, i believe. of course, non fiction is true and fiction is not. i am in a class called feature writing right now, and i have just recently come to understand that a non fiction article can have the feel of a short story, if need be. into the wild, by jon kraukauer, is an example of this sort of writing. the book has the feel of a fiction novel, but it is in fact a non fiction story of the journey chris mcandless goes on, from his flight to his death. it is an excellent story, and i recommend it, highly.

somewhere small.

this story was inspired by one of my dearest friends, jamie ball. hopefully she will not mind my sharing of this story. she is a survivor. i look up to her a great deal, whether she realizes it or not, and i decided to write this story to help myself understand her a little better, and to perhaps help her understand herself a little better. the story is called somewhere small, but i am considering a title change to apricots. i can make that decision later. i am quite attached to this story–it is very near to my heart, and i am proud of it. of course, no story is ever done. it still needs substantial revision, and this is (approx) the first three pages–

Brevyn hated flying—airplanes made her feel out of control; they always had. As the plane landed safely on the runway, she exhaled.
“Hate flying?” said the person next to her, a middle-aged, scrawny woman with tangled hair.
“Yeah, my ears always pop, and then I have a headache for about a week,” said Brevyn.
Brevyn had been gone for three months, her entire summer vacation. And now she was back. She knew Michael was going to be waiting for her at the gate, and she was honestly not excited to see him. Denver, Colorado changed her, hardened her, made her into this person she didn’t even know, and she was not excited to see Michael. He would want them to go back to exactly how they were before she left for her internship, and she could not do that. Maybe she could try. She wanted to miss him, she did. Brevyn left the plane, carry-on in her left hand, cell phone in her right. She tossed her hair as she walked through the long hallway to the gate. She tripped on the carpet. Nerves, probably. She didn’t really know. Her head was spinning from landing on the runway and walking through the narrow terminal.
“Brevyn,” Michael said, smiling. “I’m so happy you are back.”
“Well, I’m glad to be back,” said Brevyn. “Denver was brutal.”
He took her carry-on, and grabbed for her hand. She quickly pulled it away and pretended to be looking through her phone.
“I really need to call Molly, that’s all,” she said when Michael frowned at the denial of her hand. “I have like, eight texts from her, and I’m sure these voicemails are from her, too.”
“Oh. Oh, okay,” he said. “Tell her I said hello.”
She called Molly, but she didn’t answer.
“Fuck,” Brevyn said. She had meant for it to be under her breath, but she said it so loudly that the people around her turned and stared.
“What is wrong with you Brevyn?” said Michael. “There are a ton of kids in here.”
“I’m sorry, ok?” she said. “I didn’t know I said it so loud.”
“Is everything ok with you?” Michael asked her. “You seem kind of distant. Like you don’t know I’m here, or where you are.”
Brevyn laughed. That is exactly how she felt, but she couldn’t very well tell him that she felt far away from him, and that she really wanted him to stop trying to hold her hand. Instead she let her laugh answer for her. She had a contagious laugh, and she knew how to use it to her advantage. Michael laughed, too, and she could tell he had forgotten about her distance from him. Brevyn led the way to the baggage claim, and stood at the belt, wishing her bags would be the first to come down the assembly line.
“What are you staring at?” Michael said.
His voice startled her and she jumped, panicked. She hadn’t realized she was staring—she wasn’t even blinking.
“What? I’m sorry. I was just watching all these bags!”
She lied about watching the bags. She didn’t know what she was watching. She felt like crying, and she was so ready to leave the airport that she asked Michael to get her things and meet her outside. She lit a cigarette before she even reached the door, and sat down, hard, on a metal bench outside of the masses of people that were leaving and returning.
Brevyn saw Michael before he saw her. He wasn’t as cute when he was looking for her. He looked lost, wandering around like that. His green eyes seemed darker, and his brow was furrowed. Still, his body was the same as when she left—perfect abs, perfect arms, beautiful hands. His hair fell in his face, and she shuddered. She got up and walked over to him.
“Where were you?” he asked her.
“I was just smoking over there on that bench, Michael,” Brevyn said, pointing in the direction of the bench behind her. “I was probably five feet away.”
“Ok. Sorry,” Michael said.
He rolled her luggage in the direction of the elevators, and she followed. There were so many goddamn people. They kept brushing against her, pushing her out of the way, forgetting her. She stopped walking and stood in the middle of the chaos. She watched Michael walk away and wondered how long it would be before he realized she wasn’t behind him. Maybe he’d keep walking forever. Maybe he’d forget she was there at all and just drive home, unaware of her standing in the middle of a million faces she didn’t recognize. But he turned around.

twenty minutes.

this story, called twenty minutes, is about a girl whose heart is so hardened by sexual promiscuity that she doesn’t recognize her best friend’s inevitable demise–the hardest pill for the protagonist to swallow is the fact that she is the cause of her best friend’d downfall. the story is a journey to the end of innocence, and the price that some are forced to pay and that some choose to pay.

“So what are my chances with the redhead?” Cooper was watching me, waiting for my reaction. He liked testing the waters with me, pushing me to my limit.
“I think you need to get over that right now,” I said, fighting hard to keep a straight face. I wanted to be serious. I wanted to make him think I was serious. We were sitting beside each other on a swing on his front porch. Cooper had gotten lucky enough to rent a house that was close to campus with a wrap around front porch. I loved being there, especially then. It was the beginning of fall semester so the weather was still hot. I felt sticky sitting close to him that way; my left leg kept getting stuck to his right. It was mid afternoon, and I was drained from being in the sun all day with him—life was easier on the weekends.
“I am being honest,” he said. “All I need is you, her, and a cheap porn. Why don’t you get a man on that for me?” I laughed. Cooper was kidding, of course, but I suspected he was being serious. Some small part of me thought he wanted to have a threesome with my best friend and me. He would have never pursued it, though.
Cooper wasn’t my boyfriend. I didn’t like boyfriends. They were too much trouble, and I liked to keep things level. I liked to be in control, and boyfriends meant jealousy, and I just did not have time for that. I hated being questioned about my intentions and my whereabouts. Cooper let me do what I wanted, and I didn’t mind when he didn’t call. It was an understanding more than a relationship—we drew up an imaginary agreement, signed on the dotted lines, initialed in all the appropriate spaces. I liked him, I did. He was a necessary part of my junior year of college, I thought.

kitchen floor.

for the next few blogs, i’m going to post the first pargraphs of some of the short stories i’ve been working on lately. i have a tendency to stick to a certain subject when i write, and i would really like to break free from that dependency. the first paragraph i’ll post is from a story called kitchen floor. it is about a mother losing a fight with her daughter about a boy–she sees her daughter making the same mistakes as she did, and she can do nothing about it. she and her daughter have a long conversation while sitting in the kitchen.

Carli was stomping around the kitchen, and flailing her arms dramatically. It was very typical of her.
“Mom, you have no idea what you’re saying,” Carli said. “You are absolutely clueless about him.”
Paula stared at her daughter. How could she say things like that? She had no idea? She knew Carli better than anyone, and she certainly knew this situation better than anyone. She was a veteran, a survivor—Paula already knew the outcome, and her daughter’s heart was weak.
“I don’t know? He cheated on you, Carli,” said Paula. “He cheated on you and apologized. That’s what they do.”
Carli’s short brown hair was tangled. Her green eyes were greener when she cried, and her face was tear-stained. She wouldn’t stand still. Paula knew she was a fighter, and Carli was not going to let anything her “stupid mother” said change her mind. Paula looked tired. Her eyes were worn, and she was exhausted from arguing with Carli. She looked like she’d been stretched thin, and then rolled back up tight—an attempt at mending.
“He is sorry,” said Carli, calmer now. “He said he is sorry, and that he will never do anything like that again. He made me believe him, and I do.”
“Of course you believe him,” whispered Paula. “Of course you do.”
Paula knew Max would hurt Carli from the beginning, from the moment she met him. She knew he would destroy her daughter.