Analogies

Today in my creative writing class we were reading an excerpt from Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and personally I've never read the book, but it's the scene where the two animals (whatever they may be, I can't remember) are walking into Mr. Badger's house after being out at night, and they are hurt. We were talking about all the different brilliant techniques he uses to describe this little Hobbit hole (it's not actually, but it does remind me of that scene in The Hobbit (i.e., the book, just in case some of you thought of the movie first) where Bilbo's Hobbit hole is being described.

Grahame uses a lot of techniques that make me almost as intimidated as I was by F. freaking Scott Fitzgerald's excerpt from The Great Gatsby that I mentioned in the last post. Except WitW was meant to be read aloud to children, evident from the intrusive narrating; when the narrator of the story interrupts in first person in the middle of a third person book. This is part of the scene we read:

"Conversation was impossible for a long time; and when it was slowly resumed, it was that regrettable sort of conversation that results from talking with your mouth full. The Badger did not mind that sort of thing at all, nor did he take any notice of elbows on the table, or everybody speaking at once. As he did not go into Society himself, he had got an idea that these things belonged to the things that didn't really matter. (We know of course that he was wrong, and took too narrow a view; because they do matter very much, though it would take too long to explain why.) He sat in his arm-chair at the head of the table, and nodded gravely at intervals as the animals told their story; and he did not seem surprised or shocked at anything."

The sentence in italics is the intrusive narration. I never knew what that was called before today, and I always wondered and thought it was a bit out of place. And now I realize! It's common in children's novels that are meant to be read aloud! The writing is obviously a bit above standard style, maybe even elevated, but kids process words different when hearing them, rather than seeing them. It makes sense.

Even in The Hobbit J.R.R Tolkien butts into his own stories sometimes (from what I remember), and I think it's more common in books published in from 1900-1940, at least from what I've read. Probably later books, too. But I don't think I've ever read a book published in the 90s or 2000s that has intrusive narrating.

So this whole intrusive narrating thing is fascinating to me, and I'm honestly not sure why. I don't think I'd ever do it in my own stories, but it's a good thing to know.

Anyway, back on the road I was originally going down. It's seems I took a detour. You're probably wondering why this post is called "Analogies," and I will tell you why, dear reader (Kate DiCamillo calls her readers this in the intrusive narrating in her book The Tale of Despereaux...Okay, I'm done now).

We do this thing in my creative writing class where we take turns bringing in a page of writing that we think is good writing, and we have to talk about why we think its good writing. Well, today, a friend of mine brought in an excerpt from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou (which I haven't read either...my have-to-read list is getting higher by the minute). It's the part where the narrator is describing Mrs. Bertha Flowers. We were talking about types of comparison-metaphors, similes, and analogies. My teacher was giving an example, and she said:

"Emma is to her pencil as a priest is to their cross. It's their everything, how they express themselves..."

or something like that. Anyway, I really liked it! I have to admit, I do my writing with all ten fingers on my Macbook Pro keyboard 95 percent of the time, but it's a nice way to describe my relationship with my pencil, which is a love relationship, if you must know. I love pens, mostly, but I do love pencils.

My teacher is the best. I only started taking the class at the beginning of the semester and I've already learned so much. Huzzah, my dear readers!

I'm sick and I tried to drink Emergen-C, but it tasted almost as bad as fermented orange juice. Have you ever had that? Of course I didn't knowingly or intentionally drink fermented fruit juice; all I know is that it was disgusting. And swallowing nighttime cold & flu relief soft gels felt like trying to swallow a freaking MARBLE, and I'm not sure if it's because my throat is sensitive and swollen, or they really are huge. I dunno. All I know is that I'm glad to be missing school tomorrow because I have a test in English and a quiz in Chemistry, both of which I can make up very easily. And besides, I need to catch up on a lot of stuff. Stuff meaning homework, basically. And Tumblr. Ha.

This has been a long blog post, it feels like. Mostly because I've been writing it for an hour while my immune system charges ahead to attack the Cold inside me. Sorry I'm being weird. I'll go now. Happy analogies, dear readers!

Here's some analogy humor for your daily appreciation and entertainment:

HALLELUJAH, Ghost crystals and thermochromic pencils, My Antonia, and F. freaking Scott Fitzgerald

MY WRITER'S BLOCK HAS BEEN CURED!

This is a momentous occasion, my dear readers. I've eaten the most ridiculous amount of chocolate in the past few days, and drunk an abnormal amount of English breakfast tea (which I've recently discovered is very delicious), and finally I've had my huge story idea epiphany! I've let my mom and sister read what I have so far, and they think it's really good, and I think it's really good, not to brag or anything. I could feel a huge idea like this one coming on for a while now, and BAM! I heard "What You Wanted" by OneRepublic and I suddenly started writing random crap down like I usually do when I get a great idea.

Music is the source of all inspiration.

Anyways, thank God that dry spell is over. Geez, writing was like trying to brush your hair after going on a motorboat with your hair down. It hurts and it takes forever., and it doesn't even look GOOD afterwards. Anyways...

Hallelujah for a few other reasons, too! I got a 100 on my chemistry exam, and apparently I get a "ghost crystal" (whatever the heck that is). Last time I got the highest grade in the class I got a thermochromic pencil, which basically means a pencil that changes color when heat is applied to the surface. It's purple and when you touch it (i.e., if your hands are warm enough), it turns pink. It's wicked cool! Of course it's so freaking cold in Maine...

...so my hands are never warm enough to change the color of a thermochromic pencil. Alas, it sits in my "Little Miss Princess" mug on my desk, waiting for the warmer days of summer.

If I'm feeling spontaneous enough maybe I'll give you a few chapters of another book I've been editing, and one of my friends is currently reading to make sure it doesn't suck. According to her, it doesn't. Yay!

Right now I'm reading My Antonia. I never really expect myself to like classics, but Willa Cather's writing is contemporary, in a way. Not to say that it's bad writing, because it's quite the contrary. But it's a lot easier to read than Charles Dickens or Emily Bronte. Although both were brilliant, their works are so insipid. I haven't read much of either of them, but even excerpts I've read are hard to read. But that's just me. I don't know, maybe I'm ignorant. One day I will give both Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte, and Jane Austen another try.
Anyways, MA is really good so far. I'm at the part where Mrs. Shimerda and Antonia come over near the end of winter, and Mrs. S is complaining that she doesn't have any of the things Jim's grandmother has, and says that she would basically be better at life if she did, so Jim's grandmother gives Mrs. Shimerda an iron pot. It was comical, in a way.

I LOVE IT!

In creative writing class the other day, we read an excerpt from The Great Gatsby, and we kept picking apart each little detail of it and basically pointing out all the reasons why F. Scott Fitzgerald is the most amazing writer to have ever lived.

And I was so intimidated by the sheer skill in which he writes! There are conceits (elaborate metaphors), sensible illusions, beautiful descriptions of color, killer adjectives, and so much more that makes you picture everything like it's right in front of you! We read the scene where Nick Carraway first walks into the Buchanan's living room. It's such a beautiful passage.

I need to stop using the word beautiful so much.
BUT HE'S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL WRITER. IT'S NOT EVEN FAIR.
Well, it probably is.

Well, I'm afraid I must go, because Supernatural is on in T-minus 35 minutes and I need to wash myself. Later, jerks. Happy reading! :-)

Boredom and Writer's Block is....

The WORST combination!

Because, you know, you don't want to be bored, and you don't want to have writer's block either. And when a writer is bored (if they are ever bored) they usually write, but they can't if they have writer's block.

This is my situation as of now:

I'm at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport waiting to board flight 598 to Boston-Logan International Airport so I can get in the car and my mom will drive us home to the snowy oceanside town of Brunswick, Maine. I am bored and I also have writer's block (as I have had for many days now, almost a week) and my flight isn't supposed to leave until 2:15 PM and right now it's three 'till one o'clock. That's an hour and eighteen minutes!! How will I survive if not by staring at Microsoft Word for long minutes waiting for my long-expected epiphany??

I guess time will tell, as it does with all things.
Emma out.

Japanese Haiku Writing

So the title doesn't really capture the essence of what I'm going to show you guys...I really couldn't think of better words to describe it, so anyway.

So midterms were last week (I aced and Beed all of them, FYI), and my English teacher said for extra credit, since we were reading some Japanese literature last class, that we could structure a paragraph off of a haiku that we found and liked. Meaning that we would start the paragraph or story off of the three lines, then continue making a story out of it. Haikus are very short and sweet, simple pieces of writing, but that is the beauty of them, I think. That something so beautiful about nature or anything you like can be captured in as little as three lines. It's not easy to capture the essence of something in that little space, but when one does, it's beautiful.

I recently wrote my extra-credit paragraph, and I must say, I am very pleased with how it turned out. I think I'm going to make more because I enjoyed it so much. Yes, I think I will.

Here's what I have so far:


A field of cotton--
as if the moon
had flowered
~Matsuo Basho

A field of cotton--as if the moon had flowered, was spread before me, vast and emitting angelic white light from the rays of the sun, as if it were the surface of the moon.
I put my bare toes underneath the down surface, and what I felt was not cotton; it was air. Soft, fluid air. This air was like the sea moving with the summer breeze, swaying like a ball dance in a grand castle--the Castle of the Sky.
The Castle of the Sky was mysterious to many, but not myself. Much of my time was spent in the Castle, caring for it, nurturing its inhabitants, making it my own, since no one else did. Gallivanting through the Castle was my favorite pastime. No one ever lost their patience with me, for no one ruled this particular castle. It is a free land.
Yes, a free land with full green-leaved trees, bursting with luscious fruits and plentiful with beautiful sanguine blossoms. The fields were of many, endless and open with opportunity for fresh, new growth.
As I step into this balldance, these moon flowers, I make a dance of my very own, underneath the Castle of the Sky.


So, what do you think? What I was thinking is that I would make four season paragraphs out of this guy's haikus. I really like them and think they are wonderful, so I would find one for each season and write a paragraph on it. I've started autumn, but it is yet to be finished. The paragraph above would be the summer paragraph.

Happy writing, and I hope your new year is going well so far! I don't know about you, but I'm enjoying ever spare minute of free time I get! :)

My 500 words: A Writing Challenge

So...NaNoWriMo went awesome! Admittedly not at first, because I was actually at a loss for a good idea and any sensible words, but things turns out alright. I actually switched my story three days in, because I didn't see the storyline I had chosen going anywhere without more thought and work than just thirty days. I was really behind progress for the first two weeks because I spontaneously thought of this really random idea and it took me a while to think of where it out to go, plot and detail-wise. I was almost always at the least three thousand words behind for those two weeks, but on that 15th day, all I did was write, for eight straight hours. I still wasn't completely caught up, but I was off to a good start. For the next week I struggled to stay on task with the word count, but when Thanksgiving break came, I actually was really ahead of the word count. The thing is, I still haven't ended the book yet because it's a really hard story to end (because it's a sad book and a lot happened), but I did reach almost 51,000 words at the end of November. I guess I should tell you what the book it about, huh? So, I'm going to give you the non-formal, whole-book synopsis because I don't really have a good one yet that makes sense. Because, like I said, a lot happens and I'm not sure I can sum up the basics but still leave a lot to the reader. There are five best friends: Gemma, Alyssa, Mandy, Timothy, and Will (the story is told in the first-person POV of Gemma). They go on a trip to Paris in the winter break of their senior year, a trip that they've been planning since they were freshmen. The book is laid out so there is one chapter in the present, then one chapter in the past, alternating turns. The whole Paris trip is not in the book, more like little scenes from the trip over the course of the book, as past chapters. The past chapters aren't just from Paris, they're from freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior years, and over the summer. The book starts out with a prologue where Gemma is describing falling into the ocean and watching a plane explode above her. She is in extreme pain and lands in the below-freezing water of the Atlantic ocean. As she does so in a state of near-unconsciousness, she contemplates many aspects of fate and life, especially the fear of her imminent death. The actual first chapter begins with Gemma waking up in a rescue helicopter. She is listening to her one surviving friend (and kind-of boyfriend) tell her that their friends are dead, that the helicopter could find them. She can't open her eyes and is still in a daze, but she thinks she is dreaming. But she wants to tell Will that she loves him. Eventually when they go back to their hometown (Adena, Ohio) from Belfast, Maine, they look in their friends' rooms to find keepsakes and to silently say goodbye. Mandy was a writer, and in her room they find a book that she had not yet told them of, and a set of suspicious and mysterious letters to an unknown identity. They pass it of as props for one of Timothy's plays (he is a playwright), and take the book. Gemma reads the book over the course of the story and is infinitely confused by it. Her and Will comfort each other and are there for each other, but at the funeral Will tells her that he and Alyssa dated secretly for half a year in their sophomore year. This greatly upsets Gemma and they get in a fight. They make up eventually, but from then on things aren't quite the same. Over the course of the book they also get updates on the plane crash from the news and they find out that the plane didn't crash because of the reason they thought; instead, someone had corrupted the gas tank. They don't know what to make of this. Gemma hears Will talking to someone about the plane crash (she doesn't hear much, but enough to be suspicious), but when she confronts him about it, he lies to her and says he was talking to someone from school. She persists that he is lying, but he insists that he is not. She lets it go but soon she hears him talking to the same person, but this time he says the name of the news broadcaster, who desperately needs to keep her job. Will was giving her anonymous tips so she could have something to broadcast. They get into a heated fight and Will tries to apologize for lying, which is Gemma's greatest pet-peeve. She grew up with parents who never paid any attention to her, who always lied about what they were going to do; so it's more than a pet-peeve. Gemma doesn't listen and is still angry at Will for his lying, because it wasn't the first time he had lied to her. He apologizes for being a coward and tries to run home, but it is snowing (he's wearing a white T-shirt, mind you) really hard outside, and he gets hit by a car that was driving to fast and didn't see him crossing the street. Will dies hours later of internal injuries and head trauma, leaving Gemma heartbroken and regretful. As it turns out, her friend Mandy was recruited by the CIA in their freshman year, and there was a terrorist on board their flight back to Ohio. Mandy corrupted the plane's gas tank and sacrificed many lives so the government would be able to keep this dangerous French terrorist from entering the United States. To get her mind off of all that has happened, she gets a job at her local diner that her and her friends used to go to all the time in the summer. She meets an older college guy, Aiden, who goes to Penn State, like she was planning to. Over the summer, she discovers that she wants to sing on Broadway and live in New York (she's a singer-you find that out earlier in the book). The book is going to end with an epilogue, but I'm still not sure what the last words will be. Last words are always the hardest. Obviously, I left some major details out, but that's the gist. If you have any general ideas about how to end it (which I know is hard to ask for with the meager details I gave you) than just post it in the comments below! I will be eternally grateful. Please keep in your knowledge that this story is copyrighted. I can't even imagine having my ideas stolen (it's kind of my second writing worst nightmare), so I just want to ensure that it doesn't happen. Thanks! So this 500 words thing is something I signed up for this January. You basically write 500 words every day of January. It's supposed to help you become an amazing writer and stuff. And a more confident writer, which is going to help me, because my writing confidence level is in the depths right now. I'm considering making a fan page for my writing once I self-publish my first book: The Ignorance of Me, Daphne Willowston. I'm still working on ending and editing it, but it's coming soon! Yay! Happy New Year! :)