Free Write Makeup

My final post :(
I wrote this is class the other day using the words "umbrella" and "bright."

Kurt grabbed an umbrella and slipped on his new pair of running shoes. He had a long way to run to her place. He ran in place a couple of times to get his heart pumping. The sun began to paint moisture onto his skin. With the umbrella tucked under his arm, he started to run. His footsteps were methodic as his feet married with the concrete—a new piece of pavement with each step. Always new cracks to skip, new pebbles to slip on, new gum left by some other riff raff before him. Kurt’s gut began to scream—only a little ways left. His skin was beginning to cook and his body was begging him to stop this mad dash. Useless, and he wasn’t going to get anywhere anyway. The thudding inside his chest began to pump faster than his legs were moving, and the umbrella was chaffing his underarm. Kurt closed his eyes because the sun was bright. And Pam was bright, so he kept running. As he went, he began to feel to his heart slowing to a crawl.  Finally, it crawled to a gentle buzz. His chest felt concave and he tried to just keep walking. The sound of his footsteps reverberated in his ear. The lampposts turned on and were bright, but artificial when compared to the sun. The darkness lapped the perspiration from his skin and his heart was completely stopped. He got to her house and hit the door. Pam opened it. He handed her the umbrella for when it rained.

Class Exercise. Word: Reflection

In the Psychiatric Ward

The guy next to me was snoring, even though he was awake. The sounds from his Mario game were muffled by the people talking in the rooms surrounding us. Sitting in the alcove waiting room, we couldn’t see anyone.  We could hear their footsteps and the doors creak as they opened and shut them. There was a picture of a parrot on the wall that was screaming “yellow.” It was all loud. I leaned my head against the wall. There was another picture on the wall of a skull and it said “death.”  There was a man in a top hat that had been staring at it ever since I had been there. He never even blinked, but he just started ahead. I stood up because my legs hurt and I was curious. I walked to where he was standing and looked at the picture. I was startled when I saw myself looking back. And  I realized the skull and my twin were reflections. I looked at the man in the top hat. His face was covered in flesh. Then I looked in the mirror and: bones. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought I looked pretty okay, until green smoke started to flit out of my mouth. Slowly the green smoke began to tear away my skin, too. I flinched but it didn’t really hurt. Not really. I looked at the man with a top hat for an explanation.  He said, “It is just beginning.”

Three Reading Responses (make up)

Here are three reading responses in one—all revolving around chapter 10. 600 words. Ugh. : p

 Crowding and leaping—two techniques that I had never considered until this chapter of Steering the Craft. Ursula K. Le Guin in reference to crowding says, “It’s what we mean when…never use ten vague words where two will do.” I am guilty of overcrowding.  I remember once in high school a friend was editing a manuscript of mine and she crossed out words that were “unnecessary.” I didn’t understand her logic—I thought more words meant longer and that longer meant better. Through this class, I’ve begun to realize that I actually prefer to be shorter. I thought about what would I like, as a reader. I am drawn to shorter stories and poems, and I think most people would agree there. I have discovered I have short tolerance when it comes to short stories or poetry. When I wrote my first short story for this class, I was working toward page length and trying my hardest to make it long. I look back on that particular short story and am really embarrassed by it. I know there was some great use of language imbedded in it, but the story itself was cliché. I remember then one day when I was writing another story and happened to be short on time. That short story ended up being only a page long—but it’s one of my favorites that I have written. I’m learning that length really almost means nothing….and perhaps the shorter, more concise, less wordy a story or poem is—then all the better.

Leaping is the technique that I am making myself familiar with. I have a fear of confusing my readers. I know a lot of times I will let my parents or friends read some of the pieces I have written and I get the typical, “It’s great! But I have no clue what you’re talking about.” I get really frustrated when that happens, so I then try to include details and make my message clearer. I’ve realized lately that sometimes details make a short story messy and really cliché. A lot of times my explanations are outright boring, and really don’t even help with the story. Sometimes the reader doesn’t want to know why Bill just walked into the bank…they want to know the action—what is he doing? What does it look like? Where is the action? When practicing leaping, certain “unimportant” informational details are left out so that the story can progress. I all actuality, I think this technique is one of the best that I have learned in this class. I’m learning what is important to leave in my pieces, and what I can do without. Crossing out portions of my work sometimes is really painful…taking all the time to write something to simply discard seems like a waste of time. I was mulling this over when I started to consider my English Classes—in English, we right multiple analytical responses about whatever text we are reading. Through this process, we throw out the irrelevant “junk” to get to the “meat and potatoes” of our Essays. I have found, though, that sometimes the responses that I discard end up being the introduction or conclusion to my Essay. In the same way, some of the sentence that I cross out for my poetry or short stories could most definitely be incorporated in some other work piece that I’m writing. Nothing anyone ever writes should be “thrown away” completely…who knows when it might be needed again.

Classmate Response 4/23/11

A doll, like one of those models in my mother's magazines, she was beautiful. Her hair a golden color, like crushed lemon on sun. I was born to follow in anticipation. My jealousy would one day engulf me, suffocate me, and I would die. Green and cold, beneath the grass, never achieving, never smiling, never knowing I was beautiful. I became aware of the fluff of my hips at sixteen. Awaken: a winged umbrella, an arm, my hip soaked with the beginning of the end.

I think I posted about something of Emily's last week, too; but I liked this so much that I had to give some feedback. The clast two sentences are freakin AWESOME and should go much further, in my opinion. I also love the line "like crushed lemon on sun." Beautiful. This piece as a whole is beautiful, though. Emily uses soft and sweet language to discuss an unhappy topic. The way I read is that the blonde girl is potentially a sister that the narrator is jealous of and eventually dies (suicide?). So sad...but love the way this is written. My only criticism is that it should be longer!! :)

Junkyard Quotes 4/23/11

"If people don't like you, you must be doing something right."

"The way I see it is the more people that hate you, the less you have to deal with."

"I'm so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I'm saying."

"The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because the average man can see better than he can think."

"Just remember--if the world didn't suck, we'd all fall off."

Free Writes- 1 for last week, 1 for this week

Two more letters. Sorry if anyone finds offense in these...I'm really not a pessimistic person and I seriously don't hate the government at all...it was just more interesting to write about a potentially bad situation than an optomistic viewpoint (which I ironically have).

Letter 2

            Trillions of your dollars are buried into the camps. They were once your dollars and borrowed dollars. Now they are hidden camps. I’ll call them camps, because camps make it sound better than it really was and my intention isn’t to scare you.

            Well, maybe it is.

            I bet you’re picturing something really horrific now. Bet it doesn’t come close to what I’ve seen. Instead of giving you a picture, I’ll give you a sound: A never ending belting of human voices, screeching, terrifying, nauseating sound that make your heart beat fast and glaze your body with sweat. Salt. Once you’ve been underground for a while, this sound becomes normal. I think if there had ever been silence, we all would have died. There were rumors of what made people scream. A withered old woman once told me that it was a pasta machine…but for people. Population control at its finest. Did you ever wonder why everyone was pro-choice? Or the worries of global warming because there were too many people on the earth? Well, we’re taking care of that problem…down here in hell.

Letter 3

This is my final letter because I’m about to take the walk for the last time. It was a long walk, and down a hallway of sorts. The smell was earth blended with human. There was no ceiling, really. Just mud. I began to wonder what exactly was holding this prison together. It felt like some imaginable force had burrowed its way through the underground and carved out a nook for us. God. Science. Technology. I think we should have stuck with the first one.

 I’ve done this walk for what seems like a million times since I’ve been here. But I know today’s the day. They told me, isn’t that sad? To tell someone they are about to be killed? I wonder what it will feel like. I know I’ll turn left at the end instead of right, which led to more “prison cells.” I know what I go left, I won’t come back—they never come back.

If you were walking down the hallway with me you wish you were wearing shoes. You would wish that you had light, but we don’t have light anymore. I don’t think Hell has light either, actually. Maybe flames. If you had light, you wouldn’t need someone to lead you like will be leading me this afternoon. I don’t even know who that guy is…a guard? The president? Charlie Sheen? Who the heck knows. Whoever he is, he’ll be my last contact with this world. I’ll pretend that it’s you and that you can save me. Read this, and read it carefully. Pay attention to what’s happening and take a stand. Don’t let this happen again…

Reading Response 4/15/11

I've been thinking more and more about what I didn't like about Willi since Professor Edwards asked me in class this week. In English class, I wrote a paper about the irony of Willi's mother's modest attire and his sexual attraction to her. I guess the more that I analyzed that, the more I found myself not enjoying the story. Though this is something that occurs in life, it was distasteful for reading to me. So basically, I just don't like the story. I can't really find any other way to say it. I don't like the scene with Willi's father and the dogs; it's blunt and I just personally do not enjoy reading it. Like I said though, I can appreciate the text. When someone brought up the potential of it being an allegory of World War 1, I found myself liking it a little more. I can't say that I would particularly "change" anything about the story because everything in it is crucial. And I can say positively that I like the language in the first few pages, even though I needed a map to traverse through it the first time. I realize that most people would say that my evidence for not liking it is minuscule. Simply put, however, it isn't my taste. Yet, I can appreciate it for what it is--I just don't want to read it again.