So this is the new year...

" 'Listen,' I said. 'I don't know from writing book. 

I have all this stuff in my head that I want to get down, 

but what do I write about first? Where do I begin?'"

-"Under the Hood" from Alan Moore's Watchmen

Today I realized I haven't updated this blog in over a year. That might be a sign I shouldn't attempt to keep a blog again. The difference between a year ago and now is quite significant though. A year ago, I had school and two jobs. A year ago, I was busy reading and writing for at least four courses a quarter. Now, I only have one job and no classes. Now, I'm worried that I will lose my love and drive to keep writing. Hopefully keeping a blog will help me do that.

Will anyone read this blog? Probably not. I am not a self-promoter. I have too many self confidence issues about my writing that I've only started to overcome during the past year. I actually let people other than my classmates read my short fiction stories. Baby steps?

I might start maintaining this blog again, but I'm also thinking I might get a new blog. We will see.

This blog/a new blog will be my rants/raves/reviews of television shows, movies, and books. I have started to write reviews of books I am reading in my journal but I'm hoping to improve my grammar skills by writing on this website. In my journal I don't think about if my journal makes sense to anyone but myself, and sometimes it still doesn't.

Here's to hoping my writing career didn't end with my graduation.

Just finished reading: The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick 
Currently reading: Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test edited by Mark D. White
and Watchmen by Alan Moore

Note to Self

Dear Self,
It is time to start reading again, writing again, and exercising again.
I feel uninspired and as if I eat only cookies.
That needs to stop.

Love,
Emily

"Tears stream down your face"

I don't believe that anyone goes to class ever expecting to cry. Let alone have the whole class break out into tears. Men and women sobbing, leaving the room, wiping their cheeks, hiding in their hands. That's not something you expect from a class.

But today, that's what happened in my honors creative writing class.

My professor, the week before this class told us to write down what we want to say in our poetry. We all wrote things like "the truth", "experience", and all that other cliche stuff you say to not say what you actually want to say. He made us get more specific, and I wrote down about a moment in my life that I think of every once and a while that haunts me. He told us to write about those things in our poems due the next week.

Everyone's poems were decent, and they didn't specifically acknowledge anything in the author's life. Even mine, though a story (because I'm a fiction writer) didn't acknowledge my true feelings about the subject of the poem. But my professor asked everyone to talk about what their poem was really about. Each member of my small class talked about personal issues in their lives and many cried.

I think a lot of the students were turned off by the class, now feeling hesitant to write about things so personal, but for me it only made my love of writing grow stronger. I felt connected the kids in the class, the kids that I still don't remember all the names of. I truly believe crying about these poems is going to turn them into better and more meaningful poems.

Guess I will find out next week!

Inspire me.

I believe I've mentioned in a previous post, but I'll mention again that I need inspiration to write. I'm not the kind of writer who just writes randomly for hours. I like to wait until I have something I want to write about.
That flaw or whatever it may be considered has been worrying me for this upcoming quarter. I'm taking three workshop classes, so I'm going to need a lot of inspiration.
Fortunately, I already found some. It was simple, actually. I don't want to post all about my short story here, but I want to share my love of waiting for inspiration.
Waiting makes me feel unburdened by my writing, and the words flow out. I think my characters sound more real, and I think my story is going to be funny. And I'm not great at funny.
Hopefully, I keep getting inspired. Especially for my poetry workshops. Poetry writing is my greatest flaw in being a writer. I just don't have poetry in my poetry. Not to make myself sound amazing but I feel I often have poetry in my fiction, but not in actual poems.

Music Appreciation Post- The National

I would just like to take a moment to talk about the genius that is the band, The National.
Their music is beautiful, lyrics poetic, and Matt Berninger's vocals are full of passion and honesty. His voice, their lyrics, and the music are honest in that they bear all emotion upfront but not with fanfare, completely simple.
Most of the time, all my "sad day" music (as I like to call it) goes out the window when I'm in a relationship, but despite my happiness their music still calls to me. I can't turn it off, and I can't help but play it.



"You know you have a permanent piece, of my medium-sized American heart."

The Adventures of Huck Finn

As you read and learn you begin to make connections with everyday life and the stories that you take in. Even in lectures and class, making connections with lessons with daily activities is bound to happen. But maybe, in creative writing classes this happens more.

Today, in my survey course on fiction writing my professor went on a rant about how high school English classes over analyze stories for symbols. He claimed that no writer he knows sets out to write a symbol into their novel, and that as a writer this is something we should never do. His rant sent me back to a high school, and a story that my friend told me about her English teacher.

While reading The Adventures of Huck Finn, her teacher said, "They were on a wooden raft. You know what else is made of wood?" After no response, he said, "The cross!" It took everything in my friend not to reply, "The raft was made of wood because rafts are made of wood, not because of Jesus."

Ignoring the religious aspects of this argument, you can see my professor's claim on symbolism coming into light. This rant was something tangible and attainable to me because I experienced this exact over analyzing in my own high school. This memory only seemed more relevant to me when later in the class my professor began to explain how in structuring a novel or short story there can be a disconnect of what the main character knows, versus what the reader knows and he used Huck Finn as his example.