I'm Watching You

Halloween is here, and I'm watching you. Yes, it's what I do--watch people; observe situations; listen to what's happening around me. I always have, and I imagine (and hope) I will continue to do so. They say it's the quiet ones you have to look out for. I'm here to tell you that it's true.

I don't talk much, and people often think that means I'm not involved in what's going on around me, I'm not paying attention. But my ears are always open, and so are my eyes. I pick up on little things. I often know when two people are romantically interested in each other before it's public knowledge. I can usually tell when someone is annoyed by another person or dislikes them, just by observing their body language and tone of voice. I pay attention to these things, and then I use them in my writing. Not specific people, of course, just characteristics and mannerisms.

I also find that people tend to speak freely around me. Maybe they forget I'm there, or maybe they just don't see me as a threat because I "don't talk." And they're right, in a way. I won't typically talk about things that I overhear. I don't like gossip, and I try hard to avoid it." My favorite example of this is an art class I was in during my tenth grade year of high school. I was placed at a table with three upperclassmen, known for partying and doing drugs, etc. I knew about every party that happened. I just sat there quietly, working on my projects, and amused myself by listening unobtrusively to every thing that they talked about. They certainly weren't bothering to hide it from me. I knew about it the day there were rumors of random backpack searches and one of them hid her pot stash in a plant in the back of the art room.

I often wonder if I should have told someone about all of these things that I overheard in that class. But the truth is I don't think it ever really hit me that they actually did have parties with drinking and drugs. That whole culture was completely foreign to me. (I was a nerd, remember?) Sure, I heard them talking about it, but I never thought it was a reality, for some reason. I suppose regardless of my thinking back then, it's too late to do anything about it now, anyway.

Besides, talking about what I hear would break the "Quiet Person Code." If that happens, I would lose my cover. People would stop talking freely around me. And that would make my life so much more boring. I love observing people, learning about them--why they act a certain way, how they handle different situations, etc. It's fun.

And, of course, it lends itself to a great supply of fodder for my creative soul.

The Many Voices of a Writer

Voice. Tone. Inflection.

It's something I've been thinking about lately. Writing professors often speak of "finding your voice" as a writer. Once you have that settled, it makes the writing process easier, because your voice becomes subconscious, and in some ways determines what you write about. My voice for fiction is slow and steady, controlled, deliberate. I find myself writing about small towns and inner struggles with the most success. (A professor once compared me to Flannery O'Connor--one of the biggest compliments I have ever received.) My voice for blogging, as a friend recently told me, is outgoing and bold--much more so than I am in real life. My voice for academic writing is, well, academic. None of these styles are voices I "put on" or adopt consciously. They just happen as I write.

So what determines a writer's voice? Is it personal experience? Subconscious repetition of others? Completely random? Maybe it's a mix of all three. It's hard to say. I don't know how mine developed. I may be lucky in that mine did come so easily. I never thought about it until my professors started talking about it. When I read other students' work, it was often obvious that they were still finding theirs. Of course I still have a long ways to go, but I at least have a good feel for it, and I can't seem to escape it unless I consciously try to. I guess that's supposed to be a good sign.

Once you have a settled voice, however, the fun starts. Because then you get to start playing with it. Two of my favorite short stories were written in strong voices. One was of a young girl in first person POV who prattled on and on about the "clowns in politics" her daddy told her about. The other, and more recent, was the third person POV of a young autistic man who thinks he killed his baby brother fifteen years ago. I had so much fun playing with voice; the stories wouldn't have worked otherwise.

I have had two recent encounters with people regarding my various voices that really made me think. The first was when the friend I mentioned before e-mailed me in response to my last post.

"I love reading your posts, by the way. They speak of a Laura who is constantly angry, bold, and outspoken, vs. the Laura I know."

I would have to agree with this sentiment, in some respects. I blog for the sole purpose of expressing the thoughts and ideas I have that I am incapable of relating in real life. What you read here is a part of me you won't see anywhere else. So please don't expect to. The first rule of blogging: don't talk about blogging. If you try to corner me in real life and talk about what I write here, I will evade your questions, answering in one word and running in the opposite direction as soon as I can. Leave all the comments you went--you can even e-mail me--but please do not try to talk to me about it. (Oh, and I'm not a constantly angry person. Usually.)

The second encounter I had happened today at work. My boss praised me for "losing my scholastic voice" in an article I wrote. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Yes, Mountain Home is not the place for scholastic treatises on Hume's "purple patches." I understand that. But at the same time, I have spent the last four years of my life seriously working to improve that scholastic voice to the point where it might be taken seriously by academia. (I never said I got there, but I tried.) So if I managed to lose it completely five months after graduation, well, I don't see that as a victory, per se. I guess it's a manner of balancing it all and separating the voices in my head so they don't pop up in inappropriate places.

So I guess the only question left is a personal one for me: Where is all of this leading me? I've considered graduate school in literature or creative writing (or, if I wanted to kill myself, a program melding the two). I've considered trying to write for publication. And I've considered not bothering with any of that and continuing on with blogs and personal journals. I think it's important, whatever I end up doing, to keep working on all of these voices. Who knows, maybe I can be like Joyce Carol Oates and do it all. That would be interesting.

An Insult to Literature Everywhere

As I was browsing through Barnes & Noble this weekend while visiting my brother in Washington, DC, I came across something so disturbing, so horrific, even, that I knew it was time to take a stand.  Now, I hesitate to write this post because the topic about which I am going to write is something I hardly even deem worthy of the thirty minutes it will take for me complete this complaint. I am not a hater.  I understand that some people of the younger female generation are held enthralled by grotesquely pale, sparkling young men who have an uncontrollable urge to bite and thus kill the women they love. This is weird to me, and I don’t understand it, but I was okay leaving it at that. I wasn’t going to read it, but I tried REALLY hard not to judge those who did fall under its spell too harshly.

Yes, if Twilight had stayed on its designated shelf in the Tween Fad section of the store with the rest of the obnoxious literary disgraces, I would have been perfectly happy to live and let live. But no. It wasn’t content to stay in its place. Like Eliot’s slinking yellow fog, it spread its polluting influence to places in which it has no business being.

When I saw this book lying there on the New Fiction table in a bookstore I had previously respected, a little part of me died. It still makes me shudder. I don’t know if this recent abomination is a direct result of the Twilight series, but I imagine it comes from the same general fad beginning in the 90s with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other such TV shows. I never understood the attraction to this phenomenon; I thought it was strange and silly. But it didn’t bother me, so long as it stayed in its place. (Let me say here that the vampires Twilight and other such renderings romanticize are a completely different species than the old-school vampires of Dracula or even B-grade horror films.)

But this is just ridiculous. How in the world could anyone ever compare Fitzwilliam Darcy, one of literature’s leading men—a timeless, classic heartthrob whose charm has lived on for almost 200 years—to a pale, sparkling, emo vampire? It blows my mind. I could handle the previous Pride and Prejudice spinoffs. I even read a couple of them. But I can guarantee that I will not be reading this one, and I will not hold back my wrathful judgment of anyone who does.

And it’s not even just the comparison of these two leading men. To even begin to compare the literary quality of the writings of Jane Austen and Stephenie Meyer would be a joke. I will readily admit that, as a want-to-be writer, I harbor anger and dislike for these sensational writers (like Meyer and Dan Brown) who become overnight successes, despite the fact that they are not exceptional writers. Far from it. In fact, I know many people who can write much better than them and are much more deserving of national renown. We should be rewarding the next Joyces, Shakespeares, Eliots, and Kerouacs of the world.

But I digress. My point is, Austen was an incredibly influential writer who, while her novels are considered by some (uneducated in the intricacies of irony and early feminism present in the novels) as romantic and silly fads, she was a talented writer with some important commentary on her society. She wrote love stories, yes, but they are much more than that to the exacting reader. Twilight on the other hand…well, unless Meyer is trying to tell young girls to search out unhealthy relationships with men who will never be available (or even exist in real life, for that matter), I’m not sure what the saving grace of her books might be.

Don’t get me wrong. I think any book that gets kids to read is fine. I’m a huge proponent of Harry Potter, for instance. (Although I would argue that JK Rowling is a much more talented writer than Meyer will ever be. And I haven’t seen any Mr. Darcy, Wizard books lying around, either.) Yes, they may be fun to read—escapist and a catalyst for daydreams, but that is all. And that is precisely why they need to stay with others of their kind, not infiltrating historically great literature. The next thing you know we’ll be seeing Hamlet’s dead father coming back as a zombie to rip Claudius to shreds while Hamlet emerges as a reluctant emo-punk star of the Shakespearean world. (Although the latter part of that scenario doesn’t actually seem too far from the reality of the play, come to think of it…)

As a final note, I feel that my argument would be incomplete without pointing out that Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy was 100 times more attractive than Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen could ever hope to be.

Imagining the Unimaginable

Imagination*. I have spent a good deal of time contemplating this phenomenon. It's incredible. To a certain extent, we can think beyond the concrete, beyond reality. We can create worlds and scenarios beyond what could ever happen in real life. We can create, period. Sure, we are bound by some limitations. Can a blind person imagine color? A deaf person, music? I can't imagine what spaghetti smells like. I can't imagine the intricate flavors of find culinary creations. If I try, there's just a blank wall. There must be some basis for imagination. 

This is why I understand it to be largely evolutionary. No imagination can make any jump too large. It's all about baby steps. We build off of each other's imaginings, thus eventually creating something incredible. Hence the inventions of today that were unimaginable 50, 100, or 1,000 years ago. Surely Pythagorus couldn't imagine the computer as it stands today. But I'm not interested in technological imagination. No, I leave that to my brother and the other scientists of the world. 

I'm more interested in the artistic, or creative imagination. I often find myself writing about children. In some ways I believe it is my goal as a writer to recapture a child's imagination and present it in terms understandable to adults, so that we might relive it. I was blessed as a child to have a very active imagination. 90% of my free time was spent "playing pretend" with my brothers or friends. I think most of our conversations began with "Let's pretend..." It was a way of life. Anything is possible to a child's mind. And little is taboo. I remember one particular game I played with my best friend when we were young. It was called War, and it basically involved us packing up our dolls and moving to various locations within the house, setting up camp, and avoiding the soldiers, who would kidnap our babies if they knew we had them. I have no idea where we got the idea for this game, and to be honest, the alluring part of the game was probably all of the changing outfits--nothing to do with becoming socially aware of others' difficulties. 

This same friend and I often played Barbies for hours on end, sometimes rarely talking to each other. We had seriously in depth and drawn-out scenarios we played out. The game went on in our heads, and we were in tune with one another enough to know what was going on. We didn't have to talk about it. And of course I would play with my other dolls in the same way, often alone, creating vast scenarios for them, carrying on conversations, etc. One of my favorite childhood TV shows was the Muppet Babies. Talk about imagination! And their imaginings actually came true. Even as a young child I longed for that experience. And so I lived vicariously through Kermit and Miss Piggy's fantastic adventures.

I would give anything to have that kind of imagination and mental focus again. Perhaps it has to do with the sheer number of things crammed into my brain these days. I could never devote three hours to one game of house. My mind would be in a million different directions. I'm not ever sure I would know how to start "playing pretend." I cannot make pretend become my reality anymore, and it's really a shame. 

I'm not saying that I want to live in a world I've created for myself that has no baring on the real world, of course. I just would like to be able to escape every once in a while for extended periods of time, without getting drawn into the world of work, relationships, and responsibility. I would especially like to be able to do this when it comes to writing. To recapture that childhood innocence and complete withdrawal into a pretend world would be an incredible feat for me. In some ways I can capture this through reading. I can lose myself in another world. But it's not the same. There isn't the freedom of imagination there would be in writing. Reading offers the line of focus to follow--it's already there, laid out for me. But that's what it is. I have to follow that writer's line. In writing I can create my own line--ultimate imagination. 

The truly great writers, I think, have found a way to do this: to immerse themselves into their story completely and utterly. To live it through the pen or keyboard. To make it interesting enough for others to want to follow and get lost in as well. I only hope that someday, however far off it may be, I'll accomplish this. And until then, I just have to keep trying. 

*This post is dedicated to Kate. I didn't bother doing all the reading you did...I just made stuff up. So you can have the last word.

Nerds Unite!

Ok, so I'm just going to come out with it from the start. I am a huge nerd. There's really no way around it. If you didn't already know that about me, this post was going to out me anyway. I have gone through various stages of nerd-dom in my life, each as satisfyingly nerdy and fun as the last. You see, I embrace nerd-dom. It's so much fun!


Only when you can dress up like Professor Trelawney at the age of twenty-something and parade around town, can you feel the true liberation and pure exhilaration nerd-dom offers. These are some of my closest friends and my father. We have Harry, Tonks, Dumbledore, Trelawney (my hair was much bigger, but deflated throughout the evening), Jena from Ravenclaw (I think), Becca from Slytherin (of course), and Bri from Gryffindor. What fun that was!


Of course, there are other stages of nerd-dom that I have gone through as well. High school was all about music. I was the president of the band. I started a handbell quartet. I developed an inexplicable love of Mozart that I cannot shake to this day. At the moment I find myself wearing Mozart socks, given to me by a good friend and true nerd at heart. I took a class on Mozart during the Spring semester of my senior year of college, just to make my undeniable love slightly more legitimate.

In college I slipped into my one true calling, however: Literature. You would be hard pressed to find a twenty-three year old who loves Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the grotesque with quite the same passion as I harbor. Tristram Shandy, considered by many to be a long blathering of nothingness, held great joy and humor for me. With the exception of my equally nerdy best friend, no one looked forward to our English senior seminar, Encyclopedic Realism, with the enthusiasm I had. And don't even get me started on James Joyce. I could read Portrait and Ulysses 1,000 times and not tire of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom's ridiculous ramblings. Oh, the beauty.

But I digress. Now I come to the inspiration for tonight's post: Grammar. After getting into numerous "discussions" with one particular writer at Mountain Home, I was accused by said writer of being a grammar snob. Fair enough. It's my job, you know? Well, this writer (let's call him Bill) stopped by the office a few days after one particularly heated comma debate, and tossed a book on my desk.

"Have you read this?"
"No."
"Read it."

And then he walked out. I laughed to myself (despite our differences of opinion regarding parenthetical phrases and adjective phrases, I quite like Bill and respect him a great deal) and put the book off to the side. Just yesterday I saw the book again, and decided to take a look at it.

Oh. My. Goodness.

I have not laughed so hard over a book since the unfortunate "windowpane incident" in Tristram Shandy. I laughed out loud, sometimes maniacally, for hours. I related to it, I suddenly felt not-so-alone in the world. "There are others like you,"this book told me. "It's okay to be a nerd."

So what was this hysterical book, you ask? Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. A book about grammar. A book about the downfall of the English language. And most of all, a book about grammar nerds. As I read about Truss's burning desires to walk around handing out "Unnecessary Apostrophe" stickers to the dreaded "greengrocers" of the world (Apple's Pear's and Orange's for sale), I could not help but relate. You see, I've been there. No matter how much I try to repress the memory, the time that I stealthily erased a misused apostrophe on a Pizza Hut whiteboard haunts me to this day. But Truss told me that it's okay--in fact it's more than okay. It's a great thing I'm doing. Together, grammar nerds will unite and save English punctuation from the hungry jaws of text messages, e-mails, and horrendous internet headlines (GOLD'WATCHFORSAIL**JUST10$*CREDDIT^CARDNU3BERSWELCOM).

It is fast becoming a scary world out there, and someone has to do something about it. And so, in all of my nerd-dom glory, I have taken up the call to be a grammar vigilante: saving the world, one comma at a time.

Struggles with Motivation

So, the topic of the day: motivation. I find myself severely lacking in this area most days. There are so many things I want to do with my life, and yet I just can't seem to get up the gumption to actually start to accomplish them. It's mind versus matter. I tell myself I should really do something, but then I don't. There are other things to do (most of which are completely pointless and a waste of my time), or I'll do it later, or it's not really that necessary. And yet it is. And I know it is. I just can't seem to make myself do it.

So the things I cannot get myself motivated to do:

1. Wake up in the morning. Yes, it sounds simple. I set three alarms every morning. A bit excessive? No. If I didn't, I would never wake up. No matter how many times I tell myself that if I just got up at 7:15 instead of 8:00, I would start out the day much happier. (Time for coffee.) And yet every morning I hit that snooze button, and even after the third alarm has gone off it's another fifteen - thirty minutes until I actually get up.
2. Exercise regularly. I started going to the gym this summer with a friend. I enjoyed it quite a bit. More than I expected to. It eased tension and made me feel better about myself. The thing is, my friend went back to school in August, and I haven't returned to the gym once since then.
3. Write. I love to write. I really do! It's just that it takes some real doing to get me to sit down, turn off the television, and just write. I never know what I want to write about. I know that if I just make myself start I always come up with something. And at times I have inspirations. But then when I think about actually sitting down to put it on paper (or screen), the creative burst just sort of deflates, and suddenly there are other, more interesting things I could be doing.

These are the three topics that bother me the most when I think about my issues with lack of motivation. There are others. Let's face it: motivation is something of an all or none. I'm not really motivated to do anything on my own. Which leads me to my biggest vice: Procrastination. Oh, it's bad. During college I rarely got anything productive done before 10:00 p.m. "I work well under pressure," I would tell myself. I'm not sure which is causal in this relationship: procrastination or working well under pressure. Do I procrastinate because I work well under pressure, or do I work well under pressure because I procrastinate? Who knows. I often wondered in school, however, how well I could do if I actually worked ahead and didn't procrastinate. I suppose we'll never know.

So I realize that the way I've portrayed myself probably makes me come across as a high-school-drop-out bum. But anyone who knows me, knows that is not the case. At all, really. I've done pretty well so far. And yet I lack all motivation? How is this possible, you ask?

The thing is, I lack personal motivation. There are things that motivate me. Perhaps it would be beneficial to list these, as well.

1. Deadlines. There is nothing quite like knowing that it's 11:00 p.m. the night before the due date to get me moving. Again, I work well under pressure. I probably never would have written anything if it hadn't been due for a grade. (I also harbor a need to have people think highly of me, hence the struggle for good grades...but that's another topic altogether.)
2. Rewards. Yes, I'll admit it. My mom used to bribe me with milkshakes if I finished a particularly difficult assignment in high school. (I may or may not have done the same for myself in college...) It's not so much a bribe, as a reward. If I know that doing something will have an immediate benefit for me, then I'll do it. Duh.
3. Other people. If someone else is depending on my, or expecting me to do something, then by all means I will get it done. 

The last source of motivation is what bothers me the most: the fact that I'll motivate myself to do things for the benefit of others, but not for myself. If no one but me is benefitting (and it's a far-removed benefit), then I don't see the point in trying. I can deal with disappointing myself. But not others. I think there's something wrong with that. But the only way to work my way up to doing things for myself, is by sticking with what I know will work at first. And that's why I have started this blog. I know that if other people are reading it and (hopefully) commenting on it, then I'll continue to write. And it may not be publishable, but at least I'm writing, and that's a start. I have to start somewhere.

Sleepover - Girls Only!

I'm having a sleepover tomorrow night. I'm almost giddily excited. It's been a while since I've had a real, honest-to-goodness, girls-only sleepover. It'll be just like eighth grade. We'll watch girly movies, talk about boys, and giggle a lot. The only difference between now and eighth grade is that the boys we talk about now are real, not figments of our overly romanticized imaginations. And the mudslides. Yeah, we didn't have those back in eighth grade. I suppose there are some perks to growing up.

So should I be ashamed that at the age of twenty-three I am so excited to revert to childhood joys once again? I think not. First off, let me say that I am completely secure with my nerdy self. I still like to color in coloring books on occasion, and I'll always harbor a love for JTT, my childhood celebrity crush. So if being excited for a sleepover with a good friend makes me a nerd, so be it. It's not news to me.

There is a really interesting bond that forms over girls' sleepovers. Back in the days prior to drivers' licenses and unlimited curfews, sleepovers were truly unique experiences. Hanging out with friends past bedtime, staying up ridiculously late just because you can, eating junk food, talking about things that are sacred to the girly sleepover--these things just didn't happen any other time. My friends and I used to have a saying: "Deep conversation, ready, go." Of course the irony is that you can't have a deep conversation at the press of a button. But that phrase only popped up at sleepovers, and wouldn't you know it, we always did have deep conversations. I won't go into the details of these because (1) I would be breaking the secrecy entrusted upon me by my friends and females the world over and (2) some of the things we talked about were just awkward and not fit for mixed company. (Not improper or dirty, mind you, just - well - awkward. Girl stuff.)

There's really nothing quite like sleepover talks and silliness. I could tentatively relate it to its more adult counterpart, "pillow talk." Certain topics are more easily discussed in the peaceful darkness of the late night for one reason or another. It's a safe environment with people or a person you trust. You know that nothing you say will leave the circle.

So even though I'm no longer in eighth grade and have no curfew or bedtime, I'm still very excited about this upcoming sleepover with my friend. Granted the "sleeping over" part is mainly a result of the mudslides, but I think every girl needs a good sleepover every once in a while. Even some day when I'm married and have children, I think I will make it a point to leave the family for a night with the girls. My mom and her sisters used to do this regularly, taking a weekend shopping trip - girls only - and staying in a hotel. I have no biological sisters, but I do have a number of girlfriends who are like sisters to me. And I pray to God that I never get too old to get excited over having a sleepover with any of them.