I've got several bits and scraps here from the various writing classes I took in undergrad (how long before the past tense on college doesn't feel pretentious?).  Soooo I'll post them here!  With as much of the original prompt/assignment as I remember.

For this one, we were given "Dear Annie" letters, and told to rewrite the scene from another POV that would reveal that the letter writer was completely and utterly wrong.  Mine was a woman bitching about her in-laws being really horrible hosts. 



( Elizabetta + Alice )

Items of interest:

For a TV show produced in the late 70's, The Professionals isn't as sexist as it could be.
I want some (any) new icons.
Going to Ireland in a week!
Interminable vest of endlessness is in fact almost done, but it is currently on break due to some totally uncalled for nastiness with the shoulder seam coming out.

Ok, first of all, what is the big deal with these diploma things?  I have earned a Bachelor of Science.  Yay.  Somehow the piece of paper in the faux-leather booklet is way less meaningful to me than the memories of the last 3.5 years.  I suppose over time the diploma will become a symbol of these years, a sort of physical anchor for memories . . . but the paper has nothing to do with what I did.  Several hundred other people were there and got a degree which says nearly the exact same thing as mine (plus/minus some honors).  It doesn't even list the major/minor.

So, uh, yeah I'm gonna not care that it's tossed casually on the floor.

I mean, I don't step on it or anything!

Anyways 10 days after I graduated, now I am teaching.  BAH.  Wild.  (13 days after I graduated, I made my first mistake in front of students.  I feel that is a much more significant milestone)  It's not a permanent position thank god, but I can think of worse summer jobs.

My mind has been: Dragon Age 2 Dragon Age 2 Dragon Age 2 Dragon Age 2 DRAGON AGE 2 for the past month or so, but I feel a Mass Effect phase coming on.  Oh yes.  Yesssss.

It is difficult to walk the line between comfortably trivial and boring.  I DON'T EVEN TRY.

Want:

1. (More) new shoes
2. My own place
3. Organizational skills
and/or 4. Neatness
5. More throw pillows
6. My friends to be able to go drinking on half hour's notice on a Tuesday night.

Am:

1. Knitting never-ending vest of interminable-ness (that is quite cute)
2. Trying to write fanfic
3. Teaching classes aaaah responsibility
4. Re-watching BBC Sherlock (<3)
5. Stalking a bazillion (couple dozen) threads on various ficmemes
6. Floundering under the ridiculous pile of STUFF I have.

Need to:

1. Use prose
2. Clean my room all the things
3. Go to sleep
4. Run
5. Go to sleeeeeeeep

I'll post more on LJ, right?

BWHAHAHHAHA

.....

sigh.

This would so make an excellent livejournal post.

An excerpt from Graybird, which I wrote to fit a class exercise.  I expect that the final version of this will be quite different, but here's the scene
( This is about a third, maybe halfway into the story )

Spontaneously visiting my parents house. I have a complicated relationship with their food -- after moving out, they stopped stocking food I like. This is less a complaint and more a logical statement: I moved out 3 years ago. But it makes it difficult whenever I'm up for a weekend. I invariably end up looking into a completely full refrigerator and 4 cupboards, and then go "There's NOTHING to eat here!"

Today I did that.

Then I grabbed some eggs, sliced onions, olive oil, potatoes, milk, and salt and made deliciousness. With a side of reheated spinach raviolis (leftover from dinner yesterday). And somehow, nothing became something to eat. Not like, the best scrambled eggs and potatoes anyone has ever had, but worthy sustenance all the same.

Clearly I need to reevaluate my definition of "nothing."

So I've got the first draft of my ghost story probably half/two-thirds of the way complete. It has a reasonable chance of getting done, if I can ever convince myself to ignore that there isn't enough ghost in the beginning. You can work that in AFTER you've got a first draft down, self, I promise.

Also, I do not understand why beginning is spelled the way it is.

Also, I have badly needed to do laundry for the past three days now. Way to go, me!

A brief list of things I'd like to have, but don't:
1. Good, non flipflop sandals
2. A small purse
3. Nice abs

(I threw that last one in there for lols.)

Dragon Age: Origins is EATING MY LIFE. I cannot speak more than that.

Must not buy yarn. Must not buy yarn. *whine*

So, if any of you have Netflix (or randomly stumble across this in a movie store), the British miniseries Neverwhere is about 50% what I imagine Downside to be like. More fantasy elements than Downside, but neat regardless (of production quality or 80's hair).

Oh man. Mini-kitty emergency today. Events occured thus: fiesty (annoying) kitten got banished to the basement to hunt spiders. Kitten does not emerge when door is opened later -- 'oh well, he must be really enjoying himself.' And even later -- 'Hm, what is wrong?'

Cue an hour of plaintive meowing coming from nowhere while I frantically tried to coax a kitten out of a place in the rafters of the basement that I couldn't even see, on account of pipes/ductwork in the way. It was totes awesome, I assure you.

(Archie is fine -- he got over it faster than I did, possibly because he got to eat most of a can of tuna.)

In other news, went to a play with physics people which was v. awesome, makes me miss plays a great deal. And, I'd like to note for the record, that editing your own written work is the most nerve-wracking, cringe-inducing, masochistic act one can preform.

Also also, 2 + 1 = 3, not 2. Good one, that.

See, I use the bad grammar, and it makes the funny. It makes the funny OR ELSE.

Um, god, I dunno. Still the same continually-evolving version of me. Items of Irrelevance: Kind of made an ass of myself in Creative Writing today. Bought a lot of nail polish. Didn't do any schoolwork. Discovered RuPaul's Drag Race. Cuddled kitten lots.

Spent the requisite 5-10 minutes moping about being single and "unloved". Then, you know, I went and did something else.

I'm going to try to make it to class tomorrow -- wish me luck!

I have discovered my problem with poetry! I'm quite fond of the form, despite what I may have thought in my early(er) years, but I can never quite figure out how or where to stop the damn thing. And all of a sudden that phrase that struck me has turned into a multi-page rambling run-on monster.

I'm still rather fond of the ones I write, I just also believe that they're mostly garbage.

Re: personal stuff: I am still a ball of neurosis and self-doubt held together by pride. But I have gone from a streak of mostly down -- sullen, judgemental, hypercritical, and a startling lack of self respect -- to still basically fucking up because of all the downward momentum I've accumulated, but with days where I feel really quite sane and upbeat. I am counting this as a win, though today was a day of fail and suck.

Three days of lecture left this quarter.

So, I have been trying this thing which is basically, "summarize the plot of the story in one cliche." If I cannot do this for a story, I am considering it insufficient. I know, hardly a dificult concept, but I'm basically discovering this on
my own, give me some slack (STRIDER :p). Unsurprisingly, most of my stories fail this test, with only four passing. These four are:

1. Graybird - defeat the evil overlord
2. Gold Luck - save the princess ( which makes it soundike a romance, which it might be, which I don't know how I feel about).
3. King & Thief - quest to save the kingdom
4. 405 Rosedale - exorcise the ghost

OH. There's a no. 5:
Dragon Slaying: slay the dragon

XD clearly a lot of working titles there. The last three are more short stories than novel length plots, though 3 and 4 have potential to expand. 5 has potential to expand too, but it is speaking the " series of shorts" language to me. Also, I have off and on toyed with making Gold Luck in TV script format, mainly because it fits itself easily into episodic forms.

And that is where I am with things pertaining to writing. Yay.

6,803 words / ~100,000 total

1,001 words! 2/4 bullet points down for chapter 2. That's fun. But now I really am tired, and waking up at 7 is going to suck like sucking.

5,802 words / 100,000 total

Whee! Less than 1% added . . . finishing the scene will probably bring me to 6k, then there are ~2-3k more in the chapter. Probably. I'm bad at estimating fight scenes.

5,004 words / 100,000 total

Lookit that, it's a progress bar of my very own. It's also slightly out of date: I've written half a page to a page since then, but I don't want to stop and count again because then I might lose my roll . . .

5,000 words doesn't seem like much. :(

I am quite seriously looking into the mechanics of writing for TV.

I am pondering the amount of research I can do in one day and still have time for eating dinner with the friends and writing a significant bit on the paper (that I would be researching for), particularly in light of the fact that I may have to work until 4/5ish.

Why does Ohio have to have 11 district courts?  Seriously?  Why not, like, 3?