REM: Losing my Religion

I had my critique for Love me Tender in my Creative Writing class today, and it went surprisingly well. No one bad mouthed anything this time, and nearly all of my classmates had the same concerns-- age, setting, time period, why Susanna gives her son the middle name Paul, and whether or not there should be a distinctive relationship between Paul and Susanna or Susanna and her father. I'm leaning toward Paul and Susanna, but that would involve bringing Paul back to Ford's Creek, or at least calling her on the telephone. I want the dad to be a part of it, too, but he needs to have less of a role if Paul is a bigger part of the story. At the same time, the story tracks Susanna as she grows through her pregnancy, and I almost feel that keeping with Susanna between months three and seven (when Paul is mentioned, she is five months along or so), so her father would play more of a role than Paul (and then Paul would be deleted from the story altogether except for the part where she gets pregnant). Anyway, I need your thoughts, Moma! And anyone else who read the story!

Mom, I know you're not good with critiques, but I need this.

For now, I'm putting the story aside-- at least for a few days until I have a grasp of what I'm going to do-- and then I'll commence work on it. I need to be done with my final revisions by June 3rd AT THE LATEST so I can pack up and get the hell out of here by June 6th. Hopefully it can happen, or else I'm stuck here another week.

This week, my friend Tony and I will be driving to Long Beach to attend a Sufi Prayer Circle. It's a field work project for my Islam class, and we have to develop a seven minute presentation and (both of us) have to write a four-page ethnography on our research. It should be really fun; it's the last project of year, and also the deciding factor for my grade. I have confidence that we will do well, though, and fun at the same time! I'll post more about it after the trip.

However, because the field trip is on Thursday, May 20th, I will not be able to attend the Master of Fiction at UCR reading that night, where my workshop leader Holly and my old TA Angela will be reading. I'm a little disappointed-- I was really looking forward to hearing some of my teachers' works. I respect both women very much, and I feel as though I'm letting them down by not attending such a great night for both of them. I'll have to drop by Angela's office hours this week and wish her luck and say hello-- it's been awhile.

I encountered a quote by Ray Bradbury today: "You must stay drunk on writing so that reality does not destroy you."

I love it. I feel like people in my class take writing too seriously. No, that's phrased wrong (and obviously I want to point out the problem, or else I would have simply erased it and reworded it). Writing should be taken seriously, especially when you want to pursue a career in it, as I and my classmates desire to. However, I feel as though my peers do not allow fantasy to mingle with reality, like they want everything to be black and white-- no gray area allowed. This shouldn't be how it is. If I say, "Avery floated down the stairs..." several people will write, "People can't float" even though I was clearly talking about him being in a dream-state/sleepwalking. That's just an example. Sure, dialogue needs to be believable in the story, it needs to flow naturally based on a character's character, but if I play around with words, then I shouldn't be penalized and criticized for it. Not just me, either, but any and every writer. I'm just saying...

Other great quotes on writing by writers:

-The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. ~Ernest Hemingway, interview in Paris Review, Spring 1958

-Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

-Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death - fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant. ~Edna Ferber, A Kind of Magic, 1963

-One ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's own flesh in the inkpot, each time one dips one's pen. ~Leo Tolstoy

-Writing is both mask and unveiling. ~E.B. White

-It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write. ~Sinclair Lewis

-The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

-Ink on paper is as beautiful to me as flowers on the mountains; God composes, why shouldn't we? ~Terri Guillemets

-A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. ~John K. Hutchens, New York Herald Tribune, 10 September 1961

-Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov

-Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain

For more:




If the links don't work, text copies are provided below. :)

http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html
http://www.fontayne.com/ink/quotewrite.html
http://thinkexist.com/quotations/writing/
http://www.logicalcreativity.com/jon/quotes.html

I remember in Mrs. Asgill's class, we had to write "This I Believe" reflections and we had the opportunity to submit them to NPR. Well, I'm going to do another one. I heard Anna talking about it-- I mean, Anna mentioned it in an email she sent me-- and I thought I should try my hand at it again, now that I've got more to say and better means to say it. I was checking out different story-telling websites-- NPR and Storycorps, when I happened upon this animated video of a real interview between a mother and her son, who has Asperger's Syndrome. If you have read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, then Chris, the main character in that story, also has Asperger's; one of my close friends also grew up with it (and he's totally awesome and I'm so happy to be his friendy!). Anyway, the video is awful sweet and I teared up by the end of it.

Watch it here:

http://storycorps.org/animation/

I've also been doing online browsing of cool stuff for gifts and whatnot, and just for cool stuff to look at. I'm having the hardest time finding something to get my moma and my dad for their birthdays (which I feel bad about, but I'll get it before gift exchange! forgive me for not having it ready THE DAY OF your birthdays!) and I stumbled upon this awesome sleeping bag!

http://www.patchtogether.com/store/chumbuddy-192.html

If it didn't cost $200 and take up a lot of space, I would own this in an instant. I could also go for a pair of adult footy pyjamas this winter when it starts getting cold again-- I might invest. They better have dinosaur print available. I'd kill for some dinosaur footy pyjamas. I'll have to find some.

I'm also trying to get a line-up on Fall 2010 classes to take. My registration period is June 2nd, so I've begun to compile a tentative list, which I will leave out. I've been thinking about whether or not I should double major or get a minor-- I was thinking psychology, but the longer I'm in school and the more I think about it, the more I want to get into religious studies. Psychology would require a lot more time and effort, and I couldn't really do anything with a psychology minor and a creative writing major (not that I can do anything with a religious studies and a creative writing major). Anyway, I did some research, and I'd need less classes for a religious studies minor than I would a psych minor; that's not what I'm concerned with, though. I've already taken my entire Islam sequence and loved nearly every second of it-- Muhamad Ali, Reza Aslan, Sherine Hafez-- all of my teachers have been excellent, my TA Harold is THE BEST, and my peer mentor Lianna is seriously one of the sweetest girls I've met at UCR. I know that I would enjoy religious studies-- I'm already interested in it, and religion definitely plays a huge part in the world-- both the conflicts and the resolutions-- and I want to understand that. (<-- That period was definitely overdue.) So, I'm going to seriously consider a Religious Studies minor. I love psychology, but it's so much math and terms-- all I really care about is personality psychology, and that's just to help in my writing and my understanding of the people around me. I can always just take that class! (Nothing will be like Tribble's class anyway). But Religious Studies... I can definitely apply that. Too many people either extremely LOVE religion or extremely LOATHE it. I want to be able to understand it before I make up my mind. That's what I did with Islam, and now why not the other religions? So, yeah. That's the end of the religion spiel.

Before I go, I'd just like to say...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMA!!!!! You're the best! LOVE!