Elapse

It's been a long ride. This was an amazing semester - and I had tons of fun writing this story. And T.T moments, but yeah. In case you wanted to read my edits, the final draft is up now. Well....

Final for this class. I might expand on it more.

ABP#07: Drowning Swimmer

Yeah, this is probably just me being cynical. But writing to me was kind of like a giant contradiction. Like a drowning swimmer, it's the fact that you know how to swim, you're a GOOD swimmer, and you swim regularly.... but you're drowning nevertheless due to some outside force. Maybe you got punted off a ship in the middle of a storm, maybe somebody hit you with a golf club into the water, maybe you're being chased by sharks. Either way, something you're good at normally now turns into this horrific experience of "Oh my god, I don't remember how to do this, how do I do this, oh god am I actually drowning?!"

Writing was kind of like that. We're all fairly accomplished students, plenty experienced in the English language. We have all the tools. We know how to write.

But the deadline's looming, time is crunching, and all of a sudden, all of that goes out the window. We look for ideas, try to plan, but the inspiration doesn't come. All of a sudden, writing becomes a horrendous chore as we try to pull out the words that we definitely do know but can't coherently link together in sentences anymore. Searching for the correct word, the correct phrase, the correct way to place these words.... all of this has gone. Inspiration is like the knowledge of how to swim - once that finally comes back, we've been flailing so long against our computer screens that we're out of energy and we're drowning because we're TIRED. As opposed to just drowning because you're panicking and can't swim. In this case, we're failing in our story because despite the fact we know what to write, despite the fact we know how to write it, it just doesn't come out because you can't dredge it out of your head because it's just pounding so much. You need bursts of inspiration, bursts of energy to get anything done, because now, it's kind of like weakly flailing in the water. Doggie-paddling? Treading water? You're wasting energy, the words come out as half-baked nonsense.

And then, once all those hurdles have been surmounted, you finally see a glimpse of land. Suddenly, everything you do has new fervor - the END is in sight. You swim faster, churning out whatever comes to you in the moment, rendering the ending a somewhat hastily-wrought but ultimately reflective of what you were thinking at the moment. There's a great sense of elation upon knowing that you got out alive, finished the story - succeeded. And in that elation upon finishing the work, you also forget how to swim or write. So your attempts at self-editing are met with vague glazing over and your mind telling you "Since you swam so much, of course you know how to swim!" OR basically, your mind is filling in the blanks for you and you find it hard to spot any errors because you're so self-assured by this point that since you survived, you must know how to swim = shuddup, I'm not missing words here.

Wow, this sounds pretty cynical.

Yeah. Okay.

...Victor, I swear I wasn't thinking of you.

Writing Life - CHTHE REST

Because I'm getting way too rambly and I might as well just make a ginormous ramble post.

IT'S ALL A DREAM?!?!?! EXPLODING TYPEWRITERS? BURNING SHIRTS? I'M DOWN. Motto: BE PREPARED FOR ANYTHANG. Seriously. Best two pages evar in this book.

See, what' s the point of rambling about two pages? It's already chapter five!

That's kind of creepy and derogatory. Emily Dickinson - slant of light. Richard Selzer - glistening peritonium (whatever that is). Faulkner - muddy bottom of a little girl's drawers. Wow. >_>

Writing Life - CH3

Hope this gets better again. Puget Sound, yeaaaaaaaah. Also, the end of that first paragraph on page 42 irritates me for some reason.

I'm too lazy to do stuff that's good for me too! Like homework.

IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS. I'm so amused whenever anyone does this. Was watching Obama's welcome to America speech during dinner, laughed when he was like BACK IN 1971...! Because I get this image of a random old guy, "BACK IN THE GOOD OL' DAYS..."

Writing Life - CH2

Nooo, my second-person narrative! Whyy!!!! And why is it named Cape Cod? Whenever I think Cape Cod, I think this

I apologize for the TERRIBAL photoshoopz. But yeah, point still applies. Warble warble.

Writing Life - CH1

Wow. My first thought upon finishing this chapter is - holy crap, this reminds me SO much of what I thought when I was writing my story. Complete with awesome second-person narrative and more metaphors than you can shake a stick at. The inchworm narrative was particularly good - guess that's why it's the assigned blog post prompt. Huh.

inb4update

Came back to blogger after a while, surprised by blog activity. Look at blog. Feels slightly empty. Hence, unlikable character entry. Should get started on those Writing Life posts. And story revision. And psych journals. And math. And chem. And art. Whoa, that's all classes in schedule. Oh and internship too.

Also, disappoint that workshop is over. Was fun while lasted.

Why talking like this? No idea.

Screw tags, lazy.

MERRY XMAS

MERRY XMAS!

.... Now where's my snow? :(

Crash

What do you do, when your idyllic illusions finally crash down, in the perfect storm of angry shouts and words that tear more deeply than any knife could?

T,T WHYYY.

MIRA, WHY WOULD YOU WRITE ABOUT MAGIC THE GATHERING?! WHYYYY?!

Because Writing > Math

I really should be studying for my math test.

Chasing

Need to get this out of my system.

SNOWWWWWWWWWWW

Dogs.

Except it's a dog. And it likes licking me.

Flashback

Was informed that I should post this.

Primordial Ooze - The States of Existence

This is the truth. Those of you who know me know that I have been consistently relegated to a lower state of existence. When I come to school, I am the HEADLESS WORM - the unthinking beast that moves around based purely on muscle memory. By the end of the school day, my situation has not much improved - it is only when I return home that I have access to the elixir that is the cranberry juice that can elevate me to the state of a MOVIE ZOMBIE - the wandering hulking sentience that rumbles "BRAINSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS" and seeks to devour everything including brains and chocolate chip cookies. Movement and actions is purely instinctual. At this point, only Life Balance (see Blenderlid/Genre Whiplash) can elevate my being to a ORDINARY HUMAN - yes, the state in which a person that is not myself can normally function at. But it is just as likely (read: about 10x more likely) that my procrastinating ways lead to an all-nighter... which drops me to the state I want to talk about.

PRIMORDIAL OOZE.

What is it. It is a state in which you cannot think. But it's more than just that. Muscle memory fails you. It's like late night limbo (see Blenderlid). But you have no presence of mind - you will wake the next day and see your chat logs and say, "HOLY FRICK DID I REALLY SAY THAT." And at school, you will be greeted by "HERPDERPWHAT." Because that's what you did last night. You oozed. And then your nebulous fingers typed some random shit that constitutes a cohesive thought - or so it might seem but you might as well just head-desk into your keyboard and achieve the same effect. You ramble. Like so. Because really, the only thing that's keeping you awake is the very rambling thought itself and if you didn't type this up, you would be snoring on your computer. Keyboard. Whatever.

Hey. Guess what state I'm in right now?

P.S. As a note, Energizer Bunny and Coffee Demon states do not exist for me. Those are reserved for people whom draw energy from god only knows. Is it a cult? THE CULT OF TIME MANAGEMENT? DO YOU PRAY TO THE ENERGIZER BUNNY? DOES HE GRANT YOU THE HOLY VISION THAT ALLOWS YOU TO MAINTAIN CLARITY OF THOUGHT, THE BATTERY OF TRUTH? ENLIGHTEN THIS SLIME. SLUDGE. BRAIN MATTER. OOZE.

I feel like someone is jabbing my eye with a giant steak knife or something. Why am I still up.

Tree

As the other PRISMer in art/design will attest, I like drawing trees. Drawing trees makes me calm. Although this is my first time on computer medium - I usually prefer sketching stuff because I can't color for crap and I hate solid lines. And I feel like I cheated using some filters for shading, but whatever, I'm still terrible at drawing stuff in general. I still suck at art either way, but hey, it's fun like doodling. Stress relief is stress relief, so I'll take it. I think my anger bled out on the sky anyways.

THE MUSING OF PRIMORDIAL OOZE

Notes on 'Elapse'

If you haven't read my story, please don't read this post. I don't really want to influence your critique/initial impression of my story. For those of you who have, these were just the general notes I was basing my story on.