For my Twitterive place, the technology that helped me keep track of my observations was Twitter. It was especially helpful to link my phone up with Twitter and Twitpic because I don’t carry my laptop around campus with me and I guess I could write my observations down on a piece of paper, but my memory is so ridiculous, I would forget that I wrote things down by the time I got back to a computer. It was really helpful to be able to tweet literally a second after I saw something. That way, I had more tweets to choose from to write my Twitterive….even though I only used ten.

My weebly blog helped connect me to the class because we are supposed to comment on each other’s posts, ask each other questions about our writing to better it. It’s nice to get feedback from other people about your writing, whether it’s positive or negative, it’s good to have feedback. You can’t improve your writing if no one points it out. Sometimes I get so caught up in what I’m writing, that of course it makes sense to me, but I’m so close to it that I can’t tell whether or not it might make sense to someone else. And that’s important because writers don’t just write for themselves, they hope that someone will read their work. We are given that opportunity through our weebly blogs.

My online identity only represents half of my real-life identity. I have two halves, the charming, social me, and there’s the introverted, antisocial me. The first me is what you see on my blog, a person who has a lot to say and isn’t a nervous nelly about saying it. The antisocial me is what you get in class and especially in my Twitterive (if you read my Twitterive, you’ll get it). That’s the person who would rather listen than to talk and sometimes that weirds people out, but there you go.

P.S. If you’ve read my Twitterive, I just want to let you know that I don’t want to kill you. It really is fictional.

Lil Firecracker makes yet another trip to the gym today, this after going at 5 o’ clock this morning, 12 this afternoon, 6 o’ clock this evening and now 11 o’ clock at night. Clearly, she’s trying to bulk up for the upcoming arm wrestling match between her and defending champion Latina Heat this Thursday. I guess the steroids weren’t doin’ it for her. Hey, everyone’s thinking it. I’m simply writing it. Of course she denies it, but so did A-Roid—I mean “Rod.” How else do you explain her rocky home life? A neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous, swears she hears Firecracker physically abusing her husband on “a regular basis.” Hellooo, Roid Rage, people! Come on! Why hasn’t she been tested yet? Seriously, this is appalling. If you look back on the great arm wrestlers of the 30’s and 40’s, they didn’t need illegal substances to win. They did it on pure strength. And look at the guns on Latina Heat! You better keep pumping that iron, Lil Firecracker, ‘cause the Arm Wrestling Federation is closing in…and so is the fight for the title. If you can’t handle the Heat, get out of the kitchen.

On a related topic, Latina Heat, the current arm wrestling champion, was seen out earlier today with a hunk who looks suspiciously like Lil Firecracker’s husband. That is, her current husband. If you recall, her ex is currently in rehab.  Since Firecracker’s current residence is the fitness gym, it’s understandable that her husband would go looking for companionship. And who better than Firecracker’s archenemy, Latina Heat? Scandal! But I can’t help but worry for his safety. Everyone knows that Firecracker’s husband is rolling in money. His blood is probably green. So is Latina Heat planning on seducing him, marrying him, and then killing him for his money? I don’t think arm wrestlers make that much money. But then again, maybe I’m overreacting. Obviously, L. Heat isn’t as good at killing as she is at arm wrestling. Her first stab at homicide wasn’t exactly successful (though she was successful in wriggling out of life in a jail cell). Perhaps she is trying to hone her killer skills to relieve her nervous energy caused by the upcoming match. Good luck with that….with the match, I mean.

Characters: an unnamed girl (the narrator), and zombies

Connection/Disconnection with place: She has a physical connection with her new home in the woods, she has a mental disconnection with society and other people

When: This is a post-apocalyptic story, so it's set sometime in the (near?) future, but the narrator also flashes back to before the Incident

Where: the narrator lives in a tree in the woods

Why: The Twitterive is based off of my found poem, which is based off of 10 tweets about winter weather, I included the apocalypse element because of a line in the poem that goes "Something is really off." I immediately thought of 28 Days Later

How: It's going to be a narrative, but it will be split into sections, each section is headed with a line from the found poem

Direction of piece: I'm going to continue on with what I was doing before this interview, except I still need to figure out the logistics of the zombies (how fast they move, if they can climb, their mental prowess), and exactly why my character is an outcast, what makes her prefer the post-apocalyptic world full of living dead people that like to eat flesh over her old life

I remember when I wrote my blog post for the Billy the Kid reading, when I was pondering over the two poems at the beginning and end. The first one was very literate and the last one, I thought at first was a trainwreck. But the more I read it, the more it grew on me. My writing process for the blog for this piece was a little chaotic as well. I remember working out that second poem on paper and at first I was planning on deleting the parts where I admitted that I was confused and didn’t like it. But at the last minute I kept it because I liked how the poem instilled some kind of emotion in me. I think that if a story doesn’t make the reader feel something, the writer did something wrong. I’ve officially added “confusion” to the list of acceptable emotions to have for a piece of writing, because it’s certainly better than indifference. And I think it’s interesting that I was intrigued enough to try and figure the poem out instead of just leave it.

I liked the Anzaldua readings even less than I liked the Billy poem, but not for a lack of good writing on Anzaldua’s part. I know the point of the piece was that she shouldn’t have to translate her native language for English speakers because she’s proud of her culture, but there really was a lot more Spanish than I had expected. The first sentence I came across, I was going to type it into an online translation dictionary, but then I didn’t because I realized that would defeat the purpose of the piece. Plus, there was a lot of Spanish, it would have taken way longer to read if I translated. By the time I finished reading it, I was so frustrated that I had been left in the dark for a lot of the reading that I went on twitter and ranted for 140 characters. Interestingly enough, part of that tweet is going into my Twitterive. So, thank you Anzaldua.

For my microfiction story Tell Me, I used a line from Anzaldua that goes “Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out.” Anzaldua was talking about people who speak a language other than English and how they are forced to learn English. I knew she meant that the Spanish people are proud of their heritage and won’t let go of it without a fight, but my twisted mind immediately thought of a literal meaning for this phrase. But I think, in a way, it comes down to the same thing, so really, I’m not all that crazy. She started it….

I’m surprised that I was even able to complete the found poem assignment because when I went back and looked at all my tweets, on first sight they looked like the inane ramblings of a crazy loner (which I am). There wasn’t anything cohesive, like I didn’t tweet about a place I had gone to or an outing with friends because I didn’t do any of that stuff. Mostly I stay in my room, with periodic trips outside for fresh air, exercise and food. And that’s where most of my tweets came from. Fleeting observations as I walked quickly to the cafeteria, which is right across the street.

But then I noticed a pattern, which was winter weather. What was initially nonsense became a poem about winter and people’s mood about winter. So I collected all the tweets about the weather and incorporated the whimsical style in which the tweets were written to form an admittedly strange poem that, to me at least, makes perfect sense. I’m using my found poem to write an equally unusual Twitterive.

Stay tuned.

In this post, I have two poems. The first is a haiku based off of the microfiction in the previous post. The second is a found poem based off of ten tweets.


Vulnerable

Tell me what you know
with those perfect clear blue eyes.
You’re vulnerable.




Wild is Beautiful

The trees are throwing snowballs.
Isn’t that wild?
That’s one way to do it.
Snowdrops swoop down
like albino hawks
as I make my way to
the warmth of my secret lair.
Something is really off.
I hate it when people bitch
about inclement weather.
Each mind perceives
a different beauty.
Have you figured out how to make
happy little bluebirds?

In this post, I have two 250-word microfiction pieces. In the first one, I used a line from Gloria Anzaldua's piece How to Tame a Wild Tongue, to inspire my story. The line is: “Wild tongues can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out.” The second microfiction story is based off of one of my tweets: “Alaska is so different from California…we don’t have freeways and we don’t have people.”

Tell Me

“Tell me what you know!”

I don’t know anything, he says. I’m innocent, he says. I have no idea what you’re talking about!

Well, I’m not stupid. I know when I’m being lied to. I’ve done this before and I know how to get the information I need. This little prick isn’t going to stand in my way. I will get what I want. I need to know what he knows. What did he see? What did he hear? Did he tell anyone? Because if he did, then I’m in deep shit.

Another dunk should do it, I think. He’s always been afraid of drowning since he—fell—into the pool last summer. And maybe this will speed up the potty training process. I’m sick of him crawling into my bed and pissing on my sheets. It is not cute!

I pull his head out of the toilet when his body starts convulsing. He gasps and spits and cries and begs for me to stop.

“Tell me what you know!”

I look into his dripping face, with those perfect clear blue eyes, and adorable little button nose splashed with freckles and his rosy mouth filled with straight baby teeth.

I’m starting to think maybe he didn’t tell Mom anything. In fact, I’m almost sure of it now, thank God. But I need to make sure he continues to be quiet. There’s only one way to do that. Butter or butcher, I haven’t decided yet. Either way, it’s going to be wonderful. Oh, that pretty little face.

I’ll find a way to stay out of trouble. I always do. No one ever suspects me.


They

They’re out there, roaming the streets. Shuffling, staring, mumbling. Brainless things out to infect everyone They can find. They’ve learned our ways quickly, like They’re trying to fit in, be inconspicuous. But I know They’ve infiltrated our governments and our daily lives. And now They’ve come for our safe places, our homes. They get you when you least expect Them to come, when you feel comfortable, when you’re vulnerable, at your weakest. Nobody thinks it will happen to them and then bang, you’re dead. On the inside, at least. You can still walk around, but your soul is gone. You don’t know anything, you don’t really do anything. You just are.

They’ve been doing this since the year 2000. Everyone laughed when the computers didn’t malfunction like they were supposed to, but I didn’t laugh. I knew that was just a distraction from what was really going on. They won’t be satisfied until we’re all like Them, til we’re all members of Their diseased army. There’s no way I can stop them. It’s too late, there’s too many of Them. But I have been able to take some of Them out, to at least try to lower Their numbers with my rifle. You have to get Them in the head, it’s the quickest way. They won’t have the chance to see where the shot came from. That’s how I’ve survived for so long, but I got sloppy. I ventured too far from my house and someone saw me. They know I exist. They’ve surrounded my house.

Here They come.

Ondaatje’s Billy the Kid reminded me of an assignment I didfor Writer’s Mind with Professor Maxson. It was a multi-genre paper, whichmeant that we could incorporate poems, lists, narrative, odd spacing, etc.Pretty much anything that went against the norms of a traditional collegeresearch paper. I absolutely loved the paper I did, I had so much fun with it. I wrote a story about a doctor who accidentallycreated a virus that turned people into zombies. I had narrative, newspaperarticles that I wrote myself but that I formatted to look like they were real,a poem and even a letter that was hand-written on notebook paper for the final draft. Then I stapledall these together so that my paper looked like a scrapbook. It was totally awesome.

Anyway, I liked the poem at the beginning of “Billy the Kid.” I’llbe honest, I almost skipped over it because I thought it was part of thecopyrights and dedication and all that boring crap on the inside cover of abook that nobody ever looks at. But then I did read it and I liked it becauseit was background story on the house and what goes on in the house. Ondaatje didn’tfeel the need to go into as much detail about the history of the house, but hedid need to tell the reader why the house is important. And he did that throughthe poem. The poem was the complete opposite of the narrative that followed it,which was richly detailed, right down to the “suction as an arm lifts off atable breaking the lock that was formed by air and the wet of the surface.”

I think there were three different perspectives in Ondaatje’spiece because the first poem was very smoothly written, had proper grammar andpunctuation so I assume it was written by Sallie. The poem at the end of thepiece, however, would have made my old English teacher poop a brick becausethere was zero punctuation and the spelling was bad in a few places. It soundedlike broken English to me, I don’t know if that was intentional, but I supposethe gist of it was that either the narrator of the poem is slowly going insaneor he’s talking about Billy the Kid’s dead body floating in a river. Eitherway, I got a strong feeling of disgust and foreboding, just because of therepeated references to rats. The more I read it, the more it grew on me. It waslike a car accident.


On to the microfiction, Fernandez’s “Wrong Channel”  was hysterical, when the doctor was askingabout TB and Barbarita was talking about TV. The fact that the interpreter wasn’tvery good at speaking English should have been a red flag for Barbarita, but I guessit was better than nothing. But this story was also kind of sad because thedoctor was trying to tell this woman that she had a serious illness and she wasjust completely missing the point. Perhaps this was a social commentary onillegal immigration or something. Whatever it was, it was funny. And short!Hooray for flash fiction!

I liked Berry’s “Mockingbird” because it showed what blindfools love can make of us. The story was also ironic in that on the surface,the couple lived a perfect life, but then something ugly slipped to the surfaceand just for a second, when the guy said he’d rather inherit a rich life, thewoman saw reality and thought maybe she shouldn’t be with this guy. Then lovepunched her in the face and he said something cutesy to get out of trouble, andthings were “alright again”. Meanwhile, there’s a little albino boy playing inthe yard next door, which called for more irony in that, since he’s albino he’sgoing to have a hard life, trying to make friends and fit into society, whilethe fairly well-to-do couple next door’s only problem is that they don’t haveas nice a house as their friends, who are slowly drowning in their miserable,domestic lifestyle.

In Nelson’s “Land’s End” a woman is jumping the border….to Mexico.

I love irony. It’s good for you.

In Gopnik's piece, I liked the imagery of the musicless carousel. It was, for me, a satisfying image of irony, of something that’s supposed to be cheerful, but isn’t because it’s broken and battered from Time’s relentless hammering. And yet the carousel still moves and so the kids still ride it. Of course, the ride would be much better with the music, but the children can fill in the blanks, the silence, on their own. It evoked a feeling of sadness but also determination. All things become chipped and meek shadows of their former selves, but you’re not dead til your dead.

I also like the dreariness of the ring game. I liked the fact that even if you are good at the game, you don’t get rewarded for it. You just accept that you’re good at it, get off the ride, and do something else. This is the opposite of the American Way. If you’re good at something, you want people to know it. Football players showboat after a touchdown, baseball players stand and watch the ball fly over the stadium before very slowly running the bases towards home plate, musicians have hours-long awards ceremonies during which they pat each other on the back for making millions of dollars on a one-hit wonder. It’s not hard to spot an American in Europe, they’re so loud and rambunctious. That’s the way we do things. Europeans are more understated.

The final sad point (perhaps a matter of opinion) was that the carousel is being replaced by video games. When Baudrillard was talking about the Regulon in the Semiosphere, it seemed that he was pining for the Good Old Days of playing outside and walking three miles to and from school in the rain or sunshine. He didn’t seem to be a fan of technology, which he seemed to think was a form of false reality. In a way it is, especially when you look at video games, which are becoming more and more real visually, but not…physically. I mean, World of Warcraft and games like that are visually incredible, but there’s no such thing as dragons and dwarves and stuff like that. But there are so many people who are addicted to these games and feel that the real world is boring. I can understand that argument, but I love playing video games, a healthy amount I think, and I believe they’re just upgraded versions of the carousel.

I was like Joyce in school, I loved to read of fantastic adventures, but I was too chicken to actually go and look for adventure. He’s right, you can’t just wait for it to fall into your lap (not unless you’re Frodo Baggins or Harry Potter) you have to go find it. I wasn’t able to get up the courage to skip the second half of lunch period, let alone skip a whole day of school. But I would love to be a fearless Gryffindor—I mean, adventurer….Like Harry and his loyal companions….

Now to talk about place and characters, I thought it was interesting that the characters were so interested in the Wild West, emphasis on the "wild" because the characters were clean-cut boys who went to some kind of religious private school. I think they were so drawn to wild west stories because it was the opposite of who they were in real life, except when they skipped school to go on their little adventure. Another thing that was ironic about the "wild west" thing was that the boys skipped school and wandered around a place with "noisy streets flanked by high stone walls" and "working cranes and engines" which are all features of a populated city. But the Wild West is...well, wild. There are no structures, no machinery. No rules. That's why the boys loved it, I think.

P.S. There was a lot of British/Irish slang and terminology in this piece. It was hard to figure out sometimes, but it reminded me of when I read Anne of Green Gables, for some strange reason. But that’s a good thing. It reminded me of springtime where the trees are heavy with pastel leaves and the ground is covered with bright, fragile flowers. The breeze is warm, but not heavy like in summer. And it tastes sweet.

This is a very long blog post.

In Living the Narrative Life I loved how Pagnucci made a distinction between essays and actual stories because I agree that there is a big difference between the two. When your teacher says, “Okay guys. I want you to write an essay about what you did this summer,” he or she is expecting a topic sentence and five paragraphs. Each paragraph has five sentences that can’t be too long, like a run-on sentence, or too short, like an incomplete sentence. But I don’t think an essay is a good way to express what you did over the summer because it is so precise and orderly. Life is not perfect, there are moments like crazy run-on sentences like if you’re in the waiting room at the dentist’s for two hours and there are other moments that are incomplete sentences, like when you remember that you need to do something but you can’t remember what it is. Life is unpredictable and chaotic and that’s why it’s interesting. When you write an essay about life, you have to generalize the events so they can fit into five paragraphs, there’s no room for you to explore the minute details of a particular summer day. The warm breeze lifting your hair off of your sweaty forehead. Two squirrels chasing each other up a tall oak tree whose branches reach up to the sky as if in joy and triumph, mirroring the screaming children on the dusty baseball diamond below. You just can’t beat imagery like that.

The stories that form my life were Goosebumps, the Harry Potter series, and, most recently,H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King novels/stories. The people who know me now know that I’m a huge King fan so when I tell them that I want to be a writer they say, “Ooooooh, you want to write scary gory stories like Stephen King, huh?” And I hesitate before saying yes, but that’s not really the truth because I want to write more for young adults, which stems from my obsession with J.K. Rowling’s fantasy book series. So it’s hard for people to imagine a combination of Carrie and Harry. And sometimes, I find myself starting an innocent enough story with a young cast of characters but by the end, nearly everyone’s dead or about to die. I enjoy putting a dark twist to things…but like King, sometimes I’m ashamed to admit that.

In A Native Hill when Berry was talking about leaving NY University to go back to Kentucky, he said that he had achieved his goal of having a good job and talking with other writers and learning from them. This made me think of how depressing it is when I think I have a really good story idea and I start writing it and one day I’m surfing on Google and I see that my idea has already been taken. At that point I say, “To heck with it, I’m writing my story anyway.” And I guess that’s just it. The difference between my story and the other guy’s story is that mine is mine. Stories can be similar in the way a character might react to a situation, but each character is unique in their own way. I have thoughts for my character that no author can put in his head. Even if I don’t write those thoughts down, even if they’re just backstory, my character’s backstory is different from yours. But I still shy away from talking to other people about writing. Suggestions from acquaintances and family are especially unwanted because most of them laugh at me when I say I want to be a writer, anyway, so why would I care about their opinion? And when I give my creative writing teachers a story, I simply want them to like it….i don’t want them to change it….just to like it. Because if they change it, then it won’t be mine.

I’ll make for a lovely children’s writer, don’t you think?