writerfangirl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
writerfangirl) wrote2010-01-01 11:59 pm
writerfangirl) wrote2010-01-01 11:59 pm
Day 1 - 01/01/10
I wrote six pages: three pages for the morning pages written this morning and three pages in response to day 1's prompt--allegory. To be honest, I groaned when I read I had to write an allegory. I didn't want to do it. I found myself partly closing, but it was the prompt and I had to read it. So I did and I got three pages. I surprised myself by writing a story and being creative. Right now, I'm really heavily drawing from my life. That won't always be the case and I am really looking forward to that time.
I didn't want to have a day spent at home, as past Januarys have gone. Instead, I went out with my friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
leadaisy. We hit the Waffle, in Hollywood, first and then went to Pasadena. I was so sure that Vroman's was going to be open, but alas they were not. What we did see was a bunch of trash lining Colorado Blvd on either side, outside closed stores. A few hours after the Rose Parade ended and it was already empty. I actually didn't see any of the parade today. That has to be a first for me. I'm not so inclined, either. I could take it or leave it. From Pasadena, we went to the mall. I made a Borders trip in Hollywood and at the mall and between those two bookstores, I came home with three books and three journals. One book I will start when I get up: The Writer's Book of Wisdom: 101 Rules For Mastering Your Craft. I liked the layout and I thought it had some handy points to be made. I look forward to breaking into that.
I surprised myself in my Morning Pages when I wrote down a few ideas for fiction stories I want to try; one story is a fanfic and the other is an original piece. I don't want to tackle those now, but at some point later. It doesn't seem to take a lot of effort to brainstorm for writing fiction. Did I really forget so easily? I also plan to go back to an original story idea I was playing with. I'll be brainstorming on that today, I think. The other two pieces are much shorter while this one is going to last a little while. But a piece is a piece. And if I complete one, more the better. It has been ages since I have ever completed any pieces. I don't make myself. And, sometimes, I don't even let myself start. But I know that you won't accomplish anything if you don't start. If you start something, finish it, then maybe it will work, or maybe it won't. But if you don't even start something, it won't work. It's that simple. I would like to give myself more of a chance. Heck, maybe I'll get something out of the very attempt of trying.
There was a book that I was looking at that I didn't pick up today that I might at a later point. I remember it is the companion book to Write. but other than that...I don't remember the author, even. I've checked Amazon.com. The writer is Karen E. Peterson and the companion book is The Write Type: Discover Your True Writer's Identity and Create a Customized Writing Plan. There is one exercise Peterson had where you write the answer to a question with your non-dominant hand. I imagine it is to see if your brain hemispheres think differently. I have read that they do think independently of one another. And if there is a disconnect, then you would have two distinct personalities vying for control of one body. I think I might get something from my right hand that I hadn't even thought I would think about. Maybe something like that one style of writing, like...it isn't ghost writing. But the idea is that your tapping into a presence that isn't your own. I've always been scared about trying that. Scared about what would turn out, so I haven't even tried that. I've seen a book somewhere on that too, but I didn't give it a great deal of thought. Maybe in the future I'll check that out, but I have enough on my plate right now than to get into that too. One change at a time.
And another book I want to check out is Fear of Writing. This writer seems quite accessible to readers. She also holds monthly 10K days. Her next two will be the 14th and 23rd. I will definitely be signing up for both of those. I am not going to turn down a shot at 20k words in just two days. I want to get as much writing done as possible in the least amount of time possible. I know I don't have to work that hard, but I have gone so long not asking very much of myself that I want to change that.
There is indeed a method to my madness for wanting to read so many books about the writing process. It is partly for myself, yes, but it is partly for my wanting to make a stockpile of knowledge that I can share with other people. I want to be a writing adviser. I want to help free other people like me, or those who have words they want to get out and don't know that they are writers yet. With enough time, determination, and practice I think people can achieve something. If you're not--this has been in my personal experience--there is a block somewhere. I was able to block the learning for a foreign language and of mathematical concepts because neither carried much interest to me. If I saw no practical application in something, or I questioned my need to know something, I put a block up. Now, I reacted actively to teachers who made their subject interesting. These teachers who shared their passions with their students.
Passion I can relate with, even if it is a passion that I do not share. I am thinking of my 8th grade math teacher Mrs. Oishi. She was a very kind woman and she encouraged her students to try math in many different ways. One way involved creating a mobile of geometrical shapes out of materials of our choosing. I went with black electric tape because I thought they would looked cool. I had fun with this. Then, consider Mrs. Geisler, my geometry teacher in 11th grade. She groaned on about theorems and proofs. And I was given no valid reason why any of this mattered. If I saw no value in what I was learning, I discarded it away. In Mrs. Geisler's case, the woman herself was more interesting than the course she taught. She wore drab clothes and had long brown hair that was close to her head. She was in her mid-forties, at least by appearance. I wasn't sure in age, though. I was mildly convinced that she was years older. Not because of anything she had done, but because there was a picture of a woman in 1940s clothes in my US history textbook who looked exactly like Mrs. Geisler. I am talking frighteningly so. There was a point during class where I took out my US history text and compared the picture to Mrs. Geisler. The resemblance was scary uncanny. Mrs. Geisler seemed to be proud of her children, or at least of their accomplishments. She had these large, blown up pictures of her kids taking part in their hobby: performance horse back writing. Imagine, teenage kids, dressed in spandex costumes, standing on the backs of horses. There were pictures like that on the walls of her classroom. Mrs. Geisler was not the only Geisler who taught at my school; her husband also taught math. So, I imagine Mrs. Geisler was quite passionate about her children's hobbies, but she never mentioned them to her class, never brought attention to the strange photos. I wish she had. That would have made her more interesting.
Thinking back through a lot of my teachers, I have something not related to the class that I associated a lot of them with.
Mr. Prebble, my mass communications professor - he was a fan of the Oregon Ducks, failed from a bunch of colleges before he settled down, used to smoke in the classroom (this was in the 70s), was missing half of his middle finger (I never got the courage to ask what had happened)
Mr. Condino, my econ teacher in high school - a lot of his clothing was sports-related and he was a BIG fan of Manchester United
Mr. Riley, my sixth grade math teacher - he was obsessed with Disney, particularly Mickey Mouse, and had a Mickey embroidered on every one of his polo shirts, not to mention on pictures around his room
Mr. (Edward Everett) Hambley (III), my seventh grade English teacher - the brother of Barbara Hambley, always wore tweed (maybe not, but he was definitely "tweedy"), had a poster of Charles Barkley on his wall
Mrs. Carolyn Payton, my sixth grade science, English, and PE teacher - Canadian, a daughter of "mercenaries" (actually missionaries, but I proudly proclaimed to my parents that her parents had been mercenaries, thinking they were the same word), introduced me to Yanni with "Felitsa" (she would play music and have us write what we were thinking. I ended up telling a story about lovers, a dancer, and a crystal castle on a cliff. Hearing it now, I can still picture what I saw then), put socks on her golden retrievers so they wouldn't mess up her carpet, bungee jumped
Ms. Grace, my tenth grade English teacher - painted furniture with odd colors and designs; according to a fellow student, she used to get high in trees
It was always the little details that meant a great deal to me. I had one professor--granted, he was at a disadvantage because he was teaching statistics and I wasn't interested in that at all--that had nothing. He was blank. He was an older Asian gentleman and didn't know English very well. Not many of the students in my class understood what he was teaching. When we would ask him for clarification, he would just repeat what he had said that we hadn't understood. I was convinced that he was an autobot who only cared about math. He made no mention to a life outside of the classroom. I thought this might be a culture thing. For me, it's crucial for me to make some connection with the teacher to help my learning process. He made that impossible. I'm proud of my C+ that I got in that class. It got me the necessary credit I needed in order to transfer.
There is one English teacher I heard about who knew that people have different styles of learning. For this reason, she would bring objects to help engage her students, such as for the kinesthetic learners who needed to do something with their hands. I found math lecture had a way of getting my creative juices going to write prose poetry.
I don't know if this was a memory trick I adapted or if it is a trait of the kind of learner that I am (kinesthetic and audio visual), but I found that simply by writing down notes, I was digesting the information that was being expressed. When it came time to review the notes I had hand written, I found myself remembering a great deal of what I had written to the point of reviewing was unnecessary. This ability surprised me the first time I found that I had it. I didn't realize this until I was at UCR. Maybe it cropped up after my exams in anthropology and psychology--I had to memorize how to spell words, the functions of various things, the placement of bones, etc. I think anthropology did in fact changed me. That's the first, and one of the only, exams that I pulled all the stops to study. I even did flashcards, and I never do flashcards. But I was serious about that class.
I miss the challenges of school, the daily routine. There was safety in that, in expectations. And aren't syllabi great for that? It's like "here is the run down of all of my expectations. Follow this and you'll do fine." Now, it's not quite like that because you don't know how the professor is going to grade, but it's darn close. The teachers aren't against you, as I think some students think. I learned how to get what I needed from the system. One of the best pieces of advice I heard from my grandmother's experience in college, told to me by my mom, was that college is about line waiting and red tape. If you can face both of those things, then you'll get through college. I also found myself that in order to get the answer I wanted, I had to have some idea what the answer was. I think I had some hyper-awareness going on in college. I was keyed into things better during that time. I really want some of the things I knew/did during that time back. I think I might become a better person if I do. I really liked being Jen the student. That's why I like being a student of life. Learning is a life-long process; it doesn't stop when you graduate school.
I will start the Artist's Way tomorrow. I'm going to figure out my word count at the end of the week. I'd like to have about 7,000 words. I'm not going to worry about word count, though. I'm just going to write.
I think I may do a photograph a day, too. For today's photograph then, here is the aftermath of the 2010 Rose Parade:
I didn't want to have a day spent at home, as past Januarys have gone. Instead, I went out with my friend
leadaisy. We hit the Waffle, in Hollywood, first and then went to Pasadena. I was so sure that Vroman's was going to be open, but alas they were not. What we did see was a bunch of trash lining Colorado Blvd on either side, outside closed stores. A few hours after the Rose Parade ended and it was already empty. I actually didn't see any of the parade today. That has to be a first for me. I'm not so inclined, either. I could take it or leave it. From Pasadena, we went to the mall. I made a Borders trip in Hollywood and at the mall and between those two bookstores, I came home with three books and three journals. One book I will start when I get up: The Writer's Book of Wisdom: 101 Rules For Mastering Your Craft. I liked the layout and I thought it had some handy points to be made. I look forward to breaking into that. I surprised myself in my Morning Pages when I wrote down a few ideas for fiction stories I want to try; one story is a fanfic and the other is an original piece. I don't want to tackle those now, but at some point later. It doesn't seem to take a lot of effort to brainstorm for writing fiction. Did I really forget so easily? I also plan to go back to an original story idea I was playing with. I'll be brainstorming on that today, I think. The other two pieces are much shorter while this one is going to last a little while. But a piece is a piece. And if I complete one, more the better. It has been ages since I have ever completed any pieces. I don't make myself. And, sometimes, I don't even let myself start. But I know that you won't accomplish anything if you don't start. If you start something, finish it, then maybe it will work, or maybe it won't. But if you don't even start something, it won't work. It's that simple. I would like to give myself more of a chance. Heck, maybe I'll get something out of the very attempt of trying.
There was a book that I was looking at that I didn't pick up today that I might at a later point. I remember it is the companion book to Write. but other than that...I don't remember the author, even. I've checked Amazon.com. The writer is Karen E. Peterson and the companion book is The Write Type: Discover Your True Writer's Identity and Create a Customized Writing Plan. There is one exercise Peterson had where you write the answer to a question with your non-dominant hand. I imagine it is to see if your brain hemispheres think differently. I have read that they do think independently of one another. And if there is a disconnect, then you would have two distinct personalities vying for control of one body. I think I might get something from my right hand that I hadn't even thought I would think about. Maybe something like that one style of writing, like...it isn't ghost writing. But the idea is that your tapping into a presence that isn't your own. I've always been scared about trying that. Scared about what would turn out, so I haven't even tried that. I've seen a book somewhere on that too, but I didn't give it a great deal of thought. Maybe in the future I'll check that out, but I have enough on my plate right now than to get into that too. One change at a time.
And another book I want to check out is Fear of Writing. This writer seems quite accessible to readers. She also holds monthly 10K days. Her next two will be the 14th and 23rd. I will definitely be signing up for both of those. I am not going to turn down a shot at 20k words in just two days. I want to get as much writing done as possible in the least amount of time possible. I know I don't have to work that hard, but I have gone so long not asking very much of myself that I want to change that.
There is indeed a method to my madness for wanting to read so many books about the writing process. It is partly for myself, yes, but it is partly for my wanting to make a stockpile of knowledge that I can share with other people. I want to be a writing adviser. I want to help free other people like me, or those who have words they want to get out and don't know that they are writers yet. With enough time, determination, and practice I think people can achieve something. If you're not--this has been in my personal experience--there is a block somewhere. I was able to block the learning for a foreign language and of mathematical concepts because neither carried much interest to me. If I saw no practical application in something, or I questioned my need to know something, I put a block up. Now, I reacted actively to teachers who made their subject interesting. These teachers who shared their passions with their students.
Passion I can relate with, even if it is a passion that I do not share. I am thinking of my 8th grade math teacher Mrs. Oishi. She was a very kind woman and she encouraged her students to try math in many different ways. One way involved creating a mobile of geometrical shapes out of materials of our choosing. I went with black electric tape because I thought they would looked cool. I had fun with this. Then, consider Mrs. Geisler, my geometry teacher in 11th grade. She groaned on about theorems and proofs. And I was given no valid reason why any of this mattered. If I saw no value in what I was learning, I discarded it away. In Mrs. Geisler's case, the woman herself was more interesting than the course she taught. She wore drab clothes and had long brown hair that was close to her head. She was in her mid-forties, at least by appearance. I wasn't sure in age, though. I was mildly convinced that she was years older. Not because of anything she had done, but because there was a picture of a woman in 1940s clothes in my US history textbook who looked exactly like Mrs. Geisler. I am talking frighteningly so. There was a point during class where I took out my US history text and compared the picture to Mrs. Geisler. The resemblance was scary uncanny. Mrs. Geisler seemed to be proud of her children, or at least of their accomplishments. She had these large, blown up pictures of her kids taking part in their hobby: performance horse back writing. Imagine, teenage kids, dressed in spandex costumes, standing on the backs of horses. There were pictures like that on the walls of her classroom. Mrs. Geisler was not the only Geisler who taught at my school; her husband also taught math. So, I imagine Mrs. Geisler was quite passionate about her children's hobbies, but she never mentioned them to her class, never brought attention to the strange photos. I wish she had. That would have made her more interesting.
Thinking back through a lot of my teachers, I have something not related to the class that I associated a lot of them with.
Mr. Prebble, my mass communications professor - he was a fan of the Oregon Ducks, failed from a bunch of colleges before he settled down, used to smoke in the classroom (this was in the 70s), was missing half of his middle finger (I never got the courage to ask what had happened)
Mr. Condino, my econ teacher in high school - a lot of his clothing was sports-related and he was a BIG fan of Manchester United
Mr. Riley, my sixth grade math teacher - he was obsessed with Disney, particularly Mickey Mouse, and had a Mickey embroidered on every one of his polo shirts, not to mention on pictures around his room
Mr. (Edward Everett) Hambley (III), my seventh grade English teacher - the brother of Barbara Hambley, always wore tweed (maybe not, but he was definitely "tweedy"), had a poster of Charles Barkley on his wall
Mrs. Carolyn Payton, my sixth grade science, English, and PE teacher - Canadian, a daughter of "mercenaries" (actually missionaries, but I proudly proclaimed to my parents that her parents had been mercenaries, thinking they were the same word), introduced me to Yanni with "Felitsa" (she would play music and have us write what we were thinking. I ended up telling a story about lovers, a dancer, and a crystal castle on a cliff. Hearing it now, I can still picture what I saw then), put socks on her golden retrievers so they wouldn't mess up her carpet, bungee jumped
Ms. Grace, my tenth grade English teacher - painted furniture with odd colors and designs; according to a fellow student, she used to get high in trees
It was always the little details that meant a great deal to me. I had one professor--granted, he was at a disadvantage because he was teaching statistics and I wasn't interested in that at all--that had nothing. He was blank. He was an older Asian gentleman and didn't know English very well. Not many of the students in my class understood what he was teaching. When we would ask him for clarification, he would just repeat what he had said that we hadn't understood. I was convinced that he was an autobot who only cared about math. He made no mention to a life outside of the classroom. I thought this might be a culture thing. For me, it's crucial for me to make some connection with the teacher to help my learning process. He made that impossible. I'm proud of my C+ that I got in that class. It got me the necessary credit I needed in order to transfer.
There is one English teacher I heard about who knew that people have different styles of learning. For this reason, she would bring objects to help engage her students, such as for the kinesthetic learners who needed to do something with their hands. I found math lecture had a way of getting my creative juices going to write prose poetry.
I don't know if this was a memory trick I adapted or if it is a trait of the kind of learner that I am (kinesthetic and audio visual), but I found that simply by writing down notes, I was digesting the information that was being expressed. When it came time to review the notes I had hand written, I found myself remembering a great deal of what I had written to the point of reviewing was unnecessary. This ability surprised me the first time I found that I had it. I didn't realize this until I was at UCR. Maybe it cropped up after my exams in anthropology and psychology--I had to memorize how to spell words, the functions of various things, the placement of bones, etc. I think anthropology did in fact changed me. That's the first, and one of the only, exams that I pulled all the stops to study. I even did flashcards, and I never do flashcards. But I was serious about that class.
I miss the challenges of school, the daily routine. There was safety in that, in expectations. And aren't syllabi great for that? It's like "here is the run down of all of my expectations. Follow this and you'll do fine." Now, it's not quite like that because you don't know how the professor is going to grade, but it's darn close. The teachers aren't against you, as I think some students think. I learned how to get what I needed from the system. One of the best pieces of advice I heard from my grandmother's experience in college, told to me by my mom, was that college is about line waiting and red tape. If you can face both of those things, then you'll get through college. I also found myself that in order to get the answer I wanted, I had to have some idea what the answer was. I think I had some hyper-awareness going on in college. I was keyed into things better during that time. I really want some of the things I knew/did during that time back. I think I might become a better person if I do. I really liked being Jen the student. That's why I like being a student of life. Learning is a life-long process; it doesn't stop when you graduate school.
I will start the Artist's Way tomorrow. I'm going to figure out my word count at the end of the week. I'd like to have about 7,000 words. I'm not going to worry about word count, though. I'm just going to write.
I think I may do a photograph a day, too. For today's photograph then, here is the aftermath of the 2010 Rose Parade: