workshop deadlines

Lest ye forget, if you're story is being workshopped in session two (Virginia, Khristie, Mark), you have to give copies out to everyone week one. That is, Tuesday week-two-ers need to hand out stories in class this coming Tuesday, Thursday week-tw0-ers need to hand out stories this coming Thursday. And, once again, Alexander-Leake are Tuesday people, Lindquist-Waid, you're Thursday people. And don't forget to read and mark up and write a note to the people going this week, y'all, it's really important.

boring teacher-y stuff

Please check your UMass email (I sent to a class list generated by spire) for reiteration of workshop instructions. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

For those of you who weren't sure what that other picture was of, here's a pretty good hint. And here's another.

p.s. no office hours tomorrow (weds, 9/whateveritis) me sicker still, ugh. Thursday I will be back with bells on!

Musings of a Writer-Actress

Acting was my first love. It was there for me when I was that painfully shy kid in elementary school, it was there for me after I broke up with my first boyfriend, it’s still there for me now as a relatively well-adjusted young adult. Throughout my childhood and majority-of-teenagerdom, I never really had a problem getting cast in the shows I wanted. It sounds terribly jaded of me, but I was one of the few kids in my school that took acting seriously and actually worked to not-suck. However, I find myself in recent months questioning my abilities as an actor. Am I as good as I like to think myself? Am I simply a two-bit character actor? What makes a good actor?

My first semester freshman year at UMass, I was cast in a show. I was the Third Witch in Macbeth. I remember being simply elated. It proved to me I was good, I could act. My acting in shows growing up wasn’t just a case of directors latching onto simply the faintest glimmer, and glimmer alone, of talent. I was good enough to get into a college production. Macbeth turned out to be, quite possibly, one of the best experiences an incoming college freshman could have. I loved everyone in the cast, and it was through the show that I made all of my closest friends.

However, since Macbeth, I haven’t been cast anywhere else. Given, there have only been two shows I’ve auditioned for since then, and I know I can’t be cast in everything, but my worry is still there. Recently, I was called back for a second audition, which any actor will tell you is an awesome thing; it means the director thinks he sees something there. I am not so sure though. I have the faintest suspicion that the only reason I was called back was because the show contained a “creepy” role; Death. I was marvelously creepy in Macbeth. People came up to me afterwards and told me that I honestly scared them. They know I can do creepy. While everyone else was called back for two, three, even four roles, Death was the only one I was called back for. I think I’ve become their go-to girl for creepy. I’ve been reduced to a character actor.

I’m not sure that this should surprise me. I mean, I make certain choices with my appearance that might constitute type-casting. My personality might also lead to this. I’m a regular 19-year-old girl, but I do have an off-beat sense of humour, and I sometimes revel in creeping others out. I know this. I accept this. I had just always thought that my acting abilities spanned a wider range than “that mysterious, creepy, possibly not human” role. Now maybe I think I’m wrong. Maybe creepy is all I can do, and this bothers me.

I want to be an actress. I want to be that lady up on stage that inspires such a reaction out of a crowded room. I want people to laugh when I laugh, to cry when I cry. Am I good enough to inspire such a reaction? Even if I am, I suspect that if I succeed I will become that token famous alternative chick. I’ll be the next Christina Ricci or Fairuza Balk with her tattoos and weird piercings. I think I might have to work on being alright with that, should I ever achieve success.

I did my senior project in high school on acting. I remember my mentor told me something during one of my meetings, something which has always stuck with me. She was working with this kid, an actor, with emotional problems. His emotional problems caused him to be stuck in a rut, acting-wise. It was her job to help him out of it. She told me that you can’t be comfortable as someone else onstage until you’re comfortable with yourself offstage. I still remember that. This might be my problem. I may very well be stuck in this giant Catch-22 cycle. I don’t get cast in anything because I’m not comfortable with my abilities as an actor, and it shows, and since it shows that I’m not comfortable with my abilities as an actor, I don’t get cast.

I’m really not sure what will break this cycle, but I need to find it, or it’s curtains for my acting career (bad pun is bad).

On Feel-good Feelings

A friend once described me as "crying over milk that hasn't even spilled yet". I wish I could protest that that was exaggeration. But it isn't. It is so apt that it is even on my Facebook page. And we all know how important that makes it. We always, as students, when reading a book or a story, whatever it may be, try to figure out something about the author's life to put that piece of writing in some kind of personal context. Here's my personal context: My boyfriend is in basic training for the army reserves, and we have spent 37 minutes on the phone total since he's been gone (nearly 2 months), and I get his letters when Umass mail deigns to deliver them, and he gets mine when there isn't an army-imposed embargo for some delightful reason like, "one of you might get a distressing letter from home and since we're working with live fire we're worried about suicide".

He called Sunday. It's funny how when you have to give an oral report for 10 minutes it seems like eternity, but when you only get 17 minutes to talk to the one person you really want to talk to it goes by in a flash. After we hung up, I was so mad at myself for not asking why his voice sounded kind of different. Why did his voice sound different? I asked myself at 1:30 in the morning and again today starting at 9:30 AM. Is it some cold that the army is ignoring? Will it turn into a flu? Is it pneumonia and he just has no idea? Was he just trying to sound all tough with all of the other soldiers and drill sargeants around him? If it were just him and me would his very deep voice have taken on that sweeter quality he sometimes gets for me? Is it allergies? I have claritin in my purse, but what use is that when you just aren't here?! And I forgot to ask in the letter I already sealed, are you sick? is it just that you're not used to the southern flora? were you trying not to cry?
But last night, amid the worry, amid waiting for the glass of milk to be put a little unevenly on the edge, I was looking up tree kangaroos. I had sent him a national geographic picture of one, asking, "isn't this cute?" Upon my further research into "what exactly are they" I realized that there are ten different kinds, all fabulously adorable. Distractingly so. And for a moment, I had a feel-good feeling. And forgot.

Brian

Have any of you ever not known how to spell a simple word that 2 minutes ago you could have? I was sitting down today thinking of how to spell a word, a simple two syllable word. I sometimes think of a word too hard and double guess myself or focus on the punctuation too deep.

I knew there was something wrong when even the almighty spell-check didn’t even know what I was saying. I sat, thinking. How can I not spell this word…I can say it, I can visually see what it is, an 8 year old could spell it.

Five minutes go by. I have already bitten off 3 nails and hit my keyboard thinking of this word that will be the death of me. “Tollar”, nope. How can I not spell this little word! I will not look it up, I am smarter than this. “Tallar”…fuck you I say to my brain and I start to sweat thinking that this mystery will never be solved. I yell to my roommate the word and ask him how to spell it. He laughs and I slam the door and start to pace. Is this possible? Will my brain ever snap out of this world of thought?

This word is even in one of my favorite movies, I can see the cover, there’s Aragon, Saruman, Froto, Gandalf…how do you spell that word!? I should see it but its not there. “Tohller”…nope.

Wait, hold on. I tell my mind to stop right there at this new thought that struck my head like a smack to the back of my head. I am thinking of ‘Twin’ and ‘Two’ before the word. I am seeing two, or twin, ‘l’s. This is incorrect. Your trying to fool me aren’t you Brian the Brain? “Towar”…close. TOWERS! I yell it at my Family Guy poster in my room.

I hate Brian sometimes.

sea oak, fyi

This delicate Rhodophyte is composed of blades whose margins are deeply lobed giving them an appearance similar to that of an oak leaf.

how far to stray

One of you all emailed to ask me just how far she could stray from the original nonfiction 911 piece - could it be almost totally different? Yes yes yes yes yes. So long as you were moved to write the fiction by the nonfiction you wrote and the stuff it brought up from your gooey chocolate centers, goferit! This photo is an example of someone starting with something and ending up with something very different from what he had planned to shoot.

Michael Swanwick

I ran across Carol Emshwiller just after she finished writing Ledoyt and she said she was in mourning, that all these people she had lived with for years were suddenly gone and it felt as if they'd all died. "Doesn't it feel that way to you, too, when you finish a novel?" she asked.

I thought about it. "No," I decided. "It feels like all these characters who have suffered under my persecuting hand have been set free. I imagine them running joyfully in all directions, as hard and fast as they can, so that I can never catch them and put them in another book again."

-M.S.

Holy Introduction Batman

Hello all,
My name is Bill and this is my introduction. I play video games a lot.
There was this one time I wrote an introduction and I couldn't think of anything so I wrote this.

Well thats about it folks
see you in class

p.s.
I do other things besides play video games, I read books (mostly sci-fi fantasy and horror, but I am open to anything that interests me), I write (mostly like the stuff i read), I play football and am an avid sports fan( thats a lie), I watch movies ( I mostly like movies that are good, but bad movies are pretty cool too), and I listen to music( mostly heavy metal, anything that has good guitar).

On Divine Intervention and Mustard Stains

Hi everyone, it's Angela. It's taken me a while to get on this because at first I thought I was once again proving I missed the technological window, but apparently I just missed out on the email.

Wednesday last week, I got grab and go from Franklin DC and decided to sit in that little area with the benches surrounding the plot of grass near the greenhouse. They didn't have any bagels left when I went, and I was heartbroken. So, I grabbed a turkey sandwich and a couple of mustard packets. Mustard packets are dangerous. Mustard in general is quite dangerous. It stains you, your fingers, your clothes, sometimes without you even noticing. The worst is going to some place like disco bowling and when they turn on the black light lo and behold, you have a mustard stain on your khaki pants. I even remember watching this movie, "Notorious", a Hitchcock with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. In it, Ingrid Bergman shares a picnic with Gregory Peck and is found out by the mustard stain on her finger.

To continue, I sat on the bench, opened the mustard packet, and it split in two! I paused, frozen completely. I stared down at my pants. Nothing. I looked at my shoes. Nothing. My shirt, My hair, nothing! There was one large blob of mustard on the ground in front of me, but I was saved! It was amazing. It was proof of something, I'm not sure what. It couldn't have been luck, I'm never that lucky. Something for all of your brilliant minds to ponder...

Late introduction holla!

Hi, I'm Lindsey, and I've missed our last two classes due to being felled with an angry, angry cold. Way to make a first impression, right?

At any rate, I'm a rather short girl with rather short hair. I'm another vegetarian in the class (yay!), and I'm a huge fan of all things cute. I watch entirely too much TV, and I've recently developed a big thing for vintage books.

I write very short fiction. My longest piece so far was actually only seven typed pages! Working on length is a big issue for me, because I really do want to write a full-length novel, which I've been working on in small snippets. I recently went through a writing dry spell over the summer, so I'm excited to be getting back into it.

And now I've run out of things to say. See what I told you about my length thing?

Readings to attend at least one of

Gang,

There are the only two fiction readings in the Visiting Writers Series this fall (see bottom of this post), and I'd like you to attend a fiction reading. Amherst Books, though, lists many other readings on their website, several fiction ones for October. In order to spare yourselves the last minute panic, please consider going to a reading (if you recall, you all have to attend one and write a short response to it) before, say 11/15. You can find Amherst Books' October listings here and November ones here.

UMass Readings:

The Visiting Writers Series at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (some events held at the University Gallery, some at memorial hall - see schedule is
pleased to announce the Fall 2007 schedule of readings. For more than 40 years,
the VWS has brought outstanding poets and writers to the university campus for
public readings of new work.

Joanna Scott
Sunday, October 4, 8pm, University Gallery
JOANNA SCOTT is the author of seven novels, including Liberation, Tourmaline,
Make Believe, The Manikin, and Arrogance, and two collections of short fiction,
Various Antidotes and Everybody Loves Somebody. Her books have been finalists
for the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN-Faulkner, and the LA Times Book Award. Awards
include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim
Fellowship, the Ambassador Book Award from the English-Speaking Union, and the
Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the
Roswell Smith Burrows Professor of English at the University of Rochester.

Sam Michel
Thursday, November 8, 8 PM at University Gallery
Sam Michel is the author of a short-story collection, Under the Light, and a
novel, Big Dogs and Flyboys, to be published this October. He has taught at
Phillips Academy, Andover, and in the graduate writing programs at the
University of Florida and the University of Massachusetts. He divides his time
between Massachusetts and Montana, where he writes and builds rock walls.

your authors

Okey-dokers, gang, here's a list of some of the writers you listed as faves (with focus on the ones I'd never heard of - if you'd rather bring in a page of Whitman or Shakespeare or someone not on the list below, that's great too.)). Please bring in a page photocopied 23 times for us all to read. You can bring more than one page if you like. Try to find a page that exemplifies the author's work and what you like about it and be able to show and tell us about him/her. If you're really and true too broke to make 23 copies, see me. If more than one person brings in the same author, that's cool too. Have these for next tuesday, 9/25. Thanks. Here they are (please pardon any misspelling from my misreading of your handwriting), and I've added a couple that some of you mentioned in class that you've been reading:

Michael Swanwick
Greg Egan
Francesca Lia Block
James Howe
Frank Miller
Tod Williams
Robert Charles Wilson
Neil Gaiman
Jumpa Lahiri
Terry Goodkind
Douglas Adams
Robert Frost
Frank McCourt
Carson McCullers
Kurt Vonnegut
Frank O'Hara
Aldous Huxley
e. e. cummings
George Orwell
Mark Doty
J. K. Rowling
Charles Bukowski
James Tate (Umass faculty member, fyi)
Edgar Allen Poe
Kazuo Ishiguro
Emily Dickinson
Amy Hempl
Raymond Chandler
Michael Chabon
Jeffrey Eugenides
Salman Rushdie
Mark Spitz (?)
Chris Bachelder (UMass faculty member, fyi)

various and sundry

Emily emailed me and asked what some of my favorite books/authors were, seeing as you all told me yours. It was a surprisingly hard question. As I get older, I find that I like different authors, different movies, different music, different books, for various purposes, for various ways in which they inform me, so it's harder to call any one "favorite" any more. That said, here, somewhat edited/expanded, is what I pulled out of my hat in response to Emily:

I love Haruki Murakami (Japanese, contemporary). I do like Raymond
Chandler quite a bit. Just read a book by David Mitchell called 'Cloud Atlas'
that was pretty darn great. I must admit that I'm both a a George Saunders and Lydia Davis fan. Raymond Carver is one of the great short story writers ever. I don't read much scifi but I've loved a couple of Phillip K. Dick novels. There's a slim little book by the actor/playwright Wallace Shawn (see photo - you may know him from "The Princess Bride" or as a Ferengi, but he's also one of our greatest living playwrights) called 'The Fever' that's a great political monologue. Charles Bukowski is not the greatest writer and he's arguably a pig but I've read and really got a lot from his stuff. That first Dave Eggers book, 'A Heartbreaking Work . . . " I love and hate and love and hate. I've read two Ursula Le Guin books that I thought were terrific, but it's been a while, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Didn't mention this in my email to Emily, but Flannery O'Connoor is another incredible story writer, sez me. I could go on all day, but there's a start. Oh, there's also poetry. If you think you hate poetry, read Frank O'Hara or a Bukowski poem or two. Robert Lax is also a strange and wonderful poet.

***

As for me, in terms of introduction, well, you can go here (jamiebergerwords.com).

You'll find a cute little book about my dog, some journalism, and some fiction and nonfiction that's, well, a bit "adult" to be sharing with my college students, but I'm guessing some of you have already looked and it's in the public domain so there you go. Please, though, let's leave my work out of the class and the blog, okay? If you really want to respond or ask a question about something of mine, drop me an email. I'll bring that dog book into class sometime.

The Old Roll of Toilet Paper

A (partly humorous, hopefully) draft of a response to The Old Dictionary. Reading it again, the story struck me as callous. So I hyperbolized. But some of this is pretty much quoted from the book in a different context.




I have an old roll of toilet paper, about 15 years old, that I need for something that I was just making. Its pieces are brownish in the middle and brittle, and very large in the fashion of toilet paper from the early 90s. I risk tearing them in half when I part them from their kin. There aren't very many left now. Each time that I use it, I have to ask myself if I have enough. Should I leave the house? Should I get more, or should I wait and use the rest? What if I forgot to get more? Then I'd have to use it, and there would be no more left. No more comforting net. No more last-ditch backup. When I took it off the shelf today, I realized that it was more precious to me than my own son. Each time I handle it, I take the greatest care to use as little as possible. What struck me today was that even though my son should be more important to me than this roll of toilet paper, I can't say that each time I deal with my son, my primary concern is not to unroll him too much. My primary concern is almost always something else, for instance to make sure that he makes it back to the car with the alcohol fast enough because I'm too drunk to be sold any, or to quiet him down because I have a headache. If he gets harmed in the process, that doesn't seem to matter to me as much as getting the thing done, whatever it is. Why don't I treat my son at least as well as the old roll of toilet paper? Maybe it is because I can see how much toilet paper is left. When I snap off a piece, it is unmistakably diminished. My son does not look diminished, cowering in a corner or nursing the dog's wounds. Certainly his body is weak and brittle, and is easily harmed by me. I have bruised his body, and sometimes it doesn't heal the same. It's pretty obvious to me when I have hurt his feelings, but it is harder for me to care. He usually seems to mend, and since I can't see them, out of sight, out of mind. Maybe I treat the toilet paper better because it makes no demands on me, and doesn't fight back. Hold on a second.

I, I, I, me me me, I me I.

That's better. Maybe I am kinder to things that don't seem to react to me. But in fact my house plants do not seem to react much and yet I don't treat them very well. They demand light, but it hurts my eyes. Their other demand is water. Vodka has water, doesn't it? They usually die pretty quickly. Most of the ones left look pretty strange. Some of them were nice-looking when I bought them but are strange looking now because I haven't taken very good care of them. Is there any other reason to like a house plant, if it is not nice-looking? Am I kinder to something that is nice-looking? I'm sure I could treat a plant well even if I didn't like its looks... despite the fact that I haven't treated any of my plants well thus far. I should be able to treat my son well when he's not looking good or when he keeps talking incessantly about school and annoying me. I treat the dog better than him, even though the dog is more active and more demanding. It is simple to give him food and water. I make my son take him on walks, though not often enough. He seems sad all the time. I have also often slapped his face, though the animal rights groups told me never to hit him anywhere near the head, or maybe they said anywhere at all. I'm not even sure I'm not neglecting the dog when he is asleep. Maybe I am kinder to things that are not alive. I honestly can't really think of anything that I'm kind to, though, other than that roll of toilet paper.

The math guy's introduction

Hi everybody. I'll try to keep this short, but I doubt it will be.

I guess I should probably introduce myself as well. I'm the one with glasses, short dark brown hair, and I've walked in late at least once a week so far (I'm trying to get better with that, I swear). Obivously, having somebody with my background is a bit odd. Let's face it, math majors spend most of their time doing homework or working on a program that will crack some impossible theorem that nobody outside the math department has ever heard of. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I hate programming, so I don't exactly fit the mold of my own department either.

So, let's move on to something more substantial about me. I'm a bit of a gaming nerd. By a bit, I mean I'd play them for 6 or 7 hours a day if I didn't have other things to do. None of WOW or any other online RPG though, I'd rather pay for a game once then pay monthly. I'm a Futurama and Family Guy fan, but the show's steadily getting worse (they started losing it in the third season, but there are still flashes of brilliance). As for music, I like rock, but I can be fairly picky. As in, I listen to Crossfade, Hinder, Three Days Grace, Hoobastank, and a bunch of others, but I can't stand the Red Hot Chilli Peppers or the Foo Fighters. It's weird, yes.

Oh, shameless plug for an RSO. I'm a member of the UMass Shotokan Karate Club. Our website is here but it hasn't been updated for a while. If anyone's interested in training, let me know, I'll go through a little explanation of when/where we train and such.

Now that that's out of the way, I can (breifly, I hope) explain why the hell I'm in this class. I've been writing on and off since the start of high school. Through all that time, I only have 4 stories I'm will to admit exist (only one of which is even remotely worth reading), and a bunch of dicarded ideas that couldn't get off the ground. All of these are fairly long (25+ pages, single spaced), which is probably carrying over from the fact that I played Final Fantasy a lot. I still do, which probably doesn't help the process.

Well, I think my ramblings have taken up enough space for now. I'll see you guys in class. Who knows? Maybe I'll be on time.

on tendinitis and speech recognition

I don't mean to capitalize on the space here, so I'll be as brief as possible.

Some of you might be interested in trying speech recognition because you can't type fast. I wouldn't recommend it.

As is evidenced in the post below, writing with speech recognition is not easy. Even with an expensive microphone and a fast computer, it basically consists of the following:

1. Say a sentence fragment
2. Wait for the software to recognize it
3. Read over your sentence fragment to make sure that no errors were made. I get errors at least once or twice a paragraph, sometimes nine or ten times.
4. If any errors exist, correct them by speaking, which also takes time
5. Repeat until you get a full sentence.

Even in an environment free of distractions, it can be difficult to hold not just the point of the current paragraph and sentence in your mind, but the conception you have of the flow and the tone and the language of it, and the way it all fits together. This can be seen in my post below: editing could have fixed many of the issues with disorganization, but editing is pretty darn difficult too. In some writing tasks, it's simply not worth the effort past a certain point.

That said, I'd like to warn you all. You don't want tendinitis. If you're feeling pain in your wrist or hand as you type or write or do anything really, don't ignore it. There are things you can do -- an ergonomic desk and keyboard, better writing practices, etc. -- that can help you avoid it. In many cases, tendinitis is life long. For a few months after I first injured myself, I couldn't really even take care of myself. It's not something that you can work through; working through it eventually leads to a type of paralysis of the hands. If you have any questions at all on the matter, from what you can do to prevent it to what to do if you suspect you're developing it, please feel free to ask me.

Trust me when I say that you don't want it.

Novelizing

So I've been writing a novel.

I don't know how many of you have tried to write a novel. This is probably my third attempt; it's the first one with any likelihood of actually succeeding.

Writing a novel is hard. Unless you're Jack Kerouac, sitting down and pounding out a novel stream of consciousness, an incredible amount of work goes into planning and researching and in my case filling in some of the blanks... to borrow a metaphor from class, how the mattress gets from point A to point B.

When I read a novel that someone's written, I feel like I've been given a large cross-section of their diary. So much of who you are goes into what you write. Sometimes when I'm writing even a short length story, I get hung up on what it says about what's going on in my head. I want it to make sense to me -- to be something that I feel not just as an idea, as a possibility, or as a story, but as a reality. That's the only way I ever really feel comfortable disseminating my writing. I know that this is something that I need to get over.

This one has been brewing for at least two years. It started as just the kernel of an idea. I'd always been fascinated by superheroes, but found their portrayals generally lacking. With a few exceptions such as The Watchmen, there seemed to have been few attempts to give them a "serious literary treatment." I in no way mean any offense to comic books. I'm just saying that they didn't tell the types of stories that I wanted to hear about superheroes.

So let's take an analog for Superman. Let's take an ordinary Joe -- in this case, an ordinary Jonah -- with all his biases, baggage, and problems. With all of who he is outside of his superpowers. And when we give him those superpowers, let's have him not get caught up in platitudes like "with great power comes great responsibility." After all, his problems don't suddenly cease and he doesn't suddenly become different because he gains these powers. This is a poor example, but I hope you follow me. Humans in essence are not "made to be" happy; when we find happiness and contentment for too long, we inevitably develop feelings of discontent and restlessness. We always find problems, no matter how small, to focus our lives on. It is a natural and perhaps necessary part of life. Simply being able to do almost anything should certainly be no different.

My favorite science fiction has always been the kind that uses its science to explore and illuminate the human soul. In "From Where You Dream," Butler talks about how you should write from the white hot, burning center. He says that you should only write from there. Personally, I have to disagree to an extent. That's where this story comes from -- 2 years of thought, ideas, meaning, and experiences, two years of my life spent burning up inside over the characters, the settings, the themes and plot and narrative and tone and meaning and everything. Instead of writing directly from that white hot place, I've extracted and distilled it into its purest form: what I want it to be. And because of all this planning and thought, what I want it to be and what it is shaping up to be is infinitely closer to my white-hot core. It's closer to becoming a reality like I discussed above.

As a further point of disagreement, what if some of the meaning you derive from life comes from analyzation and abstraction? After all, we make choices about our lives. Emotions are not the only things that inform these choices. In Teranesia by Greg Egan, one of the key themes was finding continuity in life. The main character hears about a mathematical method for plotting a straight line with no reference except for your own path. This is then tied profoundly into the story and theme of continuity in what I hope are pretty obvious ways.

I'd like to end this with two observations by successful authors.

Someone (I forget who) wrote in his introduction to one of the Nebula Awards compilations of the 80s -- I believe it to be the 11th, but I may be incorrect -- that extroverted science-fiction writers tend to write somewhat introverted novels that are full of thought and ideas and not as much action, and vice versa. I grew up a deep introvert -- deep in the sense that I was extremely introverted, not necessarily claiming that I had any more substance than average. Now, while still an introvert, I can sometimes straddle the fence. I've had to struggle some to find the correct balance for the story I'm trying to tell. How do you all feel about this observation? Do you find that you, yourself, tend to write characters that are extroverted where you are not, and vice versa?

Terry Goodkind wrote, "if you have a message, send a letter. If you have a story, write a book." This is one of my favorite pieces of general writing advice. How do you feel about it?

Ciao

Hey all. Jumping on the bandwagon of introductions here: I'm Grace, the one with the black glasses (they're green on the inside!) and hair somewhere in the blonde range of colors. You may or may not be able to recognize me from that description--but my name will presumably come up in class at some point, so it's all good.

About me... I call myself a writer, though I don't think I write as much as I really should. Even when I spend what ought to be a satisfactory amount of time writing (read: one part writing, three parts staring out the window waiting for words to appear) I still berate myself for not being productive enough.

I'm also a reader! I'm one of those people who dislikes reading more than one book at a time; something about jumping between multiple storylines bugs me. The last book I read was "The Eyre Affair" by Jasper Fforde, which looked promising but didn't live up to my expectations. It's the first in a series; I wasn't sufficiently hooked to want to read the rest. I tend to have favorite books rather than favorite authors, and some (though not all) of those books are The Stolen Child (Keith Donohue), Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), The Thirteenth Tale (Diane Setterfield), The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini) and The Raw Shark Texts (Steven Hall). And I'm a Potter fan--one who was severely disappointed by the seventh book, but a fan nonetheless!

I don't watch much TV on the whole, but I adore House, and have recently become addicted to Dexter. I enjoyed Lost up until the end of season two; the latest season was somewhat lackluster. The writers are clearly not well-acquainted with the concept of plot continuity.

I like coffee, music, good food, earrings, my two-year-old PowerBook G4, proper English grammar, and foreign languages. I dislike hot weather, close-mindedness, and having lots of spare change.

hi

i'm sarah. i'm probably most recognizable by the jangly bracelets and the curly blonde hair with its own zipcode.

i have a radio show on WMUA on saturday nights from 11pm - 1am, which nobody listens to, because a. about twelve people listen to college radio to begin with, and b. eleven of them have better things to do on saturday nights. so if you're ever sick or nursing a broken leg or under house arrest on a saturday night...you know.

i just finished reading U.S.! by chris bachelder, and now i'm reading misfortune by wesley stace. i recommend both.

currently, i'm pissed because i can't get tv-links (http://www.tv-links.co.uk) to work. i don't have a tv, because 9 times out of 10, i hate watching tv. this is really inconvenient for that one time where all i want to do is watch tv. which is now. so if anybody else does have a tv, i suggest you spring for the fancy channels, because showtime has this new show called "californication" which seems totally promising. david duchovny is this surly, womanizing guy with writer's block, and if the pilot is any indication, it's completely awesome.

uh. that's it, i guess. see you in class!

What up?

to follow suit with Dave, I'm digitally introducing myself as well. I'm Nellie, the sort-of-redhead goth chick with the lip-ring. I'm pretty cool, I guess.

So, some stuff about me...I'm a pretty gigantic nerd. Like, I know most people say "oh, I'm such a nerd", but no, I mean it. I play video games, I costume, I LARP, I watch artsy movies, I make witty (I hope) literature references in everyday conversation. Maybe they're not witty, but I still make them. I also listen to a crazy wide array of music. Like, right now, I'm listening to Ray Charles, before that, Pentaphobe, sort of industrial tribal bellydancing music.

Right now, I'm reading Alan Moore and Dave Lloyd's V for Vendetta and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

Also, favourite painting ever...It's called Le Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images) by Rene Magritte, a Belgian surrealist. I plan on getting another one of his paintings done as my second tattoo once I get money.

Introduction

Hello all. Dave (the tall bearded tendinitis guy) here. Just digitally introducing myself.

EDIT: A little more about me. I'm a vegetarian. I'm from around here, but my heart is back in New York City, where I lived and worked as a professional software developer. I got tendinitis lifting radiators.

I invite you to my Facebook (just got it a few days ago so nothing interesting yet)

What used to be a very inspirational writing blog for me - Hitherby Dragons and its main page
Free office software to write in roughly equivalent of microsoft office but FREE - OpenOffice

Right now I'm reading "House of Leaves" by Mark Z. Danielewski and recommending "The Iron Dragon's Daughter" by Michael Swanwick.

Finally, a lot of people don't know this, but you can usually write your favorite authors. You should use your own judgment, but I've done it a few times, and gotten nothing but good responses.

welcome writers!

Jamie's Fall 2007 creative writing class, his is our blog. Write something. Or don't. For instance, about "Sea Oak" or anything else we've talked about, or anything that's on your mind going into a workshop. Or anything you struggle with or take great joy in about writing. Or about Brittney's comeback performance or how you're a secret Yankees fan. A secret Brittney fan. Anything, really. Show us a picture. Don't be shy. Or do. It's up to you. This piece, above, about the inert bodies, is a piece of art by Jenny Holzer. She makes visual art out of words. Her work is in all the big museums. Is it art? Literature? Neither? Both? Is she being sincere? Ironic? Both? These are not questions you have to answer. You don't have to do anything, it's your blog. Welcome.