Category: Writing

Writing is hard

This was Andrew’s conclusion last night. More precisely, it was: Writing a short story is hard. But he did it.

To cap off the mythology unit in English, his teacher had everyone write their own original myth (emphasis on original–apparently, she’s read many a variation on Harry Potter, Star Wars, and so on).

Andrew came up with: The Adventures of Gulix.

It has prophecy, an orphan hero, a wise old mentor/sage, fiery death, sword battles, skeleton armies, river journey, wolves with diamond teeth (now that’s original), and romance.

All in 1,250 words.

He was proud, but realistic, said to me, “You can tell a kid wrote it, can’t you?”

And I told him it was a really good story for a kid. And he knows to do things I’ve seen many an adult writer not know or understand. His writing has really improved this year (and yes, I’ll be sending his English teacher a thank you note).

Plus, his story contained lots of terrific action verbs. Andrew is all about the verbs. Of course, with all that fiery death, sword battles, how could he not be?

But you want to know about the romance, right? After the epic battle with Hades, Gulix comes to and sees the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen before. He asks her name (it’s Persephone). Apparently satisfied with this answer, he goes back to sleep.

I’m going to have to figure out how to work that scenario into one of my stories (minus all the fiery death and skeleton armies, of course).

Corralling cats and words

Yes, it’s a commercial, but it’s still pretty funny (and kid safe–my kids loved it). It occurs to me that everyone else has already seen this except for me, since I don’t watch television.

In any case, enjoy!

 And by popular (?) demand, I’ll post that 490-word sentence, but below the cut. Click through if you’re curious/bored. And yes, it’s one big fat paragraph because, after all, it’s one big fat sentence. It also features Dating on the Dork Side characters.

Continue reading “Corralling cats and words”

Remember when I wrote that really long sentence?

Remember when I wrote that 106-word sentence? I wrote another one! Even longer! This week, as part of the class I’m taking (called masterful sentences, oddly enough) we mimicked Hemingway and his +400 word sentence, which you can see here. (Scroll down to #3. I’m not going to post it here-dude, that’s longer than most of my blog entries.).

So part of the assignment was to write a 400 – 500 word sentence-and have it make sense. I did the first part at least. I wrote a 490-word monstrosity.

In the process, I think I broke Microsoft Word.

Writing wrong yet again

So I’m taking this writing class called Masterful Sentences which is about … wait for it … sentence structure. Yeah, you didn’t see that coming.

Anyway, as part of this week’s assignment, I have a choice between “offering corrections to phrase and clauses wherever you see you can improve it” on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or diagramming several sentences from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

That’s sort of like the choice between a chocolate chip cookie and chewing on some crushed glass.

Personally, I don’t think Dickens needs “improving,” and I gave Joyce the old college try. Then I ran back to Dickens, asked for forgiveness, and was extremely proud of myself that I didn’t substitute “Dude, check it!” for “Mind!” in the second paragraph of the story.

Geek Girl Update

While Darcy slipped off the front page, you can see a few excerpts from her interview over at Geek Girl’s Guide.

Dude, that’s one really long sentence

Ha. The magical, mystical, way-too-long sentence. It was part of an assignment where we were given a laundry list of short sentences (He wore a shirt. The shirt was frayed.) about an individual that we had to work into a single sentence.

I don’t feel right about sharing the entire list, but there were sixteen items to work into the sentence. Most of my classmates managed to do that in far fewer words than I did.

Still, I think I had more fun. So here it is, in all it’s 106-word, longwinded glory.

The man stood, gnarled, emaciated fingers clutching a sign held high above his head, the frayed cuffs of his shirt poked from the sleeves of his suit coat jacket, its material shiny with wear, the stubble on his jaw cast his mouth in shadow, but his forehead shone with sweat, while the sign’s letters, a single word–PEACE–appeared penned by someone very young or someone very old, and on all those hot afternoons that August, he held the sign high, only lowering it when the traffic thinned, the rush of blood to his hands making the skin pink and–for a moment–like a child’s.

Words, 106 of them

I just wrote a 106-word sentence. No, I’m not kidding, and no, it’s not going in my YA novel either.

I’m taking a class called masterful sentences, and let me tell you, it’s exhausting to write a 106-word sentence. And as a bonus, Word doesn’t even think it’s a sentence fragment. Of course, we all know how good Word is at grammar. Hey, you, over there! Stop snickering.

Outlook: sunny with a chance

Recovery mode: on!
Snark mode: off (mostly)
Health: improving
Word count: better, if only by 600 words
Goal: 500 words/day or 2,500/week

The above is my post for JaNo this month. My only post for JaNo this month. I am beyond the  prodigal daughter at this point as far as that’s concerned. But! No one’s cut off my access, so I decided to post over there as well.

This post also marks my 300th post on WordPress. Ah, WordPress, how I love you. You’re a blogging platform! You’re a website! You’re lunch!

And we (as in Darcy and I) hope that very soon, we’ll be giving you more WordPress goodness–but it’s all super secret double probation at this point. But stay tuned …

Now that everyone here can go to school/work, pay attention to/be aware of their surroundings, we’ll be in catch-up mode too. I even went to the grocery story yesterday. I walked around kind of dazed, sort of like I was a Muscovite GUM shopper circa 1984 who was suddenly transported to the glories of the decadent west.

It was great.

Now, off to visit my heroine where I left her, which was in a very large hoop skirt with lots of ruffles.

You never know where you might end up

So I was procrastinating doing a little web surfing this morning when I discovered that an essay I wrote a few years back ended up in the syllabus for a creative writing course. To be more specific, it was the Kidd Tutorial at the University of Oregon creative writing program.

I have since been revised out of the course. But I was there, or rather, my essay, Learning to Lie Still, was there, under the lesson topic: THE WRITER IN THE WORLD: as witness, mirror, canary.

Of course, the “half-empty” side of me immediately thought: Hm, maybe I’m the negative example for that particular topic. You know, Personal Essay: You’re Doing It Wrong. Still, to put a positive spin on that scenario, I would still be providing many, many writers a valuable service, no?

Still, I “shared” a lesson with Susan Sontag, Eudora Welty, and Alice Walker, so no matter what anyone said or thought about my meager little essay, I’m completely psyched to have ended up there, if only once.