Assigned Blog Post 07 - ???

I wrote something?!

Oh look, it's like 10 pages. That's within the acceptable length. Is it good? Are people going to like it? Would that make it good? Does it make me feel good about it? Does it make me feel good about writing it? Does it make me feel good about having it done? Would that make it good? What does "good" mean?

I know people are going to react to it, at least. For one, it's messed up. Also I've already seen people react to parts of it. Is that what I wanted?

I know I wanted to be different. I know this is definitely different, otherwise I'd have lost faith in humanity a really long time ago. But then again, I'm already different from everyone else, so shouldn't that have been enough?

For me, writing my first short story was like ???. I know, that's pretty ambiguous. And that's the point. I have (had?) pretty much no idea what I was doing when I wrote my story. What I wrote was (hopefully) not some great journey of self discovery. It wasn't even about one. If anything, it was more like a great journey of nonexistent-character-identity discovery for readers. Which means that I had to put myself in their shoes to see if they could actually discover what I had to discover they had to discover?

???

Assigned Blog Post 06 - YOU SO CRAZY!!!

(yes, caps and multiple exclamation points were necessary)

So, over the course of this course, I feel like I've gotten to know a lot of my fellow classmates much better, and a lot of that can be attributed to what I read on their blogs. Not only do these blogs give me an opportunity to steal delicious infos about the people with whom I spend about 1/4 of each day, they provide me great pieces of writing to simply enjoy as a normal person, someone who lives life and goes through all of its joys and pains and whatever else gets thrown in the mix.

Assigned Blog Post 05 - Jerk

Move with a brisk pace; walk with your arms folded; stand with your arms folded; put a little more of your weight on one leg, so as to make it look like you expect something from them; stare down the people who look into your eyes, so as to make sure they know you're completely serious; look past the people you bump into, so as to make sure they know you don't give a crap about them; ignore the people tapping on your shoulder - if they wanna say something, they should say it; don't do menial tasks for others, only things that will boost your reputation; don't delegate the work, because if you want something done right, you should do it yourself; make them do the work, because if they want it done right, they should do it themselves; here's how you greet someone you could care less about; here's how to greet someone you hate; here's how you (don't) greet someone you somewhat like, because that way your underlying nature's gonna bleed through and scare them away; someone you actually like should know you well enough that they don't care how you greet them; wait until they've already started the assignment before telling them it's not actually due, because that way you can laugh at how stupid they are but they'll still think you're nice enough to trust next time around; but deep down, my underlying nature is one that needs love and care; let your eyes be shifty, because that way they'll pick up more things for you to sneer and jeer at; don't ever wipe that smirk off your face until you're sure there's no one there to see that it's not there; don't ever turn around and look at the messes you've left behind; but what if I feel bad about leaving people in those messes?

Assigned Blog Post 04 - Bindleton? Milderweicht? Luza Bay City?

So...names for our version of Winesburg, Ohio. Bindleton sounded like a good name for a kind of mellow town with a humdrum sort of life. I guess by having an underlying mundane nature for the town I figured we could have fun unmundane-ifying it. Milderweicht just sounded cool, and apparently it means "mild softened" in German.

Assigned Blog Post 03 - Quinn Marksley

Quinn Marksley was a bit odd, or at least his fading mother definitely thought he was. She was in her mid-90's, and although she sometimes took a while to figure out who Quinn was, who she was, and how they were related, she would always remember he was messed up when she did get that all worked out.

It was a complete mystery how she could possibly survive so long with a son like Quinn. As far as she could remember (about 4 days if she concentrated really hard), he was essentially some strange man with the soul of a six year-old who lived in the basement of her home reenacting scenes from the Pokémon TV shows using his infinite collection of Pokémon cards. No, really, he lived there. He feared all people, even his mother at times, and thus he never left that basement (he shut her up in some tiny room; it wasn't hard because she couldn't move at all beyond random twitching). He had no job but the one he made for himself, and those reenactments didn't exactly pay . . . at all, but the family had enough food in the basement to last through a nuclear holocaust followed by an ice age (and that wasn't counting whatever sustenance may have been upstairs).

Sometimes people would ring the doorbell for who-knows-what, then after a few seconds without reply, they would leave. One time, however, someone was able to pull off a whole 17 minutes and 3 seconds, at which point Quinn Marksley had become so distracted that he couldn't even emulate Rattata's battle cry. So Quinn actually went up the stairs and opened the door.

In front of him was an upright mop. A mop dressed in a gargantuan sport coat with a fake-looking golden nametag. On the tag lived an impressive collection of grime that probably would have taken a normal person a lifetime to gather, but through the smudges Quinn thought he could see the outline of a few words. From what he could tell after staring at the tag for a little over a minute at point-blank range, they said: Oswin St. George, CEO. He looked up and noticed that what he had been staring at was not, in fact, a mop. It was a person whose hair could have passed as the long-lost brother of the tattered stick that Quinn's mother used to use to wash down what she could reach of Quinn's room (when he still lived in his own room). Quinn staggered back in fear as the mop's face revealed an otherworldly void which, given a larger body on the other end, probably could have consumed Quinn in under five minutes. From the void came a sound that Quinn instinctively interpreted as a battle cry.

Assigned Blog Post 02 - Me, Myself, and not I [m' style and me - info]

As I'm sure you're now well aware, I'm not everyone else. In fact, if I had to say, I'm probably everyone. My personality, I think, is fairly dependent on who's around me. Sometimes I'm that kid in the corner just staring at the crowd, listening to whatever seemingly important chatter comes out of the others' mouths, analyzing and evaluating everything. I'm a part of the crowd, laughing at all the little things that (don't) count in life. I'm the one that waits until it's almost time, just so I can have the thrill of having something I'm supposed to do, even if only for one moment. I'm too good, the jerk who would rather ignore the inferiority of the crowd than fix it. I cry for the happy-ending love stories, then scoff as others do the same.

Yeah, I'm a mixed bag, and when I write, I'm never sure which one of me is the one that's writing. Whatever gets written reflects that, in plot, concept, and character. My writing is abstract, because I don't totally know what it is I'm writing about. I make it up as I go. I come up with things to write based on how I feel about what I just wrote. Sometimes I'll know how I want a story to end, but I've yet to start it, then I struggle in filling the gaps to reach that end. Other times it's the opposite way around. I see my inspiration in one facet of my soul, and I follow it deep inside to nothingness, then end up popping out of some other facet. In my mind, life is twisted. I have to twist myself and my writing to fit it.

Assigned Blog Post 01 -The Convergent Realities Collectively Known as Truth

When we write fiction, we present to the world our own personal reality. Whether this reality is a representation of the truth or an almost completely implausible figment, it is always undeniably influenced by the truth. While as individuals we each hold our own views and emotions, we inevitably interact with each other, even if only on the level of simply perceiving others, and these interactions taint our individual realities until we formulate what we decide to call the truth.