original_lavi (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
original_lavi) wrote2007-12-12 02:38 am
original_lavi) wrote2007-12-12 02:38 am
Entry tags:
Untitled, but inspired by Girl.
NaNo: I got to 38,000 words. And as a sign of how much pure determination counts, that was my word count the 27th, when I realized I had too much to do and felt too unmotivated to push out the words so I couldn't catch up to reach 50,000. Maybe so, but I really meant to write at least another couple thousand words to say I reached 40,000. But no, once I gave up, I didn't write another word. *shakes head* Next year, though! I will outline and ponder ahead of time, attack it with a will, and get to the goal.
Meanwhile, more things from my writing class. Some of them are still being edited for the portfolio (my ants-and-acacia-trees will be too...I might replace what I have in this journal with the edited version), but here's what I've finished revising/am not changing.
The prompt was Girl, by Jamaica Kincaid. It was pretty much the most awesome thing I've read in a while. It was hard not making my version too personal to turn into my professor, though. This is what I finished with; it's still quite honest. And YES, I quoted icons in it. Eh, the ending was more poignant last night.
Meanwhile, more things from my writing class. Some of them are still being edited for the portfolio (my ants-and-acacia-trees will be too...I might replace what I have in this journal with the edited version), but here's what I've finished revising/am not changing.
The prompt was Girl, by Jamaica Kincaid. It was pretty much the most awesome thing I've read in a while. It was hard not making my version too personal to turn into my professor, though. This is what I finished with; it's still quite honest. And YES, I quoted icons in it. Eh, the ending was more poignant last night.
***
You haven’t been a very good student this semester. You always thought you were a good student, until this year; you always thought that under the right circumstances, you would excel at nearly any decent, interesting subject, you would take pleasure in learning for learning’s sake. But you found out this year you were lazier than you thought, your ability much narrower than you thought, and you still want to visit Oxford, walk the cobblestones – and say truthfully, I’m not able to go here, but I would like to be. And somehow, that still comforts you. But there are other things outside of academia. You tell people, I had a difficult childhood, but I like to be cheerful anyway. You’ve lingered on it long enough. You worry about your brother, who’s still enduring, and the bothersome things you still have to do. But one thing you learned in your difficult childhood is that anything in your trivial world is survivable, and it’s just you who makes it dramatic. You have so many things now, and if time does not seem to be one of them that’s your fault too. You’re stuttering less – still some, still with your best friend and your mother (whenever you’re excited, you know, you’ve analyzed it enough) – but soon you fear you won’t be able to remember to write about what it was like. You can’t remember many things people tell you to write about. But you like to write not about the things you remember, but the things you make up – you always try to keep your theme inspired by never give them a thought – how they live, where they sleep and when I was six, I fell in love with a shadow. You feel ashamed that you don’t understand and appreciate poetry as much as the rest of your majors, you feel certain that will make them better writers than you, in the end. Some days, you know you are a good writer; other days, you feel despairing of even a chance of success for you. (But of course, welcome to the daily life of the author.) A lightning flash of insight: it’s both conditions at once. And you love that poem that tells you not to make comparisons, which is how you come by all these feelings anyway. And just trying to write, with a keyboard at your fingertips: you feel frightened of all the possibilities, so many ways to do it and there has to be a better way than the one you’re currently thinking of, a better way for every sentence and turn of the story. But you know by now you’ll be here forever if you hold out for that better way; you just have to write and write half-blindly and later when you read what you wrote as a whole, you will know what the better ways were and remember them for next time. But first, you must write.
You haven’t been a very good student this semester. You always thought you were a good student, until this year; you always thought that under the right circumstances, you would excel at nearly any decent, interesting subject, you would take pleasure in learning for learning’s sake. But you found out this year you were lazier than you thought, your ability much narrower than you thought, and you still want to visit Oxford, walk the cobblestones – and say truthfully, I’m not able to go here, but I would like to be. And somehow, that still comforts you. But there are other things outside of academia. You tell people, I had a difficult childhood, but I like to be cheerful anyway. You’ve lingered on it long enough. You worry about your brother, who’s still enduring, and the bothersome things you still have to do. But one thing you learned in your difficult childhood is that anything in your trivial world is survivable, and it’s just you who makes it dramatic. You have so many things now, and if time does not seem to be one of them that’s your fault too. You’re stuttering less – still some, still with your best friend and your mother (whenever you’re excited, you know, you’ve analyzed it enough) – but soon you fear you won’t be able to remember to write about what it was like. You can’t remember many things people tell you to write about. But you like to write not about the things you remember, but the things you make up – you always try to keep your theme inspired by never give them a thought – how they live, where they sleep and when I was six, I fell in love with a shadow. You feel ashamed that you don’t understand and appreciate poetry as much as the rest of your majors, you feel certain that will make them better writers than you, in the end. Some days, you know you are a good writer; other days, you feel despairing of even a chance of success for you. (But of course, welcome to the daily life of the author.) A lightning flash of insight: it’s both conditions at once. And you love that poem that tells you not to make comparisons, which is how you come by all these feelings anyway. And just trying to write, with a keyboard at your fingertips: you feel frightened of all the possibilities, so many ways to do it and there has to be a better way than the one you’re currently thinking of, a better way for every sentence and turn of the story. But you know by now you’ll be here forever if you hold out for that better way; you just have to write and write half-blindly and later when you read what you wrote as a whole, you will know what the better ways were and remember them for next time. But first, you must write.