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childofatlantis
"Write what you know."
What aspiring fantasy or sci-fi writer hasn't heard that advice and cringed? We don't want to write about *us* - our lives are so boring and mundane. Or are they?
Everything you do that seems deathly dull is probably unknown and new, even alien, to someone somewhere else. Even if it's not, as a writer you should be able to make it seem that way to your readers.
Pick up the challenge. Take a slice of your normal, dull, boring daily routine and write it the way you would a fic. Keep it true but make it interesting. Write yourself in third person, the hero/ine of the newest chart breaking novel about a student/office worker/mother/net geek/whatever. Write what *you* know best.
Brigdh got out of bed at a quarter of ten in the morning, which was just enough time to get dressed, brush her teeth, and spend ten minutes attempting to fit all her textbooks plus a binder plus a manga plus a scheduler plus food plus a laptop into a messenger bag. Of course, it would have been easier to simply carry less stuff, but that would have involved leaving something behind, and you never knew when you'd desperately need the adventures of gay Japanese rock stars. The bag was old, plain, and solid black, without even a 'kiss me, I'm a geek' button- which her backpack had- to brighten it up. However, it did have the advantage of being able to carry a laptop, which is generally a plus.
Outside, everything but the streets was snow-covered. There'd been a storm over the weekend, but it hadn't left much more than an inch of snow. Brigdh felt almost cheated. The news had been predicting life-or-death situations and blizzards conditions for days beforehand; it was disappointing to see it turn out to be no more than a flurry.
The streets and sidewalks had been churned into a mud and melted ice mix that resembled a chocolate slushy. It was the worst sort of groundcover: a single thread hanging loose off the hem of her jeans was enough to soak the dirty water nearly up to her knees, where it would take hours to dry and leave swirls of dust-colored marks as it retreated.
Her first class was in Lord Hall, which was also where the offices for her major, Anthropology, were. Lord Hall was an old-fashioned-looking building, built of brick with a white, wide staircase leading to the front door. Random graffiti marred the faux marble, names and hearts and one pretend cave drawing with a stick man hunting a bear. Lord Hall was several shades darker than the surrounding buildings, more chocolate than cinnamon, and had air conditioners protruding randomly from several windows on the third floor. It was set at an angle from everything else, disturbing the neat, parallel rows aligning the mostly one-way roads. It had been condemned since the 70s. It also violated quite a few state laws, mainly having to do with providing accommodations for the handicapped, and didn't have enough offices for its professors, leading to many boxes of files stacked haphazardly in the hallways of the upper floors. The walls and bulletin boards inside were decorated with posters, advertising upcoming classes or lectures, and providing application information for field schools held during the summer. Scattered among the more intellectual papers were propaganda for the still-forming Grad Student Union and a few flyers for Jesus, left behind by very different groups.
The Economic Anthropology class started at 10:30 with a discussion on Marx's ideas about market value. The professor was Brian Tucker, who was so young that he actually wasn't technically even a professor. He spent every summer in Madagascar, living with the Mikea, a group of hunter-gatherers there. He had the warped sense of humor that teachers occasionally have, and tended to use doughnuts and sticks of chalk for his 'supply and demand' examples, if he couldn't come up with anything even stranger.
Brigdh took her notes, filling the margins of the paper with doodles and hiragana charts. She hadn't been able to hold pen and paper without sketching something in years, and a typical class just wasn't enough to hold her attention. If she didn't distract herself with something small to occupy her mind while she listened, she'd end up completely off in a daydream, and wouldn't remember anything of what had been said.
This class was a bit more interesting than most days, if only because of the giant roach that wandered into the room halfway through. It was nearly 6 inches long, with clear-ish wings over a dull orange-red body, and wildly spinning antenna. Several people suggested squishing it, but although people were ready to shout out ideas, no one was ready to have quite that much bug guts on their shoes, and it was allowed to walk around unmolested for a time. It spent a while underneath Brigdh's chair, while she squeaked quietly and tried to keep any body parts, clothing or bag straps from touching the floor and allowing it to climb up. Eventually, someone flipped it onto its back and it squimed helplessly in a corner for the rest of class.
It reminded Brigdh of another experience she'd had with a similarly giant roach, involving bug spray, senile nurses, the foothills of Appalachia, and little girls ceasing to breathe, but it's a long story and best left for another time.
When it let out, at 12:18 because her university has weird time issues and declared that all classes must end at either 18 minutes after the hour or 12 minutes before, she headed to the library. Her next class wasn't until 3, but it was a test she hadn't yet studied for, and she had two reading evaluations to write before that. The library was a big, stately building. It had something like 12 floors- something like because there were the small hidden floors 2A and 3A and others that made it hard to count accurately. Once she got above the second floor the building seemed deserted and empty and slightly scary. The rows and stacks of books made it hard to tell if anyone else was nearby; someone could hide mere feet from her and she'd have never known.
She opened her laptop to write the evaluations, both critiques of the Pardoner's Tale by Chaucer, though on different aspects of it. Theoretically, there was wireless internet in the building, but she couldn't get it to work long enough to check her email. She ate a Rasberry-flavored Nutrigrain bar, which was the only food she'd had all day, and then learned to ask "How many hours a day are you in class?" in Japanese. She also learned the word for a day off, which is yasumi, and decided that she could use more of those.
At 3, she arrived at Hagerty Hall, which was a brand new building. It was shaped like a hollow square, and had a courtyard with trees in the middle. She found it horribly easy to get lost inside of it. All the walls were the same blank white, and there weren't any windows or oddly shaped doors or computer labs to differentiate one hallway from another. Too many long, empty rooms made the entire place seem like a labyrinth. Her TA for the test was Murazumi-sensei; Brigdh had a tendency to run into her at the coffee shop she frequented, which always was slightly weird. It ran over, unfortunately, taking twenty minutes instead of the usual ten, and she had to run for her next class at 3:30, surprised to pass her roommate on the way.
That was Medieval Literature, which was taught by a small Scottish man she adored. He spent most of the time being unreasonably quiet and timid for a professor, but every now and then would begin to discuss the Middle Ages' Penis Police, or translate a line of Chaucer into Modern English as "Yoquisha, you my boo." She found him very funny.
Afterwards, she came back home, very thankful to get out of the cold and to have something to eat. She made dirty rice, which was good, but caused one of her roommates to comment yet again that she only eats weird things. Brigdh refrained from responding by pointing out that said roommate ate TV dinners twice a day, and that was far grosser than anything she could possibly eat.
And then, finally, she got to read email and check livejournal, and lived happily ever after.
childofatlantis"Write what you know."
What aspiring fantasy or sci-fi writer hasn't heard that advice and cringed? We don't want to write about *us* - our lives are so boring and mundane. Or are they?
Everything you do that seems deathly dull is probably unknown and new, even alien, to someone somewhere else. Even if it's not, as a writer you should be able to make it seem that way to your readers.
Pick up the challenge. Take a slice of your normal, dull, boring daily routine and write it the way you would a fic. Keep it true but make it interesting. Write yourself in third person, the hero/ine of the newest chart breaking novel about a student/office worker/mother/net geek/whatever. Write what *you* know best.
Brigdh got out of bed at a quarter of ten in the morning, which was just enough time to get dressed, brush her teeth, and spend ten minutes attempting to fit all her textbooks plus a binder plus a manga plus a scheduler plus food plus a laptop into a messenger bag. Of course, it would have been easier to simply carry less stuff, but that would have involved leaving something behind, and you never knew when you'd desperately need the adventures of gay Japanese rock stars. The bag was old, plain, and solid black, without even a 'kiss me, I'm a geek' button- which her backpack had- to brighten it up. However, it did have the advantage of being able to carry a laptop, which is generally a plus.
Outside, everything but the streets was snow-covered. There'd been a storm over the weekend, but it hadn't left much more than an inch of snow. Brigdh felt almost cheated. The news had been predicting life-or-death situations and blizzards conditions for days beforehand; it was disappointing to see it turn out to be no more than a flurry.
The streets and sidewalks had been churned into a mud and melted ice mix that resembled a chocolate slushy. It was the worst sort of groundcover: a single thread hanging loose off the hem of her jeans was enough to soak the dirty water nearly up to her knees, where it would take hours to dry and leave swirls of dust-colored marks as it retreated.
Her first class was in Lord Hall, which was also where the offices for her major, Anthropology, were. Lord Hall was an old-fashioned-looking building, built of brick with a white, wide staircase leading to the front door. Random graffiti marred the faux marble, names and hearts and one pretend cave drawing with a stick man hunting a bear. Lord Hall was several shades darker than the surrounding buildings, more chocolate than cinnamon, and had air conditioners protruding randomly from several windows on the third floor. It was set at an angle from everything else, disturbing the neat, parallel rows aligning the mostly one-way roads. It had been condemned since the 70s. It also violated quite a few state laws, mainly having to do with providing accommodations for the handicapped, and didn't have enough offices for its professors, leading to many boxes of files stacked haphazardly in the hallways of the upper floors. The walls and bulletin boards inside were decorated with posters, advertising upcoming classes or lectures, and providing application information for field schools held during the summer. Scattered among the more intellectual papers were propaganda for the still-forming Grad Student Union and a few flyers for Jesus, left behind by very different groups.
The Economic Anthropology class started at 10:30 with a discussion on Marx's ideas about market value. The professor was Brian Tucker, who was so young that he actually wasn't technically even a professor. He spent every summer in Madagascar, living with the Mikea, a group of hunter-gatherers there. He had the warped sense of humor that teachers occasionally have, and tended to use doughnuts and sticks of chalk for his 'supply and demand' examples, if he couldn't come up with anything even stranger.
Brigdh took her notes, filling the margins of the paper with doodles and hiragana charts. She hadn't been able to hold pen and paper without sketching something in years, and a typical class just wasn't enough to hold her attention. If she didn't distract herself with something small to occupy her mind while she listened, she'd end up completely off in a daydream, and wouldn't remember anything of what had been said.
This class was a bit more interesting than most days, if only because of the giant roach that wandered into the room halfway through. It was nearly 6 inches long, with clear-ish wings over a dull orange-red body, and wildly spinning antenna. Several people suggested squishing it, but although people were ready to shout out ideas, no one was ready to have quite that much bug guts on their shoes, and it was allowed to walk around unmolested for a time. It spent a while underneath Brigdh's chair, while she squeaked quietly and tried to keep any body parts, clothing or bag straps from touching the floor and allowing it to climb up. Eventually, someone flipped it onto its back and it squimed helplessly in a corner for the rest of class.
It reminded Brigdh of another experience she'd had with a similarly giant roach, involving bug spray, senile nurses, the foothills of Appalachia, and little girls ceasing to breathe, but it's a long story and best left for another time.
When it let out, at 12:18 because her university has weird time issues and declared that all classes must end at either 18 minutes after the hour or 12 minutes before, she headed to the library. Her next class wasn't until 3, but it was a test she hadn't yet studied for, and she had two reading evaluations to write before that. The library was a big, stately building. It had something like 12 floors- something like because there were the small hidden floors 2A and 3A and others that made it hard to count accurately. Once she got above the second floor the building seemed deserted and empty and slightly scary. The rows and stacks of books made it hard to tell if anyone else was nearby; someone could hide mere feet from her and she'd have never known.
She opened her laptop to write the evaluations, both critiques of the Pardoner's Tale by Chaucer, though on different aspects of it. Theoretically, there was wireless internet in the building, but she couldn't get it to work long enough to check her email. She ate a Rasberry-flavored Nutrigrain bar, which was the only food she'd had all day, and then learned to ask "How many hours a day are you in class?" in Japanese. She also learned the word for a day off, which is yasumi, and decided that she could use more of those.
At 3, she arrived at Hagerty Hall, which was a brand new building. It was shaped like a hollow square, and had a courtyard with trees in the middle. She found it horribly easy to get lost inside of it. All the walls were the same blank white, and there weren't any windows or oddly shaped doors or computer labs to differentiate one hallway from another. Too many long, empty rooms made the entire place seem like a labyrinth. Her TA for the test was Murazumi-sensei; Brigdh had a tendency to run into her at the coffee shop she frequented, which always was slightly weird. It ran over, unfortunately, taking twenty minutes instead of the usual ten, and she had to run for her next class at 3:30, surprised to pass her roommate on the way.
That was Medieval Literature, which was taught by a small Scottish man she adored. He spent most of the time being unreasonably quiet and timid for a professor, but every now and then would begin to discuss the Middle Ages' Penis Police, or translate a line of Chaucer into Modern English as "Yoquisha, you my boo." She found him very funny.
Afterwards, she came back home, very thankful to get out of the cold and to have something to eat. She made dirty rice, which was good, but caused one of her roommates to comment yet again that she only eats weird things. Brigdh refrained from responding by pointing out that said roommate ate TV dinners twice a day, and that was far grosser than anything she could possibly eat.
And then, finally, she got to read email and check livejournal, and lived happily ever after.
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no subject
Date: 2005-01-25 04:33 am (UTC)I can relate to the doodling in class issue. Unfortunately my drawings are actually terrible doodles that could make Watari's...artwork appear to be masterpieces.
How far are you into Japanese? I've been studying it for a while, but it's always nice to know that other people are learning it as well.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-25 06:01 am (UTC)I'm in 103 now, which through our system is supposed to be the equivilant of the third year of a high school class. I don't know how accurate that is, though, because we've seemed to go in a terribly weird order of learning things. For instance, we just learned the days of the week a few days ago.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-25 07:57 pm (UTC)Are you learning the kanji for the days of the week while you're learning the names? Many language texts opt to handle both issues together, since it's almost unheard of to have the days written out in hiragana or katakana. Also, within the next year or so, you might want to get two dictionaries. The first should be a romaji one, like a standard two language dictionary that you can find for virtually any language in a typical bookstore. The second should be an actual Japanese dictionary written entirely in Japanese (these can be purchased online). The Japanese dictionary holds over 6000 kanji, with their definitions and readings and the like writen in hiragana. Using both dictionaries in tandam will help out your reading/writing skills a great deal.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-26 03:58 am (UTC)We haven't learned any Kanji yet; we're still finishing out the hiragana. But thanks for the advice. I wouldn't have thought of getting a dictionary in Japanese, but that's a great idea.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-25 03:54 pm (UTC)Not sure if you're learning kanji, but if you're interested, yasumi = 休み, which I always remember because it's a man (ｲ) resting in the shade of a tree (木). ^_^
Also I do exactly the same thing with my bag every day. Especially with my writing notebooks, which seem to multiply whenever I turn my back...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-26 04:31 am (UTC)I totally think they are secret passages in the library. There are actually secret tunnels underground connecting all the buildings on campus, which I've always wanted to sneak into some night. But they use them to channel heat, and I don't want to die in a steam blast.
The Appalachia story (which really is long, I warned you): when I was younger, I used to go to a summer camp every year. It was in Tar Hollow State Park, which is in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains. I went there as a camper for 5 or 6 years, but when I turned 13, I got to be a counselor for the first time. Now, usually for the first year, you're actually a "junior counselor" and don't have any real responsibilities. Also, usually two counselors share a cabin with six campers.
Not me! The year I was first a counselor, there happened to be an overabundance of campers, so I was put in a cabin with 7 campers, mostly about 8 years old, and no one to help me. Many traumatizing things happened, but the best story is the one about the giant roach. In my defense, I'd had something like ten hours sleep total over the previous three days. And I was, you know, 13.
A few minutes after getting everyone to bed and turning out the lights (ie, almost 4am even though the wakeup call was at 7:30), one of the girls sat up with a shriek and said that something had crawled over her face. I turned the lights back on and we found a giant roach, 6 or 7 inches long and bright red, on the wall. It was at about eye-level, and was so huge that I couldn't contemplate squishing it. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to kill it, or I'd end up with half-squished bug body-parts hanging off the wall.
So I sprayed it with bug spray. Okay, see, now I know that bug spray doesn't actually kill bugs. But at the time, I thought it did. I thought that was how it worked! That was why the bugs stayed away from you when you had it on: they didn't want to die. So I sprayed it. And sprayed it. And sprayed it. Eventually it slipped off the wall and fell to the ground and I scooped it up with a bucket and threw it outside.
However, by this point, the cabin smelled really heavily of bug spray. I tried getting everyone back to bed and turning off the lights, but the same girl who'd started this said the smell was making her head hurt. We went outside and stood around for a few minutes, and then she told me that she was starting to have trouble breathing.
That is so something you never want to hear. Our cabin was located at the top of a hill; the nurse's cabin was in the center of the camp, at least a mile away, and that was a mile of steep, gravelly path, over ground it was hard to walk safely in the day, much less at night with a sick child. I asked her how bad she thought it was, and she said she didn't think she would last long enough to walk to the nurse's. There was no way I could carry her, either. I ran to the nearest cabin and banged on the door until the counselor there woke up, and left the girl with her. And then I went running for help.
When I got to the nurse's cabin, I was grateful to see the light still on, but when I banged on the door, I didn't get an answer. I was panicking, so I started yelling for her, and managed to wake up the camp manager in the next building. It turned out the nurse was in the shower, so the manager and I went back up to try and do what we could.
And found the little girl perfectly fine. She was asleep, in fact. Eventually the nurse moseyed her way on up, and gave the girl something like 6 aspirin, which probably was in no way safe. I was so shaken and Adrenalin-high and, now, embarrassed, that I was in tears. And that was only one of the things that happened to me that year. And then there was the year that a tree crashed through the roof and demolished my cabin. Oo, or the time the crazy Christian fundamentalists implied I dress like a whore. I have the best luck ever!
Man, camp was fun. I'm too old now, which is sad.
Writing notebooks! I feel your pain. I'm always buying more writing notebooks because they have a pretty cover or a neat feature or cool paper and OMG I need it.
no subject
Date: 2005-01-26 10:34 am (UTC)I firmly believe that all of Oxford is honeycombed with secret passages. All the colleges are connected, and the Bodleian library (which I know for a fact has 11 underground levels) is the key to it all. Someday I'll find my way in...
Or, yknow, why don't I start a notebook just for THIS story, but that means I need to take my general notebook too in case I have any OTHER ideas, and also I might want to work on THAT story too...
no subject
Date: 2005-01-27 04:05 am (UTC)No roaches! I am so jealous. I didn't know that.
Well, it's probably much more likely that Oxford has secret passages than my university. Most of our buildings are only 30 or 40 years old, if that. I don't think secret passages where a big feature in the 60's. ^_~ But I like to believe that they're there, it makes things funner.
Oo, oo, yes! I do that too!
no subject
Date: 2005-01-26 01:26 am (UTC)I was very amused by your descriptions -- although the 6-inch cockroach was funny only because I've never seen a roach near that big, let alone have one near my person *shudder*
no subject
Date: 2005-01-26 04:35 am (UTC)And thank you! I'm glad it wasn't just boring narcissism.
I seem to have a strange tendency to attract roaches. I also had one crawl over me while I was in the shower. But I've never had my living place infested with them, for which I am very, very grateful.