Some Explanation

       That piece started as a story for my friend. I had the idea rolling around in my head for a while, but never written it out. Anyway, my best friend is gay in a conservative household. He does get support from his family, but I just wanted to give him something that said I'm here for him, too.
       That's the way it started, at least. The direction the characters appear to be taking is moreso a reflection of my own feelings and insecurities about myself and relationship prospects. I find it very hard to stay true in writing from someone else's perspective. The problem with writing, I've found, is that you can only write what you know. And I only know myself. I know my best friend well, but I can't seem to shake the desire to put myself in my narratives. It's a downfall of mine. And a constraint I can never stick with. I can't tell if it's aversely affecting my writing or not, however.
       Should a piece of me be in every story? Or is it unhealthy to have this connection with all of my characters? I suppose it could be problematic further down the line if I am in every character like that. It's dishonest in a way. What if I come across a character I'm writing that has to do something I don't want to believe I would do? Would I change the story so that I could live with myself and have restful sleep? Or, would I use writing as a cathartic exercise to air out a few of my demons and allow those parts of me to live honestly in my stories?
       Either way, I don't see it being very healthy to my craft. If I only write about me, am I really growing as a writer?

Meandering

This is a story idea I've been playing around with for a little while.

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There is not a more confusing time in a young boy’s life than his teen years. Or so Naldo would have you believe. Now, he wasn’t the most awkward teenager ever; he had a good personality and was able to have flowing conversations with others. He just didn’t like that he had to. He was perfectly content with being quiet all day, ignoring everyone around him. He couldn’t do that, though because then people would think he was weird, and as much as he would hate to admit it, he needed help with things from time to time. And no one wants to help the weird kid. You have to give to get. But he was still kind of awkward.

When the time came for a new seating chart, he would try to talk to his new tablemate , but she would be barely responsive, or it would go well for the first two minutes then lead to a long silence as the laughter died down and then they were forced to pretend to be really interested in last night’s homework. Then he would hate every minute of his life that he had to sit next to her.

On Tuesday morning, Naldo went into his Anatomy class to see a new seating chart projected onto the screen. “Great,” he muttered. He had just gotten into a comfortable rhythm with his last table mate. She would turn to the next table and talk rapidly to her best friend before the final bell while flipping her hair back, slapping Naldo in the face and irritating his eyes. When the final bell rang, they would quietly listen to lecture and then he would let her copy his assignments. That was their rhythm and he was okay with that. But now he had to start all over and he was not in the mood. He tried to decipher the chart even though it seemed physically impossible for that to be a visual representation of the same room. He eventually gave up and just looked around the room for his new partner. It was a boy this time. Harrison Daley.

Naldo kind of knew Harrison from around the school. He was nice, and had a lot of friends. His friends were mostly girls, so everyone thought he was a player. Naldo just thought it meant Harrison had some “left-leaning tendencies”. He didn’t know Harrison beyond that, and after closer inspection of him as he walked to his new table, he could tell that he wanted to. He changed his gait to more of a saunter and sat at his assigned seat. “Hello,” Joe said as Naldo sat. Naldo had his “gaydar” going at full operating potential. He had his suspicions about Harrison, but he had to be sure. (None of this made Naldo gay. He was just very interested in the sexuality of other boys his age.) He noticed that Harrison didn’t look up to greet him, so he figured that it was okay that he didn’t respond. He just sat next to him, calculating. Harrison was trying to finish the homework from last night. Had he been up all night watching a Sex and The City marathon, or had he just not felt like homework after a long night of banging his girlfriend? Did Sex and The City even still come on? How long would it really take for him to do some chick? Those were the thoughts that were going through Naldo’s head as he watched Harrison Daley and the final bell rang.

That is how it was for the next couple of days. They’d greet each other, Harrison would try to scramble to get the homework done, and Naldo would watch him, until the lecture started.

Finally, one Wednesday, Naldo asked, “Hot date last night?” Harrison gave Naldo a look that asked him to repeat himself. Naldo just pointed to the almost finished page.

“Oh,” Harrison looked at his homework and then chuckled. “No. I wish. I just wanted to eat, sleep, and watch t.v. when I got home,” Harrison explained. The Sex and the City theme started playing in Naldo’s head. Then the gears started to turn.

“Sex and the City marathon?” he wondered.

“Does that still come on?”

“I’m not sure,” Naldo answered truthfully. He decided that he was going about this whole thing in the wrong way. It doesn’t make you gay to watch Sex and the City. He’d seen his dad putting in discs from his mom’s collector’s edition DVD box set.

“What are you thinking about so hard?” Joe wondered which made Naldo remember that he was in the middle of a conversation. See? Awkward.

“Nothing. Just that I watch way too much t.v.” He was really starting to blur the lines.

“I have that same problem,” Harrison confessed. “My guilty pleasure is RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Naldo’s mouth fell open as Joe turned to finish his homework and the bell rang.

Poetry and I

        I hate poetry. I'm really bad at it, and I have no patience for it. When I start reading it, I stop almost immediately because I don't understand it. Sleeping With the Dictionary was no exception. Well, it was kind of an exception. I read All She Wrote and I thought this poetry book would be different. I really liked this one because I related to it on some level. When I am put into social situations (like all of life), I usually end up doing something weird. Or, in the case of teachers, I usually abuse their trust in my character by turning in assignments late or not at all. I try really hard not to, but it always happens. I'm not an awful person, so when I screw things up, I apologize for them. My apologies, however, usually come out sounding like excuses, and that's what this poem sounds like to me. It sounds like a lot of apologetic excuses. And I guess I relate to that because I'm a sorry excuse for a person. Ha.
        I thought I had good momentum after the next entry, but I hit a wall when I got to Any Lit. I hated it because I didn't understand why she thought it was a poem. I understood that the first part of the sentences started with a yoo sound because they started with the word "you"and the second parts started with an em sound because they started with the word "me." I suppose I understand its inclusion in retrospect. Ask Aden is my favorite because it was simple, I'm a simple girl, and it doesn't take much to entertain me. It reminded me of being a kid with a kind of wide-eyed wonder.
        The book lost me at Black Nikes. I got frustrated because after such smooth sailing, I didn't immediately understand this one. It didn't help that when I skipped it, I encountered Blah-Blah. And every entry after it seemed to have a more ambiguous meaning than the last. I put the book down and  I found out that she was an older lady. I tend to have more patience for older people because I respect their their experiences and hardships, and I think patience is the very least that they deserve. After reading the interview,with her, I picked the book back up, and I'm glad that I did because some were funny (Kamasutra Sutra), some hit home for ineffable reasons (Eurydice), and some were insightful (Exploring the Dark Continent). I think I"m better for reading these even though, for the most part, the meanings still elude me.

To Talk About Myself and Genre (x_x)

        I'm not exactly sure what to say about my writing. It's usually in the first person, though I've been forcing myself to use third person lately. I usually lean toward funny or romantic (or both) when writing stories. I only write short stories because I don't have the discipline or self-confidence to go any longer than that. I recently finished a short story entitled Almost There (after a groundbreaking 1969 novel titled I'll Get There, It Better Be Worth the Wait of which it's loosely based) that was surprisingly well-received. I'm being pushed to make that one longer, but I'm running into the aforementioned problems in my plight.

        I have enjoyed the Creative Writing program here so far. My last teacher was Aaron Burch and he was a great teacher. He had a laissez-faire approach to teaching this subject which was was great for me. I don't really think that this is a subject that can be micromanaged. He was open to suggestion and was easy to talk to and readily available. Those qualities were very helpful in a Creative Writing teacher.

        Genre, to me, is just the different categories pieces of writing go into. These categories can be defined by the topic or its similarity to other pieces of writing. Different genres like mystery or romance can easily be distinguished from each other because they don't cover the same topics or have enough similarity to be lumped together. The exact same thing should go for different genres such as poetry or prose, but there are certain types of poetry that read like prose (like epic poetry), so the lines are blurred there and it's not as distinguishable. (I didn't know there was a difference between genre fiction and literary fiction and I still don't understand the difference.)

        I honestly don't think I've had any experience with reading or writing transgenre or anything that falls outside of traditional genre categories. I don't read or write nearly as much as I used to and when I do, it's usually pretty conventional. I have no problems with reading outside of the box, I just haven't had many opportunities to do so. Like I said before, comedy and romance are usually what I write about in my works because that's really all that I have any experience in. I'm hoping that as I get older I can better write about other topics as I experience them.