Write Club: What Not to Write

Hey y'all.  Some time ago I made some notes about what a writer shouldn't do when they write.  And now I found the paper again when I was organizing my bookshelves.  So why not share it?

There are certain things a writer shouldn't do.  Either the consequences can be on themselves, their readers, or both.  Writing and reading communication with the innermost parts of the authors' souls, and they show themselves in ways they didn't realize.  My english teacher said that what you write hides you from the world, and she says she can write something without someone knowing she is southern or a woman.  I disagree.  While no one who reads what you write will know what you look like without seeing your picture on the back cover, they will see your soul.  And which is deeper, your skin or your soul?

My english teacher's soul is not particularly southern, but I've noticed that women writers tend to make themselves obvious (to intuitives, anyway), and it is possible to guess the gender of a writer even if they don't mention it.  The more you understand the souls of people, the more you can intuit about a writer from their book.  Sometimes even unintuitive people can guess, especially if they are social and know how people act.

That being said, here's number one of what writers shouldn't do.

1. Don't emphasize your superior (or "superior") knowledge/vocabulary/ideology.

Arrogant people are nobody's favorite, especially when the arrogant person lifts themselves up at the expense of the reader.  They know when you're making fun of them, or contradicting their beliefs.  You're not fooling anyone when you write a children's story with "disguised" vegetarianism and yoga-type mysticism.  You're not impressing anyone when you spasmodically obfuscate facile lexeme.  It's very nice that you know how steamboats work, Mr. Twain, but that doesn't mean you need to have three pages worth of a kid pretending to be an audibly accurate steamboat as he goes along.  Seriously, that totally could have been cut out of Tom Sawyer.  I skip it every time.

Me and Aldaris (p4): Cheonha's Adventure

Yes, this story will change perspectives.  Notedly, Cheonha is not thinking in english, I'm simply writing it that way.  Also, if something seems inconsistent with what I've written before, it's because I've done some editing to the story for when it was posted to fanfiction net.

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Cheonha didn't know what was going on.  Only a few seconds ago she had been on an alien ship with a weird Miguk, and now she stood in on a path in a dark forest.  It wasn't entirely dark.  A few sparce electric lights lit the way on both sides.  One part of the road went further into the forest, and the other led out into a more open area with fields.  Cheonha went toward the open side, the mostly empty plastic bin of strawberries still in her hand.  As strange as her stomach was starting to feel, she wasn't sure she wanted to get rid of her only source of food.

Why are all these lights on?  Cheonha wondered.  That's a huge waste of electricity.  An important person must live here.

Cheonha shuddered.  She didn't like the idea of getting on the wrong side of a powerful government official.  She hoped they were the nice sort of official that only threw tresspassers off their property instead of sicking the dogs or throwing them in prison.  For the moment, there didn't seem to be any mansions or fancy gates or important looking people.  Only fields of tall wheat on both sides.

I've never seen a person as rich as this... Cheonha blinked.  He doesn't even have any guards.  I must be deep in his property.  He better harvest this soon.

My Top Ten Favorite Video Game Characters

Hey y'all.  I'm gearing up for another top ten top ten list, and that means going over another set of Youtube videos.  This one is actually going to be harder than all my previous ones, as I have to count the votes of over 100 videos.  That's right, I'm going to do a top ten top ten on favorite video game characters.  Now, annoying video game characters are easier to guess, as some are just so annoying they bother just about everyone.  However, everyone has different definitions of what they consider best.  There's best in personality, in storyline, in gameplay, and even in looks.  So I have no clue who will come out on top in my informal survey.  It may turn out to be a matter of game popularity.

However, top ten top tens take a lot of work, so you won't be seeing it for a bit.  In the meantime, here is my  personal top ten list!  Notedly, my favorites will not count as votes in my top ten top ten blog.  That just wouldn't be fair.  That, and I'm not a hardcore gamer.  I think I'd need to play more to have a really balanced list.  For now, here we go!

10. Knuckles from the Sonic Series

I've never actually played a Sonic game, other than a few moments of puttering around with a sample game at my work.  However, I have seen all of Clementj642's Let's Plays, and well, I like Knuckles.  He's a brave guy that has an eternal duty to guard a large, powerful gem from anyone who would want to take advantage of it.  I like that.  He never has a bad attitude about it, and he has a really cute animation in Sonic 3 and Knuckles when he laughs.  I just get such a kick out of all the times Knuckles fights Sonic.  My favorite Knuckles moment is when Knuckles pushes a button, causing a bridge to collapse, while Sonic and Tails fall down a cliff.  I don't hate Sonic or anything, but that's just such a silly, comic setpiece.  I need to do a live-action bit on Youtube or something of it.

Epic Description

Hey y'all.  Want to be creative?  Then write an epic description of yourself in the comments:

"She stood there, still and stern as stone.  The glasses resting on her nose gave her young face the look of years worth of intelligence and education.  A smattering of freckles were the only cheer on her hardened face as she gazed into the wind, observing the heartless landscapes of fate before her.  Her grey-blonde hair danced lightly in the dry wind, as dark as the growing clouds above her.    It was a long, treacherous road before her, and the knowledge of this weighed heavily upon the nerdy hero.

And then she smiled like a doofus and ruined the whole effect."

I Can if I Want to: Apples vs. Oranges.

Hey, y'all.  I did some writing for my english class in school, and quite frankly, I'm dang proud of this essay.  Thus, I want to show it off.  So now comes the final battle between two mortal enemies: the apple and the orange.

Oh, and I left all the citations in just for the heck of it.  Maybe you need some research sources for your essay on fruit or a fruit-related point.  Also, the self.com links are really interesting if you want to look up the nutrition information on any food product in general.  Cite your sources, students!

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Apples and oranges are two common fruits in America.  Both of them grow within the continental 48 states and are consumed regularly by the American people.  These fruits are going to stay a staple of the American diet for the forseeable future, as they have become a part of our food culture.

            Oranges are more of a tropical fruit than apples, growing in warmer, rainier places like California and Florida.   It is the fourth most popular fruit in the country.  Apples are the second most valuable fruit crop in the United States, and grow in places like Michigan, New York, and Washington state, places that see more cold weather than where oranges are grown.  While oranges are generally available throughout the year, apples tend to be harvested in the fall ( par. 6).

Arc Rose Tips for Life!

Hey y'all.  So this is just my little ramblings of advice I've collected over time.  Maybe it'll come in handy.

1. If you want to buy a Wii, only buy a used one.  People can download games on them, and once the game is downloaded, it stays on the Wii hard drive.  I once saw a used Wii with Super Mario 3, Mario RPG, and one of the Legend of Zelda games on it.  And plus, used consoles are cheaper.

2. If you're going to learn gaelic, keep in mind that language books call Scots gaelic just plain gaelic, while Irish gaelic is simply called irish.  I don't know why.

3. Washing your face in coffee grains does great stuff for your skin.  Just keep it out of your hair if you're a blonde.

Me and Aldaris (p3): Back on Board

Well, sharks or no sharks, up I went.  As I swam, little zaps of electrical-looking lines started to warble in the water around my head.  It doesn't take a Protoss engineer to figure out what that means.  I pushed harder against the narrowing depth of the water, but like I said, I'm no diver.  The field around my head collapsed without even a chance for me to get a good breath in, and I choked.  But, saltwater up my nose or no, I had to make it to the surface.  With burning nostrils, throat, and eyes, I pushed my way up to the light.

And slammed into the floor!  Blinking the saltwater out of my eyes, I guessed I was back in Aldaris' ship.  I had to guess because I couldn't look. First of all my glasses (yay!  They're still on me!) were wet, and secondly a sickness had hold of me, and darkness filled my eyes.  Forcing myself to hack and cough, I tried to get the water out of my system.  I started shaking.

Me and Aldaris (p2): Underwater Mishaps

Hey y'all.  In the interest of having posts regularly, I'm going to be updating this story in shorter bits.  It would just take too long to update if I posted a chapter's worth of information on every post, and I tend to write until I finish a specific idea rather than after a set number of paragraphs.  But hey, that means more updates, and a more active blog.  Oh, and hopefully I won't have to put notes on every chapter.  Onwards!

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I was somewhere in the ocean.  I didn't know where, having just teleported there randomly.  That meant that not even Aldaris knew where I was, and that's assuming he wanted to find me.  That would be opportune.  Right now, I'm staring at sharks.  There are at least two of them.  I think I saw a third, but that might have been the second shark swimming around some rocks.

My eye was focused on the closer shark.  Its dorsal fin was pushed far on its back, almost on the tail instead of on the back where most sharks have them.  The mottled grey skin of the shark, speckled with all manner of smudges and spots, gave it the look of something very old, like a ten foot antique swimming through the bay.  Its iris stayed focused on me, even when it swam slowly to my left.

Hello, cow shark!  I waved.  Moo!

Write Club is Up!

Hey y'all!  I'm proud to announce that Write Club now officially exists on Facebook!  I created it the other day, and will be working on it through the next year.  This group is for those who wish to be surrounded by those who write and find the motivation for writing when we don't feel like it.  I'll be posting things like exercises and tips, and members can feel free to do the same.  So, if you would like to be a part of the group, just go ahead and search for "Write Club" on facebook and ask for an invite.

The only requirements to this group are that you yourself are a writer.  The stuff we post is for author critiquing, and not for readers yet.  You must "audition" by messaging me (Bethany) and send me a sample of your work.  It can be fiction, nonfiction, or poetry.  Just something that you wrote yourself.  You don't have to write anything new.  Just send a segment of something you've already written and you enjoy.  For poetry, please no longer than a page.  For everything else, no longer than two pages.  This is just an audition, not a critique.

Anyway, I hope to see you there, and hopefully this group can become something big one day!  Thank you!

Me and Aldaris

It was college.  Ho-hum.  I walked home with my backpack on my back and my head in the clouds, not noticing my surroundings.  I do that too much.  Honestly, Fort Bragg Road isn't too bad on the way between school and the house.  There's the old church to pass by, some cute houses, two haircutting places, and that new building some guys have been working on for the past month or so.  It looks like a residential place, but I'm not sure yet.  In Fayetteville we get a lot of businesses that work out of regular-looking houses.

But I'm not paying attention, like I said.  I was off in la-la land, enjoying myself.  The song "Dark Heart Dawning" by BT was stuck in my head, which isn't too bad of a thing, because it's such a happy, content song.  I had just discovered this song, as well as Ashley Carr's remix of Illuminor, and well, techno is one of the happiest things in the world.  To me, anyway.  I was in an especially good mood because I didn't work that night, and I had the next day off of both work and school because of mid-term break.

"And in the age of love," I sang quietly, "I found my sacred place...where I can hide-"

Whoops!  Someone was on the church lawn trying to mow it.  I looked straight ahead, avoiding the eyes of the redneck-ish guy starting up his John Deere.  No, silly man, no need to smile at me.  I wasn't singing at all!  Nope!  Not me!  Politely, I glanced in his direction and nodded.  There!  I'd officially fulfilled my obligation to be friendly to strangers who are looking at me funny.  Moving on!

Thankfully he started up the lawn mower at that point, and I could go on singing my songs.  I don't know all the lyrics to Dark Heart Dawning, so I skipped over to a song that I wrote: Cafiza.  It's a love song about expresso machine cleaner.  Hey, don't judge.  If you were a former barista, you'd like cafiza too.

"Up til now I'd say I'm fine," I sang, distancing myself from the lawn mower.  Oh good, no one was coming out of the haircutter's place.  "But not so today.  Parts of me I thought were mine, slowly fall away....uh?"

I stopped singing because of the stuff around me.  It was like cloud around me, thin wisps of some sort of finger-like mist beginning to circle me.  As it thickened and grew around me, it turned various shades of electric blue and separated me from the street.  I swatted at the mist, but it did nothing more than swirl a little faster.  I was trapped -- but only for a second or two.  Soon enough the mists cleared away.  However, the sigh of relief caught in my throat.  This was no longer Fayetteville.

Personality Environment Type: The Forest

Hey y'all.  Another personality environment thingy.  I like doing these things.  They're fun.  In any case, I'm going to go with the forests for now, because it's sort of similar to the "outer space" type, and that's what I am.  Because this is a personality typology thing in progress, I'm going to save the environments I'm least familiar with for later, assuming that I'll be able to talk to more people in the future. 

So please help.  Write the environment you feel inspired by, drawn to, or just plain prefer to live at.  It can be something like space, forests, deserts, the city, the deep ocean, the beach, suburbia, or something else I might not have mentioned by is an important place to you.  Tell me a little about you, if you like.

But for now, forests!

Nerds vs. Geeks

Hey y'all.  So I was in my english class, and the teacher assigned to us to come up with a definition of a word that doesn't already have an obvious meaning.  She wanted us to pick things like happiness, love, and whatnot, but this is what I picked.

Nerd -- 1. (n) a socially unaware or socially indifferent individual whose interests pertain to discovering in detail the quirks of a chosen subject matter, preferring to gain knowledge than to wear important clothes or impress others.  Examples include Star Trek nerds, gamers, those who build their own computers, and people who write massive Azumanga Daioh essays about Sakaki-san for the fun of it when they really should be paying attention in English 111, planning on turning this in for an assignment whenever it fits the standards of an assignment.

            2. (n) a more specific subsection of nerds (referred to by the same word) whose obsession with their topic is more mental and intellectual rather than about owning gear or engineering electronics.  Examples include history nerds, those who pursue PhDs, and people who can psychoanalyze every single character in StarCraft but stink horribly at the game when they actually try to play it.  Nerds are generally obsessed with words, history, or the story of an already created fictitious universe.  See: Geek.

Geek -- (n) a socially unaware or indifferent individual whose interests pertain to discovering in detail the quirks of a chosen specific subject matter, but less in a mental way and more physically.  Geeks prefer to play games than to dwell on every detail of the plot, and it is they who are better with computers and other electronic technology rather than history or writing.  Examples include Best Buy's Geek Squad, gamers who hold LAN parties, and people who will bore you to tears trying to explain to you the difference between RAM and ROM.  While the first definition of the word "nerd" can be applied to them in an overall sense, "geek" is more specific to their nature.

So is this consistent or different from your own view of nerds vs geeks?