What to write when you have nothing to write

Some days I think I have something I want to write about and then I realize that I really only have one or two sentences to say about it and so it doesn't seem worth the post. (Is this why Twitter is so popular?). Normally, I let these things die or else pad the post with photos of my cat, but today, I'm just going to throw them together incongruously in a single post. This post.

Websites like this one make me wonder if I'm not under-utilizing Dinah's incredibly tolerant nature and willingness to be photographed. I think I should start a line of greeting cards with her image.

I went for a hike in the Palisades in New Jersey this weekend. It was a beautiful day and the trail was surprisingly empty, but for a group of teenage girls. We saw them fleeing the scene after they spray painted a heart on some historic stone tower thing at the start of the trail. You give teenage girls everywhere a bad name, teenage girls of Bergen County.

I recommend the book Sea of Poppies. It's one of those books with a number of characters whose lives all intersect, but remarkably you still are able to care about all of them. It also offers some very compelling evidence for why you should never succumb to opium addiction.

I saw the movie A Dangerous Method this weekend purely because my friend wanted to go and it was showing at a movie theater that served movie themed food to you while you ate (a phenomenon which is apparently slow to reach the East Coast). I got "Jung's Beaten Biscuits" which I didn't really understand because do you really beat biscuits? Wouldn't there have been a better food to put on the menu if you wanted to draw on the S&M aspects of the film? Also, if they were beaten it was probably a bit too much because they were not fluffy and delicious, but rather the type of biscuits I imagine they gave to sailors on overseas voyages in the 1800s. I ate them only because I paid for them and because the apple chutney they came with was tasty, but it likely would have been just as good with something like "Freud's Over-analyzed Pork Sausages" had they but been on the menu. The movie was only so-so.

In other movie watching news, I finally arrested my attention from watching Law & Order episodes on Netflix long enough to actually watch a movie. If you like satires of college-kids-killed-off-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods type slasher movies that still have a fair amount of gore (albeit comedic), I recommend Tucker and Dale Versus Evil. Actually, you can really get the whole movie just from the trailer, so maybe just watch that instead.

Another near-victory at trivia night was thwarted by not knowing any of the noble gases other than neon. The only thing I remember about high school chemistry (being the last chemistry class I took) is that my teacher would go out to his car on lunch and smoke cigars.

Have a happy Mardi Gras readers!

Tumbleweeds...

I should be writing a number of things at this moment, none of which are this blog post. I'm working to finish writing samples for grad school applications (and bless all of those who read and gave thoughts on early drafts--gold stars all around). I also realized the deadline for a book that I haven't started yet is coming up faster than I realized. Normally, January in New York would be the perfect mix of biting cold and dismal slush combined to make my apartment the perfect forced writer's retreat. Alas, the weather has been lovely these last few weeks which can only mean that I will need to develop actual will power and work ethic to start/finish things. But as luck would have it 2012 is actually the very year I had planned to develop work ethic and will power so really it's just like everything is finally falling into place.

In light of this new Panglossian approach to life (to which I credit finally seeing the Muppets movie in all it's adorableness and thus to Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords fame), I'm going to prioritize those thing which will get me paid and/or get me into a school that will then take all of that money. Never one to let such a resolution come at the expense of blogging (which as far as I can see neither earns me money or academic acclaim, but that's likely my own fault), I'm still updating today, but only to post links to other better things to entertain you. I'm actually not sure why I didn't think of this before. Enjoy!

A video montage of tumbleweeds in various films. More interesting than it sounds!

Photos of awesome street art from around the world. Who doesn't love street art? Well, the awesome kind anyway.

A totally different kind of street art--the less awesome and more morbid and sad kind. I found this because it was started by Sloane Crosely who writes the kind of personal essays that I think look easy until I really try.

This tumblr of ugly Renaissance babies was viral a month or so ago and was started by a guy I used to sit next to in a Postcolonial Lit class. Yet another famous artist to blossom from Hendrix College!

Blogging about bloggers' blogs

So I've been thinking lately about why I keep a blog. Is it to keep a record of when and what I do for myself? Is it just to keep myself writing consistently? Is it to let friends and family know that I haven't yet become a hopeless shut-in? Or is it to communicate with strangers who will be wowed by my subtle cynicism on big city living and ability topost photos that I didn't take? I think at this point, it is only some mix of the first three things. And I've decided I'm okay with that.

For a while, I'd entertained the idea that people I don't know would enjoy my thoughts (which I guess is the goal of any would-be writer). I think I'd hooked one for a while, but she drifted off around the same time that I stopped reading her blog (which probably had something to do with it.) The thing is, I read a number of blogs very faithfully and almost all of these blogs are from strangers or near strangers since only a handful of my friends really write. So I guess because I do this, it surprised me when strangers or near strangers didn't stumble on my blog, or stay when they did stumble.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of this post; however, it's one of my favorites of the "50 incredible animal photos taken in 2011" that has been circulating the Internet lately.

Consequently, I've been trying to figure out what it is that causes me to continue to read certain blogs, and I've come to a conclusion. The blogs I read regularly very in theme from food to television and even several Christian housewife blogs (more on that in a minute), and I realized that none of them are really terribly interesting or special, but that they all have one thing in common: they post daily. Well, if not daily, they post on a very strict schedule. I work in an office job and am in front of a computer with some downtime five days a week. I like having blogs that I can reliably check each morning and know that they will have new posts. That really is the entire draw.

On the subject of Christian housewife blogs (were we not on the subject? well, we are now!), I started noticing I was reading a number of these. It started with just a handful of Mormon mom blogs, and then has expanded to any number of conservative women writers. There's one in particular who is fairly political and routinely updates with views that are the antithesis of my own. The only thing she has written that I have ever agreed with is that people should probably eat less sugar and more whole foods. But for some reason, even when her anti-feminist views frustrate me, I still keep reading it daily. I guess it's just interesting to see how the other half lives. Most of my friends are also city-living, godless singles without kids so it's interesting to see another perspective on life.

Or maybe it's not interesting at all, and I only find it so because I'm here, predictably at my desk writing book captions and talking to sales reps while somewhere in Kansas City some woman I don't know is baking bread and homeschooling five children. After reading this particular, polarizing woman's blog for a while, she frequently talks about how great a housewife her daughter-in-law is and how Christian and feminine and submissive she is. She also mentioned that her daughter-in-law was writing a book, so I continued my voyeuristic stalking and discovered she too had a blog. I had assumed it would be along the same lines and that she would be a carbon copy of her mother-in-law, but the thing is, she's actually a fantastic writer, a really interesting person, and doesn't at all define herself solely by her faith or her husband or her job as a housewife, although all of these things do help inform her writing. Which is really neither here nor there, but it does remind me why I enjoy reading the blogs of strangers to begin with.

In the end, I guess none of my conclusions or musings are terribly helpful to me in my hopes of getting people I don't know to read because I have no interest in updating every day or in updating with something just for the sake of doing so. So I guess I'll stick with those loyal readers I do know and treat this blog as a way to keeping a record of what I do for myself, as well as for anyone else who cares to read them. Maybe it will evolve beyond that at some point, but for now, that's where we are, and I'm enjoying that.

Don't Forget to Write

Last night, I skipped my weekly tin whistle class--something I never do without a very good reason (previous good reasons have mostly entailed being out of the country). Last night's reason was for a book launch party for Don't Forget toWrite, a new publication from 826 National (see previous posts for more info on my involvement with 826) compiling lesson plans from some of the workshops from 826's around the country. The purpose of the book is to help teacher's inspire kids to find writing fun again--something I never felt was emphasized enough when I was in school. As David Handler, speaking for Lemony Snicket, said in the promotional video, "Kids all have the potential to be great writers. They're all born with stories they want to tell, and sooner or later they can all hold pencils."

On request, I had contributed a lesson plan for a workshop I designed and ran with a friend on making stories through mashing together literary genres. We had gathered the materials together and sent them to the editor a while ago, and up until I received the invitation to the launch party a week or so ago, I had completely forgotten about it. So why was this worth my getting behind on learning to play slip jigs? Mostly, it was just exciting to go to a launch party for a book I had contributed to. As fun as it is writing freelance and having my name on the front of a book, it doesn't have nearly the same fanfare when my author's copy arrives at my inner office mailbox as it does when I get it while enjoying free wine and assorted meats and cheeses.

Also, as I hadn't known that much about the project when I agreed to contribute, it was exciting to see who else was in it. Dave Eggers wrote the foreword, and while I haven't read any of his recent books, I will always be a fan or his starting for 826 and then marketing it so well at a speech he gave at the University of Central Arkansas that I remembered to look up the organization a year later when I moved to New York. Jon Scieszka contributed a chapter which was exciting to me because I remember when he came to my elementary school when I was in the 5th grade. He autographed my copy of The Stinky Cheese Man. I was also a fan of his Time Warp Trio series, which I see, through a quick google search, has expanded greatly long after I aged out of reading them. Also, submitting a lesson plan was Jory John, who I only recently became a fan of when a friend sent me a link to his book. He has another one called I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York that I can perhaps relate to more, as I live here and so many of my friends are alive. Anyway, this fandom led me to stalking his twitter and also learning that he works with 826 (the original in San Fransisco) as well. An admirable person to be compiled in a book with, to be sure.

If you are in need of a book with over 50 creative writing lesson plans for elementary grades (which I'm afraid, many of my readers may not be...), don't miss out on the book that film producer/director Judd Apatow calls "unconventionally brilliant." At any rate, that's enough tooting of my own horn for now, but I will say, this is so going on my resume.

Apologies for writing under the influence of eggplant parmesan and a couple of glasses of wine

I might not be doing the same amount of writing here for the next month or so because none of my readers pay me and my freelance employer does. More importantly, they except me to turn in 23,000 words on subjects ranging from rising ocean levels due to climate change to Wikipedia founder and technology mogul Jimmy Wales in the next month or so. (And by "ranging from," I really mean just those two things).

But really what is my writing but empty words trying to express experiences much better captured in images? To that end, here are a couple of photos from my beach weekend. Well, not so much weekend as a single summer Friday followed by two days of clouds and rain. Which really was fine by me because I was (mostly) confined to my keyboard penning lines from what will become the definitive biography of Jimmy Wales. And I know it will be the definitive text because there are currently very few sources in existence in the New York Public Library system devoted to the man from which I might draw my research. My only recourse has been to pore over various interviews Wales has given over the years. Through which I've determined he's kind of insufferable. So this is going to be a long 15,000 words. But that is my cross to bear. At any rate, enjoy these photos from Long Beach, NY--the jewel of Long Island.

The fact that there isn't broken glass on the beach make it worth the $11 for beach access. The beauty is just a bonus.

I'm only this carefree and looking at the world through rose colored glasses when on the Long Beach boardwalk on my way to BBQ legend Swing Bellys

See that sky? Talk about blue!

Taking photos of the platform did not make the train back to the city come any faster.

Also, I promise not to blog while drinking in the future. It might not help my writing much, but it certainly makes reading quotes from Jimmy like "I make the Internet not suck" easier to stomach. Until next time, readers!

Poems Enough

Today is my mother's birthday (Happy birthday, Mom!). This year is something of a milestone birthday, so I wanted to do something special for her. My mother is a woman of many talents: an artful painter and sculptor, a dedicated gardener, and (one day) a virtuosic banjo player. But above all, she is a life long writer--both of poetry and fiction. For her birthday this year, I wanted to publish her collected works of poetry into a single volume. At first, I wanted this to be a surprise and enlisted my dad to help gather her oeuvre. What I realized from the smattering of word documents he sent me was that my mother had written more than I realized, and many things were in varying stages of completion. I had no idea where to even begin to sort through what she would even want to have published. So the secret thing was out the window, and she contributed not only the book and chapter titles and where the poems should be organized, but also a thoughtful introduction tying the volume together.

Through the ease of self-publishing offered by createspace.com and with the enormous help of a very talented designer (whose unflagging devotion to this project, despite my many edits, prompts me to plug his Website again: www.stevedoredesign.com), we now have a finished book:The cover, although I forgot to credit it in the book (whoops! so much for the editorial check list!), is a section of one of my mom's recent paintings. It's something she did based on a photo of the Japanese gardens in Fort Worth.

I wanted to share my favorite poem from the collection, but it was harder to pick than I thought it would be. Instead, I'll just share one that I really like. It's about the constant spread of suburban sprawl (something anyone who has ever lived in the suburbs of Houston is quite familiar with). One day you're neighbors are cows in wide open fields, where you and your sister can pick berries of somewhat questionable health, and the next it's the inevitable grocery store/nail salon/laundromat mini mall.

Suburban Sprawl

We remember cows
Where grocery carts now graze.
In dove season shots rang out
Reminding us that hunters
Nestle in the cozy grass.

Then, we dared not walk
To Val-U-Drugs
Nor could we imagine how
Vast the space, once paved.

Mere grass,
Festooned with barbed wire
It seemed a part
Of our own backyard.

Now it is open, uninviting.

A beat-up taco van
Parked beside the winding road
Nourished the crews
Who straightened the road
Paving the way
For Taco Palace
And the storage place
(Painted orange and purple
To avoid confusion with the red white and blue
one
And the other two)
The day they broke ground
We vowed to boycott
Twenty-Four-Seven-Shop & Drop
And stick to homemade tamales
In honor of the fallen trees.

But sometimes you need something late at night

And it’s great to nibble a praline
Walking home
Pondering where the cows graze now.

I know the vast majority of my readers already have their copies soon to arrive in the mail, but if anyone would like to procure their very own copy of Poems Enough, you can do so from Amazon here. I realize I'm a little biased here, but if you can only buy one book of poetry this year, it should probably be this one.

Why else did I keep a livejournal all those years?

I'm sure you all thought I would be updating this with disparaging remarks about James Franco's recent Oscar hosting performance. I would love to oblige, but unfortunately I only watched the first part of the Oscar's and then only in the background while trying to come up with ways to make the difference between GDP and GNP interesting and relevant to teens. I will say he gave the impression, during the part of the broadcast that I watched, that he would rather have been napping. Did anyone else feel like he really didn't want to be there?

Anyway, I'm plowing ahead on that book this week, so in lieu of a classy, fresh update I'm giving you another blast from the past. After all, just because I have writer's block now, doesn't mean I didn't used to have loads of stuff to write about. Actually, looking back over my old journals and blogs, I realize the reason I wrote so much is because I had a lower standard for what I thought people might find interesting. But, at any rate, desperate times call for recycled tales of my youth. Here's one about embarrassing myself at college functions back in 2007.

Tonight there was a Lesbigay party at a local pub. Jill and I felt it was necessary to make an appearance because a) its high time we prove our loyalty to the organization by going to a function that doesn't offer free food and b) because it was a theme party with the theme of "dress as your favorite fictional character." Now I love a good theme party, but unfortunately I left most of my bizarre and/or costume-y clothing at home. However, what I did have was a red semi-formal dress which I brought just in case I had a semi-formal red dress wearing occasion while abroad. As I had not yet gotten a chance to whip that sucker out, I knew it would have to feature prominently in my costume. Serendipitously, Jill had a similar predicament with a red dress. Naturally, we decided to wear our red dresses, make our hair crazy and big, give ourselves sultry eyes through the power of makeup, and draw snakes on our faces and chests with eye liner. Sound like any fictional characters you know? Yeah, we couldn't think of any either. That's why we decided to be from a book no one has really ever read--and enter Ulysses. Yep, we were the two red dress twins from James Joyce's much ballyhooed epic.

Feeling cheeky and clever as we often do, we were all excited for people to ask us who we were. We had planned out dialogues where they would be skeptical and we would say "Oh come on!" (a la Gob of Arrested Development) "The red dress twins? You really don't remember them? Haven't you read Ulysses?" However, when at the party, an instance finally presented itself and Jill was able to utter our tagline, we realized something: while our little skit was all well and good to people who knew us, feigning disbelief and implying people are stupid and lacking in literary knowledge is actually quite rude when done to strangers. So much for making friends over at Lesbigay.
If livejournal weren't requiring me to "upgrade my account" in order to post a picture from this evening, I surely would. As it is, if you ever want to see a picture of me doing my version of "sexy" while sporting eye-liner snakes with their tongues sticking out--well, all you have to do is ask.

Luckily, I've switched to blogger since 2007 when this post was made. And thus, I can post a picture of us:

I enjoy looking back at 20-year-old me even if she is a wee bit insufferable. So much so that I'm considering posting something else I wrote back then. For those who regularly read the Modern Love column in the New York Times magazine, they're currently advertising their annual college essay contest where they welcome submissions from college students on the fate of modern love for the youth crowd. I wrote one back in 2007 (or possibly 2006?), soundly rejected by them, all about how my relationship with my very first boyfriend ended in a tragic (if not entirely undeserved) facebook dumping. It's less whiny than it sounds, I swear, but reading over it I'm still pretty glad it never made it to the New York Times. It might just make it to my blog, however. Really it just depends how much my readers want to read about me as an awkward teen...

I'm thankful for stories with endings

Amazingly, the month of November is already coming to a close. This means we will soon be back to our regularly scheduled programming here at Living the Astorian Dream. Which, as you've probably figured out by now, is not really that different. Mostly I'll just feel obligated to write a little more, resort to recipes a little less, and consider proofreading before publishing.

I wish I could say that my time this November was fruitfully spent. However, the only fruit really born from this experiment were shorter hair (theoretically haircut time was one of many times my nose should have been in closer proximity to a grindstone) and the discovery of my henceforth untapped skill for making sublimely creepy Christmas cards. That said, while I'm not finished, I can say: my word count did go up, and I'm determined that before month's end my book will have an ending. So yes, at the very least my book will have a beginning and an end. Now it's just a matter of filling in a few gaps (if you're feeling charitable, you can imagine them as small gaps), and my draft will be complete.

One thing that stood between and my writing this past week (not that I'm making excuses), was that I was far too busy stuffing my face with Thanksgiving goodness. Impaired by mass amounts of turkey and wine, I wasn't equal to writing so much as haiku. (For the record, I'm not intending to belittle the labors of true haiku poets...just that the type of haiku I write could generally be generated in a semi-conscious state.) I don't have much else to say about Thanksgiving, except that it was lovely to see my family and to eat the delicious offerings they provided. It was also fun to eat some proper BBQ and briefly attend (though not participate in) a square dance. Below find two photographs that I feel succinctly sum up the event:

What a beaut'. Behold 21 pounds of free range deliciousness.


Did I journey to Japan? Or is this just one of the culturally varied parts of Fort Worth, Texas? It's surprisingly hard to tell sometimes. Also, I'm posting this because I'm weirdly proud of this picture. Notice the delicate balance of shadow play. That just happened.

Finally, I'd like to take this time to give a shout-out to my talented mother, a loyal reader and commenter of this blog, who has already completed her 50,000 words for the month. Congratulations, frenchteacher! You are proof that it can be done. And done despite turkey-and-wine-impairment to boot.

I can take a hint

During short post month (er, I mean National Novel Writing Month...because I swear I'm still doing that), I always enjoy it when posts can just write themselves. Or rather I enjoy throwing other people's writing up on here that they may entertain you with their fine words. Today's contributions come not from my 826 kids (whose work I've had no compunctions about pirating in the past) but from some contest-winning writers. That's right--they finally announced the winners of the Hint Fiction Writing Contest of many posts ago. Here they are without further ado (by which I mean: effort on my part):

First Place:

Cabin Fever
by Sean Johnston (Sachse, TX)

Cindy had agreed to the electric fence, the deadbolts, the new alarm system—true—but she had assumed his intentions were to keep people out.

Runners-up:

Inheritance Money,
by Tami Absi (Dayton, OH)

To fish his apartment key from his pocket, Gunther placed his pink slip, the Detroit Daily’s obituary section, and the flowers on the floor.

Cruciform
by Matt Mintz (Fontana, CA)

The pastor's daughter made me meet her in the church basement. There was no light but she told me where to duck.

Swimming Lessons
by Vicki Wilson (Clinton, NY)

Her husband told the coroner she'd only signed up for the damned class because some crazy fortuneteller told her she'd die from drowning.

The Mirror
by Colleen Leeman (Brooklyn, NY)

She held the old, straggly feather boa up against her business suit. She apologized to the picture of her with pigtails on the dusty table.

How Does Your Garden Grow
by Katheryn Yu (Dripping Springs, TX)

One morning Annie found a hand under a the rosebush where she had never left one before.

Although I was sad to see none of my readers' wonderful entries made it (unless...Sean of Sachse..are you out there?), I must say I very much enjoyed the winning entries. Particularly the swimming one, but then I do have a soft spot for fatalism in short fiction.

I bet James Franco doesn't have 30,000 words

It's November, and I've decided to buckle down. Lay my cards on the table. Burn the candle at both ends with some midnight oil. In other words, I'm going to get more serious about writing my young adult novel, henceforth to be known as Project: Defeat James Franco. For you see, November is National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo, as the kids call it) during which participants are supposed to start and finish a novel in 30 days. I say I'm "sort of" participating because I'm not signed up, and I'm technically not attempting to write 50,000 words from scratch during the month of November. That said, I AM trying to finish my novel, even if I started it many Novembers ago. For those interested, November is also apparently Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, International Drum Month, and Pomegranate Month (but only in the United States). I only wish I had the time to participate in those as well.

Unfortunately, this means that I'll probably be posting here a little less. Or at the very least my posts will be shorter. After all, I've got to save the good writing for the werebears. I know this will be taxing for my more loyal readers (although I've been very excited to hear that many of my most loyal readers are doing NaNoWriMo themselves!). But just think: when my young adult novel takes off and becomes a smash sensation, you can say you read my juvenalia from the time when it was just blog entries. Perhaps they'll even publish these very posts, with a few edits of course, into an (albeit plotless) epistolary novel of sorts. Ah yes, imagine that.

Anyway, I promise not to forget about Astorian Dream and to check in and update as much as I can (or when I'm trying to avoid real writing...).

And finally, and this is completely unrelated to the above: remember that pumpkin contest for Zipcar? Well, my (boyfriend's) entry won an "honorable mention" prize of $15 in driving credit! I'm still not sure if the entry really was honorably mentioned or if it was more of a participation prize they gave to everyone, but I also don't really care. We'll take the $15, and they can keep their accolades! Although, I do think he should add this honor to his resume.

A hint at things to come

As sad as I am that summer is over, I'm looking forward to winter as a time I can hopefully get a little writing done. You know, free of the distractions of beach trips and BBQs and island hopping. Of course, I say this every winter, and every winter I use the fact that it's cold and dark all the time as an excuse to hole up in my apartment and watch reality television on my laptop. It's just so hard to make any real progress when the alternative is watching Gordan Ramsey yell at people.

For this reason, I enjoy writing projects that don't involve being constantly plugged away at. As a matter of fact, you may remember that as one of the key reasons for starting this very blog. But even blogging can feel taxing at such times when I'm feeling truly lazy. Luckily, I've found a project that requires even less effort! A while ago I took one of the Gotham Writer's Workshop's free classes and have been on their mailing list ever since. Usually, I just delete their monthly newsletters, but every so often I read them for the inspirational writer's quotes and information about writing contests. Well, it just so happens, they have a contest this month in "hint fiction". That is, apparently, fiction that is written in less than 25 words and "hints" at the possibility of a greater story. The concept came from this 6-word story of Hemingway's: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

It's fun idea, so I've been playing around with a couple for the last half hour or so. You're only allowed to enter one, so I'll probably spend a bit more time on it, but here's what I've thought of so far:

She was huskier than he remembered, and at some point during the last five years, had apparently stopped taking her gender hormones.

Jill would forever remember that as the summer she learned to never buy sushi from an airport or a jet-pack from some guy named Stan.

He'd had her fooled, but thinking about it, Nathalie had to admit that there weren't very many synchronized swimming classes that met at 2 am.

Ben was happy to see the morning's newspaper headline made no mention of his involvement and said simply: "Alligators attack unlucky sleepwalker; family is grief-stricken."

The entry deadline is October 11. The prize is only $100, but you also get a year's subscription to The Writer and published in Gotham's winter course catalog. You also get a 10-week workshop although I'm not sure how that works for entrant's that don't live in New York City. Although they do have some online classes, I think. At any rate, I think you should all (yes, all of you--my esteemed readers!) enter and then share your ideas here. Or you could enter and share nothing with me. Or you could share, but not enter. Or you could pretend you didn't read this. Really, I'm cool with anything. But for those interested, here's the link: http://www.writingclasses.com/ContestPages/hintfiction.php

Not your James Franco's werebear

I thought long and hard about whether or not to post this. I'm generally pretty secretive about my writing projects (or rather not about the projects themselves--which I freely and jokingly discuss with anyone who will listen--but in terms of actual content). For the last two years or so, I've been playing around with a young adult novel (very) loosely based on a Norwegian folk tale. It was (or is) an attempt to cash in on the success of the lucrative phenomenon of teen vampire and werewolf romance novels. (A movement spearheaded by a woman whose name so closely resembles my own that I was once mistaken for her at an airport security checkpoint.) Only instead of vampires (overdone) and werewolves (practically passe), it would be about a boy who is cursed with turning into a bear every night. A werebear, for lack of a more awesome term.

I'm actually no closer to finishing even a first draft than I was six months ago. So why post something now? Well, partly because I haven't done anything worth writing about since I've gotten back from my trip, and I have a self-imposed blog post quota to maintain. The second reason is that it has recently come to my attention (thanks to a tip from a loyal werebear fan) that James Franco--who you may remember from his iconic role as "New Goblin" in Spiderman 3--is now shopping around a very similar idea. Observe exhibit A (skip to 2:25): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfzuOu4UIOU. Okay, so he's not so much "shopping around" the idea as he is making fun of it. But that's how I got my start too! You start off joking, but pretty soon you start thinking: "hey, people have paid money at bookstores for worse." Before you know it, two years of your life are gone, and all you have to show for it is 30,000 words of teen fluff.

At any rate, I submit for you an excerpt from the book in all its unedited glory. This particular section takes place when Tara (our lovelorn teenage heroine), egged on by her friends Rachel and Kati, finally discovers her boyfriend Mike's (a Norweigen exchange student/bear) secret of why she never sees him at night. It's not the sort of book I would read myself, but hey, that hasn't stopped me from writing it. Enjoy!

All business now, the girls readied their flashlights and sprinted across the cul-de-sac to the entrance to the woods. With the light now, the way seemed only slightly easier. It still was nearly impossible to see where Mike had gone. It was as if the woods opened up to let him pass and then barred the way again. Still they pushed on with great urgency, all pretending they knew exactly where they were going. The twigs scratched their arms and legs but they pressed on without even registering it. Tara led the way, furiously pushing aside branches that could serve no purpose but to stand between her and the truth. Rachel followed her while Kati, holding the flashlight aloft, brought up the rear.

Suddenly, Tara heard a muffled cry behind her and turned around. Kati had tripped over a root and lay crumbled on the ground gripping her ankle. Rachel bent down to help her, and Tara ran back to her side.

“Are you okay?” asked Tara.

“Yeah…well, I’m not sure. It really hurts” groaned Kati.

“We’re so close though,” said Rachel.

“You don’t know that,” said Kati with a pained laugh, “for all you know, we could be far. And anyway we don’t even know where we’re going, so close and far are kind of moot.”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” whispered Tara almost to herself.

Suddenly, as if to underline Tara’s point—and in a way Rachel’s as well—very near to them was a flash of light illuminating the trees and a clearing up ahead. Accompanying the flash of light was a horrible, guttural, roar. It sounded like the voice of something (for a human voice it was not) in horrible pain.

“We’ve come this far,” said Rachel with finality. The two girls hoisted Kati who was able to walk quite well on her foot, though whether from adrenaline or actual foot health was a matter that didn’t concern any of them just then. They ran towards the clearing where they had seen the light.

The flash had settled into a dim glow, but the clearing was still very visible in the haze of the mysterious illumination that was seemingly without source. The source of the light was soon clear—Mike was lying in the clearing, but his body was wrenching about without his control. He seemed to be having some sort of seizure. Tara’s instinct was to run to him as he was clearly in pain—but Rachel’s hand on her arm stopped her long enough for her to realize her legs wouldn’t have moved anyway. But at the instant Rachel’s hand touched her arm, before she could think of anything other than that the man she loved was being tortured by some unseen force, she let forth an involuntary cry: “Mike!” He looked over at her and she was immediately washed with regret. For the look of pain on his face and in his eyes at seeing her there, as proof her betrayal, was far worse than any physical pain he might have been undergoing. He looked truly hurt for only an instant before his head snapped back looking upwards, and she saw his face no more.

In the next moment, fur was growing all over his body. He was becoming huge and muscled, a sinewy muscle, thick and strong especially in his limbs. The muscles were soon obscured by the hair that rippled over them in beautiful white waves. His entire stature was changed—his arms became equal to legs, and his body was contorted until it finally came to rest on all fours. Somehow, before the very eyes of the three girls, and in only a matter of minutes, the scrawny, pale, blond boy with a penchant for biochemical studies had transformed into an enormous, powerful white bear.

Rachel and Kati each grabbed one of Tara’s hands, and they stood in a chain, paralyzed by fear. The bear did not approach them, however. Once settled on the ground, safe and transformed, he turned to give one parting look to Tara, a look brimming with dissappointment. And though he was still a ways from them, she could see that while everything else had changed, his eyes were the same deep blue. He then turned and lumbered away into the forest. The light immediately faded and the clearing was left in darkness. They could not have followed him had they wanted to.

The walk home was undertaken in silence. Kati limped now, and her irregular footstep was the only remarkable noise on the journey back. Without discussing it, they all returned to Tara’s house and walked upstairs. There was no question: if they slept at all that night, it would be in the same room.

Kati was the first to speak: “Well…at least he’s not cheating on you.”

Writing, (mostly) not my own

I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks and was hoping to blog a lot before I leave to help get all of my dear readers through the tragic, and all too quickly approaching, week when I will be doing more interesting things than blogging. Then again, I'll actually be traveling with one of my most loyal commenters, and I'm sure the rest of you can get along without my words of wisdom for a time.

At any rate, my efforts to post frequently this week have been thwarted by an unfortunate case of writer's block. I have a lot of ideas, but no good ones. However, last night when I was looking through my "files" (a fairly loose designation for the plastic tub containing everything from my birth certificate to the lease to an apartment I lived in almost a year ago, all my tin whistle sheet music, and every birthday card I've ever received) and found some books written by the kids I work with at 826. 826 NYC is a charity devoted to tutoring children and encouraging creativity and writing. They also provide superhero supplies to the people of Brooklyn. For more information (and a very unflattering picture of me) you can check out this blog: http://www.changesbrooklyn.com/2009/05/08/profile-826nyc/.

Anyway, I got to reading some of the kid's stories. I realized I probably should have started blogging when I was 8 because there is no greater cure for writer's block than having the unbridled creativity of a child. However, I'm still stuck. So instead of writing anything real, I'm going to give you a couple of quotes from my favorite stories. Trust me, these kids are good.

"The place was an abandoned apartment. Her name was Rosy. She was tall, lean , gorgeous, blond--probably had tons of boyfriends. She was wearing a white sweater, short skirt. Probably a cheerleader, you could tell. She had on the local school colors and dirt under her fingernails, plus her voice was a little hoarse."
-Justin, Age 10

"One day, at 12:00 am, when Billy Bob was getting honey from his bee cage, like he usually did four times a day, his arm jerked, because he's not that strong, and the honey fell all over his face and he fell into the closet, straight into the cages, and his shirt unlocked the cages for the python and the lion. The bees escaped. The python escaped. The lion escaped. Everything escaped."
-Tyler, Age 9

"Every morning when he wakes up, he runs over to check his safe of money. He then puts a big red check on his pajamas and throws them into the garbage (he wears different pajamas every day). He is 57, good-looking, nice, and cool and smart."
-Greg, Age 10

And my personal favorite (in honor of my home state and one of the places I'll be vacationing soon):

"In Texas, everyone helped one another. There were no worms, and families loved each other."
-Sebastian, Age 13

What I used to do instead of writing papers

I went through a James Thurber phase a few years ago. Actually, I've always liked James Thurber, particularly the book The Thirteen Clocks. I remember my mom reading it to me when I was little, and then later when I was much older (because it is a book best read allowed), reading it to peers. When I say "much older," I seriously mean college age. While studying abroad, I even made some like-minded friends who delighted in spending winter evenings drinking tea and reading The Thirteen Clocks as well as other fairy tales allowed together. There's something so exuberant about how Thurber plays with language in that book.

At any rate, following this relaxing study abroad semester of joyful tea drinking and Thurber basking, I was thrust into my final year of college thesis writing and seminar paper completing. Instead of doing any of that, I would pen my own pointless Thurber-esque writings. I found one of them on my computer today while I was trying to avoid doing something else (par for the course). Because one of the requests for this blog was to post some of my writing (although I don't think the person who suggested that actually reads this blog), I'm including some of it--
un-edited, circa 2007 writing--here:

When he was only a dot on the horizon, seen by only Ms. Sarah, the nyctalopic old maid, he was already involved in the fabric of the town because he was already a part of what “might be” which is almost as important as what “would be” and almost as exciting as what “never was.” He became Ms. Sarah’s husband while he was still only a dot on the hill. She saw his gentle stride and knew him to be a kind-hearted old man who would wash her feet in warm salt water in the evening and tell her stories of his travels over the high seas. In her mind, he was also a sailor. He had been from one end of the world to the other a score of times and from top to bottom twice as many. He had seen mermaids eating fish raw with their hands and whales so large you could build a castle (albeit a smaller one) on their backs. He had been to where the people would eat without ever getting fat and grow fat without eating. He had heard the songs of sirens and thought it not as melodic as his mother’s voice singing him to sleep as a child and only slightly more than anything.
As he grew closer to the cottage at the edge of the village where Ms. Sarah stood, by the garden in her yard where she was planting sunflowers and cabbages side by side, she had to give up some of her imaginings about him and replace them with new ones. As his features became apparent, she saw that he was not a sailor at all, but maybe yet some sort of carpenter or wood maker. Where he wouldn’t have stories, at least he’d be reasonably handy around the house. Ms. Sarah considered for a moment the broken door behind her that creaked on its hinges, and when it was thrown open suddenly, like from a gust of wind or a dramatic house guest, made a disagreeable thropping sound not unlike the sound of someone swallowing a hard-boiled egg whole.
She saw that he was a very short old man who walked with a cane and an affected gait that was less of a hobble and more of a limp. It was not the walk of a man feeling his age, for he walked quickly with a jolly spring in his step, but rather the slightly inconvenienced walk of someone who had stepped on a thorn and for whom one foot is tender. He wore a dusty brown suit and a dark brown cape heavy with mud on the ends. He wore atop his head a proper matching brown hat which completed the outfit and made him seem quite the well-dressed little old man. It was a couple more minutes of watching him make his quiet progress toward the village that she saw that his clothes were a thing of patches and that his feet were bare and hardened to stones from many, many miles of walking. His hands were weathered too and had turned to stone out of sympathy for the feet. Ms. Sarah thought regretfully of her aching feet and the bowl of warm salt water and gentle hands. By the time he had reached her door, he was no longer her husband.

So yeah, that was really neither here nor there. As for future posts: astute reader, deepsnaps, suggested I take a crack at this list: http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/05/the_101_best_sandwiches_in_new.html. I just spent a good 20 minutes pouring over this list and chose my must-try favorites. Unfortunately, I've recently started trying to save money, a (not so surprisingly) difficult task in this city. However, if (and when) I find my way to any of these delicious sandwiches (and with sandwiches such as the Bar Boulard croque monsieur--this seems an inevitability), I promise to write about them in mouth-watering detail.
Believe it or not, despite all the culinary attractions of NYC and the fact that there isn't even a commercial Chick-fil-a franchise open to the public in the five boroughs, this little beauty is number 78.