Raymond Carver's "A Serious Talk"

I really liked how simple but powerful this story was. The words and sentences Raymond Carver used were uncomplicated and easy to comprehend, but the point of the story was more hard-hitting and complex, and I loved the way it ends (not because of what happens, just the way it's ended).  I can't say I really hated Burt by the end of the story.  I would describe it as more of a disdainful pity.  You want to hate him and you want to feel bad for him at the same time.  But because we are given so little information about him, and so much room to fill in his backstory ourselves, you can't really put him in context.  The way Raymond Carver writes not only sets the abrupt, non-descriptive tone of the story, but it also gives you insight into Burt's mind, everything seems normal on the outside, but inside something's just a little off balance.

Emulation Piece: Clementine

5

Clementine is just five years old.  She sits on the front walk, her sweaty curls plastered to her forehead.  Her tiny fists clench four flower stems, wilting in the heat of her palm.  She lays them out in front of her chanting “One for Mama one for Papa one for Evie one for me”.  She gathers the flowers again, picking each one up carefully with small certain fingers.  Her overalls are smudged with dirt and marmalade and she chirps a song that has no words.

25

When Clementine is twenty five she will follow a love overseas.  She will bring home flowers every day, weaving them into her braids and tucking them in between book pages.  Her bedside table is scattered with petals and her hands always smell of planting soil.  He will love her for these things. Them, and the way she watches stars, scribbles in the margins of her poetry books, the way she sings while she sweeps.

45

When Clementine is forty five her garden will be the talk of the street.  She will walk back and forth from the house, filling pitchers of water that spill over onto her overalls as she dodges her son's tricycle.  In the spring her tulips and daffodils peep out first, dipping over onto the sidewalk and bobbing in the breeze. She kneels and sets down the pitcher.  Her son pushes toy trucks in circles around her as she hums and turns the soil.  The sun is out today, so later they sit together and make clover chains, he tells her stories and she sings to the sounds of the birds.  When her husband comes home he finds them asleep on the porch, draped with their crowns and necklaces.

65

She is older now.  The sun is setting and the open curtains allow the glowing light to flood the kitchen.  Clementine delicately places flowers in a vase.  She picks them up carefully with trembling fingers. The walk to her bedroom is long and the evening is quiet. She takes off her slippers and turns on her lamp.  She sings a song she used to know as she slips on her nightgown.  She hums until she falls asleep.  Sometimes she forgets the tune.

Fry's Spring Cafe

Many criticize the cheap and possibly unsanitary ways of the once well renowned Fry's Spring Cafe, but they don't understand the pure nostalgia and love that it is filled with, nor have they lived practically their entire life inside it's swinging screen doors.  Fry's Spring Beach club, founded over 100 years ago used to be a private country club right by the University for the most elite of Charlottesville. It's now-vintage 50's ballroom and carpeted sunrooms with now-cobwebbed chandeliers dangling over now-dusty hardwood halls, used to be home to glamorous parties and many an elegant dance.  The massive trees and lush grass that grow around the pools still attract families, but it's lost it's splendor to most and no longer represents that well kept wealthy lifestyle. In fact, it's in deep debt and practically bankrupt. The cafe downstairs, once a restaurant, may not have a completely functioning grill, but it's smoothies of questionable origin, the buckets of nacho cheese, and melted ice cream sandwiches are part of people's childhood. From group of punkish teenagers that always take the corner booth and never wear shoes, to the group of old men that sit on the hill with their guitars on Saturday nights, this cafe means home. This review may be biased, but even if my chicken nuggets are frozen and the salt shaker has pepper in it and my smoothie isn't smooth, and even if the service is minimal and it's a negligent teenager behind the counter most of the time, it's a landmark in kid's lives. They'll make fun of it to others, laughing about how a raccoon died in the wall and how nothing ever works around there, but they'll never forget summer days when it rains and the cafe managed to crank out some watery hot chocolate and cut a muffin into twelve pieces so every soaked and freezing person could have a bite. It's the purest example of heart over health. Always appreciate its' good intentions, even if you're being sold overpriced soggy cheese fries that may give you food poisoning.

***DISCLAIMER: this review is highly exaggerated, Fry's Spring is a great community and beautiful place and I love it with all my heart.... though the raccoon thing is true but it may have been a opossum. They couldn't really tell it just smelled really bad.***

Creating Tension

I''l be honest, I've never consciously thought about tension while writing or how to even apply it to my writing.  I've always been more poetry focused, so plots and conflicts like to hang out on the backburner of my mind and I spend time writing short lines of things that don't make a lot of sense but use some figurative language and sound kinda cool. But, after reading this passage, I figured out another reason why tension isn't something that I've thought about in my stories and poems.  I hate writing dialogue.  I love reading it, some authors are amazing at writing dialogue and I really admire that, but unless I'm writing something from a memory where the dialogue was created for me, I have trouble bringing a character to life through words. I'm more comfortable with describing actions to paint their picture for the reader.  So, I think creating tension, creating those little cliffhanger moments within paragraphs, is something I should take off the backburner and think about when I'm writing. Dialogue and tension create good stories, and though I don't think they're always key elements, it's something to think about and a new style to explore, and I'm always up for that.

Reflection on "There's No Such Thing As Good Writing"

Revision is the part of the writing process I am the absolute worst at. It's not that I can't take feedback or criticism, it's just that once I've written something I read it over and over maybe change a few words but by that time I can feel it's rhythm, the way it reads. I get attached to that particular draft. When I read what Graves said about "there is only good rewriting" I immediately thought oh god no I couldn't do that. For someone who can hardly delete one word from a stanza, it just seemed way too drastic. Since then, however, I have given his ideas more thought and I think it's a concept I could really draw something from, and maybe I'll let myself edit more than spelling errors and bad rhymes.

the best gimmick: straight up fire

My science teacher, a woman me and my classmates loved for the four years she taught us, saw after the first days of class we didn't seem that engaged in or excited at the prospect of studying basic biology.  So, one day, even though it had nothing to do with the unit we had just begun, we walked in to see a table covered in some sort of liquid. Behind it stood our petite 5 foot teacher, matches in one yellow gloved hand, and lab glasses pulling her short hair behind her ears.  She then lit the table on fire, it blazed for a whole 20 seconds, and then died out.  Our eyes were wide, and ever time we blinked we could see dancing flames flashing at us. We marveled at the untouched black surface, still clutching our books to our chests. Every first week of school after that, we would come in, and we would get some sort of flammable trick to look forward to, and hey it must have worked because science was never anyone's least favorite subject.

Reflection on "Steal Like an Artist"

The concept of "stealing" from other writers and authors is something I actually think about a lot.  There's this thing a lot of teenagers do, a lot of people in general do, where they act differently towards different friends and different people. They mold to the group, for better or for worse. I'm not necessarily like that socially, but when it comes to reading and writing, it applies to me completely.

If I'm reading something and I really like the way it's written, or it's style, or even the subject of the story/poem, I'll notice that for a little while my writing style will change to fit whatever I've just read.  It's a way of just testing out that way of putting words on paper, of expressing an idea a little differently and seeing how it sounds. Recently I've been watching a lot of spoken word poetry, so most of my poems or stories are coming out in that sort of spoken word style, which has been something kind of cool to play around with and work on.  Sometimes I get something I really like, or sometimes it feels like I'm trying a little too hard to be something I'm not. Either way, I think it really relates to what Austin Kleon was talking about in his talk.  The idea of not trying to replicate people you admire, but take their basic ideas and transform them into your own.  I've only noticed that I do this recently, but I think as a writer it's important to be able to draw inspiration from other people's work and remember that you don't always have to strive to be original.

(this is a joke for an assignment but like seriously I'm good at all these things hire me)

UNEMPLOYED:

15 year old girl

SKILLS: awkward conversation, eating large amounts of tacos, some embroidery experience, can kick a soccer ball a considerable distance, sleeping through alarms

CONTACT INFO: helen.gehle@gmail.com

Reflection on Ta-Nehisi Coates

In the video Ta-Nehisi says ¨I knew what kind of writer I wanted to be, I was not becoming that writer¨ and I can really relate to that. My writing has evolved a lot, because I've evolved a lot, and it hasn't really become what I'd expected when I first started writing.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, I don't know if it's something anyone can really predict about themselves, but it's interesting and somewhat reassuring to see someone whose career revolves around writing still struggling with things I struggle with and have struggled with.  Another thing he mentioned was how his main advice towards young writers is perseverance, and I think that's a good reminder for me.  A lot of the time I have an idea and I sit down to write, and I find myself writing something that sounds and feels wrong, and I have to just write it over and over until it's something I don't hate. Or sometimes I think I'm writing something completely different, and then I realize I'm writing a different version of a previous draft. Every idea, with enough time and editing, can be turned into something decent and I think that's important to remember even if, at the time, it feels like you're just writing the same thing over and over.

Why I Write

I've never been someone who seeks a lot of attention. I'm the shy girl in the back of the room who likes to wear flowers in her hair and doodle in the margins. I have no great aspirations of fame or fortune, in fact most of my fantasies of the future involve a small cottage in Europe or living in some unknown corner of the coastline. But until then, writing has been my refuge.  I don't know how else to say it besides that whether it's scribbling under my psychology notes or sitting up at 2 AM typing, writing gives me some sort of strength.  Though I've never actively sought power, I do have authority over my words, and that's something that's meant a lot to me my whole life.  

I always found it funny that the first thing I learned to write was my name.  My first story, the only story I could write, was something that was entirely and by definition, me.  But then, after I was given more letters, more rules, more details, I wrote about anything but myself.  I wrote of girls on sailboats, in trees, riding elephants, girls who could see past the stars. And I always thought this was how people wrote. Their writing wasn't supposed to reflect them, it was supposed to tell stories of foreign landscapes and people who lived adventures on the sea and children who could fly out of bedroom windows.  

Then, I met this author in the sixth grade.  I don't even remember her name if I'm being honest.  I just remember this one thing that she said to us that changed my writing forever. ¨Write for the reader out there that is you¨ . That really stuck with me, and it helped me begin to find my purpose in writing. It helped me realize that the only person I needed to write for was myself.  I went full circle, in a way, to when I could only write my name over and over.  But now I can go so much further than that.  Since then I think I've come to know myself better, and that's why I write. To understand the things I can't understand until I've read them, to have written words when spoken ones fail me. So I'm not writing stories of strangers, but I'm not writing my name over and over either.

Ocracoke

Sitting on the dock that night, watching Sirius glow in the sky, raising our feet to the stars and realizing millions of galaxies were contained in our pinky toes, I was struck by the simple enormity of our universe. If I can even call it ours.  It all came crashing down on us like the waves we’d been jumping hours ago.  Our heads on each others shoulders, just watching everything that is real become silhouettes while everything that seems magic becomes brilliant orange red pink blending into a rich glowing blue gray black.

We never wasted an hour of daylight. Always dancing with sand in our hair, sunshine in our smiles, playing cards or paddleball, joking, and laughing at our own clumsiness until we felt as sick as the time we ate all those chips ahoy in the car trunk.

But at night we became the philosophers of our generation.  You would quote some famous author and I’d try to profoundly summarize my opinions. We loved discussing the finer details of loving and being a good person, the hidden fears we had tucked away, and why johnny cash impressions were oh so terribly difficult for a teenage girl.  

There were shoes optional walks that we took under the island stars.  First sitting on the harbor, feet swinging, a certain thrill coming from the independence of it all and the slight danger we felt from the open water, unsure of its black depth.  Sometimes we would lay down, your voice twirling its way through the moments whether it was singing or talking about the time your sister was crazy.  Sometimes I’d jump in, sharing my own anecdotes or trying to be witty. But almost always I drew that giggling laugh from you and it made me laugh and we’d just laugh together for a little while. Neither of us quite sure why.  

Then we would get up and walk the gravely road that ran along the docks.  Live music and laughter would bubble out from bars and the murmurs of passing bikers added a nice background noise while we talked about past friendships and admitted fears of growing old (specifically above the age of 60) and our tenth grade class schedules (specifically whether they would involve each other).  I would burp and you would glare and I would laugh and then you would too.  It was a cycle that would recur probably every few minutes.  A cycle that still never really ends.

We loved to analyze our own friendship. How it began, how it will end (preferably never) and why it happened.  We tried to list our similarities and got tired of listing things because you would say something and I would say saaaame and I would say something and you would say saaame. So we had to decide that we were essentially the same person but not.  Every night our feet carried us faster than we thought and we would end up at the ice cream window before we were ready. I was still finishing my thoughts on the finer points of Dudley Dursley’s personality as the man behind the window interrupted with ¨would you like to order something??¨

I don’t think we ever stopped talking the whole night. It was like we both had so much to share. So many pieces of ourselves to hand over and trade. I gathered my scraps of you and tucked them away fondly, knowing you a little better now.  And now that I think about it that’s why we walked. To share the intimacy of being alone together with each other’s words, to know each other and grow on each other.  We built on each other with book store opinions and smoothie decisions and biking lessons.  Stacking memories on memories until we had no more to hand over. By the end of the night we were girls with empty hands. We’d given each other all the things we’d held before, but instead of tucking our hands in our pockets, we held them out under the starlight of Sirius glowing over the harbor and let the new memories of sunny beach days with sand in our hair and sunshine in our smiles, fall like stardust, into our palms.