Assigned Blog Post #3: Character Sketches

Ben wanted this to be a love story, but it's not. That pretty much describes our entire friendship. JUST KIDDING... Maybe.

Macy Jones (though Ben calls her Trina Roca because he was too lazy to ask me my character's name...) is a school bus driver in her 30's. She has curly blonde hair and is slightly overweight, but just at that point where women can still say they are concerned about their weights and get away with it. She has always lived in the suburbs of Houston, Texas and has no intentions of moving. Even if she did, she tells herself, it wouldn't matter. It's not that she has the financial power to go anywhere, and what've they got that could be better than where she is? It's not that she's completely content where she is, just that she is, to quote The Sound of Music, "suffering from a deplorable lack of curiosity." She's never been the best at anything and of course she's had friends in different stages of her life but they got up and left and she never had the motivation to leave. She doesn't like her job and is searching halfheartedly for where to go next, but she also appreciates its dependability and general ease so it could be a while...

Macy Jones walked into Dress Barn Women's around noon and waited to be attended to, as if it were a restaurant she'd just entered rather than a dress shop. "No pink," she said to the younger woman who came to help her. "And none of that orangey yellow either. Nobody really likes that color."

The attendant was at least ten years younger and never seemed to stop smiling. "Alright then," she said, "let's look at some darker colors. There's a plum dress over here and a nice navy blouse-"

"Good god no," Macy cut her off. "This is my sister's wedding! Why on earth would I wear dark to a wedding?"

The attendent apologized, directing Macy to a sleeveless lavender dress.

"It must have some sort of sleeves," Macy instructed. She'd never admit it to this stick of a girl, but Macy was quite self conscious about her shoulders. She recalled the last man in her life saying "must be a woman thing," but by the time they broke up a year later he'd become certain it was just a Macy thing, that most women were completely comfortable with their bodies. No matter, that was years ago. Macy had concluded that men were a hassle and had therefore given up on them entirely.

Macy rejected dress after dress for being too thick, too busty, too short, to expensive, too informal... The attendent gave up trying to understand it all. "Red is for prostitutes," Macy would say, or "do I look fifteen to you?" She finally picked a green floral print from the back of the store, with sleeves just long enough to cover all that she wanted concealed but short enough to be cool for an outdoor wedding in Houston.

Macy left the store thirty dollars later and checked the time. 2:00 pm. She needed to be at the school by 2:20 and bus drivers are always early. Hurrying through the parking lot, she brushed by a pack of guys a bit too briskly- within seconds her hard- sought out dress was covered in a red energy drink. "Do you people pay any attention?" she asked. Her tone was plenty beyond irritable as a man in a Sumo in the City 2008 sweatshirt attempted to clean up the mess.

"Sorry ma'am," he said, his voice reflecting no more intelligence than she could expect with a man of his size. Not that she held any stereotypes, but if she were to be a judgmental type of person, he'd have fit her expectations pretty well. "I'm sure I've got napkins in my car or something..." he trailed off.

Macy was not always the brightest woman around, but she was well aware that napkins would not solve the mess, and she didn't have time to figure out what would. "Napkins?" She asked, clearly aggravated. "What, do you have kleenex too?" Not waiting for him to answer, Macy dragged the stranger with her back to the store. If she was going to have to exchange this dress she'd spent so much time finding, The man who caused her problem was going to suffer as well.

Assigned Blog Post #2: Soanywayyy

I get off track a lot. In my head, in my speech, in my... life. It's not that I waste time, I just... have a lot of thoughts. Katie Giseburt described ADD pretty well last year when she said "they say it's deficit of attention, but really I have so much asking for my attention that I can't fit it all into my head." I don't actually have ADD (not that I know of anyway...) but I don't focus very well at all. This means my conversations, emails, and writings tend to be long and tangenty. And I have lots of poems that I don't put up because the poem I started out writing is very different from what I ended up saying, and what came of it was rather ridiculous.

I think my writing reflects my personality quite a bit, although I hope to experiment with voice enough that I am able to create pieces that don't sound like me at all. I'm a distractable person- my writing changes direction frequently. I'm a pretty honest person even when people would really rather I weren't- my writing is pretty blunt and to the point. I don't use many metaphors to describe things because I don't think in metaphors, I think in adjectives. It's not a mountain of papers, filling up my desk space and brain space and threatening to egulf my physical and psychoogical world, it's... just a big stack of papers. I don't think there's much I do in my writing to make it different and interesting, but when I see other people's writing I always wonder why they have so much fluff. Like claire's (sorry I don't include anonymity, nothing I say is actually bad)- Clarie describes things so much without actually saying what she's talking about. I won't pretend to be succinct, but I do like to be clear in what I'm saying. I guess that makes sense in person too; Claire likes to pretend things are happening when they're not (yes, you all already knew that) and I like to get to the point. The thing is that a plot doesn't usually have a specific point so... I dunnooo

I guess I'm supposed to adress the first half of the assignment, huh? I like Junot Diaz's writing, but I think this is heavily influenced by his use of Spanglish. It's not a way I aspire to write and the themes aren't generally themes I like to write about (though they are themes I'm interested reading about), but it is cool that he has such a strong voice in his writing and that it's so distinctive. I guess it's interesting to me to see how other authors use voice and how they really portray the character of the narrator through the way he/she describes the world instead of through what he or she is actually describing, and it's a skill I'll try to acquire, with lots and lots of trabajo :P

Details. Randomly.

So I had some kind of fabulous story idea on friday in school and then I went straight to a retreat and I never wrote it down and... I'm sure you know how that goes.
I guess I'm supposed to write that story about how my overweight bus driver meets Ben's sumo wrestler but I am not awake enough for such nonsense. You'll see tomorrow I suppose.


So I think I should keep an ongoing detail list because once I start something like a blog or a list, it comes up more and more in my thoughts and I need to write down examples of details (real or made up in my head) that come up or they will POOF disappear completely. Some of them aren't sensory details, they're the way people act. or random descriptions. And I wish I could flag posts or something because this list will keep expanding for a long time.

• Someone who says goodbye with "ciao!" and it sounds totally natural because she used to live in Italy and she doesn't think she's being foreign when she does it. I can't even say goodbye in English without it sounding awkward (I try to make it two syllables: bye-ee) and in other languages it just sounds ridiculous
• Guilt about your unhappiness/selfishness... like when that sophomore gets the solo you really wanted and you could just kill her because you honestly think you're better at it and deserve it, but at the same time she's really sweet and you feel horrible just being annoyed at her because it's not like she's a bad person or even like it's her fault she got picked ahead of you. And it doesn't have to be a solo, it could be a scholarship, a homecoming date, a varsity spot, an internship... what have you.
• Have you noticed that when you set your mind against something, you have no chance of liking it? Like a good friend at church doesn't like choir but her family's really involved and her two older sisters did it and so her mom requires it but because she's set her mind against liking it, everything the director does bugs her and every time we get a new song she dislikes it and everyone else in the choir loves it but all of us choose to be there. I've noticed that a lot lately, that people's disliking of things is very self-feeding and when you ask someone why they don't like _____, their reasons are the dumb things that shouldn't matter, and wouldn't matter if they didn't have that attitude to begin with.
• Flavored mini marshmallows. Why? The entire point of a marshmallow is to be a puff of sugar, nothing more. But my mom bought them because they looked fun. No actually, they look (and taste) gross. And because of this, they've been sitting in the cabinet for quite a while now. Soon they'll start to take on a new flavor...
• Hair that is too long to be bangs and too short for a ponytail. I have a bunch of hairs like that... not like anything that used to be bangs or that I cut that way, just some of my hair never seems to grow past that point and then I run and I have random hair sticking out in messy curls on the top of my head and it looks a tad ridiculous.
• Doing things out of habit instead of because you actually want to. Like being on a team because it's your life/social group/something you've done since you were 3, and not giving a second thought to if you actually enjoy it. Or, when you do, pushing the thought out of your head as soon as it comes because somewhere you think you couldn't bear to leave. You could be wrong, though, if you actually thought about it. Some friendships are that way too. And plenty of marriges. It's all rather unfortunate.
• "It seemed Maurine's greatest fear was an empty funeral. Death was no concern, but she was constantly trying to make herself valued, pushing her love and shoving her friendship onto the confused masses, who could never quite understand why she chose them to join her eclectic social group. In reality, neither did she, but she felt that she was doing them an honor by seeking their friendship and giving each one a sense of value when it was clear that was her own goal. Sometimes, though, there are cases in which it is better to leave a child at home than let its mother drag it to an event- wedding, funeral, what have you- kicking and screaming, and with little understanding of why they are there. In Maurine's case, none of them quite understood why they came to visit the grave." BLEH THAT ONE NEEDS A LOT OF WORK but I put quotes around it because... it is not a note from me, it's a note from a narrator. And I can figure out how to phrase myself better some other day.
• Our cats used to be fit. We kept the cat food on the laundry machine and they'd jump up on it whenever they wanted to eat. If they ate too much and stopped being able to jump, that was alright because they just wouldn't get any food and they'd lose the weight soon enough. It was a cycle and it worked out well. We were proud of ourselves for keeping such good cats. Nowadays, neither of our cats can jump that high. We keep their diet cat food on top of the laundry machine as always, but we also keep a stool there just so they can get up. It gets in the way in our crowded laundry room, but we've learned to put up with it. Five years and three cats ago we would never have accepted such nonsense

Character

Have you seen A Chorus Line? If you haven't, stop reading this post and look it up on youtube or something. Not the movie, the show. It's entirely based on characterization and man, does it do a good job. Here's the beginning of the song At the Ballet:

Daddy always thought that he married beneath him-
That's what he said, that's what he said.
When he proposed, he informed my mother
He was probably her very last chance.
And though she was twenty-two,
Though she was twenty-two,
Though she was twenty-two
She married him.

Life with my dad wasn't ever a picnic
More like a 'come as you are.'
When I was five, I remember my mother
Dug earrings out of the car.
I knew they weren't hers, but it wasn't
Something you'd want to discuss.
He wasn't warm.
Well, not to her.
Well, not to us…

That part of the song is only about 30 seconds long, but it tells you a ton about a character, both from her voice and from the examples she uses. Show, don't tell. This I have let to learn.

My life? Meh. In elementary school they'd have us do projects on our ethnic identity and kids would bring in food from Morocco or tell stories about their parents' escape from Vietnam and I would have to go back ten generations to find anyone out of the US. In youth group, we try to get students involved and willing to share their stories and be open about their lives- people give testimonies about nasty divorces or going to juvi or unhealthy relationships and in light of all that my life is pretty mundane. It's not that I find myself boring or think my life is actually lacking, but I'm not the kind of person I would write a story about. I can identify what characters yearn for and what a lot of people yearn for but I'm a pretty easily contented person. I suppose I yearn for excitement, for what sets me apart from the crowd, but it's not that I want other people to see me as unique and different as that I want to prove it to myself. I suppose the cliche answer would be a yearning for inner peace, but I'm pretty confident an I think I've experienced such little chaos that what I'd like is quite the opposite- this super intense life of travelling around the world and changing people and backpacking through rainforests in Chile and building houses in Rwanda and never ever "settling down" or finding contentment because the idea of that is so ridiculously boring.

Soanyway (sorry, I tangent. A lot. Have I mentioned that yet?), as I was running today I thought about characters I'd be really interested to write about- mostly characters with whom I have very little in common. I'll probably use one for Thursday's assignment and maybe one for the final story, I guess we'll see. You'll notice none of these are animals. Part of this is because we read the story about jealous parrot-husbands and I like being original, and part is just a general averion to animals of any sort. Sorry about that.

• A young child. Like 2 or 3 years old.
• Someone in a wheelchair, probably who also has difficulty communicating and is therefore very much trapped
• A homeless person
• Someone with alzheimers or dementia. Actually that could turn into a super intense storyy
• A man who cheats on his wife. I find there are a lot of stories from the wife's point of view, and a few from the mistress, but not many from the man himself.
• A former prodigy or expert who has not done whatever activity it is for a number of years... that's pretty cliche though :(
• A CEO of a major corporation. This could be interesting if done by... someone who is not me. Because I would probably just turn it into a fable about how money doesn't buy happiness or something. But because characters yearn, I haven't read too many stories with narrators or main characters who seem to have it all
• A paper boy or barista or person at a street stand or one of those "little" people who we notice for a moment while they're relevant to us and then promptly forget about

Assigned Blog Post #1: Comfort Zone

I'll be honest, because apparently that's what this post is about. After I read the prompt I had a very difficult time trying to think of concepts I am uncomfortable talking about. People I've just met tend to find me awkward or shy (I realize most of you will strongly disagree...) but that's more an issue of not knowing what to say than not being willing to say it. I don't have an abusive father or an alcoholic sister or a dreadful family secret—actually, my family is about as stereotypical-white-family as they get—but as I kept the prompt in my head for a few days, I realized there are a few things I'm not a huge fan of discussing. Like that guy who asked me to homecoming sophomore year... That was pretty uncomfortable. Except he still exists so it's still uncomfortable. Or people who ask me about my relationship with my mom. That's probably the one thing I would least like to talk about so I should probably write about it at some point or another, probably through fiction. And a friendship in which a good friend and I were both in it for the wrong reasons. And that time in eighth grade when I wrote a card to a girl I really admired telling her how much she means to me (inspirational books always tell you to do that and I actually did, of my own free will) and she just gave me a bunch of awkward looks after that and I've barely talked to her since. And that calc test last year when I literally got 3 points on the entire second half of the test... actually, just talking about calculus at all makes my life just that much worse. For as much good as Tania has done me and continues to do for me, she's pretty darn good at bringing up topics I don't want to talk about- I guess I'm pretty uncomfortable with guilt. The thing is, though, that a reader will empathize so much better with a flawed character than a perfect one, and the most convincing flaws would be aspects of myself. Well I'll try.

In the prompt post, Ms. Cross says she has to "pretend my mother will never read a word of it" and that resonates with me a lot. Because probably my mom will read it, and probably she will share it with a bunch of people with whom I am only vaguely acquainted and they will also read it, and they will come up to me at some point and say "oh I was reading your poetry and-" and I'll already be very annoyed. And then I will have an agitated confrontation with my mother. And then...

That's why I don't like talking to or about my mother.

How much truth surfaces in my writing? I don't know. There goes this entire blog assignment, huh. I haven't written much fiction before, or when I have it's been based on characters to portray an idea- very specific characters that I thought up after thinking up the idea, and they may not have been convincing at all because I had such a specific way I wanted them to be. I guess we'll see then how much honesty I am able to incorporate into my fiction, and how much I am willing or able to push myself out of my comfort zone in order to make convincing characters or interactions between them. Hmm

Honestly

So this isn't meant to fulfill the assigned blog post, it's pensamientos based on the idea of bringing truth into fiction. So I'll try to expose myself but heaven knows how it'll go. I'm writing true stories because that seems the best way to start. So... this isn't a full story by any account. I'm still learning, poco a poquito.

The new Physical Education teacher was called Dr. Gonzales. No, not Mr. Gonzales, he was sure to point out. This man was far above par as far as elementary PE teachers go, and don't you dare forget it. We'd power walk down to the lower field for kickball, making sure never to run lest we hurt ourselves- power walking was one of those fantastic hobbies they must teach you about in order to get you from "mister" to "doctor," and what a relief it must have been for those administrators to see orderly lines of power walking second graders in contrast with the reckless runners we'd been in previous years. Down at the field, we'd divide into boys and girls- it would have been entirely unfair to require the poor little girls to play against a more talented gender, but don't worry now, you were born that way. So we'd divide the field in half and learn to play nice and support our team. If anyone was tired, they could sit out and watch. We wouldn't want children to be uncomfortable during their physical activities now would we? They might get a bad impression of it all- avoid joining sports in the future. Best let us rest.

I have trouble working sarcasm or any sort of irony into writing, I'll work on that. In the end of this story, Erin decides that conventional sports are not for her and goes from Irish dancing to horseback riding to running in order to maintain some level of physical activity, but does not enjoy a PE class ever again. In another equally true ending to this story, some classmates decide in fourth or fifth grade that we will write a petition about this teacher, deliver it to the principal, and then have an extremely uncomfortable conversation during which the principal asked us to discuss with Dr. Gonzales directly about what we felt he was doing wrong, as she sat and watched. That was pretty awkward.

So I could write a story that takes place more recently but I worry a bit because at a certain point it switches from an attempt at an honest account to a lot of gossip, and I am not a fan of gossip. Hmm

Michael says he doesn't want to waste his money traveling.

"Waste?" I ask him, putting my toe up against a fence to stretch my calf. He keeps stretching his quad and just kind of stares at me, like I'm so naive not to understand this.

"Well yeah, I have to pay tuition and room and board and food and..." he trails off, as if it's a long list. I know better.

"College and what?" I ask. If he's going to treat me like I don't get it, I'll act like it. He can try explaining his excuses to himself in simple terms.

"Just college," he says, "but that's a lot of money. I don't have time to spend my summers on the Mediterranean. I have a job you know." I know he doesn't mean it with any offense, that he honestly thinks teaching kids math day after day will do him more good than experiencing a new culture, that he's only saying this because he needs to reassure himself that the job signifies him becoming a mature adult, thinking for himself, making his own decisions. I swear to myself that I will never try to prove my maturity by resorting to the mundane.

"I'm not saying you have to go right now," I say, ignoring his comment on the Mediterranean. "What about next year? You don't already have a job for next summer. You could go somewhere completely new, like Cambodia."

He switches to his IT band. "I'll still have to pay for college next year..."
"So what, you won't go anywhere for the next four years? What about after that, when you get a job? It's easier to travel when you're young you know"

"I have a job," he reminds me. "Four years isn't that long, I'll have plenty of time for adventure after that. It's not like I'm in my eighties. Besides, college is enough adventure for me."

 This is why Michael and I can never quite get along. Enough adventure? I think. Does anyone ever have enough adventure? I stretch my hamstring to keep myself from giving him bad looks- it's hard to roll your eyes when your head is upside down. "A real job," I say. I've given up trying not to offend him. "You think suddenly you'll get out of college and have a ton of time and money? You think your first job will give you a month of leave so you can learn another language in another part of the world? What if you go to grad school? What if your first job isn't perfect? What if you never find a perfect job? Plenty of people don't, you know. Will you just keep putting off adventure until you think you have everything else right? You never will- and I don't mean that offensively, I mean nobody ever has everything right. But it seems a little silly, doesn't it? Giving up excitement in order to find the ideal balance of boring?"

"I am not giving up excitement forever just because I can't afford to spend a month in a third world country this summer." Michael is indignant. "And yes, I might very well get a Master's or a PhD. I'm sorry if you can't appreciate the educational opportunities offered in conventional systems like, I don't know, the entire system of American universities." He spits out the words conventional and American, as if I have degraded them without a second thought. "You really can't accept that there is any merit in going to one of the best schools in the country?"

I do a frog, that uncomfortable quad stretch I learned in Irish dancing years ago. "Of course I can," I say, "and getting some of the best jobs in the country, and being a hard working American with a comfortable salary and a delightful wife and all the workplace freedom you could ask for and... by that point you won't want to travel will you? By that point, you'll be so convinced you have it right that you'll decide to have children! Oh joy of joys!" A part of me prays that he is tuning me out, but now that I've gotten myself started I have to finish. "And then once your children are half grown and you've been sitting at home and in a cubicle for ten years because nobody really enjoys traveling with children, it'll hit you that your life has no meaning and you'll wonder what might have happened if you'd started searching for adventure in your youth instead of letting your life waste away for twenty or thirty years as you gain raises and recognition that don't matter..."

Michael looks at his watch. "I have to go tutor," he says

"Have to?" I ask. I need to stop messing with him, he's a good kid.

He rolls his eyes and puts his sweats in his athletic bag. "I enjoy working, I enjoy tutoring these kids, I enjoy learning in a normal classroom, I enjoy aspiring to higher and higher goals without changing everything that I am, I enjoy talking to normal people. Excuse me while I zip up my mundane athletic bag but I really should get going to my conformist car... want a ride? It's on the way."

"It's a nice walk," I say, leaving through the back gate. Besides, I like hopping the fence.

Of course it didn't happen just like that, and of course I have more respect for Michael than I give him credit for in the story. And yeah, he knows the story's on here. I wasn't expecting that story to run so longgg. I'm not sure about the stretching though, it seems like it only fits some of the time. And that's the best ending I could figure out, but I've never been good with conclusions. I have more real life stories but that's enough for one post, and hopefully I'll have aquired some technique and a better sense of voice by the time I write the next few.