#simone chu

[apachepowwow-blog]

NaNoWriMo

Ah, yes. November. The leaves are falling (well, I mean, kind of), the weather is cooling (as much as it cools down in SoCal, that is), and pumpkin spice fever is still going strong. 

But for me, the month of November is more than just Thanksgiving and Uggs--it’s also about the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge.

The object of the NaNoWriMo challenge is to motivate aspiring writers to produce a 50,000-word novel within 30 days. Difficult? Yes. A good thing to try out during junior year? Um... maybe? Or maybe not. This should be interesting, to say the least.

Day 1

3,000 words in. 47,000 more to go, but I’m not going to think about that too much. Beginnings are hard, but it’s a bit like jumping into cold water: you just have to jump in, scream a little, and flounder around until you start to warm up.

Day 2

No time to write today. Oops.

Day 3

Squeezed in 1000 words! Small victories still matter. Like Andrew Jackson winning the Battle of New Orleans...after the War of 1812 was already over.

Day 4

I’m stuck.

Day 5

There’s this method of moving past stumbling blocks called the Elephant Method. It’s where you replace whatever words you’re blanking on with “Elephant,” just so you can keep your momentum going. Can’t decide your secondary character’s last name? Just type in “Elephant” in its place, and when you’re done, you go back through and use the Find and Replace tool to fill in all of the appropriate Elephants. So far I have two Elephants. Hopefully this elephanting works!

Day 6

6,000 words and counting.

Day 7

Everything is an elephant and I don’t want to go back and address all the elephants in the room.

Day 8

Couldn’t write on the computer, so I grabbed a few sheets of lined paper and went old school. Hopefully I remember to type these up later.

Day 9

So I took out my archetypes packet from sophomore English and I’ve started to work the Journey of the Hero into my story. It’s a lot more fun being on this side of things.

Day 10

I’m told that re-reading is the worst thing you can possibly do during NaNoWriMo, because re-reading leads to editing, and editing leads to self-doubt and lack of motivation and all sorts of fun things. Must... not... re-read...

Day 11

I had all day to write and I did nothing. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me. There was no school. I sat down at the computer and opened Google Drive. And then... I spun around in the swivel chair for half an hour with Smash Mouth’s “All Star” playing in the background. I don’t even know.

Day 12

Writing? Or homework? Homework it is, then.

Day 13

Has anyone smirked within the last few minutes? Or chuckled? Or how about gritted their teeth? Hmm. I’ll have to scroll back up to check. Did Els ever uncross her arms? Or has she just been sitting there with her arms crossed for the entire conversation?

Day 14

Detail is very important, kids. Employ all five types of imagery. Otherwise your characters could just be standing in a white box for all the reader knows. Like mine. I’m terrible at this.

A sneak preview:

The catacombs are dimly lit, but Eirik almost wishes that they were completely dark. That would be better, he thinks, than watching the light from their torches flicker across the walls as they pass. Whoever had stacked the aging yellow bones in the walls had done so with a loving hand; the placements were done artistically, almost. But he can’t shake the feeling of being watched, even though he knows that the grinning skulls in the walls haven’t had eyes for a long, long time.

Juho turns around to leer at him. Eirik still hasn’t figured out if that’s the man’s actual smile, or if he just really doesn’t like Eirik. Or maybe it’s a little bit of both.

He wishes that he had his friends with him. Following Juho alone through the catacombs is probably one of the worst decisions he’s ever made, and that’s saying something.

“Fascinating, aren’t they?” Juho bursts out, those beady eyes of his glinting in the torchlight.

Eirik starts at the boom of his voice. It bounces down the tunnel. There’s a vague fear in the back of mind that the skeletons will wake up if they make too much noise. “Beg your pardon?” he stammers.

Juho gestures grandly around them—like a king proudly showing off his gilded throne room. “The tunnels, of course!” That awful smile of his stretches wider, and Eirik is suddenly struck by the terrible mental image of the man’s face tearing apart at the seams...

[apachepowwow-blog]

Creativity

The light flickers overhead. I’ve never liked fluorescent lighting much, not with the way it bleeds out the other colors and heightens the yellow in everything.

I stare at the sheet of paper sitting on the desk in front of me. It is blank—mockingly so.

I hold it at penpoint.

Ah, yes. The essay. My old nemesis.

There’s a simple plan to follow. Gut the literary work. Spread its entrails on a planning sheet, selecting the choicest bits and pieces to be smeared into the essay. Construct a thesis. Body paragraph number one: topic sentence, evidence from the text, analysis of the text, second piece of evidence, more analysis. Body paragraphs two and three: lather, rinse, and repeat. Conclusion: some kind of global message that we can all walk away with from this piece of literature I have disemboweled, and restate thesis.

This isn’t what I wanted out of an English class.

What happened to the creativity? The freedom? I miss the days of elementary school, when English was a tool to be used in expressing ourselves in poetry and in prose. I miss being the writer, and not the digestive enzyme.

I behold the book pityingly. Poor thing never stood a chance; all around me, my classmates are slicing and dicing and turning it into mincemeat. I wonder how the author would have felt, having his or her beautiful baby on display to be cut open and searched in by sleep-deprived English students rummaging for archetypes and literary devices and whatever other tidbits may be hiding in the belly of the beast.

The red curtains symbolize the main character’s passion and sacrifice, I write. Or maybe the curtains were just red. I don’t know anything anymore. It’s all turned to mush. There’s pulp on my sheet of lined paper—blood and ink taped together by a few sad lines of rambled tangents.

I take out my cookie cutter—we’ve all been given one, to make sure that the mess stays within the lines, given how messy this English business can be—and slap it on the page, forcing the heap of words to conform to the mold.

The essay writhes like a slug who’s been given a salt bath as it takes form. I twist the cookie cutter and peel away the edges.

It starts to turn yellow. The sallow color of the lights does its job, bleaching out the other color and making sure it’s exactly the flaxen shade of stifled creativity.

I miss the other colors, almost. I wonder where they all go when we don’t use them.

[apachepowwow-blog]

The Death of Bookstores

My favorite store in the mall used to be Borders. For as long as I could remember, every time my family and I went to the mall, we’d be sure to stop by this bookstore. I had a system for our Borders stops and everything—first, I’d head to the comic rack and see if there were any new issues of Teen Titans; then, I’d go and see if the next issue of the Pokemon manga was out; and finally, I’d scrounge the shelves for every fantasy book I could possibly find. Gail Carson Levine’s were my favorite. I loved the bookstore, full of the smell of paper and ink and inspiration. Usually, but not always, I’d get to pick a comic or chapter book to take home, and I’d cradle it in my arms like a newborn baby.

In 2011, Borders closed its doors across the nation.

I remember that after Borders disappeared from the mall, there was still a light of hope in my dark, bookless despair. Crown Books opened up in the mall and floundered to keep its head above the water, but it didn’t last very long, either.

I consoled myself in the fact that we still had Barnes & Noble in Pasadena, but—surprise!—that eventually closed its doors too. Now, I’m down to two bookstores: the Book Rack on First Avenue, and Vromans in Pasadena. (The Barnes & Noble in Glendale is still alive and kicking, last time I checked, but that’s quite a trek away.) I’m afraid. What with all of these newfangled electronic reading devices nowadays—and the fact that downloading a book is much cheaper than buying a physical copy—it seems as though the world is distancing itself more and more from paper, and eventually tangible books will become relics of the past.

Yes, it would probably be beneficial to the planet as a whole if humankind were to go completely paperless; but as bookstores across the nation die one by one, I’m holding fast to my collection of printed pages. There’s just something about ink on paper that’s far more soothing to the eye than pixels on glaringly white screen. (I’m looking at you, beautiful 100,000-word-long fanfics that kept me squinting at the screen of my phone until three in the morning!) Additionally, I find it much easier to rifle through physical pages than to scroll furiously up and down in search of the page that I want to find.

I suppose that even if the bookstores do die, we’ll always have our libraries. And if doomsday occurs, you’ll know where to find me—with my nose buried in a library book, breathing in the smell of old paper and print’s glory days. 

[apachepowwow-blog]

Reflection of an Ex-Grammar Policewoman

You can’t turn it off.

It’s there, like a little tiny radar blipping in your head. Constantly searching and checking for imperfections. The mental grammar checker.

It draws a squiggly red line under every glaring error you see. You cringe when you hear someone say something wrong. Your fingers tingle with the urge to reach for your red corrective pen and fix the mistake. Breathe. It’s okay. I used to be there—where my knowledge of the workings of English grammar was a strong point of pride, and I would point out any grammar errors that I’d come across. I don’t know why I did it—or what I had been hoping to achieve—but I would absentmindedly correct whoever was speaking, almost as a reflex. And then I stopped. Because honestly, what's the point? It interrupts the flow of conversation, and it makes the other person feel as though you don’t really care about what they’re saying. You may mean well, but for all your good intentions, correcting someone’s grammar while they’re in the middle of communicating a thought to you just comes off as rude. There’s a quote from one of the Pokemon games that I feel is applicable to grammar policing. In the game, if the player attempts to ride a bicycle indoors, Professor Oak’s voice rings through their memory to sternly remind them, “There’s a time and place for everything! ...but not here, and not now.” We should all heed the words of Professor Oak; there are times when it’s helpful to put your powers of strictly adhering to grammar rules to use. (For example, when you’re writing an essay or copy-editing someone’s article. Or if someone asks you to proofread something for them, go for it!) But other times, when no one has asked for your assistance, it’s best to avoid interjecting your corrections willy-nilly. Yes, speaking with appropriate grammar is important, and yes, I still cringe inwardly whenever someone says “have went” rather than “have gone,” but the thing is, it’s not worth it. Whoever you have just corrected will most likely not take your remarks to heart—they’re in the process of trying to express an idea to you, so they probably couldn't care less about whether or not their sentence is consistently in the present perfect tense. You know what they meant—and that’s the important thing.