The Art of Contest Writing

So, I type here, procrastinating from the short story that is going completely off-tangent and inducing headaches (or maybe it's the humidity here in godforsaken Lafayette, IN...). As I was staring at the aforementioned story, waiting for words to magically appear on my computer screen without my actually having to TYPE them, this little light bulb lit up over my head. It kind of freaked my boyfriend out. And by "kind of," I mean, not at all, because it didn't actually happen, and my boyfriend is so engrossed in his new MLB '09 game that he wouldn't notice if a homicidal maniac came through our front door right now and hacked my screaming body into itty bitty pieces.

Of what, pray tell, did this epiphany consist?

Contests.

In case that succinct reply was not definitive enough, I will go into a bit more detail.

As some know, I recently entered ktliterary's "prompt contest." (My entry is a bit further down this page.) Not surprisingly, I was not the winner of a coveted free book, but that's okay. I didn't really EXPECT to win. I just thought, "What the hell?"

One of the best feelings, to me, when writing is that rush I get when I've finished a piece of writing. It's like the world becomes a better place, and I will be set for life because I've finished a crappy first draft.

With contests which a person chooses to enter, comes a deadline, comes pushing oneself to finish a piece of writing, rather than lolly-gagging (I have no idea how to spell that word; corrections are welcome) and saying, "I've written five words...that's good for today...where's my beer?"

I'm exaggerating, of course - I don't drink beer.

To conclude this blog entry, I come to a resolution: enter more contests. More writing means, hopefully, that the writing will get better. I think I'm going to write a contest entry every two weeks.

Now, on to working on this difficult short story. I think...I think my characters HATE me. ;)

A la mode

For a guy, it is as American as apple pie to lose your virginity at sixteen. This is when all of my friends did - relating the fulfillment of a long-term relationship or drunken luck at a large party to me the following day.

So here I am, seventeen, the only one of my friends to retain the purity valued in women and scorned in men.

I guess my problem is that I don't have females figured out yet. I'm a nice guy. Or, at least, I'm not an asshole. Yet when I work up the courage to ask a girl out, she tends to be busy. A smile and a half-hearted apology should lessen the blow of rejection though, right?

I'm too old to be a virgin. So, since I'm not charming/asshole/nice/Robert Pattinson clone enough to seduce my peers, it is time for more drastic measures.

* * * *

"Room 13? Are you serious?" I ask. Not that I'm superstitious, but it doesn't indicate a long, fulfilling sex life, to lose one's virginity in a motel room of an unlucky number. "I thought motels skipped 13."

"Relax, kid,"Trixie says, fidgeting with her shiny gold top. With a name like Trixie, which she assures me is her real name, no matter how many times I ask, a person has to wonder if her parents foresaw what her career would be. "It's just a room. It doesn't mean anything."

I have to wonder, for a second, if Trixie maliciously picked room 13 to screw with me because I'm just a kid. Then I realize I'm paying her to screw with me, so if she does it in the figurative sense as well, I'm probably getting double my money's worth. We walk to room 13.

It's not really that different from the more expensive hotel rooms I've shared in the past with my parents and younger sister. The carpet's a little more worn, the television's a little older, the bedspread's a weird brownish-purple color.

Trixie leans forward to kiss me, and I feel nervous, suddenly - even though this is what I want. "So, how did you lose your virginity?" I ask her.

She raises her eyebrows. "You do realize you're paying me by the hour, right?"

"Well, yeah. But it's just - too weird, to lose 'it' to some chick I don't even know."

"Okay. If you must know - I was raped. Under a stairwell during a school assembly. Other students were cheering while a guy I knew took advantage of the fact that they wouldn't notice my screams."

"Really?" I ask.

"Nah. I lifted that story from a movie," she says, smiling. "Do you mind if I smoke?" I shake my head. She lifts a slender white cigarette to her mouth, lights, and inhales deeply. "What does it matter where I lost my virginity, or who I am? You know where I end up, so it's not a happy story."

"I'm sorry."

"No you're not. If I didn't have an unhappy story, you wouldn't be about to get laid."

I nod my head. She's right.

"So - are we done with this 'getting to know you' shit?" she asks, placing her purse on a square table to the left of the door.

I take a deep breath. "Yeah. I'm ready."

She kisses me, with firm pressure, with her soft mouth, and I taste the smoke that lingers in her mouth.

* * * *

"So, kid, do you feel different?" Trixie asks.

"I'm not a kid," I answer.

"Sex doesn't make you a man," Trixie says, lighting another cigarette.

"I know." I find my pants on the floor, and retrieve my wallet. As I count out the proper number of bills, I say, "I do feel different. Not grown up, but...okay with myself."

"That's good, kid. Let's hope it's not just afterglow." She takes the money from my outstretched hand and walks out of the motel room.

The room's still paid for a half-hour. I turn on the television, and sit against the headrest of the bed.

*This story is a piece written in response to the kt literary blog. I hope you enjoyed it.

The Question

The idea that "There is no such thing as a stupid question" is well-known, and often said. How much truth there is in the stated idea, however, is another matter.

I, personally, think that it is the sign of an intelligent person to ask questions if you need to gain knowledge. I also, however, contend that there IS such a thing as stupid questions.

I was asked one the other day. One of the stupidest questions I've ever heard, in the most condescending manner.

At the moment, one of my jobs is at Coldstone Creamery. For those who have never been there, let me say that the point in going to Coldstone is to get your ice cream with toppings mixed-in. You can watch us mix the toppings in on this cold slab, and you get toppings in every bite, etc.

So this girl got some ice cream the other day, and one of the toppings in it was whipped cream. Whipped cream is one of those finicky items - so I asked her if she wanted the whipped cream mixed in, or on top. She chose on top.

Then: "Why would anyone want whipped cream inside?"

To begin with, this is a poorly phrased question. Inside what? Inside the store? Inside the universe? Inside your mouth? Presumably, she meant inside of the ice cream. Still, a poorly worded question is a poorly worded question.

I will admit, my response to her was less intelligent than could be desired. "Um...(shrug) some people like it mixed in their ice cream, and some like it on top. (Pause) It's just a matter of preference. (Longer pause) The whipped cream makes the ice cream fluffy."

All factual statements, and I was slightly thrown off by the question, which seemed idiotic to me, but not one of my strongest moments.

I restated something which was obvious. I indicated that the preference might somehow be connected to texture.

Overall, I could not be rude to the girl who asked me this question - but really, the obvious, smart ass replies to her question would be the most correct.

"Why not?"

"Why do YOU like whipped cream on top?"

"Does it matter? Do people always desire things that make sense?"

What thinking over this matter really leads me to think of, however, is dialogue.

In writing, stupid questions can help the story, effectively portray character, etc. And the answers are just as important - and hopefully, better than mine was the other day.

Do YOU have a funny, stupid question? Share it in the comments.

Responding to Criticism

I love Alice Hoffman's writing. Even when it concerns sentimental matters, she resists (for the most part) my gag reflex - the one that acts up when I'm reading something that is cliche or ridiculously implausible. She writes about magical things, and in turn, her writing is magical.

But I've got to say, after her reaction to a critical review of her latest book The Story Sisters, I respect her a bit less.

I will admit, I am biased because I myself occasionally write reviews of the works which I read, but this incident is disheartening.

When a person is a writer, and she gets her work published, or puts it on the internet where everyone can see it, there is going to be criticism, whether good or bad, and probably both. The nice comments are uplifting to the heart and soul. The bad comments hurt. But both of them have to be taken with a grain of salt.

I don't think that literary critics tend to want to hurt the feelings of authors. However, in order to do the task which they intend to do effectively, these critics need to be honest. If they didn't like the book, they can point out its merits, but ultimately, must admit that that book was not for them.

Yet they shouldn't be attacked. It might be cliche, but two wrongs do not make a right, and hurting the feelings of the literary critic will, in turn, just result in more bruised hearts. And if the critic is not strong enough to turn the other cheek, then a circular pattern of abusive comments can begin, in which neither party gets anything good out of the interaction.

We all have our asshole moments, so I'm going to pass this off as one of Hoffman's, which was  unfortunately made public. And I'm still going to read her work. But it's been a disheartening moment in time, nonetheless.

Fond Recollection of a Reputed Pedophile

Unfortunately, the only people who will ever know the truth regarding my title are the boys who accused him of inappropriate behavior, and Mr. Jackson himself. There is no winning answer to the question of "did he really?" - if he didn't, then the boys who accused him have sick parents who were willing to traumatize their children and hurt a man's reputation for money; if he did, then Mr. Jackson himself was mentally ill in a manner that hurt other people, and those boys' parents are still dicks because they took a settlement rather than persecute the man who hurt their sons.

Since I can't know, for certain, what Mr. Jackson's status was, I prefer to dismiss the issue from hereon out, and think of a simpler time. A time when the brat pack dominated the teen movie market, the yuppie society which American Psycho would later satirize was in full force, and Vincent Price did some voice over work on what would become one of the best selling music records of all time.

I was born in '85, and I adored "Michael Jacks," as I called him. Most likely, because he habitually grabbed his groin for his adoring public, thereby giving me something else with which to horrify my parents by imitating.

Michael Jacks, despite his emotional problems, which would become well known later on, was a great performer. He sang, he danced, he smiled, he wore jackets with huge shoulder pads. He gave us music that is still worth listening to, twenty years later.

I really hope that more people are stunned, and remembering the good things that Michael Jackson did, rather than judging him for being screwed up (as a lot of us are, in our own way).

Now that Michael Jacks is dead, "Darkness falls across the land..."

Rest in peace, Michael Jacks.

Admitting to an Inadequate Amount of Blog Posting Recently

I am sorry. I always mean to blog more frequently, and then I always allow the world to overwhelm me so that my body craves sleep to obliterate my need for work and money. I recently twittered a request for money, addressed to all billionaires. Sadly, I received no response.

Anyway, I will amend my shortcoming slightly by posting today.

I have lately been rather infatuated with YouTube. Particularly make-up tutorials and reviews. Partly because I wear make-up, when I'm not too lazy to apply it, and I learn nifty little tips and tricks. Partly because I marvel at the amount of money a lot of "make-up gurus" spend each month on new make-up. Partly because a lot of the gurus aforementioned are really enthusiastic about what they do, and have a nice voice to provide background noise as I work on my writing, and ramble in an adorable manner.

Yet I found myself unsubscribing from one of these gurus recently, because of her stance on words, and the manner in which she sometimes spoke to her viewers.

I'm not going to mention this person's username - I do not want to be petty and mean, and for the sake of this blog entry, it's not really necessary for anyone to know it.

This person was one of the cute ramblers, and frequently posted reviews. Recently, however, she made a video putting some restrictions on what she would review (mostly having to do with monetary limitations, which I completely understand), and regarding the disclaimer she inserted in the beginning of every video.

A lot of make-up gurus have disclaimers in the side bar, or in little yellow pop-up balloons, or on their profile, etc. This user had it in the beginning of her videos, and apparently people had been complaining about it.

Some of this complaining was the usual bitch and moan because it "annoys" a person, rather than because it has no merit. (Which it did (have merit); I understood why the disclaimer was there, and personally had no qualms with it.) Some of this complaining had to do with the manner in which the YouTube user had phrased the disclaimer, however; some people thought that it was a bit mean. (And I could understand how it could be construed that way.)

To the latter people, the YT user replied that words do not "emote," and that they should stop complaining, and if they had a problem with it, that was their problem, and things along that line. In the comments, someone wrote what part of the disclaimer could be seen as a bit rude and off-putting, to which the YT user wrote a text comment along the same lines as what she had said.

Now, technically, this YT user was correct. Words do not emote. Not being living beings, words are incapable of actually emoting.

I think, however, the YT user was a bit too dismissive of the complaint. If the YTU didn't mean any offense, she could have simply said so, and possibly that people were reading things into her words that weren't intended to be in those words.

I am a living being, however, and I suspect you are, too. People are capable of emoting, and people read words with emotion. People are supposed to read words with emotion. When a person writes a poem, that person intends for his or her reader to feel something as a result.

Words have connotations to them. Words have emotions associated with them.

If they didn't, there would be no fun in writing. There would be no fun in doing a vlog. It is through words that a person tends to express emotion. So please, do not sit in your chair before your camera, using words to tell me that words are much more sparse things than they really are. It is narrow minded and ignorant to think that people should not, sometimes, be offended by words.

Don't you agree?

Living the Dream

This post is in reponse to Pensive Tuesday's post from May 11, in which he said:

"Adults often talk about their childhood or adolescent dreams and aspirations, the things they wanted more than anything but were too afraid to go after. They'll talk your ear off about all the regrets in their own lives, all of their past mistakes, and when you're a child they even tell you not to make the same mistakes. They tell you to follow your dreams, or you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

Pensive Tuesday (sorry, P.T., to talk about you in the third person if you're currently reading this) then goes on to talk about how parents talk about college.

Which brings up the ultimate dilemma: realism v. dreams.

Honestly, I don't remember getting talks about how I needed to follow my dreams, lest I awake with regrets later in life. I guess that's because I was such a dreamer when I was a child. What I heard while growing up, as I dreamed about my future career as a prima ballerina in New York City, was "Well, you better go to college and have a back-up plan." Which is sound advice, of course, but did not exactly convey the connotation of confidence in me that I might have wished to receive.

Not surprisingly, I gave up on the dream of being a dancer - when I was 14, in ninth grade of high school. I decided I wasn't good enough, I didn't know how to get good enough, and that since my parents didn't support me, I should just give up on the idea.

And I do regret it, of course. (Especially as I would be in better shape if I was currently a professional dancer.) But that's not really what this blog is about. It's not the regret that I want to focus on - it's that I allowed myself, my aspirations, to be quashed by the unkind words of others. It's that now I don't know what I want.

I've come to realize something recently. Being a dreamer, being ridiculous and having large dreams, is a large part of who I am, as a person. When I let the "realistic" advice of my parents, my teachers, and my peers override my innate feelings, I gave up on myself. A lot.

Dreams are important - as Michael Shurtleff writes in his book Audition, dreams are what people live for. Perhaps we can't all actually achieve the things we want most in life, but it's not healthy to just give up when you're in the middle of the race and nothing's physically wrong with you.

Now, since this is a blog about writing, (see, I was going somewhere with all of this), I'm sure any aspiring writer can see how my topic applies to his or her future. Writing is an arduous journey. Each work is difficult to perfect, and demands a lot of time and effort. Writing is setting dreams down on paper, whether they actually happened or not, whether it's a fairy tale or a nightmare. Writers are, perhaps, the biggest dreamers of anyone.

The key to writing, it seems to me, is persistence and not losing that dream - that this idea is worth putting down on paper, that you will finish the story, that you will publish the story, that you might even get PAID for the story, etc.

You shouldn't do it for fame and money, though every writer, of course, would love to become famous and get paid plenty of money for his or her work.

You need to have a dream. And you need to be strong enough not to lose it.