As a writer, I am in the begining stages of creative writing.  I have done many papers and diary entries, but I have never really put much effort into mastering craft in regards to plot, character, dialogue, etc.  It is important that I continue to work on such things.  For this entry, I am going to attempt the first exercise from chapter 5.  Pat Schneider developed the exercise show, don't tell.  I have to make a list of characteristics and incorporate them into a scene; however, I have to create the same scene through different points of view.  I am going to use the scene of the beach because I already miss warm weather.  Here goes:

Sandy, beautiful, sunny, crowded, long, warm, etc.

From a Family's Perspective:  The day was young and the beach was not croweded yet.  This made finding a spot for the chairs, coolers full of  juice boxes and snacks, toys, and towels a bit easier than usual.  The kids loved the sand and it usual grit ended up everywhere.  They constantly run toward the water to collect the wet sand and bring it back to their "castle."  It was also a chore to make sure everyone had enough sunscreen to ward off the hot sun.  

From a Surfer's Perspecitve:  The sun was just breaking over the horizon and glittering over the breaking waves and soft, white sand.   The morning was the best time to avoid all of the crowds and catch the best waves.  It was also the most beautiful time of the day.  Sunrise lets you feel the first warmth of the sun and a first glimpse of the warm day to come.  Feeling the first warmth of the day and the motion of waves is the perfect way to start a day.  It is peaceful and allows you to be patient...waiting for that one wave.

From a Couples Perspective:  Holding onto each other was the only way to prolong the warmth of the setting sun.  The beach was scattered with other couples, but finally free from screaming kids and drunk parties of mid-life crisis victims.  The water gently plays with our bare feet as we walk along to find a quiet place to sit and watch the moonlight dance over the water.  The sand seves as a mattress, blanket, and pillow.           

 Chapter Six of Pat Schneider's book encourages writers to find their voice.  She explains that you must trust you own voice and that you cannot write in the voices of other characters if you do not know your own voice.  Schneider breaks down voices into the original voice, primary voice, and any number of acquired voices.  The original voice is the one that I learned first.  I used this voice as a child.  My primary voice is the what my original voice evoloved into.   This is the voice that I use when I am at home and relaxed in my adult life.  My acquired voices exist during specific situations.  For example, my original voice is southern (Georgia) and an extreme stuttering problem.  My primary voice is a little less southern due to years of speech and a little less stuttery.  It is fairly animated though.  My acquired voice could be proper for a presentation, silly when I am lounging with my girlfriends, or possibly frustrated when I fight with my mother.

The example from this chapter encourages me to use my own original voice.  Its purpose is to help me find my personal voice by talking about relatives.

Grandma Etna:  She grew up in Texas and moved to Alabama once she married my Grandpa Otis.  She developed alsheimers when I was young; I am not sure that I fully knew her personality or her voice
Grandpa Otis:  He grew up in Alabama but he died with my mother was twenty and I never had the opportunity to meet him

Grandma June:  She grew up in Wisconsin, met my grandpa in New York, and moved to Atlanata, Georgia to get married.  She was the only grandparent I ever developed a genuine relationship with and luckly she is still alive.
Grandpa Jim:  He grew up on the family's farm in Tacoa, Georgia.  He loved airplanes and built them for each of the grandkids.  He was eccentric.  I never talked to him very much because by the time I came along he was deaf from flying and he passed away when I was thirteen.

In place of class, I decided to do a writing exercise in Pat Schneider's book.   I am going to do exercises about "my list" of things that I would like to write about one day.  My list is not too big, but one day I may write about them or incorporate them into a story.  

My list goes something like this:  THE SOCK COLLECTION, THE BASEMENT, THE MOUSE, THE MOUNTAINS, THE BOOKS,  THE NECKLACES, RINGS, AND BRACELETS, THE MAGAZINES, THE CITY, THE SUNSET, THE SCARFS, THE SMILES, THE CITY, THE STREETS...

As the exercise suggested, I can discover myself in the list that just came out of my brain.  Each noun that I listed has been a part of my life.  This list may help me create a character that can potentially lead a great story.  Pat Schneider explains that characters are from our list of nouns; moreover, she states that in successful writing the trick is learning that your characters would do your work for you if you just give them the opportunity.  As a writer, your characters can lead their own journeys, fantasies, and fights.  As part of the exercise, I am going to pick one of my nouns and write a brief story about it.  Hopefully, an interesting character will be the result.

It was impossible.  The dresser drawer would just not close.  She tried to force it closed and she tried to cram more socks into the small space that she allotted for her socks, but nothing seemed to work.  What was once a colorful and mismatched sock collection had now become an organizational problem.  She stood there staring at the dresser with socks trying to escape at every opening.  One, a birthday present from her boyfriend, had red and pink hearts on a white background.  Another had gripper pads on the bottom and Sponge Bob on the top.  Some had stripes and others had spots.  Some had holes in them and other still had the tags and partner still attached to them.  Some had meaning and some were just plain cool.  Regardless of their appearance or value, there was no way she could ever get rid of one.  The were all priceless.  She went to school  determined to have a solution to her sock collection problem by the time she got home.  There was never a problem that she could not fix, especially when the lives of socks depended on her to save them from her mother's garbage-friendly hands.   





 

I particularly enjoyed chapter four of Pat Schneider's book.  The chapter began perfectly; I remember my first diary and several after that.  I have one diary that I bought from a school book fair that has a golden set of keys; another one is a Lisa Frank diary with dolphins on the cover; I bought so many that I have lost track of the others that I have aquired over the past 20 years of my life.  Diarys always had an appeal to me; perhaps this is why I bought so many.  I would go in phases with my journals or diarys, but this past year I finally kept my New Year's resolution...to keep a journal and to try and be nicer to my mother.  Hopefully, I am succeeding in the latter part of my resloution.  However, I have successfully kept a journal this past year.   Sometimes I write more frequently and other times I scribble down a line or two for a few weeks.  I have found my journal very theraputeic regardless of how much or how frequently I write in it.  

A journal is important to me for several reasons.  It has my secrets.  There are many things that bother me that I do not want to tell anybody until I am ready to tell them.  My journal helps me gather my thoughts and see how I feel about something.  I am a passionate and sensitive person; my journal helps me objectively look at situations so that I avoid as much drama as possilbe.  I am not a fan of conflict so I generally try to aviod it all together and confide within the pages of my journal.  It also records my feelings at a particluar time.  I recently went back and read what I wrote about when I was in Rome.  After reading what I recorded, I had a vivid image of each site I visited or a distinct taste of my favorite wine at dinner.  I also remember how excited I was to go to Vencie and Florence.  Since I have already gone to these places, it was amusing to see how I described my anticipation at seeing these places and works of art that I had only heard about in history.  More than that, my diary captures how I feel in an exact moment in regards to feelings close to home.  It is important to see how I responded to a fight with my best friend, a break-up with my first boyfriend, or the death of my daddy.  My journal includes happy, sad, and bittersweet memories that I can read whenever I like.  It shows my growth as a person.

I just recently read a book called The Truth About Life In Your Twenties.  For all you girls out there who feel like you are in a pre-quarter life crisis, I strongly recommend this book.  It talks about the real life after college.  The book has stories from several different women who became writers; they just talk about things they learned along the way.  The one thing these women had in common was that they all kept a diary.  Their diaries served as their writing outlet and it was through their diaries that they realized they wanted to become writers.  These women were able to use their diarys to inflence their writing careers.......food for thought to those of you who want to become writers one day....     

I really enjoyed reading the first chapter of Writing Alone and With Others.  I have always enjoyed reading and writing, but this is the first time I have taken a class in this particular field.   I have also never read a book about writing and I did not really know what to expect.  I think Pat used great examples to explain the main points.  I was especially able to relate to the story about about "scar-tissue fears."   I remember writing about my summer vacation on the first day of school and getting it back with nothing but red marks was not too fun.  It does make a person insecure about their writing.  I never followed the train of thought that Pat used in that particular scenario, but it made complete sense when I read it.  I think it was beneficial for me to read that creative writing is not like grammar school writing.  It made me feel as if creative writing should be fun insead of scary.  I am now more excited about sharing some of my work one day in the future.  It is a bit scary though.  Another thing I enjoyed about the first chapter was how Pat addressed fear.  I completely agree that a "scary place" might be a journey to find treasure.  I think that her advice about foucusing on specific details when you are unsure about a memory is a great way to remember the event.  Her outhouse example with her father was a great example.  It showed that there is so much more to a memory and that the meaning behind each memory is deeper than anyone might imagine.  The best kind of memories are the ones where you discover something that you never expected to uncover.