September

Suddenly, it's September, and I've been gone for months and months.

I'm back at school. The leaves are beginning to change. I'm doing new things but thinking old things, and some days, my brain feels like spaghetti.

I spent my summer working at a camp. My days were full of Band-aids and hugs and a lot of laughter, and sometimes some timeouts, but I loved it. Even though those kids could run me down like a race car.

I was ready, really ready, to get back to school in August. To keep myself on my toes, I changed things up with my major and shuffled my class schedule like a pack of playing cards, but now I'm safely tucked back into college days. Life is normal again.


......Well......

If you don't count the 2:30 AM fire drills, the girls shouting down the hall, coffee and piano music, sock monkey footie pajamas, late nights every night, poetry, excursions to far-off cigar shops, meddling in one another's love lives and forgetting the papaya rotting in the fridge, lost socks and bobby pins and where did I put my binder, vanishing car keys and oh my goodness how will I finish this in time, I have no money, let's stay up all night studying and smoking--or we could just go take a walk.......

And it's so good to be home.

In Which I Speak of Summer

I'm home!

Everything is in! Papers are written! And yes, grades are received.

*slumps on the ground*
*hibernates*

Wake me when it's time to go back.

How strange, to dismantle the room and make it decidedly un-ours, putting furniture back into standard configuration for whomever will live here next. Down come the paper snowflakes, the posters from the walls, the notes from neighbors, silly pictures from vacation and letters from family.

And then, removing the pictures from the door and locking it one last time.

A road trip seemed like a good, temporary goodbye to college life, so a friend and I piled our belongings into her car and took off for North Carolina.


Then Charleston:

Then Savannah:

....which included some interesting detours to the Savannah Scottish Games, a fantastic afternoon on which men in kilts threw heavy objects to prove just how rugged they were, wore clan tartans with pride, and presented fork art -


....and the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist:

Other adventures abounded, of course, including run-ins with a squirrel, an angry mother cat, skin-staining Icees, sailors, and some free-spirited travelers in Tennessee.

Now, I'm home, and ready for a vacation. And the new free time does have some benefits.

Primarily, I'll have more writing time!

*does a happy dance*

As is plain from the activity on my figment page, college caught up to me. I've been plain out of the loop, but now I'm getting back and working on those last few chapters of TDS that have been bugging me. Lilla, I hope, will be chugging along too.

There will be more short stories coming, hopefully this week, as well! I really enjoyed working on the April ones. It was a great challenge, and now I'm up for it again!

Also, I'll enjoy being home. Home is nice, though my skin feels odd in the summer air and I miss the Hill. Home is good.

Just a little bit starry-eyed

Can I just pause for a moment and talk about what a lovely weekend this has been?

Last weekend had some pretty horrendous aspects to it, discounting the Easter Vigil and its beauty. I had another paper due, and it was consuming my life. There's something kind of awful about being so busy that eating, sleeping, and bathing are no longer priorities. But, yes, that's the way college life sometimes goes.

But this weekend. Oh my.

My blog has gotten more and more personal lately, but I'm going to allow it to swing that way for a moment.

On Friday, I headed to Pittsburgh with some friends for an Owl City concert. There is something surreal about seeing someone who inspires you so much only fifteen feet away.

But get this--Saturday night was even better.

It's totally unprofessional to talk about this online, right? The internet is forever, after all, and I'm supposed to be blogging about writerish things. So I'll make it a story.

Once upon a time, a really nice boy asked a semilonely girl out. Since they were college freshmen and not permitted to have cars, he borrowed his roommate's. She borrowed a floral dress from a friend (isn't it helpful to live with so many other girls?) and skipped other commitments to get ready, long before she actually had to. By the time 6:00 rolled around, she was pacing back and forth and nervously chipping away her nail polish. 

She uses the word 'lovely' a lot when she writes, but it's so suitable. Especially for this evening. 

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I am on cloud nine today, for a lot of reasons, and life is a big Easter bunch of wonderfulness.

I was struck by the difference between my own feelings and the rest of the world's when I got onto Figment today and saw their Easter wishes--for Easter bunnies and candy and pastels and pretty things. It didn't offend me, because it's a writing website, not a Church organization, and besides, a lot of people celebrate Easter, but it definitely struck me.

It's amazing, this high holy holiday of ours. All through Lent I've kind of been lost in a muddle, with lots of anxiety about the future and the present, so that life felt Lenten even when I wasn't focusing on penance. It's been a long winter. The sun never came out. Homework grew mountainous, fasting made me grumpy, prayer felt forced, and Easter would never come.

Last night during the Easter vigil (when Easter did come, after all!), I was so struck, so moved, by an abundance of feeling that I can't describe. I was feeling something for the first time in weeks, and it was beautiful and painful, and in the candlelight and the knowledge that when I feel dead and bored with life, there will be a resurrection, I was able to truly say, "Alleluia, Alleluia!"

I'm going to still a quote from a friend of mine, because I don't think he'll mind, and because, you know, it's kinda unbearably beautiful:

The Easter Vigil is one of those miraculous glorious magnificent occurrences that makes water seem more wet, that makes walls seem more solid, and makes romance take on an even more brilliant shade of romantic. That is, life seems more real, more filled, more glorious, for Jesus Christ has risen.

Today, life is very, very beautiful. Everything good has arrived--color and sunshine, good food and smiles. Life is back, and it reminds me that my God is a God of life. 

A very happy Easter to all of you. :) 

Thoughts on the Dance Floor

On Sunday nights, the university sponsors swing dancing in the student union. The music blares, the doors are flung open, and couples hit the floor.

I will give it to the guys there--they do their best. They go out of their way to make sure that no girl is without a partner, that each one is comfortable and enjoying herself. It's witnessing things like that--the best and most attractive dancer in the room inviting a shy, bespectacled freshman girl out onto the dance floor--that make me think, I like nice men. 

It's something I increasingly take for granted, chivalrous men. After all, I go to a small, conservative, Christian university where old-school values are still going strong. There are all sorts of people here, of course, but for the most part, the men are beautiful.

There's something really cool about men, well, being men. 

So I think--shouldn't I take it for granted?

Shouldn't this be our standard, this manly, courteous, gentle, thoughtful kind of man?

So, swing dancing.

I headed over to the student union late last night, never expecting to get roped into dancing. When I got there, I found a friend of mine--we'll call him John--standing on the sidelines and watching the action. On seeing me, his face brightened and he bounded over, holding out his hand.

I said, "Huh?"

Then his intention grew clear: I was to go out onto the floor with him, amid the couple twirling in graceful circles like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and dance.

Don't get me wrong. I like to dance. I would even say that I'm a decent dancer. Growing up, I took a lot of dance lessons, mostly ballroom stuff, but it's all been filed away in my memory now. I do not like looking silly, and as I didn't know what I was doing, I pretty soon found myself being forcibly bereft of my wallet and coat and carried onto the dance floor. I probably fought a little, but I'm five foot two, and no match for two guys.

John said, "Take some risks. It's an adventure."

So I shut up. And just a side note--to John, who will never read this blog post--you are a fantastic leader. You relaxed me, you helped me follow and made me laugh. It was lovely.

I was enjoying it in spite of myself, if I ignored the couples around us who were, quite literally, flying through the air. When the dance was over, John kissed my hand (!!) and left me. A moment later he was spinning fearlessly with another partner.

Someone else asked me to dance. It was different, dancing with a total stranger (OK, not a stranger. We actually met last semester during a Pittsburgh ministry, but he didn't remember, so I didn't remind him). There was a lot more talking than twirling. When the song was over, he said, "May I have another dance? I'm really enjoying talking to you."

Whoa.

And even though I fumbled, he kept me laughing. When I left at 11:30, I still couldn't banish my smile. The exercise had done me good, and I felt flushed walking out into the chilly evening.

I know people say chivalry is dead. A lot of them even say good riddance. I get it. I do. At the same time, I think we've lost so much by doing away with that courtesy, that measure of respect for one another. There I was, standing uncomfortably on the sidelines with my clumsy shoes and my shambled heart, and the attention of these two boys--one a friend, the other a (semi-)stranger--made me feel feminine and pretty. And I even had fun.

This is why we treasure the princes of fairy tales and fall in love with story heroes. To those boys who dare to be chivalrous, thank you. You don't know how much we girls ache for real men.

The Creature that Wanders the Halls

You know the look that people in the student union coffee shop give you?

That someone-left a paper-late look, that I-know-this-is-your-third-cup-of-coffee-today look?

I got that this week. I shrank beneath it, murmured a thanks so soft and ashamed it could have been mistaken for a cough, and escaped.

If I learned a difficult lesson from that night, it was to never venture back into the land of caffeine. Then my brain catches up, and I think, Maybe you should rethink that double major. 

Goodbye for now, coffee cup. I know we will meet again.

Up until now, I've never been able to track down anything that really gives me a jolt. It's possible I reached some level of homeostasis from too many years of black tea. Then, last weekend, my friend Joe asked me to run to the cafe and get him a coffee.

Perchance I should have learned my lesson there. I should have told him to get his own dang cup of coffee.

(Just kidding. If I remember correctly, I offered to treat.)

Then he uttered the fateful words, "Tell them to add a shot of espresso."

The words stayed in my mind, and Wednesday night, when I walked over to get something before starting my paper, I thought I'd try it.

At 2:30 AM, when I decided to take a break from writing my conclusion, I wandered the halls of the dorm, pondering the sleeping breaths of my 300 fellow residents. Across the piazza, the windows of Louis Hall were dark. That was eerie.

But in the wee hours, nothing. No sound. No rustle. No boys bursting into one another's rooms to yell and wrestle. No shouts from the lobby. No girls calling to one another for hairpins, homework help, clothes, advice. None of the myriad of other sounds that constantly echo down the halls at college.

I was a ghost, just the slip of a spirit, made corporeal by coffee.

Because I could, I did a couple of pirouettes down the eerie halls. Maybe, I thought, I should do some jumping jacks. I had a teacher in high school who hauled us up for jumping jacks whenever he sensed the class was mentally less than present. Just the thought of moving that much after only dregs of sleep and too much coffee made my stomach roil.

I wandered on, caught, like Hamlet's father, in my caffeine purgatory.

At long last, I snatched four and a half desperate hours of sleep and thought, never again. 

But I can hear it, that sniggering voice, the jolt of caffeine in my veins.

"Don't wait up," it says. "I'll be back soon."

After January

This year, speeding up to This Month.

I remember the delicious free time of Last Year, when senioritis relaxed me, soothed me. I had gotten into college, after all. Work was pointless. I had much better write.

I did, and finished The Default Sweater in May. That was a gem of a day, what with triumphant story endings and new jobs and wonderful new beginnings and endings all rolled into one.

Then came summer, and I drifted away from my computer, moving across an ocean. That was all right, because after all, I had finished the story. It was time to let it sit and mellow before tackling it again come fall.

Fall did come, and it was exhilarating. It bowled me over with the power of a fist. Still, I didn't come back to write.

I would, I said, over Christmas break. But Christmas break was lonely and restless.

Now, January is gone.

It's a relief. I feel a little tired, a little pale and sick, exhausted from picking up pieces of paper and assignments and broken glass, and now I think, I'll write.

Soon.

November

I am a warm-weather child.

Living in Ohio has been such a new experience for me, especially as frost sets in. The leaves have long since fallen from the trees, and the world has grown winter-quiet.

Twice a week, I have a holy hour early in the morning.

I'm pretty sure that approximately 90% of the world has no idea what a holy hour is, so I'll explain. I go to one of the Cathlockiest of Catholic universities in the country, and we have Perpetual Adoration. This means that there is a chapel in which the Eucharist is kept, 24/7, which means that someone is there praying before it at every moment of the day. Even in the middle of the night.

Which means that twice a week, I drag myself out of bed in the wee hours, pull a jacket on, and set out across campus.

At the beginning of the school year, when the weather was September-fresh and I could slip out with only a sweater, it wasn't bad. Then it got colder, and I cringed and quaked and whined like a pouty little kid at having to leave my room.

Yet every now and then, while the bitter wind swirls around me and my bones jump with shivers, I'm struck by the raw beauty of winter.

Winter has no pretense. It is bare and immediate. It calls my heart with its silence.

It's November now, and my holy hours will get more difficult. The world is turning to ice, and in those moments just before I see the lamps outside the chapel entrance, when I experience only wind and darkness, I'm afraid.

And when I enter the chapel and am so welcomed, so loved, by the soft glow of candles and the beauty of the monstrance, I know that I can trek across an icy campus in the dark, that I can sacrifice hours of sleep, that I can kneel on a stone floor, dizzy with wishing for my far-away bed, because this is worth everything.

Reasons Why I am an Enfant Terrible (plus some news)

So, I need to own up to the fact that I've been a total brat. My bratness is not completely my fault, but to be honest, well, a few things have gotten away from me.

First off, deadlines and goals I set for myself. It's been a busy year, with lots of new things that demand my focus. I'm beyond being kept on my toes, I'm en pointe.

*snickers at her own joke*

But I can't make excuses, since I've been behind all year.

First of, my adventures in audioland. In March and April I did several posts talking about my research into audio book making, promising that I would be posting my resulting audio chapters within a few weeks. Well, time got away from me, and the next thing I knew, it was September. Oops.

So will I be posting Hearthsinger chapters? I honestly don't know. I hope that eventually I'll be able to share them, because I truly enjoyed researching and creating them. The cast was so much fun to work with and it was amazing to hear my own words spoken by other people. I'm sure I'll be posting more on the subject, since I'll (hopefully!) be making more forays into audioland.

Secondly, my disastrous ambition of finishing Lilla & the Tower by the end of the summer. It's still a dream I wish I could have accomplished, if I could turn back the weeks. Unfortunately, even vacation was a whirlwind this year. Lilla will definitely be continuing, but at this point, as far as writing goes, I have no plan. Currently, I'm working a few minutes a day on the second draft of TDS, tweaking some of its kinks and cutting a whole lot of words. It's a happy and painful process. I'm hoping that some Lilla time will sneak in there somewhere.

(On a happy note, I have a new blog! You may notice it's yellow. Like corn, maybe, or sunshine, or maple leaves in the fall, or perhaps some soft Sweater wool....)

And lastly, I had vague intentions of getting the TDS sequel up on my figment page right around now. Sadly, that won't be happening for a while, either, but the synopsis will be going up on my blog this week! As soon as it does, I'll post a little more about it and why I chose my new main character.

*exhales*

Things are hectic.

But good hectic.

Thank you for reading my hectic blog.

Willkommen in Europa

Twenty days. A long route north over Nova Scotia, following the tail winds over Greenland, dipping down through France and landing at last in Stuttgart, Germany. Clammered against my seat with ear phones and a desperate desire to sleep.

Oh, what a relief to stand up and stretch your legs after nearly ten hours! It's 8:30 a.m. The sunlight and the small airplane breakfast do just enough to convince my brain, kind of, that it's actually morning. Back home, the sun won't rise for hours yet.

That's the way my trip began, three weeks ago. Up till now, my summer's been quite tame--work, college preparations, sneaking a last few days at home. Then, late in July, it was time to head back to Germany for a delicious three-week vacation.

A quick explanation: when I was sixteen, I did a foreign exchange through my school. For six months, I lived with a family in Baden-Wuerttemberg, the southwestern-most state of Germany. I went to school and took two additional private German lessons a week. It was a beautiful stolen chunk of time, where I made friends, took trips around the country, and had the amazing experience of learning a new language.

Afterwards, I came back to the States, and the real world started again. I went to school. I studied for my SATs. My life was college applications and senior classes. I started to notice how much I stumbled over words during German class.

This spring, I wrote to friends in Baden-Wuerttemberg and asked if I might stay with them over the summer. In July, I packed up a couple of gifts--two bottles of Texas hot sauce--and boarded my plane for Stuttgart.



 I can't possibly describe every day of the trip, though I'd love to. I'll just say that it was non-stop, hectic. Autobahn-quick. The first two weeks I stayed with various friends who all live in separate small villages. My favorite: Michelbach, region Schwaebisch Hall.

Gorgeous.

Other than the friends, other than spending time with beloved people whom I haven't seen in several years, there were other great highlights.

1. The food. Friends and acquaitances were shocked to hear that I eat much more sensibly in busy, fast food-famous America. And why? Because I can't resist German food. And we ate. And ate.

This is Döner, the world's most amazing food.
It's worth a trip to Germany just for lamb and yogurt sauce on pita-ish bread.

When cousins arrived, I even got treated to a lesson in how to make Spätzle, a regional noodle dish with sausage and lentils:

Ta-da!

2. One day, friends and I decided, like true former Waldorf students, to spend the afternoon felting. If you don't what felting is, it consists of taking bits of colored wool, wetting it in hot water and soap, and then rubbing it between your hands until it holds together. Kind of like making dreads. I've felted slippers before, which was interesting to say the least. Lucy and Miri and I gathered up our supplies and headed out to the garden:

After a while, the boys came out and decided to try their hand at felting, too. I think we girls hit a little closer to the mark.

After hours of felting and felting, we were just about ready to sew all our teeny tiny pieces together and make some extremely gorgeous potholders.**

**Sarcasm disclaimer. I also need to practice my felting skills a while longer before my potholders reach "gorgeous" standard.

3. A quick detour to Italy! A mutual friend of Lucy's and mine lives in Brescia. Our last week, we piled into the car. This is what the morning in Germany looked like.

Austria....

Ten hours later...ahh, Salo, Italia!

Six days in Salo with quick trips to Brescia and an accidental almost-trip to Verona after a wrong turn on the Autobahn. After fear of arrest and a sixty-euro traffic ticket, we were back on track.

We started the nine-hour drive back to Germany at 2:00 AM on Monday morning. I dozed off in the back seat and woke to the sun rising in the Alps. When I woke for the second (or possibly third) time, we were just outside of Ulm.

We had one afternoon. We grilled. I packed. We ate in the garden until there was no room left.

I arrived in Stuttgart the next morning just in time to settle in for my flight.

Now, it seems impossible that I was in Italy only four days ago. It was the roadtrip of a lifetime, and now, I'm happy to be back home. Home where everything is scheduled, regular. Where we measure things in inches and miles instead of centimeters and kilometers. Where things are safe and familiar.

Yes, it's good to be home. :)



Tea and Other Curiosities

So, I lied.

I recently looked back at my last post and realized I had promised to post Hearthsinger audio clips by early April. So I guessed that slipped past me. I have no concrete theme for today's blog post; my life has been so hectic lately, so I guess I'll just share a bit of what I've been up to with you all until I have time to sit down and write a nice fat post about the audio process with Hearthsinger.

Figment News:

Most exciting news is, Default Sweater is almost done! I can't believe it. I'm scanning my "Chapter Progression" word doc and counting remaining chapters. I'm already planning edits for the second draft and I'm just so excited. Finishing a story, even a first draft, is funny, because I'm simultaneously so excited to have this brand new story there for people to read, and sad to let it go. Writing TDS has been such an adventure, and it's taken me through more twists and turns than I ever expected. But more on that later. :)

My post-TDS plans are exciting, too. Although what's posted on my figment account right now is just a first draft, I'm feeling the need to step back from the story for a little. My plans as they stand right now are to return and keep writing Lilla & the Tower, which I'm totally excited about. It's fun to switch back to fantasy for a little while after working on TDS, which has no magic to speak of.

Well, except perhaps the magic of manly eyes. Manly eyes in droves. I'm realizing I need to go back during rewrite time and count mentions of eyes.

Also, TDS has no girls locked in towers, feuding queens, or possibly glass slippers. All things I'm hankering to write.

In the meantime, I'd like to talk about something else. Namely tea.

I like tea. I think about tea a lot. In the past year, I've read two figment works which consistently mention tea (namely Waxflower Wood, formerly Nattie & Finn, by Anande Sjöden, and Birdcage Girl, by Kimberly Karalius). The tea mentioning was not a central plot point in either of these, but I'm a tea kind of girl, so I noticed.

My family has actually given me tea for Christmas before. So my next goal, as soon as Default Sweater is finished, is naturally also tea-related. I guess it was perfect for me to write a story set in England, a place I've never actually been.

When I was little, we lived in the frigid Siberianesque state of Maine. I was seven when we left, so while we were there, I went through a merciless strengthening of my immune system....e.g., I was sick ALL THE TIME. My mom isn't a big one for medicine, unless it's cough syrup or aspirin, so often, I was left to fight through it with more natural remedies, like vegetables, chicken soup, blankets.....and tea.

I drank it like an Englishman, with milk and sugar. When I was sixteen, I lived in Fichtenberg, Germany for six months, and encountered more tea-drinking, of the milk-less and sugar-less variety. Germans have a national distrust of "flat" water--e.g., non-fizzy water, and, like typical Europeans, a love for frequent tea, coffee, and cigarette breaks. My host mother used to make a pot of tea in the morning. Whatever we didn't drink before catching the bus for school, we'd drink with dinner that night.

So I'm a big tea drinker. My father thinks I'm nuts. He's a typical southerner, so "tea" to him implies black tea, boiled with sugar, then left to cool and be drunk with breakfast. He kind of regards me as some sort of European hipster who drinks unheard-of herbal concoctions and doesn't like "real tea"--cold and sweet.

Okay, this one is coffee. But it was delicious. The cookie, too--already had a bite out of it before I took out my camera.

My tea fascination obviously comes out in Default Sweater, and my next goal is to count mentions of tea just for fun. The next chapter's going up soon. Thirty-three down, three to go. WOOT WOOT.

Off for a cup of tea and Chapter Thirty-Four. It's eighty-five degrees outside, but I defy you, stars.

Words, Writing Exercises, and Where I've Been Lurking

My excuse is always and unabashedly schoolwork. It should be slowing down any moment now....*checks watch*. In the meantime, I've been here, at my computer, writing up data on animal life in central Texas and remembering that I haven't done a blog post since early February. But now, ahhh, isn't spring break wonderful. Add that to the fact that the weather is beautifully sunny, I've made a return to being blonde, and there's leftover birthday cake, and I am rolling on a big cloud of happy.

I've recently gotten sucked into a secret project (I'll be announcing it on figment within a few weeks, and I hope it's something that makes people happy, because I'm super excited about it!), that, as awful as it is, has distracted me badly from Hearthsinger and TDS. The up side is that it has kept me writing a bit each day, when I'm too tired from school to write a 2,000-word chapter of Erin's adventures in London. I'm very excited for it, because although it is, like Default Sweater, set in a contemporary time and place (a genre I NEVER used to venture into), it's got a fair bit more whimsy. I love whimsy.

In other realms of internet snooping, I ran across a website which offers different exercises for writers. I'm not normally into intensive story webs/exercises/breakdowns/character interviews/so on and so forth, but I was hooked by this one. The challenge offered was to write the opening of a story as a film prologue in which the main character speaks directly to the audience, introducing him or herself and his dilemma. I tried it out on Default Sweater and liked it quite a lot. :) Since I'm not a big fan of first person (for my own writing, at least), I was surprised that I enjoyed it and that it seemed to flow quite well. Whereas with a few of my other projects, like Lilla and Hearthsinger, I sometimes have difficulty writing realistically, since the stories are fantasy, Default Sweater has a very real-and-touch-me feeling. It's stuff I can picture well as part of the real world, for example, as a film prologue. Cars. Annoying younger sisters. Spaghetti sauce. That sort of thing.

But I'm rambling.

Here's the exercise! This is written from Erin's point of view.

            If you’re wondering, I’m not paranoid.

            You know, about the kissing thing. Isn’t it weird that we can’t stand a love story unless it’s sealed with that perfect touch, the kiss?

            And not just any kiss. A First Kiss. That’s the touch that’s supposed to change you, isn’t it? It redefines your whole life, theoretically. Sometimes you forget and slip...mm, remember all the love stories you’ve read or watched where the hero rushes in and sweeps the heroine up to kiss her? Look at her. She just melts into his arms.

            Stop looking at me like I’m a woman who sits along at home analyzing movie kisses. It’s not like my whole life revolves around kissing. Because it doesn’t.

            I mean, it can’t, since I’ve never been kissed.

            Oops. Guess we got that out of the way. 

            I can’t talk about it, see. I can’t even admit it to myself. How much I want...that. I mean, not just that. If I was the kind of gal who just liked the gratification, I’d grab the nearest guy who reminded me of George Clooney and pin him against a tree. Or a lamp post. Or whatever.

            But that’s not how it is. I mean, look at that. With a touch like that...won’t your heart follow? If you give someone a kiss, it must mean something. Like a leap into forever maybe. But I wouldn’t know.

            I am not asking Maury.

My Secret Collection

I have a document on my computer called "Stash". Just like with candy, or my mother's odd obsession with cookbooks, or my stepmother with her grocery coupons, I have a delicious secret stash all to myself of words.

So often when I read, I get excited when I read certain things. They're the kind of phrases that make me twitch with excitement, that just hit me in exactly the right place. So much so that I have to, of course, write them down. It's the most fun when I find them in old stories I'm no longer working on; I just copy and paste the line, or phrase, or paragraph, that I like and squirrel it away for another story. More often, I find them in already published works or on figment. I'm so impressed by other authors, how beautifully they craft their words. Some of my favorite authors ever include Shannon Hale, whose lyrical descriptions capture an element of truth that always leaves me stunned, Gail Carson Levine, one of those authors who has made me fall in love with every one of her heroes, Roald Dahl, who was so witty and clever with words (albeit a tad creepy), and Chaim Potok, who does such a wonderful job of capturing characters that I name mine after his, apparently, without even thinking about it.

Recently, I submitted to peer pressure and finally read The Hunger Games. I read the first two in two sit-in sessions at an independent bookstore over the holidays, and the third one several weeks later. I had a hard time with these books. As I was reading them, I was asking myself constantly whether I wanted to read a story containing so much violence. I'm the kind of person who listens to Owl City, likes sunshine, and enjoys a good comedy. Happy stuff. I wasn't sure I wanted to read books that center around gladiatorial games. Squeamish, much? But true.

The result? I was completely swept away by Suzanne Collins' language. I read the second and third books of the trilogy twice in two weeks. Literally, I read #2, #3, then #2 again, and #3 again. The second time through, I sat with a pad of paper beside me, copying out bits and pieces I liked. Purely for my "stash". I admire other writers so much and can see in comparison how much refining my own writing needs. I love learning from people like Shannon Hale and Suzanne Collins and the hundreds of talented writers on figment and beyond.

Here are some excerpts from my "stash" of writing. Sometimes I have no idea why I like what I write down. Every now and then I can place my finger on it. Sometimes it's something as simple as, "I like this because it's so succinct, it stunned me." Sometimes I just am surprised at the chord it strikes with me. The stash is drawn from blogs, books, trashed writings of my own, songs, and from my friends and teachers. Enjoy!

Suddenly he's sitting up, eyes wide in alarm, short of breath. "Katniss!" He whips his head toward me but doesn't seem to notice my bow, my waiting arrow. "Katniss! Get out of here!"
~Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins

There's a raw innocent purity among the trees, I can feel it.
~Adam Young

I already know he can laugh.
~An earlier draft of The Hearthsinger. My, aren't I shameless? Pulling quotes from my own book.

"I had some ham for breakfast. I do not get ham much, what with pigs such dirty beasts and not on the property." His gaze wandered.
Jane tried to think of some appropriate response to that. She came up with, "Hooray for ham!"
"Yes, lovely," said Aunt Saffronia.
~Austenland, by Shannon Hale

The children in the library, poring over yellowed textbooks on topics like flower pollenating and building proper bee boxes, looked up from their books and thought the same thing.
Hedda Sparling must be reading love letters.
~Boys and Bees, by Kimberly Karalius

You taught me language, and my profit on't is, I know how to curse.
~Caliban, The Tempest. William Shakespeare

"Natalie," he says. Quietly, like I've just handed him a delicate flower.
~Nattie and Finn, by Anande Sjoeden

I don't like that smile, so sad it's barely a smile at all.
~Ever, by Gail Carson Levine


By writing down snippets that really speak to me, I only want to be able to read them and understand what it is about it that I like, so I can learn to write what I like.

What am I Doing Right Now?

What am I doing tonight? Not doing homework, an architecture essay on the history of Neuschwanstein. Not cleaning the house or working on a resume or any number of things I should be doing. Instead, I'm writing Chapter Nine in TDS and making brownies.

And the slacking is wickedly, wonderfully, delicious.

Mm, brownies.

Gals with Gumption

Everyone loves a good heroine. I can tick my favorites off without thinking about it: Elizabeth Bennet, Ella in Ella Enchanted, Becky Jack, Dashti, Eliza DooLittle, Katharina from Taming of the Shrew. There's one thing that ties all these ladies together, and its name is gumption.

If you've ever seen the movie The Holiday, there's a certain scene where Eli Wallach describes his late wife to Kate Winslet. "She has gumption," he says. Later in the film, Kate Winslet bursts out to Rufus Sewell, "I don't know, but I think what I've got is something slightly resembling....GUMPTION!"

That line, that phrase, is just so perfect and tender and lovely. I think people love seeing a heroine (or a hero) with a rumpled, wild, human, daring spirit, because they can see themselves in her. That's me, they think. That could be me. That doesn't mean a female superhero, conquering the world (even though that could be awesome). They love to see a character who's vulnerable and uncertain and real, but who forges her way through her story just because she's got....gumption.

I've got the song 'Gumption' from The Holiday on each playlist I listen to while I write, whether it's for Hearthsinger, TDS or Kaleva. It's a little nudge, a little reminder to me for myself, but also for the character I'm writing.

Because it's really, really fun, to write about a gal with gumption.

The Last Days Caught on Camera

I had a fun blog post in mind for today, but instead I think I'm going to write another Figment chapter for Default Sweater, so here's a couple pictures of what's been going on at home lately:

Figment and other distractions

When I originally set out to write a blog, I did it with the shiningly pure intention of sharing my writing with the world. As a writer, I'm typically shy. I stow away in corners, but if anyone tries to peep over my shoulder, I'm like a frantic armadillo curling into a ball. As a result, it's generally only my family who reads anything of mine.

Last winter, my friend Isaac told me about a writer's website called figment.com. It took me a while to get warmed up, but now I'm a regular "fig". There are some truly talented writers there. There's genres for poetry, short stories, novels, anything a little writerish mind can dream of. If anyone is interested in reading some of my work, they can follow this link to view my profile:
figment.com/Savannah-Finger

Figment's become a very fun place for me. I have an unintentional attitude toward my stories that makes writing like romance: I can't have a fling with a book. A story socks me in the stomach, and I'm in love forever. I don't do well writing multiple stories at the same time. Occasionally another idea teases me, and I yield to it for awhile, file it away to age, and repeat. Since the dawn of Figment, though, I've started allowing those teasings to distract me, lead me off in different directions. A couple of the things I've published are short stories/poems/screenplays which I loved writing, but know aren't going to go farther. So, still hopeful, I'm sending them out to the other figs, wanting them to be loved a little at least.

My two big projects, The Hearthsinger and The Default Sweater, probably won't enjoy as much posting. With these two, I'll most likely just post the first few chapters and ask for critiques (eek!). This coming week, I'll post the synopses of these two guys, as well as my screenplay, The Way the Scroll Is. Which was just so dang much fun to write.

 A side note: Hooray! Rain's finally hit Texas! It's amazing to see how grateful people are after five months of scorched grass, blazing 105-degree temperatures, wildfires, and drought. It's almost as though we were the thirsty ones, instead of the earth. I was at our church this afternoon when the roof started to rumble with rain. Everyone stopped and looked at one another in amazement. It poured like it was trying to make up for the last few months. I think it'll have to try harder, though...

We opened the patio door and let the rain smell seep in. I saw an older couple walking through the puddles of the parking lot, holding hands. After so much devastation in this area, the realization of rain startled me and made me almost want to cry. It's amazing what you learn to appreciate when it's suddenly not there.

So we central Texans are reveling in our wet wonderland, and it's September, my favorite time of year. I should start baking stuff. Maybe I can sweet talk my mother into making a pie. Mm, pie....

On Blogging

Hello, look at this. I've become a blogger. I guess we'll see how this project chugs along. I'm not a technical kind of gal, and probably won't be able to figure out how to do this anywhere else, so I'll go ahead and introduce myself:
My name is Savannah! (There's a start.)

 I have kept a blog before, but, as I said, I am not gifted when it comes to technology, and when the website encounters problems...you got it. I can't fix them.
So this is my new site, I guess, for talking shop about writing, sharing a bit of my own work with you all, and generally discussing stories. While not possessing a particular aptitude for the mechanical, I do love stories.