Uber Marianne » Write Hand Turn

If I Could Save Time In A Bottle . . .

Marianne — Wed, 06 May 2009 00:26:01 +0000

The first thing that I’d like to do? Is to chug it it when it comes to working tonight instead of sipping it politely over the course of nine hours. Too bad I can’t.

So I found out some devastating news this morning. Part of me is wondering how I’m managing not to simply freak the dickens out, but I’m kind of sick and tired so it might just be taking its sweet time sinking into my processing cortex. But, here it is: The UC lady told me today, for the first time, mind you, that the only way I can test out of my prerequisite French classes? Would be to go back in time and take the equivalency test before I started taking my current French class. Groan.

I do have a little hope though. I’m pulling a “When Bank’s Compete, You Win” type scam, or at least trying awfully hard to. I emailed Kent State and asked them if I could test out of my French classes with their equivalency. Of course, it will probably be about mid-January of 2011 before I hear back from anyone, but ya gots to do whats ya gots to do, eh?

Sigh.

The encouraging thing about life of late though is two fold. First, I’ve worked a little on my story for Writer’s Group and it is sucking much less than I thought it might be at this current state of development. And, second, I’ve found a really good friend in James Scott.

Maybe it’s the name, and all us Scotts are bound to stick together. Incidentally and on totally unrelated tangent I looked up my name on BabyNames.com and found out that apparently I’m a Pure Sea Of Bitterness Of Scottish Descent. Not completely encouraging. But back to James. It’s nice to have someone you can call up in the middle of the night because your jerkwad sister and brother are weenies and “have to sleep” because they “have work in the morning” and say, “Hey! This is what I heard on Christian Talk Radio tonight. Whattaya think?”, and have the person not only not say, “You?! Listen to Christian Talk Radio?! EWWW!” , but even be able to have an insightful discussion about it with. It’s even better probably when that person can quote almost verbatim the prologue to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, which of course he can. All in all, a specimen that I wasn’t expecting but that I appreciate nonetheless.

I can’t wait to get some more work done on my writing piece. I think that I’m usually alright when it comes to pacing, and I think I might even be slightly better than alright when it comes to character development. There’s probably more insight given to the internal lives of people in my stories than most readers even have about themselves. It’s the plot lines that I really bomb on. There’s usually just not enough going on. Not that a story has to be full of explosions or Nazis and vampires running around everywhere, but it’s unrealistic that this is all there is to someone’s life. No one sits around reflecting constantly probably unless they’re living alone in the woods or are terminally depressed. But with a little ridicule and assistance from my Writer’s Group compatriots, I think I just might be able to pull this one out of the toilet.

Also, I’ve found out that, surprisingly enough, part of what I love about writing is the actual doing of it. I love looking at the screen while my fingers race around and watching my ideas trickle themselves out, line after line. Part of me even loves writing emails for this reason. I know, I’m a freak. And, I probably should have been a piano player.

Sad Sack

Marianne — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 02:17:45 +0000

There’ s nothing noble in

Being corpulent and spent.

Looking like a moody marshmallow or maybe

A sad sack of potatoes,

Who really cares?

You’re too broad to be narrow like this.

But despair looks lovely

On the slender and the slim

Who sit with bony knees uplifting bony elbows

With a board flat abdomen that curves,

The head in the hands is only the point that comes at the bottom

Of the body’s question mark.

And the question is:

What’s the point?

Wiki Wiki Word.

Marianne — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:12:12 +0000

So, guess what? Delightfully I got my french textbook finally. The joy of this most recent conquest almost caused me to pirouette as I bent down and picked it up from my doorstep. Giggling, I peeled back the tape on the package and looked inside. I drew out the mass of pages and opened it to the number for my assigned homework, and-

And-?

Crap! I ordered the wrong addition.

Yes, I can use it for studying for my proficiency test but as far as keeping up with the class, doing my homework, and not looking like a pothead in front of my professer? Not so much. But the correct book is on it’s way and hopefully will pull my fat out of the fryer at just the last moment. Crossing my fingers.

I also got a call this week about working the full time counselor job at the WalkIn office of the place where I pick up shifts at the shelter. The only problem is that I thought I’d missed the boat so I didn’t work around the idea of a nine to five when planning my summer classes. Mrrrgh. But it’s just one more chance for me to try and pull a rabbit out of my hat, or, if you will, a miracle out of thin air.

In other news, I’m working on my new piece for Writer’s Group. I can’t entirely say that it’s one that I truly love and that others will find it life changing. But it’s a process and till I think of something that will fit in the catagories I just mentioned, it will just have to do. I think that it’s valuable to take it and revise and edit and work and work and make it great. And I figure that once I can do that with something kind of mediocre, I should have no trouble with the fantabulous novel that I’m going to light the world on fire with. We’ll see if my suppositions are correct.

I really, truly, deeply want to be a good writer. And all allusions to Savage Garden aside, I believe that if I work enough I can do it. And I want to praise God with my work. I want to write what he would have me to. I’m just still trying to figure out exactly what that is. My sister says that to write good Christian fiction, there’s something of a light hand that has to be applied. I agree. I just can’t do it yet.

Wish me luck! . . . and, buy my book when it comes out.

If You Want To Know?

Marianne — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 05:07:17 +0000

If you really wanna know, you’re going to have to know it all.

So I’ve been working over at Writers’ Grope on Livejournal on the prompts from the JulNoWriMo website. So far I’ve done . . . two of them. But! I’m getting there. The reason I bring it up is that in this last exercise I was writing a letter to someone from highschool and I realized that there was a lot of my experience that this person didn’t know, and couldn’t have known. It was suddenly apparent to me that a lot of my life has been an exercise in duplicity.

Is this the common experience? What are those things that we’ve never told anyone? And is now the time to let them breathe?

I’m thinking about it. I’m mulling it over. Should I embark on recovering the past and recreating it to be what it really was? In some ways, I was probably doomed to be, well, something of a hypocrite. This won’t make sense now, but I believe it will become clear. Regardless, I’m not going to be that anymore. God is truth, and I love him. And so I will love truth as well.

Yet Another Baffling Boy (YOU Know Who You Are (Maybe))

Marianne — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:40:54 +0000

My Best Part Time Friend

Every once in a while, you suddenly appear!

So maybe it’s just when you’ve drunk too much beer?

But whatever the reason, I know soon you’ll prob’ly

Show up all witty with a short email volley

And then all at once disappear off the planet

A word here, a sentence, and then suddenly vanish.

Now I’m trying to figure what all it’s about . . .

Say, are you secretly married and your wife just found out?

Do you cyclically go into hiding or something?

Are you a dangerous criminal who has to keep running?

Did you remember you’re Amish and can’t use a computer?

Are you ashamed to reveal you were recently neutered?

Did you fall off a bridge, as I so casually offer?

Were you kidnapped by pirates or your long lost real father?

Regardless, I hope your adventures delight

And when there’s a lull, I’m sure you will write.

And I’ll be as baffled as always and then

You’ll return to being my best part-time friend.

The Confessions of St. Augustine

Marianne — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:24:59 +0000

I have a confession of my own: I heart St. Augustine.

We’re like soulmates seperated by hundreds of years, and by class, gender, education, and age. We’ve both been foolish, we’ve both been degenerate. And yet God in his infinite wisdom and grace was kind enough to show us fully what kind of jerks we really were and grow us into something better, more in keeping with who he is. And it is encouragement to me now to read the words of someone who has sought, as I myself need to continually seek, the absolute truth.

<—–see the resemblence?—–>

” Entrust to truth whatever truth has given you, and you will lose nothing. What is withered in you will flower again, and your illness will be made well, and all that was flowing and wasting from you will regain shape and substance and will form part of you again, and they will not lay you down in the place where they themselves descend, but will stand fast with you and abide with you forever before God who stands and abides forever.”

May I say it? HOT.

I told Mark a few months ago when I started it that I was reading the Confessions and he was surprised. He had heard it was kind of dirty. But while there may be sections that are candid about his carnal appetites, St. Augustine’s point is not to revel. The point is that God has redeemed him, he who was the worst of these, he who was immersed in not only the lifestyle but the mindset of the flesh. He speaks about the superiority he felt as he pursued intellectualism and the emptiness he found in simply following his own desires. The point is that God knew him even then, in the dirty places, and was pulling him ever closer to a true knowledge and understanding of him. And that is lovely.

I can relate. I’ve been distracted, distracting, unkind, cruel, insensitive, unfaithful, disingenuous, lazy, impatient, lusty, and raging. I’ve been called a prude and a tramp, and sometimes both at once, which . . . well, was actually probably closest to the truth. I’ve had a chip on my shoulder. I’ve rolled my eyes at people who weren’t as smart as I thought I was with my incredible massive brain. I’ve derided the Church and thought that Christians were boring, legalistic, and dead, at the same time I claimed to be a Christian while getting slobbering drunk and following boys home at night.

It’s difficult to share those things. It’s difficult to know what’s appropriate. Because as Christians it seems like we don’t want to hear it or maybe that we should just forget it. Because we’re the new creation now, aren’t we? And we are. We are. But those dark places in us . . . those dark places in us are forgiven and healed, and yet, is there sometimes scar tissue left?

What is the purpose in confession? Is it to show how God has moved and what he’s done? Is it to humble us, to remind ourselves that the perfection we are working towards hasn’t been attained yet? Is it to show other people who don’t have the relationship with God that we do that we weren’t really all that different, but that God granted us wisdom to recognize a need that only he could fill? Is it to pass on the wisdom that all those bruises have granted us, so that no one else need go through the gauntlet niavely?

Maybe it’s all those things. And I have to say I think I’ve learned more about myself in being introspective over the last year about my mistakes and failed efforts and all the time I spent not paying attention than I learned in the two and a half decades that came before it. I confess: He’s still working on me.

Writey Write Write!

Marianne — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:24:29 +0000

(no endorsements are implied from this video.)

There’s a manic spirit of summer drifting in and making everyone wanting to Do Something, and I’ve decided not to fight the current this year. I will Do Something too. In fact, I’ve already got a head start, as I’m doing my laundry today. But maybe that isn’t enough. Yes, I’m almost certain of it.

Talking with my brother over the last couple of weeks has given me the inspiration and even the method of my new madness. He has a friend who did something called “NaNoWriMo” last year. And what might this wonderful anacronym refer to? Only National Novel Writing Month!!! Basically the idea is to crank out a 50K word novel within thirty days, aka the month of November. But check it, readers. For those insane enough that one month of sleepless nights spent beating their heads against the typewriter, begging, begging, begging for something, anything to occur to them, still leaves them with the shakes? There is apparently a secondary iditarod of fiction, namely JulNoWriMo (Psst! It takes place in July).

And I? Am! SO! DOWN! (memo to me: work on puctuation.)

If I can pull it off, it will be wonderful. Not that I’m expecting to be published by the end of the year with this or anything. That’s still a long way off probably. The Trick is though, I think, to write and write and pour your soul out onto a page again and again till you can string together about two hundred and fifty of them. Edit it to death. Take out that goopy sidenote about how snow reminds you of the cotton beards little kids make for Santa Claus and how it comforts your heart. Hand paint a cover and have it bound. Then? Throw it away. Do this about eleven times and your next book might just be alright.

At this rate, after about six years of Jul-and NaNoWriMos I should be a decent writer. Take that, mid-thirties!

Anyone want to jump on the band wagon with me????

ENG2013 Major Modern Writers

Marianne — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:23:19 +0000

That’s the name of a class I took in college, and the one in which I fell in love with the childish poetry of Stevie Smith and the extra-ordinary stories of Alice Munro. I invoke it’s title to remind myself of the first blush of desire that precedes a good old fashioned book lust.

So I’m off Simon and on to modern classic literature. My sister was kind enough to accompany me to the Half Price Book Store this afternoon and help me peruse the A-D aisle for a sampling of Adams, Balzac, Collins, and DeLillo, to name a few. I even procured a copy of A Clockwork Orange, which I’m already almost certain I’m going to hate.

It may seem like a “nuveau riche” thing to do (“Give me one art, please!”) but I want to have my very own custom made party tray of great authors of the past two hundred years or so. Not because they’re interesting. Not because I like them. But because I don’t know if they’re interesting or if I like them. I find it amazing that someone can write an entire book simply critiquing the characters, plot, and writing style of someone else’s novel. I want to bite into a beefy, substantial novel like that.

If you know me, you’ll know that my livres d’amour are usually either feminist diatribes, cross cultural expositions, or moving coming of age tales. I love Margaret Atwood and Alice Walker. I see a copy of Sula or HerLand and my eyes tear up. When I read the Yellow Wallpaper, I literally giggled with glee at the end. I know, I know, it’s pathetic. But that’s what my natural frequency is tuned to. But this new venture is a study, like my own personal seminar. I want to be a good writer. I want to understand the intricacies of the novel. I want to learn.

And that’s something that probably invariably happens. The schoolgirl turns into the scholar. The child longs for excitement, the adult values the steadiness of discipline. And discipline is a very good thing. Discipline itself still pretty exciting for me though, I must admit, since I haven’t been at it that long. But I imagine it is here to stay: that recognition that I don’t do what is fleetingly pleasant but what continually draws me closer to becoming the woman I want to be.

Can you believe I got all that from a trip to the bookstore???