May Day

well, now i'm missing the months of March and April. what can i say? five weeks to graduation and i've got midterms and other things to worry about. i will refrain from releasing certain information here considering my future until i get a particular letter sent to Canada where a friend is waiting for it still unknowing. but i will just say that i started this blog four years ago to record my life at college and i think i have done that to some extent. you can be sure that after i graduate, i will release the feathers in my cap to the wind. college is an institution where you learn, presumably. the learning is what i wanted to capture here. but the future will be different, not structured, unplanned. ergo, i will be too busy picking up the pieces of myself to write, for posterity's sake, the account of a bewildered and still innocent girl in the big city. what i will learn will be far too personal as well. i'll have a notebook handy.

now. i have a thesis and argument due by 3:30 for my next class and i intend to brainstorm on here. i will write on the Reveries of a Solitary Walker by Rousseau and as of right now, my argument revolves around a particular quote from the First Walk that i found fascinating both times i read this text:

I am writing down my reveries for myself alone. If, as I hope, I retain the same disposition of mind in my extreme old age, when the time of my departure draws near, I shall recall in reading them the pleasure I have in writing them and by thus reviving times past I shall as it were double the space of my existence.

we looked at a number of contradictions within the text and i plan to assert that these contradictions stem from Rousseau's double existence: his existence as a writer and his existence as a reader. as a writer he is living very much in the present. as a reader reading what he has already written, he is living very much in the past. his Reveries, he claims, are written solely for himself and why else would someone write something for themselves if not to remember? memory and remembering are linked with the act of reading and so his existence in the past would be an existence as a reader. in this way, too, as reader and writer, Rousseau would no longer need the company of society and can live independently and on his own since he constitutes all that he needs and is self-sufficient. as writer he fills the role of creator, as reader he fills the role of interpreter. he is both God and man in his mind if you would permit me to assert. following would be a number of relevant quotations and concise and brilliant theoretical arguments. i am content with this for the moment since i have all weekend to shape the rest of the paper and five pages and five days.

on other news, i have gotten into the advanced creative writing class here at my university. tuesday was my workshop. i don't mind telling you that i thought the professor was picking on me a little too much throughout class: first for my writing exercise which i wasn't proud of and then for my story of which i was a little more certain. turns out that he really liked my story. they all did. i had been afraid because for my last writing exercise i got such catty comments. i don't know but they were all alert and wary of other talent in the class. we are all talented, that is fact since we were accepted into this exclusive group, but all that talent in one room could get a little stifling. needless to say i think the catty remarks sprung from an inherent and implied competitiveness within the group. the thing is, we all get along really well. we're open with each other, acknowledge each other's gifts and failings rather openly. but my professor's opinion was key since he himself is a writer i admire and already published and lauded. he said it was lovely, well-measured, well-observed. i read his remarks with pleasure and a keen surprise. during the workshop he had few words of praise and mostly asked the others questions of what the story was about. i had a look on my face, i'm sure because of the way one of my classmates kept looking at me. i felt cornered, like my story was completely incomprehensible and inadept. i still don't know why he picked on me so much if he liked it and didn't offer much in the way of constructive criticism himself. one thing i was particularly proud of, however, was when he said the story didn't seem like a story an undergraduate would write. it's old-fashioned, yes, but i'd like to think he meant it was sophisticated too, mature and well-developed.

and i am old-fashioned, if you hadn't caught on. i'm old-fashioned. my writing exercise was dubbed postmodern in the way it inserted a seemingly unrelated scene to the rest of the story but this critiqued story...it's what i love and how i love to write. i think i write best when i write traditionally, not because i can't write any other way--ask others, they would say i could--but because with more traditional stories with plot and characters i can dwell more. i can catch my breath and observe the scenes and see what is happening. i don't feel like i have to narrate at break-neck speed to give the reader some kind of adrenaline rush. these stories aren't about the reader. they are about themselves, the story, and they are about the way a story can be told. that was another thing he said, that i told the story quietly and assuredly. yes, i don't mind a quiet telling, a simple telling that is straightforward if not loud. i don't get my readers with a bang. some people don't appreciate that--some people didn't with regard to this story--but i think the majority do.

you should have read some of their comparisons. i don't know why i can't escape them. i never compare a writer to another writer. it just never occurs to me to do that comparison. but i've had two people tell me that my writing reminds them of Roald Dahl which, to me, sounds completely preposterous considering the things he wrote about and the things i write about. on tuesday i got comparisons to Fitzgerald, the Brontes, L.M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, and once--appallingly--i was compared to George Orwell and his Burmese Days. now i think the Fitzgerald through the Brontes comparison sounds about right, but i'm the one being compared, so how would i know? i get what they're saying though even if it troubles me a little to be categorized so easily: the way i write is a reminder of certain classics. i don't know if its the language i use, the sentiments, or the scenes i decide to write, but these are what my readers tell me and they should be listened to, i think. people are always searching for originality these days, but can't i just be myself, even if that means being like others? i don't care so much about originality as individuality. i want to write what i want to write about, regardless if this means writing a romance or historical fiction or some other genre piece. writing a genre should not be shied from because it is a way of learning. once you know the guidelines and have followed them, you can move on to forge new guidelines. i learn a lot when i write a particular genre.

i suppose what i'm trying to say is that a writer shouldn't be so caught up in being new and original. be yourself. someone is bound to like you, don't you think? this whole excursion into the creative writing emphasis was my way of grappling with this risk. i wanted to see if i could write my stories and whether people would like them. and they do. more than one person does. i have found that i can write what i want to write about and no one will hold that against me. just don't pretend. a reader can always tell.

now, it's back to Rousseau. all i need now are some more quotations to support my argument and i'll be all set. then i have an interesting essay due next week for my other writing class (e28e) which involves analyzing a story i've written myself. that will be really interesting, but i will have to master the tone so i don't sound so pompous. this is my last quarter and i want to use my brain as much as possible before i have to leave school and work with less astute coworkers. there is a reason why shows like The Office exist. how else could such stupidity be made funny?