law school is my boyfriend

Earlier, I found myself quoted, which was strange. This was the passage:

(They say, find a day job, write on the side, support yourself until you are so successful that you can quit your day job. But they don't take into account that writing takes a huge amount of creative, mental, and emotional energy - all of which your day job can drain out of you. What can you produce that is good, that is full of heart and soul and story, after a long, tedious, dry day of work? Those who say that are practical, but where does practicality come in to writing? Writing is an art, and does art leave room for practicality? Or is it something deeper, more innate, more in tune with nature - wild, raw, free - the need for expression?)

I was surprised that I actually sounded somewhat approaching coherent in that; it reads very much me though. An excessive fondness for commas and lists without conjunctions - it is my shame. I am working on converting my sentence fragments into better-flowing complete sentences.

Unrelated to writing because that's something I'm not doing recently (for fun or for school, and it kills me that I'm not), I was thinking about the complexities of relationships and the implications tied into them, whether or not we realize those implications at the time. For example, M has been seeing someone recently - only 3 dates so far, but he's a born-and-bred Midwestern guy and very proud of that. He's only ever been too two states: MO where he was born and where he lives now and AZ where he went to school. He has no inclination to travel and explore the rest of the country, much less the rest of the world; he has no intention of leaving St. Louis. There is always the possibility that a relationship with M will broaden his horizons and open his mind to a new world, but the chance seems small and, to me, seems like so much unnecessary work.

I don't think I could ever date someone who doesn't enjoy Asian cuisine on a fairly regular basis (if not every day), someone who isn't interested in new cultures, someone who doesn't want to see more of the world than just their own backyard. I don't think I could be happy with someone like that. M is uncertain too but this is only a fairly minor concern for her because he is presenting a few more pressing issues for her: his complete stinginess and that he's proclaimed his love for her after just three dates. Three casual dates, mind, not exactly soul-searching, heart-baring, death-defying and life-affirming dates.

But hearing her story made me linger on the unsaid implications if she should choose to continue dating this guy and turn it into a relationship: she would essentially be committing to him and to St. Louis. She can't get into a serious relationship and then turn around and leave school to work on the coast; she can't demand he follow her when his home and roots are all here. Dating means looking towards the future, and the future means you have to consider what you're willing to compromise and what you're not. (This applies mostly to people like me and M who don't do casual; maybe it's a very stereotypical female mindset that the point of dating is to find a suitable person you're willing to spend the reset of your life with. I say "stereotypical" because a lot of girls are capable of doing casual and only want that, and more power to them.)

This is why I don't want to date in law school anymore. I don't want to commit myself to anyone here. I don't want to have to worry about another huge factor I have to work around and compromise with when I consider my future. I'm still young. I want my life to be about me right now, not me with someone else. Right now, I am happy not being in a relationship. I like not having to worry about that, having only to look out for myself and take care of myself.

And I have plenty to worry about. Thanks, law school. You provide me with just as much emotional drama as any relationship could with no cuddling trade-off.

시간이 흘렀어도 나이가 들어도

Assorted and unrelated thoughts, collected:

I do like textbooks with a sense of humor. Also awesome are judges who have a sense of humor and write hilarious court opinions.

I will write you 3 million footnotes in the final draft, I promise. Have no fear at my ability to BS in abundance, at great length, with citations.

It is such a literary turn on when authors really know their stuff and convey it through their storytelling, without infodumping. So much "do want".

I joke about the world ending in 2012 but there's a part of me wishing fervently for it because I don't know what I'll do with my life, what I'll be left with, if it doesn't.

(So Mei totally cries at commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NQaWk_GTNc)

I build my fences high to protect myself, but I've built them so high that you can't see me behind them.

I've never known what it means to "drink someone in with your eyes" until you.



And, to end, a little bit of prose poetry:

This was once a love poem, before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short, before it found itself sitting, perplexed and a little embarrassed, on the fender of a parked car, while many people passed by without turning their heads. It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement. It remembers choosing these shoes, this scarf or tie. Once, it drank beer for breakfast, drifted its feet in a river side by side with the feet of another. Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy, dropping its head so the hair would fall forward, so the eyes would not be seen. It spoke with passion of history, of art. It was lovely then, this poem. Under its chin, no fold of skin softened. Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat. What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall. An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks. The longing has not diminished. Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat, the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus. Yes, it decides: Many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots. When it finds itself disquieted by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life, it will touch them—one, then another— with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.

—Jane Hirschfield

i'm building these castles with words

Looking back over my writing (and comparing it to what I've read of other people's writings), it's unquestionable that I have a fairly distinctive writing style. The problem I have with it at times is that I'm not sure I like it.

I think I have a decent grasp on my strengths and weaknesses, or at least how I perceive them (though I'm not sure how it might come off to others):

I am good with realistic dialogue. I can make a character say something that they would conceivably say in real life, if they were that situation. I am capable of believable vernacular. On the flip side, when I'm writing humor, I apparently have enough witty one-liners and sarcasm that can carry the tone of the scene.

In continuance with that, I am good with comedic timing and punchlines. I do well with short scenes that make an impact, shaping up a few paragraphs of a situation to conclude with an - oh. A revelation, to either the character or to the reader.

I am not good with overarching plots, pacing, subtle transitions (or else I am too subtle and obscure and the reader will totally miss what I'm trying to convey), and natural development. I am impatient with writing because I like to know where I'm going, so I often have a roadmap of where I want a story to go in my head, and I end up forcing things along without taking into consideration the pacing becomes too abrupty. I overcompensate with what I feel is a lack of progression by throwing in too-subtle foreshadowings that I'm not sure people pick up on during the actual read (and may only seem like foreshadowing to me because I know what happens later on).

I get caught up in descriptions of what people are doing or what their body language is expressing when they're speaking. I don't let the dialogue stand for itself because I know, from personal experience, that people convey unsaid things with their expressions or other small gestures - unfortunately, these tend to bog down scenes with excessive description.

I'm also not very good at describing the setting or background environment of a scene in natural, non-conspicuous ways. I tend to infodump when I remember, oh yeah, I should put in some description of this room or that building or the sky. I should give people enough details for them to get a general idea of where things are taking place instead of throwing a paragraph of text at them, because everyone can use their imagination, right? On the other hand, sometimes I want to describe a particular environment that I know readers wouldn't otherwise imagine. It's a difficult balance. I struggle with that a lot.

Another trap I am guilty of falling into is an overuse of adjectives or adverbs. I'm usually pretty good about them when I am paying attention and at editing out unnecessary ones upon reread. This is why I have to reread. I also reread to get a feel of the general flow of things because I do a generous amount of time-skipping in between scenes and sometimes that jump is not obvious, or it's incongruous or confusing.

As for plot: plot is hard. I tend not to write long things because they require having a better idea or grasp of an overarching plot than I tend to; I'm best with scenes and stories developing organically as I write, which the control freak in me does not allow to happen with longer pieces. Longer pieces demand that I know in what direction I'm heading and it all just ends up driving me crazy.

Sometimes I struggle to find new ways to say old things. I'm not averse to idioms or "clichéd" phrases, as long as they fit into the flow of the narrative (or are apt in dialogue). But sometimes I want to be creative and sometimes that just doesn't work out very well, or I am creative with one particular phrase that I like so much I can't seem to ever think of a new way to express the same sentiment, and I feel like I'm rehashing my writing with the same descriptions or metaphors. Not good.

I also tend to meta in my writing, instead of telling a story. It works, sometimes. Other times it makes me grit my teeth in frustration, but if I have to meta, I would rather do it through a thin veneer of storytelling than in essay form.

Hmm... That's all I can think of to comment on for now, so I'll stop overanalyzing my writing (it comes from writing so much lately...) and actually get back to writing. Ugh, writing is hard. But I write to improve, right?

To paraphrase Stephen King: To be a good writer, you must do two things: read a lot and write a lot.

you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you

It's a little ridiculous how happy writing can make me. It makes or breaks my moods: not writing, or writing poorly, can make me so frustrated and listless, whereas managing to write something, however long, that I am pleased with...well, that can make my day or night.

I predict many mood swings come November and NaNoWriMo.

Granted, I need to finish this term paper and a 45-page draft of my Note before then - this endless writing will eat up my life. But, like I was saying to L - what needs to get done needs to get done.

Let's keep on truckin'.

words are the music notes on my composition sheet

Have I figured out yet what I want out of life? It is easy to ask questions, but finding the answers is a little harder. Can I tell you what I don't want? "Whatever left, however improbable, must be the truth." But that applies only to eliminating the impossible things.

It is impossible to imagine a life where I don't write, or don't feel the constant itch under my skin to write. It is impossible to imagine a life where I don't crave reading, where I don't admire a gorgeous turn of phrase. Writers are people for whom writing is more difficult than normal people, maybe because we care too much what we sound like. Maybe it could be easier, but I don't think it could ever be a chore when it is a labor of love.

I can't live my life without thinking, "Oh, I could write that. I could write it this way." My mind describes scenes without my conscious realization; I search for the right words, the right emotions, that could play out in the scene that is my life. I think about how one scene might lead to another, cause and effect, how I might format everything for the most emotional impact. Is that normal? I can't imagine not living like that, like every day is something that can be turned into art.

You'd think I would be able to write better blog entries if that were the case. I should put these descriptive urges to use, practice with a summation of What I Did Today. I have always been inclined towards slice-of-life vignettes, in any case. But for all that I see my life through the writer's equivalent of a camera lens (I wonder if this is how photographers feel, I wonder if it is something they can ever set aside, or if they even want to), it can be a struggle to show that viewfinder, that perspective, to someone else. Writing is an intensely personal experience for me, because it involves not only the emotions I want to convey through words, but also the emotions I feel as I write. For someone who isn't me - can they ever truly experience what I do? See what I do?

I should practice more though, shouldn't I? If it's a hardship, a struggle, then I should only work harder to overcome it.

How many ways can you say that the world is painted in red-and-gold leaves, vibrant against the wet gray sky and ground? How many ways can you say, "This world makes me feel," when you look out the window at the sky, and the trees, at the cars and people and rain and world?

Some feelings you just can't put words to, it's true. But there are so many things you can, if you try. If you find the right words, the right analogy, the right phrasing.

I wonder if music is like this to some people.

is it writing? is it art?

(They say, find a day job, write on the side, support yourself until you are so successful that you can quit your day job. But they don't take into account that writing takes a huge amount of creative, mental, and emotional energy - all of which your day job can drain out of you. What can you produce that is good, that is full of heart and soul and story, after a long, tedious, dry day of work? Those who say that are practical, but where does practicality come in to writing? Writing is an art, and does art leave room for practicality? Or is it something deeper, more innate, more in tune with nature - wild, raw, free - the need for expression?)

looking forward into future mine

On a totally unrelated note, I'm so interested in how copyright works. Is Shakespeare public domain now? Does that mean derivative fiction can be published about his works? (The way all those horrible, horrible Jane Austen spin-offs about Mr. Darcy and his diary or what-have-you are now allowed to be put to print.) How does it work in the music industry? Taylor Swift's song Love Story is practically a fic in itself of Romeo and Juliet. It's sweet (and it makes me want to write...), but it's also makes me wonder how copyrights work.

Good thing I'm going to take Copyright Law next semester. :)

I can't decide between taking Internet Law, Trademarks, and International Intellectual Property Law for Spring semester. They're all similar and fascinating, but it all comes down to other factors like what professor teaches it, if I can build a rapport with and gain a reference from that professor, what time the class is, how the class is graded, and what the final's like. I need to go investigate these things.

Signing up for classes in law school is an art. It's not just about taking whatever you need to or think is interesting.

Fortunately, I've pretty much decided what my schedule's going to look like Fall semester: 12 hours + 1 hour journal credit (if I get on one...which I hope I do), which is few enough to allow for the crazy amounts of traveling and interviewing that fall recruiting will entail. No classes on Wednesday or Friday, either, as per my mentor's suggestion - it will also make for an easier time flying out on weekends to interview, since I won't have classes to miss and make up.

Classes for next semester look like: Copyright & Related Rights, International Law, Federal Income Taxation, and Censorship & Free Expression. Good times.

I have to make a note to remember deadlines for bidding on OCIs over the summer. Oh the summer. So many more details to work out, but I'm so excited. I love Beijing! Plus I will get to hang out with T.

The only sad thing about the summer is not getting to see everyone I want to see (for long enough). In particular...M and M. I will make it happen somehow, though.

no need to complicate our time

These past few days I haven't found it in me to have the right words to describe my life. I wrote last week and it came so easily, effortless creativity that made me stop and think: I love this. I love to write. I do it well. I'm not the best, god no (how I could ever think I was even close with all the friends I have whose talent continue to amaze me), and of course I need a lot of work and improvement, but this writing thing...I couldn't exist without it.

I don't mean blogging. I mean writing. There are days, weeks, when I miss it so much it's like a physical ache. It discomfits me not having put feelings and ideas and style onto the page, with the right words strung together in the right way, saying the right thing for once, when so often I feel tongue-tied and the very opposite of eloquent.

I love writing and I'm afraid law school stifles that. I'm afraid my own fears stifle that.

Have you ever read something you've written and cried over it? It made me feel incredibly pretentious, as if I thought I was such a good writer that I could stir even myself, as if my writing had such raw, powerful emotion.

(I like to think my writing makes people feel, but who has really read my writing?)

I don't think I'm a very good blogger, however. I don't think I am very good at chronicling my life and making it entertaining, witty, poignant. I am too busy trying to live my life and not let it pass me by to translate it into words for other people. I am too busy making the memory to reflect on the memory, at least until long afterwards, in hindsight.

I am better at translating other people's lives into something readable, however. I wonder why my own is such a challenge. Perhaps that is something I should try this year, to chronicle my life in an interesting way.

They tell me what I write about China is strongest, in vivid color and emotion, that it reflects my love for it. I wonder if I could do this for anything (a form of lying, because it is China I love, not just anything, not just anywhere), and it makes me want to try. Orchestrated lies, and all that.

Sometimes I wonder where I might be if I were braver.

when the words fall away

I hate everything I write; I especially hate it after reading a particularly good fic or piece of fiction. Nothing I write has a point. There should be themes, interpretation, parallels--something. Something beyond a random slice-of-life; if the slice-of-life is demonstrating a particular sentiment or illustrating a certain point, that's different. But I hate everything I write because nothing I write has a point. I can never find the write words to express the things I'd like to express, or I use pretty language in the shallowest of ways to describe things in a vaguely literary manner--except still without a point. I have too many loose ends and irrelevant details, emotions that escape at the edges and aren't properly directed or reshaped by the end of the story. My humor is contrived and not that funny.

I can't write length and I can't write plot.

What kind of writer am I?

if you write about writers, who will write about you?

Today in my Intro to Fiction class, we discussed The Hours by Michael Cunningham, where he fictionalizes a part of Virginia Woolf's life. This brought on a meta discussion about the morality (as well as other literary problems) involved in writing fiction about a real person's life. Why would you choose to do this? How accurate does it need to be? Are there problems in presuming their thoughts and feelings; what kind of liberties are taken?

Questions that also struck me that I hope to bring up next class (or privately with the professor): Is there a difference between writing a fictional account of a historical (i.e., dead) figure and someone who is currently alive? What kind of permission do you have to seek? Is there a certain length of time that needs to pass before the person's life becomes public property much in the way literature copyrights expire?

Then there's the entire idea of writing fiction about fictional characters. I would love her opinion on this. They call it "derivative fiction" when they can get it published, all those awful works based off Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy's Diary, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, etc.; what is this crap?) or The Wizard of Oz (oh Wicked). How legitimate is this? How are the morals involved here different from writing about real people (historical or present)?

I have no problem with any of this. Honestly, the thing about writing is that no one can stop you from writing whatever you want. The only thing people can restrict is the distribution of your writing--they can say who can or cannot read your writing, but they can't stop you from writing it.

So write it.

Writing down your life

It's said that a writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people (Thomas Mann), but as a writer you tend to think--hope--that whether or not it is more difficult, it is still something you are good at, perhaps even better at than most people.

So when you take a first-year level class that consists of a lot of paper-writing, it comes as a blow to receive back a low grade on an essay. You stare at the grade, at the bleeding red numbers, and you wonder, What happened? You're a writer, aren't you? Everyone's said so. You've heard the litany for years from your parents, your English teachers, your friends--strangers, even: you have a talent for shaping words. This is why you're a humanities major, after all. You know you've no talent for science and math, that your brain just doesn't process the numbers and formulas and logistics the way that's expected for those fields of study, and you're quite content with being able to focus on the stylistics of a pretty turn of phrase or the semantics of word usage. Your roommate pities you for your endless papers, but you'd prefer them any day over her lab reports or Chemistry tests.

But that grade. That low, low grade. What does it mean? The more you stare at it, the more it undermines your own confidence as a writer. Maybe you were never as good as you thought you were. Maybe you were never good. And maybe a part of you knew that all along.

Isn't that why you never ventured to take an Intro to Fiction-Writing class? Or why you never committed yourself to NaNoWriMo, despite all your talk about it? You've read your friends' writings, their short, original stories. You recognize their talent--a wealth of originality and clever turns of phrase you could never manage. You recognize the strength in their writing, the depth, the capacity to integrate a cohesive theme and provoke thought or feeling.

Your fiction has always felt flat in comparison; you have very few pieces you are genuinely proud of, and of those, you still nitpick, you still compare and fall short. Your weaknesses gape wide under your eyes, permanent black marks against every attempt to improve. You wish you knew how to improve, how to write like those authors you read, but the task seems so monumental that most of the time you despair. Sometimes you think you have it inside you, that ability to craft words and mood and theme. You can feel it rising within you, struggling to burst out onto the page, into sentences, paragraphs, a roller-coaster of emotion that pulls the reader along. But there's a stop-gap between your mind, where the creativity is roiling, ever epic, and your fingers, which seem unable to output what might have been brilliance.

This is why you fear taking an actual writing class. You're afraid of feedback, of critique, not because you expect yourself to be perfect and for your writing to amaze all who read it--but because you're afraid that it will amaze no one. You're afraid that the class will confirm that deep-down fear that you are not the writer you think you are, that you are not a writer at all.

Maybe it's already been confirmed, though. Maybe that's what this low grade is--proof of what you've always feared: that you are incapable of excelling in anything, forever mediocre in everything. A slideshow flashes through your mind, rapidfire, images of piano and violin, of cultural dance and modern dance, of sports you never played and clubs you never joined. Wasted potential.

Excellence does not come easy, you know, nor does it come naturally. It takes work. But you feel as though you have worked for your writing; you know you've improved over the years. You can look at your writing from five years ago and compare it to your writing now and say with certainty that you are a better writer now than you were then. But that doesn't mean that you are a good writer now.

The fear sits low in your stomach. That doesn't mean that you are a good writer now.

It's all you've ever wanted, to be able to write. You knew too late you weren't going to be anyone of note in violin, piano, sports, or dance. Your regrets are endless, but you thought it might be all right as long as you could write. That was still something. Something to make you noticable, special, worthy.

But maybe you aren't a good writer. Maybe you don't even have that.

You try to tell yourself that it's just one grade, that all it indicates is that you didn't try hard enough on that paper, that you didn't give the professor what he wanted. It's a matter of failure in your effort, not in your ability. You cling to that fleeting excuse like a lifesaver in your river of denial; it might be true. It might save you from a life of being unremarkable, unnoticeable, and untalented--and you need that belief to keep going. The alternative is incomprehendable.

You don't know what you would do if you couldn't write. What would you have then?

The physical ache of not having written for weeks, not having written properly and giving some release to the pressing demands of creativity (you've never doubted that you had muses, but the ability to translate their urges into words has you terrified now), is nothing compared to the stomach-dropping, breathless fear that consumes you when you consider even the possibility of not being able to write.

I'm a writer, you tell yourself.A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. It's understandable, excusable, acceptable for writing not to come easily.

You look at the grade again. You try not to frantically shift through all your writing for the past five years to prove your own abilities to yourself. You don't know. You don't want to know.

You try to abate the panic. I'm a writer, you whisper. I just need to practice more, think more, plan more, write more. It will be all right. It's only a matter of effort.

You're a writer, because you can't not be.