Was that not the least committal title ever? Are you loving the negative situation in that last sentence?
Yes, I got a terrible grade on my physics final. Yes, I'm getting a B in that class. Yes, I have absolutely no idea what I'm getting in APUSH. No, that's wrong. I'm getting something between a C- and an A+. It's not my fault that the grades aren't entered. Yes, I am feeling a little bit angry and stressed and tired and weird about the whole school situation. Yes, I am looking forward to French 4 next semester. Yes, I'm eating cranberry sauce with yogurt. Yes, I've recently finished reading a 255k word Harry Potter fanfic.
We're going to pretend that never happened.
The moral of the story: I do not want to think about school anymore. I need to write something realquicklike.
While we're on the topic of writing, I'm starting to think that short stories have to be conqured in a completly different way than novels do. With novels, characters are important, and they have to be right, but with short stories, it's this weird snapshot, and you just need a few moments. Although maybe what I'm talking about is flash fiction more than short stories. I have a growing affinity for flash fiction, but I'm not sure how I feel about legit short stories. Short stories, I think, require some degree of character development, but I don't know if I've ever pulled that off successfully. Either they're novel characters, or they're these faceless beings that are only there to get my point across.
I'm pretty sure that these questions of character are just the aftermath of my NaNoWriMo. I wouldn't consider myself to be at peace with it yet, if you were curious.
Sigh.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Yeah, Well
Posted by Samantha at 11:11 AM
Labels: School, Writing/Nanowrimo
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2 Fab Fans:
I love short stories. They're the only things I can attempt to write. But I think short stories are all about painting a big picture in a few pages. It's admirable that any author can do that well. It's also admirable that authors-like Rowling-can create a whole other world within our own and draw it out into a series, being consistent with everything.
I have an E in AP Lang right now because she's entered in all our assignments, but has not graded them yet. Therefore, I have a whole bunch of 0's in that class. But I did all the work, I promise.
Did you post this at 11:11 on purpose?
I only realized it was at 11:11 after I posted it, and it made me really happy.
APUSH teacher has me down for 0's in two assignments that I am positive that I did. He will be changing this.
I think I love novels more than short stories, but for completely different reasons, and JK Rowling is one of those reasons. I thing with novels, especially novels in a series (not a novel that was successful and had a sequel, which is completely different and usually bad) that are all planned out ahead of time is that they really do plunge you into their world. I know more about some characters in HP than I know about people in my life, and I think that the extent to which they're planned out makes the series good. There was an interview (with pottercast, I think) where JK Rowling said that something wasn't real. She didn't say that it wasn't real in the context of the book, because it does seem like it's all very real to her.
Enough of me talking about how much I love Harry Potter. On to short stories. I think short stories don't get you as wrapped up in a character as novels do, and that's good in some cases. For instance, if one of my favourite characters from a novel killed themselves, I would probably cry (Yeah, I cry at books sometimes.) I wouldn't cry about a character in a short story doing that because I'm not as emotionally invested. Instead, I can appreciate how the writer leads up to it, how they show the character's thoughts and actions before they commit suicide, and how they show everyone's reactions afterwards. They're good for different things, and when I think about that, I'm not sure if I've ever had the right idea in my mind when I've been writing something, because I'm not sure what I want to say, and I'm not sure what I want to get across.
Why yes, I have written some blog posts shorter than this comment.
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