W's- Weekend & Writing

The wedding last weekend was *fantastic*!  Garrett, Eva and I had such a blast.  I got to see so many close friends from high school- many whom I haven't seen in way too long.  I realized what I was missing out on and, how much I really loved so many people who used to play a major role in my life.  (More to come on that during a later date.)

Eva was a dancing queen.  The second the dancing began- she did not stop.  She was on the dance floor for hours!  We did not leave until almost midnight.  (I was mighty proud of myself, because I danced too! I was even talked into doing the Cupid Shuffle... Impressed?!  HA!)

Ashley and Chase were the epitome of bride and groom.  Both were equally stunning.  The chapel they held the ceremony in was beautiful and, the reception was fun and tastefully decorated!  Not that I expected anything less- Ashley has incredible taste.  The happily married couple is currently enjoying a honeymoon in Europe!  (How *FUN* does that sound?!)

I dodged out on pictures all night.  But, Garrett managed to talk me into taking this one of the two of us:

Like our glasses?

Also this weekend, there was a very small carnival here in Mankato.  This carnival comes to town every Memorial Day weekend.  Eva rode on the ferris wheel all by herself!  I was so proud of her.  I could have cried.  (But, who are we kidding?!  Everything makes me cry lately.  Hello hormones!)

Such a big girl!

And, because I don't think I have enough to do during the month of June- I decided to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo.  This should be interesting.  Especially since my French course is even more overwhelming than I was expecting.  Yeah- after this, I have to complete 25 online exercises.  DUE TONIGHT.  How ridiculous! (And another 20 that are due on Friday... sheesh!)  I understand we are covering an entire semester worth of French in 5 weeks, but seriously?  Does this not seem excessive to anyone else?  As for Terrorism and Political Violence- incredibly interesting so far.  Just as I had expected.  In regards to Camp Nanowrimo- WISH ME LUCK! 

I'll leave you with a bit of inspiration:

"A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."

-Jorge Luis Borges

Their Absence Has Shaped Me

It's a grey, humid and wet day in Mankato.  The air is thick, leaving a bitter taste on your tongue.  The smell of worms encases your nostrils and your instincts insist that you remain indoors for your own safety.

Garrett is gone for the day, with work and meetings- leaving Eva and I to do as we wish.  Occasionally a bird will sing a song and we'll both longingly look out the window, searching for the sun, hoping that a trip to the park will become a reality.  But, we both know the disappointing truth- the walls of our apartment will surround us throughout the day.  Maybe we'll take a trip to the coffee shop for a chocolate milk and an iced dirty chai. Yes, maybe.

The quiet, melancholy tone of the day, so new yet already set in motion, seems appropriate.  Today is May 23.

Both of my parents- my deceased father and my estranged mother, share this date as their day of birth.  She is now 48 years old, he would have been 54.  Neither are in my life.  Yet, I will think of them both on this day, as I spend it in silences and love with my own children.  One, with her hand in mine, facing the somber, rainy day at my side.  The other, snuggled safely in my womb, nudging and stretching- reminding me that he's alive and well.

Eva and I will paint and, cuddle.  We will watch the rain and play make believe.

And, the two people who created me, yet did not raise me, will be anchored in the back of my mind throughout the day.  Because, even in their absence, the lack of them has still shaped a part of who I am.

xvii.

xvii.

Lady,i will touch you with my mind.
Touch you and touch and touch
until you give
me suddenly a smile, shyly obscene


(lady i will
touch you with my mind.)Touch
you, that is all,


lightly and you utterly will become
with infinite ease


the poem which i do not write.
                         - e.e. cummings

---
I'm reading erotic poems by e.e. cummings today.  The sun is warm and the sky is white/blue. So far, so good, Saturday.

How is your Saturday?  Do you have any poems to share?  Or stories?  I'd love to read them.

50 Shades of Fuck That Shit

It is a known fact that I love a great Young Adult novel.  Why do I love the YA genre?  I love the writing, I do.  I really do.  I love that you can read a story about witches and wizards or even vampires, and it's more about the characters and less about sex.  You read something like Game of Thrones (which is amazing- I'm not dissing it!  NEVER!) and there is tons of sex and vulgarity.

I don't always want tons of sex and vulgarity, oddly enough.

Just because I'm obsessed with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, just because I love The Chronicles of Narnia and read The Twilight Saga (and used to be a moderator on Twilight's largest Facebook fan page years ago.  Don't hate me)- does not mean I'm going to read 50 Shades of Grey by E.L. James.  Frankly, I can't see how my appreciation for YA can even go hand in hand with this novel.  It's not a YA novel!

Stupid Author of a Stupid Book

People keep asking me, "Oh my god!  Have you read this book yet!?"  Like it's expected of me or something.  Stop asking me if I've read it!  I haven't and I don't plan on it.

I have standards, thank you very much.

I try not to judge things before I try them... I even told my friend Amanda that if she took the time and energy to mail the book to me I may attempt to read it so that my hate for the novel can be solidified by the phrase, "I've read it and it fucking sucks."

But, then I see things like this and I know I'll never read it.

This.  This is STUPID.

Why would I read this garbage?  I love literature.  I love Jane Eyre.  I love Revolutionary Road and novels by real writers like Margaret Atwood and George Orwell.  I do not read this kind of crap.

50 Shades of Grey was originally Twilight Fan Fiction.  The two main characters were originally written as Bella and Edward.  Some 40 year old hormonal woman wrote a lusty, perverse fan fiction about Bella and Edward.  It's Twilight Porn.  It really is.

Don't believe me?  Let's recruit our ever-trusted Wikipedia:

The Fifty Shades Trilogy was developed from a Twilight fanfiction originally entitled Master of the Universe and published episodically on fanfiction websites under the penname "Snowqueen's Icedragon". The piece featured characters named after Stephenie Meyer's characters in Twilight, Edward Cullen and Bella Swan. After comments concerning the sexual nature of the material, James removed the story from the fanfiction websites and published it on her own website, FiftyShades.com. Later she decided to rewrite Master of the Universe as an original piece with the principal characters renamed Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele and shortly prior to its publication withdrew the fanfiction version from her website.

Also:

The plot traces the relationship between recent college graduate Anastasia Steele and manipulative billionaire Christian Grey. Steele is required by Grey to sign a contract allowing him complete control over her life. As she gets to know him she learns that his sexual tastes involve bondage, domination and sadism, and that childhood abuse left him a deeply damaged individual. In order to be his partner she agrees to experiment with BDSM, but struggles to reconcile who she is (a virgin who has never previously had a boyfriend) with whom Christian wants her to be: his submissive, to-do-with-as-he-pleases partner in his "Red Room of Pain."

What did I just read?

So again- I ask- why would I read this garbage?  People- just because I love a *good* YA novel- does not mean I like dirty-Mommy-porn about a pathetic young woman who chooses to let a man control her life.

Not to mention, I keep reading reviews about how shitty the writing is.  Here's an excerpt from a review by the Chicago Tribune:

 By that measure — and frankly, pretty much any other measure I can think of, other than the cringe-inducing fiction 14-year-olds tend to submit to literary magazines — this is a pretty dreadful book. Put simply, author E L James — who is now officially invulnerable to criticism because she has more money than God — is not a very good writer.
Her dialogue is stilted, the descriptions of place overwrought, and the characters and plot so predictable that a reader could theoretically skip over several dozen pages of text and still be utterly unsurprised by new developments. (Hey, what do you know? They're having violent sex again. And both appear to feel vaguely conflicted about the violence aspect, but apparently not conflicted enough to actually stop doing it).

And, she's making millions off these stupid books and I'm pissed off about it.

And, yes it's slated to be a motion picture.  Obviously.

How does something like this happen?  I really just don't understand...

Writing: Quote & Some Vids

I'm supposed to be answering one of the 30 ?'s : Meet Me today.. But, I'm not really feeling it.  SO- I'm not going to do it.  


I'm such a rebel.


Instead, I thought I'd share another quote with you guys:

"A ratio of failures is built into the process of writing. The wastebasket has evolved for a reason." -Margaret Atwood

I don't know about the rest of you writers out there- but it takes me forever to finish a story.  The general idea usually spills onto the page relatively fast, but then I edit, revisise, edit, revise, edit, revise, edit and THEN- it winds up in one of two places: A. Purgatory.. in which it's not quite complete, but not quite finished (home to 80% of my writing) or B. It's acutally complete and I don't know what to do with it!

This video made me chuckle:

And this one too..