Gray Skies and Rainy Weather...

...and I still wouldn't change anything.

So... let me just start by saying that I made a great decision coming to this part of the country. Yes, it's cold here in the winter and the state has the highest death rate for black ice (according to my mother), but where else in the country (Pacific Northwest likely) is it 64-degrees in June (almost July)? It's 100+ degrees in Texas right now. Sorry to all my melting friends, but I am very happy where I am. I'm staying (at least in the N/E... my next stop will likely be Boston cause jobs are not raging in this area) indefinitely--or at least for 13 years (that seems to be my cycle).

Anyway... I'll stop bragging about my New England the weather.

I haven't heard from any other journals yet. I think about writing every day (haven't written a single word, sadly). I 've read a lot of young adult lately, and I'm REALLY enjoying it. Picked up two more books from the library. I started one and I may put it down because it feels a little too "teen," if you know what I mean. It's called: Prom Dates from Hell. *sigh* I know, I know... that was hard to admit. Don't judge me too harshly. The other seems a little more "literary" and it's called Jellicoe Road. I'm particularly curious about this story for a lot of reasons. The most important reason is the title of my thesis (a novel) will likely be "Alabaster Road" and I'm not quite sure if I'm going to be writing a literary YA novel or adult novel. So... I consider this research (not just based off titles, btw, but subject matter too).

Teaching Question: What do you do with a student who is obviously bored? Teaching is going well beside this one kid--I don't know what to do with him. Alas.

I'll be checking out Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen tomorrow sometime. Will post my opinion soon.

Working Up the Kid Inside of Me

It's been a while since I've blogged (nothing new there). Since the last post, I've seen the new Pixar Movie "Up" and I've gotta say that the studio does it again!! While I'm not sure if kids would actually get the full impact of a story about a guy mourning the loss of his beloved (thus honoring her memory with one last adventure), there are plenty of amazing visuals and funny "kid" things (like the colorful bird and talking dogs) that will keep them entertained. The visuals for this movie--like its predecessors Wall-E and Nemo--were amazing. My favorite image was the colorful reflections/shadows of the balloons as they rose up into the air (especially a scene where a little girl is bathed in color as the balloons rise up past her living room window). I didn't see it in 3D (because I'm cheap and they make you pay for the glasses) so I can't attest for that version of the movie. Overall, beautiful movie.

My rating: A

Next up: 1) Angels and Demons, 2) Transformers, 3) Harry Potttttttttttttttttter!

Topic change....

So, I'll be teaching a 6-week writing workshop (for first-generation college students heading to PhD programs) starting next Tuesday and I'm in the middle of preparing for that, but I've made time to get in a lot of reading (mostly young adult). I think I'm reading young adult/teen books now because they're lighter than the literary fiction that I've been cramming my brain with the past 9 months. It's nice to take a break and enjoy something without psychoanalyzing it. The adventures are fun... reading these books is like watching a movie. I'm not saying that some adult fiction isn't this way, because it is. I'm just in a YA kick right now.

I'm currently reading the newest Neil Gaiman YA novel: The Graveyard Book.

I've got to tell ya, it's actually REALLY good. The best YA that I've read so far this summer (see below). There's something about the writing that's a bit spooky, a bit crafty, a bit literary, and there are PICTURES! Haha... I guess my mind really gets a break with illustrations, which is probably why I thumb through picture books when I should be shelving in the children's department at Barnes and Noble.

Here are the other YA books I've read:

• The Percy Jackson and the Olympians (read the last three of the five book series)
• Vampire Academy (three books so far) - These are the first books that I've read where there were major typos... very disappointing. The first book took about 200 pages for me to really get into (the first book is 332pgs). I think I like them better than Twilight though--not that they're better written or anything like that. I'm commenting on the story itself. The editors really need to get their act together with the typo thing... unacceptable.
  
• The first book in the Pendragon series (there are nine total and I'm not sure that I'm going to be reading the rest after book one).

Next in line:

• The Mortal Instrument Series, book 1: City of Bones
• Stoneheart
  
• Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

I suppose I'm on a bit of a supernatural/sci fi/fantasy YA kick! Anything to take my poor literary abused mind on a fun adventure.

I'm also reading a few non-fiction books by Geneen Roth and they are completely amazing--perhaps life/habit changing. We shall see... won't get into them to much here.

This is the summer of reading, I suppose. I really should be working on my thesis (outlining it at least) or writing two new short stories to get a jump on next semester or writing a few essays (for the same purpose). But all I want to do is read... so I guess that's what I'll do for a little while longer anyway. If anyone has any YA recommendations, send them my way!

Icing

So today my department held an awards ceremony to honor academic smarties and good writing (poetry, fiction, and non-fiction). I submitted my Jesus in a Confederate Flag story, revised and edited, and I won the Dick Shea Memorial Award for fiction. I won an award. The first award ever for any of my writing. First time to get paid for a story too. :)

I was TOTALLY shocked when she said my name. I wasn't expecting it because of the company my story had. I'm surrounded by a lot of really excellent writers who I'm learning from every single day, I really didn't expect to win, which makes it so rewarding. I'm still a little shocked.

My name being called was a nice end to a crazy semester. :)

First book on the reading list: Richard Russo's "Nobody's Fool"

Beetlejuice Flashbacks

While driving through Dover a few days ago I noticed a covered bridge, which is a key fixture for most New England states I think. Today I went back to investigate. It's a simple bridge that doesn't really lead anywhere exciting, unless you consider skate parks exciting. I don't. Too bad it didn't end at a nice normal park or something like that. I'll find one that does eventually. Anyway, these bridges always remind me Beetlejuice, a classic 1988 movie and one of my favorites.

I received my first text book in the mail yesterday: The Essential Tales of Chekhov. I've read the introduction and two stories so far and feel a tad bit smarter than I did the other day. I also went to the library and found a book of Flannery O'Connor's stories (another writer who I'll be studying this semester) and read the introduction of that book. Familiarizing myself with these authors before reading their works will be pretty helpful, I hope, in understanding why they wrote what they did. I found myself relating in some ways to O'Connor. I'll probably read more about her online and will buy the second text for that class tomorrow after my first day working at Barnes and Noble (with my 30% book discount). I work the 7:00am to 2:00pm. The 7am thing should be interesting... a shock to the institution of laziness that I've adopted for the past three weeks. Vacations are nice.

Ehhh....

Remember that post a while back about feeling overwhelmed in regard to school and how unprepared I feel? Well, that consuming feeling returned with a vengeance today and it has yet to die hard. It probably won't go away until I'm in class, surrounded by all of the people that I'm going to work with in the next three years. Then I'll see if I'm in over my head or if there are a few people on the DL (in regard to reading) like me.

I'm falling back into "should" thinking. I should be this, I should be that, I should read this, I should read that. I want to throw up my hands and say "screw this", but I can't because that would be taking the easy road. This new chapter of my life is going to be about taking the hard road and I must preserver. And while my current plan is to reconnect with old classics that I read but didn't read in high school, a part of me wonders if I'm in a way selling out to the type of writing that really makes me happy just to save face or to be the proper MFA student. I feel like you should be at a certain level (in both reading and writing) when you apply and are accepted to an MFA program and currently I am below average. I don't like being below average. It's likely that I'm putting too much pressure on myself, because that's how I roll, but still, it's overwhelming.

So, to feel better about things, I went shopping and bought some shoes (black flats for work) and a book by Paulo Coelho called The Devil and Miss Prym. The summary looks pretty interesting. Maybe I'll read this tonight and attempt to feel like I'm reading something of substance. That or I'll crack open Francine Prose's book Reading Like a Writer or another book that I bought before moving called How to Read Novels Like a Professor by Thomas Foster. Maybe a little studying before classes start might help me feel less paranoid and will help me fake it 'til I make it.

I thought maybe this funky, overwhelming feeling was due to today's horoscopes, but nope. One (my Chinese Rooster horoscope) talked about my new B&N job: Financial good news does bring some challenges, like changes to schedules [for example, I can no longer stay up until 2am watching Olympics and sleep until 10:30 or 11 am] and additional workloads that have to be juggled [work - sleep - work -sleep]. If you accept some additional responsibilities and a leadership role, you could find yourself bringing home a lot more bacon [hmmm promoted to assistant manager after day one perhaps? It could happen.]. And my astronomical Virgo horoscope just talked about jumping on rare opportunities when offered. The Virgo horoscope ended with a sentence that I do hope to be truly prophetic: "You are an investment that can turn a handsome profit as you mature."

God willing. But does mature mean 27 years old (as I will be in a month exactly) or 67 years old?