Research Paper Blues

A few days ago, I considered not turning in a research paper because it would be a waste of my professor’s time. I wrote it, and it fit the technical requirements, but it didn’t prove my argument at all. My thesis was trying to prove that cultural ideals are presented to children as objective truths, and because of this a character can only develop a sense of self when they expose these as false-truths. It’s really vague, but I tried to touch on the idea that in some cultures people will attach themselves to a certain lifestyle because it offers a security for them, and when they do, it causes them to weaken internally. For this paper, I used two of Divakaruni’s short stories and Stefan Molyneux’s On Truth: The Illusion of Tyranny. This paper is the first of three, so I’m hoping that I can pull my act together, because right now I feel absolutely disgusting.

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Page Caps

I only have ten double spaced pages to work with for my Creative Writing workshop. My cousin gave me this analogy that it’s like making a samurai fight a war with a little knife. As much as it sucks, we’re going to do it. Our medium is restricted, but we have to make the product the same. My fear is that the subject and purpose of my story might be very difficult to cut, seeing as I’ve just hit twenty pages.

The first of the research papers is on the horizon, too. I’m both frightened and excited.

I read an article on the Writer’s Digest that this one eBook Company had their bestselling eBook only sell six copies. Yikes… If you want to read it, click this. The article itself is discussing controversies in regards to eBook royalties.

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Cling to the Wreckage

“Collage can be therapeutic,” he mumbled through sips of coffee. “It doesn’t have the stress of painting, and there is something about having complete control of the objects, even when they’re on the paper.”

Frankly, I thought of Tetris.

Four hours into the assignment, the mess started coming together. But it wasn’t enough. In front of me were the waste products of the semester. Receipts taken out of the trash, pills stolen from medicine cabinets, and Scan-Tron testing cards were glued to the board. It’s not making something out of nothing, I tell myself, it’s understanding. Dipping the wrong paintbrush in a deep black, I drew a figure on top of the collage. He wasn’t made of sticks, but created with awkward, overweight circles. Dan and Bethany identified it with a penguin, but they didn’t see the word self carefully covered, concealed in the array of text. Looking back at me from the canvas stood a man, face constructed of a McDonald’s receipt, waiting firmly in the American slush-pile.

Therapy is progress.

This piece I’m writing this semester in an honest reflection of growth and maturity. Though, to keep the jigsaw together, I am attacking the people once closest to me. I owe it to myself to fight ignorance. And it’s about cats…

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Book Shopping

I’ve been going to bookstore longer than I have wanted to be a writer. I was assigned to complete a bookstore analysis this week, and I thought this would be a particularly easy reflective piece. I bribed one of my hall-mates with Chinese food if he brought me into town. After devouring some orange chicken, we stopped in the Bennington Bookshop. The store was pretty empty, thus creating an awkward atmosphere when I walked in with a notepad and a pen, recording random blurbs of what I thought was important. Learn everything you can about the bookstore. Genre, location, quantity, and everything else. Everything, I thought. What else is there to learn about a bookstore? I continued around the shelves, noticing how the 40% off shelf was larger than the Fantasy/Sci-fi shelf, noticing the kids section tucked far in the back corner, and noticing nothing but book covers stacked against each other carelessly like merchandise. Well, that’s exactly what they are, right? I ended up using $30 to purchase the Writer’s Market. Ginge, whom was bribed, drove me back to the dorms only to get a text from Jeff asking if I wanted to go to the Northshire Bookstore with him.

Jeff had the same assignment as me, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to grab more info. The bookstore itself was stunning, consisting of three floors and a cafe. Though, ordering a coffee was harder than trying to get a taxi on the streets of Boston. The two of us spent a few hours tearing the store apart, looking for something spectacular to put on our reflection.

When I now think about the nature of the assignment, I realize it’s significance. We aren’t just readers when we walk into bookstores, these are the warpaths of the future. As much as we want to consider what we write to be brilliant pieces of art, we are lucky if they even get considered for these slush-piles.

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Cold Thursdays

I think perception is a tricky thing when writing a story. Whether it’s conveyed in first or third person, you should be able to tell a character’s maturity by the way they perceive the world around them. I wish I could use this better in my own writing. Literature courses make me green with envy in the worst possible way.

Speaking of writing, is anybody trying Microsoft’s Office 2010 Beta release? It’s pretty sharp. There’s actually a text-effects option that reminds me of Photoshop’s. I’m not too thrilled about using Adobe CS4 in my IT class; I’m more of a CS2 kind of guy. Two of my flash drives have gone missing, so in a state of emergency I bought a new 3G stick for $15. Not a great deal, but I needed one for class.

Either tomorrow or Saturday I will be heading into town to do an analysis of a bookstore. I need to find out everything from distribution to placement for one of my classes. It’ll be a nice little adventure.

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