Colin Powell, Basil, and Gnocci (but very little writing).

Sunday night, we launched the space shuttle at 3:14 AM. Guess who's husband made her stay up for the event? Also, I couldn't fall asleep until he came home from work, so I got to sleep at around 4:30AM.

Yesterday, I woke up at 6:30AM (math: 2 hrs sleep) and went to the Get Motivated Seminar. I saw amazing speakers like Lou Holtz, Colin Powell, James Smith (who was HILARIOUS,) Rudy Guiliani, Sarah Palin, and some more. Sarah had some amazingly cute, tall shoes on and she was still only a little taller than the podium. Never realized before that she was such a short lil' woman. Colin Powell was my favorite inspirational speech; he discussed making everyone in every job feel like they're the President. He said to lead by being a humble servant to your followers first, something I hold very strongly.

I got home about 7:30 PM. Both Hubby and I were incredibly tired, and I forced some dinner down my throat, and we went to bed.

Woke up this morning at 8. I once again ran outside to look at my plants. The cilantro looked like this:

When I wanted to plant some herbs, I looked at my top 3 herbs I use in cooking: basil, cilantro, and parsley. I normally have to buy these at the grocery store and they only come in one size: huge. I don't need an entire pound of basil, people! All I need are the two or so tablespoons the recipe calls for! And then it all goes bad within a couple of days so you never cook it all.

So that's the reason I'm growing herbs and why I'm growing these specific ones. Not that you care. :)

So anyway about like, writing and stuff. Today I finished up my Literary Narrative for Advanced Writing class. I almost didn't turn it in; I'm one of those people who want to revise it to death. Call it unhealthy perfectionism. (I do.)

This essay was really tough to write, which is weird because it's pretty easy for people to talk about themselves (see entry #1) but I think the trouble comes from talking about oneself without sounding like all you're doing is talking about yourself...which you are. And then comes the knowledge that I thought it was MINIMUM five pages when it turns out it was MAXIMUM five pages. Mine's about 5 3/4 pages. It was at one time over 7, but I found out I was repeating myself a lot. No one likes to listen to me, let alone listening to me talk about stuff I've already said. :)

I kept veering off course during my writing. No, not on the writing page, but with distractions. I'm now caught up on every blog I read, every newspaper I read, every email I could check, and eaten pretty much everything I could have eaten in my house without much cooking. Because, after all, cooking is distracting, and we can't have that!!! :P I probably won't get the chance to do anything fun until Thursday, in which I plan to bake. I'm gonna practice baking the white cake I'm making Brian for Valentine's Day, and I'll probably practice making the gnocci that will be in Valentine's dinner. These two things, I've never made before. So Thursday is a practice run.

See, I've even veered off TALKING about writing! I started talking about cooking!

I just got a new job tutoring students in English at San Jac South. It's pretty awesome. I don't actually get to tutor yet; I'm still in training. Tutoring feels really good, though. Seeing the student come in to the center all nervous because their paper doesn't have any direction and guiding them to make their paper better is awesome. Too bad professional tutors make even less than professional teachers, because I'd be a tutor for life.

So in AW class, we talked today about citation. Citation is one of my favorite things to teach because it's really easy to translate into something people like. Lemme give you an example. Say you like Math and want to learn MLA citation for a book:

X, y. Z. A. B: C, D.

X=Author's Last Name.
Y=Author's First Name.
Z=Name of Book.
A=(Name of Journal if you're quoting an article)
B=Publishing City.
C=Publishing Company.
D=Date Published.

Fill in the blank.

Knitting, Bitches, and Laurence Olivier

This morning, we finally got to sleep at about 4:30 AM. The shuttle was supposed to launch last night at about 3:30AM, which means Hubby had to go in to work at 2:30 AM. So of course, if he has to be awake in the middle of the night, I have to be awake in the middle of the night.

And the shuttle didn't launch. So now the new launch time is 3:14AM tonight (or tomorrow morning if you wanna get technical.)

Anyway, today we woke up at noon. I had some monster back-aches and just all-around icky feelings, so I've been holed up on the couch the whole day. It's not been a complete waste. I haven't heard a damn thing about that big football game going on today, which is a total blessing. I walked outside this morning and noticed that my little herb plants have begun to sprout!












So apparently, anyone can grow plants. I don't think our little apartment porch even gets any direct sunlight this time of year, but my herbs are sprouting regardless.

That's the farthest I've ventured out of the house on this lazy day. I started a scarf last night and it's already gotten this big!

























I'm using size 1 thread with size 6 needles. A little out of the correct gauge, but I actually like this loose knit a little better than the correct gauge. I'm doing a k2, p2 pattern.

Today's TV watching has been quite an adventure, actually. When we woke up, we watched the last little bit of the Euka...Eukanew...whatever, those guys, the Dog Show people. We watched the dog show. We love the dog shows only because of the commentators. They'll say, "Now showing for the Scottish Terrier, this is Julie, a three year old bitch from Scottsdale, AZ. What a beautiful and happy bitch. She's the kind of bitch you'd be proud to see in the winner's ring." LOL. You really don't think it'll be as funny as it is. You really think you've grown out of that being funny. But you haven't. No matter how old and mature you are, you still giggle.

Then I switched in between the Food Network's Ace of Cakes and TLC's Cake Boss for a couple of hours.

Then I was flipping through the channels and my favorite, favorite Sick Day movie happened to be on TV: the 1939 Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier's Wuthering Heights. I cry EVERY time. Add chocolate and wine. Bliss.

Advanced Writing Journal Post 1

Planning My Literary Narrative--Trudging Inside

Most people talk about themselves constantly--just overhear any random conversation at a coffee house, cafeteria, or phone conversation. Drawing from our own life experiences and knowledge, we meander through the world communicating our desires, our ideas and sometimes our advice, prompted or not.

Few people can write about themselves. Somewhere in the neural transfer process from brain to fingers, most people short out, loose major amounts of information, and in some people, the communication altogether cuts and repairs must be made. If you sit down to write and suddenly realize you have nothing to say, you are not alone. Even published authors and professional writers fear writing. When most sit down to their lonely computers, nothing immediately comes out, and that moment of hesitation invites the negative voices to raise up from within.

This fear will always live, but there are ways to combat it and help your neurons fire 100% from brain to fingers--the foremost of which is PLANNING.

Bleeding
I don't remember which famous author said this, but he described writing as sitting down to his typewriter and bleeding. True, really, especially when the subject is YOU and not some objective third-party. Bleeding is much easier if one plans the whole process out before one begins writing.
I usually start with 1.) Figuring out what I want to write about.
This is USUALLY the toughest part of the whole writing process. In this case, for my literary narrative, I'm choosing to write about the first time I attempted to write a creative short story. I know--I'm writing a story about writing a story...but I think it shows a lot of different types of literacy, and talking about writing is something I'm already familiar with doing. Plus, you know, my major is Literature, so it's related to my field. Much of my essay deals with the planning and developing of my short story, so stay tuned.

Planning Based on your Topic
Normally, I'm writing research papers, and to plan that, I like to do those trees or clusters of Word Association. Something like "In writing an essay about these two books, I could write about..." And then I'd jot down Social Issues, for example, which will make me think of Racism, so I'll write that down. Another social issue is Poverty, so I'll write that down. Government. Class Divisions. I'll write down a few others. and then I'll see what interests me most, and what I can make the best case for and write that essay. Sometimes I'll write an essay I don't actually believe for fun. I once tried to write an essay on Julius Caesar by Shakespeare that claimed Antony was behind the entire murder plot. My teacher ultimately nixed it, but it would have been an interesting paper for which to gather evidence.

For this paper, I planned by jotting down some things that have happened in my life, my major life decisions (college major, marriage) and saw where I could fit the most into the different types of literacy. I nearly wrote about my job as a waiter. If you've ever been one, you know they have a language all their own. I nearly wrote about the first thing I noticed about my husband (his impeccable grammar--don't judge me!) But I decided on writing. Hopefully I can inspire my other classmates to not feel so alone and nervous when they fear writing.

First Lines
Next to figuring out what I want to write about, the hardest part of writing is the first line. I will write a line only to scratch it out and start with the first line again, sometimes taking up two pages worth of scratched out first lines. The first line, for me, sets the tone of the entire work and must draw the reader in and want to read the second sentence. For this assignment, I wrote three versions of the same first sentence. That's after discarding over eight other first sentences. Once I find a first line, it's usually easy to write the rest. Sometimes I have to fight for every sentence. Sometimes it takes an hour to write a paragraph.

When writing anything, I don't plan much more than that. I'm not really an outline person, or a person who pulls quotes and fills in between them. I'm a reviser. (Look at my moniker: wordshifter. It's a nod to revising.)

My blog entry for revising would be twice as long as this one. But of course, I will always help anyone who wants to learn planning or revision. The Writing Center on campus is AMAZING for helping you plan out your essay. Here's their link:
http://www.uhcl.edu/portal/page/portal/WC

and they also have a handout for Planning an Essay:
http://prtl.uhcl.edu/portal/page/portal/WC/Files/TIPSHEET_PLANNING


Happy Writing and Planning!

--Alicia