Favourite Food Challenge

Image: http://doctorbrady.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/

I'm taking English Composition this semester, which is academic writing. Only I'm thrilled to learn that we're supposed to use a bit of showing in our texts. For this week, I'm supposed to write a short, descriptive paragraph of how my favourite food tastes like. I'm not allowed to say what it is.


So! I'm turning this into a challenge. Write a short paragraph to describe HOW your favourite food tastes like, using some or all of your senses.

My favourite food fuses my taste buds with sweet, rich flavour almost before it passes my lips. My mouth waters with the thick, smooth texture as my teeth crunch against the hard surface and my tongue smoothes the shattered fragments, creaming them against the top of my gum.

Okay, so this can be a double-meaning thingy, but I swear it's food. Can you guess what it is? 

Grammar Hampers Voice

Lips borrowed from: http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/phrase/637/lips.html

I got my first peer review for my character sketch today (I‘m taking Creative Writing at Uni). My hands shook with excitement as I waited for my internet to download the document. My eyes tuned out and in focus before I started reading. Clear description of character...dialogues are clear...use less emphasis on the narrator...good development...good pacing at the beginning, needs to slow down at the end...tenses kept changing back and forth (Me: What? No way! Of course it‘s past when he‘s thinking back and present when he‘s in the now. The distinction is clear!)...There were some grammatical errors!

Grammatical errors? Okay, so I haven’t learned as much English at the Uni as the other students in this class (it’s a master’s degree class, but I got an exception because of my enthusiasm), but, in my opinion, there was nothing wrong with the grammar. I even posted the character sketch on my crit-group forum and no one said anything.

That leaves me with the question: Should novels be strictly grammatically correct? And (like the debate on TV/videogame violence) is it the author’s responsibility to provide reading material that is grammatically correct?

My answer is no and heck no! Misspellings and non-intended errors should be eliminated, of course, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with flexing grammar a little to provide a good story. The author’s purpose is to provide the reader with entertainment and emotional experience. At least that’s what Randy Ingermanson says, and I hereby take that up as my motto. If that means bending the rules of grammar to better suit the holy purpose, then authors should do that!

I’m also a strong believer in “grammar interferes with Voice” (yes, capital V). Which has more voice in it? “I don’t want to be here!” or “I so don’t want to be here!” I’m gonna say the second and break the grammar in this sentence to inject some voice into my blog. Most people speak with grammatical errors, so why shouldn’t the people whose PoV we’re reading from do so as well? And I’m not just talking about dialogues – internal monologue and overall action as well. Doesn’t that make them more real to us?

I’ll be the first to admit that I read the Twilight series in 10 days and fell in love with it. I didn’t know anything about writing until long after that, and I have read countless books since then. Looking back, I see that the grammatical correctness of Twilight is enough to put an insomniac to sleep, whereas series such as Sookie Stackhouse and House of Night would keep the insomniac entertained during his hours of suffering. There’s a reason those series have the most memorable characters! Those books are packed with grammatical errors – probably all intentional – and I don’t care one bit. I don’t even care much about most of the unnecessary adverbs and the occasional passive tense, even though I try all I can to exclude those  in my own writing. The books are entertaining, emotional and fantastic.

If I want to learn “proper English” I’ll read books on English grammar!

My Life of Crime

In the Creative Writing course, we have several assignments. One of them is a memory flashback called "As a child..." I'm supposed to write a memory flashback from my childhood. I immediately decided what to write about when I read the description. Aaaand today I wrote it, although it's not due until September 24th. I understand that I might have to change it as I learn, but this is what I have for now:

My Life of Crime 

When I was ten years old, I stole for the first time in my life. I was at a school-buddy’s house and we were playing with her dolls. When she went to the bathroom, I snuck this Lego-sized rubber baby-doll into my pocket and took it home. She later accused me of stealing it, but I denied it. She had no proof, so I got away with it. Needless to say, she didn’t invite me back to her house. She wasn’t my best friend, anyway.

That doll was precious to me. It had a tiny little head, tiny limbs and a teensy body. The hair on its head was also rubber, but it still had a stylish “hairdo”. I made it tiny little clothes to wear, I built it a home out of Lego blocks, and I even gave it a holiday home in one of my ceramic Christmas house that’s supposed to hold a candle inside. I’d wrap up tiny little things before Christmas, and then I’d unwrap them before I went to sleep at Christmas Eve, making my doll jump up and down in excitement. It was always the baby in my doll games, but it could also be an adult in other games. In every game I played, this doll had a major role. Of all the dolls I owned, I loved this one the most.

I did other things considered illegal. I broke into a building with a good friend of mine. It was a construction site with locked doors. There was no glass in the windows, so my friend managed to help me climb inside. We’d play in the seven-story high building for hours. Looking down the gaps next to the stairwell had my stomach in a knot, so I would go down the stairs on my bottom, much to my friend’s amusement. As a boy, he wasn’t afraid of heights.

I also broke into a patched-up hut, built by a kid in my neighbourhood. With the same friend-in-crime, we crawled through a hinged-flap on the roof. There were no doors or windows. There was nothing of interest inside but soggy wood and spiders, so it wasn’t as much fun as my friend had made it out to be.

At school, a different friend of mine and I were sometimes allowed to go to a separate room to study. I’d have my crayons in my backpack. She’d ask me to fish them out, and together we’d go to the furnace and melt the crayons on it. By the end of the year, the furnace was very colourful – a piece of art! One day, I was on my way outside when I heard the teacher discover our little secret project. My friend was still inside. I was scared, so I didn’t go back to confess that I had taken a part in the vandalism. I doubted the teacher would let me leave if I told her that it was all my friend’s idea. My friend had to spend the rest of the afternoon scrubbing the wax off the furnace. I got away scot-free.

The break-ins, and single act of vandalism were initiated and encouraged by my friends. If it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have done any of it. But the doll-theft was my own little act. My own little spontaneous act to obtain something I wanted, no matter the consequences or the hurt feelings of another human being. An act I made to prove to myself that I wasn’t the blonde, longhaired, pink-coated, quiet little girl everyone saw me as. I wasn’t the goody-goody only child, who never caused any trouble. Not really. I was capable of doing bad things just like anyone else! No one needed to know that I had it in me, as long as I knew it.

My life of crime didn’t last. I doubt there’s a straighter arrow two hundred miles away. I have never been stopped by the traffic police, because there’s never been any reason to. I always give back excessive change – even that extra 5000 kr. bill I once got by mistake. I turn in valuable jewellery I find to the lost-and-found desk – even though that pearl ring was absolutely gorgeous. I don’t cut in line. I don’t lie. I don’t cheat. Not even in cards.

But deep down, I know that I once stole a tiny little item, and that memory is precious to me.

---

Now you have something to distribute to the tabloids if I ever get famous :P

Edited to add: Of course I feel guilty about stealing the little doll (today, even though I didn't feel it as a kid - kids do stupid things). I even wish I could go back and undo it, but that's not possible. Instead I just smile at that single act of rebellion of always being thought of as the good girl.

Creative Writing

Okay, I know I said I was only going to blog once a week, but I'm just too lazy to do anything else this late evening. The weather has been unusually good in Iceland this summer, and there was another T-shirt weather today. That kind of heat always makes me a little drowsy. 

I'm extremely excited about starting school. I've changed my course selection three times already. I think I made the final change today. I decided that since I'm a mature woman now and know what I want, I wasn't going to follow the cookie-cut way of taking classes. I'm only taking two classes with the rest of the first year students, and then I'm taking English Syntax (an optional class for second or third years) and Creative Writing (!!), which is meant for students in the master's program!

I wrote to the teacher, explaining how much I already know about the subject, that I've written a full-length novel, that I've started the second one, that I've researched a lot about genre, styles, voice, rise and fall of tension, that I've read books on writing. I both emailed her and talked to her face-to-face (while buying course material from her for another course) and she sounded genuinely excited to have me join her class. For Creative Writing, we have; Holes, by Louis Sachar; On Writing, by Stephen King (I've heard so much about this one!); and Stein on Writing, by Sol Stein.

I decided to go my own way in course selections because the courses I've chosen will help me with my writing. It's something I would never in a million years consider doing if I was starting uni for the first time at age 18. I realized that if it's possible (and I'm so glad that it is!), I need to get the things I want out of this education, in the sequence that best fits me and my writing. Yay for being older and wiser!  

I'm sure that all the courses will help with my writing, in some ways or another, but English Syntax, Creative Writing, How Language Works I (need it to be able to take the useful part II next term), Foundation Course in English for Foreign Languages: Methods (again, part I of II for next term), and English for Practical Purposes (mostly learning to speak well in English - there are a number of presentations throughout various courses during the studies), are the courses I really need to take right now.

The first-year courses I'm saving for Fall 2011 are: The Talking Animal (No, it's not an MG kid-lit), British History and Culture, and Brit. Lit. I. All exciting, but all things that can wait :) 

The courses scheduled for Spring 2011 are very exciting. I'm trying to get into a master's class called "Fantasy". Yeah, that's right. We'll read popular fantasy books and discuss. Dreamy-creamy fantasy course *pats course*. But yeah, it's for master's level, so I'm not sure I can get it. I sent the teacher an email today to see if I can get an exception.

I got my delivery from Amazon yesterday. In it were three self-publish books (hey, I had a gift certificate from mileage points) Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual, Self-Publishing for Dummies, and Become a Real Self-Publisher, by Michael N. Marcus ,  The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan, and The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak. The problem is that I have so much to read before the classes start next week, and I need to revise the first five chapters of my manuscript. I have very little time to read my choice of books! I do like to read in bed, before going to sleep. I might do reviews on these once I've finished - you know, just for the fun of it ;)