aamcnamara | Entries tagged with school

Typo of the day (well, yesterday): "...and, as far as I could tell, didn't have any redeeming graves to make up for it."

Tomorrow or the next day we'll be sending off the housing payment for Odyssey, along with a story. Which story it is that goes in the packet is anyone's guess.

I've got story #1, which I think is good--although not as good as story #2. I have a story I wrote a while ago, and I have a story I wrote last night, and I don't have the time to edit either of them. I think that the story I wrote last night--let's call it story #3 for simplicity's sake, because it doesn't have a title--has potential to be better than story #1.

But I don't have time to edit it up, or even to rewrite it, really, because even if I wanted to stay up for another hour and a half I still have to edit this paper for English class tomorrow and do my math homework and study for the IB physics test that starts Tuesday.

So it'll probably end up being story #1 that I send, and I'm not happy about it. It's not that I think it's a terrible story, because I don't, but it isn't any story #2.

I still don't know if I'm going to wiscon. I know: it's next weekend, and I still don't know? I don't. I would almost be happier at this point to stay home, but I know that I would have a lot of fun if I went.

And it's late, and I need to decide which thing I'm going to try to get done tonight, because I probably only have time for one thing if I want to have any of my brain tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately, it probably won't be studying for my IB physics test, or doing my math homework, and even though I've all but decided to send story #1 in to Odyssey, anyway, it keeps distracting me from editing my paper.

(Which is a problem in and of itself: it's a fine paper, but there are pieces of information that don't fit into the flow of it. But they're important pieces of information, and I think they would make it better--if I can figure out where to put them.)

Getting to school much too early. Finding a sentence trapped in the empty halls; walk it out, feel it beat. Hearing "Rhapsody in Blue" from the band room and still feeling uncertain whether it was a recording or live music.

Taking the AP Calculus test in the east gym. Filling out bubblesheets for five hours. Walking out of school like we own the place. The sheer beauty of spring. Debating rules of childhood games at the park. Taking over the playground. Playing freeze tag.

The way intent and determination can change a friend's face into that of a laughing hunter. Seeing a friend for the first time in months. Sitting on green grass.

Finding sand from the playground in your shoes later. In your socks. Between your toes.

--
It looks like Odyssey is on. Now I just need to survive the rest of the school year--AP physics test on monday, and another test the week after that. The good side is that many of my classes are winding down, which means More Time For Writing. (The bad side is that my English teacher has decided to make up for all the homework we don't have in other classes.)

Wiscon is the weekend after my last big test. I don't know yet whether it'll work out to go. Of course, I want to go, but I don't know if I can.

Related Odyssey things: a second story is due May 23rd. I'm struggling with it--I don't want to send "story #1" because it seems too thematically similar and I'm not sure if it's up to the level that my "story #2" was when I sent it with the application; certainly it doesn't have as strong of a voice. However, if I'm going to write a new story, I should have already done it, and I don't have anything.

I found a first line this morning while wandering around the empty school and waiting for my AP test to start. This afternoon I tried to do something with it, which didn't seem to work too well. It almost seems like a long premise for something, but I'm not sure what yet. I might just scrap everything I have except the first line and try again, because I have a couple of ideas of things I could do with it.

(Of course, writing is rewriting. Maybe I should just finish a rough draft already and do what needs to be done to it.)

My other recent idea seems like it won't be going anywhere for a little while. It needs a lot of time devoted to it, I think. The main problem is that (in my head, at least) the narrator is somewhere in the gray area between male and female, and said narrator doesn't have a strong enough voice in my head yet to write a rough draft in first person.

Under most circumstances, if I have an idea, I can rattle out some sort of rough draft. However, in these circumstances I've been having some problems--I hate writing first person without a clear voice, because every sentence ends up starting with "I" and I cringe every time; in third person, to use "it" seems impersonal and "they" too collective, while "he" and "she" are both inaccurate and the nongendered pronouns that have been offered to me sound awkward to my inner ear--so I'm thinking of letting it simmer for a while in the back of my head, and maybe doing some exercises to figure out voice a little more.

It snowed yesterday.

Now--don't get me wrong--I love snow. Earlier in April, I was able to gush about flurries and small accumulations without being untruthful at all.

But after a week of seventy-degree-fahrenheit weather, it just seemed wrong.

Still, there was something beautiful about it. You'd think, having lived here for my whole life, I would be sick of it by now, but I haven't gotten there yet. I hope that I never do.

--

However, I have gotten tired of taking standardized tests, which is too bad because I still have to take a lot of them.

It's an interesting point in the school year: when all one's classes cease to be about Learning and start being about reviewing, and doing nothing. And then the test creeps up on you, and you go and sit in a windowless gym full of other students under similar torture for three hours and fill in bubbles and write essays until your wrists cramp, and then you skip school for the rest of the day and pretend you never have to go back.

You do, of course, but you don't have to tell yourself that.

--

One of my struggles this year has been to figure out how to be a Theatre Person while still being, well, me, along with A Writing Person. (Sometimes Me and A Writing Person intersect. Actually, most of the time. The trick is getting the Theatre Person in there, too.) It seems like all three could be full-time occupations, and I've put the problem off for a while by being a tech person, which doesn't seem to demand as much attention as being an actor, or a director.

Then my theatre class got signed up to show ourselves off to the Theatre Teachers of the Grand State of ---, and it's on Tuesday, and one day I started talking to myself when I was home alone and ended up writing a monologue. (Along with being a Theatre Person, the goal has been to figure out how to write for theatre, so this is a promising step.)

I read it for my class a few days later--which was frightening enough, because some of the people in my class are phenomenal theatre artists. They seemed to like it, but I'm still uncertain of it. And, oh yes, I'm doing it again on Tuesday. For ~40 fine arts teachers from around the state. I don't think I ever do anything by halves.

--

Which ought to be enough for anyone's life, but like everyone's life it isn't, and there are two hundred and seventeen other things that I'm doing right now. Homework for the classes that don't have tests, review for the classes that do, worrying about this and that, trying to write more short stories, edit papers, have time to breathe. Have time to watch the snow, if the world gifts me with it.

One of the reasons that I keep returning to the idea of shaving my head is that I get caught up in the hurry too often. A lot of my fellow students are in it with me, but that's no reason to stay in it. It's worrying about this and that and not taking time to breathe, or watch snow. It's having no time to stop and think about yourself, and your place in the world, and be yourself as you want to be.

Watching your hair grow out isn't usually the best way of reminding yourself of the slow pace at which the world moves along, mostly because if you have long hair, it doesn't look that much different. But starting from nothing--I think it might work.

I'm still not sure, but who's ever sure of anything, these days?

To a certain extent, this journal has lost its point.

Originally, it was to chronicle my adventures in applying to the Clarion workshop in 2008. (Owing to their last-minute clarification of policy, of course, I didn't apply.) It then fell back on the other workshops I was applying to: Odyssey, Alpha, IYWS. All three have now replied, and all three accepted me.

With those deadlines gone, it feels like there's time to relax. There isn't, really. For one thing, it's the Season of the Standardized Tests. The ACT is over; so is the state math standards test, which may or may not count toward graduation--depending on whom you ask. The SAT, SAT IIs (the day before Odyssey starts!), AP and IB tests are all still yet to come.

And then Odyssey wants a second story from me, and a third on the first day of the workshop. Having heard some of the comments and compliments on Story #2, which I sent them, I am nervous that it will prove to be a brilliant fluke, and not representative of my greater work. I feel, in effect, nervous and uncertain. I don't think that they'll kick me out now--well, I hope that they don't--well, they probably won't.

But several people have commented on the voice in story #2 especially. I don't think that either story #1 or the potential story #3 that I'm currently sighing over (in the midst of homework! and tests!) has as distinct a voice as does the narrator in story #2. I don't even know where I found that voice.

--

I have realized lately that I have two houses and no home. I think that this happens a lot, with kids who have divorced parents with equal custody, but it was a shock in some ways to realize this. I'd thought for so long that my parents' divorce was an entirely positive thing that this negative aspect of it really was, well, a surprise to me.

And I'm not sure how to fix it, except maybe to write about it, which is sort of what story #3 will be, if it ever gets out of my brain.

--

Other things that have happened:
- My mother has agreed to take me to WisCon. (I will be sad when I go off on my own and I have to pay for all this stuff myself. From, uh, my writing. ... Or just not go to this sort of thing.) I'm excited, because going to Odyssey means not being able to go to Fourth Street.
- I've finished working on the school's musical and begun a sort of apprenticeship in lights in our student-run black box theatre. It's interesting. They do it, once, and then go off and leave me to it, assuming I've watched carefully enough to learn.
- We had our spring break, and I spent an exhausting week visiting colleges in NYC and western MA, bracketed by late-night flights. On the one back, the woman sitting next to us had a cat. Good job at preventing allergies, Airline That Shall Not Be Named. Good job.

Well.

In the interim: Clarion specified a week before the application deadline that they don't consider minors (much tearing of hair), applications duly sent off to Alpha and IYWS, the school musical had its first weekend, I did a lot of homework...

I realized today that it was the first day in about a week that I haven't worn black, and spent the rest of the day gleefully telling people this. "I'm not wearing ANY black clothing today!" The plight of the backstage manager.

The best moment, undoubtedly, was, however, when I was at GSA after school and three of the other four people who'd turned up were having a ludicrous competition over beating the other persons' handmade or otherwise obscure clothes. The fourth turned to me. "Well, what are you wearing that's handmade?" "I'm not wearing anything that I made, I don't think," said I, "but I'm not wearing anything that's black."

Odyssey's deadline is Yet To Come, so I need to stop my mind wandering and go over Story #2 a few more times. (In the interim, it morphed into something quite different, but with characteristics of, both previous versions of Story #2. Including gay girls. Ouch.)

Or, maybe even a better idea, now that I'm out from under the shadow of all these deadlines--I can now write things purely for fun, instead of going obsessively over a couple of stories.

The main problem may be finding ideas. Usually I get ideas in the summer or over breaks from school, when my mind has time to relax and let things move together naturally. Both Story #1 and Story #2 were based on ideas I first started exploring last summer.

But there's one that I dug up somewhere that's started growing tendrils into my brain. Prying apart cracks with its little white roots and new green leaves, that sort of thing. I may find myself going off to research some elements of it--library, anyone?--and writing different versions of a first few scenes. I know a few tensions, and I know a few things about it, but I'd like to know more.

One thing I would really love to learn how to do is how to write a novel without the crutch of NaNoWriMo. It's an awesome month, and it's lots of fun, but I'm worried about how I'll be able to stand up without knowing the community is there behind me.

Of course, the ironic thing is that when I do NaNoWriMo, I hardly even touch the forums, and when I do, I don't talk about novels. I just write. Maybe what I need is the starter-gun aspect of NaNo. The anticipation, and the buildup, to that one thought: novel. novel.