Fried Slice: Unparalleled Levels of Awkward

My brother mentioned recently that out of all the stories I told about my years at Bob Jones University, not one ever began with "hey, I once knew this one person who was completely normal." I realized that this is completely true. Granted, the average, every day person rarely ever makes a good character in a story, but it's absolutely amazing how many downright awkward people there are at Bob Jones University.

Now, I managed find and befriend some very normal, very awesome people, but for ever one regular individual, there are probably three who instantly make a room feel extremely uncomfortable. That's what this post's about: those wonderful folks who add a little awkward flavor to all of our lives.

The first semester of my senior year, I took a class for my creative writing minor called Writing for Children. The nice thing about a small university is that your classes also tend to be small, so our little band was able to be a little more casual and candid during the hour and fifteen minute sessions. In between workshops, projects, and lectures, we'd sometimes get to peruse and discuss children's literature. One morning, the teacher read Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, and we discussed it.

Now, I am personally convinced that many children's authors actually hate their intended audience, and Love that Dog pretty much confirmed this, because the much beloved dog dies in the book, and dies hard via a car. It made me feel sad for the little boy in the book. That's what good books do, however cruel they are: they make you relate to the character and feel some compassion for their hurts.

But not this one girl.

When the teacher read the part in the book where the dog dies, this one very nice but very awkward girl said, "BAHAHAHAHA!!! OH MY GOODNESS THAT WAS HILARIOUS!!! WASN'T THAT FUNNY GUYS?!"

If not in so many words.

As you can guess, no one else laughed. We sat there, looking around, all...awkward now. I mean, it's pretty well known that Old Yeller's death in his self-titled novel is not exactly a great moment of comedy.

I'm not sure where it comes from, but there is just something about a few of the students at Bob Jones University. Hand them a tragic story, and all of a sudden they turn into Michael Scott making a Chris Rock joke in front of Darryl and Stanley, and all of a sudden they feel it necessary to assure everyone that their friends are, indeed, ethnically diverse.

True story.

Book Review: Shattered, by Sophia Sharp

Say what you will about the Twilight series, but it must always be conceded that the books have been successful in the six years that they've been out. With the rising popularity of self-publishing and the ready availability of resources for such, lots of sad, sad clones of Twilight have appeared on the digital bookshelves of the Kindle store.

Shattered, by Sophia Sharp, popped up as a "YOU MIGHT LIKE THIS" sort of thing in my Amazon account, while I was poking through author pages. It was 99 cents, so I thought "heck, why not" and downloaded it to my Kindle app. (The app was free. Awesome.*)

The book started out okay, but it felt a little first draftish, and the wording tended to be a little juvenile. The male lead (Logan) brooded and mystified the girl (Laura) in an all too familiar way.

And then people begin to disappear.

No, really. Entire sets of characters disappear, including all of Laura's friends. Though the dialogue among them could be stiff and unconvincing most of the time, the characters didn't deserve the horrific fate of being erased from reality altogether. As far as her family, though they are mentioned, you never meet them. Even the dog is a faceless entity that exists, apparently, to underscore the All-American main character.

An unlikely situation involving Laura's soon to be former crush which could totally get the jerk arrested is lifted straight off the pages of Twilight and solved by Logan and mixed martial arts. Very little is described in the book, except for a detailed view of a river-powered mill somewhere in the boonies and Logan's distinctive pale and emo look. The conversations between Laura and Logan aren't badly done, but like the rest of the book, they do need some work.

It's a clone of Twilight, so the SUPRISE I'MA VAMPIRE moment is pretty obvious before it comes, though the "visit the dream world" concept that Sharp includes is interesting and not something I was expecting, though it does make the vampire element seem a little more intrusive and contrived. Logan goes to high school, and Laura first meets him when he transfers to hers. However, he is a 400 year old vampire and travels alone, and there's never given any reason for him to keep up appearances as a high school student. Maybe he fears arrest by a truant officer even though he's totally old enough to drop out and get his GED.

On the bright side, Shattered only cost 99 cents, and the grammar and spelling were clean, something not seen much in a self published novel. It's also refreshingly free of that dreaded pair, Mary Sue and Gary Stu. Sophia Sharp is a 19 year old college student, so writing this novel, however flawed it is, is a commendable effort. I won't be reading the rest of the series, but feel free to check them out yourself in the Amazon Kindle Store.




*Seriously, get it. The app is free for all devices that it's available on. Your iPad could be that much more awesome, my friend.

Edward Cullen, Man-Child

Upon a mental analysis of the Twilight novels, it has become apparent to me that Edward Cullen, one of the male leads, is an 80 year old man-child.*

I have a few facts to back up this observation.

1. Edward has no job, only hobbies. He spends most of his time playing piano and hunting. Now, true, his adopted father is a doctor, which in any family is a well-paying occupation that sometimes does allow one's offspring to live a life of comparable leisure. But, uh, Ed? You still don't have a job 'cause your dad's rich. That's just as bad.

2. If the book and the movie are to be believed, at the time of his marriage to Bella, Edward has lived an honorable life and kept his virtue intact. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make him the 80 year old virgin. Steve Carell will be playing him in the sequel to Breaking Dawn, which I understand has a working title of The Cullens Take Manhattan.

3. Edward stares. And I don't mean that he stares at Bella while's she's sleeping. (The horse is dead. Put the whip down, step away, and go on with your life.) I mean he stares at people in general. Now, he is a vampire, but you sorta get the feeling that he did this as a human. Since he was 17 at the time of his transformation, this plants Edward firmly in the realm of awkward guy. If he had lived to head over to Europe with the rest of the dough-boys (because his "death" was during the first World War, and from Spanish flu), he probably would have been "that guy."

4. He demands to be taken seriously, at all times. No joking. It's mean. Stop it now. (Sorta like how little kids react when you laugh at their indignation.)

One consolation is that, given his love of hunting things that involve blood, he'd probably be fun to play Halo with. Or maybe Left 4 Dead.**




*This is not a Twi-hate post, and if you don't get in touch with the real world and realize that the Twilight series is not going to result in severe damage to the world as we know it, then I'll have to accuse you of being a secret fan.

**Hurr hurr. Get it?

Rare Sunday Post!

So yeah, it's Sunday. I don't often have time on the weekends to post, usually because I end up chillin' in our living room, looking in the general direction of the television and snarking about whatever the heck I feel like. But I feel a little inspired. I think.

And really, I'm thinking it to myself "Okay, Amanda, it's Sunday. You're not working today. You've got a novel to finish, maybe some other posts to do ahead of time because of your weird work schedule and superhero-compromised attention span. How about some productive stuff, okay?"

And I'm all "NO I MUST BE AWESOME TODAY."

Really, I don't know where it comes from. My body works backwards or something. Friday night, I got 8 hours of sleep. I usually average about 6-7, and function. Heck, I functioned through most of college on 5 hours of sleep a night. But 8 hours should make me feel like...okay, I'm out of analogies since I don't know many un-stupid female Marvel characters and most DC characters bother me. Bottom line is, I should feel ready to run a freaking marathon, but all I felt Saturday was sorta tired. Like "oh, that 8 hours...that was nice. Let's do that again." If I get a normal amount of sleep, I have this weird hangoverish feeling (and I don't drink, so...yeah) and I just end up sleeping more. So basically I've wired my body to actually run better on less sleep.

Case in point. I had to open last weekend. I work at a museum, and my only full days are Fridays and every other Saturday. I have to leave my house about 8:20 to get downtown. I usually get up at 7:15 to give myself enough time. So last Thursday night, I was winding down, about to prepare for bed, when my brother, innocently enough, said "Let's watch Ironman 2."

I had not seen this movie yet, and I wanted to, but I had to get up early. So my brain took half a second to be all "Eh, I better no-YES WE WILL WATCH IRONMAN 2."

I rolled into bed at 2 AM and got up at 7 ish.

Now most people would feel sorta gross and just not good after 5 hours of sleep. Me? All I could think of was seeing how high in the air I would be if I stood on the lobby desk at work to clean off the mysterious smudge 12 feet up. Actually, the smudge was a bonus, I just wanted to feel really tall. Then the thought entered my brain that "I wonder what would happen if I jumped off the counter onto the floor." This continued for quite some time.*

Last night, I got to bed sometime after three and got up at like 9:35 to get ready for church. I don't want a nap. I want to be awesome. I should be writing away, but I am far too ADD to not want to be doing something like knitting upside down above lava. And this is how I normally am, mentally anyway, because most nights I go on Cracked.com and get into the "open seven tabs at once" trap.

When I'm in a really really really really really really really good mood, and I'm feeling all "OMG I WOULD BE AMAZING CREW MEMBER ON A SPACE FREIGHTER" then I don't get much done. Seriously, when I'm feeling that awesome, I have weird daydreams. The apocalypse version of me is an engineer that fixes stuff UPSIDE DOWN and saves the day.

And then I usually end up tripping up the stairs.




*Pesky customers never let me get time to do it. Dang.

Featured Book: For the Wounded Soul

Hey y'all, I'm back after quite a while (sorry about that...) and today I'm featuring a book by author Cheryline Lawson, and it's just one of a bunch of books she's written. The title is For The Wounded Soul. A couple of links to the book are below, and it's available in Hardcover at Lulu.com and in Paperback at CreateSpace.com.

Here's a picture of the paperback copy for your reference.

And here are the links.

Hardcover: http://www.lulu.com/product/hardcover/for-the-wounded-soul/18311668
Paperback: https://www.createspace.com/3708353


Accompanying text.

The deep wounds described in this book tell the tale of these real, compelling and chilling short stories of individuals who have experienced unusual childhoods, abuse, incest, living with alcoholism, obesity, eating disorders, infidelity, rape, addiction, prison conviction and more. Learn what they went through and in some cases, how they came out of it. If you or anyone you know has experienced anything like this, you know it isn't easy. This book will encourage and motivate you that you are not alone.

This book has just come out this week, so check it out.





All text and images from this book belong to Cheryline Lawson, and I own none of them.

Tuesday

It's arguably the most mundane day of the week. It started that way, 10 years ago.

English class was drawing to a close. I think we'd gotten our progress reports (sort of a halfway point between report cards) and we were waiting for class to end. I remember looking at the clock at 8:45. For a moment, I felt a chill. It happens sometimes still, and I thought nothing of it then. The bell rang. On to Algebra. I was failing that class.

A guy in my grade mentioned that something had happened. I heard him say "World Trade Center", but the teacher I guess didn't know anything about it. We had class and got those stupid little reports at the end. Mine, miraculously, gave me a passing grade of 83.

I went to P.E. class, but that day my teacher had opted not to have us dress out. The girls in my small high school class spent our time in the art room, and the teacher told us of what had happened. She said something about Israel attacking us. I didn't know much about the world, but that just didn't seem right to me. This wasn't a military attack. This was something else.

It wasn't until 6th period that I fully knew what had happened. We'd been told stuff, but our American Government teacher was an older man who thought to grab a TV and turn on the news.

And over and over again, they showed the plane ramming into the second tower. They showed the devastated buildings, and the ash, and the Pentagon spewing smoke into the air.

September 11, 2001 unfolded before my eyes.

I knew that we were part of history. I never knew that life could not be the same again. I remember as a child being allowed to walk into the airport, be let past security and watch planes take off, because it was cool. I remember not being afraid.

We'd made it through the 20th century, through four wars and a few conflicts, not to mention the Cold War. Not once had one of those air-raid sirens gone off for any reason involving an actual air attack. We'd celebrated the new millenium. All was hopeful, and it was a beautiful day.

A few years later, in 2008, while working in a K-4 classroom, the jarring thought came to me that those kids, all born around 2004, will never know a world before September 11, 2001.

Ten years later, I am 24 and the world seems a much darker place. It's not simple and easy anymore. I came of age while a nation slowly healed from the rawness of it all. War became a reality of life, another thing that was always just happening. We talked about a possible draft when we were 17 and 18, hoping, as the guys filled out stuff for the Selective Service, that it wouldn't be something to worry about again. We wondered what if women were drafted, too. Osama bin Laden is dead, and from that I know that time is now divided. Before the attacks...and after.

So many people were lost. So many kids have grown up missing a parent. Lives were destroyed.

I don't know what we can learn from September 11. I don't have the answers. The attacks have in them no hope and no light, only darkness and chaos and fear and death. If there is anything on that day that we can look to for some courage, some fortification, it is the willingness of innocent people to just keep going, even when it meant that they had to sacrifice everything for the chance that someone else might escape.

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

To all the firefighters, police officers, military personnel, and civilians who perished on September 11, 2001, may you all rest in peace.

Writing Like You Speak...or Not?

"All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland." - Jimi Hendrix

One of the challenges in writing fiction, whether or not you decide to make your setting a MAJOR THING in the story, is making your readers feel at home. I've already gone over your personal writing style and making your readers feel at home. Today, I'll get into something that can be more of a technical aspect. I use that term very loosely, because this part of writing fiction (or even non-fiction) is not much dependent on mechanics. You can't memorize a method for it or figure out how to do it from a textbook. It must simply be mastered. Want to know what this all-important thing is?

Writing like you speak.

Not so hard, right? I mean, it seems pretty easy. Just write stuff like you and everyone you know says stuff. Easy stuff. Slang, here you come. Colloquialisms abound. Awesome.

Or not.

Here's why. Ever read a transcript?

Yeah. Writing a sentence exactly how someone says it, every time, is as bad as trying to make your random hilarious true story into a scene in a novel. No one is going to believe it. Case in point: any time anyone tries to give characters a "Southern accent." I have read the word "gwine" too many times in my life. I still don't know how you're supposed to pronounce it. (Like swine, maybe? I'm really not sure.) I know it means "going" and is supposed to be Southern (or just Old Person Southern), but it gets on my nerves. A lot. It's a really bad way to have a character (old or young) talk because it's a good indicator that a) you don't know what you're doing and b) you've never been out the house or flipped on the TV. Same goes if you insert some New York or Boston or California slang stereotypes and try to phonetically indicate how people in a certain place speak. Unless you are making a movie and are the Coen brothers, it will not work.

So your real challenge is to make your writing, prose or dialogue, seem as though it is actually someone speaking. Nicholas Sparks is pretty good at this. Honestly, though I am from North Carolina, I wouldn't speak like he writes, but somehow the guy manages to convey a conversational tone without it actually being anything from a conversation.

So how can you do the same? Well...practice. Read books that feature that local flavor feel. And practice some more. Bounce your ideas off willing friends. The method and time are different for everyone, and it may take some work before you find that conversational groove for your fiction. But once you do, it will be all worth it.