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I think it's a fact of life that packing = bizarre nostalgia. For some reason, I still have a notebook I kept as a journal in 8th grade. I only ever read through it when I'm moving things. So that means I pick it up about twice a year. Once when I move out, once when I move back in. It follows me everywhere, and I'm still not entirely sure why. And now really isn't the time for nostalgia, because I still have a lot of writing to get finished, but I also need to be mostly packed in less than 24 hours if I want to get my things sent home, so...
It's especially odd this year, reading through the notebook. Usually I can manage a sort of detached embarrassed amusement at it and get a good laugh. I mean, the first line is "the light is low and dim, it matches my mood." Somehow, nearly eight years after I started writing it (9-24-98 at 8:38pm is the first entry in it), this is the first time the total self-confidence-lacking 8th grader has come through... and been me, too. With a bit less variation in sentence structure, and a bit lacking in proper spelling, and embarrassingly much on the middle school crushes and desire to write rather Sueish fanfiction (one plot for an Animorphs series starring my friends and me, though I had the strength to avoid giving myself Jake's position as leader, and another starring three Andalite girls, whose names I believe I culled from lists of obscure Indian tribes who became Warrior-Princesses. Yep)... but it's still me. And now I'm all "aww, I've always been a dork like this!" It sort of reaffirmsentry for the my existence despite the countless existential crises I've had this year. I mean, the entry for the 3rd of October starts "Okay, dilemma time. I want to write ANIMORPHS [inexplicably in all caps and printed, the rest is in a larger, neater version of my standard cursive] fan-fic [sic] and post it on Chee's message board, but I'm pretty much out of ideas. I've got one I think will work, about how the female Andalites feel. I need a good name for it though, something Chronicles or trilogy..." Once a fannish, writer-y dork, always a fannish, writer-y dork, I guess. I won't even go into the school-related stuff in here, though. I just can't believe how I appear to have been just as stressed about things in 8th grade as I am now. That's just... it was 8th grade. I'm not even sure I actually had homework! I guess I just take everything overly seriously. Or not seriously enough.
So, moving on from that particular yearly boobytrap I set for myself, I decided that sorting my books wasn't the biggest problem, because whether those ended up in storage or at home wouldn't matter too much, so I moved into the bedroom to clean things out under my bed. Where I discovered the un-read copies of people's comments. I skimmed over them, and they were mostly positive, telling me things I already knew were wrong. Then I hit one that pointed out that the second line of the second paragraph accidentally rhymed. Thrice. And I went "hmm, interesting that you noticed that." The actual response contained this paragraph, which for right now is my favourite thing anyone's said about my writing this quarter, and in addition to amusing me greatly, it's made me think:
So... fantasy doesn't care about people, and I'm better in some ways than George Lucas. There's an unusual standpoint. One of the other guys also compared me to David Mitchell... but neither of them had any respect for either of them, so it's sort of not really praise at all. Except that I have an unfortunate amount of geeky respect for Lucas (at least as far as the first trilogy's concerned) because... well, because. And though I'm definitely nowhere near Mitchell in terms of a lot of things, a lot of my goals end up looking like they're aimed at the way he writes. I guess it would be kind of like me comparing someone who wrote well, but who I didn't care for to Gertrude Stein or something when she's someone they actually like. Good, but no one I like. And that amuses me to no end. That someone could take something I wrote and say "Well, at least it's better than Star Wars." I mean... wow... wtf. (It's still making me laugh.) That completely illustrates the difference I saw between myself and most of the writers in the class this quarter (not, um, as between myself and George Lucas, but between my fantasy-type aesthetics and their realism). Oddly, I wasn't expecting it to come quite like that from this guy, though out of everyone, I think his writing and mine were about the farthest apart, and as far as plot issues go, his were the ones I complained most about. And now I completely understand why, and it makes me feel justified in a way that actually stops me from diving the class into "people who write too seriously," "people who have a sense of humour," and "people I can't classify" (which I knew was a bad idea in the first place, but that didn't stop me most of the time). It makes me wish I'd been able to put down my differences with his writing style as well. "This is all well and good, but this is nothing new; I've read this before, and I've seen it happen, and no amount of metaphor is going to make it interesting for me" is the best I can do. The fundamental difference, I think, might come down to the fact that I was a girl in 8th grade who wrote about running off to fantasy worlds when things seemed hard who never quite grew out of that, or at least still doesn't see anything wrong with distancing herself enough from the world to see it differently. And there are some people who are firm realists, to whom I must seem a rather strange and whimsical person with no real ties to any of the major issues of the world. Which, I think, is mostly right... and is also no reason for me to see myself as in so much conflict with them as I saw myself most of the quarter.
Heh, and for contrast, out of the people I had on "my side," one of the other guys complained that the whole thing wasn't written in the completely incomprehensible pirate dialect. And that made me smirk, but shake my head with an emphatic "no!"
Edit of Random Nostalgianess 1 [8:08]: So, I've made it through 2/3 of my desk drawers... I got to the second drawer down, and for once had no qualms about throwing away the old syllabi and such. Then I saw the Stack of Notebooks. I am a packrat when it comes to notebooks. And I decided "All right, I'm doing good... I'll finally throw these away. They take up a lot of space." And naturally, as all notebooks are able to force me to do, I opened them. Discovering therein a plethora of senior-year physics quizzes full of ridiculous puns and overemphasized punctuation (and one with a post-it from the prof making fun of my principal). An in-depth sountrack I'd made for my last year of high school. The evolution of my college-level margin doodles/ramblings from my junior year of high school on. I think I've got a horrible thing for written nostalgia in the form of notebooks. They are my weakness! I don't know if I've just taken increasingly disorganized notes over the years, or less in classes has seemed important, or if I've just had a tendency to take more and more disorganized classes. I have the oddest feeling it's the latter, though, just by virtue of the fact that most of the earlier ones were in math and science, and now I'm an English major. Figures, don't it?
It's especially odd this year, reading through the notebook. Usually I can manage a sort of detached embarrassed amusement at it and get a good laugh. I mean, the first line is "the light is low and dim, it matches my mood." Somehow, nearly eight years after I started writing it (9-24-98 at 8:38pm is the first entry in it), this is the first time the total self-confidence-lacking 8th grader has come through... and been me, too. With a bit less variation in sentence structure, and a bit lacking in proper spelling, and embarrassingly much on the middle school crushes and desire to write rather Sueish fanfiction (one plot for an Animorphs series starring my friends and me, though I had the strength to avoid giving myself Jake's position as leader, and another starring three Andalite girls, whose names I believe I culled from lists of obscure Indian tribes who became Warrior-Princesses. Yep)... but it's still me. And now I'm all "aww, I've always been a dork like this!" It sort of reaffirmsentry for the my existence despite the countless existential crises I've had this year. I mean, the entry for the 3rd of October starts "Okay, dilemma time. I want to write ANIMORPHS [inexplicably in all caps and printed, the rest is in a larger, neater version of my standard cursive] fan-fic [sic] and post it on Chee's message board, but I'm pretty much out of ideas. I've got one I think will work, about how the female Andalites feel. I need a good name for it though, something Chronicles or trilogy..." Once a fannish, writer-y dork, always a fannish, writer-y dork, I guess. I won't even go into the school-related stuff in here, though. I just can't believe how I appear to have been just as stressed about things in 8th grade as I am now. That's just... it was 8th grade. I'm not even sure I actually had homework! I guess I just take everything overly seriously. Or not seriously enough.
So, moving on from that particular yearly boobytrap I set for myself, I decided that sorting my books wasn't the biggest problem, because whether those ended up in storage or at home wouldn't matter too much, so I moved into the bedroom to clean things out under my bed. Where I discovered the un-read copies of people's comments. I skimmed over them, and they were mostly positive, telling me things I already knew were wrong. Then I hit one that pointed out that the second line of the second paragraph accidentally rhymed. Thrice. And I went "hmm, interesting that you noticed that." The actual response contained this paragraph, which for right now is my favourite thing anyone's said about my writing this quarter, and in addition to amusing me greatly, it's made me think:
I have some serious reseservations about this piece. the writing is competent and moves well... but - and remember this is a completely unfair, subjective judgment - your piece reminded me why I so dislike fantasy stories. ... Nothing seems to be at stake here. The elements that make for rich literature (moral, aesthetic, political, ideological, etc. conflicts) are de facto absent from fantasy - by which I don't mean science fiction or allegory. ... This reminded me of a particularly spot-on passage in the film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of Star Wars: "the deliberate silliness of all this...leaves the audience free to react from a safe voyeuristic distance, enjoying 'pure' sensations that are unencumbered by any moral or emotional investment." "Silly" is too condescending a term for your writing, which I think shows more expertise and understanding of the medium than Lucas showed for film in Star Wars, but I think this fairly captures my fellings about fantasy. When I read fiction, I want to read "difficult" fiction that takes and understands a position in the world as it is, and that cares about human beings, about art, about politics. I don't think there are equally forceful arguments for fantasy's aesthetic and moral value because I don't think that this genre even cares to make those arguments...
So... fantasy doesn't care about people, and I'm better in some ways than George Lucas. There's an unusual standpoint. One of the other guys also compared me to David Mitchell... but neither of them had any respect for either of them, so it's sort of not really praise at all. Except that I have an unfortunate amount of geeky respect for Lucas (at least as far as the first trilogy's concerned) because... well, because. And though I'm definitely nowhere near Mitchell in terms of a lot of things, a lot of my goals end up looking like they're aimed at the way he writes. I guess it would be kind of like me comparing someone who wrote well, but who I didn't care for to Gertrude Stein or something when she's someone they actually like. Good, but no one I like. And that amuses me to no end. That someone could take something I wrote and say "Well, at least it's better than Star Wars." I mean... wow... wtf. (It's still making me laugh.) That completely illustrates the difference I saw between myself and most of the writers in the class this quarter (not, um, as between myself and George Lucas, but between my fantasy-type aesthetics and their realism). Oddly, I wasn't expecting it to come quite like that from this guy, though out of everyone, I think his writing and mine were about the farthest apart, and as far as plot issues go, his were the ones I complained most about. And now I completely understand why, and it makes me feel justified in a way that actually stops me from diving the class into "people who write too seriously," "people who have a sense of humour," and "people I can't classify" (which I knew was a bad idea in the first place, but that didn't stop me most of the time). It makes me wish I'd been able to put down my differences with his writing style as well. "This is all well and good, but this is nothing new; I've read this before, and I've seen it happen, and no amount of metaphor is going to make it interesting for me" is the best I can do. The fundamental difference, I think, might come down to the fact that I was a girl in 8th grade who wrote about running off to fantasy worlds when things seemed hard who never quite grew out of that, or at least still doesn't see anything wrong with distancing herself enough from the world to see it differently. And there are some people who are firm realists, to whom I must seem a rather strange and whimsical person with no real ties to any of the major issues of the world. Which, I think, is mostly right... and is also no reason for me to see myself as in so much conflict with them as I saw myself most of the quarter.
Heh, and for contrast, out of the people I had on "my side," one of the other guys complained that the whole thing wasn't written in the completely incomprehensible pirate dialect. And that made me smirk, but shake my head with an emphatic "no!"
Edit of Random Nostalgianess 1 [8:08]: So, I've made it through 2/3 of my desk drawers... I got to the second drawer down, and for once had no qualms about throwing away the old syllabi and such. Then I saw the Stack of Notebooks. I am a packrat when it comes to notebooks. And I decided "All right, I'm doing good... I'll finally throw these away. They take up a lot of space." And naturally, as all notebooks are able to force me to do, I opened them. Discovering therein a plethora of senior-year physics quizzes full of ridiculous puns and overemphasized punctuation (and one with a post-it from the prof making fun of my principal). An in-depth sountrack I'd made for my last year of high school. The evolution of my college-level margin doodles/ramblings from my junior year of high school on. I think I've got a horrible thing for written nostalgia in the form of notebooks. They are my weakness! I don't know if I've just taken increasingly disorganized notes over the years, or less in classes has seemed important, or if I've just had a tendency to take more and more disorganized classes. I have the oddest feeling it's the latter, though, just by virtue of the fact that most of the earlier ones were in math and science, and now I'm an English major. Figures, don't it?
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