Friday, March 5, 2010
How to Become a Writer response
The story was really interesting. It was a story about writing, but it was more of a story about the girl saying the story. She sounds really angry about how frustrating writing is. The story explains that you can't just becomes a writer. You have to work and work to become a published author, and most people don't get published. Francie worked for years and everybody was telling her, basically, that her stories were crappy. But she kept on trying, even when her mother didn't believe that writing was her true calling. In the beginning of the story she was so enthusiastic about writing, and made up the most creative stories. Towards the end she was really discoaraged. She thought a lady getting on a bus would be a good story line. She stopped being creative, and losing hope.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
First Draft
Hey Soul Sister…
I was sitting in the café, and waiting. I’m early, but I don’t care. I’ve been thinking about this day all week. I was staring at the wall drinking hot chocolate with a pile of whipped cream on top. It always reminds me of her. We would always go to the corner café about a mile away from the old high school. We’d share a hot coco. She always ate the whipped cream, and she’s get angry at me if I ate it first. She has a way of doing this to me. All the little things remind me of her, and when I starting thinking about her I start remembering all the good times that we had. They start flooding into my brain, and I can’t stop it no matter how much I want it to stop.
I started thinking about that time in my kitchen. We were eating my world famous grilled cheese, and listening to the radio. An upbeat song came on, and she stood up, almost in a trance, with a huge smile on her face, and started to dance. I wasn’t sure of what I should do. I laughed at her at first, like she was telling a joke, but she wasn’t. She was just dancing. I told her that if she keeps dancing like that she would break all the china in my kitchen, but I don’t even think she heard me. She was so concentrated on the music. The beat was all around her. She was the beat. She was the rhythm. I did the only other thing I could do. I got up and started dancing with her, but not on her, if you know what I mean. If we were in a night club, we would have gotten kicked out for being too dorky. But we we’re in a night club, we were in my kitchen, dancing like maniacs. We jumped up and down, disco moves, crazy dances from the 80’s, and our strange version of the jitterbug. I know it sounds awkward, but it strangely wasn’t. If I was in my world, it would have been crazy, and weird, but I wasn’t in my world. I was in her world, a world where dancing like go-go dancers was perfectly normal and a world that I was only allowed in every once in awhile, but it didn’t matter because I loved her.
I looked around the café, and the person who invades my dreams too much still wasn’t here. I looked down at my watch, and I remembered all the times that she used to grab my arm, before we were together, just to check the time. She did that the first time I have ever worn watch, and I’ve worn a watch every single day since that day all those years ago. I used to wear it because I wanted her to grab my arm again and check the time, and she always did. I haven’t seen her in five years, so I don’t know no why I still wear a watch. Maybe because of habit or maybe because everyday I still wish she would come up behind me and touch my arm to check the time.
As I came out of my trance, I heard the bell over the door to the café ring. I looked up from my hot coco. I had taken the table that was the closest to the door. I wanted to see her walk in, it wasn’t her. I ran my hand though my black hair. I was getting nervous that she wouldn’t come when I thought to myself that the first thing she would say to me was that I needed a hair cut. She always liked the buzzed look.
Everyone else in the café was living their lives. Laughing too hard, and eating too much. They were talking about the weather, and studying for their crazy math tests, and gossiping about celebrities. They were laughing about what happened the night before, and arguing their opinion over the latest political argument. They were living their lives, and I couldn’t live mine until she arrived, and gave me some closure.
It’s been five years since I last saw her. We lived together in an apartment fifteen minutes away from Duke University, where she took writing classes at night, and I took physics classes too early in the morning. We had afternoons together. We ate lunch together at the cafeteria at the university. We would always people watch. We’d make up stories for other people. Some made us laugh, like the one where the man wearing the bright red dress shoes (he was a struggling jugglist), and the woman with the librarian classes (third grade teacher by day, rock and roll groupie by night). But some were sad, like the man that always sat in the corner by himself (lost his job a month ago, but he told his wife that he got a promotion instead). We tried not to make ones like that, but if we were having a bad day we couldn’t really help it. They would just kind of slip out.
The day she left was the second day back after Christmas break. I had just gotten back from my class that morning, and when I came back she was gone. All her stuff was gone. There was not even a trace of her left. My first thought was that she was kidnapped, so the first thing I did was call her. I got her voicemail, but I knew that something extremely serious had happened if she left without telling me, and so abruptly. I called again, and six seconds of dial tone later, I heard a shy, soft, “Hello?”
“Where did you go? Where are you? Who took you?” I screamed into the phone. The scariest images of her in the truck of a ’87 Cadillac flooded into my brain, but I tried my hardest the ignore it.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. No one took me. I’m back home,” she spoke so softly. It was a side of her that I haven’t really seen before. She sounded timid, and scared. She sounded like she needed a hug. If she hadn’t left with out talking to me first, I could have given her that.
“Phew. So, you’re not kidnapped? So if you’re home, why am I here?” It was the first thing that came out of my mind, but instantly regretted. Why couldn’t I have picked on of the thousand of other unanswered questions running through my head.
“You’re not here because I don’t want you to be. I need to be alone.” Those words slashed my heard into shreads. I couldn’t even breathe for a few seconds.
“But what’s wrong, I mean, you sound so scared, and I don’t know why, and I could help, what every it is, I can get you through this. We can get through this. Just tell me what’s wrong.” I had so much I had to say, and saying all this hurt me. Just the thought that she was hurting was hurting me.
“Everything’s wrong, and I don’t think that it will ever get better, but you can’t help me, so please just promise me that you won’t call back.” I can tell that she was feeling the same thing I was. So much to say, and not enough time, and that saying all of this hurt. She was sobbing through the phone. This wasn’t even the girl that I know. She is so strong, always the one to be fixing the problem, not crying about it. But maybe she was fixing the problem by being home. I had to trust her because it was the only thing that I could do. “Please, just promise me.”
“I promise.” The phone went dead, and that’s how I’ve been living for the last few days, dead.
I came out of my trance, as I heard the bell over the door ring. And there she was. She looked the same but so different. She still had long, black hair that wore in butterfly clips. And she still had those big eyes, but they were her normal brown eye color. I guess as you get older, you grow out of the greened colored contact lenses. She still had the scar above her right eyebrow from the time that one time when she fell down the two flights of stairs when she was six. Her skin was just as ghostly pale was it had always been. Being Irish does have its disadvantages. She was still short, even though I always told her that she will have a growth spurt soon. I guess she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t entirely truthful. There was something different about her through, but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. I guess, she looked older, and she carried herself differently. She wasn’t twenty anymore. She looked mature, but she still had a sort of carefree look about her. Maybe it was the worn in jeans she was wearing.
She sat across from me, and I didn’t know what to say. We haven’t talked in so long. “Hello, there,” she sang.
“Hel…” I started to say, but she cut me off. She looked like she meant business. She was on a mission.
“No. Before you even say a word to me, I need to explain to you. I don’t want you to hate me. Do you promise that you won’t say anything until I’m done talking?”
This wasn’t the first time that she told me to keep quiet. I nodded, and smiled. I missed her so much. Her sitting across from me seemed unreal.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I found my old year book and I saw your picture, and I realized that what I did to you was terrible. Your face always had affected on me.” She smiled at me, and I knew that there won’t be much of this as she goes on. There is no way that her story can end happily. “When I left, and I told you not to call me, I was only thinking of myself. I was selfish, and in all the craziness, I forgot that I wasn’t the only one in that relationship. I had to leave, though, and I had to go through with this on my own. While you were in class all those years ago, I got a call that my mother had been shot.” I was taken back by this and she paused, but I kept my promise like I did before, and I just nodded. “And I needed to be home. I thought that if anything else were to happen, I didn’t want to be miles away. My mother died, and I didn’t even have a chance to say good bye.”
She took another deep breath. “At the time the reasonable thing to do was to pack my bags and leave for home. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to come back with me, and quit college. Even back then, I knew that you’ll have a bright future.” I love how she could smile, even though she is talking about terrible things. “So, I continued my life, and my education at home. I went to the community college near the mall, and I bought an apartment ten minutes away from my dad, and I lived happily, and now you know.”
I knew that I was allowed to talk now. “Thanks for telling me.” As, I said those words, I felt a lifetime of worries, and bad thought fly out my ears. I actually felt that I weighed less.
“Your welcome. I see you got hot chocolate. Memories, huh. Oh, wow. You left the whipped cream. Do you mind if I…” she said.
“I would be offended if you didn’t.” She smiled back at me. Every thing will be okay. I’ll be okay. As she reached for the purple mug, the gold wedding ring on her left hand glistened in the morning sunlight.
I was sitting in the café, and waiting. I’m early, but I don’t care. I’ve been thinking about this day all week. I was staring at the wall drinking hot chocolate with a pile of whipped cream on top. It always reminds me of her. We would always go to the corner café about a mile away from the old high school. We’d share a hot coco. She always ate the whipped cream, and she’s get angry at me if I ate it first. She has a way of doing this to me. All the little things remind me of her, and when I starting thinking about her I start remembering all the good times that we had. They start flooding into my brain, and I can’t stop it no matter how much I want it to stop.
I started thinking about that time in my kitchen. We were eating my world famous grilled cheese, and listening to the radio. An upbeat song came on, and she stood up, almost in a trance, with a huge smile on her face, and started to dance. I wasn’t sure of what I should do. I laughed at her at first, like she was telling a joke, but she wasn’t. She was just dancing. I told her that if she keeps dancing like that she would break all the china in my kitchen, but I don’t even think she heard me. She was so concentrated on the music. The beat was all around her. She was the beat. She was the rhythm. I did the only other thing I could do. I got up and started dancing with her, but not on her, if you know what I mean. If we were in a night club, we would have gotten kicked out for being too dorky. But we we’re in a night club, we were in my kitchen, dancing like maniacs. We jumped up and down, disco moves, crazy dances from the 80’s, and our strange version of the jitterbug. I know it sounds awkward, but it strangely wasn’t. If I was in my world, it would have been crazy, and weird, but I wasn’t in my world. I was in her world, a world where dancing like go-go dancers was perfectly normal and a world that I was only allowed in every once in awhile, but it didn’t matter because I loved her.
I looked around the café, and the person who invades my dreams too much still wasn’t here. I looked down at my watch, and I remembered all the times that she used to grab my arm, before we were together, just to check the time. She did that the first time I have ever worn watch, and I’ve worn a watch every single day since that day all those years ago. I used to wear it because I wanted her to grab my arm again and check the time, and she always did. I haven’t seen her in five years, so I don’t know no why I still wear a watch. Maybe because of habit or maybe because everyday I still wish she would come up behind me and touch my arm to check the time.
As I came out of my trance, I heard the bell over the door to the café ring. I looked up from my hot coco. I had taken the table that was the closest to the door. I wanted to see her walk in, it wasn’t her. I ran my hand though my black hair. I was getting nervous that she wouldn’t come when I thought to myself that the first thing she would say to me was that I needed a hair cut. She always liked the buzzed look.
Everyone else in the café was living their lives. Laughing too hard, and eating too much. They were talking about the weather, and studying for their crazy math tests, and gossiping about celebrities. They were laughing about what happened the night before, and arguing their opinion over the latest political argument. They were living their lives, and I couldn’t live mine until she arrived, and gave me some closure.
It’s been five years since I last saw her. We lived together in an apartment fifteen minutes away from Duke University, where she took writing classes at night, and I took physics classes too early in the morning. We had afternoons together. We ate lunch together at the cafeteria at the university. We would always people watch. We’d make up stories for other people. Some made us laugh, like the one where the man wearing the bright red dress shoes (he was a struggling jugglist), and the woman with the librarian classes (third grade teacher by day, rock and roll groupie by night). But some were sad, like the man that always sat in the corner by himself (lost his job a month ago, but he told his wife that he got a promotion instead). We tried not to make ones like that, but if we were having a bad day we couldn’t really help it. They would just kind of slip out.
The day she left was the second day back after Christmas break. I had just gotten back from my class that morning, and when I came back she was gone. All her stuff was gone. There was not even a trace of her left. My first thought was that she was kidnapped, so the first thing I did was call her. I got her voicemail, but I knew that something extremely serious had happened if she left without telling me, and so abruptly. I called again, and six seconds of dial tone later, I heard a shy, soft, “Hello?”
“Where did you go? Where are you? Who took you?” I screamed into the phone. The scariest images of her in the truck of a ’87 Cadillac flooded into my brain, but I tried my hardest the ignore it.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry. No one took me. I’m back home,” she spoke so softly. It was a side of her that I haven’t really seen before. She sounded timid, and scared. She sounded like she needed a hug. If she hadn’t left with out talking to me first, I could have given her that.
“Phew. So, you’re not kidnapped? So if you’re home, why am I here?” It was the first thing that came out of my mind, but instantly regretted. Why couldn’t I have picked on of the thousand of other unanswered questions running through my head.
“You’re not here because I don’t want you to be. I need to be alone.” Those words slashed my heard into shreads. I couldn’t even breathe for a few seconds.
“But what’s wrong, I mean, you sound so scared, and I don’t know why, and I could help, what every it is, I can get you through this. We can get through this. Just tell me what’s wrong.” I had so much I had to say, and saying all this hurt me. Just the thought that she was hurting was hurting me.
“Everything’s wrong, and I don’t think that it will ever get better, but you can’t help me, so please just promise me that you won’t call back.” I can tell that she was feeling the same thing I was. So much to say, and not enough time, and that saying all of this hurt. She was sobbing through the phone. This wasn’t even the girl that I know. She is so strong, always the one to be fixing the problem, not crying about it. But maybe she was fixing the problem by being home. I had to trust her because it was the only thing that I could do. “Please, just promise me.”
“I promise.” The phone went dead, and that’s how I’ve been living for the last few days, dead.
I came out of my trance, as I heard the bell over the door ring. And there she was. She looked the same but so different. She still had long, black hair that wore in butterfly clips. And she still had those big eyes, but they were her normal brown eye color. I guess as you get older, you grow out of the greened colored contact lenses. She still had the scar above her right eyebrow from the time that one time when she fell down the two flights of stairs when she was six. Her skin was just as ghostly pale was it had always been. Being Irish does have its disadvantages. She was still short, even though I always told her that she will have a growth spurt soon. I guess she wasn’t the only one who wasn’t entirely truthful. There was something different about her through, but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. I guess, she looked older, and she carried herself differently. She wasn’t twenty anymore. She looked mature, but she still had a sort of carefree look about her. Maybe it was the worn in jeans she was wearing.
She sat across from me, and I didn’t know what to say. We haven’t talked in so long. “Hello, there,” she sang.
“Hel…” I started to say, but she cut me off. She looked like she meant business. She was on a mission.
“No. Before you even say a word to me, I need to explain to you. I don’t want you to hate me. Do you promise that you won’t say anything until I’m done talking?”
This wasn’t the first time that she told me to keep quiet. I nodded, and smiled. I missed her so much. Her sitting across from me seemed unreal.
“The reason I wanted to talk to you is because I found my old year book and I saw your picture, and I realized that what I did to you was terrible. Your face always had affected on me.” She smiled at me, and I knew that there won’t be much of this as she goes on. There is no way that her story can end happily. “When I left, and I told you not to call me, I was only thinking of myself. I was selfish, and in all the craziness, I forgot that I wasn’t the only one in that relationship. I had to leave, though, and I had to go through with this on my own. While you were in class all those years ago, I got a call that my mother had been shot.” I was taken back by this and she paused, but I kept my promise like I did before, and I just nodded. “And I needed to be home. I thought that if anything else were to happen, I didn’t want to be miles away. My mother died, and I didn’t even have a chance to say good bye.”
She took another deep breath. “At the time the reasonable thing to do was to pack my bags and leave for home. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to come back with me, and quit college. Even back then, I knew that you’ll have a bright future.” I love how she could smile, even though she is talking about terrible things. “So, I continued my life, and my education at home. I went to the community college near the mall, and I bought an apartment ten minutes away from my dad, and I lived happily, and now you know.”
I knew that I was allowed to talk now. “Thanks for telling me.” As, I said those words, I felt a lifetime of worries, and bad thought fly out my ears. I actually felt that I weighed less.
“Your welcome. I see you got hot chocolate. Memories, huh. Oh, wow. You left the whipped cream. Do you mind if I…” she said.
“I would be offended if you didn’t.” She smiled back at me. Every thing will be okay. I’ll be okay. As she reached for the purple mug, the gold wedding ring on her left hand glistened in the morning sunlight.
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