oops.

Forgive my possible lack of capital letters, issues with the shift key.

Anyway, I was working on my creative writing project and spaced on this. So here we go!

I probably misinterpreted the project prompt horribly. The images that came to mind for it were a hand on someone's head, a flower, and royalty. The world was fantasyesque and vague, and so I tried to play off of that as a style element and give the story a very odd visual approach, letting the reader piece it together themselves, if vaguely.

I wasn't sure of where this was going to go, or if it was going anywhere at all.

The main character is genderless, or at least they are right now. They won't tell me who they are either. I think I will know more after i edit. Or at least I hope I will.

Will we ever build a snowman?

I just read an interesting article courtesy of the NaNoWriMo facebook page on editing. I think I've seen it before but I clicked on it because it showed a rainbow of highlighters. I love random editing tips because I really dislike editing and revising.

Well, no I don't. But it never feels satisfactory. I usually miss something. And it's all very, very serious too. If you don't edit right, you might get a proper scolding. Not fun my friends. Not fun at all.

Who would scold you for it though? Your editor, probably. Or anybody who happens to read it. Nobody likes a sloppy editing job, funnily enough. Not sure how anyone could. It's like turning in the first draft of an essay and expecting full marks. wait, isn't that what happens for the ACT and SAT? No wonder we have poor essay scores. We're used to getting weeks of studying and research time. Not cool guys.

Anyway, I have been puzzling out a short post-apocalyptic story for a while. It focuses less on the apocalypse and more on the people.

Main characters: A half-human, half-android girl ferrying children across the wastes to the ships nearby.
The human child->woman who falls in love with her when she repairs her.

Ending: no idea. I seriously think it doesn't have one.

It's more emotional than what I'm used to writing. Well, no it's not, there are just less explosions. I just see deserts and dust, and a very pretty comb.

I need more than this brain. Give me more! Does it at least snow?

What do I say...?

There was originally a long rant here but I deleted it. Too whiny... I'm just going to rant again anyway...

I wouldn't say I'm bad at poetry. To be honest, I'm not sure what good poetry is. Is it lyrical? Is it vivid and clear? Or is it a grudge match with ink splotches everywhere? I don't know.

I don't like poetry very much.

It makes me feel like a clumsy fool. The more I read poetry, the more I think, "how much more am I lacking in grace? Each phrase is like somebody decided to preach a love ballad to themselves about whatever word sounds pretty enough. Or they have God's almighty thesaurus.

To a point, I appreciate complex phrasing. But there comes a point where things just get ridiculous. To be fair, I feel the same about old literature and even some newer literature. I feel like the klutz who just happened to be in the right room and I don't think I'm even doing this blog right.

I'm a little bad at blogs. I need direction. It's why I write stories. I need a point, a reason to do things. The reason could literally be "just because" and I would be cool. I just... I need a reason to do things because without that I am so lost. Stories need to have a point. They can dance around it like ballet if they want to but if there is no point to the events occurring then I am just bored. Yep, bored, bored, boredity bored. I am Sherlock Holmes. Nobody likes it when I have nothing to do. At least I haven't skinned your cat. Or whatever it is he did... oh he poisoned Watson's dog. Yeah...

See I just need a direction, a purpose. Poetry to me, even with the themes involved, lacks a purpose to me a lot of the time. I can do it, I can write a story in a poem but there are so many rules to poetry that I don't know how to loophole my way through. I wish I did because story loopholes are the best thing because writing stories is more like a bunch of loosely-tied knots rather than a particularly tight string ball.

... I have no idea what I just typed so I am just going to shut up now.

Introductional Flapping About

Hi, um... I'm Kaitlyn Hirsch... and I don't like to talk. I like to write. I'm slow at it, and most of the time, I fly on the seat of my pants on where it's going beyond flashes of ideas and flops on my face. It's a clumsy way of going into the world, gripping the walls and a parent's skirt, but I feel it's a lot of fun. It was why I chose this college, and specifically this program. I like the idea of being able to get my feet wet in many different ponds and seeing the color of the water or the way it ripples when it touches my toes or even the temperature it's at. Creative Writing, to me, has always seemed like the program to exploring new places with nothing but a pencil.

My writing style is considered by many to be very unusual, and to myself it's something that I don't know how to explain. It's a very personal style, reflecting the author as well as the character, voicing details and nuances that as a neutral narrator normally go ignored, or even not noticing little pieces of information or clues that would be noticed if the narrator was distanced from the character. It's meant to be immersive and human, imperfect and sometimes unfocused. I don't know if I like it, but I can't think of any other way to write. To be honest, I don't think too much on how I write as a whole, just the topic I'm writing about.

I write to invite people in. I want to walk with readers on their journey through the story, see what they see and how they see it, but while inviting them to look and see other elements of the story in new ways or as a different story altogether. It's a lot of fun.

My experience in the EMU writing program has been rather laid-back. I am encouraged to explore and test boundaries, as well, but not to think one way or another. I feel like I've just entered into this big discussion that doesn't really have an overall topic to discuss, but a lot of little ones I can walk in and out of and puzzle out. No one's shoving their ideals down my throat or letting me think I'm a fool if I'm different. I enjoy that I get to interpret things my own way.

Genre fiction, to me, is a type of story that is written with a specific box of tools. There are notable tropes and plots that are generally associated with a genre, such as science fiction. If you ask a random reader on the street what goes into an everyday science fiction story, it's usually something along the lines of "X years into the future" (haha, that used to be 2001. I still want my hoverboard.), something to do with super advanced technology, or we humans in our wisdom destroyed the earth. Obviously not all of sci-fi has this, but that's what everyone expects. Genre fiction has expectations. It has a box. Sure, it can break the box, but the genre you're writing in tends to at least start in a box and say: look, I belong in this box. If it doesn't, people get horribly confused. Everyone likes things in their boxes and uncomplicated. Not that twisting things around for fun and difference is bad or something.

I mostly write for YA fiction, if I have to put the genre label at all. I find I understand that area the best, emotional head games and troubling realities included. Plus lasers and magic because that's fun. I'm not a fan of straight-up romance most of the time, but if it tends to be mixed with other genres I really enjoy it a lot more. My problem with it would be that the formula rarely gets mixed up or taken in different directions, so I give the romance genre more flak than it may deserve. I feel like I usually write hybrid genre stories most of the time. When it comes to labeling my work, I admit to getting confused on where it stands. It's kind of sad but also fun. I never find enough tags to explain myself or even the right ones a lot of the time.

To be honest, these sort of intricate technicalities confuse me. I don't know how to explain writing or teach it to people. I can suggest ideas fairly easily but I don't really understand what it is I'm doing until I talk it out. The process of writing is something I know inside of me, but to bring an outsider into the backstage is uncomfortable and hard to get used to. I guess, to me, as long as it works, I don't have to understand everything that goes into the writing. I'd rather just leave myself open to guessing about it.

I think I should stop before I get more off-topic. Thanks for reading!