Waiting Builds Character

But the God of all grace, who has called us into His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, strengthen, settle you. 1 Peter 5:10

This is what I needed to read today, even though I didn't want to.

I hope it helps you, too.

At least napkins are less costly than tattoos

I finally started organizing my ideas today. They've gone from haphazardly scrawled fragments to haphazardly scrawled sentences in a pretty notebook. Will I ever stop scribbling all over restaurant napkins? Probably not. I've started to develop the odd Memento-reminiscent habit of leaving myself notes all over the place. The weird thing is I don't remember leaving them until much, much later, or sometimes never. Sometimes there are sticky notes in my sock drawer. Sometimes there's a letter in the fridge. Sometimes I have Sharpie all over my elbow. My eccentricities are taking me over. How does the rest of the civilized writing world keep track of all their little ideas for stories? I can't carry around notebooks wherever I go--my purse already weighs about ten pounds. I'll find a better system someday. Or maybe I won't.

You forget yourself, sir.

I wonder how many people are synesthetic. I think that everyone experiences some level of this whether they know it (or would like to admit it). In fact, this sparked a miniature debate in my philosophy class today. Philosophy was really pretty interesting. Today we moved onto David Hume, one of the last British empiricists we're taking a look at. His beliefs are really close to those of John Locke's, but he's a true cynic. He doesn't even think one can rationally believe that causes lead to effects just that causes lead to events. It's one of his main arguments. I just find stuff like that mindblowing. He's so cynical, he doesn't believe in anything outside of what can be sensed, though. He got rejected when he tried to become a member of some religious board, and I think that spurned him for good. After that he just sat around with his little intellectual group and giggled at the people who dressed up for church on Sundays.

My latest short story was work shopped yesterday. My creative writing professor enjoyed talking about it so much that she lost track of time, and we spent the entire class on it. I felt bad for my classmate, because his story won't be critiqued until Monday. Oh well. I got a lot of great feedback. It was liked unanimously. They also gave me a lot of great suggestions on how to improve what I have. I think it's going to be substantially longer when I hand in the final draft in a couple weeks.

On a much different note, I totally weirded myself out today. I'd like to weird you out, too. Last night I had some difficulty shutting my mind off in order to go to sleep. I finally wound down, and all of a sudden "Natty Bumppo" popped into my head. I thought, Natty Bumppo? Who was Natty Bumppo? Natty Bumppo. Then I fell asleep and dreamt about everything else in the world besides Natty Bumppo (as far as I can remember). I forgot about it upon waking and went on with my normal Thursday routine. In history we were talking about the literary awakening Ralph Waldo Emerson helped jumpstart, and The Last of the Mohicans was mentioned. I've never read the book, but I did see the movie quite a while ago. My teacher inquired if any of us knew the protagonist's name. No one responded, so he gave the hint that it was the same as a character on a 1960s show involving war and medicine. So I said, "Hawkeye!" My teacher smiled triumphantly. He asked if anyone knew the real name of the character. This was followed by a substantial amount of silence. He reassured us that it was real trivia and not many people really know. Natty Bumppo. Natty Bumppo.

Possibilities Before Breakfast

So, I've finally taken the first step in "putting myself out there." I'm really hoping that I can change the name of this blog later. My brain is foggy and not able to think of many unique things this early. Last night I attended a great lecture about agenting. I had the opportunity to listen to three great agents and their views on many things. I'll probably post more about this later, when I feel like getting up and grabbing the notebook I had with me at the time.
Today I have a creative writing class at 12:00. We're worshopping one of my short stories along with one from another classmate. I'm looking forward to what everyone has to say. I think my main character is very strong, but I'm really not sure if I like the way I wrote the piece. And as always, my title is a work in progress. My mother is really the one who gave me the idea for the plot. And the title. Maybe she should write her own version--she'd probably do it more justice. I started out wanting to write an action story, because that's not a usual thing for me and it seemed the thing to do. I don't know how to classify what I ended up with. It's a bit dark, like most of my other work. But, it ends happily. I just can't seem to write light or fluffy things. Maybe someday.