The Struggle is Real(ism)

     Those of you who know me know that when it comes to fiction, the more the story can't exist outside the realm of fiction, the more I like it. What I mean by this is simply: I prefer unrealistic stories.

     When I go to the bookstore, my inner monologue while perusing the bookshelves is something like this: Coming of age story about a girl who searches for her adoptive parents? Nah. Too boring. Novel about some teenage drama, sisters' love/hate relationship, and a boy issues of some sort? Yawn. Real life is boring.
     Story of  a girl who moves to a new neighborhood, finds her neighbors creepy, and finds out that they could possibly all be vampires? Sounds cheesy, but I'd probably read it. Retelling of Snow White that takes place in some imagined kingdom with trolls, dwarves, magic, and princes? That has my name written all over it. Series about demon hunters in Victorian London? Um, HECK YES! Novel about a dystopian future with revolution looming on the horizon? A little dark, not quite filled with enough magic for my taste, but it will probably still be awesome. 

     Sometimes, this penchant for the fantastical makes me feel a little "less-than" as an English Literature/Creative Writing major, as if all proper students of literature must enjoy gritty realism or, at the very least, something that doesn't involve dragons.

     This can get awkward at the beginning of the semester during introductions when the professor makes you state not only your name and major, but your favorite book as well (this happens often in English and Creative Writing courses). I say it's awkward because what I really want to name as my favorite book is Ella Enchanted, or all 7 Harry Potters, or The Hunger Games, or any number of other things that are wildly unrealistic and are geared toward readers much younger than me. Usually I don't go first, so if others say things in a similar vein, I do too. But a lot of times they'll have answers like The Great Gatsby (which I, in an act of English major-hypocrisy, quite thoroughly disliked upon last reading) or The Grapes of Wrath, and I feel like my favorite books seem vapid in comparison. In these cases, I typically answer with Catch-22, because, though I haven't read it in a while, I thought it was both hilarious and incredibly thought-provoking, and was probably the novel which first got me thinking about what a terrible thing war really is. Regardless, it's not the novel I pick up to read over and over again. Though I'd like to read it again, I'm not likely to page through the book to reread favorite parts when I'm feeling whimsical, or daydream about the characters and the world they inhabit.

     The point is, I like "silly" fiction. And I am ashamed.

     Or, I was.

     Over winter break, I had a much-needed self pep-talk in which I realized that I always have and always will love folk tales, magic, and the supernatural in my stories, that I'm happy with that, and that I'm not going to change or hide who I am because I feel intimidated by my fellow English majors with more scholarly tastes. I decided that I will embrace my frivolity and write about what I love without being ashamed. Because really, if I plan to write such things in the future, why be ashamed to write about them in creative writing class? Am I really that intimidated to have it critiqued by peers?

     So, rallied by this new self-confidence in my literary interests, I decided that when fiction time came in my creative writing class, I was going to go all out fictional, by which I mean wildly imaginative and not at all realistic.

     But then my creative writing professor sank that ship when he said, "All works for this class will be literary realism. So no aliens or anything."

     Mentally, my reaction was But...but... I want there to be fairies!!!

     Eventually, however, I got over my initial disappointment and decided this will be a good challenge for me. Except, when coming up with story ideas, I kept running into one mental block. What do real people DO?

     Because honestly it all seems kind of lackluster compared to what people who find out they're actually fairy changelings do.

My kind of story usually involves castles. No shame.

     Nevertheless, I will rally all creative powers to try and write the best gosh-darned realistic story that ever was written. Or at least a fairly decent one that I won't be too embarrassed to share. Ask me at the end of the semester if you really want to know how it all goes.

The Perks of Being an English Major

     I'll admit it: sometimes, being an English major isn't all that great. It seems that every other week Yahoo or some such site posts an article about the least marketable majors, and sadly, English is usually quite up there on the list. When you tell people that you're swamped with work, sometimes they say, "You'll be fine. English is the easiest major!" And then you begin to wonder if it really is easy, if you're just skating by in college, if maybe you made the wrong decision, if maybe you should have gone with Business or Psychology or Bio so you could do something more challenging with your 4 years in college that has more real-world significance (or, for that matter, gives you more of a chance to actually earn back all that money you paid for your fancy liberal arts education).
 
 Also, you get really paranoid when conversing or writing, wondering if you made any mistake that reflects badly on you as an English major (because, of course, majoring in English means you should have a grasp on the language by now).

A sampling of what I have to read this semester. Forgive the bad lighting.

     But then there are moments, like when I feel the sublime joy of getting lost in a story, or get excited about complex and nuanced character development, or can't resist the urge to smell a book no matter how ridiculous I look in doing so, or feel legitimately, deeply saddened at the closing of a book store, that I realize I could never be anything else.

     Plus, there are some obvious perks to being an English major, one of the most notable being CHEAP TEXTBOOKS. I cannot emphasize this enough. My poor science major friends suffer the loss of arms and legs on a regular basis because they have to pay for exorbitantly priced books. I, on the other hand, am so glad that most of my required reading, with the exception of an anthology or two, consists almost exclusively of novels which--praise the Lord!-- can be purchased used on Amazon for dirt cheap ($0.01 plus $3 shipping? Don't mind if I do!). Even if I purchased the novels brand new, they still wouldn't set me back much more than $10, if that. So here's that whole silver lining thing: even though English majors don't tend to make much money after college, at least they save money on books while in college and are thus not quite as significantly in debt as they could be upon graduating.

     Not to mention, it's always great to hang out with people who know that when Juliet says, "Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" she means "why are you Romeo," not "where are you Romeo?" I know this isn't important, and I'll still be your friend if you didn't know that, but the fact of the matter is I really like to geek out over writing (particularly poetry) with excessive amounts of thee, thou, hence, wherefore, anything-eth, etc., and am quite happy when I find at least one other with whom I can sufficiently share my excitement for such flowery language. So, if you enjoy John Donne and Shakespeare, talk to me.

      But really, the thing that I'm most excited about as an English major this semester is my class "The Victorian Novel." Now, sometimes Victorian novels are a struggle to get through-- they move at a very leisurely pace which is sometimes just not up to par with our impatient standards today. However, I've always been fascinated with that time period and think it's actually quite pertinent to study Victorian culture, since many of their values and fears align surprisingly well with our own. Technology and science advancing faster than we can keep up with it? Check. A new view of womanhood? Check (although our new view is much more progressive than their new view). Novels about monsters and the supernatural? Check.

     And here's where my interest lies: the cultural catalysts that have, for whatever reasons, spurned an obsession with the gothic both in the 19th century and in our own. They have Dracula; we have Edward Cullen. The question is: why? What do we have in common? Now, I might have to save that answer for my thesis or, at the very least, a nice scholarly paper, so I won't get into that now.

     Needless to say, though, when we had to sign up for a research presentation topic in class, and I spied "gothic/supernatural" as one of the available topics, I jumped at the opportunity to research something I'm actually interested in. Sometimes as an English major I feel that I'm supposed to like gritty, realistic fiction that offers a bleak view of society. However, my heart really lies with all things wildly unrealistic, so you can only imagine my excitement at the prospect of getting to look into supernatural fiction (albeit, supernatural fiction written only within the span of Queen Victoria's reign) as a legitimate assignment for school.

     As I searched for relevant source material in the library, my excitement grew as I found I had a perfectly legitimate excuse to check out books such as The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night and Bram Stoker's Dracula: Sucking Through the Century, 1897-1997. I felt like maybe it would be more appropriate to check out these books with heavy eye makeup and a hearty helping of teen angst, but no matter--IT'S FOR RESEARCH! This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I like being an English major. Because doing research for school is actually quite fun, to the extent that I feel like I'm almost getting off easy.

     Not every class may offer me an opportunity to research literary topics not usually taken seriously, but I'm okay with that, because each class offers fun new reading opportunities of its own. And I am, after all, just an avid reader at the bottom of it all. Who else just has to read a novel for homework semester after semester?

     So what if Plans A, B, and C don't work out and I have to resort to struggling to find a job for which my English major is somehow relevant or, heaven forbid, resign to teaching? For now, I'm doing what I love and hoping that good things will come from that passion. Maybe it's just because I am-- in a very non-English major-y way--a sucker for happy endings that I'm not TOO worried about what the future holds.

The Summer of Drought

     Everyone has a filter on their brain, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Some people have a filter that lets practically everything through and say everything that is on their mind, whether or not it is interesting, appropriate, or kind. Others have a filter that must be clogged or something, because although they stop themselves from saying things that don't need to be said, sometimes they just don't talk much at all. Sometimes I think I fit into the latter group.

     I think my mental filter is a bit overactive, because sometimes I feel I just don't have much to say. I think a lot, sure, but most of the time I find that while what is in my brain is interesting to me, it probably isn't interesting or relevant to others. So I sit in silence a lot of the time, not knowing what to say unless someone else brings up a topic of conversation. I've  trained myself to do this so well (although really, I don't think it's a good thing) that now, I believe, it has trickled into my writing life.

     In high school, I had story ideas bouncing around in my head ALL THE TIME. Sometimes I would just have to leave what I was doing and just type a page or two until all the inspiration was spent up. What I wrote wasn't always good, but that's the thing-- first drafts just aren't. The important thing is to get something written. You can go back and make it pretty later.

     Now, though, I have to try to set deadlines for myself to get any writing done. At the beginning of the summer, I made a goal with my friend Laura to have something done, yes, DONE, by the end of summer. That was  in April or May... now it's mid-August, and I have practically nothing to show. I even scaled back the goal to 25 typed pages, but all I have are 3 (which I wrote before I decided to take the story in a completely different direction).

     So just like much of the country, my summer was besieged by drought, only my drought was a drought of words.

     I love words-- reading them, hearing them, reciting them. Even reading people's comments in message boards, the cadence of their sentence structure. I wish I still had Hamlet's whole "To be or not to be" soliloquy memorized ( had to do it in high school English) just because the words are fun to say. I guess I'm saying this because I want to clarify that this summer was not entirely devoid of words. I devoured them, as usual, reading books and blog posts and whatever. I just didn't produce many of them.

     I think maybe, just maybe, I needed a break. Maybe I needed time to just let life soak in, to sit back and observe and think and let some ideas marinate. Hopefully, though, the floodgates will open again soon, because I want to bond with words again by shaping them out of thin air, molding them into various shapes until I find one that just fits. We'll see how it goes.

Java Chip Cupcakes (no endorsement from Starbucks implied)

The other day I drove out to Malibu to hike to a waterfall (aka face my death numerous times) and have dinner with some friends from Heidelberg. It was a fantastic day, but... well, that's for another post. Anyway, since I spent the day exhausting myself and didn't get to my car until around 10:45, I wasn't sure how conscious I was going to be for the hour and a half drive back home.

About halfway down PCH I decided that I was going to get some coffee as insurance against falling asleep at the wheel (although I didn't feel too sleepy at that moment, I wasn't exactly feeling energetic, and I didn't want to take my chances). I stopped at a gas station and bought some cheap cinnamon coffee at the convenience store before I set on my merry way.

So anyway, the coffee worked, in case you were wondering. But since I really only sipped on it (not wanting to over-caffeinate myself before bedtime), I had a lot of coffee left over, and I wanted to do something creative with it. Drinking it would be a good idea. But I had a better one.

Coffee-flavored cupcakes.

But then I got to thinking about how I could take it one step further. I mean, coffee cupcakes would be good, but there had to be a way to make them fattier tastier. Then I remembered everyone's favorite Starbucks drink (and by everyone I mean people who don't really like coffee coffee and really just like sugary drinks. Which is not necessarily a bad way to be, unless you're asking your arteries): the Java Chip Frappucino, aka chocolate, sugar, cream... oh yeah, and some coffee.

After some experimentation, this was the result:

Behold the Java Chip Cupcake in all its delicious, caffeinated glory.

I doctored up a basic white cake recipe to be slightly chocalatey and very caffeine-y, and I liked what I tasted, so I decided to share with you.

Cupcakes

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs (or 1/2 cup egg substitute, which is what I used to save on calories)
1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup (ish) chocolate pieces (or mini chocolate chips)
1/2 cup coffee

Directions


1.

Cream together butter and sugar.

2.

Add vanilla and eggs. Mix until nice, creamy, and smooth.

3.

In separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and cocoa.

4.

Chop up the chocolate into small pieces (if necessary).

5.

Mix in the flour mixture and the chocolate pieces.

6.

The best part... add the coffee :)

The finished batter is so delicious you could just eat it with a spoon!

7.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, then let cool.

Frosting

Ingredients:
3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup marshmallow creme
1/3 cup powdered coffee drink mix (i used a white chocolate caramel cappuccino mix, but I'm sure     that just about any other flavor would work just as well).
1/4 cup milk

Directions:

Pretty simple. Combine all the ingredients until smooth. Add milk until it's the texture you want.

Frost the cupcakes (when they're cool, of course) and then they're ready to eat and DELICIOUS!









Some suggestions for variety:

• Add oreos instead of chocolate chips
• Top with whipped cream instead of frosting, just like a blended drink at your favorite coffee shop
• For extra decadence, drizzle chocolate sauce over the top
• For even more decadence, chocolate ganache would be great injected into the middle or as a layer  in between the cupcakes and the frosting.

It's been one of those days of the good variety.

Let me clarify that, at least for today, when I say "it's been one of those days" I mean one of those of the good variety. The ones that are incredibly full yet at the same time relaxing, at the end of which you can sit down, eat dinner, unwind, and feel satisfied about everything you managed to accomplish in such a short time.

This morning, I got up shortly after 6 am, which one would not assume is the start to a good day. However, there was reason for me to get up with the sun on a Saturday: my mom and I spent the morning scouring garage sales, which, may I mention, is one of my favorite things to do (if I'm in the right mood, of course... otherwise it's just kind of weird looking through people's old stuff). We've been looking since last summer for a good desk to go in my room to replace the one I've had for years, which is currently in a state of disrepair-- not to mention that with it's locker-style drawers, it clashes horribly with the rest of my shabby-chic style furniture. Well anyway, today we finally found a suitable replacement! It's got some gunk on it, but the bones are good, and I wanted a fixer-upper anyway. Plus, we were able to get it for $10. That's it. And now I'll have a fun summer project painting my desk and making it good as new (if not better).

After that we went to breakfast (perhaps one would call it brunch?) at Flappy Jacks, a new(ish) restaurant in this awkward location by the freeway. The way I say that doesn't make it sound appealing, but trust me, it actually is. The decor inside is quirky, with license plates and Route 66 type things. Plus, the breakfast menu is HUGE. I debated back and forth between pancakes or a crepe with strawberries, bananas, and nutella before deciding upon the better-for-me-but-still-ridiculously-tasty Veggie Benedict, which was basically a bunch of good stuff on top of an English muffin with poached eggs and hollandaise sauce. Plus there were avocados involved-- and when avocados are involved, 90% of the time that's the dish I'm going to order (perhaps this is my one stereotypical "California Girl" trait). Anyway, it was actually kind of fun eating in a booth with a view of the freeway, because it made it feel like we were on a road trip. Which for some reason made me crave a cup of good, solid diner coffee. Probably because in pretty much every movie or TV show when people go on a road trip and stop in a diner, or really pretty much anytime they're in a diner regardless of whether a road trip is involved or not, they always have a simple, comforting mug of coffee. Must be a Pavlov's dogs kind of thing.

I ordered the coffee, in case you were wondering.

This isn't the coffee I drank today, but that doesn't matter. Coffee is always good.

So if you couldn't already tell, the morning was perfect. After that, we decided to get crafty, and I've spent pretty much the entire afternoon going crazy tie-dyeing things and cutting up T-shirts and pants. I feel like I've been pretty productive, if you ask me.

The moral of the story? Sometimes it's not so bad waking up voluntarily at six in the morning, because that means by the time 6 pm rolls around you may have accomplished a whole lot more than you do in a normal day.

I'm dreaming of the end of the semester

... which is weird, because it's over.

The past two nights I've had those horrible kinds of dreams where you have to do something monumental, but you waited until the last minute, and it's just a strugglefest until you wake up and realize that you don't have to do that at all and don't need to be stressed out about it.

It's weird.

Two nights ago, I had a dream that we were packing to leave Moore Haus (wait, I did that like a week ago...). So I procrastinated on putting my whole life in two suitcases until the last moment, as per usual in dreams like this. One by one my roommates (not actual roommates from Moore Haus... nor was this my actual room in Moore Haus) went to sleep, and I was still packing in the dark, calculating how much I had left to do and at what point I could stop, how much I could leave unpacked until the morning of our departure. In the dream, we had to board the bus to Frankfurt Airport at 7 am (which is actually much more reasonable than our actual bus-boarding time, 5:45 am). So I set my alarm for a few hours before 7. The next morning (dream morning, not real morning) I woke up and played card games and talked with people, then thought "Oh yeah! I need to pack because we're leaving this country soon!" Then I looked at the clock to see how much time I had left, and it was 8:15. When I finally woke up for real, I could relax because I realized I was at home in my own room and my packing/departure was already over and done with (although my unpacking is still a completely different story).

Last night I had another end of the semester dream. This time it was a final. As we were walking into the classroom, I realized that I probably should have studied more, because I had completely blown off putting any work into it since it was the last final. We were seated and given the tests... I believe it was some sort of foreign language test. The girl next to me would not stop talking during the test and I could not concentrate for the life of me. I moved seats and was able to concentrate more, but then I realized the test was multiple pages long and required me to translate entire sentences from multiple texts we had read. I started stressing because I hadn't memorized the texts, so I didn't know what to do (this doesn't exactly make sense in real life, but whatever...dreams never make sense once you look bring them to the waking world). After I called over the teacher, she told me that the texts were in the study guide and we were supposed to bring them along. Of course, I had forgotten to do so. So then I stressed that I would not have enough time to complete this impossible test. And once again, I woke up realizing that the semester was over and I didn't have to worry about these things anymore.

I find it strange that I've been having these stress-filled dreams, because I'm not currently stressed in waking life. So it doesn't make sense that my dreams are so rushed and traumatic when that's the opposite of what I'm actually thinking and feeling. Any dream interpreters out there who can shed some light on the situation? Anyway, maybe now that I've brought it out into the open I'll dream about something else tonight.

Lately

Lately I've been feeling a lot like writing. The issue with this, though, is that my moments of inspiration and the days in which I have time to write never seem to overlap. Although I've been home for a little over a week now and certainly have had plenty of time to write, any concrete ideas have been nowhere to be found, and if I have the inclination at all to write, all I can muster are vague, wispy clouds of ideas that don't materialize into anything more than a sentence fragment (we'll just blame it on the jet lag...).

Now that I'm starting to get into my own kind of new routine back at home, settling in, and getting over jet lag, I finally have inspiration teasing me with ideas I can't wait to write about. Of course, I need to let them stew in my brain a little to make sure I know how I want the whole story to play out (or really, how I even want the opening scene to play out...), but I'm thankful that I finally have some productive thoughts that I want to follow through to completion, that I actually WANT to sit and think about nothing but my story. FINALLY!

Of course, one cannot ride on the excitement of a first snippet of inspiration forever... I found this blog post to be stock full of good advice for gathering ideas for a story. I might try some of these for my next story, or even for this current one when the going gets tough.

Also, on a slightly related note, I highly suggest the aforementioned blog to any aspiring writers. The advice is so relevant and, well, for lack of a better word, good. If you ever want to make your story perfect (well, as close to perfect as anything human-made can ever be) in every detail, follow this advice.

Anyway, enough of this for now. I have go feed my creativity :) Happy writing, reading, or whatever else you choose to do!