If you'll recall, part of the point of this blog was that I could do some creative writing. The prompt I was working on was to list 10 things you'd like to do on a rainy day, pick one and free write about it for five minutes. For those of you who are unfamiliar, a free write means that there is to be no censorship, just continual writing on a topic or string of topics, wherever your brain leads you. Here's my product:
10 things I like to do on a rainy day:
Sleep
Read
Go shopping
Cuddle up with a good movie
Cook or bake something
Clean the house
Make photo albums
Eat some soup
Call a girlfriend and catch up
Listen to the clock tick
It has been so long since I’ve been home on a rainy day, let alone have time to read a book for pleasure and not have anything else on my agenda for the day. I have a stack of books on my nightstand that need to be read and who knows when I will get to them. Gone are the days when I used to have a book with me at every lunch; I would sit down to eat during the summer at exactly noon every day and my family would laugh at me. But I would spend an hour sitting at that table, even after I’d finished my lunch, just reading my book. I would read the same books over and over, nothing special or earth shattering, just the same pre-teen stories that I felt comfortable with. There was nothing challenging about those tales, but the safety of reading them repeatedly, the knowledge of the characters and what would happen next (namely, a happy ending) is still something I find myself looking for today when I get suckered into reading fanfic on the Internet. That search for the happy ending, the tucking of that last loose end into the sunset of a story, somehow makes me feel content and safe inside again, like eating my Spaghetti O’s and knowing what was going to happen in the next chapter. I have to admit, my standards are much higher now – not all fanfic is created equal. I can’t take anything that’s missing dialogue and I’m still a stickler for proper capitalization and spelling, but there are some pretty good writers out there crawling the Web, some of them close to the real thing. I have written some fanfic myself (nerdy, I know) and although it’s been a good practice in structure, it gives you no practice in character development because you are using people who’ve been made up for the purposes of a TV show or movie.
Sleep
Read
Go shopping
Cuddle up with a good movie
Cook or bake something
Clean the house
Make photo albums
Eat some soup
Call a girlfriend and catch up
Listen to the clock tick
It has been so long since I’ve been home on a rainy day, let alone have time to read a book for pleasure and not have anything else on my agenda for the day. I have a stack of books on my nightstand that need to be read and who knows when I will get to them. Gone are the days when I used to have a book with me at every lunch; I would sit down to eat during the summer at exactly noon every day and my family would laugh at me. But I would spend an hour sitting at that table, even after I’d finished my lunch, just reading my book. I would read the same books over and over, nothing special or earth shattering, just the same pre-teen stories that I felt comfortable with. There was nothing challenging about those tales, but the safety of reading them repeatedly, the knowledge of the characters and what would happen next (namely, a happy ending) is still something I find myself looking for today when I get suckered into reading fanfic on the Internet. That search for the happy ending, the tucking of that last loose end into the sunset of a story, somehow makes me feel content and safe inside again, like eating my Spaghetti O’s and knowing what was going to happen in the next chapter. I have to admit, my standards are much higher now – not all fanfic is created equal. I can’t take anything that’s missing dialogue and I’m still a stickler for proper capitalization and spelling, but there are some pretty good writers out there crawling the Web, some of them close to the real thing. I have written some fanfic myself (nerdy, I know) and although it’s been a good practice in structure, it gives you no practice in character development because you are using people who’ve been made up for the purposes of a TV show or movie.
Not too bad, but it's not going to get a Pulitzer either. Oh well, it's a good exercise to stretch those synapses!
In other news, my mom's family, the Forsters, just celebrated their family Christmas this past Sunday! Some pictures of the fam and our new cousin, Samantha Forster.
1 thoughts on this topic:
I thought you were going to put that awesome picture of lauren and i with all of those grapes in our mouth...but i am glad that you didnt...
ps- our teeth are looking pretty nice! haha
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