Maniacal Mondays: My Arsenal of Weird Noises Has Only Increased

As if I didn't already seem weird enough, my time spent with other students complaining about assignments, exams, and people leaving their laundry in one of the ten dryers meant to service over 200 people for three hours, my vocabulary of grunts, moans, weird Wookie-esque calls, and banshee screeches has become more complex. One is a very distinct 'I need to do this action but don't want to leave my bed', another being 'why am I craving food when I literally just ate', and my personal favorite, 'this is a place of higher education, how are you this stupid?'

Anyway.

Unfortunately, college continues to be a roller coaster for me in terms of time, energy, socializing, and eating habits. Some days I feel like I have all the time in the world, others I'm sprinting from place to place. And as someone who has friends in college but never knew what the world was like, it's pretty weird. In fact, I'm actually writing a manifesto for a friend as a graduation present that's essentially 'How to Succeed in College Without Really Trying'. Everyone's experience in college is different, but she should definitely know how much Easy Mac will change her life and not make my mistake of only stocking the room with Kit Kats in three-pound bags following the Halloween sale at Kroger. Even now, it tempts me with its chocolatey deliciousness and wafer crunch.

Hopefully with Thanksgiving coming up and my assignments winding down as finals loom instead I have more time to post, and while I'm home I'll try and rack up some posts to queue up. I don't really like queuing, it seems artificial to me, but at the same time I don't think I have time each day like I used to for just writing a blog post. I also have a research paper to do before I go to Pittsburgh this coming weekend, so there's that, too.

Suffice to say that this upcoming blog series is going to be something different than my usual. I'm getting introspective, as I'm prone to do when days get shorter and nights get darker and I lose feeling in my fingers after ten minutes of walking. I hope that the shortening light has treated everyone well, and that my American readers are gearing up for exciting Thanksgivings - I'm salivating at the thought of stuffing already. For my other readers, just the weekend is a long time coming, right? Stay warm, make yourselves some tea, and get ready for depth.

Big sweaters and wool socks,
Brie

Maniacal Mondays: My Conversion to Easy Mac

Hello, everyone.

The last post on this blog was over a month ago, August 27th. I was still reeling over the fumes of the first week of classes, joining clubs like it was going out of style, and trying to meet people. This whole period of freshman year is wonderful, but when it's over, it hits you like a truck.

It hit me like a truck that was full of bricks. I went down, hard.

My departure from the honeymoon phase of Welcome Week wasn't really noticed in my classes - I turned in assignments, got good grades on papers, whathaveyou, but personally my life was falling apart. I had no time to be social, I was constantly doing homework, staying up late. I hadn't written in two months, The Artist sat in it's finished form untouched, unedited, unseen. I was having trouble concentrating on my work and my studying because characters would fly into my head like neglected baby birds. It was a dark time.

But now, I think I have a handle on things. I'm writing for English now instead of just reading, so that's a wonderful outlet, and when I can I slip some things into either book two or I go back and see what to do with The Artist. I literally had a talk with my first year advisor, also a writer, who pretty much freaked out when I told her what was happening. She ordered me to make time to write, and it has been absolutely wonderful. I feel so much better.

Anyway, college is getting cooler now, I can finally wear pants (and not shave...sorry, boys), my scarves from Spain, and not come back to the dorm covered in sweat. And I have discovered the joy of collegiate life that is Easy Mac. Seriously, within three minutes you too can have melty, cheesy, ultimate-comfort-food goodness in a little handheld bowl. Pro tip, though: use that Parmesan cheese powder stuff and mix it in. It adds just another cheesy element and makes your belly happy. These can be found in any dining hall, or at any grocery store for dirt cheap in nice shaky containers.

On a final note, one of the best parts of being a writer in college? The people watching is utterly spectacular. Where else can you find people in droves walking dimly lit sidewalks in togas, American flag garb, or see someone play bumper cars with their body and the cars parked on the street? Ah, college. A writer's paradise, except that whole thing about socializing. Whoops.

I'm going to be doing my best to start queuing up posts for this week early, as I'm currently writing this on a Wednesday. Maybe I'll get really lucky and be able to do a week of postings! I hope you've all been doing well since I've been gone, and have a great week!

Easy Mac and Goldfish,
Brie

Witty Wednesdays: Free Brownies, Steve, and Other College Nuances

And, like I said, my posting might be sporadic. So of course I missed the post yesterday, I practically prophesied it. But lo and behold, I have returned! Between my 8:30 classes and my Bio, I have a little smidgen of time to blog, and after this long weekend (All hail Labor Day!) I can probably start to queue up some stuff, get it all going, and keep this blog alive while I panic-flail through my first few  weeks of classes. How does one read a syllabus? Through guessing, my friend, always guessing. Though I have to say that some profs' syllabi are better than others. The ones dripping with sarcasm are my personal favorite.

So you're probably wondering why I titled this Witty Wednesday post with free food, some stranger, and the promise of an explanation. Well, you're in luck. College is great, and I'm all for the college life, but there are some things here that just aren't permissible anywhere else. On one hand, they're kind of random things that make you smile, but on the other you kind of end up looking like this:

To start at the free brownies: During move-in and Welcome Week, free stuff is everywhere. Free shirts. Free food. Free ice cream, music, and bubbles. My History professor, a perfectly adorable beanpole of a Dutchman, walked into our Monday 4:00 class with a tray of brownies, blondies, and other goodies. He believed that on our first day, particularly at the dreaded 4 pm time, we'd be burnt out and need the sugar. That was delicious free sugar. Is a tall, accented man giving out free sweets normal anywhere else? Of course not! But in college, it's free food, which means it's automatically okay. We're weird like that, we really like our stuff to be free. But if you see how much meal plans cost you'd be in line for those free breadsticks, too.

On to Steve. My roommate and I were sitting ourselves in our rooms, studying away in what we had deemed our temporary 'studyy dungeon'. I had even written a note by our door that she was studying for a huge math test and to please let her accumulate genius in peace, and some of the girls in our corridor wrote really nice notes of encouragement. But when I went out to find our RA, I saw that each and every white board by the doors had an arrow, a room number, and the name 'Steve'. Upon searching the basement, I realized that this occurred on all floors. My roommate and I followed the arrows, wrote on Steve's board (yeah, that's right, mess with us. Try it.) and met the kid. He's very nice, and there's a meetup for Steve this Friday. It's a really creative and non-creepy way to meet people, especially girls. Apparently his friends decided he needed to make some girl friends and took it upon themselves to subtly advertise Steve. And while I was looking for him, I met some other cool guys, Nate and Cal. Again, could you graffiti your friend's name, address, and an arrow pointing to him on other people's apartments and get away with it without being arrested or at least hated? No. But it's college. This stuff flies here.

Moral of the story is, whether you want to take this as a part of life or as a part of writing, the rules change. People are weird, but they're also creative in how to get what they want. It's really inspiring. Keep in mind when you're writing that the social rules change every time your setting does. It's like the handshakes vs. cheek-kissing thing. In college, you can walk up to anyone and start a conversation. In real life? You'd get plenty of weird looks and the occasional cursing-out for getting in their way. They're not kidding you when they say college is different, but everywhere is different. So don't be afraid to be Steve and try and meet people in some crazy way that's totally acceptable for your environment. Seriously, be like my History prof and bring free food, that doesn't turn anyone away. Get out there, do you, and find the other people who do them, too, and like you for it. This wasn't actually very funny (I mean, I thought the Steve thing was genius), but it just goes to show you, anything can happen. People draw cartoons of themselves on the doors, one of my friends' door tag is a picture of Beyonce. Let your freak flag fly, and see who else comes around. And for now, I must leave you. My Biology lecture calls.

Clickies:

Everyone knows that lots the food in college is free. @themoorewriter talks why this is weird anywhere else. [Tweet it!]

@themoorewriter on Steve: the man, the myth, the legend. [Tweet it!]

Scrounging for free pasta,

Brie

Maniacal Mondays: The Inability to Can

This past week was a really rough one for me. I decided not to blog in order to keep what was going on off the internet, and let everyone get on with their business unaffected. But I'm back and better than ever this week, ready to get back on a normal blogging schedule and attempt to get down to it once more.

I'll keep this short and sweet (well, short and sweet for me, anyway) because I'm sure you guys have things to do like freak out about the World Cup or read all of those BuzzFeed articles sarcastically lambasting Americans and our ridiculous Americanism following the Fourth of July, also known as the one day the patriotism gene is switched on in every American and causes an overflow of red, white, blue, the letters U, S, A, and eagles. Along with drunken shouts of patriotic phrases.

'Murica.

What's going down this week on le blog? Introspection. I mean, it's no question that to make art, whether it's a painting or a piece of music or a great novel, you have to give little pieces of yourself to make it real. The really great books, the classics, they're classic because they have immortalized truths about human nature that will never fade. It's what made Harry Potter so iconic, it teaches these truths to children that will never be lost to the ages. A great book doesn't tell you 'be safe on the internet', it tells you something more along the lines of 'you become you through your experiences, not your knowledge'. Something that will last.

And especially with what I've been through this last week, some introspection is overdue. Each day is going to be a little bit of how to anchor a little bit of you in there, whether it's a book you're writing, some art you're trying to make, or even wondering why that one song that comes on the radio every so often makes your heart pound all through your body and you feel like your soul is screaming the words at the top of its lungs.

Hopefully, I'll be back in the swing of things soon, thanks for keeping with me, guys. :)

Brie

My Thoughts Thursday: Walk That Line

I really do apologize for posting three things today to catch up, dear followers, but I've been sitting on these ideas for quite some time now. Part of it is the fact that I'm very interested in politics and the human rights of people around me (hence my genres!), and another is just the infuriating fact that we as a species love to either stick our heads in the sand or sit in lawn chairs and complain about what's happening, yet never actually do anything about it.

The other part of it is that I'm on tumblr and that's a very big focus in the lit blogs I follow. There's actually a large part of tumblr, regardless of type of blog, that have noticed the serious lack of sexual, racial, religious, and gender variety. They champion the Bechdel test and note how many non-white faces they see in movies. As a generation, we notice. But here comes the problem with all of that. When you try to represent, that's great. But what happens when you go a little overboard?

You get what I like to call Textbook Syndrome. Does 'Lashawna, Mike, Qian, and Pablo all have seven watermelons' sound familiar? It makes the diversity and representation fake. As much as 'stay with your own kind' seems fake, sticking with everyone of every subset is just as bad. Not everyone needs to be a transgender pansexual half-Indian half-Chinese person. But to err on either side, to be so diverse it's obvious or so whitewashed it's appalling, is just as bad.

I see this quite often on tumblr where users tend to fly off the handle towards the underrepresented. I mean, there's even this post going around saying that in the Disney movie Frozen, which has caused both controversy over supposed 'whitewashing' and acclaim for allowing a mainstream, successful movie to not depend on the prince-saving-the-princess plot scheme, Elsa should be a lesbian, and that her lover should be an African Muslim who controls fire.

As nice as this sounds, this completely disregards the Muslim religion entirely. For the faithful, it's stated quite clearly that same-gender sexual relations are sin. This is an example of non-Muslims pushing this image just to represent a racial and sexual minority while not actually thinking of whether or not these combinations can exist. It's what I like to call pandering, trying to represent without respect.

So I guess this MTT's theme is simple: in life, you will meet people who are unlike you. Different experiences, genders, religions, sexualities, and races. But recognize in our shows, stories, and movies, that there is a difference between no representation, representation, and too much. Like many things, our living conditions, for example, there needs to be a balance.

Walking the tightrope,
Brie

Weturning Wednesday (Bugs Bunny, anyone?)

Hello, everyone! Contrary to popular belief, no, I am not dead. Unfortunately, this school year has hit me in the face like a frying pan (here's looking at you, Common Core Curriculum) and I haven't had time to do much of anything but my homework, college applications, and until now, marching band.

But, ah, as winter comes I draw a breath of free air.

Finals are coming up for me - yes, I'm actually kind of excited - and that means that I'll have four extra hours a day to myself starting next week. How can I not be excited? My friends are all getting out, snow's on the ground, my older compadres are coming back from college, I get to sleep in...life is good.

What could I do on my break? Well...

1. Finish The Artist.

As sad as it seems, I failed NaNo completely and utterly thanks to a week of Calculus take-homes and quizzes, and a few college submissions deadlines. TA turns one December 18th (eep, seven days away!) so hopefully I can get on to the sequel before the snow melts. Hopefully.

2. Finish my college supplements and scholarship apps.

Do I need to elaborate on this one? Maybe I should've ranked this first.

3. Knock out some of my reading list.

I'm part of the way through Insurgent, the sequel to the bestseller Divergent, but my list is huge. I have to read at least one of The Mortal Instruments series, read Not A Drop To Drink by the actually-perfect Mindy McGinnis (seriously, check it out, it's super sick), and then kick back with some classic dystopian novels: Brave New World, 1984, and perhaps even get around to some Bradbury. But that's unlikely.

4. See the movies on my list.

This one's probably easier. I haven't seen the sequel to Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and I've been dying to. There's also Thor 2: The Dark World, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (comes out Christmas Day - heep!) and probably a ton more I'm forgetting. Although I DID see Catching Fire. It reduced me to that horribly obnoxious moviegoer that won't stop hitting people on either side of her and stamping her feet. So.

5. Sleep

6. Eat

But there's no way I can get that all done, can I? ...Can I? We'll see.

What're your plans for the holiday season? Travel? Sleep? None of the above? Tell me below!

Snow flurries and black ice,
Brie

Day 19 of Summer. Conclusion: Still Glow-in-the-dark White.

Hello again, everyone! It's been awhile, I know, since I posted last. I just...feel like I don't want to be bothering you with useless blog posts, as not very many interesting things have happened to me as of late.

Well, that's not necessarily true, but the things I find interesting aren't necessarily interesting to others. I did play a riveting three-hour game of Would You Rather. I think my friends and I go way more into depth on the prompts than is probably necessary or considered good. When asked if we'd rather be one of five surviving humans scattered across Earth or a survivor on a distant inhabited planet, we took into consideration that you might rather know the human race will continue without you rather than be one of five humans left in the globe. It was then argued that you probably wouldn't last too long on an alien planet where you don't know anything about the place or what's good or not good to eat, sleep on, walk over, etc.

Short version: Nerds are probably the best people to talk over your plans with. Whether it's for world domination, an impending apocalypse, or whether or not you should buy a certain outfit.

Anyway, I guess this blog post is both an apology for being so late and a little mini-lesson from me about how to take criticism. I actually got a critique today from someone on Hexbound (a miracle, if you've ever visited the site. That place gets about as much activity as a nursing home.) and, while reading it, realized that people (myself definitely included in the bunch) need to learn how to take criticism. I see it all the time with writers, students, and people in general. The classic reaction is to defend oneself or lash back out at the person. But we can't expect to improve if all we do is rationalize our shortcomings away, right?

So that's what this little mini-list is for. Because we all could stand to remember these things.

1. They wouldn't say it if they didn't want you to improve.

You hear this a lot, especially in class. Whenever I rip through someone's paper with my handy-dandy red pen, people tend to complain about all of the marks. I actually had this happen to me freshman year when I was fifteen. I had edited a kid's creative paper (of course, a strong area of mine at the time, being a bookworm and a returning writer) and practically covered it in comments, suggestions, and red pen. He started criticizing me for marking up his paper and my teacher walked over and told him, "You know, you should be thanking her. The more ink on that paper, the more she likes you. If she didn't really care whether or not you did well, she would've just noted a couple grammar mistakes and given it back. But she wants you to get a good grade on this and make it good, so she ripped it up. Don't ever ask a woman to do something, because guess what? She'll do it. And she'll do it well." If someone criticizes you on something, it'll probably hurt. Maybe a lot, maybe just a smidge. But it's better that they want you to be better than to just leave you as you are.

2. If it is said, take it to heart.

This point is where it gets hard for writers, especially. For us, our works aren't just mounds of black letters forming words, sentences, paragraphs. Writing is a dangerously personal profession, and a lot of writers - myself included - consider our manuscripts like our babies. They require care, attention, effort, just about everything a real baby does besides food and diaper changes. So when someone criticizes something about it, it's hard to look at it and change it. You love it so much, you feel so connected to it, it's like someone is personally criticizing you. But when they do, you have to realize that your opinion is not the only one that matters. If someone thinks that way, there's bound to be others who think so, too. If someone says (I'll use the example I got today) that some of my descriptions seemed to 'try too hard'. My automatic reaction was to lash out: what do you know? There's a point to that description. But I remembered this point again. If that reader thought so, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of others who think the same thing. It's worth taking a look at.

Last but not least:

3. Life is all about improving yourself.

You're never too old to change, and you're never too young to be stubborn. Remember the first two, and the third comes easy.

Backspacing and white-out wands,
Brie

So, Happy Belated New Year, Everyone!

Yes, I've noticed, my blog hasn't been updated since NaNoWriMo was still in full swing in mid-November. The good news is, all this time away from the blogosphere has given me ample time to work on The Artist, and that yesterday I literally spent seven hours doing nothing but writing. Oliver and Collins thank me dearly.

However, unfortunately, I've been away for far too long! It's been almost five months, which is a lot of time in any person's perspective, but definitely a long time for a writer. Usually, most blogs are updated weekly, and I'm hoping to finally get into the swing of that, save perhaps finals week in May. But that's hopefully as far away as I think it is.

Anyways, dear followers, I thought I'd make an annoucement:

I have been accepted to two very prestigious writing programs at Denison University and at Kenyon College in Gambier. You may receive the college's Kenyon Review. They're both intense summer programs, not very cheap, and an opportunity to go out there and meet more writers. We writers are like birds, we flock together when we can. So the chance to meet thirty others? More? That's like a dream come true.

Alas, I must choose only one, and hope that next year when I apply I can attend the other. Or perhaps I might even get into the one offered for rising college freshmen at Yale. That would be fantastic.

So thank you to those who have stuck with me, or perhaps just forgotten to stop following my blog, and I hope to appease you with more posts to come! I hope everyone's Spring Break, whether it's ended, ending, or just begun, was wonderful, and a happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Spring weather and chocolate bunnies,
Brie