What I'm Doing When I'm Not Writing: Writers' Harvest

I have a feeling that this might be a reoccurring title... which is why I added the magnanimous colon to make this post specific. Since this is the novel writing month, my mind is wired with guilt for every minute I'm not writing something to add to the word count race. This isn't my first time writing a manuscript, but since the main structure of this one is not quite so linear, writing it is strange and wonderful, but mostly frustrating. Ah, yes. Sounds like I'm right on track.

So this past Monday I went to the Writers' Harvest, an amazing event that our department put together to help raise money and collect cans for Feeding America. I happily brought my cans, listening to them clank in a tinny, musical way. The sun had long set when we got there and the venue, Ella's Folk Art Cafe, was alive and waiting. The building was two-stories, inviting and exotic with its artistic atmosphere and earth-tone colors. We all gathered around the first couple tables, taking in the colorful bar and metal sculptures; Ella's is usually closed on Mondays, so we felt special standing within its doors.

Photo Courtesy of Claire Stephens

Haha, here I am on the left, wearing what I call my "Sci-fi shirt." I fell in love with the teal stripes and the band of brass buttons along the collar. I think I gained a bit of money experience after manning the USF booth at the Other Words Conference, so I volunteered to sell the featured writers' books, tag teaming with fellow MFAer, Alan. With a full bar at my fingertips, I ordered a Diet Coke and got to work...

There are a ton of great readers, the four main ones being Ira Sukrungruang, Jeffrey Thomson, Rita Ciresi, and Katie Riegel. Three MFA students - Melissa Caroll, Jaquira Diaz, and Tristina Dickerson, were also featured and really knocked it out of the park. Sadly, I couldn't see any of them reading from my spot. As the books flew out of my hands, I simply enjoyed listening. The table was awfully comfortable and I rested my chin on my arms and was taken away by the soothing and humorous words floating over my head.

The night ended with hands sore from clapping. The night air was cool, but not cold, and I joined my grad friends in casual conversation. When I say casual, I mean what we all normally talk about - literature and writing. The topic was a heated debate about the literary cannon, among other things. My contribution was a few chuckles and nods and gasps as hands slammed the table and voices rose in good cheer and banter.

While it's always fun to talk about, I don't think we'll ever have an answer to the final, official cannon. The best thing about this is that all of us individually make connections with various authors. There's something cozy about this. You find an author buried somewhere on a shelf or in a pile and you are drawn in like all the magnets in the world are packed within the pages. It's as magical as examining the brush strokes of an old master's painting , more private than the discovery of a breathtaking band.

When we find those authors that mean the most to us, I like to imagine that tiny networks form and stretch over time and space that connect us. How many times (and I guess I'm asking mainly English majors) have you daydreamed about sitting across a table with your favorite writer or poet? What would you say? What would he or she say, for that matter?

I'm wearing a mudmask as I'm typing this. My quiet smiles make the clay on my cheeks crack. It's a good night for thinking.

Am I Tired or Just Impressed?

It was one of those Friday nights where the fatigue of the week sets in and you find yourself buried in the cracks of your well-loved couch.

With a bag of no-name brand chocolate chip cookie sandwiches (the strange pimply step-child of the Oreo) and a bookmarked, bedraggled copy of Sara Teasdale's biography, I enjoyed the evening. The TV was set to the home and garden channel. With the Travel Channel gone (Why... oh... why?), I appease my travel bug now by watching rich people (they have to be) house shopping for international abodes.

My fingers on the keyboard of Gorgonzola, my randomly-named laptop (blame Chowder), began to slow. Yes, yes, I was on my laptop too. I really am a multi-tasker. The idea was to read a little, watch TV a little, and raise the word count on my novel manuscript another notch. Hey, it's only a first draft. At least, that's what I keep telling myself. It really is better to just get it all down the first time. So in the process of my usual bout of juggling, a commercial came on that made me stop in my tracks.

A new, Christmas-themed Planter's Nuts commerical.

Whuh.

Now, I've had a lot of little surprises over the past couple days, like, for one, finding out that Nickelodeon is making a partically live-action movie for The Fairly Odd Parents... with Jason Alexander as Cosmo. (Whhhyyy? But Cosmo is so young... and cool... I say this, even though I love Seinfeld. Believe me. But this just isn't right). However, this peanut commercial not only made me abandon all my juggling balls, but had me geeking out about it long afterwards.

[There is something you should know: I am madly in love with both claymation and stop motion animation.]

The commercial is wonderfully made and is a great example of a minature story told artfully in a matter of seconds. I wanted to link it up here via Youtube, but it hasn't been put on there yet. I did learn that Mr. Peanut has his own Facebook page and the video is on there. Please take the time to watch it:

Planter's Nuts Commercial

Best part: Richard the Nutcracker going in for the kill. I thought immediately of Twilight - the way Richard moved was completely vampirelike. It was hilarious.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who found this commercial, well, noteworthy. Tracy Agnew from the Suffolk News-Herald wrote a great article, enligtening us all on the changes that have occurred to the image of Mr. Peanut. I was surprised at how much thought went into the revamp:

Made-over Mr. Peanut debuts

There it is. A great weekend post. And now it's back to work on the manuscript... until another commercial comes along to dethrone me.

The "Old" and St. Augustine

I'll be the first to tell you that Florida isn't magical.

If that comes as a shock to you, I'm terribly sorry. We do have theme parks, most of which I admittedly love and will likely blog about. Beyond that, though, Florida is a very new state. I say new in broad terms: we don't have much "old" going on here.

In craft class, we were joking about ghost tours. Thinking about the possible tours that could spring up in New Tampa, the best we could think of was one that boasted haunted outdoor shopping malls. "And over here," Claire said, wiggling her fingers for good measure, "is the haunted Steinmart! It's three years old... creepy, right?"

In order to find the "old," one must travel to certain parts of Florida for the fix. St. Augustine is, without a doubt, one such place.

As I said in my previous post, the lot of us mosied over to St. Augustine for the awesome Other Words conference at Flagler College. The air was sharp with cold and we huddled together as we wandered up and down the tiny streets and hidden treasures. I was so happy to have finally put my sweaters to good use: winter is a rare breed of season around these parts. With a red nose and aching finger joints, I grinned and sighed happily at each gust of wind attempting to tear off my face. It was so delightful. I friggin' love the cold.

Most the conference was spent in the Ringhaver Student Center. We took turns manning the USF booth, advertising our MFA program, literary journals, and books for sale by our talented professors ;) The panels took place in comfy classrooms and some us even took a gander at the library (to print our pieces for Open Mic... if you were me and forgot them). I even walked away with a Bible-sized biography of Lord Byron from the free rack just inside the door. What luck!

The night readings were held in Ponce Hall, Flagler Room. Beautiful room. On either side of the podium, rooms were filled with old furniture and the most lovely paintings I've seen in a long time. There were even four paintings in the middle area, each a female character from a Shakespeare play. Super. The room was all gold, and wood, and filigree designs above our heads - I wish I studied more architecture so I could describe it better. Pictures, unless taken sneakily, weren't allowed. Over the two nights there, I listened to such poets and writers as Wil Haygood, Diane Wakoski, and Lola Haskins.

My discovery poet was Sarah Maclay. I perused the book fair and found her book, The White Bride, at the table. The mythic cover art drew me in and the imagery kept it in my hands. I presented at the comic book panel at the same time as her reading, but I did get to meet her later on that night. She was wonderful.

St. George Street is THE street to start for a plethora of unique shops and restaurants. The first night we were there, I somehow ate every little rice fleck left from a giant burrito. The interior of the Taco joint was the most interesting we came across: the walls were covered with drawings and messages written with Sharpie. Other foods included: my favorite staple tuna sandwich, pizza, pastichio, and a plate of scrambled eggs. All of the food was delicious. You can't go wrong in St. Augustine. Next time, in warmer weather, I want to try something sweet from the gourmet Popsicle shop. Yes, that's right.

Gloria and I fell in love with a shop called "Dragonflies" and at another Spencer's-like store, we all found something strange and wonderful to bring home with us. I couldn't resist taking home an inflatable desk version of Evard Munch's painting The Scream. It's always been a favorite of mine since I was little and seeing one in a favorite undergrad professor's office make me want one for my own. The little screaming guy now sits in my cubicle, reminding me of the horrors of grad school life :)

Among the other shops, I found a bead shop that I remembered when I went to St. Augustine in middle school. I remember not being able to find it on the way back and thinking that - oh my god - it simply disappeared! Well, it is still in business even after all these years, and I must have had a hard time finding it because the store was, really, a hole in the wall. A little square with a door. I squeezed into the shop and stared at all the beads. I even found the glass beads with little mushrooms inside them (I had purchased a cat version with a mushroom in it's stomach back then). What I didn't remember, with my rose-colored glasses, is that everything in the bead hole was expensive. I left empty-handed from the store, frowning at my friends and saying, "She wanted ten bucks for a ring!" Watch out, dear reader, for the fine print that says "$2 for every gram of metal."

St. George's Row was another place I remembered; it's an indoor hall that curves and it is lined with shops and other interesting things. The first picture in this post is from the magic shop. I went with my family again to St. Augustine not long after the middle school trip. My mom was experimenting with our hair at the time so she and I had matching banana-yellow hair with dark roots. The magicians running the store put on a few tricks that wowed my brother into begging for a card trick kit. We were all actually impressed until one of the magicians smirked and made a stinging comment about our hair (my fear of being blond again must stem from this).

The hallways had at least three different fortune-teller puppets (ranging from zombie swami to one-eyed pirate). Another machine tested the amount of love one has? I didn't quite get it, but there were levels of love like hot stuff, burning, mild, clammy, and my favorite: poor fish, try again. Featured to the right is the Merlin machine. After being fed 25 cents, the starving wizard will measure your personality with the shake of his hand. The light on his chest says that I'm "royal," but I'm going to be honest here and say that I didn't give him a quarter. Now that I'm looking at this picture, it seems like Merlin is staring at my chest. Hmm. Perhaps my reaction to that is the real test of my personality.

Now I'm back to the old schedule and the piles of work look especially mean. I guess they missed me. But it's invigorating to get a taste of something different, an extra flavor that adds a spring to your step and a light to your weary eyes (corny? Nah...). Breathing in the dust of another world makes me appreciate what we have now... and inspires me in my writing and life.

To work, to work!

Ye Old Comics

When I was little, food shopping was a fun activity. There was a payoff. If I refrained from dunking sugary items into the cart, and the constellations were lined up just right to give us all a good mood, my parents would let me pick out an Archie comic for the week. Starry-eyed, I would dramatically reach for the little books on the tops of the towering magazine stands. Gum? No. Chocolate bars? No. Nothing was ever as tempting at the end of the hunt than holding Betty, Archie, Jughead, and Veronica in my grubby paws.

Flash forward to this past weekend when "Other Words: Literary Conference" in St. Augustine, Florida took place. A particular bunch of us MFAers answered the call for papers with a panel about comic books and creative writing.

I never read many American comic books. I lived and breathed Archie (and then later on, the Sonic the Hedgehog comics... by the same company, really) and only read Wonder Woman via a Christmas present of a collection of WW comic covers. Well... that's just the way it was. I knew that Archie and the gang would be making an appearance in my paper and it was just a matter of what it would be about.

"Behind the Trope: Love Triangles in American and Japanese Girl's Comics" was born.

I find love triangles ultimately exhausting and frustrating to read, so I attempted to overcome those feelings by thinking about what makes this device tick. Betty and Veronica helped me out in this matter, as well as studying one of Yu Watase's newer works, Alice 19th. Poor Archie. Kyo just might give him a run for his money.

I was half hoping for a Betty fans vs. Veronica fans brawl during Q and A, but nothing like that happened. Everyone was rather pleasant :)

I'll hold my tongue on the girl I rooted for over the years. That, I'm sure, would make an entirely different post.

I'm a Kid

Whenever I'm shopping at certain stores, I feel like I have to apologize for what I bring to the cashier. Hmm. Bold statement. But doesn't the cashier sometimes seem a place of judgment? It is a platform of the public where everyone can see what was sitting in your shopping cart. One by one, the items march into plastic bags and the cashiers can never, ever keep a straight face if they see something weird.

A curious woman might blush at the video store if the movies in question were a little... suggestive. An embarrassed father might look away as the items scanned are supplies his daughter sorely needs. As for me, I'm always finding children's book and movies.

"Wow, look at this," the cashier, maybe Sally, says as she put a paperback Nutcracker book into a plastic bag. She does the same for a McDonald's booklet story from An American Tail to a delightfully hilarious, illustrated book called King Bidgood's in the Bathtub:

"Cool, right?" I reply, still high off of the adventure of perusing.

She smiles like I'm ten and says, "Are these for you?"

"Yeah, they're for me."

She laughs and rings me up.