Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Freedom is Never Free

I stopped by my friend's Facebook wall to wish him a happy birthday, posting this message: "Have a very happy 17th birthday! You can blow out the candles this year knowing you are finally free!"

He responded back, saying: "Thanks, Paige. Unfortunately though, freedom comes at a cost."

I just sat there thinking a bit before replying: "Ahh...It always does. Is freedom worth the cost though? I guess that's up to you to determine."

I find it funny how the rules of society correspond with the laws of science. Newton's third law of motion says, "For every action, there is an equal, but opposite reaction." You get what you give. If a teenage boy harrases a girl, he gets a broken nose. Action, reaction.

It's the same with freedom. If you push to get towards your goal, something's going to try to shove you to the ground. Freedom comes with a price. For Katniss, she had to kill Cato to win "The Hunger Games." In "127 Hours," the guy had to cut his frigging arm off to obtain freedom.

In writing, that struggle to obtain freedom is called conflict and readers just gobble it up. I'll admit, I feel bad for my characters sometimes and forget that I'm trying to write the next great American novel so I just give them a break when I really shouldn't.

However, I'm getting better. Outlining my novels helps a lot. There are still moments when I have to stop myself from handing my character freedom on a silver platter though.

Remember this when writing your novel: freedom is never free. Learn it, believe it, and accept it because that, my friend, is life.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Random Post

For some reason, I've been having a hard time writing lately. I'm even having a hard time writing poetry and I usually crank poems out within minutes. As you can see, my sentence fluency is a little off. I don't think it's a lack of ideas, I have plenty of those. I think it's more about getting the right idea out. I can feel the idea, it's there, but I can't get it out.

How weird. I don't really think it's a writerly thing, it's more of an emotional thing. Now it's getting sort of hard to write this blog post so I'm just going to spurt out random things. You may stop reading if you wish because the stuff that follows is completely pointless.

I hate writing e-mails on my phone. I find it hard to be grammatically correct while typing on that tiny keyboard. It fustrates me immensely. Also, sometimes my phone glitches and I lose the e-mail I've been working on avidly. That makes me fustrated and angry at the same time. I'm so glad I'm writing this blog post on an actual computer.

My brother is incapable of eating even 1/4th of a 72 oz steak. There's this steak challenge in Amarillo, TX where you try to eat a 72 oz steak, a salad, a potato, and 2 rolls in an hour that I want to see my brother do. I think I may end up doing the challenge because I don't want to pay $72 if my brother fails (and he will). I am more likely to win the challenge. DON'T underestimate me. I'm a teenage girl, but I eat like a man!

I want to buy an underwater video camera that will connect to my goggles when I'm swimming in the ocean. I bet footage of me body surfing and waves crashing on top of my head would look awesome on the big screen TV! It would be awesomer if I were filming California waves though, North Carolina waves are puny.

My friend Jason sent me a beautiful crystal cube with a piano in the center, but it got lost in the mail. Curse the New Mexico postal system!

I hate bringing my dog to the beach. He always poops in the exact same spot: right in the center of a public walkway. My brother and I have to give up our sandwich bags to pick up Bear's doo-doo. He also digs and flings sand into our stuff. I think he does it to annoy me. I still love him anyways.

My friend Eric and I are having a hard time finding a time to get together. Since I write the e-mails to him on my phone, the situation is twice as fustrating.

I can't believe you read my completely pointless statements. I just wasted your time because I simply am having a hard time writing something. I wonder if writing this post even helped me. I hope it did.

Good night. I hope this post at least entertained you. :-)

Sunday, June 10, 2012

The Fault In My Stars

I am convinced that John Green is the best writer that has ever lived. Faulkner, Shakespeare, and Hemingway have nothing on him.

I have just read his amazing book, The Fault In Our Stars, which is about kids with cancer. I could go on to tell you the whole plot, but just click on this link: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11870085-the-fault-in-our-stars

Yeah, it's a cancer book. The topic's been done to death, but yet it's not a cancer book. It's a book about making your mark on the world, making sure you mean something. Making my mark on the world has been an issue I've been struggling with for a while now. I have dreams, and as I told John Green in my fan letter to him, I have deadlines for those dreams.

Some of those dreams have not come true yet or they just died. One of my dreams was to go to Duke University, but I didn't get in. I also hoped to be agented or something by now, but I'm not.

Some would look at me like I'm crazy saying, "You have lots of time to make your dreams come true, why do you need deadlines?"

Here's what I say to them: some infinities are bigger than other infinities (as John Green says). Some of us have more time, some of us don't. I am here on bought time. As a little kid, I was pretty sick. I had lungs that sucked at being lungs (like Hazel's) and there were many times when I could have died. Now, I'm considerably healthy. I have muscles that sort of suck at being muscles due to a muscular disease, but I am doing pretty damn well.

Still though, I have a muscular disease. That will shorten my life span. The heart is a muscle and if my disease decides to attack it, I'm done for. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. I'm sure as hell going to squeeze a bigger infinity into my smaller one.

Augustus wrote to Hazel, "I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."

I've made some choices that I did not like at all in the past year and as a result, I feel bitter and resentful a lot. I think the message John Green was trying to convey was: if you like the choices you make, you will be happy and you will have made your mark on the world in your own unique way.

I guess that was the fault in my stars. (metaphor! Stars are choices.) I don't like all the choices I have made so I'm unhappy.

So I am going to start liking my choices.

Friday, June 8, 2012

My First AQC Chat!

Last night, I had a great chat online with some people from AgentQuery Connect. When I entered, I knew I would learn things from these people since they were talking about the best season to query agents. I never thought about when the best time to query an agent is. What I learned from that conversation: winter is a big no-no for querying.

I also got the chance to ask some questions that were on my mind such as: what is the significant difference between a query and synopsis? The answer? A query is agent bait (come here, fishy!), and a synopsis is a detailed description of your story.

I was quiet most of the time, just hanging out and reading along with the conversation. I still benefitted from hanging back and people-watching though.

And while I was people-watching, I noticed that there was a real sense of community among the authors. All of them were really excited that their friend, R.C. Lewis, got agented (I'm very excited for her too! Yay!) and they were all saying "hi" to people as they entered the chat room.

Was I overwhelmed? A little, but I felt very welcome.

That was my first chat on AQC! Hopefully during the summer I'll be able to get more involved on the site.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Now I'm on Twitter! Apparently it's a good website for writers since they can follow agents and such. I already had an account, but I found the site confusing so I left. Hopefully this time around, I'll be able to navigate the site better. Tomorrow I'll probably be doing some research on who to follow.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Food for Thought

I've been sitting here at home pretty immobile and I've had nothing to do but watch TV and think about all the strange food commercials they have on TV. Especially the cereal commercials. Here are some examples:

1. I think everyone has seen the cannibalistic Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials out there and would agree with me when I say they are so wrong. O.o There's also another thing wrong with the commercial. When a cereal square eats another cereal square, their stomaches don't get bigger AT ALL. They're the same size too so when a cereal square eats one of it's brothers, they should grow at least a little, right?

2. Hebrew National takes pride in their hot dogs because they are kosher. Yay, good for them! Do hot dogs normally have dairy products in them?

3. Lucky Charms and Trix commercials always fustrate me. You know why? Because the leprechaun and rabbit never get the dang cereal! I think the kids need to stop being so selfish and share the cereal.

4. When you eat Fruit Roll-Ups, your tongue is supposed to grow according to the commercials. Well, when I eat Fruit Roll-Ups, I wait a long time for my tongue to grow, but it never does. Isn't that false advertising or something?

5. Last, but not least is the very disturbing Pops cereal commercial I see every once in a while. Aliens invade this farm and with their abduction beams, they flip a cow over and beam the milk right from the udders. The cow is mooing for it's life so I want to jump right into the commercial and give those aliens a piece of my mind!

Those are my thoughts on some of the food commercials. Are there any commercials that you think are kind of odd? If so, please share! You will not be discriminated against. :-) 

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Writing Wise

I'd like to say that I'm very wise for the average eighteen-year-old. At my school, I was pretty much the school psychologist, imparting thoughtful tidbits to wailing girls. My problem?

I can't write like Yoda without sounding cheesy. Okay, maybe Yoda's a bad example, but whatever. It's kind of hard for me to write like I'm an all-knowing person when I am not. When I have to write like a shaman, I just try to recall what other wise people have said and put what they have said on paper (in a different way, of course. Plagairism is not my thing). This is where "writing what you know" comes in handy.

What happens when I need something completely original? Something from my inner "Paige the Sage?" I have a hard time getting what I want to say on the paper.

Before I start writing the next chapter of my book (which will include lots of wisdom), I'm asking for help from my fellow bloggers. Do you have any words of wisdom for writing words of wisdom? If so, please let me know.

I just got my wisdom teeth pulled (harharhar) so I'm sort of fresh out of the stuff. :-)

Friday, June 1, 2012

Stressed-Out Grad

Today was graduation day and that day is pretty stressful for most people. Your friends and family come so you have to make sure you look good, that you don't trip across the stage, and even making sure you turn the tassle around the corner of the hat. I worried about all of those things, but there were even more things that happened that added unneeded stress to the day.

The stress started before the big day when I found out I was valedictorian and had to prepare a speech. Writing a speech is no problem, but presenting it is another thing altogether. I am not the greatest speaker in the world. Especially if I have to present in ASL since I am not the greatest signer in the world either.  I practice that speech avidly with my public speaking class (thank you, Vicki and Cal!), ASL specialist, and the interpreters as well. I'm going to be speaking in front of the governer of New Mexico so my speech better be written and presented pretty damn well.

Then comes graduation day. I am so nervous, I don't eat breakfast. I want to make sure I don't forget anything. Especially my earplugs and valedictorian sash. My family leaves at 7:30 and halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, I realize that I forgot my sash. Smooth move, Paige. Pancho says that we can't go back and get it since I have to be at school at a certain time. I have the brilliant idea of calling my dad and asking him to bring it with him on his way up, which he was able to do.

Later, I'm in a back room with the graduates and I'm pacing across the floor I'm so nervous. My stomache is growling and a guy from a newspaper is interviewing all of us. I give halfhearted answers since my mind is preoccupied with my speech and sash and food and aaaaah!!!!!

Luckily, the governer is late so graduation is delayed a little bit and the principal comes rushing in right before we go walking into the auditorium with my sash. I later found out that there was construction on I-25 and the road closed for an hour about ten minutes after my dad drove through. Luck was apparently on my side today.

We all walk into the auditorium and sit down. Dr. Stern, the superintendent, welcomes all of us and then it's time for the salutatorian address. My friend and future roommate in college did a wonderful job and after her, it's my turn...

And my speech surprisingly went well. I only made one minor, undetectable mistake. My job is done and relief floods into me. Pancho speaks after me and he gave a wonderful speech. He cried so I almost cried and I think a lot of people cried during that speech.

The governer is up next and gave another great speech. She even quoted my poem in her speech so that was kind of cool. A celebrity likes my writing! Yay!

The rest of the graduation ensues and soon I am finished with high school. Finished. Just knowing that sent another wave of relief through me.

The rest of the day was filled with lots of hugs and goodbyes as well as a lot of laughter at a post-graduation BBQ.

I will miss NMSD. I had a great five years there and it's definitely a place I owe a lot of gratitude to. If I ever come back to New Mexico, it will be to visit NMSD because there's no way anyone could ever get me to come back unless someone dies or gets married.

So yeah. Today was a pretty stressful day, but it was definitely a memorable one that will replay over and over in my mind even when I'm old and have Alzheimers...

Congratulations Class of 2012. We did it. :-)