yourwords

Job hunting is no fun, and feels very unproductive. However, while I have been filling out online applications a few times a day, I’ve come to notice the ways in which they try to trip you up. Not in the work expirience area, but on the evaluation section.

You know the ones:

You like people.

-Agree

-Strongly Agree

-Disagree

-Strongly Disagree

 And so on. A question that piqued my interest was on the Borders application. They asked twice, in similar phrasings, if people are worth growing close to. I suppose if someone were to put on one question that they find it easy to meet people, then on another question hint that they don’t feel close to anyone, that it could be a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, if a person speaks easilly to strangers, then they are going to be more reliable to approach customers. On the other hand, if they don’t feel close to people, they have a lower chance of feeling attached to the company. What if they enjoy meeting new people to the point that they take on retail jobs quickly, but leave them just as quickly to meet new people?

Even though I answered that I both like to meet new people, and I feel it worth it to get close to people, I also find it very easy to jump into jobs, only to leave a month later in search of something different - to shake things up a bit. That’s the problem with the retail job market, they are supportive of being hired on the fly, and not hanging around very long. Unless it happens to be on your resume. My short duration at job sites is waht maks it difficult to get hired, I’m starting to suspect. After all, 5 months is the longest I’ve worked for any one company, and that happened to be for a therapist.

Prompt:

Write up questions that your main character would ask either a potential employee, potential lover, potential friend, potential enemy, etc. What are they looking for in that person, and are they sneaky about getting the truth, or do they ask directly?

Personally, if my main character were writing questions for a potential lover, she would try her best to trip them up. Then she’d test their knowledge of history, and if she isn’t impressed by that, the application would quickly be shredded. She’s a tough bitch. I based her on a mix between a badger and the old hag from Dark Crystal.

So while I impatiently await the midnight showing of Twilight tomorrow, I’m in the throngs of another vampire series: House of Night.

It’s an interesting take on the whole modern day vampire fiction. While Twilight is about teenagers who are spending their waking minutes being old for their age (literally in the case of immortal vampires) But Bella, in all seriousness, is pointedly against the teen girl thing. She has music and movies, briefly, but they’re not anything that exists in true pop culture. The twilight kids are boxed up in a small, very green town, in the middle of no where, cut off from most of the world. That works for twilight, and it’s kind of nice to pretend some things don’t exist for a while (like MTV) even if it’s strange that a teenage girl is completely isolated. She doesn’t even like the internet… Whatever, though, she’s into the classics, namely old fashioned immortal vampires named Edward that also happen to be super hot.

By the way, I don’t want to think about how badly they could have messed up on the Twilight movie, so from now until midnight tomorrow and hopefully throughout the movie, all I will be concentrating on is hot vampires. It’ll lessen the dissapointment I hope.

Moving back to my original topic, Marked is the first book of the series House of Night. And immediately in the first paragraph you can tell that it’s not one of those “the world doesn’t exist” kind of fictions. Which is a very good thing in this case. Marked is extrememly readable, unlike most vampire novels. Usually, in the case of Anne Rice and Bram Stoker anyway, Vampire novels get extremely wordy and broody. They’re still brilliant, but for me, it’s an epic challenge to force down. Twilight even has it’s moments, which I’m sure the movie will cut out. Marked, however, is action packed. The main character Zoey is constantly surrounded by people, and every page is something new to learn.

Which makes sense because she’s slowly becoming a vampire and has to go to a school called the House of Night. No spoilers fer ye! That be stuff ye can learn on the back cover, arrrgh!

Anywho… Although it’s teeny bopper maximum, with MTV and something about that DiCaprio fellow, Marked ain’t bad. It even swears! I was starting to think I was the only author that let her characters drop F bombs! yay!

• Location:house

Personal projects are difficult for me to finish. If I am the only one to impress, then who am I to ask so much of myself? I can take days off, and write only a little if I feel lacking in creativity. What the hell? I am my own boss and I have the best boss ever.

Of course, that means I never get anything done. I looked back on my history of writing, and I found that the books I finished the fastest, and with the most exciting plots, were the books that friends were reading along the way. I had some bossy friends, lol. One in particular would come in to class everyday in middle school expecting me to have another chapter done. That’s apparently how I finished my first book, 164 pages, in a year. Without that constant nagging (which in this case is a good thing) I lose projects in their early stages to my lacking morale.

Lucky for me, though, I have a friend right now in Iraq who volunteered to be my motivator. Last night he called me at 2:00 am, and told me to get writing so he can read it. I was like “huh? yeah ok. I’ll do it tomorrow.” Not that I was asleep anyway, just wishing I was. But having him as a driving force is helping me along, no doubt. He’s fascinated by the reasearch I’m doing, and he thinks my opening paragraph is new york times best seller material (wow! I don’t care if he’s exaggerating to make me feel good, I still feel good about it ) . If it weren’t for his enthusiasm, I may have given up by now. Thanks motivator!!

Prompt:

Do writers all get stuck inside their own heads? Why? Does it mean they’re selfish or just a little odd? Explore the idea, then come tell me how to solve it.

This isn’t a very good thing to say on a blog that advocates writing, but it’s an empty victory. After a great weekend of writing, and doing nothing else, you’d think I’d be proud of myself. It is not so. I feel anti social and like a lazy bum. The writing is good though, , which means my book is finally underway. Thereby completing the empty victory. Sigh. No, actually what completes my empty victory is that while I was writing just now, I missed a very important phone call from someone I haven’t talked to in forever. And I missed it by seconds.  That’s what I get for being too engrossed in my book.

Prompt:

Everything we perceive as good is balanced out with something not so great. Usually the thing we value most as being ‘good’ also has the most negative consequences. Take a minute to write about something that makes you very happy. Cooking? Sports? Whatever. Write about it thoroughly, and make sure to include when you get a chance to enjoy this thing, how it makes you feel, what you probably give up in order to enjoy it, etc. Then read it over and see if you’ve found the negative aspect yet. You may be surprised.

There’s a lot of things I’d like to say about Prop 8, and I could go on for too long, so I’m going to limit myself. Somewhat. :)

My mom and I get a long very well, and we only bicker about once a week or so lol. But when the election came around, I really had to hold my tongue. She is against gay marriage one hundred and fifty percent. It’s wrong in god’s eyes, it spoils the sanctity of marriage, and gay people are unnatural. That’s what she was raised to believe, and thats what the mormon church would have everyone believe. But somehow I thought my mom could surpass all that and do the right thing. No. And she’s a sweetheart about it, she’s not a lecturer or beligerent at all. When prop 8 went through, she didn’t rub it in my face whatsoever, didn’t even mention it. Still, though, it’s hurts me that she would take away people’s rights like that.

It’s the generation gap, apparently. When she was a little girl, she asked her mom if she’d ever rent out their spare room to a black family. My grandmother told my mother that she’d rather burn down the room than let a black family live there. My mom was shocked, and I was too. Now I’m shocked again. It’s not nearly as bad, my mom is a very loving woman, and she would give the food out of her mouth to anyone no matter who. She just doesn’t want them to get married.

There’s no awkwardness because of this, and I’ll never let it come between us, but it makes me sad. I must be a 20th century girl, but I don’t think the bible is a good dictionary for what we’re going through right now. And I don’t see a line between gay couples and straight couples. This might alienate me somehow, but I’ve dated girls, and I would marry one. It’s all the same, only the holes change ;)

Prompt:

Generation gaps get pretty nasty. As fast as we’re moving right now, the gaps will continue to widen. What will your children accept that you don’t? What will they call you a bigot and old fashioned for believeing?

Love is a tricky dick.

Or the pursuit of love, I should say.

There’s no need to say that I’m currently dealing with lots of emotional ‘love-type’ issues, because I think everyone does whether they’re single, married, or other. That’s how it feels sometimes- that ‘other’ status. If you are having problems in a relationship, or you’re having problems with trying to get into one, the other seems like handy classification. I’m constantly in the ‘other.’

There’s no escaping this tormenting ‘love’ thing. One of the difficulties I face in this “other” category is my anticipaations of people. I expect people to fall into neat little traps- all of which get labelled wrong. I think we all do this when we meet people. We try to fit them into our preceptions, so that we might not feel uncomfortable with them. In the case of meeting ‘potential interests’ hopefully beyond friendship (because those ‘friend’ crossover relationships kill my soul even to think about) I think our preconceptions are even more severe. For instance, I can rule out a potential love interest in the matter of a few well chosen minutes. It hurts me to be so picky. I don’t like imagining all the bad things that could happen, but I do it, and it makes me run away.

What this has to do with writing? My main character right now is emulating that response to men without me even trying to make her. It’s a disease that she caught from me. And I thought maybe I could try making her not a run-away, but that didn’t appeal to me. Wow. Type-casting.

Prompt:

Back to lyrics. Haven’t been there in a while.

When I hear the song “Strawberry Fields” I want to cry. There’s something very deeply appealing about the offer to go to a land of peace and beauty. To me, I imagine frolicking, and sunny meadows. Maybe even a flower or two behind ears. I see that place and I feel like I’m home. Lyrics that touch you deeply are revealing. Because strawberry fields appeal to me, I am looking for a very innocent, idealistic love. What love are you looking for?