one of life's great mysteries

random stuff I found on my computer that I've been meaning to post

reblog

knitting from the heart….get it?

My Alphabet

A. Age: 19, turning 20 in November
B. Bed size: Twin right now, but extra long twin at school.
C. Chore that you hate: Cleaning with bleach. I have a really bad reaction to bleach. 
D. Dogs: needy, slobbery, demanding. I'd prefer a cat. 
E. Essential start to your day: Hot chocolate and my Bible study.  
F. Favorite color: Forest green. 
G. Gold or Silver: either <3
H. Height: when I'm just standing I'm about 5'7" but when I stand up straight and let my spine stretch like I do when I'm dancing, I'm 5'8.5"
I. Instruments you play: Recorder and Piano, both by ear.
J. Job title: Student, book reviewer, would-be-ballet teacher
K. Kids: Need a husband first ;)
L. Live: Little town in NC during the summer, and another little town 8 hours away from the first one during the school year.  
M. Mother's name: Michelle
N. Nicknames: "Hey you," "Princess," "Ballerina girl," etc. 
O. Overnight hospital stays: Zero.
P. Pet peeve: boys. (lol sorry.) No, mostly people who don't follow rules. and bad drivers. man do I hate bad drivers. 
Q. Quote from a movie: "when what's left of you gets around to what's left to be gotten, what's left to be gotten won't be worth getting, whatever it is you've got left." ~White Christmas
R. Right or left handed: Right
S. Siblings: three: two little sisters and a little brother (who might end up taller than me…)
T. Time you wake up: Well. See. At school I wake up at 5:30 M-F and whenever I feel like it S/S. At home. it depends on what I did last night, whether I have to work the next day, and whether mom is feeling strict or not. 
U. Underwear: what about it?
V. Vegetable you hate: Almost all of them. I'll eat peas, though…
W. What makes you run late: Other people. I'm usually early. 
X. X-Rays you've had: teeth, knee, stomach
Y. Yummy food that you make: cake. <3
Z. Zoo animal: I hate the zoo. Peacocks are cool though. But generally they don't have butterfly cages at the zoo…

If you do this, leave a comment so I can see yours :)

Rules for writing

List by Keith Cronin

10. Never say verdant.
9. Just because it’s true doesn’t make it compelling – or even interesting.
8. Adverbs are just words. They don’t damage sentences; writers do.
7. Three words: Strunk and White.
6. Don’t fall in love with your words. Makes it hard to kill them.
‎5. It’s hard to grow if you only write what you know. Crap, that rhymes. Wasn’t meant to.
4. When writing sex scenes (edit for the sake of my readers. you can look op the original link if you must.)
3. Stop bitching. You have cut-and-paste, and the Undo key. Most literary greats did not.
2. You’re not wrong: Clive Cussler really does suck.
1. It’s fiction. Make stuff up.

 

And,

A list by Elmore Leonard

1. Never open a book with weather.

If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's ''Sweet Thursday,'' but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: ''I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.''

3. Never use a verb other than ''said'' to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with ''she asseverated,'' and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb ''said'' . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances ''full of rape and adverbs.''

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words ''suddenly'' or ''all hell broke loose.''

This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use ''suddenly'' tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories ''Close Range.''

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's ''Hills Like White Elephants'' what do the ''American and the girl with him'' look like? ''She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.'' That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character -- the one whose view best brings the scene to life -- I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in ''Sweet Thursday'' was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. ''Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts'' is one, ''Lousy Wednesday'' another. The third chapter is titled ''Hooptedoodle 1'' and the 38th chapter ''Hooptedoodle 2'' as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: ''Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.''

''Sweet Thursday'' came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

Writers on Writing

This article is part of a series in which writers explore literary themes. Previous contributions, including essays by John Updike, E. L. Doctorow, Ed McBain, Annie Proulx, Jamaica Kincaid, Saul Bellow and others, can be found with this article at The New York Times on the Web:

www.nytimes.com/arts

Jaaaackkkkk

<3___<3

Photo love

yup. been there.

 

makes me sigh.

 

^^

 

bwahahahahaha!

 

<3

"you'd better start sending names."

Yeah. so I've mentioned the arranged marriage thing up here before, right?

*crickets chirp and readers get weird facial expressions.*

ooookayyy I guess not.

So my dad is picking my husband. not like I'll show up on my wedding day and get married kind of thing, but I want him involved in the process. He's smarter, wiser, more mature, and is an outside perspective (whereas I loose my head easily). and it's good accountability.

so one afternoon mom was like "You'd better start sending dad some names so we can start checking them out."

and I was like "Yeah ok. let me send you the long list of guys who want to marry me."

you see them all in there, waiting anxiously?

yeahhhhh.

remember the whole scaring people away thing? what have I not talked about that either? besides Voldemort I've managed to scare off a bunch of my friends.

or maybe they were never really my friends in the first place.

(depressingly inspired from Nacho).

</3

pretty.

from Monica

Sharing

Re-blogging is where you find something on another blog you like and you share it on yours, but you give credit where credit is due.

Re-blogging some love from The Monica Bird.

From The Monica Bird