Conclusion: The Underestimated Interrobang

My dear, dear readers, it seems we have come to the end of this glorious assignment. And I have chosen at this time to showcase my absolute favorite punctuation mark: The interrobang.

Born from 1960's typewriters, this simple mark (shown above) meant to bring together the querying aspect of the question mark and the outrage/excitement of the exclamation point. It is perfect for sentences such as "The dog did what‽" or "What do you think you're doing in that air duct‽ Get out of there immediately!" It allows for outraged questions without the awkward "?!" or "!?" used so often today in venues from informal essays to best-selling novels (although, with marks like that, it's no wonder that they aren't best-selling for long).

So at this point, I'll move to the topic sentence of this entry. 

"You mean, it's over‽"  (Bolded interrobang: not a good look.)

Yes, boys and girls. Unfortunately, time marches on, and waits for no electronic writing project. Such is life. Even so, I have thoroughly enjoyed this endeavor in a way that I never expected to. Quite honestly, until the moment that I was staring at the entry page to begin this blog, I thought that it was going to end horribly. All I can say is, I was very happily mistaken. I love it when I'm wrong.

Thanks to all of my wonderful commentors throughout this experiment. You are all true friends. I wish that I could have akgnowledged all of you for your support, but I hope you know that each and every one of you gave me the extra boost I needed to actually continue writing.

Now, I would love to say for sure that I was going to continue this. As great as that would be (My very own blog, all mine! Squeee!), I know myself too well to believe that I'll be able to keep up with this on a regular basis. I may make a few more entries, but I can almost promise that they will be few and far between. 

So, until further notice, I bid thee adieu. 

(Sidenote: Save the interrobang!)   

Paying Homage to One of the Greats

Today, we'll be starting with a quote from an absolute literary legend. His name is.... wait for it... Robert A. Heinlein. 

Yup, that's him. He's written such classics as Stranger in a Strange Land and The Day After Tomorrow. He's absolutely beautiful... well, alright, so his work is absolutely beautiful. 

Anyway, the quote comes from a speech given by Dr. Richard Ames in his book, The Cat who Walked Through Walls.  It goes a little something like this: 

      "I have a nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write. I'm not going to apologize for writing anymore than I would apologize for this missing foot, and in truth one led to the other. When I could no longer follow the profession of arms, I had to do something to eat. I wasn't trained for anything else and back home some other kid had my paper route. But writing is a legal way of avoiding work without actually stealing and one that doesn't take any talent or training.

      "But writing is antisocial. Disturb a writer when he is in the throes of creation and he is likely to turn and bite right to the bone... and not even know he's doing it. As writers' wives and husbands often learn to their horror. 

      "And... there is no way that writers can be tamed or rendered civilized. Or even cured. In a household with more than one person, of which one is a writer, the only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private, and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. Because, if you disturb the patient at such times, he may break into tears or become violent. Or he may not hear you at all... and, if you shake him at this stage, he bites...

      "I did not explain to you the other aspect of writing. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially necessary, because it hurts less to write than it does not to write... I took that first fatal step- a short story, it was, and I honestly thought I could quit anytime. Never mind, Dear. In another ten years you will understand. Just pay no attention to me when I whimper. Doesn't mean anything, just the monkey on my back." 

I'll stop there, since it's long enough, but he goes on to talk about a man he knew, a writer, who tried to see a psychoanalyst and the last he saw of him, he was basically locked up in a psych ward. Something along those lines. 

You're probably wondering what my point is. I don't have one, really. I think I just wanted to share that gem of a quote with you all. I hope you appreciate it. I picked up a copy of The Cat who Walks Through Walls. I absolutely recommend it to anyone with a hunger for sci-fi and dry humor. 

Take Chances! Make Mistakes! Get Messy!

So I spent the last few days trying to figure out how to follow up my last post. Lists are wonderful things, and I've tried to give myself a guideline (I won't call it a rule because I break it a lot) that every new thing I write should be better than the last.

Ladies and gentlemen, I was stumped.

I was dry for words, lost, completely blank. "Writer's block" doesn't quite cover it; I felt like a lack of voice was closing in on me, suffocating me. I could barely think, let alone put my fingers to the keyboard. I panicked. I shut down the computer, and then I shut down myself.

And the next day, I went to the park with a few of my cousins and ran around for half an hour. We climbed on the jungle gyms and chased each other, playing some sort of tag with no rules. We laughed and fell over each other and I realized that I didn't feel stifled anymore. In fact, I was already beginning to compose something new.

Writers are often very introverted, sedentary people. We tend not only to keep to ourselves, but keep others at arm's length. We claim it's all because we need to be alone to write, we need quiet, we can't let other people distract us, et cetera.  And then, after we have spent five days alone in our house with no outside contact and a half finished document staring at us with almost malicious intent, we're surprised when suddenly we run out of things to say.

Romance writers often have a dozen failed relationships behind them. Novels that take place in another country are often written by someone who has either heavily researched or has actually been to that country. Obviously, fantasy and sci-fi writers don't actually experience the strange otherworldly things that they write about, but there is always a thread of truth throughout the entire story of real events.

My point is this: To be a writer, you need something to write about. To have something to write about, you need to go experience new things. Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!

... Well, you know what I mean. Try new things, guys! Why do you think the Travel channel has so many shows about people running around different countries and sampling the local cuisine? People are intensely interested in all the things they don't know, especially the things they don't know that they don't know.

After all, if a simple trip to the park gave me the idea for this blog entry, imagine what more could do for you.

You Know You're a Writer When...

Believe it or not, some writers don't know that they're writers. Since there are so many different types, it can be more than a little difficult to spot a real writer among all the people that simply put words to paper, especially if they don't know it themselves. There are, however, a few hallmarks of a true writer, and I'll list them here. (As should be obvious from the first one, this is for all you writers who are well aware of what you are too.)

You know you're a writer when...

1. You can prescribe every song on the radio to a scene in your book.
2. It often looks like you're talking to yourself, but actually you're testing out dialogue between your characters.
3. You have a favorite writing utensil and notebook type.
4. It messes you up to continue a work in a different medium than you started in (switching from pencil to pen, or even just one pen to another, for instance).
5. You run through conversations with your friends in your head and edit them to flow better.
6. Your friends have taken to correcting themselves so you don't have to.
7. You twitch when people say things like, "That girl and I is."
8. You can't stand electronic books.
9. When you finish a test, you take out a notebook instead of a book.
10. You find yourself in debates with your teachers about the correctness of starting a sentence with a conjunction.
11. Handing over the first finished manuscript to a reader/editor is an incredibly painful process, not because you don't want them to read it, but because you don't trust them not to tear off the back cover or fold down the pages.
12. You prefer not to answer the question, "What is your book about?" because you would like to go home within the next four hours.
13. People tell you that you talk too much.
14. You take an extreme dislike to some movies, and you don't really know why. (This is usually because it either isn't a very good story or it didn't end well.)
15. You are either absolutely terrified of people or you find them fascinating, or some strange mix of both.
16. You read. You read all the time. There is always a book on you, and it seems like you're always in the middle of it.
17. Your conscience sounds suspiciously like your main character.
18. You dance around the room in excitement when you finally figure out how to end that chapter that you've been working on for five days.
19. You are reading a scene in a classic novel and suddenly realize that the strange situation actually probably happened to the writer.
20. You don't have a favorite book.    

Introduction: Don't Lose Your Words.

From the moment I learned to scrawl symbols on a piece of paper to represent the sounds of words, I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Storytelling is my everything, my reason for living. As such, the open notebooks and empty pens littering my public school desks over the years generate comments of both admiration and concern.
"Writing is hard."
"I don't know how you can sit there and just write all the time. I wouldn't have the patience."
"You mean that's not for a class? You're writing that for fun?"

It can be one of the most difficult things to hold on to your words when it feels like no one around you truly understands the point of what you're doing. A lot of people lose heart. Others decide they have no talent and never pick up a pen again. This is one of the most tragic things I have discovered about the world we live in.

That's why I'm here. Someone needs to put a stop to this, and I guess that someone is me. That's alright. I've got quite a bit of free time on my hands. This is all for you: that undiscovered writer with the inferiority complex, always told to get your head out of the clouds. Put it back in.

Let the words flow.