Reading Response, Week 5

This week I really enjoyed viewing the various slideshows Marin linked us. I didn't view all of them - there seemed to be about sixty - but I'll probably be working on seeing them all over the next couple of weeks, they were so enjoyable. The use of black and white photos was striking - illustrating the story of a tuxedo-purveyor (that's probably not his proper title, but we'll go with it) with such lack of color seemed like a perfect choice. For most stories, this choice worked well, though for others - such as the story of the taxidermist - I felt color photos could have been used to better effect. I also loved the stories that were told - the people had such character. However, it was a little strange to watch the slideshow and then be presented with a little snippet of text providing more background on the person - sometimes, but not often, background that I wanted to learn about the person in the slideshow itself. This probably wasn't included in the show itself because it wasn't relevant to the story being told, and perhaps others didn't have this problem because as I have just discovered, you can view this 'About' at anytime, even previous to the show. A minor point.

The slideshows seem so simple - a person tells their story, a photojournalist snaps some photos of the scenery, and voila! you've got the product. But so much work must go on behind the scenes, work in finding the right person, getting their story out of them, taking the right photos, let alone editing it all together in such a harmonious way. I hope that my final project will be a fraction of what these slideshows are.

Moving on to Kristof. His topics were always interesting, for which I admire him. He also always provides resolution to his stories, general as some of his conclusions may be. His stories are concise and to the point, providing a perfect snapshot of whatever his opinions may be. However, for whatever reason I found his voice somewhat bland. He definitely has a voice in his pieces, but the way that he puts things/phrases things is just so...normal. I can't think of a better way to describe it. Doesn't mean his writing is boring, but it doesn't give me a sense of mood or tone so much, I suppose. I was interested in reading more about a couple of the subjects he wrote about - the American prostitution story in particular could have been so much of a bigger piece, particularly having recently read Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's in-depth piece, "Trina and Trina," but for what it was I liked it. Overall I enjoyed Kristof as a writer but would like to read more of his long-form work.

Choose Your Own Assignment - Profile Focus

I didn't expect to enjoy this piece as much as I did, but there you have it. Here's a link to the profile I picked for the class to read this week: http://www.slate.com/id/2291929/pagenum/all/#p2

In fact, when I clicked on the page to read the story, I felt similar to how the profile's author, Vanessa Friedman, felt when she was asked to report on this story: cynical. How could a fluffy little piece on a professional hair stylist be of much interest to me? But just as Friedman's assumptions about Vidal Sassoon were proven wrong, so my expectations that this story would be boring and of no merit were disproven. Sassoon is an interesting character, and though Friedman doesn't go overly in-depth into his life, the details, large and small, she pulls out about him - that he vaguely knew Marlon Brando, was one of the first to become interested in Pilates as fitness, and completely reinvented the hairstyling profession to become the one that we now know - attract the reader's interest. He's a remarkable guy, and I think this illustrates well one of the tenets we've been told of profile writing - pick an interesting person to write about.

In addition, some of turns of phrase - Friedman's description of Sassoon as the "Bill Gates of hair" and the quotes she obtained - regarding Michelle Obama's hair - "Oh! What wonderful straightening techniques they have today" are well done. The author also creates an identifiable voice for herself that stands out, which is interesting to observe. This may be no profile of a serious event or person, and it's certainly no New Yorker profile - I decided against posting one of those after going through several 10 - 13 page long articles, seeing as we won't be writing pieces that long anyway - but it does paint an interesting, descriptive picture of a person, which is what a profile sets out to achieve.

Additionally, I found this while looking for profiles on the Nieman Storyboard, thought it might be an interesting read for people looking for more information on writing profiles: http://sonofboldventure.blogspot.com/2011/03/profile-writing-basics.html

Personal Essay, Second Draft

This is pretty heavily rewritten. Here goes.

The outline is supposed to be:
Complication: Relationships consume Ellen
Development:
Ellen breaks relationship
Ex rejects Ellen
Ellen fears loss
Resolution: Ellen releases control
If that doesn't match up, then I've got something of a problem.

I’ve never been what you would call “boy-crazy,” though maybe you wouldn’t know that from the moving in and out of relationships I’ve been doing during my three years of collegiate life. I’ve loved video games and reading ever since elementary school, though these days Kalamazoo College’s hectic academic schedule keeps us apart for protracted periods of time. I’m not the type of girl who planned her wedding out in third grade, or tried to figure out what the name of my future husband would be. I didn’t have my first boyfriend until freshman year of college.

Now I’m a junior and I’m on number three. So I have some experience with this boy thing. Maybe it’s because of my inexperience with dating and love until so recently that when I fall for someone, I fall hard. I’ll cling to a relationship like there’s no tomorrow. Friendships in themselves mean a lot to me – I don’t make friends easily, so when someone ends a friendship with me, my stomach flips along with my world. I wrap myself up in relationships, platonic or romantic; I’ve often had the thought that they matter to me more than the academic aspect of college. So when I found myself, in November of my sophomore year at Kalamazoo College, forced to choose between two potential suitors – my ex-boyfriend of freshman year, Stewart; and the freshman guy I’d been dating since around October, Shafer, I knew that I was making an important decision regarding relationships. What I failed to realize was how far this would impact my friendships, and how tightly I myself would attempt to cling to the now cold corpse of a formerly vibrant friendship.

It begins what seems now far back in the spring of our freshman year, now two years ago, when Stewart and I decided to end our relationship. Politeness abounded on both sides – the whole idea began, of all places, in a facebook message that he wrote to me. In that logically thought-out message thread, we revealed our fears about the “long-distance relationship.” Never mind the fact that the great insurmountable obstacle of distance was being located two and a half hours apart, he in Chicago and myself in the small town of Niles, Michigan. Stewart wrote of his past problems with this kind of relationship, and I recalled the hard time I’d gone through in the month-long separation we’d had over our school’s winter break. In the end, we decided that it was of benefit for us to break up at the beginning of summer instead of subjecting our relationship to the stresses of distance, so that we might avoid a possible implosion later on – our already crumbling social group could not endure an explosive falling out on the two of our parts.

We entertained the idea of dating come next year, come close proximity again. I fell in more with this idea than he did, and clung to that raft of an idea over summer as the distance grew hard on me, as I realized that I still had feelings for this guy. I texted him a long message about how I missed him, how I hoped we could be together again, about how I loved him. He told me that maybe I didn’t really know what love was, a crushing blow.

But this wasn’t really where our relationship broke. Despite this, I cherished thoughts of a reunion come fall, hiding them deep down inside. For summer and much of fall, we stayed friends, hung out, remained close. A mutual friend of ours, after seeing us over summer, actually thought we were still together. Mentally, psychically, we may have been – we acted the same way we always had, without the physicality and formality of a relationship. The experiences of fall and winter of sophomore year were what worked to tear us apart. I pined after Stewart – I saw him nearly every day, we got along the same as we always had, we played the same games. I wanted our old relationship back, but I couldn’t tell him. After all, he had told me no. He would have to be the one to bring us back together.

Every weekend, often during the week as well, I made the lonesome nighttime trek from his dorm room suite – a place of gaudy, goofily arranged Christmas lights, stadium seating featuring two (2) couches (one on a homemade wooden platform behind the other), and copious amounts of video games – where he and many of our friends congregated, across campus to my single dorm, and loneliness. As I walked back night after night, fantasies of Stewart running out of his dorm after me, realizing that he really did want me after all, ran through my head. But it never happened, and slowly but surely I began to realize that it probably wouldn't.

Then I fell into the second of my college relationships with Shafer. After five months I was finally moving on from a guy I’d pined over all summer and part of fall to a potentially great new guy. However, Stewart didn’t end up seeing it that way. Being the game nerd that I am, I met and began to get to know Shafer at a Super Smash Brothers Brawl tournament, where we played the card game Magic: the Gathering. We ended up back in Stewart’s six person dorm room suite that night hanging out with all of my friends, Shafer’s head of Greek/Syrian, massively fluffy shoulder-length hair conspicuously in my lap. Stewart saw us together, and now he wanted me back.

I took him back – for a day. I remember that day of golden sunlight on the suite couch, my head in his lap, his hand stroking my back. It did not last. Shafer protested, shouting my name across upper quad, writing persuasive message about how “Stewart had his chance” and that I should come back to him. And I did. Something probably broke in Stewart when that happened, and I still regret having wrenched someone’s heart from joy to despair like that, all in one day.

Stewart and I tried to remain friends in the face of this. Over the course of months, we still hung out with the same people, played the same games, ate in the same cafeteria together. But in the end it couldn’t work out that way for him. We held many a discussion on the artificial plane of facebook, and eventually decided to grow up and actually talk to each other in person. One winter night in January, he came to my room. He sat in my chair. He told me, “I love you.” Tangled up in my desire for Shafer, I could no longer have any of that. I felt no reciprocal love. I wanted his friendship and nothing more, and I couldn’t see how much that simple fact hurt him.

When all this failed, what he did next was logical. This turned out to be the real world version of “de-friending.” He completely cut me out of his life, a surgeon excising a cancerous tumor, a doctor cauterizing a wound. Out of nowhere he simply stopped social interaction with me. The texts, the friendly bandying-about, even seeing each other over dinner – they were gone and my world began to flip.

Another winter’s night, I pinned him down to find out what was going on. He sat in the green and white striped club chair on loan from my parents’ house, I on my bed, the room dimly lit by my small decorative silver lamp affectionately named Horatio. He didn’t meet my glance when I looked at him.

Distinct memories of our conversation that evening do not survive. Emotion clouds it. Nor do I want to put things he didn’t actually say into his mouth. He told me that he connected me too much with the person he had been freshman year, a person he wanted to move away. That our connection was tainted, that he knew no other way to act around me other than as a lover. Complete severance of our friendship would further his attempt to move on from me, something he had found impossible to this point.

I cried. I told him that even if he came back to be my friend after finally working through his issues about me, I would always remember what he had done to me. I told him I hated him.

Why couldn’t someone I had considered my best friend look at me with a friendly face?

Why had I lost him, and how could I get him back as a friend? Because despite my assertions of hate, that was what I really wanted. Moving on I could understand well enough, but my feelings of rejection and loss were overwhelming. Why wasn’t I good enough? How could he remain friends with everyone else from last year, and not me, the person he’d been closest to? I didn’t know what to do other than fight, and fight I did, with more tears and angry words. To no avail.

Where Stewart’s friendship had been, there was now a vacuum, a black hole, pulling in feelings of happiness and spewing out hatred and rejection. At one point, Shafer, who strangely became fast friends with Stewart, invited myself and Stewart over to eat some leftover pasta and play cards in his room, without telling either of us he’d invited more than one person. I showed up first, heard that Stewart was coming, and then my stomach plummeted. Stewart showed up, saw that I was there, and almost promptly left, staying for a few short minutes to have some of the pasta and converse with Shafer.

I lost Stewart, and he’s not coming back. He’s moved on: while we still have some friends in common, he has a new girlfriend, and a new set of friends. A year later, I still haven’t talked to him. Just last weekend, he was invited over to a friend of mine’s apartment to play cards. I looked forward to the prospect of maybe becoming friendly again. Stewart came, but not when I was able to be there. He pointedly avoiding being around me because of group “politics,” a friend later told me.

At this point, however, I think that I’ve finally come to grips with the matter. Dealing with loss of this kind is difficult, and extremely frustrating – it’s like having lost your keys. You search and search, wishing that your keychain had some kind of tracking device on it that beeped, anything to help you relocate that most precious of objects. In this case, however, it’s like I put my keys on a conveyer belt and expected them to be there again when I wanted them. It wasn’t reasonable of me to expect Stewart to simply sit there and stay being my friend, keep being there for me, while I carried on my new relationship with Shafer right in front of his face – trying to do so probably broke part of his heart. He needed to act, and so he did, in the most reasonable way he knew how.

He doesn’t want to be my friend on account of a number of painful associations our friendship has, and that is understandable. My attempt to hold onto our friendship when he no longer wanted was the opposite of how a friendship should be; it’s a mutual contract, and once one person has signed off on his or her part, there is little the other party can do about it. One must simply relax and let them go, difficult as that may be. It’s not worth it to chase after those that don’t want you; time spent in the company of those who want you is time much better spent.

Tom Franklin Explains It All

Reading Jon Franklin's Writing for Story proved quite an experience. As I ran through the pages, I found many concepts that I instinctively agreed with along with others that left me a little confused but eventually accepting. Overall I hope that the text will help smooth the writing process along for me. Though I can't exactly say I used too much of his structure in writing this post, so fasten your seatbelts, this might be something of a rough, bumpy ride.

First of all, the things we hold in common. I enjoyed his section on outlining - the process is one that I myself, to an extent, attempt to or need to do in order to write anything complex. But the way I outline is far less refined and adept than his. His explication of how precisely one should outline is one that I want to use in my writing from here on out, and hopefully that'll be a resolution that I stick with; the process brings clarity and logic to writing, something we could all use more of.

His idea that one should begin at the end and work from there I also agree with. How can you really know what you're introducing the reader to if you don't quite have it set up yet? I also attempt to utilize this technique when I write. But here, again, Franklin's knowledge and experience with craft trumps mine, since when I do the writing that I most often do (critical writing, in my case), I usually jump headfirst into the development, the evidence I have for my argument, as opposed to starting with the major resolution part. It's what I did when I started writing this piece - skipped the introductory paragraph in favor of getting to the meat of the writing. Since I haven't quite got it in my head what I want to say about Writing for Story, I sit down and write it out first, then try to come up with an introduction that encapsulates what I've written, and a hopefully punchy conclusion.

This points to another problem I encounter when writing - not knowing exactly what I want to say yet and attempting to just sit down and write it all out. Which is where the idea of outlining - strictly structured outlining - will hopefully come in handy in the future.

Consistent use of active verbs is another writer's commandment I've heard preached ever since I've come to college - and if I had a better memory, I'd probably remember hearing some of that even through high school. It's something I'd like to improve on, though in crunch time more passive verbs or static 'to be' verbs sometimes present themselves as easier, or at least require less thinking about what word to use. Franklin also discusses word choice and the matter of getting the just-right word for the occasion. He says that the thesaurus on the whole isn't of much use to writers. Here I might have to disagree with him, because I've found the thesaurus in my word processing app useful over the years. Sometimes I'll come up with the next-to-right word, but for whatever reason there's an impassable block in my mind to that word that's just crying out for me to use, the one that I know but can't remember right now. Out comes the thesaurus, I look up the almost-right word, and there on the computer is the word that my memory has been scrambling for. It's also great for when you've been using a word over and over and over; you're sick of the word, you know whoever eventually reads what you've written will get sick of it, and with your handy thesaurus you can come up with something fresh and new.

Franklin's advice on how to structure your stories will be of great help to me; I have hardly anything of a creative writing background, so any words on how to show instead of tell are of use to me. His breakdown of the piece into transitional, preparatory, and climactic narrative also helps to see that writing isn't that complicated or intimidating of a beast, when you get down to the small parts. And his descriptions of the various storytelling techniques - foreshadowing, flashback, among others - make these things more graspable for the uninitiated writer that I am. His last chapter, about the artist and art, left me feeling a little left out because I've never felt the gripping need to write stories to change the world, or the distinction that I'm a special artist. In fact, I've never wanted to be an artist. All of which is helpful in evaluating what I want to do with my life; something I didn't really expect to contemplate when reading this book, but good nonetheless.

Personal Essay Writing Challenges

The personal essay piece was a challenge for me to write for several reasons. One, I don't do much story writing in general, meaning that I've never done this before. I have done some journalistic writing of stories, but never one that hit so close to home, never one with myself as a central character. And I wish I would've read Lopate's essay that stressed fleshing out the "I" character before sitting down to write this, because the tips in that text would have been quite helpful in alerting me to the fact that most everyone reading my piece doesn't really know who "I" am.

Getting down to more specifics: As has been noted in some of the comments I've received, I'm not sure how well the key story transitions or relates to the story I wanted to tell about loss. I agree that could use some work. Additionally, looking back I'm not sure how well this shows change in my personality, which was an important part of the assignment, and so in my next draft I would like to emphasize that more, possibly through further fleshing out some of the secondary examples I mentioned and cutting down on the key/moving into apartment elements of the piece. Lastly, I had difficulty making the essay feel like it had a point, like there was something to be learned from what I experienced, and would like to hit on that more. I did enjoy the writing process, however, and look forward to improving it with everyone's help through workshop.

Loss and the Dealing With Thereof

I recently moved into my first apartment. Well, at least the first apartment I’ve had to pay electric and cable for, and clean for myself in, seeing as I did do a fair amount of cooking and whatnot when I lived in an apartment in Greece while I studied abroad in Athens. It’s felt like I’m taking my first steps into the “real world,” as young and naïve as that may sound, as I ordered the electric and cable, bought furnishings to fit out the apartment, paid bills, and even had a minor meltdown about possible bed bugs.

Though really this whole experience is like living on my own (with a roommate) on training wheels – my parents have struck a deal with me so that they’re really the ones paying the bills for now; at least through my undergrad they pay for my room and board. So in some ways apartment life feels like a continuation of dorm life, with stricter consequences for messing around.

Several of my friends are also new to living the apartment life, as neighbors, roommates, and the like. Recently one of them, Mike, managed to lose his keys not once, but twice in the past three days, whether because due to his own fault, accidental displacement by another, or sheer bad luck I cannot say. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t yet located them again from the second go-around. He’s dealing with this loss in a way I might myself deal with it—telling himself they aren’t lost yet and that they’ll turn up eventually, that everything will be just fine despite the fact that the situation seems a little out of his control, especially because he doesn’t appear to be doing anything to fix the problem.

But who would, considering that the what he’ll probably have to resort to is paying a hefty fine of around $75 to replace keys and lock, with the alternative—waiting and hoping they turn up, with an added dash of searching when not otherwise occupied—is so much easier. This loss has proved extremely frustrating, for my friend, as he feels somewhat helpless in his attempt to regain what is missing, what now seemingly resists being found. What course does he choose now? Should he continue the search, scouring his apartment in hopes of finally finding the lost item—all while putting the contents of his and his roommate’s apartment in some danger of being stolen from—or buckle down and pay the fee to get keys and lock replaced, with the accompanying paranoia of one day relocating the hunted object and feeling a damn fool.

The basic feelings that Mike’s been feeling lately should be well known to all who’ve had to cope with loss, whether it be big or small. Feelings of frustration, anxiety, worry, and thoughts of “How do I go about dealing with this?” assault the mind, in greater or smaller degrees depending on the loss. This particular example of losing one’s keys does pale in comparison to the feelings of loss that accompany death of one close to you, or losing a lover, even a friend to a fight. The point is that loss is a label that applies to everyone, one that we all can identify with, in greater or smaller amounts depending on what we’ve lost. What is crucial to focus on in the wake of such occurrences is how the person in question deals with loss, what reactions ensue, and what knowledge can be gained even in the face of a potentially horrific loss.

All of which may seem horribly off topic in an essay purporting to concern itself with “Modern Love.” Worry not; I’m getting there, though in a very indirect fashion. The two topics, love and loss, can be seen to go hand in hand, though this requires use of a somewhat morbid lens. As I see it, anyway, love tends to come with the inevitability of loss. A thought that’s been had countless times before, I’m sure, but one that is always strikingly depressing to me. A relationship, a friendship, even a bond with a pet may begin with an overflowing amount of goodwill, love, friendliness, or what have you, but things process unceasingly toward an end, however it may come. Significant others grow apart, friendships disintegrate due to neglect over time or implode in a fiery explosion of words, the pet (or owner, perhaps) dies. Marriage, the everlasting bond, you say? Till death do us part, I say. We all die in the end; mortal bonds are inevitably broken, whether they be your attachment to your keys as an essential part of daily life or the highest flowering of love you feel toward the person you’ve partnered with for life. College seems a particularly intense time for love—of all sorts, not merely romantic—to run high, and loss to occur to capitalize on these feelings. I’ve seen it happen to others around me, it’s happened to me, and I don’t expect it to stop any time soon, especially seeing as it’s happening to me, in the right here and now.

Last year, when I was a sophomore in college, I began getting into the processes of dating a freshman guy, after determining that my boyfriend of the year before and I were not, in fact, going to get back together as we had originally thought of doing, for reasons probably too complicated to go into here. I saw it as finally moving on from a guy I’d pined over all summer and part of fall to a potentially great new guy, as strange and contorted as this new relationship eventually grew to be. However, Guy Number One didn’t exactly see it that way. We were still very close, and shared a group of fairly tight-knit friends; as such, we saw each other nearly every day, and when he began to see Guy Number Two, who became integrated into our group and friends with Number One eventually, and I together, he ended up quite jealous. He wanted me back, but that wasn’t what I wanted.

To cut something of a long story shorter, we tried to remain friends, having made something of a promise the year before to attempt to do so in the potential face of breaking up. Over the course of months, we hung out with the same people, played the same games, ate in the same cafeteria together. But in the end it couldn’t work out that way for him. He confessed to still being in love with me on two occasions, and when all else failed, what he did turned out to be the real world version of “de-friending.” He completely cut me out of his life, the way a surgeon would excise a malignant, cancerous tumor. Like you’d cauterize a wound. Out of nowhere he simply stopped most forms of social interaction with me, avoiding me like I was the plague.

By the time I sat him down and talked to him about what was going on, I was hurting badly down inside. Why wouldn’t someone I considered my best friend at one point even look at me with a friendly face? Why had I lost him, and how could I get him back as a friend? Finding out the reasons why he no longer wanted to associate me didn’t help much at the time, either—he connected me too much with the person he had been freshman year, and that was a person he wanted to move away from being, plus this would further his attempt to move on after me.

Moving on I could understand well enough, but my feelings of rejection and loss were overwhelming. Why wasn’t I good enough? How could he remain friends with everyone else from last year, and not me, the person he’d been closest to? I didn’t know what to do other than fight, and fight I did, with tears and angry words. To no avail. Those keys were never found again, and there is no price to pay in order to replace what we once had. I’m happy he’s found happiness now, but his separation from me did much in wrenching parts of our group of friends apart, to the point where I don’t see several of them as often as I would like.

And examples could continue; a friend of mine, Jake, had a similar—but still more explosive—falling out with his former roommate for seemingly no other reason than that their personal habits and mannerisms grated on each other too much over the year while living in close proximity. Another friend of mine appears to be distancing himself from myself and my current boyfriend, possibly even our entire circle of friends from last year, for seemingly no reason at all, and I’m still not sure how to react to this. Do I try to talk to him, or simply give up caring about things and let him go his own way? Is lying down and accepting the loss, in hopes of maybe reconciling later, better than putting up a damaging fight that might leave lasting, incurable wounds on the relationship?

I still don’t know the answer to that question, and I’m not sure I will ever find the correct stance for dealing with loss of love, be it romantic or platonic. Does one react with passivity and tact, or come in guns blazing trying to figure out a solution to the problem? Adaptability to the situation is surely key, though that’s such a broad statement it likely does little to help anyone dealing with such problems. Merely going through life, which inevitably both gives us love and takes it away, which puts us through significant amounts of loss, does give one the experience to perhaps deal with loss better when it happens again. A rather pessimistic stance, but a pragmatic one. What conclusions we take away from loss are our own, and specific to scenario, but in so far that these experience help us to know ourselves and perhaps others more fully, they are to be valued.