I need to back up a couple of days, back to the day we arrived at our apartments just outside of Dublin. That was a long day and I missed an important part of it: the morning and early afternoon, when we stopped by Blarney Castle to kiss the Stone of Eloquence, otherwise known as the Blarney Stone. It was actually one of the highlights of our tour, seeing the famous tower where the stone is located, but boy was it a long wait!
When we got there shortly after 10 o’clock in the morning the place was already swarming with other tourists, and we had to get in a long line in order to reach the top. Along the way we did a little exploring of the castle, which was largely open as compared with some of the other castles I had been in on my first trip to Ireland. There were so many nooks and crannies that weren’t off limits to the climbing tourists, which kept things interesting even though the line crept as slowly as molasses. We also made up a song to go with the experience. Here is how it went (to the tune of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”:
“I kissed a stone, and I liked it. Hope my tour director won’t mind it. I kissed a stone and I liked it. And I liked it.”
I’m doing something special this week in honor of the Daily Prompt, which asked me which five items I would take with me on a desert island, which is why my Top 5 is on Thursday instead of Friday. Do not fret, I will be back to normal coming soon to another Friday near you. … Continue reading Thursday Top 5: Desert Island Items
We had Domino’s and I visited a cyber cafe on that first night just outside of Dublin, the one for about the millionth time and the other for the very first. It was funny because we were trying to decide what to eat, and there were so many options, but the students knew they had seen a Domino’s when we were driving up on the bus, so they were determined to find it again. That led to a wild trip where they swore we were being stalked, and where we doubled back on ourselves a couple of times before finding the most over-priced pizza ever, and yes, they still had the Noid up on their signs. Raise your hand if you remember that guy. Anyway, then the debate began whether or not we wanted to pay so much for something we could have just gotten at home. I was of course starving by then and said we should go for it, which we eventually did, but we only got two pizzas and fought over who got more than one slice. That was a fun discussion.
After dinner, most of the crew finally turned in, but I was still high off my trip into the city earlier and I couldn’t settle down. I checked with my troops and “tucked them in,” then left a chaperone in charge while I went for a little walk around the area by myself. Don’t worry. I didn’t get lost again, well, not that time anyway. On my walk I encountered a little place that catered to those who were cyber friendly. Or something like that. I’m not quite sure how it advertized itself, but I did know that there were tons of young people in there, typing away. They were playing role play games like World of Warcraft (don’t ask how I knew what it was), and typing emails, and doing all manner of other internet related activities when I entered, but I had only one thing on my mind: getting a Facebook account.
I had one thing on my mind.
You see, on the first day in Ireland most students had either a cell phone or a camera that they used to document the trip. You can imagine how many photographs were taken as a whole from the 55 students and 10+ chaperones who were with us on the journey. And one phrase I heard more than any other when a picture was taken that had multiple people in it was, “tag me in that.” I of course had no clue what “tagging” was, and I kept trying to wrap my brain around it the more they said it. Then when we were in the ruins the day before I finally asked one of the students from another school what tagging was. She laughed at me and explained that tagging was the Facebook expression for making sure people were identified in the photos where they were featured. That way you could look at every photo with you in it at the click of a mouse.
So, I went into that cyber cafe with that purpose in mind, to get me one of those Facebook accounts so I could be tagged in all the photos that I didn’t take myself but that had me in them anyway. It sounded cool. Continue reading “You Call This a Shower?: Part 6”
There were three of us sitting in the break room with a haze of silence between us, which was apparently odd because when the next person walked in she asked why we didn’t have the TV on. I said in all seriousness,”I couldn’t reach the remote,” the remote that was on the same table where … Continue reading Water Cooler Musings: First-World Problems
“The most important character in every novel is the author’s personal story. The anguish in the narrative, as well as the tender moments, they all derive from it and make it necessary for the entire novel’s existence.”
I write in first person. Sometimes. And every single time I write in first person I wonder how much of it is me, my own thoughts and fears, my own variances and expressions, my own essence. If we really do write what we know, then maybe all of my characters have a little of me in them, which is kind of scary but kind of comforting at the same time. My imagination is vast and varied, and my experience a bit less so, but my words take on a mind of their own. I’m sure other writers can agree with me on this, if not quite on process, because we all go about it in a way that makes sense to us, the process. But with that imagination and the potential of every single character I write, all of that influences the narrative a lot more than my own life.
Then you read my first novel, and you tell me that so much of it sounds like it’s my life. Because so much of it is directly from my own life. What the conundrum, huh? And yet, even though so much of it derives from my personal anguish and my own internal conflicts, it’s still a work of fiction. Even though it’s in first person. Even though it’s largely from my life. When I sat down to write Detours that first day, I had no idea where it was going to go, what it had to say, and where it was going to take me. And when the main character spoke to me, he used my voice. I felt like we were as close as twins, that we shared so much history, but that in the end we led our own lives for better or for worse. Continue reading “The Uncomfortable Closeness of Narrative”
I am not always happy. I am not always self-assured. I am not always pleased. I am not always functioning as I should. I am not always okay, and that should be okay, right? Expectation is a very fickle thing. If people are used to you being sullen and out of sorts then it is … Continue reading Not Always Okay
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