Journal Entries
I subscribed to the AWW.
Posted Jan 11, 2007
I haven't made it through the backlog in days and I don't even have enough time to do my homework after musical rehearsal (I'm assistant stage manager) but I felt motivated to subscribe to yet another review forum. It's because I read A4832723, and I was just blown away by it. It's terrific. I began to think about what other gems I could be missing in the AWW, and so I subscribed. Maybe I don't have time, but I'm trying to get to be a better creative writer, so it could be helpful anyway.
I feel like I want to be a Miner right now, and maybe even take up Scouting again. All of a sudden, despite being exhausted and woefully short of time, I really want to get back to helping the Guide. I just wish I honestly could, without spreading myself too thin in the hour or so I may have for h2g2 each day.
I really want to learn to write, though. Properly. A month or two ago, I wrote an essay for school - I can't even remember what it was on - and my mom said to me that she didn't know why I wanted to be a copy-editor - I could write my own copy. And ever since, I've really wanted to do that. I'd like to take the personal-type essays I write and really do something with them. I had one accepted for my school's literary magazine, but I want to do better things and write better things and actually pursue that. I wish I had time. Remind me not to crew any more shows this year.
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Latest reply: Jan 11, 2007
New blog
Posted Jan 7, 2007
It's at http://echomikeromeo.wordpress.com . I've had a private and semi-private blog for almost two years, but this is a new stab at making my thoughts and writing public. So far it's started out pretty emo, but I hope it will get more interesting, so I encourage you to check it out.
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Latest reply: Jan 7, 2007
Getting in on the Christmas journalling
Posted Dec 25, 2006
Happy Christmas, everyone.
And it's... the flying pudding! 
It reminds me of a superhero.
Christmas Eve is being a bit depressing in my family. We used to have a big Christmas Eve dinner and a Christmas Day brunch, but this year no one's coming in till dinner tomorrow. It could be worse, though. I'm happy to be alive.
I may get modded for copyright violation and things, but I'd like to quote John Lennon and my favourite Christmas song:
So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Another year over, and a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas - I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones, the old and the young.
A very merry Christmas and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one without any fear.
And so this is Christmas, for weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones, the world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas, for black and for white
For yellow and red ones - let's stop all the fight.
A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one without any fear.
And so this is Christmas, and what have we done
Another year over and a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas - I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones, the old and the young.
A very merry Christmas, and a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one without any fear.
War is over, if you want it
War is over
Happy Christmas...
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Latest reply: Dec 25, 2006
Busy, busy, busy!
Posted Dec 16, 2006
Since I got home from school at about 3:00 there has been almost a page's worth of activity in my popup conversations list. I haven't seen that much in a year, it seems like - it's very pleasing.
In other news, a very happy Hanukkah (or however you'd like to spell it) to those of the Jewish persuasion, or anyone in fact.
And in further news, I've signed up for the first round of the SAT on January 27. I'm very nervous already.
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Latest reply: Dec 16, 2006
Grading a school literary magazine
Posted Nov 29, 2006
... and how would we be going about that? Well, as the head copy-editor of the magazine, I just finished making my way through the packet of 29 submissions, grading each on a rubric adding up to a total score of 15 for each submission. It was a really fun exercise - as I myself had three submissions in the packet, it was interesting to see what other people had done, and I also liked seeing my peers' creative strengths and testing my strengths as a reviewer and grader. I expected a lot of tripe, but many of the submissions were genuinely fun to read and some were really stellar. The grading was blind - I recognised a few of my friends' distinctive styles, but by and large it was a broad, anonymous spectrum of the writing population of my school. A few favourites included:
A short piece about the writer's childhood experiences on an island. It was so identical to my own experiences on Saturna Island (in PR! - A17548329) that I liked it, and besides I very much liked the author's distinctive style. A poem about feeling lonely and isolated. We get a lot of these in high school, as might be predicted, but this one stood out. It was written in complete sentences, but its compact style and reliance on metaphor and the sounds of words made it far more a poem than any sort of essay. This may have just been my personal preference, though, because I often have difficulty understanding more obtuse poetry. Another piece about loneliness and depression and things, but this one was a first-person essay. My favourite genre to write in is the first-person essay, so I found it very interesting to read someone else's take on the genre, and she (I gathered from the content that it was a she) carried it off well. Her unique voice breathed life into a topic that's a tad overused. A satirical piece attributing the character of today's world leaders to violent video games, while hypothesising that President Bush must have played Hello Kitty Adventures. I know this must have been my friend's work - I am a great admirer of his satire. This particular one made me laugh out loud. An essay expressing concern at the overachiever ethic that is visited upon many university-bound students, leading to stress and burnout. It's an issue that's very close to my heart, and I like how the writer addressed it. A piece (of my own authorship, I must confess) detailing my experiences with writer's block in coming up with a topic for my own litmag submission. It's very characteristic EMR - kinda self-centred and addresses the subject lightly, but with a more serious central message (god, I sound like an idiot analysing my own writing). I wasn't originally going to include my own submissions in the final favourites list I will have to present to the other staff, since it seemed presumptuous to toot one's own horn, but because of its discussion of the writing process I thought it might be appropriate as a sort of introductory piece to the magazine.
... I also wrote a piece that can be found at A16841559 in its expanded form (I had to abridge it to the 750-word limit for the litmag). Comments on the AWW thread are certainly welcome.
So yeah... that's my life. Yet another reason why I *know* I want to write and/or edit things for a living.
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Latest reply: Nov 29, 2006
echomikeromeo
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