J is for J.K. Rowling

When I was in elementary school, I was sick one day and staying home for school.  Unfortunately, my mom had to take her car into the shop to get repaired, so we ended up in a small cafe called Fifth Corner on the main street of my home town, looking out and the window and feeling pretty miserable.  I remember actually thinking though about J.K. Rowling and how she began writing the Harry Potter series on napkins in a cafe.  The simplicity of it all inspired me and later that year, I began my own writing project.

After my third grade teacher finished reading The Prisoner of Azkaban to our class, I was devastated.  I didn't know how long I'd have to wait for the fourth book to come out.  Instead of waiting, I decided that I was going to write my own Harry Potter book four.  I don't know if a copy still exists or not, but I assure you it wasn't any good.  I was inspired by the characters and the stories in a way I hadn't really experienced books before.  I ended up sending the Harry Potter book four I wrote to J.K. Rowling.  In return, I got a picture of her and a nice generic fan letter.  I was so excited that I took it in to school and showed it in front of the whole class.

J.K. Rowling will never know the full extent of her influence over me and my family.  Not only did her books secure in me a love for reading, but I was also able to recommend them to my parents and my aunts.  Recently, my aunt expressed shock about that recommendation so many years ago: "I can't believe I ended up enjoying a book so much that was recommended by an eight year old!"  

I have a degree in creative writing, began a book blog, and will work at publishing company someday.  Though I can't say for certain, I am pretty sure I wouldn't be where I am today without J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series, which is why I dedicated this A to Z challenge to Harry Potter. 

Tomorrow will be K is for Knocturn Alley!

Stephen Tobolowsky on Writing Majors in "The Dangerous Animals Club"

Stephen Tobolowsky's The Dangerous Animals Club marks my second book about an actor whose main works I haven't seen (the other being Tina Fey's Bossypants).  Again, it is the humor and view of life that drew me in to this nonfiction book and again, I was captivated by the result.

Amid a bunch of varied stories from throughout his life, Tobolowksy lays down some hard hitting truths about the struggles his wife was facing in college trying to write plays:

"It was crazy enough to be an acting major in college, but to be a writing major made as much sense as studying to be a rodeo clown.  As college students we knew first hand that nobody read books anymore.  At least we didn't.  For many fine arts majors, graduation is a time for celebration, a short celebration -say, about two days tops. Then comes the realization that they may have to turn to Plan B: desperation." (223)

I can only remember sitting in my capstone writing class, surrounded by graduating seniors.  We were all wondering one thing: where will we go from here?  It wasn't something our professor could ease our minds about, either.  Her advice was to market our skills, because we could learn to do any job.  All jobs involve writing.  She suggested applying to various businesses, perhaps as an office assistant.

There's the dream; the reason we all became writing majors. But seriously, it is incredibly difficult to find the type of job that will allow us to use all of the skills we learned. 

"The fall from your dream into reality is especially hard when you've seen that you can fly" (223).

It'll be a rough road for all of us, but we all have dreams.  We were taught to fly in our classes.  And we will fly again in the working world, eventually.  The road is just a little longer getting there than we imagined. Or perhaps a different road entirely.

Story Shapes, Re-Inspired by "Will Grayson, Will Grayson"

“this is why we call people exes, I guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it's too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it's not, because there's no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths” (277).

Not only does this analogy play out for relationships, as described by the Other Will Grayson in Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan, but it also follows the path of the whole story. Two boys named Will Grayson live their lives completely independently of each other, until a chance meeting (midpoint of the two lines in the X) that ends up changing the course of both of their lives.

In my advanced fiction writing class, my professor often had us write a "craft paper" to describe the "shape" of the story we read. There is no "right" or "wrong" answer, just simply a different way of looking at and understanding the story.

For one of those assignments, I described "Zero Conditional" by Caitlin Horrocks as an "X" because of intersection plot points and their changes over the course of the short story.

A substitute teacher arrives at a classroom and has no control over the class at all. As time progresses, she gains more and more control. Her goal is obviously to make her students obey and to help them learn and her success at that is the / part of the X. The other side of the X shows the decline of the classroom pets' health overtime ( \ ). The meeting point is the death of the rat, where the students all actively participate in the burial, showing that the teacher is successful at getting them to work together. At the end of the story, a student shows that he really learned a lesson from the teacher, which is the high point of right side of the X. The low point is the murky, uncared for fish tank in the classroom. Looking at the story as an X can help the reader to notice the complete reversal of those elements of the story.

X as a story shape is helpful for illustrate different types of relationships: the relationship between two characters (Will Grayson, Will Grayson) or the relationship between elements of plot ("Zero Conditional").

Kurt Vonnegut (Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five) said that all stories could be described in one of eight different graphs.

Improvisation in "Bossypants"

Growing up, I loved watching the show Whose Line is it Anyway?.  It impressed me that they could not only come up with their own funny lines on the spot, but that they could also adapt and react to the other players without a moment delay.  I always thought it would be so much fun and at the same time, I was terrified of the very idea of it.  As someone who has always felt more comfortable writing out my ideas with time to revise and edit,  improvisation sounded like the last thing I would ever be interested in. 

I am not sure what I was expecting (other than a few laughs) when I decided to read Tina Fey’s Bossypants. When she began to describe how she did improv for SNL, I was excited because though I don't watch SNL regularly, I knew this book would unlock the secrets of all television improvisation.  Finally I could stop regarding improvisation as a mythical impossible-to-understand creature.

With three simple tips, all of my questions were answered.
1. Agree.  

It’s something I wouldn’t have realized the importance of and certainly would’ve messed up myself.  You have to go along with whatever the other people are saying, without question.  The first step to making the audience believe what the improvers are saying is for the players to believe it and live it.

2. Yes, and…

It’s not enough to just agree though; you have to add something to the conversation to drive the plot forward.  Again, it sounds simple, but I would be afraid I would freeze up and not know what to say!  She gave some great examples in which someone said something pretty straight forward, she agreed immediately and then adding something so off the wall that the story lays itself out nicely.  One example I remember off the top of my head was that if someone said, “It’s hot,” you could respond with “Of course it’s hot! We’re in Hell!”

3. Make statements.

If you’re always asking questions, that’s putting all the pressure on the other improvers to have the answers.  It also doesn’t necessarily drive the plot forward.  You have to contribute and you must do so with certainty so that the audience will believe that you’re really in the scene.

Her tips and examples were down to earth and easy to understand that they seemed familiar to me.   I realized that, without even knowing it, I actually had done a form on improvisation in a medium in which I was very comfortable: writing.

On the last day of my Intro to Creative writing class, we each took out a piece of paper and started a story.  After a few minutes, the professor stopped us, and had us pass our stories to the right, where our neighbor read our story, and then added on to it.  That continued until every student in the class had written on each story. It was an absolute blast and we had written some entertaining stories.  

Suddenly, my interest in improvisation doesn’t seem so strange.  I would never be comfortable getting up and acting in front of an audience, but I can get the same thrills out of writing.