Tech Tip: Bookmarking

I use bookmarks a lot, for everything from quick links to my email inboxes to important links for classes like this one. I also use bookmark folders to keep track of links to sources for papers, especially when I'm first looking for sources and am just skimming. During those times, I'll add anything that looks promising to the folder, and then I can go through later and narrow the sources down to the ones I'll actually use.

Image: Bookmarking. Source.

Week 14 Story: The Girl Who Became a River

5/1/18

Dear Diary,

It was another boring day, like every day in this stupid town. I went to work, put up the new display for May, which is just the April clothes with the mannequins in opposite windows, helped the same boring customers, ate a grilled cheese for lunch, went to class, and went home. In class, Marianna said my sweater was “interesting” and that kind of hurt. I know she’s my friend, but sometimes she just seems like she hangs out with me because it makes her feel better about herself. Anyway, I made nachos for dinner, and watched Netflix for three hours. There’s just nothing to do here, and no one to do the nothing with, and it freaking sucks. Maybe something new will happen tomorrow. Or not. Probably not.

5/5/18

Dear Diary,

I went for a walk today, through the forest on the edge of town. Marianna told me not to go, but I just felt called, you know? Like there was something in the forest I needed to see. So I went down this little path, until I got to a river, and then I just sat by it for a bit. I listened to the flow of the water and after a while I thought I heard it whispering to me. I don’t know how I understood, but I think it told me it wasn’t always a river? That it was a person? I know that’s really weird, but it also didn’t feel strange at all. Talking to the river felt perfectly natural and I don’t know why. I’m going to go back tomorrow, and talk to it again if I can.

5/7/18

Dear Diary,

The River and I have been talking a lot. Her name is Laurel, and she used to live in town, but she hated it, like I do. One day she walked into the forest and just…never left. She sat up against a rock and let her thoughts flow, like water, until suddenly she was water. She says I can do it too, if I want. That’s why she can talk to me, because I could do it.  I could be a river, or a tree probably. I just have to go back out to the forest and let myself really join with the world around me. I want to. My job sucks and Marianna is my friend but she isn’t very nice and hanging out with Laurel in the forest all day sounds so much better. I think I’ll try tomorrow. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just come back.

5/8/18

In a forest outside a small town, a girl sits next to a river, legs crossed. She has been sitting for several hours, but they have passed like minutes, and the edges of her form are starting to blur. Slowly, she begins to dissolve.

5/9/19

In a forest outside a small town, where one river flowed, two now cross, waters mingling as one for an instant before returning to their separate channels.

Author's note: The original story I worked from is about three orphans, two sisters and a brother, who always had to work really hard and were never lucky. Their lives were very difficult, so they decided to wander and become great rivers, because that's just a thing that was possible then. They go to sleep in a swamp, and the sisters sneak off to take the best places to flow, and when he wakes, the brother angrily chases them in river form until he runs into the sea. Essentially, the story explains how three Russian rivers came to be.

I only took the part of the story that says people are able to turn into rivers, and wrote a story about a girl that lives in an ambiguous small town, hates her life, and learns that she can turn into a river from one that used to be just like her.

Image; River. Source.

Bibliography: The Metamorphosis of the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Dvina from Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887). Source.

Reading Notes: Russian Folktales, Part B

Well, I was rather horrified by the story where the loyal dog gets killed after he defends the master that abandoned him. Were I the dog, I'd hold a grudge too. I don't see why he should have been killed instead of just given to someone else, but as I said in my last post, Russia's a harsh place, I guess.

There's such a strange mix of stories with happy endings where a risen corpse or demon is defeated and stories where a bad thing happens and that's all. Or at the least, there doesn't seem to be any sort of happy or satisfying conclusion, at least not to me. I have lots of possibilities if I decide to use one of my favorite rewriting strategies and change an ending to suit morals that I like better, but I feel like I've gone that route so often during the semester that I don't know that I have any interest in doing that sort of rewrite again in the class.

My other go-to is to change the perspective a story is written in. Almost all, if not all, of the readings for this class are in third-person, which makes it relatively simple to just tell the same story in a different voice. This is a viable option for any of the Russian folktales, which are all in third-person. The method can make for an interesting character study, particularly if put in a format other than the character seeming to narrate directly to the reader. I haven't done a diary entry kind of rewrite yet, though it's a bit similar to the letter I wrote for Amten. As mentioned in Part A of my reading notes, the river story would be a great candidate for this format, and is currently what I'm leaning towards. I also will be trying to keep it on the short side, since I have a lot of other assignments this week.

Image: Russian Moujik (peasant). Source.

Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

Reading Notes: Russian Folk Tales, Part A

This week I decided to read Russian folk tales, and boy were they strange. I was both surprised and not surprised about the sadness of many of the endings. Russia is a harsh place. A couple of the stories just didn't seem to make sense at all. They felt a little like anti-jokes.

I did find the stories about Wednesday and Friday kind of fun. Either one could be interesting to try and update to a modern setting, or tell from the perspective of the day/demon/goddess? I'm also interested in doing something related to the story where the siblings turn into rivers. With that situation, I think I'd like to write some sort of first person perspective for a character that knows they have the ability to just turn into a river forever if they feel like it, and does. I could get into how they knew, and how they came to the decision to do it, and how they feel about it afterward. That could play out as a series of diary entries + 3rd person for post-river thoughts, or something closer to a stream-of-consciousness with first-person all the way through. I'm actually pretty into this idea.

I could also try my hand at something creepy, and try to write a more suspenseful and dramatic version of the story where the dead mother is found suckling her living child. I don't go in for scary stuff very much, so it would definitely be a new experience for me as a writer.

The story about the bad wife was also amusing and intrigued me, but I don't know that there's anything I particularly want to do with it. I think right now my number one choice is actually the river story, though I found it kind of boring initially.

Image: Anti-joke Chicken. Source.

Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

Growth Mindset Acronym

Try Often, Don't Abandon Yet

This is an acronym of TODAY to remind me to do things now instead of putting them off, to always keep trying, and to never give up or stop adding "yet" when I feel like I can't do something.

Meme Generator Tech Tip

Meme created using ImgFlip.com

Reading Notes: Beowulf, Part B

One of the main things I've noticed about this telling of the story is how full of detail it is - the setting is given so much attention without being boring, and that's something I want to imitate in my own writing. 

I'm also growing more attached to the idea of rewriting a chunk of the story with elementary school kids. For example, the scene with Beowulf and his men setting up their beds in Heorot could be kindergarteners about to take a nap. It could be really fun to do it from a limited third-person perspective, where a kid is just really tired, but he thinks he's being put under a spell. I have to figure out who Grendel would be in that situation. A teacher? A bully? Who lurks during naptime? 

If I just do the "Grendel attacks" portion, that's all I have to figure out logistically. I'm leaning away from anything later than that, just because I don't want to mess with finding something to be the kindergarten equivalrent of losing your arm in a fight. At the same time, if I can come up with something, the playground would be an easier place for a fight scene...

I'm still kind of tempted to do something with Unferth, though. He has an actual character arc and his story would work well with diary entries, one from each time he appears in the narrative. That's similar to stuff I've done before, but it could still go in my portfolio, probably better than anything else I've done recently. The elementary concept isn't something I would necessarily put in my portfolio, but you never know. I'm trying to have a diverse set of storytelling subjects and styles to make sure I'm really taking advantage of the portfolio format. Elementary has a lead in that respect over Unferth diary, because I've already done first person and I feel like I have more ways to creatively distinguish with third. I definitely have a lot of thinking to do.

Image: Grendel. Source.

Bibliography:  The Story of Beowulf by Strafford Riggs with illustrations by Henry Pitz (1933). Source.