Despertar

my writing process, step one

Yay, a survey, just in time!

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1. Gym, working out, health?
This is probably the main reason I couldn't live in San Francisco full-time: everyone constantly talking about their gym habits, biking hobbies, and so forth, bore me pretty much to tears. I exercise just enough to look and feel in control of my body. I can't imagine finding physical movement really interesting, as the people out here seem to.

2. Economic stimulus checks?
It's cute that they call them "stimulus checks." Cuter still that so many people mistake them for a gift from the government. They are labeled exactly right--they're intended to stimulate the economy by providing people with the means to go blow money on things they don't need. Everyone I know that's really excited about receiving a stimulus check is exactly the type of person to instantly go spend it on crap the same day.

3. The bullying natures of people with low self-esteem/depression/issues/a few extra pounds?
People always attribute bullying to one of these things, and I don't think that's quite right. I had incredibly low self-esteem for a long time, and it manifested itself in me as extreme shyness and fragility. I never bullied anyone. Low or high self-esteem, it takes a certain personality type to be really mean to someone who doesn't deserve it.

4. America versus the U.S.?
In eighth grade, I had a Spanish teacher who was constantly reminding us not to refer to ourselves as American because of how vague a term it is, and calling us narrow-minded for not seeing it as such. He was Nicaraguan, I think, and when he would drill us in class on our ethnicities, and we would call ourselves American, he would respond, accusingly, "Si, yo tambien. Soy americano." He would just repeating that again and again until we remembered we were supposed to introduce ourselves as estadounidences.

5. Neil?
It doesn't make my short list of the names I would consider if my husband insisted on having a say. I just decided I could put up with Matthew, Alexander, James or a couple of the other severely overused ones, but not Thomas, William, Edward or, I guess, Neil.

6. Is punctuation important? The redundancy of the question mark?
The question mark is redundant? I guess I can see where this question is coming from, but after listening to a bunch of borderline-illiterate eighth graders read aloud in Fresno last week, I'm pretty sure weak readers need all the clues they can get toward guiding their inflection.

7. West coast work attire?
Today it's olive green corduroys, a white camisole, brown sweater, brown gladiators with green stones. Allison is wearing the same black pants as yesterday(!), white tank top, black sweater, same black heels. I'm subtracting half a point for repeats, so she's now up a point and a half.

8. My love for creative, respectfully defiant responses to FtL prompts; example: spidey's bonus response?
I think "respectful defiance" is a great phrase and an even greater skill. I wish everyone knew that one.

9. Nutrition?
I'm thinking falafel for lunch again. Dinner is the third third of the pad see euw I bought in Berkeley on Sunday. Maybe I also want a cupcake from the Ferry Building on the way to the train station this evening.

10. How easy it is to push the buttons of people who try so hard to be weird--simply categorize them in a group with similarly weird people, and then accurately predict that doing so will upset them, then point out that most weird, totally unique people respond in the way that they did?
Yes, it seems like that would push their buttons pretty hard. Kind of like all you have to do to push my buttons is accuse me of not being as smart as I think I am.

11. The longer I live, the more I conclude that the people who are most seemingly normal are the weirdest ones out there?
Or, more accurately, the longer I live, the more I realize that it's normal to expect that everyone has weird little quirks that parse them out into tiny minorities. There are Internet communities that provide support to people who are obsessed with chewing ice. Books up for sale on Amazon.com that teach the fine art of incorporating enemas into lovemaking. Douchey hipster art galleries where everyone walks around pretending they like paintings depicting babies drowning in menstrual blood.

12. Everyone is weird, really; no one fits in; we're al just a bunch of puzzle pieces with at least one edge; no one settles into the perfect middle, because there is no such place.
Not so. I would argue that there is very little that is edgy about Candace Cameron Bure.

13. Everyone has problems; that makes you, my problem-infested follower, normal?
Another argument in favor of the question mark is that it and the period are not always naturally interchangeable.

14. Maybe there is a perfect midde, and we're all in it--maybe there are no edges?
No, there's an edge. I can see it from my office window. The fog rolls in off of it and makes the streets fifteen degrees colder than they are in Emeryville.

15. I love bologna?
Okay, but it has nitrates, which are known carcinogens. So be careful.

16. Stupid, jarring transitions in books that are being published these days, and the readers who love them?
I disagree that this is annoying. I like when things pick up in the middle of things, or cut over before the obvious resolution. It keeps me interested in reading. Angelica was kind of like that. Arthur Phillips. However, I also enjoy a narrative style that is way more streamlined, like what Ian McEwan used in Atonement, which remains, I think, one of the best things I've ever read.

17. Which term annoys you more: "fucking" or "love-making"?
The latter annoys me when people use it just to be obnoxious. However, I wouldn't pigeonhole anyone into using one term exclusively, because I think fucking, sex and love-making are three completely different things.

18. Jerry Springer?
People do soulless things for money all the time. I don't know why people make him out to be a bigger tool than, say, that evil lawyer Mr. Loophole. Or people who work in gas stations that sell cigarettes. Or the guy who has the job the narrator had in Fight Club, writing up the cost/benefit analysis of car safety hazards sure to cause some deaths (but how many?).

19. Being a size two and a sedentary Internet junkie--next, on Sick, Sad World?
I'm a size two, and I didn't do anything all day Sunday but play around on the Internet. However, I wouldn't describe myself as sedentary or a junkie, so I guess this doesn't totally apply.

20. Sims 3?
It doesn't come out for nine months. It's like waiting for a baby.

21. I like the term "problem-infested follower"--it reminds me of lice?
Hmm, I don't know. I don't know if "problem-infested" works very well, figuratively. I'm having a hard time drawing a concrete image.

22. "Lice" is a pretty word?
Agreed. So is deny.

23. "Louse" is not?
Relatedly, "Lice Capades" is one of my favorite episodes of South Park, for reasons that will be made clear if you ever get a chance to watch it.

24. Songs that you hate, that run through your head for years?
That's most of them. I have a love/hate relationship with catchiness, because it can either make or break a song, and in the case of the latter, it's the glue that adheres it to your mind forever. I'm lucky artists like Pink, whose music I think is pretty terrible, don't rely on hooks in their songs.

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I never do that. List topics. I've never successfully written anything that didn't just hit me unexpectedly, wanting to be written. The closest I ever come, when it's my Leading date and I don't have anything on deck, is to survey my surroundings and wait for a marketable catch phrase to hit.

Also, though, I can't think of anything catchier than O-Zone's "Dragostea Din Tei," and that's probably the best song there is.