Week 7 Theme 5

Evaluation.

Writing is hard. I knew that when I signed up. I also knew that I was new to creative writing and that I would need to wear the keys of my keyboard to a smooth polish if I wanted to write with vibrancy and voice. Daily Themes seemed like a good place to start.

Seven weeks and thirty-three themes later, this eventual goal seems only farther away than it was when I began. I suppose that should be a heartening sign that I was learning. But that does not comfort the part of me who tries to recreate the musical elegance I read in the writers I admire, only to find that I’d composed a syncopated staccato.

I seem to have trouble with the “theme” part of the course. A theme is an underlying idea, an invariant that grounds the reader in a moving story. When I began the course, I wanted to learn how to orchestrate themes – to choose my words not only to express my ideas, but also to sound like them. I also wanted to emphasize those ideas at just the right points to keep the reader moving alongside my own thoughts.

While the words flow more easily now, and while I can say that I’ve improved on the goals I set earlier in the semester, I can still only capture that elusive eloquence in brief moments of inspiration or luck. Hopefully the next few weeks of writing will make that less accidental and more frequent.

Week 7 Theme 4

Revision: Create a fictional person who is like you in some significant ways.

Tony watched as a small turtle continued its trek towards the thick reeds around the pond. He was leaning on the bus stop sign. “Look, you just ruined my day for me. As much as I still love you, I’d rather not talk to you. Not for a while.” A groaning bus drove by, and Tony took the interruption to breathe. “Bye.”

It was getting dark, and the crisp evening chill only sharpened his newfound loneliness. Tony’s four-legged companion did not seem to notice any difference – and it was right, there really was no reason to let a disembodied voice touch his daily life. But it did, and Tony felt its unshakable tendrils once again. “How can you prepare for these things?” Tony asked. The turtle kept crawling. “I’ve been here before. I know how this works. I need to move on. It’s over. I can’t afford the distraction.”

Tony looked at his watch. Half past three. The bus would be here soon. He couldn’t hide his face for much longer. “Smile!” he told himself. “Smile! You’ll feel better.” So Tony smiled at the turtle and personified it as his sagely grandparent. “You’re probably older than him, aren’t you?” He said. “I bet you’ve been through your share. How’d you do it, you impervious git?”

The turtle stuck to its line, pulling itself along at the same leisurely pace. Even the whine of the approaching bus didn’t bother it. Tony laughed. He had to! It was funny! The turtle was speaking in metaphor! In this life, tonight was just another bus stop. So Tony muttered a thank you, smiled at the driver, and rode off, finally leaving the turtle in peace.

Week 7 Theme 3

After a short, two-theme break on theme writing to dispatch some unruly midterms, we're back and at it with a procrastinated piece on procrastination.

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Write a story that meditates not only on experience but on how we talk and write about it.

Time has shown again and again that extreme circumstances inspire periods of extraordinary creativity and progress. It took decades of religious oppression to move the Puritans to the New World. It took a war for Picasso to paint his immortalized Guernica. And it took an ominous race of national pride and fear to land man to the moon.

Therefore, this particular late December night, in a darkened kitchen, shivering under three layers of coats, working by the fluorescent light of a computer screen, during a week-long power outage with no light at the end of the tunnel, I should have been able to write a half-decent college essay. They told me not to procrastinate in case extraordinary circumstances arose. So when the tiny, shrieking “told you so!” accompanied the draining battery meter, I could only admit that it had indeed told me so.

Procrastinators wish they were in my coats. I had no time to ponder topics. I would write, or I would go to community college. So my mind blundered in the shadows clawing for anything that could twist into five hundred coherent words. And after two percent of my computer’s juice, it settled back where it started its search. China, where I would go in a few days. That would have to do.

“Really? Seriously?” I muttered to my creative block. “Do you honestly believe that half the kids aren’t writing about visiting China these days?” And I waited, eyeing the barely legible How to Write the Perfect College Admissions Essay on the unlit bookshelf. Then it said back: “Okay, but nobody writes about toilet paper.” So I wrote about both.

Week 6 Theme 5

Revise an earlier theme in order to experiment with cutting your prose significantly.

Edited Week 5 Theme 4

Take time to talk to someone you would like to write about in the form of a brief profile.

Cut by a third:

I’m a bit early, so I find Paul in the kitchen. He straightens up from the table, striding with a bit of a penguin’s waddle to his oyster stew. 50 years were catching up. He gives me a taste. “It’s amazing!” “You know what I was thinking?” he says as he strolls to his table. “I’ll put the stew in these bowls and cover ‘em with a puff pastry. How’s that sound?”

“Amazing,” I say, but he’s already on his next dish. Taking a spoonful of hot oil, he pours it over a Chilean sea bass steak. “What do you think?” He asks, handing me a fork. “I heard that’s how the Chinese restaurants do it. Oh, how do you garnish this fish?”

“I’ve always added some salt, scallions, and ginger.” He cuts a stalk, arranges it quickly, and straightens back up, beaming. “How’s that look?” “I guess that looks fine.” I tell him. “Good enough,” he says, as he goes back to poaching bass steaks.

Cut half:

I’m early, so I find Paul in the kitchen. 50 years were catching up, but you couldn’t tell by his food. He straightens up and strides with a penguin’s waddle to his oyster stew. He gives me a taste. “You know what I was thinking?” he says as he strolls to his table. “I’ll put the stew in these bowls and cover ‘em with a puff pastry. How’s that sound?”

“It’s amazing,” I say, but he’s already on the next dish. He pours a spoonful of oil over a poached Chilean sea bass steak. “What do you think?” He asks, handing me a fork. “Oh, how do you garnish this fish?” “I just add scallions and ginger.” He scatters some and straightens up. “Good enough,” he says.

Week 6 Theme 4

Describe a night sky.

Betelgeuse was blocking the shot. A filmy haze streaked across the evening sky, just enough to scatter the more brilliant blacks with the tangerine terrestrial glow of sodium lamps. The gall! Had any other hidden behind the filmy mist, it would have been just a bright dot. But. Betelgeuse. Its red glare diffused into a blistering pimple on Orion’s shoulder. The hunter had seen better days.

Heather was already up far past her bedtime, and she did not enjoy the thought of her walk home as she sat stuck behind the console watching Betelgeuse ruin her night. The heavens – nowhere else might one find such a vacuous, vain space. Of the billions of miles spanning the sky, Betelgeuse had to attend its most popular corner, but tonight, it strangely joined the B-list. Any connoisseur of nighttime venues would know that Orion’s belt was the gathering place of the hip and young, the stars.

Betelgeuse was washed up. An old flame. A rare, inflated stalwart of a past eon ogled by too many eyes while it was still the only one that they could see. It was in every tabloid, its life combed over by far too many photographers hoping to start their petty careers. But tonight, Betelgeuse was dying, and Heather had no choice but to grant it one last centerfold.

Week 6 Theme 3

Exchange between two people who have different ways of talking.

The time is lunch, but the year is debatable. The place is an upscale New York restaurant, but the topic hasn’t settled. Our first conversationalist is a retired, grayed, congenial man who really has seen the world in his long career as a spy handler. Our second conversationalist is a thin, slightly taller than average, 22 year-old with a model’s face. But if you ask her, the conversation is between a very sharp man from the past and an ambitious young woman starting a career.

“Amanda, have you thought about what you’ll be doing next year?”

“Yeah, I want to do something interesting. Maybe work in the Middle East, or I could be a researcher for 60 minutes.”

“Well, you know what it is they say.” William gingerly rested his fingers on the table as his eyes glanced first left then back. “You’re attractive. You speak well. You know, I know a guy who works at the Picknell Foundation. What if you were to get in touch with him? Maybe have lunch.”

“He sounds interesting.”

“You could enter into their broadcasting program. Like those…” William glances left again, though no reporters are sitting there. “Like those news anchors. Maybe in a few years, you can have your own show.”

“That’s a good idea, William, but I’m not sure that’s what I want. I’d rather be doing the research.”

“Well, you want to meet interesting people, right? That’s always been the one way to meet everyone. You’ll get to interview them. You’re someone who could win a grant to do that. Hmm, look, here’s what I’ll do. Why don’t I send this guy an email, and I’ll include you, Amanda, I’ll include you in it.”

“William, thank you for trying to help, but that’s just not what I want to do.”

“You know, I was just speaking with him at dinner sometime last week. He was asking…”

“Oh, how was the meeting? Do you know who the fellowship winners are?”

The time is today. The place is still the restaurant. The topic just changed.

Week 6 Theme 2

Using plain, "ten-center" words, predominantly Anglo-Saxon in origin, write a theme about someone or something you love passionately.

3pm, just outside Shanghai. Two boys sit at the window of a Beijing-bound train. The summer heat is just barely too much for the air conditioner, but they don’t care. They’re staring at a board between them covered in grid lines. Flat white and black stones sit where the lines meet. The train bumps over the track, and the stones shudder in matching time. They smell like glass and palm sweat.

The younger boy clicks a black stone against the board. Another slips from his palm and crashes into the careful pattern on the board. The older boy sniffs it before he throws it into the bowl it came from. As he thinks, the younger boy fixes the arrangement.

“Why don’t you go there?” asks a slightly wider boy watching from across the aisle. The older boy puts his white stone elsewhere. “No, that’s a mistake. You should go here.” The wider boy takes the stone. The older boy clicks down another and stands up. “Listen, Fatso, I already thought of that. Give me the piece.” Fatso pulls his arm back. “Come on, think about it.”

The older boy sits down on the other side. “I did. Look, Fatso, if you think you know better, why don’t you take my spot?”

Fatso does, and he grabs a handful of white stones as he scoots into place. The older boy pulls a black stone out of the younger boy’s hand. Moist with sweat, it slips out of his fingers as he puts it down. It clatters into place, but the young one picks it up again. “He’s right. I was feinting.”

The older boy reaches for another stone, but the young one grabs his wrist with clammy hands. “Look, this is my game. If you want to play, take your spot back.” As the older boy ponders whether he wants to watch Fatso lose more than he wants to play, he smells his wrist. It smells like glass and palm sweat.