stunt_muppet

I have a mild dilemma in my homework-doing enterprises. I'm supposed to read the "Law" passages of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica by Tuesday. They're all online, but generally speaking I prefer to print out class reading material if possible. It's easier on my eyes (because while I can easily digest 18,000 words of fanfic on the computer screen, trying to read actual educational material on anything but paper gives me a headache and makes me terribly unfocused. Which is not at all what's happening right now, no sir.) and it makes taking notes much more convenient. Plus, that way I can easily look up any passage I wish to quote/use as support in the class discussion.

Problem: printing the sections out would probably take longer than reading them online, since there's about a million frelling pages of the stuff. I plead forgiveness from all the trees dying for my sake.

Also, I can't seem to locate my Biology syllabus, even though it's supposedly on the Blackboard site. Hmm.

Re-read "1914" again today, in preparation for my next round of edits and rewrites thereof. (By the way, if you want to read it, dear friends and loved ones...) I really haven't looked at the thing since I turned it in, and I think a few of the passages I was doubtful about held up surprisingly well. Not all of them did, of course, and I still think the ending is far too abrupt, but I'm still rather proud of it. 

Of course, as I was doing my reading for Short Prose Fiction today, which discussed the mechanics of a short story and what makes a short story good, a thought came to mind. Almost every writer who comments on their writing has emphasized how unconscious the process is. Nobody thinks about what symbols they're going to use. Nobody sits down and decides that they're going to write a limited-3rd-person short story with the theme of _____, using _____ as a complex metaphor for ______. They just write a story the way it needs to be told. Sometimes themes and symbols inform their work (as Flannery O'Connor stated), but most authors don't sit down to write with all that literary analysis in mind.

I think Gerry LaFemina, the visiting author to our Creative Writing class, said it in a way I most identify with: "I don't sit down and say 'I'm going to write a story about man's inhumanity to man or whatever. I write stories about characters that interest me." (By the way, I highly recommend his short stories if you find them. "Cecil County" is quite brilliant.)

Now, that's the way I've always approached writing, though of course I'm nowhere near the level of skill as these professional authors. I've never thought about theme or symbol in writing except in passing; while such things sometimes crop up on second reading, I don't set them aside and put them there. 

Which, I think, is one of the reasons that I've always had such a hard time with literary analysis - once we start picking stories apart by theme and symbol and tone and such, I start wondering if I've used anything like that, and if I'd write better if I started working consciously around the categories by which Good Fiction is judged. 

Consciously, I know that's not true - the whole point is that theme/symbol/tone et al are an inextricable part of a short story, and must arise from the author's method of telling the story. Try to work them in specifically, and the story dies - it becomes a sterile assemblage of parts rather than a living, creative thing. But I can't help but realize that I never have anything like that in mind while writing and wonder if that's why I'm not better than I am. They say the only way to improve is to read, and to write, and to observe, and I do as much as I can (I actually write much more original fiction than I post or talk about here, mostly because very little of it is good enough for me - or, for that matter, is ever finished), but I can't help but feel as if I'm missing something.

Perhaps I should listen to my mother: The fact that I'm a teenager and really haven't accumulated that much life experience to speak of probably has something to do with it. 
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On to cheerier topics! We've finally got Monday off, after supposed years of pleading from the student body, so I've got an extra day or two to finish up my reading, meaning I don't have to frantically cram all my work into one day. Getting started today rather than Monday is actually quite an improvement for me - I think I may finally be getting better at pacing myself.

Still haven't started talking to my adviser about my major, which I really really need to do. Granted, it's only the end of the first week of class, so I've got some time, but ignoring the fact that I have to choose my major isn't going to make that decision go away. One of my friends suggested that I consider designing an interdisciplinary major in science writing, since that's the area of Biology I'd want to pursue - I'm not nearly as interested in the actual practical lab work as I am in writing, reading, and learning about the facts of it, and the ability to translate from technobabble to English is a valuable one, especially for the more mainstream publications. 

Of course, if I do something like that, then odds are I wouldn't have time to take a semester abroad - likely as not I'd have to take a lot of summer courses, too, so summers would be closed-off to travel. Which is a shame, because I really desperately want to go back to Spain, and I'd prefer not to spend my study abroad trudging around in swamps collecting samples. My uncle suggested something I hadn't considered, though: if there are any universities in Spain that offer courses in technical writing, I could try enrolling there for a semester and taking a course. Being able to write bilingually for Biology would be a very marketable job skill.

There are issues there too, obviously, namely that I'd have to actually apply to and get into a university (and pay the accompanying hunk o' tuition - the dollar does not go too far in Europe at the moment). Plus, all my classes would be in Spanish, and while his confidence in me is heartening, I'm just not sure my Spanish comprehension or speech is quite at that level anymore. He tells me it's a problem of confidence and experience - that once I have no choice but to speak Spanish and don't have a Spanish-speaking family member to fall back on somewhere, my language skills will improve exponentially. Which is probably true, but I'd have to be well nigh fluent to begin with to hope to keep up in a program like that, and the truth is I'm really not. 

He also tells me that being on another continent for four months away from family would be a helpful experience for me, and would help me to become more extroverted and confident. Again, probably true, but also very scary. And if I apply to a program like this on my own, the odds that there would be any other students around would be slim to none. I don't fancy wandering Madrid or Barcelona alone, especially not given my sense of direction.

I still haven't talked to my Bio professor, either. I haven't worked up the nerve, and I'm quite frightened of exactly what he's going to say to me. I don't know why I feel like I disappointed him on such a personal level, but I do.
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One final topic: I should not get into two fandoms at the same time, and I should definitely not try to leap into a new fandom while I'm still in the Sparkly Obsessive Love stage of another. It's like mixing two alcoholic beverages: it invariably leads to embarrassment, poor decision-making, and nobody having a blessed clue what you're talking about.

Or, in this case, it leads to me writing crack-fic scenarios where the Doctor and Charlie Eppes technobabble at each other and wondering why someone hasn't written this crossover yet. Seriously, respective fandoms. Don't make me write it. Nobody wants that.

Charlie <drawing on chalkboard>: Now, if you're proposing what I think you're proposing, Doctor, we should be able to set up a consistent, predictable behavior algorithm for this creature based on it's tendency to be drawn to areas of Newtonian certainty. But, since Newtonian physics doesn't quite account for the space-time fluctuations that would complete those certainties, we'll need to look at the relative time quotient based on this thing's mass and velocity compared to the coordinates of the certainty points...*

Doctor: *hugs him*

Charlie: What - what are you...

Doctor: SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS ME. :D

*Author's note: All mathematical dialogue was pulled completely out of my ass.