Alright, so there's a thing we do in my English class called Vital Vocab. It's a weekly assignment, due Mondays at midnight (alliteration!), in which we have to write at least a paragraph, using five given vocabulary words. Sometimes, we have a prompt to follow (if Mr. Parker's feeling the vibe, I guess).
But since there isn't always a prompt, I decided I'd take an idea I'd half-worked out over the summer and write an ongoing story with my Vital Vocab.
Unfortunately, I'm kind of procrastinate-y and tend to cut it close on writing these, meaning...well, meaning my first three submissions kind of suck. They're all over the place, seriously. It's awful. So I've decided to start posting them here, to prompt myself to procrastinate less, suck less, and to pre-write a little more. So...Vital Vocab 1. Here it is.
Now, don't judge me. It was sort of the middle of the night.
Prompt: What are your goals and expectations for English this year?
Vocab Words (underlined): vernacular, context, figurative, literal, subtext
Grammar Focus (we have those, too): your/you're, and properly use a semicolon to connect clauses
Emilia Keye-
The old house towered over me. I stared up, eyes transfixed upon its sage green, shuttered windows, the old paint peeling slightly, the siding not quite straight. It looked like something I’d draw up in a notebook, sort of quaintly ramshackle (if that was even possible). We’d moved in almost a month ago, and the utter character of the place - not just of the house itself, but of the old willow in the front yard, the still pond in the back, the stray cat we kept finding on our doorstep - it still shocked me every time I came home. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to it.
I closed the car door behind me and helped my mom bring in the groceries before going back outside and settling on the stoop. School here had started only a week ago and the work load was just beginning to build. So, I pulled out my laptop so I could start on my English homework. What are your goals and expectations for English this year?
How dry, I thought. That was always the worst part of the beginning of the year: boring intro assignments. My goals for most classes were just to get good grades, but for a select few courses, like English and art, I actually aimed to learn. But how does one put that into a paragraph? I sighed, thinking. Maybe if I just started writing...
One sentence completed. You’re boring, I thought, and deleted it.
Another, more interesting sentence. Where’s your vocab? Deleted.
That was the problem: I had to follow a prompt and use the fancy writing vernacular. Those two things didn’t balance easily. So, I did what I usually did in times of doubt, and took the instructions as far out of context as possible. Oh context, I thought. You leave your prompt friends no room to breathe!
Personification was my favorite figurative language.
I started thinking about poetry, and if I could write my assignment like that. I could do an acrostic poem, or maybe concrete. (Was that what those were called? I hoped we did a good poetry unit this year.) But poetry was tricky and I was running out of time. Besides, if I wrote a poem, I’d want to make it good, fancy. Literal or subtext? You decide! I wasn’t sure I had the energy for that.
In the end, I just started writing a nonfiction story kinda thing, sort of obnoxiously mirroring myself in the main character. (Was that cheating?) It was sort of long and unedited, but I had to finish soon, so I did my best to wrap it up and hoped for the best.
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