Hi Again, Also Bella, Also "Wasted Time"

Hi, all.

I can't believe I haven't posted since winning the writing contest.  (Late March, right?)  Stuff has happened and I'm sorry I haven't updated you on any of it.  Bullet list timeeeeeee:

• school is out and I'm a "rising junior"  (somebody told me that was the term)
• I took down the post about being in the newspaper and my editing Freshly Squeezed v2 because I gave it to the greatly capable and deserving Sarah Fosburg
• she did a great job and Freshly Squeezed v2 is out; I'm on pages 9 and 60-64 (my favorite piece though is on page 32)
• I have a new story to post!
• I have a cat, though that happened back in February.

Here is my cat, her name is Bella:

And here is a short story called "Wasted Time" that I wrote while fairly stressed:

Wasted Time

Um...so yeah, I think that sums it up.

Until next time,

-Allie H-S

P.S: I also started a cover band with a couple of friends, but it has no name.  I am the guitarist/ukulele-ist.  Root for me, 'cause I dunno how to play instruments, but I'LL TRY!

SO I ACTUALLY DID NOT LOSE THE CONTEST

HI, ALL!

So remember this post when I was half-secretly all bummed like, "yeah so I lost the writing contest but here have a story anyway"?  Well I actually was only thinking that because the UVU people were all, "Hey so yeah we'll notify winners by March 1st, yeah totally," and then it was like March 3rd and we'd heard nothing back and I was like, "the tears are real."  But hey guess what IT'S MARCH 27TH AND THEY GOT BACK TO US!  I actually was a runner-up and will get fifty dollars for it!  Yaaaaaaaaaaaay I just placed in a writing contest for the first time everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Thanks to everyone who read "Locks and Keys" and gave me feedback.  You guys are great.  I am excited.  This is pretty swell.

Yay.
-Allie H-S

Short Story: Locks and Keys (with Audio) (UPDATED)

Hi, all!

Sorry for the lame amount of posting currently.  I was actually waiting for the results of a writing contest to come through before I posted anything else.  I have a short story I wrote called "Locks and Keys" that I was actually going to post back with "Missoula," but instead I decided to enter it in a writing contest.  If it had been previously published, it would have been disqualified.  Not that is really matters, since I lost (ouch).  I'm actually pretty bummed.  But hey, at least I can put the story online now!

Locks and Keys
(I took this link down, revised it, and put it back up at least four times before coming to the version you see now.)

Locks and Keys Audio
(Sorry my S's are so loud.)

So...you enjoy that.

We've definitely done lots of other projects in Creative Writing this year, and I know that for this blog to become a good portfolio, I need to be prolific.  But I also don't wanna post anything I don't think is good, so...we'll see what I decide.  We're doing a poetry unit right now, so I'll probably do a post of a few poems later.  I still have to edit some and write a slam poem.

Wish me luck!
-Allie H-S

P.S: my updated favorite webcomic list should appear on the side bar.  New ones include Johnny Wander, Balderdash!, Paranatural, Monsterkind, Harpy Gee, and The Lonely Vincent Bellingham.  Wow, that's a lot more than I expected.  My friends say I have a problem....Haha...ha....

UPDATE: Eek look here I just learned I didn't lose yay!

Short Story Time! "Missoula"

Hi, all.

I know I haven't posted in a while, and I also know that I promised you all a peek at whatever decent writing I manage over this school year.  We really haven't done any interesting writing in English this year (just essays and things), but I would kind of like this blog to function as a portfolio, so maybe I'll post those later.  In the meantime, I'll talk about my latest couple Creative Writing pieces.

But first (bear with me), I am excited to announce that next year, Mr. Parker will be offering a Creative Writing II!  It will be a class in which each student chooses a long-term project, a goal they've been interested in for a while, but haven't found the time to fulfill.  These include screenplays, novels, poem books, etc, and the entire year will be dedicated to finishing that one project.  This means that, potentially, I could have a book published before I'm out of high school.

Oh my god.  I have been wishing for a class like this for years.

Also, so you don't think I've been doing nothing all school year, here are the projects we've done in Creative Writing that I may or may not (probably won't) post later:
1. Memoir - We spent the entirety of first quarter just writing this short memoir.  Mine was about a friendship I lost last year, and involved a lot of personal angst.  We'll be reviewing these fourth quarter, and if I decide then that mine doesn't suck (or at least that I can fix it), I'll post it then.
2. Horror Story - I didn't actually finish my horror story (whoops), partly because I had horrible writer's block, but mostly because I kind of went all-out and decided to write about things that frighten me personally, every single day.  It was about creepy china dolls and mirrors and evil reflections and stuff, and I'm pretty damn sure that I can't ever finish it without it affecting how comfortable I am at home, so you probably won't see that one.
3. Unexpected News ("Missoula") - This (or most of this) should be posted below.  The prompt was to write a story in which the main character receives unexpected news.  "Missoula" is about a fifteen-year-old boy named Andy whose mother one night takes him and his little sister, Molly, and leaves their father.
4. Deeply-Held Secret - This one really wasn't very good.  My main character, Ed, has a crush on a girl who's into drugs and stuff; one day when there's a drug bust at school, the girl stuffs her drugs into a random kid's locker, and Ed realizes it's his best friend's.  It was choppy though, and poorly put together.  I like Ed's friend's name, though; it's Lionel.  (He goes by his middle name, which is Jack I think, short for Jacob.)
5. Surprise Ending ("Locks and Keys") - Okay, so my surprise ending here wasn't that revelatory or anything, it just wasn't overly anticipated.  "Locks and Keys" will hopefully be posted eventually, but first, I'm entering it in a writing contest.  It's about a sixteen-year-old girl named Elliot whose mother died just a couple of months ago.  Elliot finds a note written by her mom before she died telling her that she needs to find the box that a certain key fits because it's apparently got some cool stuff inside.

And that's as far as we've gotten.  So.  Here, have a link.

"Missoula" on Google Drive

You'll notice Missoula has "Part 1" at the end of its title.  This is because I'm toying with the idea of making it into a little continuing project.  So maybe I'll post more of that later.

So...yeah.  Enjoy, and feel free to comment below.  (I like knowing you guys exist.)

-Allie H-S

TFiOS, Children's Stories, and Tiny, Mexican Men

Hello all.

Time for a jam-packed media post!

I was actually gonna post about how to defeat writer's block, but that actually began to give me writer's block and I couldn't deal with the irony.  And yesterday, my friends and I spotted three lovely copies of my favorite book, The Fault in Our Stars (TFiOS) on my English teacher's desk, and the movie's coming out on June 6th [link], and I haven't read that book for - jesus - almost two years now.  (One and three quarters?)  Also, Mr. Parker (English teacher) said it isn't sad, which I kind of have to fundamentally disagree with.  The Fault in Our Stars is a very sad book.  The protagonist has terminal cancer.  Her friend has eye cancer.  Her love interest...well, he doesn't have cancer anymore, but that's beside the point.  But so, I read it in the summer before eighth grade, then thrust it in the faces of all of my friends, and they came back and told me they had to stop at this one particular scene (and a few others) because they couldn't read through the tears.  (Alix actually told me I'd "broken her feels" because the book gave her too many.)

Now, that isn't to say you shouldn't read it because it's sad.  I've actually noticed recently that all good books are sad, or at least have sad parts.  I think that's because you can't really confront the world's problems without including some sad stuff.  (I would like to link to something here, but it's too spoiler-y, so maybe I will...later?)  And if you don't confront the world's problems, your book is really just...a book.

Anyways, the point of all my ramblyrambles here was to say this: I'm reading TFiOS again, and because I haven't done an audio reading in ages (and because those are fabulous fun), I would like to post it here.  But because it's All Rights Reserved and I don't have permission to use it, that's copyright infringement, which is just generally a bad idea.  So I will look into it!  And if, by some miracle, I manage to get permission, I'll update this post, or maybe make a new one with the recording.

So really this part of my post is just a review.  READ TFiOS.  O-O

However, I did promise for this to be a media post, and something I realized today is that I never showed you guys the last project I did in Creative Writing.  So here, I give you...

A Giant Mess

My junior high is located right next to an elementary school, so we went to visit a kindergarten class, and we each got a little kid to write a story for, and I illustrated mine and everything and just, just, gosh.  That project made me happy.  I took my kid's name out of the dedication though, 'cause she's like five, and this is the Internet.

The one other thing I wanted to share in this post is that yesterday morning, I went to a Rotary breakfast thingy and they have an orphanage/school place in Mexico that they were talking about and they gave us these on our way out the door.

they made pen people!  and keychains!  (it's a sombrero.  it says Guadalajara.)

hehe!

  

and that just made my day.  :3

Thanks,
-Allie

Creative Writing - "Write Around"

Hi everybody!  Hooray, a weekend post!  To think I'd had it together this week....

I've been posting a lot of Vital Vocabs lately, but this wasn't really meant to be a Vital Vocab blog.  It was meant to be a writing [and sometimes miscellaneous] blog.  So, here's some writing.  (And sometimes miscellaneous?)

A lot of things I do for English, but I'm also in a Creative Writing class.  Every class we do a warm-up "Writers Notebook" activity.  (Basically, our teacher gives us some sort of challenge or prompt to start the class with.)  This week, there was one called a "Write-Around."  We each wrote the opening sentences of a story, then passed it around the class, each person adding a bit to the plot.  And so, after some minor editing, I ended up with this.

Writers Notebook 10 - Write Around
((I only wrote the first three sentences and last four paragraphs of this - we had to conclude the stories on our own.))

courtesy of: www.pcta.org

     Trees towered high over the river’s edge, tall spindles of pine. A yellow and orange dusk was falling, and the air slowly gained its distinctive evening chill. There was a broken down bridge, threatening to tumble into the water. It was beautiful.
     Anna felt a warm breath hit her shoulder and she glanced around, but no one was there. She turned and watched the river slowly flow down the stream. Anna was glad to get away from her controlling parents for a little while. Suddenly she heard sticks crack.
     “Hey, Anna. I hear that you want to get away from your parents,” said her ex-boyfriend, “maybe I can help.”
     “John, we broke up for a reason. Now stop stalking me like a shadow!” Anna screamed out at him.
     “Ya but, thats all in the past.” He said making matters worse. She got up and started to walk away. Anna took one step, and BAM! John ran right into her and forcefully slammed his lips upon hers. She tried to escape, but she was to weak. She always was too weak. She was trembling, her whole body filled with fear. I better think quickly, if I ever want to get out of this situation. The last place in the whole wide world she would want to be was right here, right then.
     Anna started screaming at the top of her lungs, the sound echoing off the mountain walls. “Help! Help! Help! Get me out of here.” She began to run, run faster than she ever had before. John kept chasing her. She heard him panting in the distance.
     As she ran, her oversized shoes began to trip her up. She knew that she shouldn’t have worn those shoes. They were slowing her down, so she kicked off her shoes and began to run faster. She was always super fast in track and field.
     John was stumbling over grass and roots, but still trailing after her. Anna stopped and ducked around behind a boulder, knowing he couldn’t see her.
     “Come on baby,” he said, “you don’t wanna hide from me.” Quietly, Anna picked up a stone, then climbed on top of the rock. He didn’t even look up. “Come on now, where’d you go?” he blundered, completely oblivious. Anna tensed, took aim, held her breath.
     She dropped the stone directly on his head.
     “UHG--” John dropped to the ground, unconscious. Quickly, Anna took out her cell phone. It was time to call the police. 

So.  Attempted rape.  Okay, class.  But so I know this isn't my best work; I only really edited it for grammar.  It was a fun assignment though, seeing what a simple setting could turn into when passed by a bunch of different writers.  I'm curious to see what I did to everybody else's stories, too, because when we were done and people got their stories back, I heard things like "oh wow, my story got violent," and "that's so sad, my character fell into a ditch!" and I just kind of sat there like, "oh, I did that...."

But so anyways, thanks for reading, as always.  Until next time, my friends!
-Allie

P.S: if anyone would like to see it, my waifu posted a sad coupling of one-shots we wrote on her blog, here.  (Should I post my one-shots?  They're mostly Anthony-related and poorly explained.)

P.P.S: sorry if the formatting on any of my posts is screwy.  I've kinda been trying to teach myself HTML lately.  (for anyone similarly interested, this is a beautiful website.  enjoy yourselves.)

My Abridged Short Story (late post, augh!)

Hello, my friends.  As you may have noticed, I have a general routine of weekly Monday posts with Vital Vocab, and then an assignment post every other Friday.  But now...a weekend post?  What's this?

Yeah, I didn't do my assignment post last night.  I knew I was supposed to, but I was really sick yesterday and just sort of...went to sleep.  Now normally, district policy would say that because I was sick, I have an extra day to turn it in, but I technically had a week to do this.  So that's fun.  Anyway, even though I won't actually get any credit, I feel sort of obligated to Rousseaux itself to post, even if it's a bit late.  So here it is.

Remember that one guy I write, Anthony?  Well when I was first creating him, I gave him kind of a jam-packed backstory (I mean seriously, it probably shouldn't be so complex).  A couple weeks ago in H. English, we had a short story assignment and I thought that would be a pretty good opportunity to write it out.  However, I do call this an abridged account, because I was on a bit of a deadline and had to cut a few details out of the end (like how Anthony ran away and stuff).  Also, because ah, I'm silly, and still couldn't cut it down enough, it's like seven pages.  (Maybe eight?)  This is why, instead of copy/pasting it into my post like a normal person, I'm gonna be an Allie and link you to Google Drive.  Here!

Another thing I left out was a description of Anthony.  Here's a picture I stole from a puzzle game on Gaia Online (and edited slightly for colors, back when I had a vague idea of how Photoshop works).

Don't ask me about the onions.  I have no idea.

-Allie