NOW We go to California!

That was what Nadia said when she got in the car at the first gas station anyway. Actually we were going to pick up Quincy on the way out of Ohio. Then we were going to Kansas City. Now we're in Utah. But the end destination is California, so the sentiment is right.

Multiple people have agreed that I should resurrect my blog for a travel blog of sorts as we drive across the country. I'm willing to give it a shot, especially since Nadia has stolen my thunder as far as posting quotes on Facebook. (Fine, fine. It's because she has a smartphone and I can't stand the things.)

First of all the basic facts:

Who:
Me, my big brother Quincy, and my big sisters Nadia and Noelle.

What:
Driving to California. Obviously, by way of all those other things.

When:
Right now. Until the end of May (for Quincy and I, anyway.)

Where:
Allllll over the place.

Why:
Ah, that's the one you actually want to know. My generic answer is: because we can.
The actual answer is a little hazy. Sometime way back when (last year. Maybe the year before) the idea of going on a trip when I graduated college came up. Originally it was New Zealand - that'll still happen someday. But we decided California was slightly more feasible at the moment. So we started vaguely planning, then Quincy got on board and did a better job on planning. And really, at this point, Nadia and Quincy do all the planning, Noelle is here to make sure we CAN do it and to finally have a break from work, and I'm here for the adventure so yes. Thank you for planning. Makes my adventuring easier.

Long story short: I graduated. We're going to California.

Now to the trip so far:

• It was snowing when we left Sunday morning. I drove through a snowstorm. This is also why we're going to California.
• Noelle has finished two books so far, I think? Quincy finished one, but he's also doing a lot of the driving.
• Turns out that with a lot of effort I can at least write in the car. Reading might still be pushing it. This is why I drive. Or pretend to sleep.
• In addition to the awesome people we've left behind at home, we have now left some awesome people behind in Kansas City. But they were cool and let us sleep on their couch/recliner/floor like the hobos that we are.
• Colorado's very pretty. But I drove through another snowstorm.
• We've reached a state none of us have ever been to! And Utah's quite pretty too. Everything really does seem huge. O.o

Now this morning we're leaving for Anaheim. NOW we really are going to California!

That's really about it for the overview. I was going to do a section for quotes at the end here, but Nadia has posted alllllll of the best ones on her Facebook. If you don't have her as a friend... well go ahead and add her and I'll explain to her why she's got all these friend requests.

Her fault for having a smartphone. Makes you popular.

Final note: Thank you to all of you who suggested songs for the California playlist! I quite enjoyed it. I think my passengers enjoyed most of it too. And contrary to rumor, Party in the U.S.A. is definitely not on the playlist.

(Yeah, okay, it is.)

What a Novel Idea

The title is a pun. I'm just warning you.

I'll say it: it's been almost ten months since I posted on this blog. (But I did do a guest blog over here, so that must count for something.) That's a little ridiculous, I'm very sorry for that. But in my defense, I didn't have any brilliant ideas, so why force it? I still don't have any brilliant ideas, but I had a tolerable one so we can deal with that.

Fun fact you may or may not know about me: I'm in the process of writing a novel.
Follow up fun fact: I've been planning and working on this novel for something like ten years.

"But Elizabeth," you say. "Practically everyone I know is working on a novel. What makes your novel plans any different than theirs?"

Stubbornness, that's what. It may take me another decade or so, but I will get this novel done if it kills me.

Actually I'm not trying to say that my novel is more important or better than the ones your other friends are writing. In reality, I like to think of myself as the happy middle ground between literary-gold and please-stop-writing. I don't have high minded dreams of a best seller or a movie contract. (But I'm not gonna say no if they ask, you know what I mean?)

For me what it all comes down to is this: I've had characters developing in my head for over a decade now and their story desperately needs to be told. They're wonderful people. For some kids they probably could have been called imaginary friends, but I was a strange kid who didn't believe in having daydreams involving myself so I daydreamed about characters instead. So I know them like the back of my hand but they're not really my friends. Each of them is some important part of me, manifesting itself as a philosophy professor or a skater chick or a surly teenage guy.

"Okay, Elizabeth," you say. "Why exactly are you bringing up this 'fun fact' anyway?"

Good question. The short answer is: it was a random idea that struck me and I ran with it.

But I never stop at the short answer.

The long answer relates to the fact that I am a rare breed known as an Extroverted Writer. By this made-up term, I'm simply referencing the fact that almost all of my writer friends are introverts. I'm the odd one out. I'm sure this has lots of interesting effects on my writing, but the one that troubles me most often is my need for an audience. I absolutely have to have someone ready and willing to read what I'm writing or I have no reason to write. This is also why I can't journal. The idea of a potential audience does nothing. I need friends pestering me. And they can't be pestering me on principle, they have to be excited about what I'm actually working on.

As you can see, it's amazing I get any writing done. (I do have some wonderful friends who have obliged and are enthusiastic fans).

Despite this need for an audience, I am terrible at trying to acquire one. People ask me about my novel and I go "That information is on a need to know basis." They ask for general information and I waffle a bit, deciding if it sounds stupid when I explain it out loud. Heaven forbid you ask for specific details, because then I'll just tell you they're spoilers and you'll have to wait and figure out. I think that even by average author standards I'm pretty bad and the average author lives by this principle:

So here you are, a group of people who are willing to read my writing whenever I get around to a blog post. You might be willing to read a novel if I wrote it, right? But I guess you won't be able to begin to answer that question unless you have some sort of idea what I'm writing.

So down here, at the end of this longer-than-it-should-have-been-as-always blog post, I'm making you an offer. I'm making it down here because it means you actually bothered to read all the way through so you're more deserving than most. If you 1. Would be willing to read a work of fiction of significant length written by yours truly (aka: a piece of my soul) 2. Would like to help me finish a project I've been working on since middle school. 3. Are just a curious sort of person in general.
If you meet any of those criteria, you have my permission to ask me any question you like about my novel. This includes those people who already know about it and have been pestering me for answers for ages. This includes the people who don't have the faintest idea of what I'm writing (it's not fantasy, I'll tell you that much). This includes anyone who stumbles across this blog and has no idea who I am. You're free to ask me anything. I'll do my best to actually answer the questions, but I'm not promising to never withhold information on the basis of spoilers. There's a comment section here on the blog. There's a comment section when I post it on Facebook. Don't be shy.

But also don't feel terrible if you look at the various comment sections and nobody asks any questions. I can survive on trolling my existing audience. I just figured I could give them a break.

10 Things I'm Thankful For

Don't worry. They're not normal things. Since both of my blogger friends whom I regularly follow did this I decided I'd join in, since I could just write this without too much thought. In no particular order:

1. Other People's Cars - My car has been in the shop about six times since the beginning of the semester. I like it when my friends and family have working cars.

2. Sheetz - Most Mount Union students will agree with me.

3. Acapella Groups - I can never be bored as long as I have YouTube.

4. Cover Artists in General - I can never be productive as long as I have YouTube.

5. Inside Jokes - The best part of practically any friendship.

6.  Book to Movie Adaptions - They can be blasphemous, but I think Hollywood is doing a surprisingly good job recently and it makes me incredibly happy.

7. Fancy School Computers - I certainly wouldn't be able to do overly complicated fan art and photo manipulations without them.

8. Fun French Words - All right, I didn't want to learn French. But I have learned some surprisingly fun stuff.

9. Paper Towels - I used to hate paper towels. A wet paper towel is still sickening to me. But... I've worked as a janitor for the majority of this year. Paper towels are my best friend.

10. Word Wars - It's the middle of November, they're on the mind. I would not have 50+ pages of my novel written if I didn't have so many writer friends who have been ready to battle nightly for the last 26 days.

Happy Thanksgiving, be sure to thank God for all your tiny unimportant things in addition to your friends, family, and fandoms. (It was alliterative. I had to.)

10 Things You May or May Not Know About Being a PK

This seems like such an obvious idea for a post so I decided to humor it. Welcome to a little glimpse into the life of a pastor's kid. A lot of you may relate to this, even though I realize I have very few friends who are actually PK's. As usual, this is in my (ridiculously) blunt style but I think I've avoided offending anyone.

Also I decided it'd be fun to insert GIFs for once. I admit two of the items stumped me for gifs though.

1. You're automatically great at singing, acting, public speaking, and whatever else the church requires.

Whether you actually are or not. The church needs it, so you can provide it. Now, I've spent a good amount of time acquiring acting and singing skills. However, unlike most of my siblings, I stink at public speaking in general. But don't tell some people at church, they won't believe you.

2. Over the course of your life you get to learn pretty much the entire hymal

I feel sorry for modern PK's who probably don't get this joy. At this point if you give me practically any hymn in the United Methodist Hymal I can sing it for you and might have all the lyrics memorized. Including the verses that no one ever actually sings. Those are my favorites.

3. You get to know the inside of a church/lots of churches/every church

I'd like to say that I've been in so many churches now that I can automatically figure out the layout of any church. While some things are consistent in most churches, fortunately churches really are all designed differently so there's always something new to find. I love exploring churches. And playing hide and seek in churches.

4. You learn a lot of patience (and how to entertain yourself)

"Oh, Mommy is busy so you guys need to come with me? You can come sit in on my trustee meeting!"
All right, Daddy was always very understanding and let us go amuse ourselves in the nursery or something. But between meetings and visiting and tons and tons of services you do develop a high tolerance for long slow things. Services aren't usually a problem but when you have two services and you have to go to both eventually it gets to you. I'm not saying I doodle constantly in church but maybe you shouldn't look too closely at my bulletin. Or look at my bulletin from a great distance. Ignore my bulletin.

5. You're expected to know the answer to every question in every lesson. Ever.

I mean, I'm not going to deny that in general you can depend on my siblings and I to have an answer to everything. Whether it's right or not. (Okay, that's mostly me.) But it gets a bit tiresome when the teacher and all our fellow students automatically stare at you during the awkward silences when no one is answering. That's what you get for breaking the awkward silence one too many times, people start to depend on you.

6. It feels like you're automatically either the coolest kid or the least cool kid in youth group, Sunday School etc.

So this is just from my personal experience, I don't know about my siblings. It's also an exaggeration, don't take it too seriously. The thing is, you get a lot of "street cred" so to speak from having influence in the church. Your friends can depend on you to answer all the questions (ahem), know where everything is in the church, and convince the youth leader that playing laser tag will be highly beneficial for your spiritual lives. But, quite simply put, at the same time your friends assume you're going to be shocked and scandalized if they do anything slightly against the rules so if they want to do something slightly different you get excluded.
I admit that as a teenager I totally would have been scandalized. Good call, friends. But it still got depressing to get excluded, I have to admit. (It's all right, friends, I still love you.)

7. There is apparently at the very least a 60% chance that you're going to end up working in ministry

That highly scientific number is taken from the number of my siblings who are old enough to have a job and how many of them are doing something ministry-related at the moment (whether paid or unpaid). I didn't even count the fact that my every weekend is filled up with church goings-on and Bible Quizzing. Please, take my scientific number as fact, it will amuse me.
But the point is, it's in your blood. You can't escape it, and in general you don't really want to either.

8. People automatically assume that you're either really awesome or really messed up

So far from my experience, they aren't wrong. (My family is all in the really awesome category, for the record.) I like to point to the entertainment industry; you would be amazed at just how many singers, actors and famous people in general have at least one parent who is a pastor. Notable examples: Katy Perry, David Tennant, Denzel Washington, the Jonas Brothers, and pretty much at least one member of every Christian band ever. Being a PK does lend itself to the performing arts a bit. If you want something exciting done in certain churches you have to do it yourself, or at least start it yourself. (Then you end up running it forever, so it amounts to the same thing.)

9. You get to know some of the coolest people ever

I mean, you also meet the crazies, but you get those anywhere. You just can't beat the church for the most awesome people. This is where you find the bikers and addicts turned evangelist, the little old ladies whose families have been in the same church since before the church actually existed, the little kids who have more talent than you have on your best day, and all the rest.
Did you know that L.M. Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables, was a pastor's wife? While she didn't get married until after the first two books in the series were published, you can see all throughout her works what a perfect grasp she has on human nature in general. Her wonderful portrayal of over-the-top characters remind me of people we've run into at various churches. I can definitely see how many of her humorous vignettes were probably inspired by her experiences being married to a minister.

10. You learn to stick a point on the end of anything

When you're writing last minute skits incorporating the entirety of the Emperor's New Groove or making up a children's sermon on the spot you have to learn to get a moral out of anything. "I've got some toothpicks in my bag, what sort of moral can I get out of those?" While it sometimes makes you feel a bit like Marmee in Little Women (Oh, you've gotten yourself into some sort of trouble, daughter? Here's what you can learn from it.) it's really a very helpful skill to have in life. At the most unexpected moments when I think I'm about to go absolutely crazy I suddenly get this big-picture view of life. I see, yeah, this is terrible now, but look what I've learned from it.

If I were to tell you everything I've learned (and am still learning) from being a PK I would have to write at least a six volume encyclopedia. As it is I may have to do another one of these because I had a few ideas I didn't use. But at the moment it seems this is one of the biggest lessons I've learned: God is always working in your life and no matter what the situation you can always find him.

Why I Should Never Have an Advice Column

I won't bother checking when the last time I posted was. I really don't want to know.

But I've decided it's time to amuse my readers once more, so I'm going to share with you something completely non-blog related. I'll probably regret this, good thing I excel at posting things without really thinking that much.

Most of you probably know that I'm an aspiring novelist. So far I have two chapters of a book I've been planning since I was 9 or 10. I'm a little bit of a slow writer.

But I also have some amusing side stories that I write to amuse myself and my friends. These cover a variety of topics but lately some friends and I have been working on the same general story. Like the true geeks that we are, we've taken what started as essentially fan fiction and expanded it. Long story short: we have a storyline in which all four of us are Time Lords (like in Doctor Who, to the uninitiated). That's really all you need to know for now. If you desperately want to know more I'll tell you all about it.

So I'm going to share a little bit of that with you. This isn't narrative, this is my character writing a blog essentially (so it totally counts as a blog). I actually don't remember exactly how this came about, but somehow the idea of my character having a relationship advice column was suggested and I had to run with it. I went to Ask.com and found the most ridiculous questions I could and here are the results:

I don’t know if you knew this, but when you’re a Time Lord and you carry a psychic paper of any kind sometimes you get spam mail. Sometimes it’s something exciting like a distress call and I can do something to help. Sometimes it’s a pizza order and I really can’t help. Sometimes it’s a completely different kind of distress call... we’ll see if I can help with those.

I’m referring to the abnormal amount of requests I’ve been receiving for relationship advice. I’ll open my psychic paper and there will be a pleading note from a teen (I hope they’re teens. I sincerely hope these people are teens.) asking for my help. Now, I personally was never a teenage girl, (I was a teenage werewolf, ask anyone), but you’d think with more than 500 years of dealing with life forms I would have picked up SOMETHING about relationships. So I’ll see if I can help these poor unfortunate souls.

Easy, it’s somewhere in the 400 year range.

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm how much older? Are we talking buy-him-a-wheelchair older? Because that’s creepy. Also might not get him to like you, I suppose. Well, if you’re actually friends that means he must not dislike you, ergo, he likes you. Ta-da.

http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Dummies-James-Eade/dp/1118016955/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412231300&sr=1-7&keywords=chess

Chocolate. Someone to do the laundry.

Oh, seriously? Hm. I can do serious. Maybe.

Um, it inspires you. Having someone to love and work for is a lot more encouraging than living for yourself. Plus it’s nice to have a partner in crime.

“That’s a weird place to put a piano.”

“What planet did you get that hat on? I’d like to get one for myself.”

“Hey, I have a weird freckle on my face too!”

“Come with me if you want to live.”

“Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”

“I’m sorry I accidentally locked you in my TARDIS, what was your name again, you handsome devil?”

All guaranteed to work, I speak from experience.

Aha, slightly different from the conversation starters, I can provide you with some pick up lines. I’m not saying I’m great at flirting, but I’ve never been told I was bad at it. I’ve compiled a list for you.

Here are some classics:

Do you have a Band-Aid? Because I just scraped my knee falling for you.

I'm not a photographer, but I can picture me and you together.

I thought happiness started with an H. Why does mine start with U?

You look so familiar… didn't we take a class together? I could've sworn we had chemistry.

And of course, this one:

I seem to have lost my phone number. Can I have yours?

Here are some slightly bolder ones:

Are you a fruit, because Honeydew you know how fine you look right now?

Are you a parking ticket? 'Cause you've got fine written all over you.

If I were to ask you out on a date, would your answer be the same as the answer to this question?

And here are your creeper options:

Do you live in a corn field, cause I'm stalking you.

Can I follow you home? Cause my parents always told me to follow my dreams.

Excuse me, but does this smell like chloroform to you?

This one’s for my friends, I regret nothing:

Are you a campfire? Cause you are hot and I want s'more.

And then there’s the Time Lord pick up line:

I was wondering if you had an extra heart, one of mine seems to have been stolen

Duct tape.

That about does it for now. I think I’ve done my good deed for the day. I’ll go reward myself with chocolate and not doing the laundry.

The Prodigal Brother

We will ignore the fact that it's been more than two months since I last posted.

I have always liked the parable of the prodigal son. It seemed to me the most fleshed out parable (besides possibly the good Samaritan) with even some interesting characters with some depth. When I was a kid the point was obvious; it was all about the son who went away and did bad things and came back and apologized and was forgiven. Everything else was minor.

Well the next important thing I realized is that the father in the story is very important. The most important, of course, because he's God. We can be incredibly thankful for the father in that parable because he's the one who loves us enough to forgive us. We can also try to put ourselves in the position of the father and learn a lesson about forgiving others.

But even from the beginning when I considered the other characters minor I thought the brother was obnoxious. What a downer, the story was perfect with a happy ending and then he just had to insert his opinions.

Unfortunately now that I'm older I realize that the part I am most likely to be in this story is the brother. I'm not likely to be the prodigal, it's not that I'm better than anyone else, it's just that I'm more likely to be the pompous high-and-mighty one.

What actually brought this up was a song (which I will provide at the end of this post) that pointed out what the oldest son was actually doing. He wasn't just being a jerk to his younger brother. He wasn't just giving his father and all his party guests the cold shoulder. He was self-righteously assuming that just because he hadn't been an idiot and spent his father's money and all that jazz that meant he deserved some kind of reward. He was presuming on his father's kindness (Romans 2:4) and trying to get something just for doing what he ought to have been doing.

Now I realize, that's how our world works. You do something good, you get rewarded. You do homework, you get a grade. You go to work, you get paid. You give a present to a friend, you get a thank you and probably a present of your own later on. That's kind of the way we think.

But then there's God, and he gave us everything that we have in the first place. We obey him and read his word and try to do good and we assume that this means we need to be rewarded. Whatever for? Everything you do should already be a thank you to God for simply creating you, let alone coming down and dying for you while you were a sinner and the opposite of deserving. We didn't even ask for that, like the prodigal son only asked to be made a servant.

That's what we're supposed to be doing, asking God to let us serve him. Instead we ask God why we're not being rewarded for our good deeds. Why, God, I gave my tithe religiously this year, why am I not getting back even more? I went on a mission trip, where's the answer to that little prayer this week? It's just a little prayer, is that too much to ask in return for all I've done?

That's why I've decided to finally finish this blog post today, since it's Thanksgiving. Instead of looking for thanks from God for doing what we should be doing anyway, we need to remember to give God thanks for what we don't even deserve.



Final note: Here's that song I referenced. It's even cooler because when they released it they made it a free download to drive home their point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mucrxt8KlfA

Identity of Storytelling

The following is an essay from my literature class I took last semester. It was essentially the final exam essay and, thankfully, I was given interesting options for topics. My favorite part of the class was talking about why reading and stories and fiction are so important. I had to use quotes from things we'd read in class or articles that fit certain criteria and introduce them a certain way and so on. I'd also developed a certain style to fit the professor's preferences, he was an interesting one to be sure. I've edited the style slightly for your benefit but it's still kind of hilarious how different my essay writing style is from my blog writing style.

Storytelling, in its variety of forms, can be used in countless ways.Telling a story is a very personal experience that requires a storyteller and an audience. As explained by Northrop Frye in The Educated Imagination, storytelling is essential to discovering and defining personal identity.

The first way storytelling builds identity is by distinguishing the human identity from the rest of the world. Separating “me” from “not me” is the first step in identifying who you are. But Frye also says that storytelling can re-connect a single identity to the rest of the world. 

“We discovered that the language of literature was associative: it uses figures of speech, like the simile and the metaphor, to suggest an identity between the human mind and the world outside it.”

Similes and metaphors compare things to each other by saying one thing is like another or one thing is another. These literary conventions can show how a human identity is comparable to something else in the world.

Hearing stories about other people or things teaches us about ourselves but can also make us feel better about ourselves, since we are not the ones making their mistakes. Paul Hernadi in his article “The Erotics of Retrospection: Historytelling, Audience Response, and the Strategies of Desire” discusses historical stories and fictional stories. In talking about how readers relate to characters, real or fictional, in a story he says, “Even when I follow fictive representations of actions, my attitude is not unlike that of the unobserved observer standing behind a two-way mirror. But such privileged status over people actually believed to have existed will enhance my self-esteem even if-or, rather, especially if-I admire them." He says that hearing about fictional characters making mistakes gives us a feeling of superiority. That feeling is increased if we are reading about real people or characters that we know and if they are people we admire as well then we feel proud that they have a fault which we do not have.

This relates back to storytelling having to do with identity, it separates your identity from the parts of the world that you don’t like. Northrop Frye, talking about a modern tendency to write about unhappy things rather than optimistic things, says, “In other words, literature not only leads us toward the regaining of identity, but it also separates this state from its opposite, the world we don’t like and want to get away from." By reading stories about unpleasant things we can distance them from ourselves. Reading the stories about other people experiencing things we don’t like can make us appreciate that we are not in their circumstances.

Storytelling can also help us understand others. In the same way that reading about someone can help us distance ourselves from things that we don’t like, it can also bring us closer to things we don’t understand. Hearing a story is a way of hearing another person’s experiences. John D. Ramage describes in an article the purpose of literature: “The task of literature, or at least of literature as a discipline, is somehow to complicate us, not simply by projecting us into foreign minds and sensibilities, but by revealing to us the means of understanding and judging those minds and sensibilities." Here he says that literature gives us a way of comparing other minds to our own. If we cannot relate the thoughts of others to our own we will have no way of understanding them. Stories give us other viewpoints and cause us to confront them and think about them until we understand how they do and don’t make sense.

The most obvious way in which storytelling accomplishes teaching us about others is in expressing the storyteller’s viewpoint. Every story has to communicate the author’s thoughts in some way because an author cannot tell a story without his or her own thoughts. In turn the author has been influenced by others and expresses their viewpoints in his or her writing. As Northrop Frye says when discussing authors, “A writer’s desire to write can only have come from a previous experience of literature, and he’ll start by imitating whatever he’s read." An author cannot write anything without imitating on some level what he or she has already read. In this way they share their experiences with their readers.

Frye continues that, through writing, the author releases experiences and emotions that would stay trapped inside otherwise. By expressing the ideas an author can make them more orderly and understand them more completely.

“For the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong."

Frye is saying that the author’s experiences belong in literature. This is introducing the idea that the storyteller’s identity comes from storytelling. A person cannot have an identity without stories to tell about themselves and other people.

Storytelling encourages learning, whether about ourselves or about others, and then it helps us apply what we have learned. Frye gives a way in which storytelling helps us organize things that we have discovered about ourselves. “Our impressions of human life are picked up one by one, and remain for most of us loose and disorganized. But we constantly find things in literature that suddenly coordinate and bring into focus a great many such impressions.” Reading stories can help us take what we have learned from various sources and organize it into patterns. Making patterns and connections leads to deeper understanding which, in turn, leads to more discovery.

Learning and understanding is important because it does lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves. Charles E. Winquist in his essay “The Act of Storytelling and the Self's Homecoming” addresses what stories have to do with our identities.

“Without a history or without a story, there is very little that we can say about ourselves. The generalization of our humanity leaves us only with superfluous bodies.”

Winquist continues: “The natural self stripped of its history is neutral” (electronic). Winquist is sayingthat without stories a person has no identity at all. Stories make our history and give us a way to tell others about ourselves.

In conclusion, storytelling is necessary to the continual creation of our identities. We cannot have an identity to begin with without a story to tell These stories tell individuals what they need to know in order to understand each other. Telling a story will assist in organizing thoughts and memories. Also, in order to continue having an identity, we must discover more about ourselves and others. An efficient way of doing this is through storytelling.