themodernstory-blog

[themodernstory-blog]

Part of a Drip email campaign done for IFS Insurance Agency. 

(I brainstormed the concept, edited the graphic, and worked on some spacing aspects with our Insurance Managing Director.)

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Oh, okay. So, I'll just do my thing where I'm like, 'Hey! I'm so-and-so. This is my friend. She's a writer.' And then walk away.

So, why was I surprised when my roommate did EXACTLY THE THING??? I thanked her for it though, since my solo trip to a Sunday open-mic night wasn’t as fruitful as I’d hoped. 

A lot of thoughts get in the way of socializing when you’re shy.

“Will they like me?” ”Will they think I’m creepy?” ”Will I be too boring for them?” ”Will they walk off in the middle of our conversation?” “Will I know how and when to end a conversation?”

”What do I do with my hands?!”

All of these thoughts sprinted around my mind as I tried to find people to fangirl over who presented at Java Monkey’s open mic night (because the poems were AMAZING and I have a thing for spoken word.)

I did try to joke and praise people on their poems, but I didn’t want to interrupt the person on the stage after them, and during the break, most people went to talk to their friends at the bar or to buy a drink.

SO, a couple of my friends were able to come to a storytelling event with me on Tuesday night. We listened to people tell stories about the night’s theme, Animals, and then came the moment of truth. 

I tried to mentally photograph at least two or three people to talk to after the event was over - people whose stories (or best lines from the stories they didn’t get to tell) particularly grabbed my attention, but when the waves of people started bunching up or leaving, my window started closing. 

In comes my roommate, who literally pulls me over to the table where the heads of the event sat, and she did exactly what she said she would. 

So, before I could let the full effect of my doe eyes suck me into the mumbling abyss, they sucked me into conversation. And it went fairly well.

I told them how fun their event was, and they told me how to get involved with the storytellers and where more events were. I told them I was there as a kind of class thing, and they told me about how another college gave credit for coming to their events too. There was even one woman who received her Masters at my soon-to-be alma mater. 

So, what did we learn?: Well, I learned about some other cool events from both venues where I might be able to get up and share my work the next time I go. So, maybe my path is a little more slow and steady than most.

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Okay, so this video doesn’t take place in Sydney, but it still brings up an interesting conversation about the life of a social justice internet meme (for lack of a better term).

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on the aftermath of the Sydney Siege and the resulting hashtag #iwillridewithyou. Since then, the social media movement seems to have dwindled. There are still new posts under the hashtag, but it seems to be a collection of the adamant few trying to keep that spark alive. 

It’s a really hard thing to watch such a powerful gathering like that die, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

For one, so many Australians seemed so willing to support their Muslim brothers and sisters in safety that #iwillridewithyou didn’t seem like it would need to be a lasting hashtag in the first place. 

Of course, other countries might also say that about American hashtags like #ICan’tBreathe or #WhyINeedFeminism, which have also kind of disappeared from the eyes of mass media. But I think that the overall point of these movements has always been to start a conversation, not necessarily to blow up social media. 

There are some movements like the #Blackout movement on Tumblr and Instagram that are meant to keep on rolling until social stigmas are non-issues, but a lot of hashtags are for 3 main goals:

1. To reveal a support system. 2. To encourage activism in a generation where our word of mouth can spread across the world in a matter of seconds. 3. To start a conversation. 

The third is the most poignant in my opinion. Whether you reveal in conversation that you have some racist or anti-feminist friends or you stick up for someone else’s religious beliefs on the street, the movement polarizes you in a way that you may not have recognized before. 

In the past few months, more people have taken an interest in the discussions surrounding radicalism and Islamaphobia in Australia, France, and the U.S. (recently in North Carolina).

It has raised questions about online hate and a move for tolerance, both socially and politically (coughcoughTonyAbbott). 

Essentially, placing a hashtag on an issue is a little like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with water, one cup at a time (as shown by http://www.islamophobiawatch.co.uk/). You’ll make a dent, yes. But the overall issue is just too broad, and trying to cover the entire thing with one cup is a little ambitious. 

But some people will see you and start to help.

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Above is a photo of Vivian Maier’s, the mysterious photographer who hoarded thousands of negatives and undeveloped film for years upon years until her death.  The newly released documentary, Finding Vivian Maier, takes the life of the artist and places it in a very familiar documentary format.

Quite frankly, I wouldn't know of or care about any documentaries if they hadn't been recommended by friends or if I hadn't been at a film festival for an entirely different film on a particular day, but there’s something special about the documentary style of storytelling. 

Documentaries tend to have a very journalistic kind of setup: They tell you the Who? What? When? (sometimes) Where? within the first 5 minutes or so. But the “why?” is really what keeps people watching and it’s what is so fascinating about documentaries to me. 

Why? Why do I care? How do they make me care? 

Fascination. An extraordinary kind of story that exists about an actual tangible person, place, or thing. 

In a lot of ways, the style is like storytelling in general. People love to hear about human triumph and they love to discover. However, the writer of a documentary goes through as much of a discovery process when composing the film as the audience does while watching it, according to Faith Fuller and Trisha Das.

The writer must piece together their story in the pre and post scripts to figure out how to tell this story in a way that shows their passion for the project in the first place. 

Especially in Finding Vivian Maier, where the story of finding of Maier’s negatives is equally as important as the finder, John Maloof.  

He’s neurotic. She’s a pack rat. He’s passionate about exposing her work. She was immensely private. He can rattle off all of Chicago’s area codes, and that is equally as fascinating as the fact that Maier kept film rolls of old teeth. 

A documentary writer combines a variety of “see-say” elements found in commercials and great fiction. There’s very rarely a point in any documentary where a fact or opinion is not reinforced by a cut to a news story or an object or to various relevant artifacts. 

There’s a certain concept of mystery. Producers and writers must constantly say through actions and interviews, “You don’t know about this thing. I only know a little more about this thing. And I’m not going to tell you about it in some grandiose, verbose kind of way. We’ll figure this out together.”

That’s where the documentary’s voice comes through. They have to figure out why they care as much as the audience has to figure that out. 

A prime example has to be the resulting court case against Maloof for selling Maier’s works as someone who isn't an heir. There’s nothing more disheartening about forming this great interest than someone coming along to tell you that you can’t or shouldn't do it. 

Throughout the documentary and in the article, Maloof has a constant passion and attachment to Maier’s work. He said, “I’ve been obsessed since the beginning with trying to find out who Vivian Maier was and whether she had heirs...It’s kind of sad. I have a very emotional attachment to her work and I’m very protective of it. And I’ve never let anything happen to it that’s not been of the highest quality.”

Personally, the heir conversation is something that I see as someone else simply trying to put down the work of another over a non-factor. If Maier really wanted to have an heir to her works, I believe she would have just said or done so herself. 

But that’s exactly the thing about documentaries: I have an opinion now where I once did not. 

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Moral of the Story: Check How Long Your Recorder Can Record - An “Interview” with Anna Schachner

I was extremely fortunate this past Thursday to be able to sit down with the Editor of The Chattahoochee Review, Anna Schachner. She was brilliant and funny and really helpful in clarifying some of what actually goes on in the day to day processes of a literary magazine. 

I was so ready to sit down and recount all of her answers in this post…until I realized that my phone didn’t save the recording.

Instead of risking the chance of grossly misquoting Mrs. Schachner, I’ll summarize some of the main points with a DISCLAIMER that these points are from memory and from some of the answers I managed to write out when I got home. 

A Little Background:

Throughout her graduate career, Schachner worked as an editor for her university’s literary magazine as a student. She then continued her editorial work after school at The Chattahoochee Review, before rising to a chief editorial position at the same magazine.

Although Schachner is also an associate professor, her main duties consist of working with Lydia Ship, The Chattahoochee Review’s managing editor, to make decisions on the magazine’s theme for the issue (if there is one), and to compile works for the issue. 

The Cover Letter: 

A few weeks ago, I submitted my first piece to 100 Word Story (which is an extremely cool concept, if you want to check it out), and I had no idea that literary submissions required a cover letter. 

Schachner also told me that she doesn’t necessarily read the cover letter for a piece first. And, not speaking for all editors in any sense, she also mentioned that the cover letter is definitely good etiquette for submissions but definitely a concept that is a little outdated. 

Really, Schachner explained that the work should speak for itself and that the cover letter should be a brief summary about the writer, plus any awards or publications that they have. 

And what it should NOT be is a summary of the piece. 

The Works Themselves:

Mainly, works will come from a mish-mash of:

1.) Writers who are well-known or have written for The Chattahoochee Review before, and who Schachner has reached out to or  2.) From the “slush pile” of work that the magazine recieves from other/new writers through Submissible. 

(Slush pile is simply an affectionate term used in editorial work for the compilation of all the literary sumbissions recieved through a submission engine.)

Then begins the editing work, where Schachner admittedly will write/work back and forth with a writer on a piece anywhere from 5 to 18 times (the latter is a record, but you get the point). 

Schachner told me that the back and forth probably gets a bit frustrating to writers, but it brings out the perfectionist in her, and she genuinely enjoys helping writers get their pieces to their full potential(s). 

I, and probably other writers with whom Schachner has worked, would probably agree and understand that having a meticulous editor like that in the process is extremely helpful. In fact, Schachner added that she’s only ever had two or three writers who were a little snippy about the editing.

So, the morals of this story?:

- It’s who you know, and also kind of pushing through the slush to work your way up. - Be polite, but not obvious in a cover letter. They are generally an art form, but especially with writing - if you’re summarizing your work, is your work really doing its job in the first place? - Record one question at a time because you may not know later how to segue into why The Chattahoochee Review doesn’t have a bigger online publishing section (The answer is that the staff is small and a lot of energies are stretched as is.)

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Make Anywhere a Writers’ Conference! - Networking for the Amazingly Shy.

Step 1: Find a conference with any number of literary talks/readings and/or writer gatherings.

Step 2: Find the courage to ask said writers questions and introduce yourself (or have someone awesome introduce you)

Step 3: Hope that when you’re working on a project that the people you met remember your face. 

Step 4: Now you’re done???

I’ve never gotten a good grasp on networking as a practice, and it’s only just recently that I’ve been able to think of it as a genuine form of relationship building (as opposed to “Hey, I want this thing! This person can help me get this thing. Therefore, I will talk to this person ONLY because they can get me this thing). 

However, I’ve recently attended the Georgia Womens’ Conference, where a number of very talented women spoke in lecture style and on panels. Most of them were writers (or at least, most of the sessions I went to) and generally cool people. 

Going into it, I kind of pictured a buzzing lobby full of published authors and writers talking to each other and maybe to some other newbies like me. It never really registered to me that these sort of things had speaking sessions or coordinated activities. 

I thought it was the kind of thing I would have to gear myself up for, where’d they throw us all into a big room and say, “Have at it.” (Which is a little terrifying, thanks for asking.) 

What actually happened?: I ended up learning a lot about how someone hits a writing stride or begins to write for execs and the public or the Internet or a publisher. 

It’s highlighted in a lot of other art forms, but not so much in writing - the question of: What do you bring to the table?

Really, the answer is yourself - your commentary, your values, your way of seeing the world. “Write like no one is going to read it.” 

In terms of “networking,” one should also definitely consider what they bring to the table. Not in a daunting, “there’s nothing I’ve contributed to the world” kind of way, but - 

In my case, it was that I’m young. I’m starting off in a career path, and I have NO idea what I’m doing. So, I have a lot of questions for those who do know what they’re doing (or who have at least been doing something). I also have opinions. I’m also pretty shy.

So, while I wasn’t this big personality that could charge up to anyone there and start talking, I did tell people my name, my awesome professor helped me nudge over a few emails for questions, and maybe next time I will be in a giant room of conversing people and they’ll want to see my stuff (like this page or my other writing blog that I’ve been encouraged to revive.)

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Why Don't We Think of Literary Magazines?

Probably because the population isn't entirely composed of writers. However, I think the style and format of literary magazines fits the upcoming generation. 

"Lit mags" are pretty aptly named. They're collections of short literature and sometimes illustrations, with tips and tricks for honing the writing craft. 

This includes a kind of loose version of the journalistic practice of interviewing, but since the main goal of these interviews is to help the lit mag's audience understand the techniques of published authors, the format is a little more lax. 

And this is exactly the type of format that I think is perfect for a generation "too impatient" and "too busy" to read physical books or even a typical length paragraph on the web.

Lit mags like 100 word Story turn out to be so fascinating because of the length restriction. However, magazines/journals like The Rumpus or The Millions which have stories that run longer still leave an impact in short story form (especially for some of the comics on The Rumpus.net). 

It's a quick way for readers to get a literature fix without committing to an entire novel. 

And for people in the artistic professions,  lit mags provide the career lubricant through building connections and squeezing into the community of the artistic profession. Writers get their work seen and see the work of people who are perfecting their craft day by day. 

Lit mags provide evidence of the baby-steps of writing - the never-ending quest for entry-level writers: to be published and earn the badge as an "official" writer (as opposed to waiting to be the next Tolkien).

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#IllRideWithYou and News Synergy

It's interesting to note, in the aftermath of the Sydney Siege of December 2014, the unique manner in which the Aussie community and news outlets handled the situation from the France shootings or the recent murders in Chapel Hill. 

And while I have no clue about the racial or political climate in France or Australia, it does seem like the above mentioned hashtag went viral because reporting of the Sydney Siege worked directly with the public.

Sites like The Huffington Post and SourceFed focused on the community outpouring of support and news updates as they happened on social media, while Tumblr and Twitter broadcast that message to the world. Then, major media outlets followed suit.

So, what the public received was this information wave of breaking news about the cafe being filtered through the community then back into the news. 

This is mostly apparent in the SourceFed article, which included video of the hostage release, the police press release, and then the tweets sent out in support to Muslims all over Sydney. 

However, there's also this sense of pride in the Australian community that spread across Twitter and Tumblr and in The Huffington Post only because the sites act as news aggregates and not news broadcasters, as highlighted in Russell Brand's "Trews." 

His presented clips show more of a political agenda present in most traditional news sources, an agenda that Sydney natives seemed to outright reject, and it's refreshing to see that political bias pushed out for a finally unbiased and invested take on a story.

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I came across this post a few days ago on the composition of George Washington's teeth, and it perfectly displays the gullible habit in the new, digital "fourth estate" that most people and news outlets develop trying to be the "first" to break a story. 

The diminished "fourth estate" (presence of printed news) has been a sensitive topic for many professional journalists since the inception of "participatory news." Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit feeds all create ways for important information to subtly appear.

No one looks for news anymore. We expect it to weave itself into our daily lives, and both the pros and cons of "narrowcasting" (as opposed to broadcasting) comes from a general lack of compartmentalization. 

iPads, laptops, smartphones, etc. have encouraged a one-stop shop environment for technology and the Internet (i.e. business calendars, games, books, etc.), 

While convenient for our modern world, the consolidation also forces parts of the journalistic art (editing, fact-checking, reputation-building) to the back-burner in favor of blind belief (such as the Reddit "tip" on the Boston Marathon bomber) or an inflammatory subject to start conversation. 

And conversation is what journalism is supposed to encourage, but, as shown in the linked post, the Internet tends to turn that conversation into a cutthroat intellectual match. 

So, how do we make the consolidation work for all parties? Well first, people must begin to edit and fact-check themselves instead of relying on posts that imitate a previously reliable style. Look for links, physical sources, experts, do a Google search. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is just that: an imitation. 

Secondly, news must conform to how the public receives information, whether that means morphing into a news aggregate or providing primary sources that the public does not have access to, such as interviews, conferences, transcripts, etc. 

As with the Virginia Tech shooting, there's a great opportunity for thousands of reporters and hundreds of editors to collectively present a story in a fresh way through their conversations (and hashtags). 

Nonetheless, traditional news providers have the opportunity to act as moderators and filters for these stories instead of worrying about being the "first" to report.  

(This post brought to you by: Chapter 8 in Writing and Editing for Digital Media.)

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A 30 Second Commercial Script and Storyboard. (Part III?)

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Commercial Script + Storyboard - Part II! (60 sec)

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Why You Watched the Superbowl (And No, it's not for the game)

It was for the ads. You know it. I know it. The advertisers know it. But why? Why do so many Americans tune into a four hour program to watch a bunch of ads?

"The new authority is authenticity," Erin McPherson, the CEO of Maker Studios, gave an excellent summary of what’s happening in recent ad trends. It's all about connection and action. 

As McPherson states later in the article, "viewers are watching less TV, and its audience is moving increasingly to mobile devices, with 50 percent watching on the smaller screen," which means there's no time for advertisers to "catch" a viewer's attention. They've got to take it and run with it for the product to be remembered. 

In comes the Superbowl, where tensions are high, adrenaline is pumping, and the fashion show of advertisements is ready to begin. Any Superbowl ad this year had to seize your hard, pumping heart, and run somewhere with it. 

I mentioned the first approach in an earlier post about Reebok's new ad. Another approach: polarization. It’s notorious in Budweiser and vehicle ads - big text and hardcore music. 

Another approach is reminiscent of the old ASPCA commercials that not only tug on your heartstrings, but snap them like silly string (i.e. Dove, McDonald's, and that PSA on Domestic Abuse).

Superbowl ads have built and coined the last approach: Commercials for the lolz. Ads like the ones for GrubHub, Sprint, and one of my personal favorites, Kia, have taken the funny Superbowl ad trend and melded it with their other ads to create a show between plays - one that piggybacks onto the same primal urges causing hundreds throw a remote into a $1200 TV over a missed pass. 

It's a platinum collection of scenes with an authentic and immediate connection to its audience without the Hollywood frills. (Unless you're Pierce Brosnan).

[themodernstory-blog]

Planning a Commercial Script - Take 1!

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AdWeek's recent feature on Reebok's new ad has called to my attention one of the most interesting and Big Brother-esqe advertising strategies that has arisen over the past few years. 

As much as one of my professors would be disappointed to hear, I cannot name the first three steps to a "successful" ad campaign off the top of my head. However, the fourth - call-to-action - has taken a unique turn into human interest. 

What I mean by this is that there has been a recent call to inundate the masses by invading the hobbies and lifestyles we have already chosen instead of gently shoving us into a new one with a company's product. 

Ad slogans like Coca-Cola's "Choose Happiness" or Honda's #StartSomething or Taco Bell's 2008 Superbowl ad are vastly different from the ads of the 90s or the early 2000s offering something New! and Exciting! like a circus sideshow. 

Instead of wanting us to wish we were like someone else, there's a kind of mentality now that says, "We want to be included where you are right now." And it's odd - at first. After years of asking for "people like us" on the TV screen, we've finally we've gotten what we want. 

I believe moves for tolerance (of bodies, genders, sexuality, culture, you name it) and new types of activism or "slacktivism" have a lot to do with the new portrayals. There's a distinctive lack of escapism that kind of died out with the Old Spice commercials and an impressive increase in concern and togetherness.

People want to help. There's a petition or a fundraiser or a project for everything these days, and the more awareness, the better. In comes social media, where support or any kind of social binding is a keyboard away. 

It's created a new kind of community where word of mouth and debate about a product is just as important as the advertisement, which is why the backlash from Victoria's Secret's campaign helped Dove so much. 

At the core, people don't like change. It's hard and, in ads, it sounds more like criticism of a person's worth than saying a product will irreparably change someone. So, I've got to say that this move to wanting a better version of you, just you, in whatever you do is one of the nicest invasions I've ever seen.

[themodernstory-blog]

What Would You Like? A Creative Brief

For JavaNet

Mission Statement: To provide a unique, innovative, upscale and comfortable social hub for new and experienced Internet users

Services: JavaNet provides delicious, specialty bakery items and coffees along with access to WWW, FTP and Usenet, as well as Internet apps and an entertaining community environment.

Competitors:  

Starbucks Caribou Coffee Dutch Bros.  Other smaller, local Coffee Shops

 Objections!:

- But WiFi is everywhere now?/I pay for WiFi at home. Why would I need to come to JavaNet to web surf? 1.) You can buy your Internet directly (if you don't have home access). No more unwanted coffee sips for web access nor low bandwidth. At JavaNet, you can actually buy the Internet time and speed you want without having to force down some unwanted snack to check your email.  2.) Social lubricant. You can FaceTime with real, live faces. You may share coffee tastes or life goals, but you wouldn't know it looking at your screen at home.  - I'm pretty good with [insert favorite coffee shop here], thanks. But aren't you tired of having to wait in a line full of disgruntled business types and obnoxiously loud phone conversations only to talk to some stressed out barista, hand them entirely too much money, and then to try to find a ton of teeny tables to stare at a wall? Yeah, us too. At JavaNet, bring your laptop or save your shoulders, grab one of our computers, and flip through YouTube in a soft, comfy chair. - I really prefer my coffee grab-and-go. I don't have the time or money to sit and buy Internet or a "specialty" priced drink. Luckily, JavaNet charges separately for your Internet and coffee need. Grab one of our specialty drinks or pastries for cheaper than the big chains and come back to relax when you can take a little coffee break. It's worth the wait.

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Look at my site map! Would you want to come to JavaNet? (Also, this was inspired by an actual business plan, so if you're in Oregon, you should check them out.) 

Home:  

JavaNet. Come. Create. Connect.

Welcome to JavaNet! If your relationship with the Internet is casual or complicated, come sit with a cup of coffee and rekindle the romance.

Settle into your new living room, and click on the links in the top bar to help you get started.

Café Menu:

A list of the café’s menu items and their prices, divided into three categories: Coffee, Specialty Drinks, and Bakery Items. Plus, some pictures highlighting certain items.

New to the Web?:

“Welcome to the World Wide Web! What would you like to do?” Includes a list of basic web tutorials like: How to Print from the Web, How to Screenshot, How to Copy and Paste, etc.

News: Short news blurbs routed to external, full story links to keep site users current separated into three categories: Local, National, and World.

Help & Fun Productivity: External links to calming/motivating Spotify Playlists, Coffitivity.com (a site for producing background noise), and/or to pages with tips on productivity, writing, art, business ventures, etc.

Local Events: A list of interesting (possibly under-advertised) events and their dates happening in the Eugene, OR area.

Bored?:  Favorite employee external links to their favorite time wasters, such as Blogthings.com, Welcome to Nightvale podcast,Cracked.com, BuzzFeed.com, etc.

Café Forum: A general or categorized forum for a sense of connection, community, and discussion for those inside the café or those who frequent it. Possible topics include News & Politics, Entertainment, What Are you Working On?, etc.

Follow Us: As an Internet café, the business should have a social media presence. Therefore, any external business links to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Google +, etc. are featured here.

**(May also include a short blurb on the owner.)

[themodernstory-blog]

When does writing "matter"?

The first time writing really "mattered" to me was when a friend of mine - I'll call her Erin – and I began creating characters for self-insert fanfiction during 7th grade. There’s really something about that type of writing that will make you honestly and deeply understand the words “guilty pleasure." We were creating tangible evidence that we wanted to be involved with (romatically) fictional, most times animated, characters. Say what you will about the implications of two 12-year-olds writing about these universes, but it was an escape, and it was the first time I created something very real and enjoyable with someone I trusted and that pushed me to constantly put out work.

During school, there wasn’t a lot of time to do something just for fun, but Erin and I would constantly check our progress with whatever stories we could form. At the time, her particular poison was Kingdom Hearts.

Mine was Inuyasha. We were in our school's Gifted program, which meant slightly more difficult work than the average 7th grader. Now, considering the fact that we were placed in this program specifically for the fact that we could work quickly and accurately, there was a lot of created free time. Erin and I used most of all of this time with our three artist friends to create characters to destroy Heartless and evil demons with spunk and irresistible charm.

We were meticulous. Every character had to have an age, a name with an ironic meaning, a skin type, hair type, backstory, virtues, vices, lists of family and friends. We wrote down questions and each character’s answers like an interview: What’s your favorite food? Do you want to travel? If you could live anywhere else, where would it be? What’s your type? What do you love about yourself? What do you hate? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?  There was even a sheet full of 50 in-depth questions that we managed to get our hands on.

Even in high school, we wrote every other day and edited mercilessly. There was a Social Studies teacher of ours who was notorious for assigning the most difficult one-page papers in existence. Whenever she’d hand back those papers, there would be more words written in red ink than there was actual 12-font type. While others showed off their badges of white space and legible print, Erin and I were prepared to have our hands smudged in ink. We were accustomed to the monstrosities of papers bleeding with contrasting colors. A pencil bag full of pens for the both of us, ink varying in color for any passing mood and for a visible difference between my writing and her comments, or vice versa.  

For a while, those questions and comments helped, but there came a point where that’s all our writing was. We would get so inspired by the backstories that the actual story became an afterthought and a chore. So by the time we entered high school, Erin and I kind of agreed to just write. We didn’t need to know how tragic their backstory was or what they ultimately wanted to be. We’d figure it out as we wrote, and what we didn’t figure out, the other would ask questions about until we could answer them.

Eventually, we moved on to creating original characters outside of self-inserts, and then stories that had nothing to do with our favorite shows or games. There were piles of notebooks filled with chicken scratched ideas and novel length stories of an android trying to find its creator so that the android could be rebuilt into something other than a killing machine. There were backs of agendas and composition notebooks with cursive-drawn free-writes about what would happen if we went to school with some of the characters we enjoyed to bits.

On summer after a Dreamworks movie marathon, Erin showed me her hard drive – a concept graveyard of sorts. There was an exorbitant amount of Word drafts and folders of chapters she had taken hours or months to write offhand and just thrown out entirely. In reality, I congratulated her for writing so much, but in my head, I panicked. I thought, “I can’t write like this. This is too much. Is this what writing is? I’m not cut out for this...But it’s the only thing I’ve got.” Of course, these were the days before she helped me discover the joys of theatre and before I had the courage to show my fiction writing to anyone, but the thing about it is, I kept doing it. I kept writing, and in that I discovered that writing is a kind of private religion.

People will tell you to write, and often, and to an extent, that’s true.

However, I’ve learned in my short lifetime that “often” is often a subjective term. When people say to write “often”, they tend to think of beautifully strung words across a page and prose spouting from your mind to your fingertips every single night. That’s the conception I had of my friend, and that is her style of writing “often”. But people also forget that “often” can mean writing small sentences or phrases that come to you during the day or figuring out what your character’s life motto is. They forget that some pieces will look like crap a day or two later and that sometimes writers will want to forget they were ever capable of such horribly pretentious or vague writing, but every once in a while, your thought will start that longer piece you’ve been waiting to write, and you will know exactly why your writing matters.