An original poem, posted in honor of my ancestors - for Memorial Day

Lucerne Wreaths

My grandma says in those days,
no one was paid to take care of the cemetery.
The day before Memorial Day,
she and her siblings would pull the weeds
while her father mowed the grass.
The next day, the fresh clippings were sprinkled
on the graves, where the family made new mounds.

Her mother would wrap lucerne from their garden
around wire to make wreaths for the graves --
small purple flowers nestled in green and bound in a loop.
The lucerne and wire would soak overnight,
and then her mother would pin homemade hair pins,
made by my great-grandpa, on the wreaths.

She says they always looked so nice.
But because those were the years
they never took pictures of anything,
I have never seen the clippings, nor the wreaths.
I am left outside, wondering
at the sacredness of memory
and a nostalgia for family members I never knew.

Lucerne (alfalfa, but my grandma says they called it lucerne)

Writing Excuses: An 8-Week Self-Assigned Course

I've been feeling a bit fat today. Okay, not really, but I've been annoyingly conscious of the fact that I sit at a desk for eight hours every day, I sit in a car for a little over an hour, and I spend most days lounging around my house. I need to get started on an exercise program or something, and yoga doesn't count. I'm writing this while sitting at my desk and eating homemade raspberry crisp, by the way. I think that detail supports my argument.

Something else I need to get started on, and for me, this one's a little more plausible, is my self-education. School's over (for now. Master's is a dream-goal and a PhD. would be even better), but I want to continue to improve. I definitely do not want to lose everything I just spent four years building.

I have finished the crisp, and I will now tell you my game plan. Feel free to mentally insert either a game play strategy chart or a syllabus here. Game play strategy chart? What do they call those things? For sports. Personally, I've never really played one. Maybe if I had, I wouldn't have been writing that first paragraph.

I'm going to begin my self-education with (this is all I have planned out so far) an 8-week writing course I made up. Its course material follows the Writing Excuses podcast. Writing Excuses is a well-known podcast hosted by Mary Robinette Kowal (novelist), Brandon Sanderson (fantasy novelist and, right now, the only person in this list I'm familiar with. I plan to fix that at some point) Howard Tayler (cartoonist), and Dan Wells (horror novelist). There are, as of now, eight seasons, and they cover all sorts of topics. When I first heard of this podcast, it was from a friend, and I misunderstood what she was saying. I thought she was saying that my research for a story was a writing excuse. Happily, I didn't respond in a manner that showed her I was miffed. I've become a bit more familiar with the podcast since then, but I am still not a regular listener. I'll probably go back to being an irregular listener after this course, but you never know! There are things they have to say that I may learn from. That's what I'm banking on.

My course schedule is as follows. I include it in detail just in case you find yourself also wanting to take this writing course.

Overall scope of class: Listen to a total of 35 Writing Excuses podcasts, two episodes per day for five day stretches (may as well have a school-ish schedule, right?) Each week is assigned its own season, in chronological order (Week 1 will be Season 1, etc.). Please note that episodes are about 15 minutes in length.

Each week, episodes will be chosen using the following rationale:
Day 1: Choose two episodes that seem interesting
Day 2: Choose two episodes you would rather not listen to, episodes that sound boring
Day 3: Choose two episodes about writing or editing
Day 4: Choose two episodes about story elements
Day 5: Choose two episodes about the business of writing

In addition to listening to these podcasts, limited notes will be expected, and I am holding myself responsible for writing one blog entry per week, detailing the more interesting things I learned, along with my reflections on that week's episodes.

At some point during each week, I must "turn in" a piece of writing of at least one page in length (i.e. post it on this blog). One page = 12 point font, single-spaced, Times New Roman (the font will change on the blog, but please know it's at least that long on Microsoft Word or Google Docs. I promise not to cheat). The topics for these must come from one of the writing prompts provided in the episodes from that week (each episode ends with a writing prompt).

I started this morning. That means my weeks aren't going to be calendar weeks, but that's fine. I mean, who cares? It's self-education.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Lynn Austin

Candle in the Darkness by Lynn Austin was the first book I read as a free post-college graduate. Studying English is an incredible experience, but it equates to giving up your freedom to choose what you read. Unless, of course, you’re like me and you somehow find time to read extra books on top of the books your professors assign to you. Books are like drugs. Or like potato chips, anyway.

What did I do with my new-found freedom? My parents gave me an iPad as a graduation gift, so I got onto Amazon and looked at the free Kindle books it offers. I may have also looked up a list of good Kindle books, but I can't remember whether this was on it. Either way, I downloaded a few classics, as well as this book. I've been warned that free Kindle books can be terrible. That's why I was going for the classics, where there aren't any copyright issues. For some reason, I decided to take a chance on this book. It probably had to do with the fact that it had good reviews; however, I was not expecting much.

Ms. Austin, if you're somehow reading this, I want to let you know that I enjoyed your book. I really did. It's well done, which I'll get to in a minute. The problem with it is that your prologue is stupid. It made me wonder if this book was going to prove everyone right, that free Kindle books aren't good. The moment your prologue was over, however, I realized this wasn't a book I wanted to delete from my iPad. I was also highlighting portions. But if you are ever thinking about writing a similar prologue again, don't. It was a mistake. Compared with the rest of the book, it was poorly written and melodramatic.

From now on, I'm going to ignore said prologue in this review.

For me, good historical fiction is not a history lesson. The Poisonwood Bible made this mistake. On the other side of the coin, good historical fiction is not just a story placed in another time period. If someone were to write Tom Sawyer now, I would consider it an adventure story, not historical fiction. Historical fiction should blend these two elements seamlessly; it ought to give me an insider's perspective on historical events while playing out an original story. I want to leave the book wondering why in heaven's name the main character lost the election, for instance. Obviously, they could not have won the election because history says someone else did, but I want this character to be such a plausible and believable part of the historic setting and timeline that I could almost mistake them for an actual person. Austin found this balance in her book, which is the number one reason why I would highly recommend it for anyone wishing to read some good historical fiction.

The setting is before and during the American Civil War. The protagonist, a woman who grew up in the South but who visits the North for a while and becomes an abolitionist. There is a romance element to the story without it being a romance, there are religious elements to the story without it being a sermon, and there were historical events discussed without them feeling forced. Part of this last trait was achieved by what felt like honesty from the protagonist: she had a fiance and family members serving in both armies, she lived in the South's capital, and she was relating what she was hearing from letters and from newspapers, as well as what she was seeing while she was out and about. The placement of the character was perfect, making the story feel believable and natural.

Something else I especially loved about this book was those religious elements I mentioned. The protagonist owns a slave who is an ardent Christian, and through him, Austin explains what Christianity must mean for a believing slave. It gave me a different perspective on my own religion, which I appreciate and thank her for. This slave isn't the only Christian voice to weigh in, either; representatives from the white, Southern school of thought and from the white, Northern school of thought are also represented, and I think they are represented as fairly as possible from our obviously biased, hindsight point of view. The presence of this theme in the book deepened my understanding of the Civil War, another reason I would recommend this book to historical fiction lovers.

To give you a taste of this religious element, so you can see what I mean, here are some portions of the book that I highlighted:

“Don’t go running ahead of God. He’s gonna tell you when the time’s right. Then whatever you do gonna make a difference."

"Time you grow up, Missy Caroline. Your heavenly Father needs you to be His servant.” 

"People on both sides better not be praying for their wills to be done, because God don’t answer them kind of prayers."

“God use that war to show you white boys what it’s like to be a slave,” Josiah continued. “For four years, you sleeping on the ground instead of in your fine houses. You eating food that no one would feed a dog. You wearing rags and going barefoot and marching all day beneath a hot sun until you so weary you want to die. You ain’t allowed to see your family or the woman you love. Your life ain’t even your own anymore, with someone telling you what to do and when to get up and when you can go to bed." (slave to a white soldier after the war was over)

 One last thing before I end this post: This is the first book in a series, and the other books are not free (an excellent marketing choice, in my opinion). The first was good enough that I may just buy the next one.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Chris Ware

I ordered Building Stories by Chris Ware online without having seen it in person. When it came in the mail, I thought, at first, that I had accidentally ordered a board game (this is not necessarily a bad thing). When I looked on the bottom of the box, I read that the box included "everything I needed to read Building Stories." ... Except the book? I thought.

This may be the strangest book I have ever read. It definitely competes with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, which includes empty pages, pages filled with numbers, regular pages, and more! I can just imagine what the marketing people must have thought when they were told to generate an audience for the book.

The one thing that Extremely Loud has on Building Stories is the empty pages and such. However, it's got nothing to compare with the formatting of Building Stories.

A lebkuchen box!

Building Stories is a graphic novel, technically speaking. The box I received in the mail was the book (that said, I don't advise reading it on the Metro. It would be quite unwieldy). The front cover is the top of the box, the back cover is the bottom of the box, the copyright page is the inside of the lid, and the edges of the box are reminiscent of lebkuchen boxes. A moment to explain these special boxes: My paternal grandmother immigrated to the U.S. from Germany, and one tradition she has passed down from her heritage is lebkuchen. It's like gingerbread, and my extended family eats it around Christmastime. Personally, I don't find it yummy. The boxes, however, are glorious. A good lebkuchen box is metal and looks like a treasure chest. There are pictures all around the outside, and the pictures tell a story. You go from one side of the box to the next to see the story unfold. I have a paper lebkuchen box, for instance, that tells the story of Hansel and Gretel. On one side, they are eating the house. On another side, they are being invited in by the witch. Etc. Moral of the story: Go look at lebkuchen boxes, because they're absolutely awesome.

In like manner, after my self-indulgent tangent, Building Stories features small stories along the outside of the box. These are stories that give you a glimpse of the stories inside the book, but they also can stand on their own as panels of a self-contained story segment. You know how a lot of books will have an excerpt or a tease on the inside flap? I think that's what Chris Ware might have been doing. Either that, or he shares my love of lebkuchen boxes.

Inside the box, there are booklets, individual strips, large posters, and even something resembling a game board. Readers should make sure to read both sides of everything, because Ware does not waste space.

I can't really say what this story is about. It's multiple stories, but the main one -- or the longest one, in any case -- is about the life of a female amputee who goes through stages of feeling alone, growing up, and becoming a mother. She also, and this is part heads-up for those who see this as a red flag, explores her sex life and has an abortion. Remember that this is a graphic novel, and though the pictures are cartoon-esque, they are indeed graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.

No, I did not take this picture. It is the book, though.

With this book being written using many parts (literally), one of the beginning questions a reader faces is what to read first. I decided to look up reviews online to give me some idea of where to start, but in the end, I took them all as good background knowledge and decided to read the items from biggest to smallest.

I like to keep things simple sometimes.

Reading in that order worked well enough for me. Things were not chronological, but that made it seem like foreshadowing sometimes and it also allowed me to make connections that would have been more difficult to make in regular books. I was reading parts of the story right next to each other, after all, so the juxtaposition was helpful ... or harmful, because I'm sure it made me miss a lot, too.

I'm not sure if I recommend this book or not. Putting aside the whole viewer-discretion thing, I think this would be a good book for someone interested in something new, for someone who enjoys graphic novels, or even for someone who wants a story that just feels real. Even though the story has a non-conventional layout, it still has an element to it that makes it seem completely plausible. Ware is not holding back, not romanticizing, not trying to make things look worse or better than they are. So no, this isn't a particularly happy story ... or is it? It probably depends on the order you read it in.

P.S. - The out-of-order thing works well because it feels like stream of consciousness, the idea being to tell about your past as the memories come to mind. How often do memories come to you in order? Perhaps that's why dreams jump around so much. Huh. Something to think about.

Why I Work for a Newspaper

I was welcomed to Boise yesterday when I went to Walmart to buy an iron.

Buying an iron was one of the first things I did after getting here because after unpacking only the things necessary to sleep in my bed and a few other, easy-to-unpack things, I realized that my slacks are wrinkled. No big surprise there, since they've been bunched up in a sack since I bought them last week. For my first day of work, however, I decided I needed to start on the right foot and iron them.

So I was holding an iron in its box and looking it over when a woman came up and told me the cheapest iron there really does work. I may have a full-time job right now, but I'm a recovering college student and cheapest still is usually best. After telling me this, she was about to walk away when she decided to start some small talk, asking me if I was from around here and where I'm from.

Then she offered me a part-time job on the basis that I seem like a nice person.

Is this normal for Boise? Because it sure isn't normal in Utah. We did exchange phone numbers, and that was partially me stalling and partially me trying to be polite while thinking to myself that the part-time job (in family finances) sounded like the opposite of fun. I've always said that economics or accounting are the #1 college program I would have run away from while screaming.

When I was in high school, journalism was another thing that did not sound fun. At all. There was no particle of my being that wanted to work for a newspaper. After all, I seem to remember Mark Twain once saying that the best thing that ever happened to him was that he was fired from his newspaper job. I'd say he did say it, except I can't find it easily online and so maybe I'm making it up. Oh well.

But when college hit, I needed a job, and I wanted to be able to work while doing what I love. I wanted to write and get paid for it. So I got an application for the paper, which was hiring at the time, and checked off the box for "Opinion Editor" even though I had no idea what that entailed. I also applied for Accent Editor without knowing what that meant, as well as being a receptionist. I think the receptionist bit came because I was trying not to be too picky. I was hired on as Opinion Editor, and, miracle of miracles, I absolutely loved the job.

But that is not why I applied to work at a newspaper after I graduated. I applied to work at a newspaper because I believe it to be a great place for a writer and/or editor to start. Here's why:

1. Working at a newspaper forces you to learn style. Serious writers will know what I mean by this; "style" means the rules one follows. Language is a giant compromise of how to spell, which order of words is correct, even what sound each letter makes. Heck, we've even compromised about what design to use as a "letter." As far as I know, and I may be wrong in this, books are published using Chicago style. MLA or APA are used a lot in academic papers, and newspapers use what is called AP Style, or Associated Press Style. AP is strict, constantly updated, and practical. Newspaper writers and editors are expected to memorize the basics, if not the nuances, of this style of writing. It includes things like not using Oxford commas, how to write times, and whether or not to put a hyphen in Walmart (they do).

For a writer, it does not matter which style you learn first. What matters is that you have learned a style. This helps you look at your writing in a different way. Style is a part of craft, and once one style has been learned, it is not too difficult to learn another. Anyone who wants to be a writer should read Elements of Style by Strunk and White, and then they should become familiar with a style, any style. A conscientious writer is a better writer.

2. Working at a newspaper gives you insight into the world. It is probable that some of the best-informed people in your city are the people who work for the newspaper. They not only remember past events in detail, but they also are abreast of current events the moment they are happening (we are, of course, assuming them to be good at their jobs). A writer must be aware of the world around them if they are to write anything of consequence. Staying up-to-date on one's Facebook feed does not count as being well-informed. A newspaper staff knows what the community cares about, what they are worried about, and what they are interested in learning more about. Once a writer knows what people are interested about, they know where to start with their own stories, assuming they want these stories to sell.

3. Working at a newspaper teaches you about people. Not only have I learned that authority figures are regular people with whom one can talk just like with anyone else (means I'm much less intimidated when I need to talk with them), but from observing people like journalists do, you learn about humanity. People talk using semicolons often; did you know that? Whenever a journalist quotes someone, they are quoting them word for word, trying their best to be true to what was said. From writing down quotes like this, a writer can learn that characters should never sound like real people, because real people sound stupid a lot of the time. I like to delete the quotes that sound terrible, just to save face for the person who said it. After all, none of us have an editor for what we say aloud, discounting prepared speeches.

As stupid as people can sound, they also have valuable insight. Working at a newspaper leads one to meeting so many people one wouldn't otherwise meet. Journalists meet new people and have discussions with them every day. I'm not ashamed to tell you that I have stolen entire sentences from quotes in news stories. I may change some things, but people have insights I will never have, and by working at a newspaper, I get to tap into those insights and use them to make my characters more real and dynamic.

4. Working at a newspaper forces you to write and to edit. Deadlines are always looming. If you are having a hard time forcing yourself to write, get a job where someone else is forcing you to.

5. Working at a newspaper helps you learn to be concise. Writers should not be too verbose; if what you are taking an entire paragraph to say can be summed up well in a single sentence, go for the single sentence.

I didn't want to work at a newspaper because I love fiction so much. I still love fiction more than I love news writing. However, the two types of writing actually enhance each other. That's why I recommend a newspaper job.

Wish me luck with my first day! I need to get ready now and not be late. Late would be bad. Much worse than wrinkles in my slacks.

I graduated!

Sorry I haven't written; life has been chaotic. I graduated, and on Monday, I'm moving to Boise to work at the Idaho Press-Tribune as a copy editor.

Elizabeth Burns, bachelor of arts in English (emphasis in creative writing), graduated summa cum laude on May 2, 2014. Now on to more adventures!