Embarrassing Creative Writing
Wanna read an essay I wrote in uni about The Bell Jar? I was 22 when I wrote this. It features illustrations I drew in MS Paint and some absurd acronyms I invented myself which make the essay significantly harder to follow.
Check it out here.
My essay engages with Suzanne Ferguson's essay "Defining the Short Story: Impressionism and Form" where she basically discusses the key features of the modern novel (and obviously some stuff about short stories). You don't need to read her essay to get what I'm going on about but it might help.
More Embarrassing Creative Writing
Now we're getting into really embarrassing territory: the first bit of a script I wrote when I was 22. This is actually so bad that I've removed the final 3 pages because it just descends into a deep crevasse of cringe - I know this is my shame corner but I'm going to need to work up to it. What's weird is I probably felt quite proud of this when I first wrote it. I wanted to write a rom com where the protagonists are trying to dispose of a body: this idea haunts me. I don't know why but even now I would still like to write something in this general area: set in Werribee, callous idiot protagonists, frantic internet research on how best to dispose of a body, love blossoms as they drag the corpse into the bush.
Check it out here.
(Also, if you're interested in the video of the girl in the shower, you can see it here.)
Things Which I Secretly Enjoy:
- Crying while I watch videos of dogs welcoming soldiers home
- Watching stupid YouTube videos where pretty girls recommend dumb shit I don't need, share vacuous opinions and eat nice looking food while they live it up in their fancy LA apartments. The fact that I enjoy these is not normally something I would want anyone to know about me, but Matt found out early on just from being on my computer and seeing that everything YouTube recommends for me is dumb and girly. I'm being rude to try to ameliorate my shame but I obviously enjoy this content otherwise I wouldn't subscribe to their channels, etc. I'm not even hate watching - I genuinely enjoy hearing these girls talk about their new eye cream and seeing the sick embroidered leather jacket they copped at the local op shop, etc. They're definitely vacuous (<< this link is literally a girl talking about her empty skincare containers for, I shit you not, 26 minutes... I actually did skip this video but I usually watch ~99% of her stuff). I like to think the ones I follow seem less vacuous and self-centered than some of the other girls on YouTube (like this video where a girl's boyfriend breaks his wrist and she's so upset and worried that she says she wishes she were the one who broke her wrist just so he could be okay which is kind of melodramatic but also incredibly sweet and endearing). Aaaanyway, I've been watching this girl Jenn Im for maybe 4 or 5 years? She got engaged last year and posted a 'surprise engagement' video. I believe these are a whole genre unto themselves on YouTube and obviously not one I would normally have any interest in, but I've been following her for ages so I watched it. It's definitely cheesy so initially I was pulling out some pretty sick 360 eyerolls, etc. but oh god by the end I was crying so much. I don't even know why. It was just really sweet and, yes, cheesy but genuine and it's nice to see people be so ~pure~ and happy and I didn't have it in me to be cynical about it.
Weird Biography of Lafayette
I wrote this when I was 21 for a creative nonfiction class. I have never hated anyone as much as I hated the teacher of that class: she was a dried up old bitch who compared me to Alicia Silverstone as a way of calling me dumb (haha get it? Because Clueless? And because I have blonde hair? Genius). I wanted to claw her eyes out.Anyway: we had to write two pieces for the final assessment - one autobiography and one biography. Not sure why I chose Lafayette as the subject of my biography (most people chose their grandmothers or people they actually knew) but this thing seriously goes off the rails. I did a decent amount of research while I was writing this (not that any of that research actually made it into the autobiography) but got sidetracked because I found this anonymous forum for the small town of Lafayette in Macon County, Tennessee - the forum is focussed almost entirely on gossip and bitching about other people in the town and I became obssessed with it for a while. I had this idea of comparing a biography to gossiping. Not sure if it works.
It's here if you want to read it.