A Room of One’s Own/New Blog Design!

Virginia Woolf wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”  As for the first part, money is definitely necessary regarding publishing a book, though in our modern, technology-driven world, it is much easier to write by, say, starting up a blog or posting to online forums. 

However, having a “room of one’s own” is still an important aspect to the writing process, whether one is choosing to use paper or a Word document.  The environment in which one writes is critical to a consistent and successful writing career, and I believe that that environment can refer to either a physical room or even to a person’s blog.

With that in mind, I’d like to present the new layout and design of my blog!  As you might have noticed, it has been freshened up a bit from what it used to be.  I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my good friend Gina, creator of Tulle and Combat Boots, for helping me in this endeavor and creating a beautiful new look for my blog.  She is a very talented graphic designer, and you should definitely visit her site. 

With this new design, I feel like I truly do have a space to call my own, a space where I can be proud to post my thoughts and ramblings on writing and everything else.    It also represents a step forward in my journey towards becoming a professional writer. 

And speaking of writing professionally, I’d like to also announce that my paper on Batman’s female villains will be featured in The Journal of Popular Culture, and as soon as that issue is published, I will post a link to it on my blog. 

Looks like the new year is starting off right! J

Happy writing,

Shannon

The Virtues of Eye Patches (and Other Alternatives for the Visually-Impaired)

Have you ever spent nearly an entire day squinting out of one eye or holding your hand over one eye so that you can clearly see what’s right in front of you because otherwise you’d be looking through a big, blurry lens all day?  Well, that was my day in a nutshell.

Like many visually-impaired people, I wear contacts every day, only taking them out at night.  Though I have glasses, I just find contact lenses more functional overall.  Wearing glasses tends to give me a headache or hurt my ears after an extended period of time, and there have been many instances (typically during my time in theatre or when doing physical activities) when I just couldn’t wear glasses at all, either for fear that they would break or because the character I was playing didn’t wear glasses.

Plus, I like being able to choose my eye color.  If I could, I’d go all out and get demon-red or blackout contacts.  Or contacts with the Batman symbol on them.

However, like everything else, there is a definite downside to wearing contacts.  After having worn contacts for many years, I can say with certainty that taking contacts in and out is no longer a difficult task.  You just get used to the feeling. 

The real problem comes whenever anything (from an eyelash to a piece of dust) gets in your eye.  Then you’re in trouble.  Sometimes it’s a relatively simple matter to get the irritating something-or-other out of your eye.  You can roll your eye around in the socket, try to take the contact out and reapply saline to it, flush out your eye with water, etc.  Most times, these methods work, and aside from a little redness, the feeling of burning and aching goes away.

Then there are times when you cannot for the life of you manage to get the offending object out of your eye.  You know it’s there.  You can feel something.  The pain is a dead giveaway.  But still it persists in tormenting you, until finally you want to jab a fork in your eye and let the tears hopefully wash away whatever is bothering you.

Okay, maybe that’s a little overdramatic.  A little.

Of course, there are days like today when it isn’t your eye that’s causing the problem, but the contact lens itself.  Yes, my contact lens was plotting against me.  As I noticed the rip in the lens, I resignedly threw it away and had to send the rest of the day with one eye dark green and the other my natural hazel.  (And this was first thing in the morning after I got to work, so I couldn’t really do anything about it; I also didn’t have my glasses on hand at the time.)

After days like today (which seem to occur more frequently than not), I feel like eye patches should be considered an acceptable alternative to traditional eyewear.  Pirates wear them all the time, and we all know how fashionable they can be (if you overlook the poor hygiene and scurvy).  Hell, Nick Fury of The Avengers wears one!  And if anyone can make an eye patch look badassalicious, it’s Nick Fury. 

Maybe I can get a custom-made eye patch, like one decorated with flowers or stars…or the Batman symbol (if you can’t tell, I have a thing for Batman).  Wouldn’t that be awesome?  Just think how amazingly comfortable that would be, especially compared to those suffering from contact lens uprisings.

I think we should stop limiting our eyewear choices, and we should especially make eye patches more acceptable and more accessible to women (who have been grossly overlooked by the eye patch market, in my opinion). 

It’s time eye patches came back in style, and maybe (just maybe) we can lead the charge against eye patch oppression everywhere!

Failing that, I think I’d settle for a nifty monocle like the Monopoly guy's. 

Happy Eye Patch Wednesday to all,

Shannon

Why a Prospectus is One of the Best Things Ever…Sort of

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had research paper stuff on the brain.  Not only have I been working on my paper for The House on Mango Street, but I’ve also recently been revising my paper on monstrosity as it pertains to Batman’s female villains (which, I just found out, I’ll be presenting at the National Popular Culture Association Conference!).  

Today as I was working on my annotated bibliography and prospectus for my House on Mango Street paper, I realized two things: a) I am a complete English nerd because b) after I finished writing up my prospectus, I got really excited about writing the actual paper.

For those unfamiliar with having to write a prospectus, it’s basically a summary of what will be discussed in the research paper and is useful for mapping out the structure of the paper.  The information does not have to be exactly what will be in the final paper, but it should give you a good idea of where the paper is heading.  It typically includes the paper topic, a tentative title and thesis statement, and discusses the primary source and secondary sources being used to support the thesis.

While the idea of writing one of these seems tedious, I have found that it is actually much easier to write a research paper after having written a prospectus.  Why, you ask?  Not only does it help you formulate your paper ideas, articulating what will be used in the paper and how it will be structured, but typically, everything that goes into a prospectus will also be going into the paper’s introduction. 

Think about it: if a typical prospectus is about two double-spaced pages in length, and if the prospectus is basically the basis for your introduction, then when you go to write the paper, you will already have two pages of the paper written.  Furthermore, since the prospectus should map out how the rest of the paper is structured, you can just follow that structure to write the rest of the paper.

So, yeah.  If I didn’t already know that I was an English nerd, I definitely have proof now.  Then again, there are certainly worse things. J

Happy writing,

Shannon

And Haiku to You, Too

This weekend, after a harmless conversation about Oprah Winfrey and Lean Cuisine, I got to thinking about haikus.  (If you were a part of the conversation, you’d totally understand.) 

The thing I love about haikus is their ability to convey a fully-formed and (mostly) coherent thought in the smallest amount of space.  For those who don’t know, a haiku is a Japanese poetic form consisting of 17 syllables broken up into a pattern of 5-7-5.  I’ve often found that haikus are like hand grenades: deceptively small until you pull the pin and watch the explosion that follows.  You’ll rarely find a poem shorter than a haiku, but when you actually read it, it will leave you wondering at how something so tiny could say so much and fill your brain with so much awesome.

For writers who find themselves a bit too wordy, writing a haiku is an excellent way to practice the art of brevity.  Sometimes it’s hard to stay concise and only say what is absolutely necessary in order to make your point.  With a haiku, it’s nearly impossible to add unnecessary fluff.  As an added bonus, writing haikus may just stir some story ideas in the process.