Deck Them Halls and All That Stuff

One of my favorite things about the holidays is just the overall atmosphere, the feeling of warmth and comfort associated with the Christmas season.  Granted, it’s much easier to get in that spirit after your finals are over, but even students still obsessing over the papers they have yet to finish can find some comfort in the holiday music wafting through the air, the lights twinkling on overly-decorated houses, and the warm reds and greens covering everything in sight.

                                               

One of my favorite scenes from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is the one in which Chevy Chase is decorating the outside of the house with lights.  After he covers every square inch, he tries to light the lights, but they won’t go on.    He nearly goes ballistic trying to figure out why they won’t light, and he takes his anger out on a poor, defenseless Santa lawn ornament and his reindeer.  It’s a marvelous comedic moment.

When he finally gets everything lit (with some help from his wife), however, the mood suddenly changes.  A whole choir sings Hallelujah, and the family comes outside to bask in the beauty and blinding light from the decorations.  And everywhere else in the city, there’s a huge power surge forcing a backup generator to be turned on, but we can forget that in lieu of the awesome display.

The point is, there are just some things about the holidays that bring a smile to my face, and though sometimes it can be taken to an almost obsessive level, the lights that people use to decorate their homes are one of those things.  The brilliant glow providing illumination amid the dark night sky is enough to make you stop and look, to appreciate the hard work and effort put forth by the people of those homes. 

It’s almost enough to make you forget about all those giant, plastic snow globes littering the lawn.

Happy merry everything,

Shannon

Finishing is its Own Reward…But Chocolate Would be Good, Too

I have finally finished writing my paper, and I feel so good, I just had to keep up the writing high by typing up another blog post! 

You know, finishing a paper--especially a long paper with the ability to sap all of your energy and make you feel like a zombie while writing it—is one of the best feelings in the world for a college student.  Or any student, I would guess.

Throughout the duration of paper writing, it’s often hard to keep focus and push through the road blocks.  So what do you do to keep up the momentum?  What keeps you from going slightly (very) mad?

Well, it always helps to have a reward system.  I know many of my friends use this system while writing papers, and though I sometimes slip and take a break regardless of whether or not I have actually reached the page count I told myself to reach before eating that Milky Way bar or watching that television show (oops), it is still an effective method of getting work done.

So if you ever feel like you just cannot make it through a paper (or whatever it is you’re working on at the time), just set a goal for yourself.  Make them attainable goals, as well.  Tell yourself that if you finish writing a full single-spaced page, you get to read a chapter of that Power Rangers fanfiction you love so much.  Treat yourself to a pomegranate when you reach the halfway mark.  Go for a victory run on the treadmill while listening to “For Now” from Avenue Q (fitting, considering the circumstances) after you finish completely.

Whatever you do, reward yourself.  After writing a 20-page paper, you deserve it.

Happy writing, and happy 3^rd day of the 10 Days of Christmas!

Shannon

The Princess Bride: A Holiday Classic?

In the spirit of my 10 Days of Christmas promise, I’m posting the second in what will hopefully be a slew of updates this coming week.  Since I’m still stuck in the middle of writing my Cisneros paper, I’ll try to make this one quick.

Today I noticed something while my mother and I were watching Christmas movies on TCM.  While TCM had advertised that it would be showing holiday movies during the day (including White Christmas and this movie All I Want for Christmas that starred a young Thora Birch), the movie following All I Want for Christmas was, funnily enough, The Princess Bride.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I absolutely love The Princess Bride.  It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, and I will admit that throughout the movie, I kept posting Facebook statuses with quotes from the movie.

However, I was not quite sure if The Princess Bride would really be considered a “holiday” movie.  What made it worthy of being included with all of the other holiday movies?  Other than the fact that it’s just plain awesome, of course.

In my quest to find the answer to this question, I started looking closer at the movie.  With that said, here are a few reasons why The Princess Bride could technically be considered a “holiday” movie:

1.   Ever notice the background of the first scene of the movie?  The one where Fred Savage is sick in bed?  Ever notice the Santas in the background?  That’s right.  Santas, as in plural.  One on the closet and the other behind Fred Savage’s head.  I guess this really does take place during Christmas. 
2. The grandfather, played by Peter Falk, gives Savage the book as a present, wrapping paper and everything.  Yeah, I know the kid is sick in bed, and the grandfather may just be giving the boy the book to make him feel better…but still, it’s a present, right?
3. This may just be me, but is that snow on the roofs of the houses outside the grandson’s window?
4.  Christmas is nothing if not a time for miracles, and this movie is full of miracles.  It even has a character named Miracle Max!  Who brings Wesley back from being mostly-dead!  If that’s not a Christmas miracle, I don’t know what is.
5.  As we’ve all learned from Love Actually, Christmas is a time to be with loved ones and just be in love.  Buttercup and Westley’s love story certainly qualifies.

That’s all for now.  And next time you want to pick up a holiday classic, don’t be afraid to watch The Princess Bride.  It totally counts.

Happy holidays,

Shannon

The 10 Days of Christmas: Writer's Edition

It’s that time of year again.  You know what time of year, right?  Of course you do. 

Yes, it’s FINALS WEEK.  (dun, dun, dun)

This past week has been quite hectic, and it is still not over for me.  Thinking about Mango Street and feet and sexuality and whatnot is really just the tip of the iceberg, and while I adore Cisneros, I (like everyone else in the same, sinking boat) just want this paper to be finished already.

The big problem is the fact that, yeah, it is almost Christmas, and while Christmas itself is wonderful, the time leading up to it can be…stressful.  Normally, I am easily distracted by anything and everything regardless, but during the holiday season? 

Why must there be so many catchy, annoying tunes filling my head and bright, twinkling lights blurring my vision?  Why am I so intrigued by those blow-up snow globes on people’s lawns?  Why must the TV people play so many classic and not-so-classic Christmas movies that suck me in and never let me go?  Why do the kids on the Charlie Brown Christmas special dance like Frankenstein robot marionettes?

The Christmas season is filled to the brim with distractions, and hopefully this weekend I can finish the things I need to do before I can really enjoy all of them.  With that said, however, I am going to try something that isn’t going to help my stress levels in the slightest and will most likely drive me bananas. 

Starting today, I am doing the 10 Days of Christmas: Writer’s Edition.  Basically, I am going to try to post something to this blog every day leading up to Christmas, thus giving me even more of a challenge than I had previously and knocking me out of my mango-induced stupor.  The post does not necessarily have to be long or even about writing; it just has to be something.  Most likely, they will include Christmas-related somethings.  Or nonsense.

Why would I do this to myself, you ask?  Well, in the spirit of the holiday, I wanted to take the time out of my day to reflect on life, the universe, Douglas Adams references…and just appreciate the fact that, while I may be stressed out, it is still the Christmas season.  Or Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Mayan Apocalypse…whatever it is you want to celebrate. 

Plus, if the world really is going to end, I might as well go out writing.

Happy 10 days to Christmas, folks.  Here’s hoping we make it!  J

Happy (Insert Phrase Here),

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

The House on Mango Street- Some Thoughts and Ramblings

The first time I read The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, I was a freshman in college taking a women’s lit class.  As an English major in an all-women’s college, I would go on to take many more literature courses, many focusing on gender issues in texts (sort of comes with the territory), but this was the first literature course I took in my undergraduate program.  

Fittingly, the first novel we read in the class was Jane Eyre, followed by Wide Sargasso Sea (a book I’d highly recommend to anyone who thought that the “madwoman in the attic” from Jane Eyre ought to get the chance to tell her side of the story for once). 

When we finally got to The House on Mango Street, I was ecstatic for several reasons.  I’m sure I was glad to read something completely unrelated to Jane Eyre (a novel which I did not appreciate as much then as I do now—and even now it’s not exactly in my top-ten or top-twenty). 

I also remembered having read one of the novel’s vignettes during high school and appreciating it for not only its brevity but its simple eloquence.  The vignette, “A Smart Cookie,” all together takes up about a page, creates a complex backstory for one of the characters, and uses language in a way that makes you double-take for a second after you’ve read it, forcing you to look again at the deeper meaning behind it. 

Naturally, I wanted more, so getting to read the full novel was like a literary treat.  Of course, I was not disappointed upon finally reading it, finding each individual vignette to enhance the reading of the novel yet somehow able to stand alone and create a compelling story.

And by Next Week I Mean…Sometime in the Near Future

Procrastination.  It’s one of the ugliest words in any writer’s (or college student’s) vocabulary.  Yet unfortunately, it can be one of the most familiar, as well.  Case in point: this post. 

I would say let’s just call the last two months “the lost months,” but that would imply that I am never going to go a considerable length of time without posting in the future, and…well, I know my track record.  I also know how difficult it can sometimes be to stick to a set schedule, especially if you are a procrastinator, like me. 

The reality of life is that sometimes things do not always pan out the way you originally imagine they will, and if you are a procrastinator, it is very easy to trick yourself into thinking that something important can be put off until the next day.  Or the day after.  Or the day after that…

If you are a writer, this cycle is particularly vicious.  Ideally, writers should strive to put something to paper (or Word document) every day, just so their skills do not go to waste.  

Even writers struggling with writer’s block should do this in order to see if an idea will spring to life.  When writers fail to do this (and worse, when it becomes a habit), it gets increasingly harder to return to a stable writing routine.