Joy of Checkers (Short Story)

JennethNarratives, Writing2 Comments

The world has forgotten its history and now resides in a rustic shadow of its former glory. But one little girl determines to share her memories no matter what.

This was my second short story for my Advanced Creative Writing class. As I did with the last one, I had to write a literary short story that focused on characters more than plot, but I decided to again defy the expected and wrote a science fiction literary story.

The main characters live in a post-modern world that’s intended to allude to the current political mindset of “forget our history, forget our mistakes.” The government in the story has erased its history, and anyone caught remembering or recording past events are taken into custody.

Checkers Thumbnail

The stretch of hemp fibers and rawhide creaked as a lone archer drew back his primitive bow from a crook in the maple tree. The fletching caught the golden hue of sunset dribbling through the trees, every fiber glistening in fire. The archer shifted his weight in the maple, carefully balancing his position in order to follow the deer picking its way through the underbrush, unaware that a stone arrowhead carefully tracked its heart from above.

Read More

Book Review: Peace Like A River by Leif Enger

JennethBook Reviews, Writing2 Comments

711WBU9Yz1LReuben Land is an eleven-year-old asthmatic boy with a loving family. His younger sister, Swede, is an aspiring writer, his older brother Davy a passionate man and an accomplished game hunter, his dad…a man of miracles. But when the town bullies begin a feud between themselves and the Land family, the war is taken too far and Davy sentences himself to the life of an outlaw. With Davy gone, the Land family must find a way to recover, and Reuben and Swede are determined to find their older brother, who’s escaped to the Dakota Badlands.

This book was required reading for my Advanced Creative Writing class because of its masterful use of description and word choice. I had my doubts before picking up this book, but before I knew it, the humorous and literary writing style of Leif Enger had kidnapped me into his world of outlaws, road trips, and of course the Dakota Badlands. Its setting I particularly enjoyed because of a family road trip we took ourselves through the Badlands a couple years ago, so that’s always a plus.

Read More

Not With My Watch (Short Story)

JennethArtwork, Design, Narratives, Writing1 Comment

This was a short story I wrote for my Advanced Creative Writing class. The goal was to write a literary story that focused on characters and description more than plot and action, but still manage to balance all aspects well. While our teacher told me that no one has attempted a science fiction short story for this project, she was in full support of me trying to write a literary sci-fi, referencing Ray Bradbury and George Orwell.

While I ended up sticking more to spiritual and “paranormal” (for lack of a better term) than sci-fi, I feel it’s safe to say that the story content hasn’t been done at PCC’s creative writing classes. The story is inspired from a concept my roommate and I are developing about a guardian angel watching over a young troublemaker throughout her entire life. In the original story, Eitan, the angel, is tasked with guarding her from the moment she’s born, keeps her out of childhood dangers, coaxes her to Christ, protects her from wayward rebellious stages, boyfriend problems, eventual marriage problems, and ultimately sits beside her during stages of cancer and taking her home.

This story focuses mainly on one section of this would-be larger story (and animation if we were ever to go through with our plan). Eitan is a character who’s appeared in several of my short stories (originally a response to Frank Peretti’s exquisite novel This Present Darkness), but as of now, this story takes place at the beginning of the canonical timeline.

Eitan and the other angels in the story appear similar to demons because they once were the same creature, which explains the rams horns while the demons have goat horns. Their ears are sheep-like while the demons are more swine-like. Angels have bronze skin and demons have pale skin.

Not With My Watch

The parkway leading to Highway 27 was mostly abandoned at this time of night. The only vehicles that did pass, tires thundering over bridges and echoing through the underpasses, belonged to those who were returning from a brutally tiresome day’s work, a late taxi from the understaffed and woefully inefficient local airport, or from an unexpectedly long evening of gaiety and frivolousness that parents wouldn’t approve of. Every twenty feet or so the parkway attempted and failed to show off its winning personality by displaying its wide collection of travelers’ trash. Gum spots the size of silver dollars cemented themselves to the shoulder’s asphalt, aluminum beer cans in the shape of pancakes twirled with each pass of an eighteen-wheeler, and the local gangs thought it would be a special kind of genius to graffiti the “55 MPH” speed limit signs. The only signage that successfully avoided wayward teenaged boys was that of the “No Littering” notices. Instead, a shrine of cracked beer bottles was laid at its base.

Read More

Writing Contest: Fruits of the Spirit Daycare

JennethNarratives, Writing2 Comments

I entered in my Advanced Creative Writing class’s contest this year, which was a 600 word story with the prompt “kindness in action.” Trying to find a way to keep a short story from becoming cliché and cheesy, I decided to pull from my memory of Union Station in Washington and write about a homeless man who spends his days under the arches outside the station. I won first place in my class and received a journal as a prize.

Fruits of the Spirit Daycare

Read More

How to Meet Your Characters Without Doing Tons of Character Worksheets

JennethArtwork, Writing3 Comments

If you’ve been writing for any length of time, you’ve probably come across that one blog that suggests character interviews is the solution to every writer’s writing block. Then they’ll give you a long fill-in-the-blank worksheet that has questions entirely irrelevant to your character’s interests. Why do you want to know about their love life? Who cares if they have a theme song? And they don’t have time for sports — the world is at stake, for Pete’s sake!

I will say that Charahub is a pretty legit place for these kinds of questions, but I personally think interviews are mostly useless unless you’ve already got a pretty good grasp on the character’s main interests that pertain specifically to the plot of your story. Only after you figure out their most immediate concerns (saving the world), can you focus on love lives and sports.

That being said, over the years I’ve discovered different ways to learn your character’s psyche — and some of these ways I’ve never heard recommended anywhere else.

Know Your Characters

Read More

To Fix a Rubix Cube (Children’s Story)

JennethNarratives, Writing1 Comment

For Advanced Creative Writing, we had to write a children’s story. I decided to go with a subtle allegory with this one, the Rubix cube representing life, and Ada (short for Adam) representing mankind. Mr. Joshua (derived from Yeshua) represents Jesus. Inspiration may or may not have come from Max Lucado’s You Are Special. At the end of the semester, our teacher is going to require us to submit this story to a publisher, so I guess I’ll see what happens!

Update 11/14/17: I received an A on this project.

Rubix Cube

Ada’s favorite teacher was Mr. Joshua. He was her only teacher, but that just made picking favorites even easier. Every day he would let her play with the toys on his desk, which were also favorites. Mr. Joshua let her swing the marbles on his Newton’s Cradle and press her hand in his pin art toy.

But Ada’s favorite favorite toy on Mr. Joshua’s desk was his Rubix cube. It had six colorful sides that could turn however Ada’s fingers wished them to go. She loved watching all the colors spin together into wonderful patterns and jumbles, and when she was finished, Mr. Joshua always knew how to put every color back in place.

Read More

Proposed Redesign of Indians Collegian Mascot

JennethArtwork, DesignLeave a Comment

At my college, Greek life is called a “collegian” instead of a sorority, and I joined the Indians as a freshman. Despite loving the collegian and the friends I’ve made here, I really dislike their logo. Not only did the American “Indian” look white, it was a man…for a women’s collegian. The collegian dates back to the 70s, and back then all mascots were men regardless of the type of collegian (to mimic college sports teams, supposedly) and more modern collegians have more female representation, but we don’t.

So while I was league rep, I decided to propose a new logo that was more ethnically accurate and women representative. While the college has it on file somewhere, they told me that they tend to update the collegian mascots in batch because of the high cost to replace all the branding across campus. With the political controversy around valid American Indian representation, I doubt my collegian will survive a rebrand, but one can hope.

I tried to keep to the same art style and colors as the original mascot, but with a younger, feminine face and a slightly darker and redder skin tone. Even if it never gets used, it was really enjoyable to do.

GA Portfolio Indian Mascot

Read More

Writing Sample: Novel Excerpt

JennethNarratives, Writing5 Comments

I’ve mentioned that I’ve been writing a book series for basically my entire teenaged life, but I rarely share any of my writing — for multiple different reasons. Recently, though, I’ve found part of a chapter that I enjoy submitting to writing contests on occasion, and I thought I might share here. The excerpt, although not heavily weighted with the story, I imagine to be a piece that represents the spirit and feel of the book fairly well.

Character names and events are mine and cannot be used without permission.

Division Excerpt

Read More