Externalization

Recently, in between glorious summer spare time spent strawberry-picking and rock-climbing, I've been working through The Personal MBA, a fantastic intro-to-business book by Josh Kaufman.  In it, not only does Kaufman include the basics of how companies work (e.g. finances, systems, service delivery, etc.), but he also devotes several chapters to learning how to work best as an individual and with others.

In one of these chapters, Kaufman discusses Externalization, which he describes as "the process of transforming our thoughts into some sort of external form, typically by writing or speaking."  Rather than only speaking to other humans or keeping a thought journal, though, Kaufman also suggests that those in extremely complicated dilemmas draw pictures of what they envision or converse to inanimate objects when fellow conversationalists are too apathetic or scarce.

Personally, because I'm the kind of person who could make a billion bucks a day if given a penny for each of my thoughts (i.e. my brain is seriously energetic, complex, and volatile), I made externalizing a habit out of necessity before I even knew what externalization was: sketching dreams and visions for the future and talking to myself alone on my bedroom floor since I was five.

However, there are certain feelings, series of events, and predicaments that life throws at you that can't be handled even with a lengthy discussion with loved ones or with a detailed drawing.  Sometimes, you've just got to recreate the whole situation and pour your life-blood into characters like you: channeling anger into a reckless, dispassionate street racer, welding spontaneity into a witty assassin, or draining the nerve-killing experience of depression into a hopeless antihero.

As best put by Robert Penn Warren, "Real writers are those who want to write, who need to write, who have to write."

~ ~ ~

Bloody Poetry by Grieves - Live at Audiotree

"I guess it started when the lights went out.

Everybody started running round in circles, trying to figure it out,

and I could feel it.

Wedged in my ribs, it felt freezing.

My cold air blew out.

Dance through the evening - paranormal -

slowly being called to the green

where the ghosts gather nightly and sell the devil their dreams.

I observe hails from the other side of the curb,

hold the concrete notepad,

scribble down my words in the limelight.

This is what it's like to bleed ink:

put your fingers in it, paint me a picture of what you think.

Make it beautiful

and make it look like love.

Make it hang from the heavens.

Make it break my trust.

Make it real.

Make it dangerous.

Make it out of the rust and make it passionate and impossible to touch.

It's forever, slowly resurrected from the dust.

When you understand it's everything inside of you, it's us.

You're all I've ever known.

So, to my sleep, you always got me running home.

Handful of roses,

you're my blood and brittle bones,

my soul, an open throne.

You're all I know.

I spoke a whisper in the dark one night:

watch it take form in front of me and mimic my life.

It seemed natural, especially watching it's last breath like poetry:

watch as it clung to its own chest with a smile,

made out of broken pieces of tile.

You can see the thoughts running, chase 'em around for miles.

If you want it, people say that old road is haunted.

If you travel on it long enough, you'll never get off it.

You believe it, 'cause everything is skewed when you see it.

Then you process, automatically think that you feel it,

and automatically sticks to the brain when the truth of it is standing outside,

playing cards in the rain.

You'll never beat the game it plays

You can only turn around and lick the blood from your own switchblade.

It's forever, slowly resurrected from the dust.

When you understand it's everything inside of you, it's us.

~ ~ ~

Write on!

Clove

RP Blog: Typed

Hunter -  ISTP
     Prefers working alone
     Is physically-oriented
     Has no strict plans and is often bent towards spontaneity
     Thinks systematically
Eris - INTJ
     Understands and obeys the strength of rationality
     Is cold to strangers
     Is willing to sacrifice self for goals
Juno - ISFP
     Tends to a relaxed state
     Has present-day living habits
     Changes frequently
Erik - ESTJ
      Possesses great leadership skills
      Creates plans before action
      Is great at managing people
Mornn - INFJ
      Is deceptive
      Is empathetic and emotional
      Is willing to momentarily do evil for the sake of future good
      Makes decisions primarily for the benefit of others
Svena - INTJ
      Has dry, sarcastic wit
      Is highly intelligent
      Is uncomfortable using emotions to make decisions
Autumn - INFJ
      Draws out the best in others
      Is pleasant but personally detached
      Is also willing to momentarily do evil for the sake of future good
Tessa - ISFJ
      Is very concerned with others' opinions of her
      Makes emotion-based decisions
      Has simplistic and conservative, but pretty fashion
Jace - INTP
      Takes time to think through every minute aspect of a plan
      Is quiet with a surprising undercurrent of humor
      Possesses an overcomplicated rationality
Malphas - ISTJ
      Is highly OCD
      Prefers personal property privacy
      Displays high diligence in work
      Tends towards pessimism
Jinx - ENXP
      Makes both rational and emotional decisions
      Is determined
      Works at a high energy level without considering risks

~ ~ ~

Clearly, I have too much spare time on my hands.

Anyway, October 25th marks the one year anniversary of the end of our RP Blog.  Accordingly, I've got a few really fun drawings that I'll be sharing on that distant date that I hope you all will enjoy.  In the meanwhile...

Write on!
Clove

SAT/AP Writing Tips Part 2

Want to feel better about yourself?

Read writing that you wrote nearly a half decade ago.  Heh.  Heh.  Heh.

Eh.

Ehhh...

...ehhhhhhhhhh...

*silent crying*

AAANYWAY, welcome back to Clove's School of Crushing the College Board, aka. how to survive child torture, where yours truly gives you a few tips and tricks on how to annihilate the hopes and dreams of the College Board.  For the first part of this series, keep scrolling down past this post, you lazy link-glutton.

~ ~ ~

NUMBER 4 - ORGANIZATION
As I mentioned, both the SAT and the AP English tests give time for and advocate that you devote some time to organizing your paper.  While they advocate this, it is not necessary, but IN CLOVE'S SCHOOL OF CRUSHING THE COLLEGE BOARD MRAHUAHUAHUAHUA IT DEFINITELY IZZZ.
That is, unless if you're an INFP or an INFJ and have been gifted with your personal Muses.  All other types have no allowances and must devote at least a little bit of time to preparing themselves for writing because, unfortunately, we're not fairies.
Taking a minute to organize your thoughts and pick a steady, certain stance with definable arguments is invaluable.  Do eetz.

NUMBER 5 - BREAK TIME
In the SAT, you get around three breaks, depending on how the government of your classroom runs.  (Some proctors have been tyrants for me, demanding that we take all of the breaks; others have been democratic, letting us choose which breaks we want/feel like we need.)  Because the breaks that you actually receive vary in frequency and length (depending on the size of your testing group - it takes time to herd fifty or so chatty teenagers back into a room and get them seated), you should devote your time to using them efficiently, especially on the AP English exams, which require lots of mental focus and mental clarity.
A few things you should always do:
1.) Use the restroom.  Even if you don't feel like using it now, you'll need to in another hour when you're in the middle of reading a really complex passage.  Plus, it gives you an opportunity to...
2.) Get up and walk.  Breathe.  Your brain needs oxygen to work; it's a muscle too.
3.) Even better, spend a little time humming.  Singing releases endorphins (to make you feel better about the too-many problems you guessed), serves as an aerobic exercise, and provides other benefits.
4.) Lastly, eat and drink water.  Shoot for something low-carb to keep you from having energy spikes and something non-hassle so that you can eat quickly.  (I normally bring a bag of nuts, a pre-peeled orange, and ice water.)
If you do all of these things systematically and calmly, you can actually get a lot of relaxing done in ten minutes.

NUMBER 6 - PASSAGE-READING-BASED QUESTIONS
On the SAT and on the AP English Language test, you often have to do passage-reading-based questions, which is where the College Board throws long, tedious, and often ambiguous (sarcasm and cynicism are hard to detect in writing) passages at you and then demands you answer questions about the passage.
If you want help in actually learning how to read the passage and answer the questions, go to Schmoop or find the Big Blue SAT Book of Devour-Clove's-Summer-Time, which your local bookstore probably sells for double your weight in gold.  They'll sort you out on the actual solving of the answers.
Here, at Clove's School of CRUSHING THE COLLEGE BOARD MRRRWAHAHAHAHAHA, I just wanted to reinforce something that most SAT prep-books will tell you: use your pencil to mark up a passage, especially if you're a read/write learner, a visual learner, or a kinesthetic learner.  Before I even start reading, I look through all of the questions, find all the ones that say, "In lines 3 - 7," and then underline lines 3 - 7 (or whatever numbers have you) while skimming over the question's answers.  Thus, I get a general idea of what to look for when I'm reading.
Sure, by the time you've gone through all of the questions this way, you've basically marked up the entire passage.  The goal of this exercise is not to actually eliminate the bits and pieces of writing that you don't need to read, which is a lie that some SAT prep-books tell you; it's to help you connect the passage to the questions so that you don't waste time flipping back from a question to the passage and asking, "What the what?  Where am I?  What are they talking about?  Ehhh, I'll just go back ten lines and start reading there."

~ ~ ~

Anyway, hopefully this will prove helpful in the lives of poor, abused teenagers everywhere.  Now, if you don't mind, the College Board is banging on my front door and threatening that, if I don't come out, they'll make me take the new and "improved" SAT.  Thus, your author takes her leave.

Write on!
Clove

SAT/AP Writing Tips Part 1

What - is - up, ladies and gents?

As of yesterday, I officially finished my AP English Language class, which included fifty-five multiple choice reading-based questions in an hour followed by a ten minute break followed by three essays (synthesis, rhetorical, and argumentative) written in two hours non-stop.  I'm not saying that I know what torture is, but I'm pretty sure that that test is about as close as it gets.

Anyway, having also taken the PSAT and the SAT twice each (No, I'm not masochistic.  I'm Asian.  There's a huge difference.), I've gotten a pretty good grasp on some practical tips and tricks that can help make your torture exams slightly more bearable.

~ ~ ~

NUMBER 1 - PARALLELISM
In the SAT and PSAT sentence-improvement writing section, you'll read sentences similar to the ones below:

     --"To conquer the world, to compose music, and write on her laptop are some of Clove's favorite hobbies."
     --"Clove's friends couldn't be sure whether they admired her for her stunning intelligence, loathed her for her enviable beauty, or if they just thought she was winsomely egotistical."
     --"Some of Clove's favorite non-canon ships are Machi x Hisoka, Hikaru x Haruhi, and Celty and Shizuo, but her favorite non-canon ship is Hunter x Jace."

These problems will then have multiple choice answers that suggest how to fix the sentence.  For my first example sentence, you might see answers like the following:

     a. To conquer the world, to compose music, and write on her laptop are some of Clove's favorite hobbies.
     b. Alongside with conquering the world, to compose music and to write are two of Clove's favorite hobbies.
     c. Conquering the world, composing music, and writing on her laptop are some of Clove's favorite hobbies.
     d. Conquering, composing, and writing the world, music, and on her laptop, respectively, are some of Clove's favorite hobbies.
     e. Clove's favorite hobbies, to conquer the world, to compose music, and write on her laptop, are only a few of the hobbies that she has.

The first thing you might notice is that choice "a" is the same as the given sentence.  That's always the case with these types of questions, and, sometimes, there really might be nothing wrong with the given sentence, requiring you to choose "a."  (Tricksy test-makers, I know.)
Fortunately, for you, though, you're in Clove's School of CRUSHING THE COLLEGE BOARD WAHAHAHAHAAA, so you should know that the given sentence (and "a") are wrong and that "c" is right.
Why?
Answer "c" is the only answer that contains both correct parallelism and correct grammar.  The important tip-off is the parallel form: "conquering", "composing", and "writing", rather than just "write", which was in the given sentence.  (Okay, okay, loser, answer "d" also include parallelism, but that answer is hopelessly convoluted.  If you picked that one, I'm mercilessly expelling you from my school here and now.  Leave.  Vas.  Shoo.  =.=  Pack up you bags and go.)
You could write my other two example sentences like this: "Clove's friends couldn't be sure whether they admired her for her stunning intelligence, loathed her for her enviable beauty, or just thought she was winsomely egotistical"  //  "Some of Clove's favorite non-canon ships are Machi x Hisoka, Hikaru x Haruhi, and Celty x Shizuo, but her favorite non-canon ship is Hunter x Jace."
If you've got this trick under your belt, you can easily secure at least 40% of the questions thrown at you on the SAT because, yup, there are basically that many parallelism questions.  The rest of the problems are normally subject-verb agreement related, tense related, or sheer readability related.

NUMBER 2 - PENCILS
Unfortunately, because some genius teenager taking the SAT once decided to cheat by writing answers onto a slip of paper and handing the rolled up answers it to another student inside of a mechanical pencil, mechanical pencils are not allowed on any test given by the College Board.  This means you have to use standard pencils.
Thus, two pieces of advice:
1.) If you're a hard-core mechy user like me, bring one anyway because WAHAHAHAHAAA THIS IS THE SCHOOL OF CRUSHING THE COLLEGE BOARD.  As long as you don't intent to cheat, have No. 2 lead, and are seated in the back/have a lenient proctor, they normally let you use the pencil anyway.  Just no cheating.  >:(
2.) If you're a hard-core mechy user, bring three normal No. 2 pencils anyway in case if you get rejected.  Two of them, sharpen all the way.  One of them, leave slightly blunt.  You can use the sharpened pencils to write faster and more effortlessly on the essays, and you can use the slightly blunt pencil to save time when filling in multiple choice question bubbles.  (More surface area = more space filled.)

NUMBER 3 - FONT TYPE AND SIZE
Any timed essay is nerve-wracking.  You've got to take a stance (which is hard if you don't give a crap one way or another about the prompt, as is often the case for me), organize your argument, and then put your thoughts down into words as fast as you can think them up.  Obviously, in such a speedy-relevent task, you don't want to waste time in the actual writing process.  Words should be flowing directly from your head to the paper.
Generally, therefore, while you might be tempted to write in big, uncontrolled, flow-y letters (especially if the teacher calls ten minutes and you haven't even gotten to your third paragraph out of five), you're going to want to write as small as you can without giving your font size any thought.  Writing big wastes time and will hurt your hand faster over time.
Also, don't give any thought into how neatly you write as long as you write legibly.  Cursive and forging fonts aside, I have three hand-writing fonts: the perfect, print-like font that I used to impress people, a faster script that I usually use when writing sermon notes, and then the scribbles that I use when I'm scribing or writing timed essays, scribbles that are basically loops in a long, continuous line due to the fact that I rarely pause to pick up my pencil/pen.
While writing in perfect handwriting might win you some kudos with your essay grader, you'll never actually change your score by writing more neatly.  Don't even attempt it.

~ ~ ~

Three more tips coming soon!  Until then...

Write on!
Clove

Current Writing Playlist

--- for everything pertaining to Ash and Jewel ---

--- helps you see the bullets ---

--- blackmail ---

--- creating complex plot ---

--- for everything pertaining to Skain and Silvia ---

--- adrenaline rush ---

--- reconnaissance ---

--- or just thinking while waiting in a hot car ---

--- from loneliness to love ---

--- from nostalgic moments to the happiest dream ---

--- for when he does all he can to save her and yet ---

--- inconvenient Atropos ---

Write on!

Clove

Weird Writing Problems #3

Ever since I knew the least bit about writing, I started proofreading.


Like...everything.


Cereal boxes, yogurt, magazines, ads.

And then I thought that I could do everything ten times better if I were hired by a company as a marketing writer.  And then, a few months ago, I was hired as a marketer/salesman/distributor (long story), and I found myself saddled with the task of writing a whole brochure about jewelry in twenty-four hours.  And then my first draft got blown out of the water by another editor, and I had to rewrite it.

Heh.  Heh.  Heh.

What goes around comes around.

Anyway, I still critique any bit of writing in sight; it's just one of those weird writing problems that I'll carry around until the day I die, mercilessly beating the snot out of other peoples' written babies, muahahahahahahaha~

Write on!
Clove

Antiheroes

Well, I've been thinking about antiheroes frequently of recent, mostly because I'm realizing exactly how much I like to write them as well as how exactly and drastically I'd be one if I were a character in a story.

An antihero, according to TV Tropes, is "an archetypal character ... almost as common in modern fiction as the ideal hero ... [who] is a protagonist ... [and] has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero.  They may be bewildered, ineffectual, deluded, or merely apathetic.  More often, an antihero is just an amoral misfit."

In other words...

For example, some antiheroes (who also happen to be some of my favorite and most adored characters to ever enter fiction) are: Huckleberry Finn, Jay Gatsby, and Jace Lightwood.  In anime/movies, you'll find Batman, Han Solo, Jack Sparrow, Karma Akabane, and Izaya Orihara.

What makes a hero different from an antihero though?  According to this great chart by Anthony Ehlers, heroes tend to be idealists: classic handsome/pretty looks, high-ground morals (no blatant sins and a strong initiative against evil for the sake of justice and peace, etc.), and success (whether it be with the plot or with the princess girlfriend).  Meanwhile, antiheroes are realists, who are often scarred by the past, who believe that the end justifies the mean, and who tend to be driven by self-interest.

Why do I like antiheroes so much?  Here are a few reasons:

1.) Antiheroes raise the stakes of a plot.
A hero is only willing to sacrifice his own time and resources for any given goal.  However, when a hero can't acquire his goal by his own sacrifice, he is stuck (and must be saved by a Deus-Ex-Machina or an intervention or whatever plot device you have at hand).  Meanwhile, the antihero is willing to sacrifice basically anything for any given goal, including other people.  Therefore, when an antihero can't acquire his goal by his own sacrifice or by the sacrifice of other people/other people's things, things really get dicey.

2.) Most humans (eheh, including me) relate better to the antihero than to the hero.
Being dirty and more inclined to darkness, antiheroes depict a clear image of selfish, proud humankind.  Most people won't claim to own good motives and to do good constantly and passionately like a hero, but many people will claim to own good motives and to do evil occasionally and premeditatedly because they "gave it their best" or "did all they could."  There's desperation in an antihero, a desperation and a hopelessness that drives him through his valleys of sin.

3.) Let's just be honest.  You can do so much more with antiheroes.
Antiheroes have twisted, conflicted thought patterns; they leave the audience curious because, while they tend to do evil, they might have a really good heart inside.  In a crisis situation, it's a coin-flip as to whether they'll actually choose good or evil.  On the other hand, heroes are typical and predictable, being as that they'll save as many people as they can and act according to whatever is best for the world.  Boring, boring, boooring.

Anyway, now that I've convinced you to write an antihero (because they're basically all my soul mates), you'll probably need some help in the actual writing process.  Here's one more article that I really liked that might be useful in your word-filled adventures.

Write on!
Clove