Tales of an Anthropologist in TeenWorld

Regular anthropologizing and blogging has been put on hold for Nanowrimo (national novel writers month)

But I do bring you this bit of Nano-Writer-Mama angst

So, today was beautiful, so I took my manuscript and took the kids to this awesome park. I was like, yeah I'm a great mom. Then this other mom came in and kept running around with and talking to and playing with her kids. While I was crouched over my manuscript muttering to myself, whispering lines of dialogue, being mildly creepy and insane. Thanks awesome mom for making me feel like not as much of an awesome mom.

An excerpt from something I'm not talking about yet. Except my mom read everything I'd written, but then when I asked for her opinion she had reception problems and had to go (In all fairness to my writing, her phone doesn't work more than it works)

The rooms are huge, and the low ceilings give them a cavernous feel, they are full of corners and shadows, with open places where you can see that there are more rooms, and more rooms still, like a house of mirrors, except instead of reflections you are looking at some warped version of reality, in which there are more rooms here than could possibly exist, even in a house this huge. I step over a headless doll. Blocks are strewn across the floor as if a child might be returning to finish his castle. A broken toy drum lies in the corner, a drumstick has been thrust through the leather membrane.

     A spider the size of my hand scurries across the room and into the mouth of a lifelike baby doll. The (name deleted) children of the past certainly had an abundance of dolls. Mother never bought me any, though I had a stuffed pink rabbit, once.

     I walk, slowly, through tea sets waiting for eternity for a tea party. Ropes of paper flowers and stars and moons have been hung from the rafters. I stand on tip toe to peer at them. The fluttering paper is attached to heavy rope. Odd.

     In one of the dormers, a low area where the ceiling matches the slope of the roof above, I find what I am looking for.

     Ugly black manacles, and a mattress.

     That’s all. I wonder why they didn’t get rid of this, burn the mattress. Otherwise, the room is clean, and empty.

     The house groans, and I hear footsteps creaking through the attic. There is a staircase, leading down from this room, a thing of wrought iron, with a flowing design of roses and barbs. I don’t wait for the footsteps to reach me. I run, across the room, stepping once on the mattress. A noxious smell blooms from it, thick as a cloud. I don’t inhale, just grab the banister, iron thorns piercing my hand, and bound downstairs.

Okay, change of plans. Today I'm doing a bit on Horror. I bought several really interesting looking horror YA books this summer, as well as some classic stuff.

As much paranormaly stuff is out there, there doesn't seem to be much real horror. I don't really know if this is a genre that we need...I love Stephen King, but I tend to love his more fantasy stuff (The Stand, The Dark Tower, my personal favorite, The Talisman) though I do ADORE It.

As an anthropologist in teenworld :) I really think that teens would like more horror. The Cirque de Freak books remain popular even in high school (not sure about the movie, I only saw part of one preview). I sort of think the trend might be really dark books.

Tomorrow I'll be posting a teaser tuesday, and wednesday, thursday and friday I'll be posting teen opinions on horror fiction.

Yay! Spooky stuff!

On second thought, I'm not posting the bullying scene from Handcuffs today. For one thing, I hate to post something that a lot of people have read, so I don't want to bore people, plus I don't have time today to post on the other teaser tuesday stuff. Somehow life has overwhelmed me this week. I hope to get caught up with posting stuff tomorrow. Crossing fingers. Dreaming of getting some sleep!

My small children know what a bully is. In fact, my 6 year old has asked me before, what he should do if someone bullies him. Luckily we haven't had to deal with anything like that. But chances are that someday, we will. Most kids will, at some time, deal with some manner of bullying.

My favorite depictions of real life middle school take your milk money style bullying are from Christopher Paul Curtis' Watsons Go To Birmingham. The descriptions of Byron and Buphead, and Larry Dunn playing the role of the "carp" are both sad and hilarious. This is a type of physical bullying that I never went through. I did get little girl bullied. In fact, learning how to act like a little girl was a painful process for me, since I was more accustomed to hanging around with boys. Being pushed out of the "club" was a common way to feel bullied in third and fourth grade. It was also terribly painful, and pretty effective.

I was asked in an interview (yesterday, actually) if the bullying that takes place in handcuffs was based on stuff I had seen as a high school teacher, and (despite my claim of being an anthropologist in teenworld) it really was not. Cause what I was going for in the scenes I wrote in Handcuffs, was the moment when adults aren't present. Yeah, plenty of stuff gets said in front of teachers and other school personnel, but the really nasty stuff happens when adults aren't present. And if adults don't think that kids these days can sexually harass one another in a way that would  turn your hair white, well, you haven't heard much. Or you have really fade-resistant hair.

I don't think you see much in YA lit that really plumbs the depths, and I don't think you need to.

I've been criticized a few times on goodreads for the depiction of bullying that I put in Handcuffs. Here's how I wrote the scene (I'll post the scene tomorrow for teaser-tuesday). I wanted Parker to be mortified. Totally and completely mortified. She is cornered and sexually harassed in front of an entire class, while the substitute teacher (no offense to substitute teachers, I adore substitute teachers)  reads the newspaper.

Was the scene painful for me--yes. For that reason, I believed that I had acheived what I set out to write.
I'll be writing about cyber-bullying this week, too. It's a scary reality out there.

So, I was saying that first day of school/high school, is considered sort of a cliche', but...I can't really think of that many books where the first day stood out to me. I don't know if that's good or bad, does it mean that I skim right over those parts, or that maybe there aren't that many? 

I'll have to be on the lookout as I keep reading.

I will announce my next few week's blog topics.

Next Week- Bullying in YA, and school, followed by cyberbullying/issues in YA and school, followed by cliques.

Cyberbullying week, I'll be giving away a copy of Handcuffs, Cliques week I'll be giving away a copy of Fanboy and Goth Girl...did I get that backwards, I typed it twice, both ways... look right and wrong...Okay, on clique week I'll be giving away a copy of the Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl. Great book! All you have to do to get in the contest is comment on my blog of highschool world anthropologist awesomeness.

This is the first time I've opened this manuscript since...2006...it was my first YA manuscript, ever, and I never revised it, I just took what I learned and moved on. One big problem is that one of the three main characters is a 21  year old student teacher, so obviously too old for YA. It kind of had that anthropologist vibe though, putting an outsider into high school.

I plan to rewrite this as a screenplay sometime in the not--too--far--off future.

This is Chapter Three and is called the Sureality of the First Day of School for Kate Burroughs, Unprepared Student Teacher...

     The school looms up out of the darkness, a big square block of a building. Some windows are lighted, some still dark. I can’t believe how sick I feel, it isn’t like I didn’t come here twice a week for observations last year. I had to watch a teacher teach for two hours twice a week, and then write a paper telling what I saw. Hence the name observations.

     The street lights in the parking lot pool precious bits of light into tiny circles. The only sound is the click of my heels. The feeling that this is not real sets in again as I get a weird vibe that I am late, that I will be tardy, that class has already started and when I walk in everyone will turn and stare.

     Then I open the door and all of my thoughts vanish, eclipsed by the brightness. There are voices all around, greeting one another, and there is a noxious cloud of hairspray and cologne, visible to the naked eye.

     “You going in or what?” from behind me. I pivot my body around, trying to smile, but the owner of the voice has already moved past with a psssst sound like a tire losing air. A sound that embodies all the scorn in the world. 

I don't have Freshmen so I probably don't see any extreme terror. What I see is discomfort, nervousness, and exhaustion. Whose idea was it to have school start at 7:20? When I was in college and I had to do observations for my education classes, I couldn't believe that school started that early. Yes, a mere 4 years, and I had already forgotten the agony...

On the first day they come in really quietly, nervously. They don't want to ask questions or draw attention to themselves. They stick together, especially in the halls, though my classroom in the dungeon is too far away for most of them to get "walked" to class, so they have to say their farewells someplace else.

Every school year is like a new beginning. That's one of the great things about my job (teacher). I can't imagine a job that just goes on and on and on, with each year merging into the next. Of course, I've chosen a career that means I'm in high school forever, but...that's okay.

I think Laurie Halse Anderson said it best in Speak..."It is the first day of high school. I have seven new notebooks, a skirt I hate, and a stomache-ache." I always make my students get seven new notebooks just for the poetic...okay, I don't really. I did make them get composition books that we haven't used this year, but I haven't heard any complaints (since I dropped the homework assignment that the comp book was supposed to encompass).

By the way, in three weeks, (once I get the revamped blog going, I'll be doing a book give-away. After that I plan to give away a book every week). All posts for the next 3 weeks will count toward a chance for give-away number one!

 

It's a YA book cliche', right? But how much angst is expended leading up to the first day of school? Enough to power, like, all the stuff that needs powering in the world? 



I found this when I googled (image) first day of school. Cute, huh?

Not exactly what we expect from the first day of high school, in fact, I think it's awesome in an ironic sort of way.

First day of high school is filled with anxiety. Will I be able to open my locker? Who will I sit with at lunch? Will my teachers be MEAN? Will my schedule (if it was received before school started) suddenly be randomly changed? Will I be able (if needed) to change my schedule?

And the first day of the first year of high school? That's of course the worst, because everything is UNKNOWN, and unless you're a super-thrillseeker of the masochistic variety, the unknown is SCARY.



How about this picture? Is it sweet and welcoming, or totally sinister? Depends on your overall opinion of high school, I guess.

This week I'm going to be focusing on first days of high school. From the perspective of an Anthropologist in Teen World.

I'll start by sharing my first day of high school. I don't think I was ever so nervous in my life. It didn't help that I hate change. Every year of school I would desperately miss and want to go back to my last year of school. No matter how mean the teacher, how much I hated the work, how annoying the boy who sat behind me was, I remembered it with this sense of complete and total nostalgia. Like, let me go back to that hell on earth and get out of this one, and I will do anything, anything. And then the next year I would be thinking the exact same thing. What can I say, I'm a creature of habit.

Anyway, starting high school was a terriblly scary thing for a social nonentity like me.

Anyone else have stories to share?

I'll be blogging about first day of High School all week!

Week one will be first day of High School Week.

Sunday- Introduction to this week’s topic with some thoughts about it.

Monday- Interview with author, or other person, on the topic at hand

Tuesday Writing Snippet

Wednesday Teen views on the topic.

Thursday- More observations on the topic from the “anthropologist” with links to experts/others

Friday- Book Review.

Saturday – Book Give away and wrap up

Tales of an Anthropologist in Teen-World

Teen World. It’s an alien place. One day last spring I was walking with my small kids, and they wanted to walk up and talk to some teenagers. Some vacant eyed and not very friendly teenagers. I was like, no…no…stay here with mommy. They were intimidating teenagers, even though I work with teenagers, I write with teenagers, I LOVE teenagers. These were really loud and, dare I admit it? Intimidating.

But we want to understand them, don’t we? As parents, as educators, as authors, we’re always delving into the minds of teenagers.

This is a blog experiment I’ve been considering for a while. I mean, anthropologist study groups of people. They’re trained in doing that, but…I’m also trained, as a secondary education teacher, and as an author.

In this blog experiment I will have teenage perspectives on the world and issues in the world. I will have weekly (Friday) reviews of books that focus on the authenticity of the teen characters within the books.  I will have surveys that are answered by teens.  But overall, it will be me, writing up my reports, as an anthropologist in the world of teens. It will be … the Tales of an Anthropologist in Teen-World. Wow, I never thought I would have a (self given) scientific job title. This is so exciting!

So, today I returned home from my third writing conference. With the exception of the confusing expressways in Nashville (totally not the fault of the conference coordinators, I admit), I had a really good time.

I think that it's always good to go to conferences, or classes, or other learning experiences. Sometimes (this is more true of teaching conferences than writing) I get good ideas that have little to nothing to do with what the speaker is saying. I guess there's something that sparks an idea, or maybe it's the creative atmosphere?) Anyway, that was sort of the case for me. I had a few ideas. I rethought a few things, I learned some other things, and there were lots of friendly people and some good food.

Next weekend I am luncheon speaker and presenter at the Kentucky Librarian conference, so it was AWESOME just to sit back and relax at this one.

I highly recommend this conference, and plan to go back next year!

Okay, so this weekend Lee and I went white water rafting. It was an awesome experience, but I have to admit that near the beginning, I would have gotten off the raft, hidden in the woods, and been a quitter.

Here are some pictures. I am the one near the back who always looks completely appalled. In my defense
A. I had lost my sunglasses and was squinting
B. They were all taken in rapid succession during a time when I had a horrific look on my face
C. I was appalled.





You may think these pictures are the same, I did, but by staring at the positioning of the boat and the paddles, you can see some minute differences.

Okay, so when I was invited to go rafting I did not feel particularly nervous about it. I wondered if I should spend the money right after our big vacation, I wondered if the long drive to West Virginia was too much for a one day trip, but I didn't think, wow, I'll be scared of doing this. But, I was.

We made it through our first rapid fine, I was like oh this is cool, then on our second rapid, we went back in to "surf" and our entire side of the boat flipped out. I got pulled in pretty quickly, so even though I swallowed a lot of water and felt a bit battered, I was still fine. Then on the next rapid, I went off, came up under the boat, kept getting pushed under the waves, and lost my shoe and my sunglasses. It was crazy, and I felt totally and completely out of control and I panicked. I wanted to stop right then and there.

But of course, there was no stopping in the middle of the river. I had one mini-panic attack, and then we went on, with me in the back, in the safest spot of all. I never flew out again, and the rest of the trip was really fun.

The moral of this story is either
A. I am too old for extreme sports
B. I should stay in my living room
or possibly
C. You should face your fears, even if it means freaking out in public.

 

Since I've been posting from Greedy, I guess I'll do one more before I switch over to Breathless, since that's what I'm sort of actively working on...

     Pippa starts to say something else, but Emma rolls over and suddenly all of my being is focused on her. How does she do this to me?

     I spend the entire night listening to Emma breathe. It’s intense. Intensely disturbing. One of those nights where you’re never sure if you even drifted off.

     At one point in the early morning her soft even breathing stops and I figure she is either dead or awake.

     “Are you awake?” I whisper. Classic stupid question.

     “Yes.”

     I’m relieved that she didn’t say, I am now. That would have been ridiculously cliché. But now I have to say something else.

     “Can I ask you a question?”

     “Yeah.”

     It’s easier to talk to her in the dark, where I can’t see her dark eyes mocking me.      

     “Why are you here?”

     Long pause. Is she thinking of her answer? Hesitating? Wondering where to start? I feel nervous for her.

     “Can I ask you one?”

     I nod. As if she can see me in the dark room. She continues, as if she did see.

     “Why are you here? I think that’s the more compelling question.”

     I roll away from her, so that I’m facing the wall again, letting the unanswered question hang there between us. What does she know about my relationship with my sister? Does she have sisters who never visit her here, who have abandoned her? I know I’m not the best sister in the world, but I hope that I’m getting better. Eventually Emma’s breathing evens out and I get to listen to it some more, while I try to picture Jackson in my mind, repeating over and over like a mantra. I love him, I love him, I love him. Maybe eventually I dozed off for a few minutes. I don’t know.

Why is it that kids want so much to touch animals? Here is a documentary of all the animals they looked at and touched at Myrtle Beach.



This first one is Ezra getting bunny ears from a diver in the aquarium!



Noel petting/touching a baby alligator



Ezra getting ready to touch a snake (I almost couldn't post this I despise snakes so much, I sat in the back row at this show and didn't  go into the snake house, I never do, they give me nightmares).



Here are the kids being cute.... but watch out kids, there's a sting ray sneaking up on you!

Okay, one more one more...



Ezra and a horse shoe crab. I'm afraid I didn't get pics with the sting rays, I was holding his ankles so he didn't fall in and smash the poor creatures.

Okay, and what I have proven in this post is that small children like to touch living animals. I don't actually think the converse is true, as the animals seemed pretty ambivalent about the small children. :)

As some people know, we spent last week in Myrtle Beach South Carolina. I'd never been there before, in fact, besides a few early childhood trips to Florida, most of my beach vacations were cruises or other tropical areas-- this is what happens when you are an only child with a travel agent for a mom. Lots of cruises, a little Mexico, the occasional Island or whatever. Local beaches (by local I mean within driving distance-- in this case 11 freaking hours) are unknown to me.

We really enjoyed our vacation, by far the most popular attraction was the one we came for.. the beach!





We pretty much spent every day on the beach, then went up to the hotel snack bar for lunch, and then either back to the beach or to one of the pools.

So, the scariest moment of our vacation happened on the first full day, which was also our first day on the beach.

We had been watching the kids like hawks. Seriously, when I left the ocean for our beach towel, I actually walked backwards so my eyes wouldn't leave them. I'm that good/paranoid of a parent. Then Lee told the kids we were packing up for lunch, and turned, Ezra was supposed to tell Noel, I leaned over and started packing up our toys and towels and various items (toasters, ducktape, iguanas) that we thought we should bring along just in case.

Noel (age 4) started running down the beach. In the wrong direction. When she didn't see us, she just kept running. When she still didn't see us she started crying, while still running. Let me see if I can show you how far she got.


(this picture was taken from our balcony) see the orange umbrellas? Those are lifeguard stands. She got 4 of those away from us. So far down the beach that at a full run it took me at least 15 minutes to get there. Thank goodness for the lifeguards! It was half an hour of pure panic. I couldn't imagine living with that kind of anxiety, did she get swept out in the ocean, did someone take her toward a hotel, did she go left, the way we suspected, or were we looking in the wrong direction altogether? I wasn't in tears, I think because I was too panicked for tears.

Luckily, we retreived her. She was completely unscathed, and had been telling the lifeguard about how I bought her a swimming suit with a little skirt to match my (uber-matronly and not pictured here) swimming suit with a little skirt. Here she is pouting on a different day.



Tomorrow's blog will be touching critters- the child's ultimate vacation (featuring sting rays, a skink, a python, and an alligator) then we will get back to our regular progrraming about screenwriting. I hope to have a few sample pages to show you by the end of the week!

this is the first time Jackson is introduced....

Chapter 4 On Being a Freak

(According to him (and he should know))

 

   “God, you’re greedy,” he says. “And a freak.”

    The way his voice lingers over the syllables, over the r’s and that final k makes me weak at the knees, takes me back to a few hours before when we were partially undressed.

     “Just ask. I’m sure they’ll do it.”

     He laughs “What was it again?”

     He likes, apparently, to eat ice cream afterwards. I hope he’ll get a waffle cone so I can watch him lap at it. And yes, he was right, I am a freak.

     We’re sitting in the parking lot in front of a sign that reads Granny’s Pie Kitchen and Ice Cream Parlor. A hole-in-the-wall type place less than five minutes from my house, that for whatever reason, I’ve never visited before. I love him.    

     “Get me a medium milkshake,” I say. “Coconut ice cream and chocolate, ask them to mix the two, I do this all the time, it shouldn’t be a problem.”  

     “What if they don’t have coconut ice cream?” He likes to get things right.

     It’s a good question. Lots of places don’t have coconut ice cream even though it’s one of my absolute favorites and they should. I sigh.

     “Something with caramel? Or I guess raspberry would be okay.”

     “Is there something wrong with just plain chocolate? It’s a classic, right?”

     “Is there something wrong with taking something good and something else good and having both?”

     He smiles at me, and I am reminded of how incredibly lucky I was to have everything in the world going for… to have him.

     He opens the door and his smile is illuminated by the interior lights of the Camry

      I admire him as he walks away, but my mind isn’t on him.

     I’m remembering this time when I was a little girl and my family went to the beach, and we were walking along the boardwalk and there was a place that sold ice cream cones. Not only did they sell them, but there was a big folding sign with a picture of a double ice cream cone. Chocolate and vanilla.

     “I can have both?” I remember asking.

     One of my mothers, probably Andi, said, “You can. You can even have a triple dip cone with strawberry, if you want.” Her voice was warm and she was wearing these really big sunglasses. Andi, if I remember correctly, was wearing mirrored Ray-Bans.

     “No. I want the double one, chocolate and vanilla.” I remember Caroline paying for the cones and handing the double one to me and a plain vanilla one to Pippa. I remember being extremely pleased by the cone, by the fact that I did not have to make a choice. That I could have the two things that I wanted most at the same time.

     I also remember that it was hot, and as we walked I lingered over the ice cream, making it last. That I was only on the second layer, the chocolate ice cream, and Pippa was crunching up the last bite of her cone. Pip never had any finesse about things like that, she didn’t have enough patience. I was savoring mine, and Andi made a remark to Caroline. They both laughed, and it was warm laughter. I didn’t mind that sometimes they said things in voices that I knew were meant only for one another, because I knew my moms loved each other, and even then I knew that was important.

     The car door opens, and a gust of unseasonably cool air separates me from the memory.

  
 

As a writing teacher I use the show don't tell thing all the time. There are places where I was disgusted with myself in Handcuffs for having too much telling. But in Screenwriting the show don't tell thing jumps to an all new level.

Important Symbols or visual items within Handcuffs

The For Sale Sign
The Handcuffs (duh)
The bedspread?
The siberian husky
the sticky pennies in the bottom of Parker's purse
the book about the ice princess
the blog?
the picture on the blog?

there have to be more... brainstorming to commence as soon as my head stops hurting...

Right now I'm just thinking about the screenplay. I've been told that I already have some of the main ingredients. Conflict and resolution check. Realistic dialogue check. But here's the weird thing, it isn't just a retelling of the book. I mean, I know of a few books that were almost identical to the movie...The Princess Bride, Holes, even Lord of the Rings despite some huge differences seemed to be trying to follow the book (have watched it with commentary to figure out why they made the changes they made) but then those books had huge followings, all in very different ways, so I can see staying as close to the source material as possible.

But with Handcuffs the way I'm starting is to put the book away, not even look at it. Think about Parker and her story and the stories around her, and try to find the best way to tell those stories in screenplay form.

Here's some advice that I received Handcuffs, is a great book and you should be proud of it. But as you write the script, don’t write the book again since you’ve already done that. Therefore, find the heart of the story and externalize it in a fresh, new, and inviting way

I don't know if Handcuffs is a great book :) but it's pretty interesting advice. So it's not all about going chapter 1 chapter 2 etc. It's about telling the story, and finding the best way to do that.

So that's what I'm thinking about right now.

Here's some stuff you may not know about screenwriting- obviously this is simple stuff because I still know very very little. I'm just thinking about my script....

1. You can buy scripts for almost any movie! check this out

You can also find lots of them online, though I wouldn't mind having a few of these in my entertainment collection. Okay, more stuff tomorrow as I think about it!

Okay, in compliance with all the awesome YA writers over on Absolute write, here is a teaser from GREEDY.

“This is my sister, Molly.” Pippa jumps back and pushes me toward the less than enthusiastic girl with the nasty cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

     “Molly,” she says, like she’s never heard this name before. “I didn’t know people still named their kids Molly.” She says my name like it’s some kind of disgusting word that makes her lips twist into knots of disdain just from uttering it.

     “And this is Emma, my roommate.”

     Pippa’s animation has returned and she is moving electrons around. Her movements make me think that maybe she exists more than me. She makes me afraid that I might get swallowed up into a black hole of nothingness and non-being one day.

     When I’m around Pippa sometimes I hate myself for not having any passions. I don’t even have any real hobbies. I’m just the senior class president’s girlfriend, the girl who writes the advice column for the school paper, the one who is nice and well liked.

     Except by this roommate girl who doesn’t seem to like me at all.