I solemnly swear to be the worstest blogger evar.

Hi!

I have a blog now. What does one do with a blog, hmm? Well, one of my friends uses hers to write commentary on modern fiction. Her current mania is the twilight movement and in consequence, she produces many riveting and hysterically funny observations on the subject. One of her friends writes on the very same topic, but on a chapter by chapter breakdown of the series which isn't a saga. Although saga is a lovely word and worth looking up in the dictionary, once this activity is performed, the fact is elucidated that as nobody in the story is Nordic or Icelandic, as there is no great chronicling of heroic deeds because the heroine is always unconscious in time for the action, and there is no leisurely retelling of the activities of various families, Peter Ackroyd's "London" is a saga, "100 Years of Solitude" is also a saga, but Twilight is not. On the upside, calling it a saga makes it seem a lot more epic, which is a handy tool to use for later. The saga of the missing hairbrush, for example, became exponentially more awesome as soon as I tagged the word "saga" onto it, and one day I shall write it all down and share it with you all. Maybe.

Which brings us to the reason why I'm writing a blog. Well, my second reason. I was supposed to tell you what my first reason in the previous paragraph but got excited by my own use of the word "saga". SAGA! The first reason why I have now got a blog is because I enjoy reading what my friend's friend has to say about the chapters, but not being her actual friend I really don't know when she updates, and the easiest way to find out is to sign up with the system and follow her like some crazy stalker person with a dead rose in one hand and a half-full bottle of Dr. Pepper swinging by a string in the other. There probably was an easier way to keep up with her blog, but if you know it then please tell me nothing about it. I've gone to all this effort already.

Okay: second reason. I'm really going to tell it now. With this mighty blog before me, I shall practice my awesome powers of writing about real stuff! Oooo! Did you get chills just now? Because I totally did. Seriously, I've been writing fairy tales and fantasy worlds ever since I discovered my sister's story opening which she wrote in the back of her diary, never to be discovered by the world which is a sure sign that your little sister is going to find a way into it. I think I was, like, 6 years old at the time. Most of them are still kicking in a netherworld of unrealized imagination, but I've decided to thrust as many of them as I can out of their sad limbo and, you know, write them.

One of my weakest points is description, and not just description of people and scenes, but description of moments, of time, of emotion and spirit, description of things around which the mind can barely wrap its tendrils of thought. I blame the Brontë sisters. I could blame the fairy tales that I've weaned myself on, too, if I wanted, but I shan't do that because I love them so; therefore the Brontë sisters get all the blame.

I have no sympathy for them. Have you ever read a description by a Brontë? They sap the soul, my goodness. These are the women who can spend two calculating paragraphs telling you what the trees are not doing as the wind rushes through them; who cannot create an atmosphere because they are too busy sounding intelligent. They make the pages of a brand new paperback feel as dry and dusty as if it was an ancient tome found in some ancient tomb telling you that Balin is dead. Come to think of it, that particular tome had more vivacity in its tale of death and woe than anything the Brontës wrote. When I read them, I reached a point where I swore I would either have to start skipping the descriptions or claw my eyes out. I am currently performing an experiment to see how long it will take me to wear out my eyes by reading everything REALLY close to my face, and I thought it would be a shame to waste all that hard work, so I skipped the descriptions instead.
Ah, dear subject, how blissful were my reading moments then! How easily I glided from page to page, picking up threads of story between intermittent, bland rhapsodies on nothing very interesting. Could it be? Could the key to easy reading really be kept in skipping descriptions? Why, this was marvelous! Since I myself could not write descriptions to my satisfaction, why write them at all if everyone was just going to skip them anyway? It was as if I had found a pocket of air while I was trapped beneath the ice of literature. Yes. I just called Jane Eyre "the ice of literature."

Then I picked up another book. Specifically, it was a little novel that I had never heard of called "Precious Bane" written by a little woman I had never heard of called "Mary Webb" and her story, even while skipping the descriptions, dragged like a pair of iron shoes. No, really. I couldn't get into the story, I couldn't get into the main character, who seemed pleasant enough, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Then someone asked, "are you still skipping the descriptions?" So I reluctantly read the next description I found. That was like coming out of the ice completely, into an open, airy world of sunlight glowing green through new leaves, of a soft earth, of lives that had the capacity of feeling and thinking both at once, of dreaming not in words but in images. If you can find it, and can get past the accent in the prose and the dubious chapter 8 in book two, I recommend that you read it.

Okay, so bad description, no matter how intelligent, confounds and infuriates, but good description can put the things from your imagination into someone else's imagination. Ha! I have found another useful tool, and what a saga it was, finding it. I learned in college that drawing from reality makes it possible to draw the things of the imagination as though it were reality, too. I see a lot of parallels between art and literature, so I shall try to apply the same principle here, in this blog, for other people to read. You poor souls.

Now I will clarify. I'm not going to put any of the story segments or short tales that I'm always writing up here for you to read, so the people I've been peddling those off on can breath a sigh of relief. I'm going to spend some time retelling and describing the things I've really seen and experienced as though they were from my imagination, and occasionally I will also put up my unsolicited opinion on something or other because I'm pretty sure that that's what blogs are supposed to be all about. The updates will be about as intermittent and shoddy as when I update my notes on my facebook page, which happens only when I feel like it.

I'm also going to follow my friend's friend because it turns out that I have a half-empty bottle of Dr. Pepper on a string sitting right here, waiting for me. Be back soon. Maybe.