Pleas buy a lit mag when they come out. You owe me that.

Two months. Two months of reading crappy sophomore "voice practices" and "This I believe" essays,   short stories about cutting which have absolutely no punctuation, broken hearted love poetry,  fanfiction about video games, and dozens of "The Road" found poems ( at least 10. Probably more. I know you all submitted them.). This is what Ive read in my creative writing class while we put together the lit mag(School literary magazine that Mullins gave extra credit for submitting to). Needless to say, it was hard to get through sometimes- though better than last year when we received only mushy love poems. Bad mushy love poems. A majority of  pieces submitted were said bad mushy love poems.  Being in AP English made me feel like a horrible writer. Going through that in creative writing made me feel better. Now that we're almost past the poetry unit though,  I again a feel like a bad writer. It was a harsh reminder that "Oh yeah, poetry DOES have purpose..or talent behind it sometimes."
 My overall point is, I really hope people actually buy the new copy of the lit mag (assuming we get it out this year). We need the funds and I don't want to feel like these few months have been for nothing.  There are some really good pieces in litmag- we had a picky class this year and it's the thinnest issue ever- and some..not as good ones, so buy one and either enjoy the writing or feel better about your own writing!

Please.

I love slam poetry

I sincerely LOVE slam poetry and it saddens me that we didn't get a lesson on it in class. I had a class on it in creative writing and just fell in love. It makes it easier to connect and relate when you hear how it is said aloud, and the way people read it purposefully improves or changes the poem, and I find that fascinating. I love how it sounds like rapping, but isn't. I love how it is writing, but also more. I love how it can be a story or a feeling or sound awkward or sound different, and it's all still good, and all still engaging. It plays with not just what words mean but also how words sound. It's using the English language to it's fullest, in a way that I simply can't master.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6wJl37N9C0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tVVuvA_esM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znIXyFh6dsI

Literary Cures

http://bookriot.com/2013/03/19/literary-cures-for-whatever-ails-you/

    Reading to cure my emotional problems isn't a new idea for me, though I do it differently than how the above article suggest. Becky Pole suggests ready books opposite of what you're feeling in order to make you feel better, or learn to deal with your problems. It makes sense, it' simply not how I operate. When I read, I don't pick a genre based on my mood- though perhaps a reading level based on my current attention span.  When I read, I do it to escape. If I'm sad, I'm just as likely to read a sad book as I am a happy book- if not more likely, seeing as I have actually letting myself be sad and need to get it out of my system. Its  cathartic to read a sad book when you're sad, you see how  much worse off other people could have it, can still escape from my our own sadness, and just let the tears (if you're a crier) out. If I'm happy, I don't want to be brought down with a sad book. So no opposites there either. Plus, learning to deal with your problems through characters seems like a bad idea. No one writes about perfect, happy lived people. They're boring. Most characters  well developed ones or interesting ones worth reading about anyway- are messed up in some way, aren't normal. Normal isn't interesting, normal isn't written about! So you probably shouldn't take advice on life from a bunch of fictional "interesting" people.Even if the advice is "don't do what I did", you don't know how non-fictional people are going to react in parallels to the fictional ones. In regards to the self help books the article described....yeah...it takes a certain mentality to get through and connect to a self help book. I always just imagine overly chipper old guys bouncing and yelling at me when I see self-help books, so I just can't get through them. The audio books it prescribed for going to bed though, I can relate to. The most dull and silky voiced people record audio books and it puts me to sleep every time I hear one in my grandmother's car. I might invest in those to try to get back on a  normal sleep cycle sometime soon.