1. Who is/are the characters in your Twitterive?
The characters in my Twitterive are my mom, my dad, and myself.

2. What connection/disconnection do you feel to your place?
The connection I have with being back home is that it is a new connection to an old place.  Ever since my dad passed away a few years ago, I am learning to adjust to my new life without him.  Even though I have returned home to a familiar place, it is very different from the home I once knew, which has not only changed who I am as a person, but also who I am as a daughter. For me, it is not so much an actual house that I am connected to, but rather the idea of being home.

3. When does the story take place?
From 2007 to present. 

4. Where does the story take place?
My story takes place in both Miam, Florida and New Jersey.

5. Why does the story take place?
This time of year (specifically the month of February) is always an especially difficult time for me, because it marks the anniversary of when my dad passed away.  Since my dad has been gone, our family dynamic is a lot different than it once was.  It was both this assignment and readings from earlier in the semester that have made me see how completely different things are now. 

6. How are you delivering/presenting the story?
Through a narrative, using poetry,a personal letter, pictures, and song lyrics (possibly) to help tell my story.

Knock Down Heavyweight Title Fight: This Time It's for Realsies
-Sports Illustrated Journalist-

On February 16, 2011, tens of fans will gather in room 2108 to see the undefeated world heavyweight champion “Liv to Kill” Shreeves face off in an epic battle against her opponent Stephanie “The Slammer” Dibella, in the most anticipated event of the week.  “Liv to Kill” Shreeves, coming in at 5’7 and 145 pounds of solid muscle, is ready to crush her competition with her dirty Jersey “fist pumpin’, Snookie fighting” moves, and says  she “will stop at nothing and will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means fighting dirty.” Although Shreeves may be suffering from a few past injuries which stemmed from a recent night out, there’s no way she will let a hangover, a broken jaw, or broken nail cost her the title.  This dirty fighter from the dirty Jers is prepared to make Stephine "the Slammer" wish she never entered this "situation" in the first place.

While most fighters would be intimidated by this trash talking, “fist pumping,” undefeated champ,  the 5’ 110 pound, no  nonsense  contender  Stephanie “the Slammer” DiBella is eager to “go in and get the job done.”  This will be DiBella’s first fight since returning from a six month hiatus in which she was recuperating from a dislocated elbow that was a result of her last match against Melissa “the Masher.”  Stephanie “the Slammer" says she is “going for the title” and refuses to let a bum elbow interfere with her chances of dominating tomorrow’s match. While DiBella may be the underdog, her trainer says she is “confident she will win because she knows she has been working hard” on her technique and doing extensive training exercises to rebuild her strength.  Stephanie “the Slammer” is the self- proclaimed “knock out fighter” and is best known for getting down to business and taking her opponents  out in the first round, and while she may be small, this “little but feisty” warrior has no reservations about coming out on top in tomorrow afternoons showdown.

While these two fighters may be polar opposites of each other, they both have one thing in common, and that’s winning.  With Shreeves’ record consisting of 35 wins, 10 KO’s, and 5 submissions, and DiBella’s 19 KO’s, 3 technical draws, and 4 losses, this is sure to be one hell of a fight.

Of all of the assignments we have been given thus far, I feel that this last poetry assignment was by far the most difficult for me.  There are quite a few reasons that I felt this way, but the biggest reason of all was because of how hard I struggle with writing poetry.  Besides the fact that poetry is one of my weaker areas of writing, I also found that a lot of the reason I struggled so much was because of previous word choices in my tweets and microfiction.  

When we were first assigned the microfiction stories, I had some mixed emotions about the whole thing.  On one hand, I had experience with microfiction, and not only that, but I really enjoyed writing microfiction. On the other hand, I was a little stressed because I knew I was going to have to come up with two different story ideas, and I was also going to have to work the two quotes into them.  Although I love to write microfiction,  I absolutely hate trying to come up with story ideas.  For me, the most difficult part of writing the microfiction was getting the first line down.  It seems like after I write the first line, the rest of the story just unfolds as I go.  Actually, it’s funny because I remembered thinking to myself how amazing it was that I could start a story with one idea but end up with something completely different.  I had no idea who I wanted my characters to be or how I wanted the story to end, but it all seemed to just fall into place as I wrote.

Even though I struggled a lot less after I came up with my ideas, I still encountered a few other issues when writing my stories.  The main issue was that I had a really difficult time trying to use good descriptive language without exceeding the 250 word limit.   In the past when I wrote microfiction, our limit was 500 words, so even though I had an idea of what to expect for this assignment, I still had to adjust to the idea that I had half the amount of words to work with.  As I started to write my first story, I was focused on using a lot of color and imagery when describing the setting, but I quickly realized that in order for me to actually tell the story and give it a decent ending, I had to cut out anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary to the story line (and store it into my “good shit” file until a later time).  I was both frustrated and disappointed because I couldn’t figure out how to incorporate the best of both into my story.  Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of my stories, and not just that, but I appreciated how it challenged me as a writer and helped me to see exactly what areas I need to work on in my writing.

As I had previously mentioned, the poems were definitely far more difficult than the microfiction.  I was pretty pleased with the haiku poem, but I also knew that it probably could have been better if I had used more evocative words in my microfiction.  As for the Found poem, I wasn’t sure where to begin so I tried to pull the tweets that contained the most useful words, but my issue wasn’t so much the words, it was more my creativity, or better yet, lack thereof.  Although my haiku was unrelated to my microfiction, my Found poem did end up relating to my tweets, because many of them had to do with comments I had made pertaining to the weather.  Once I noticed this theme within my tweets, it served as my inspiration for the poem.  Overall, I think that experimenting with these different genres was an excellent learning experience for me because I was pushed out of my usual comfort zone, and I was forced to evaluate each and every word before deciding to use it, which has added to my growth as a writer.

This haiku was created using words from my microfiction stories.

The moment you looked
I saw that you wanted me
With all of your heart

   
This found poem The Dead of Winter  was constructed out of words and phrases I found in ten different tweets of mine.


Dead of Winter

In the dead of winter
The nights are long

In the dead of winter
The stars light the sky

In the dead of  winter
The drafts are cold

In the dead of the winter
The snow is heaviest

In the dead of winter
The winds are so powerful

In the dead of the winter
The beauty is amazing


These are the tweets that I took the words for this poem from.

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
The force of the winds just carried me to my car. I nearly flew away

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
6 word short story... "For sale: baby shoes, never worn"~Ernest Hemingway So simple yet so powerful

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
"There are not stars in the sky, but rather openings, where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy"~Eskimo Legend

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ~Kahil Gibran

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
@norris63 My god that kid is amazing-gives me chills. Check out his studio session it's even better!

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
I can feel the freezing cold draft coming right through my window..burr

@sincerelylinz if it makes u feel better I'm in the same position as you. The nights just keep getting longer and longer

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
I really don't get this whole thing with guys wearing shorts in the dead of winter

linhoop Lindsey Hooper
I'm such a good citizen. Just shoveled my 2 car driveway and my neighbors. That was some of the heaviest snow ever!

linhoop Lindsey Hooper 
I remember when I used to get excited for snow. I'm over shoveling...about to invest in a snow blower

An Anthology of Really Short Stories: Stern

While I was reading each of these stories, I tried to focus on the idea of place, but I was struggling to make the connection between each story.   At first, I was concentrated on the idea of place in a more literal sense, but the more I continued to read, the more I noticed that the concept of place would make more sense if it were viewed more figuratively, as in the “place” in which each of the main characters are at in their lives.

 Barbarita is at a place, or position, where she is in the process of trying to make a new life for herself in America after leaving Cuba.  In Mocking Bird, the characters Rachel and Peter are at the beginning stage of their relationship, and Rachel is “at that swooning stage of love, stupid with happiness at his return” (Berry, 42).  Since the couple is at a new place in their relationship, they are still discovering new things about each other.  In Land’s End, the main character is running from something or someone and has ended up all alone in a place that is very unfamiliar to her.  In Waiting, the woman is at a place in her life where she feels somewhat depressed and unhappy with her life.  She wants more for herself and does not like the fact that she is single, drives her father’s car, working as a substitute instead of as a full-time teacher, and feels obligated to do what her father asks of her. 

Of course, I could be completely wrong about all of this, but like I said before, I had a difficult time trying to connect each of the stories through the theme of place because I didn’t really see how any of them were similar, other than the fact that three of the four stories had to do with Spanish speaking countries.

Dubliners: Joyce

When thinking about the concept of place in these two stories, the best I could come up with was that the main characters were both striving to get to a specific place.  In Encounter, the two boys were trying to get to the Pigeon House, and in Araby the main character was trying to get to the Araby bazaar in order to buy a gift for his friend’s sister, who he is infatuated with.  Although I liked both of these stories, I found them both to be a little creepy, between the crazy old man and the boy who practically stalks the girl he is obsessed with.

I could especially relate to Encounter because it made me think of the days when I would cut school.  Looking back on it, it makes me laugh because I realize now just how much effort I put into cutting school, and it was really all for nothing.   I would go through so much stuff to weasel my way out of school, just so I could sit around at a friend’s house all day doing absolutely nothing.   At least the boys in this story did their best to have an adventurous day, even if they never did make it to the Pigeon House.

A Native Hill: Berry

In the excerpt from A Native Hill, author Wendell Berry explains how everything he knows about himself is related to the place in which he grew up, and that much of who he is has been mostly determined by his ancestors who once lived there.  Now that Berry has had the opportunity to go back to Kentucky and reconnect with his home land, he has come to realize that the history behind the land is slowly being erased as each new generation continues to destroy the once untouched land.

Although I have always had a great respect for the environment and I try to do what I can to reduce my carbon footprint, I still find it difficult to fully understand the affect that some of my actions can have on the earth.  As I was reading this excerpt, I came to a part that really made me understand that even something as simple as soil has a history and a past life long before I ever existed. Berry describes the topsoil as “Christ-like” and explains that “It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it…It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it…Death is the bridge or the tunnel by which its past enters its future”(25).  This line shows just how connected Berry is with his surroundings and that he sees the life and history in something that most of us see as dirt.  His passion for nature is certainly reflected in his writing.

The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Michael Ondaatje

After reading Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, I was left with many questions. What was most unclear to me was who exactly the narrator was.  I was really confused about who was telling the story because the narrator talks about Sallie Chisum as if he were someone who was very close with her. There was a part after the paragraph about Sallie’s clothesless body curled up under the sheets that made me question who exactly the narrator was and what his relationship was with the Chisum family.  “Once last year seeing her wrapped I said, Sallie, know what a madman’s skin is? And I showed her, filling the automatic indoor bath…and lifting her and dropping her slow in to bath” (Ondaatje 31). In order for the narrator to do this I would imagine he would have had to have seen her naked.

 There were a lot of other parts that were very confusing to me as well, and I am pretty sure that I am not alone on this.  Perhaps it is because this is only a small piece from the story, or perhaps it is because I am unfamiliar with the story itself.  The only thing I am sure about is that even though I didn’t really understand much of it, I enjoyed reading it and hope to have a better understanding of it soon.

Living the Narrative Life:Gian Pagnucci

 In Living the Narrative Life, author Gian Pagnucci discusses how “living the narrative life is about embracing the stories that make us who we are” (68).   Pagnucci believes that it is our past experiences that are what shape us into the person we are today, and that it is our own stories that “help us make sense of the world”(78).

While reading this piece, I was reminded of an exercise I had to do in my Creative Writing II class, which was called “I Don’t Know Why I Remember…”  At the beginning of the semester we were instructed to create a list of ten, completely random memories from our past.  The point of the exercise was to recall any events from our lives that stood out in our minds for no particular reason.  Once we created our list, we were to then write any questions or comments we had concerning each memory, which was intended to trigger ideas for a fiction story we were to write.  At first, I thought the whole thing was completely pointless, but I soon discovered just how helpful it really was.  In fact, I found it to be so helpful that I referred back to that same list for almost every story I wrote that semester.   Although Living the Narrative Life mostly focused on the importance of telling our personal stories, it also reminded me that our memories and stories can contribute to our writing in so many other ways.

Paris to the Moon: Gopnik

In Paris to the Moon, Gopnik tells about the transition from his old life in New York to his new life in Paris.  I found that I could easily relate to a lot of what Gopnik had to say when he talked about the differences between America and France because I have experienced some of the same issues that he encountered while in Paris.  Although I haven’t been lucky enough to visit France just yet, I have traveled through other parts of Europe and have found myself in similar situations, such as needing a different converter for each different country, confusing product labels, and all of the other usual issues most Americans run into when traveling overseas.

One thing that I found to be funny was Gopniks reference to the difference between Americans and Parisians when it comes to telephones and Walkmans.  Clearly much has changed since Gopnik wrote this.  Americans have gone from walking the streets with their clunky Walkmans, to walking the streets with their clunky Smart Phones attached to their heads.

Overall, I enjoyed Gopnik’s humor in this piece, but I also felt that I was left somewhat confused at certain times because of it.  I am not sure if it was because of his sarcastic tone and dry sense of humor, or if it was because he seemed to jump around a lot.  I just felt that his writing seemed a bit disorganized at times, which made it a bit difficult to read.