Teen Writers Bloc

Cobwebs.

If you looked into my brain right now, all you’d see are cobwebs. Deserted cobwebs, at that. The “Writing” section of my brain is so vacant, so vacuous, so utterly empty that not even spiders can survive. I’ve become a barren wasteland of creativity, a place where— dare I say it — awesome ideas go to die. Twice over.

I want to write, believe me I do. I long for it. Like a long lost lover, I’m craving its familiar touch, its scent, its unbelievable way of arousing me. I want to caress the words on a page, make them sing, scream, cry out in pain or joy. But apparently my life wants me to be celibate. (No, not in that way … that would really be awful!) My life doesn’t allow for “Writing Time.”

In my ideal world, Spring Cleaning 2012 would involve me quitting every single one of my jobs — except teaching, I do love teaching — just so I could focus on my writing. Writing is, in a lot of ways, the only thing that truly makes sense to me. It helps me sort out my life and my problems. I can somehow make sense of the world when I’m writing. So now that I don’t have the time or luxury to sit down and write, everything is making less sense.

During the years that followed my graduation from Ithaca College, I spent a lot of time writing. I wrote short pieces and finished my first novel. I also started work on the novel that I’m peddling to agents now. I started a personal blog and wrote to my heart’s content. But I also put off a lot of my life. I refused to find a Real Big Boy Job. I didn’t want one. I wanted the focus of my young life to be my writing. The way I saw it: “I’ll never have the opportunity to be ‘irresponsible’ again. Once I’m in my 30s, I’ll need a Real Big Boy Job in order to support a family and pay for that two story house with the wrap-around porch in the country that I’ve always wanted.” So I spent a lot of time standing my ground, living the life of a starving artist.

Then I graduated with an MFA from The New School and went, “Aww, crap! Now I actually have to make money.” So I work 3.5 jobs during the course of a regular week. Between that and nurturing my relationship and trying to have some semblance of a social life, I have no time for myself. And I need Steven Time. I desperately need time to be alone with myself and enjoy the wonder that is Me. When I find that time, I don’t really want to write. Not because I’ve fallen out of love with the act of writing, but because during those elusive moments when I have time to write, I hardly ever feel inspired.

Most mornings, I wake and immediately think of the repercussions of calling out of all of my jobs and just writing. But I can’t. When I think of all the things I’d rather be doing than going to work, writing is at the top of that list nine out of ten times.

Maybe it’s time to start a little bit of Spring Cleaning for myself, for my own sanity.

Clean out the cobwebs.

Stop over-working myself.

Remember what it is that I love about writing.

Remember why I write.

Make time to

Write.

Write.

Write.

Photo Credit: Vlado

Popularity: 9%

I have a writers crush on JK Rowling. If life was Hogwarts, JK Rowling would be the Cho Chang to my Harry Potter, (circa books 4 & 5), the Hermione to my Ron, the Harry Potter to my obsessed Rita Skeeter, the Fleur Delacuer to, well, every Hogwarts male with a pulse.

Sure, she’s old enough to be my mom, but if it wasn’t for her, I never would have had the incredible pleasure of tasting the intoxicating Butterbeer I had when I was at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure in Florida last month.

Okay, that’s not the only reason why I love JK Rowling. I will go on record, right here and now, and say that JK Rowling is one of the most prolific, skilled contemporary writers of our generation. Her prose is flawless; it has a flow to it that her contemporaries only dream of having in their writing.

Oh, and then there’s the world-building. The wizarding world, Hogwarts, and everything else about the Harry Potter series is so well thought out, so intricate, so tightly woven that it makes me curse the heavens that I wasn’t blessed with the idea (and the talent) to write the Harry Potter series (which means I would’ve been 12-years-old when Sorcerer’s Stone was released had I written it. Whatever, I’d be famous). To think that she is often mentioned in the same breath as Stephenie Meyer and Suzanne Collins is laughable (don’t get me wrong, I also have a writer’s boner for The Hunger Games, but that’s for an entirely different reason). Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight is one of the most poorly written book series I’ve ever had the displeasure of trying to read.

But I won’t be negative. Anymore. Starting … now!

Let’s get back to the world-building. She built that series with such care that each chapter in each book fits into each other, and in the end, it all comes together making sense as a whole piece. I can only dream of constructing such a world, a set of characters, a piece of writing. One of my favorite pieces by her is from The Tales of Beedle the Bard called “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” originally featured in the last book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. JK Rowling was able to construct her own fairytale in the vein of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson, which is both entertaining and teaches its readers morals like humility and greed. It is prose poetry in the truest, most sincere form; simply breath-taking.

JK Rowling is an unending source of inspiration for me, not only within her actual writing, but as a writer in general. When Harry Potter was rejected by agents and editors (I bet you’re kicking yourselves now, eh?), she never gave up. She pressed on and became one of the best selling authors of all time. She’s a class act, a remarkable woman, and one helluva talented writer.

Since March is Women’s History Month, I wanted to take a moment to honor JK Rowling because, for this man, JK Rowling is a woman to aspire to.

Popularity: 15%

Dear Every Writing Professor I’ve Ever Had,

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for all of those times that I wasn’t the model student. Remember when you assigned five page essays and a convenient deathly illness would strike me the day that they were due and you would get an e-mail from me apologizing profusely about how I wish with all of my heart and soul that I could’ve been well enough to come to class because I loved the class and you and this five page paper that I conveniently forgot to attach?

Yeah, I apologize for essentially calling you a fool with the above excuses for not being in class and turning in my paper on time. Now that I’m on the other side of the teacher’s desk, I know how you felt. Had I actually been sick (and prepared), I would’ve e-mailed you my paper well before the paper was actually due, not a day or two later.

I now know how excuses feel.

I remember when you all would joke about how you knew all of our “tricks” for getting out of class and for handing in assignments late. But I scoffed at this. I thought, “How could you know that I was out drinking all weekend and I simply didn’t want to write your essay?” I was 100% certain that my excuse that I was throwing up all day with a 105 fever and green spots all over my body was legitimate enough for you to buy into. My favorite excuse was, “I really loved this assignment and the idea behind it, but I just couldn’t figure what to say because I wanted to just get it right. Can I get an extension until tomorrow?” I thought I could undermine your intelligence and appeal to you with a flattering comment about how intelligent your essay assignment was. But I never thought, “How will one extra day suddenly spark the necessary inspiration needed to complete this assignment correctly?”

I also never thought about your feelings. And for that, I am sorry.

I never realized that my presence in your class was, in fact, appreciated…even if I didn’t say anything in participation that particular day. I know now that, if one of my students is absent, I feel like I’m not doing something right, or that I won’t have enough of a discussion to adequately teach. I never knew this before.

I also know how you felt when, had I been absent because I simply didn’t feel like doing an essay, I missed receiving new homework and essay assignments and you’d wait for me to contact you because that’s my job as a student. I cursed you for not contacting me and telling me what I missed…now I know that it wasn’t your job. I probably shouldn’t have called you all those nasty names. I know you didn’t know about that, but now you do, so now I’m even sorrier.

Thank you for dealing with my shit all of those years. Seriously.

You rock so hard,

Steven

Cartoon courtesy of Saturday Cartoons by Mark Stivers

Popularity: 16%

Shaw. Professor Shaw.

That’s my new title. Okay, well technically my title is Assistant Professor Shaw, but Professor sounds so much cooler. I can finally thank The New School for that master’s degree — that $40k piece of paper that hangs on my freshly painted bedroom walls. It feels good.

I’ve known for many years now that I wanted to teach. That’s half of the reason I decided to go to The New School (the other half was to improve my writing so that I could get an agent and get published. Ahem … Earth to agents. This is for you. Ahem!), so it’s nice to know that I am finally teaching.

Where: The College of New Rochelle.

What: Writing 102: Critical Research Essay

When: Why am I telling you this? So you show up and slaughter me on my way to class?

It’s a required freshman writing course geared towards showing students how to write a well-developed research paper.

Typically, the thought of writing is one that makes students want to scream. So you could imagine what writing a research paper must do to them. That’s why I’ve decided to take a mass media/pop culture spin on the proceedings.

What do Facebook, Britney Spears, Suzanne Collins, South Park, Saved by the Bell, Modern Family, People Magazine, The New York Times, Drake, Lady Gaga and Beyonce, Don Henley, Chuck Klosterman, Dove, United Colours of Benetton, and many, many more pop culture references have in common?

They’re all a part of my class.

Example: On the second day of class, we listened to a few songs about fame and media influence, like Drake’s “Headlines” and Lady Gaga’s “The Fame.” My first essay assignment had my students compare Britney Spears’s “Piece of Me” to Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” and discuss what each says about the media’s influence. I’m also having them read Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games because of what it says about our reality TV-obsessed culture. (Does anyone think Hunger Games is basically one giant commentary on Britney’s head-shaving, paparazzi-umbrella-attacking breakdown?)

Not your typical run-of-the-mill writing course, eh?

Exactly.

It’s weird being on the other side of the red pen. But it’s natural. I come alive during class time, and I live to create assignments. My goal is to foster a fun learning environment that provokes discussions that ignites my students’ creativity, hopefully gives them ideas for their writing, and helps them dive deeper into their own thoughts. Last week, I had them read a study on online gender-swapping. Then I had them use Facebook to study a member of the opposite sex and write a few paragraphs on gender construction.

I’m employing everything I’ve learned in my career as a writing student (and that of a writing tutor) to kick ass as Professor Shaw.

We’re entering the fourth week of classes, and so far I have a wonderful group of students who really seem to respond to the material. We have our first writing workshop on Monday.

Stay tuned for more stories and lessons from The Other Side of the Red Pen as they develop!

Photo Credit: The Daily News and New York Post

Popularity: 20%

During my first semester at The New School, I found out that there would be no young adult or children’s literature class offered in the spring semester. Of my first year. My reaction: “Uhh … what?!” Being that I was going for my masters in Writing for Children, I kinda, sorta, maybe figured that the program would offer us, oh, I don’t know, enough courses for us to be properly educated in the world of children’s lit.

Nope. I was thrust into a shark tank of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction writers. The snobbiest of writers exist within those three disciplines. So how was I going to pick which literature course to take? They all sounded like snoozefests. Until I saw the “Writing in Vernacular” (I think that’s what the course was called) description. The booklist was intriguing and exciting. I figured, “Hey, if I have to take a course outside of my discipline, I guess this will have to do.”

I’m glad I did.

One of the main lessons we were taught was the notion of “authenticity.” What makes you believe the words on the page? If you were reading a book like Push by Sapphire and you found out at the end that Sapphire was a sixty-year-old white man who grew up in Beverly Hills, would that make you question the voice and, ultimately, the raw believability of the entire novel?

We see a lot of white characters written by black writers, but somehow we never question when that happens. One immediate example that comes to mind is fellow New School alum Nick Burd’s The Vast Fields of Ordinary. Protagonist Dade Hamilton is white. Author Nick Burd is not. Yet, there is not one moment in that book where I question the authenticity of Burd’s writing. Not one. Why is this? I often seek the answer to this, but I can’t seem to figure it out. Is it because “white culture” is oversaturated in our popular culture, from musicians on the radio to certain “spotlight” actors and Hollywood plotlines, to billboards and commercials and more? Had the roles been switched and a white author was writing about the experience of a black character, well, I don’t know; I’d be hesitant to believe it.

Maybe it’s because, as showed to us in that class on vernacular, there really aren’t books out there where the main character is black and the author is white. Not any good books, anyway.

I could ponder this and question the motives of publishing houses everywhere, but I still don’t have an agent or an editor, and I’d like to not alienate them quite yet. But I want to know: why do so many black writers write white? Is it because publishers think that only books with white protagonists sell? Is there less of a market for the Coe Booths of the world? I don’t know. I can only explain my attitude towards writing about an ethnicity that’s not my own.

My thoughts: I can’t possibly describe something that I haven’t lived. Sure, I’ve never lived in a fairy tale-esque world, nor have I lived in space, but neither has anyone else, so there’s nothing to compare my words to that exists in the tangible real world. I would feel like I’m assuming, based on what I know from my friends, what being a part of a black/Hispanic/Arabic/Asian/etc. family is like. And that’s not good enough for me.

The professor of my class, Bob Antoni, generally writes his books from the perspectives of black women from Trinidad. He’s white. But what made the difference for me, what made me cross the line from questioning his authenticity to believing him as someone who could genuinely depict an accurate portrayal of the life of a Trinny woman, was hearing his life story. He grew up in Trinidad. He knows that culture like—wait for the cliché—the back of his hand. When he read his writing, he spoke in a Trinidadian accent. When I closed my eyes, I never would have thought the man sitting feet away from me was white.

So what are “black” and “white”? I’ve always said that neither matters. Like the incomparable MJ once said, “If you’re thinkin’ about my baby/It don’t matter if you’re black or white.” And skin color has never meant anything more to me then just that: skin. But when I think about writing from the point of view of a black character, it’s not that simple. I think: “I can’t possibly write an accurate portrayal.” Would a book with a black protagonist be a beacon of truth to the black community? I’m going to say no. Maybe I’m just operating with preconceived notions of what “authentic” means. I don’t know.

Ultimately, I do believe it’s an authenticity issue. For me, at least, it is. But then again, I’m only generalizing white authors. What about all of the black authors? Where are all the books with black protagonists? That’s what I’d love to see. I think that for writers to accurately write about black characters there needs to first be an increase in black writers writing about black characters.

What do you all think?

 

Photo Credit: BaazarVoice.com

Popularity: 17%

I can’t understand why I’m not yet famous. It’s a phenomenon that I can’t quite wrap my head around. I mean, I should be famous.

I’m relatively attractive (I mean, I’m not heinous looking, and, with a little photoshopping, I could look damn good), my personality is Grade A, I’m hysterical (as if this delicious post isn’t proof enough), and I write well. I think.

I should be famous. Well, maybe not famous. But I should at least be published.

Plus, my version of “fame” is different probably different from yours. For me, fame and fortune is seeing my book up on shelves and getting a royalty check of $20 every six months. Seeing my name on a dusty shelf in Barnes & Noble is my equivalent to shaving my head and attacking some poor car full of paparazzi with an umbrella. (Yes, that was a shameless Britney Spears reference. You want a piece of me?)

Alas, I am not famous. Nor am I Britney Spears. Life isn’t fair.

Then again, I haven’t done anything to further my status. I haven’t finished my Star Search audition tape, nor have I quite figured out how to resurrect Star Search. In other words — let’s leave this Britney Spears metaphor. It’s becoming quite toxic. Oops…I did it again –I haven’t really written anything in a couple of months. Okay, now I’m being modest, and by modest, I mean I’m lying. I haven’t written anything substantial since September.

Insert scream track here.

That isn’t to say I don’t have ideas. Because I have so many ideas. I’m literally dying because ideas are oozing out of every orifice of my body. Literally. Yesterday, a string of words just fell out of my nostrils. It was weird.

Ideas aren’t my issue. My issue is time. Balancing life is tough. Cue the tiny violins. Since graduating from The New School, I’ve had to balance a bunch of new jobs, a wonky schedule that’s ever-changing, and trying to process the endless rejection emails from potential literary agents. That’s been, like, the funnest part EVER.

Believe me, I’ve tried not to let the rejection seep into my soul and turn my heart a wretched, oily black. But it’s been hard. Still, I know I need to get back on my metaphorical, clichéd horse and keep trying. (I’m sure Dhonielle is somewhere reading this yelling at me to shut up and write!)

These are all reasons why I’m not yet famous. I’m not going to say that I’ve given up, because I haven’t. Not by a long-shot. Here is what I’m going to do about my teeny failure to be the writer that I long to be.

1. I’m not going to be so hard on myself. Sure, I feel guilty that I haven’t written or tried harder to get an agent. I know what I need to do. Now it’s time to just do it. I’m not going to slap my wrists anymore…all of that slapping just made my skin irritated and solved nothing.

2. WRITE. I’m going to write. No more excuses. No, I’m not going to set ridiculous goals for myself, like I did for National Novel Writing Month. I just can’t write a whole novel in one month, so I can’t expect myself to do that. But I can do 25 pages a week.

3. Try to get an agent. I’m going to start submitting my manuscript and query letter to more agents. I haven’t done a round of this since September, so it’s time. I got discouraged, so no more of that.

4. WRITE. Write, write, write. (self explanatory)

These are my goals now.

I will be famous. Soon. One day. Eventually. At some point in the future.

Mark my words.

Popularity: 18%

Fanny turned on the flashlight. Now she could just barely see the steps. Why had she volunteered to do this? Hannah and Jenny’s laughter spilled into the tiny den behind her. Wimps. It was Jenny’s own house, and she couldn’t even come into the same room as the basement door. Jenny’s whole family was crazy. Imagine being too scared to even change a light bulb in your own basement. As if there could be anything but a few mice down here. Not that Fanny wanted to see mice. Ugh.

She started slowly down the steps. The flashlight flickered. Had it gotten dimmer? It didn’t matter anyway. All she had to do to prove they were all morons was go down, take one look around, and come back up. She quickened her pace, and soon she was almost at the bottom.

“Fanny?” Hannah’s voice came from above.

“I can’t! I’ll stay here!” said Jenny, in an exaggerated whisper.

Fanny rolled her eyes. “I’m so fine. There’s nothing down here!”

Crack. Her foot crunched through the bottom step. “Aaaah!” Fanny screamed out of surprise, grabbing for anything to hang on to. She landed in an incredibly awkward position, with her left leg twisted behind her. Three-quarters of her right leg was stuck inside the step. How was that possible? She was already at the bottom. “Hannah! One of the stairs broke. Get down here and help me!”

There was no response.

“Hannah?”

Fanny listened for her friends’ voices. “Jenny?”

Silence. No one came down the stairs. No one answered her shouts. She pulled her leg from the broken step. Miraculously, there wasn’t a bruise or a cut or a scratch. She picked up her flashlight and flashed it around the room. The light beam caught dark heaps of unrecognizable objects and rows and rows of old junk on shelves. Cobwebs danced along the walls, leaping from corner to corner. She pointed her light at the ceiling, searching for the fixture. She wanted to change the light bulb and get back upstairs as fast as possible.

She imagined the look on their faces when she triumphantly returned. She’d call Jenny a chicken just to see her pout, and she’d tease Hannah about being a wimp just to make her cheeks redden. Fanny stepped further into the cellar basement.

She wasn’t afraid.

The scurry of tiny feet echoed around her. Mice! Fanny scrambled backwards onto the broken staircase. Little red eyes peered at her in the darkness. They came closer and closer until they clustered all around her feet.

“Go away!” She wiggled her flashlight at them. “Shoo!”

The mice paid her no attention. Instead, they bypassed her and ventured into the hole her foot had left in the wooden staircase. She scooted further away, pulling her legs into her chest with the hope that they wouldn’t touch her. One by one, a train of little black mice scurried into the opening. After the last tail disappeared, she stuck her light into the hole. Small round bodies ambled down another staircase.

“Hannah? Jenny?” Fanny yelled. “There’s a …” Fanny’s words lodged in her throat. She didn’t quite know what she was looking at. How could another staircase be underneath Jenny’s cellar? A cool breeze made its way through the opening. Fanny ripped away more of the floorboards. The stubborn wood creaked as she yanked it. After removing two complete stairs, she could see down into the hole. A subtle glow akin to moonlight washed over the bottom of the mysterious stairs.

The mice reached the bottom. They all turned to look back up at her.

Come! they said in unison.

Their mouths didn’t move. Rather, the word rang as clear as a bell inside Fanny’s head. She’d never experienced anything like it before, and she shrieked and stumbled back at the shock of it.

Come, Fanny, the mice said again.

Fanny righted herself and stared through the opening, down at the creatures. As her gaze met those beady red eyes, she felt a calm wash over her. Gone was the fear of the basement, of the darkness, of the mice. All she could think to say, as she felt that cool air and strange light brush over her skin, was, “How do you know my name?”

We’ve been waiting for you, they said.

Though not exactly an answer to her question, that was all the explanation Fanny needed. She rested her dull, useless flashlight on one of the undamaged steps and slid through the hole in one swift movement. The gap in the stair was just the right size for her body, and in one second flat she was descending the hidden staircase.

From above, the length of the staircase had been deceiving. Now that Fanny was walking down it, it felt like it was going on much longer than it should have. Down and down she traveled, and yet there were still more stairs in front of her. It was especially frustrating because with each step she took, the more she yearned to be at the bottom, amongst the mice and whatever else awaited her down there.

She couldn’t see much, other than the mice and the steps and the light, because there were tall walls on either side of her, blocking her view of what she would find at the foot of the stairs. On a whim, Fanny reached out and ran her hand along the wall. In the instant that her fingertips connected with the unremarkable gray cement, she felt a jolt go through her, as if every miniscule cell in her body had been given a shock with defibrillator paddles. It reminded Fanny of the time Hannah and Jenny had dared her to drink five Red Bulls in five minutes—only way better. She felt energized, and strong, and like she could do anything. She pulled her hand away from the wall and picked up her pace.

That boost of magical energy was exactly what she’d needed. Finally, Fanny reached the bottom of the stairs. The first thing she noticed was that, from her bare arms to her sandaled toes, her skin was glowing. The second thing she noticed was that there were a lot more mice down here than she’d originally thought. They were everywhere—tens of thousands of them, lined up in neat military-like rows, staring up at her expectantly.

The third thing she noticed was the room around her.

The floor wasn’t really a floor; nailed into the cement were rafters, like she’d seen on the ceiling of her own basement, or even Jenny’s. In fact, on closer look, it looked an awful lot like Jenny’s basement, if she crooked her head like she was upside-down. Right above her on the ceiling she saw steps, two broken in, like the ones she had just crawled into. Fanny tried to shine a beam on the rest of her surroundings, but as soon as she did this, the tiny bulb flickered out, leaving her in complete darkness. Oh no! The only sign of light now came from the crack under the door of the stairs on the ceiling.

The only thing she could see around her were the eyes of the mice. Cobwebs decorated the rafters, making the mice look like they were perched on clouds.

Fanny knelt down and peered into the eyes of one of the mice. No pupils. Just white. She found herself reaching for it, but the mouse sneered, his eyes glowed red and he went in for a bite. Instinctively, she fell backward and let out an ear-piercing screech. The angry mouse snapped back into line, its eyes falling white again.

“I need to get out of here,” Fanny said out loud. Her heart thumped and she thought the mice could hear it. She went to turn around, to leave, but found no exit. The long staircase she had descended had disappeared. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

Suddenly, squeaking laughter from the thousands of mice echoed all around her. She looked down and saw that every last one of them was now pointing at the steps stemming upward from the ceiling.

“And how do you suppose I get up those stairs?” she asked. “Now, if this were a fairytale, or a portal into Wonderland, this would be the part where a little bottle would pop up and say ‘Drink Me’ and I’d drink it and suddenly have the ability to fly or something, right?” At this point, she figured she was dreaming. No, she definitely knew she was dreaming. She had to be, right? Maybe when I fell in Jenny’s basement I hit my head and was knocked unconscious, she thought.

Still, she looked around. No magic bottle. No magic beans to grow a beanstalk. Nothing. Well, except for the mice.

“Would you stop staring at me?!” she yelled, flinging her defunct flashlight into the flea-bitten crowd. Still, they didn’t break formation.

She threw her hands up in the air in frustration, only to notice her fingertips glowing. She remembered her skin glowing as she walked down the long cement staircase, but it quickly went away when she reached Jenny’s upside-down basement.

She turned her palms toward the ceiling, toward the staircase, and immediately felt lighter on her feet. Looking down, she noticed that she was, in fact, hovering over the ground. For a moment, she hesitated, but since she was certain she was dreaming, she figured she might as well go with it and reached for the wooden banister above her.

When her fingers grazed the wood, Fanny felt a pang in her stomach and everything around her flipped in one swift, uneven movement. She was flung toward the staircase, and when she looked up, the basement was right-side up again. She looked to see where the mice had gone, she found them still on the rafters, hanging upside down above her head like furry bats. Their white eyes stared down at her.

They watched her as she climbed the stairs back into Jenny’s house.

“Jenny?” Fanny called when she reached the top of the stairs. “Hannah?”

Goosebumps spread up and down her arms as an icy breeze froze her in place. She clambered up the basement staircase. She found herself shivering in Jenny’s once warm family room. Everything was just as she had left it. The sleeping bags in the middle of Jenny’s lush family room, the snacks scattered across the floor, even the movie Hocus Pocus was still paused at the exact same spot it was at when they dared her to go into that wretched basement.

Still, there was no sign of Jenny. Or Hannah.

A floorboard creaked above her. Oh, so they’re upstairs? They want me to be really scared now, huh? Fanny thought.

“It’s not going to work…!” Fanny yelled. Wait until they hear about what I’ve seen. The mice. The upside down staircase. The glowing hands and skin.

She huffed upstairs and checked every room, Jenny’s, her parents, the guest room, even her older brothers room that was always Off Limits. Nothing. No sign of anyone. Not even Jenny’s parents.

As she started downstairs, she heard what sounded like a body flopping on a tile floor. She raced down the stairs and into the kitchen. Nothing. They’re quick, Fanny thought, but not as quick as me. I’m the schools cross-country star, not Jenny, she’s way too fat to run. And Hannah, she’s not smart enough to think of all of this.

Fanny walked out the kitchen, thoroughly pissed off. “Hello? Umm, ok, not funny anymore guys. What started off like a page from Coraline became some cheesey opening scene from Scream 10. Over it,” she shouted.

As she reached the living room, she saw Hannah and Jenny standing with their backs toward her, watching the paused TV screen.

“There you are! Seriously? Where did you guys go? I have to say, you had me…” Fanny said, reaching for Hannah’s shoulder. Hannah didn’t respond. She tapped Jenny, but Jenny didn’t flinch; her body was hard as the cement wall she had felt earlier, and just as cold.

Fanny began to hear the pitter-patter of small feet scurrying around her. She looked behind her and saw the mice hopping on Jenny’s furniture. When they stopped, Fanny grabbed Jenny and whisked her around, hoping to get the attention of her friends.

That’s when she noticed Jenny’s face, her skin droopy and tarred, like it had been melting. Her lips were replaced by a zipper. Her eyes, stark white.

She reached for Hannah, who looked the same; the only difference was that Hannah had her fingers on the zipper that had been sloppily sewn onto her chapped, bleeding skin.

“Cut it out, girls,” she said, but it didn’t feel like a prank anymore. The lights flickered.

They both looked Fanny right in the eyes, and instead of speaking, let out little grunts, sounding like angry dogs. There was a sickening stench in the room, like fresh vomit and rotting flesh. Fanny couldn’t get her eyes off Jenny and Hannah. They looked so pale… so weird. She took a step back. Then she realized that the smell was actually coming from them. They reeked!

Their flesh was rotting. Little black shiny worms came crawling out of Jenny eyes. A fat gray maggot slid out of Hannah’s right nostril and began to glide across her face. Within seconds, a thousand red tubeworms were going up and down Jenny’s hands.

Fanny could feel beads of sweat collecting on her forehead. Then, she felt something run down her spine. It wasn’t just sweat. It felt like something with feet. Like a bug. She scratched her back, and felt something gooey and oozing.

When she looked at her finger, she found a dead fly where her forefinger should have been. She shook her palm, but the fly just wouldn’t fall. The lights flickered again. Fanny looked up to Jenny and Hannah had disappeared. In place of the television screen was a mirror.

And in place of her own reflection, Fanny could only see the fly. This couldn’t be real. She HAD to get out of the room.

She took another step back and bumped into something. Someone. She turned around to see Jenny’s mother, Mrs. Capelli. Only, she was much broader and larger than her usual petite self. And tinted blue?

“Stay for dinner, Fanny,” said Mrs. Capelli. Only, it didn’t sound like Mrs. Capelli. There was something hollow about that voice, like it was coming from the end of a long tube. That’s when Fanny noticed the gleaming blade of the giant knife in Mrs. Capelli’s left hand. Her white apron was stained with specks of brown. Blood. It had to be blood.

Mrs. Capelli began to walk across the room towards Fanny. “Did you meet our friends from the basement?” The lights flashed violently now. Mrs. Capelli got closer to Fanny. “They’re really quite lovely, aren’t they dear?”

Thud. Thud. Thud. The floor shook with each step.

Something gripped Fanny’s ankles. She found herself unable to move. She tried to lift her left leg, but it just wouldn’t budge. She looked down and freaked out.

Around each of her ankles was a wrist, one belonging to Jenny, and another one to Hannah. They were lying on the floor, on their sides, grunting and growling. Jenny began to gnaw at Fanny’s toe.

Fanny thrashed back and forth and screamed until she had no voice. Her head felt foggy and light. She heard her name.

“Fanny.”

Her heart threatened to stop.

“Fanny!”

Sweat soaked her cheeks.

“Fanny!!!”

Her skin itched. She was dying she was certain of it.

“Open your eyes!”

Fanny listened to the voice. Painfully, she opened her eyes. Both Hannah and Jenny stared at her. Jenny stifled a giggle, but Hannah’s face wore concern.

“You fell,” Hannah said.

“What?” Fanny croaked out.

“You tumbled down the stairs,” Jenny said with a laugh.

“Girls! What’s going on down there?” Mrs. Capelli stood at the top of the basement stairs.

“Fanny fell!” Jenny called back.

“Where are the mice? The staircase?” Fanny’s eyes darted around. “You were….you both were…”

“What?” they said in unison.

Fanny gazed around. Her head throbbed with pain. A knot formed on the back of her head. Each time she moved pain shot through her entire body. She was sprawled at the bottom of the step. “Nevermind.”

The girls helped Fanny to her feet. They started back up the stairs. Mrs. Capelli brought an ice-pack.

“Mom, I think Fanny broke one of the wooden stairs when she fell,” Jenny said.

Fanny gawked behind her. In the slit beneath the basement door, she swore she saw the red glow of tiny eyes in the darkness.

This story was written by Teen Writers Bloc members Mary Thompson, Dhonielle Clayton, Jess Verdi, Riddhi Parekh, and Steven Shaw, in a round. One person started the story and then passed it to another person to add, then that person picked up where the first person left off and added text, then sent it on. The story took on many dimensions. We hope you enjoyed it. 

Photo Credit: Clitheroe Paranormal Investigators

Popularity: 24%

Halloween is my favorite day of the year. I get to hide behind a disguise, ask people for free candy (and get it — that’s the best part), and if I wanted to cause some mischief with some shaving cream and toilet paper, Halloween is the only time of year I could potentially get away with it. Besides, who doesn’t like playing dress-up?

Okay, maybe that’s not everybody’s MO. But dressing up like somebody else has its perks. It’s a chance to live vicariously, to explore a new side of yourself, or in my case, to let one of my many personalities out for some fresh air.

Unfortunately, when the leaves start changing and store displays get spookier, I’m reminded that I have no money to explore my Halloween fantasies. I dream of elaborate costumes; I foam at the mouth when I see expensive disguises. My mind goes wild and I’m endlessly thinking about the possibilities. Sure, some of the best costumes I’ve seen (mostly in my college years) have been a patchwork of Salvation Army finds and a little make-up from the nearest co-ed  — like my old roommate who, in our senior year at Ithaca College, draped herself with a red bed sheet and plopped an old lamp shade on her head, attending parties as a “One Night Stand”   — but once you’re in the real world, Halloween costumes are decidedly more legit.

This year, for example, my best friend wants to be a sexified Roadrunner from Looney Tunes, and of course she wants me to be her Wile E. Coyote. I’ve been eBaying like crazy trying to find a suitable coyote suit, but nothing. Maybe if I rob a Six Flags, I’ll really be the hit of the party.

In any event, I’ve always been the guy with the best costumes. When I was six, I won Best Costume in elementary school for my version of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. It was killer. Real strands of hay were super-glued all over my body, and the make-up was flawless. I probably should have won Costume of the Decade, but they didn’t have such an award. Whatever, I’m not bitter.

I’ve been Dino from The Flintstones, Daffy Duck, The Riddler (from the God-awful Batman Forever movie, which is a guilty pleasure of mine: “Riddle me this, riddle me that, who’s afraid of the big. Black. BAT!”). I even channeled Will Ferrell as a Spartan Cheerleader from SNL during one drunken sophomoric Halloween, and in my senior year of high school I went all out as Captain Jack Sparrow, which was right after the movie came out, so nobody had thought of such a costume idea yet. Yeah, I’m a trendsetter.

This year, my boyfriend and I discussed going as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” complete with Army rags, badges and everything. Pretty rad, eh? But, I dropped the ball on that and never followed through. That’s the inherent problem with Halloween costumes post-undergraduate life. They can get expensive, and my practical sensibilities (and my wallet) don’t exactly allow me much wiggle room when it comes to extra spending for silly-yet-totally-awesome things like costumes.

So when I think about Halloween in regards to Teen Writer’s Bloc, I think of all the literary characters I could dress up as. No doubt I’ve sung the praises of the late Perry Moore and his comic book-inspired novel Hero. Thom Creed, the main character, would be a great choice. Or one of the many superheroes from that particularly awesome book.

But then I think: hardly anybody would recognize me. And as much as I love the book, part of what I love about Halloween is the back-and-forth guessing games associated with the various costumes encountered. And I fear that when I reveal my superhero identity, nobody will know, and thus I’d be deflated. See, I’m one of those all-about-the-center-of-attention Halloweenies. I need people to get it.

So that’s why my idea of going as Holden Caulfield is brilliant. Nobody will get it at first, but when they do, it’ll be epic.

Or a total failure.

All I know is that it’s cheap enough to manage, yet under the radar so that I won’t run into somebody else wearing the same costume. And it’ll give me some indie cred. Whatever that means.

Where’s my goddamn candy?

Popularity: 13%

I got my first rejection letter for my query on How I Set Myself On Fire.

I’m not defeated, though. I’m not even fazed. Sure, I had hopes when I submitted my query letter and the agent immediately responded saying that he’d be interested to read what I wrote. Who wouldn’t be psyched to receive interest on your first query letter?

I won’t lie. I had visions of an e-mail saying “I want to represent you right now. Be in my office in five minutes so I can shower you with gumdrops and rainbows and sunshine and lots of good will and money money money.” I had Disney-esque fantasies of this agent slipping a glass slipper of excellence on my foot and saying, “We’re a perfect fit!” (Okay, maybe I just got a little weird with that example but whatever.)

But I knew it couldn’t be that storybook-like.

I was right.

Five days after submission, a big, fat rejection e-mail popped up in my inbox. Still, the rejection was nicely put:

“Dear Steven,

Thanks much for sending How I Set Myself On Fire, which I read with great interest. Unfortunately, I’m going to be passing at this time.

Fiction, as I’m sure you know, is just about the toughest thing to sell in the current marketplace. I need to really fall in love with something before I can even think of taking it on. Though there is much to appreciate here, I’m afraid that I ultimately didn’t believe I would be its best advocate.

Thank you again, sincerely, for the chance to take a look.”

Sounds promising, no? At least he was interested enough to request the full manuscript. I totally understand that agents and publishers have to, without a doubt, love what they’re representing/publishing (respectively). Otherwise, how could they possibly advocate for a book?

All writers go through their fair share of rejection. Hell, I experienced countless rejections three years ago when I stupidly thought I was ready to publish this book I wrote called Breathing in Secret. (Insert laughter here.) I still have that stack of rejection letters sitting in my desk drawer. Every great writer has been rejected. It’s the way of the world.

And what would I do if I gave up now?

Where would J.K. Rowling be if she had stopped submitting Harry Potter after she was rejected repeatedly? We’d never know the incredible world she created, a world that has since taken on a life of its own.

Where would all the great novels be if their respective writers had given up? We’d have nothing to read.

So I’m not giving up. If anything, my resolve is stronger. There’s a long road left in front of me, but I won’t be stopping until How I Set Myself On Fire is on store shelves.

You heard it here first.

Photo Credit: Funny Times

Popularity: 19%

Life after The New School is odd.

I’ve been severely MIA from TeenWritersBloc.com. I sincerely apologize and promise to be a better writer. Do you forgive? Good. Because I have lots of news!

The past couple of months have been a little busy for me. In August, I completed my third novel, How I Set Myself On Fire, after a year and a half of working on it extensively and exclusively. It’s gone through three complete rewrites to become what it is now. And what it is now is something that I’m incredibly happy with. More than happy: ecstatic.

Yes, I be a wee bit dramatic. But I’m proud of my work.

After writing two novels prior to this one, I can say without a doubt that this is the beginning of my career as a writer. This is what I’d want people to associate with me. This is my debut. Now if I could get some damn representation!

This summer has also been a different one for me. I graduated from The New School and had to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be starting classes in the fall. It’s a weird feeling, being in school for 24 years and just like that, it’s over.

I still feel like I should be taking some sort of class. Maybe basket-weaving.

At the end of the summer I found out I got a job at Westchester Community College as a Senior Writing Tutor in their Writing Tutorial, which is pretty rad. Although now I work six days a week and have no time to write. I’m still getting used to working so much and adjusting to this schedule.

But the start of September brought great promise. The promise of a literary agent. Well, not so much the promise as the idea. Which, as any great writer would know, is the way the best things start. I started querying just last week.

Do ya’ll know what goes into writing a query letter? In blatant terms: it sucks. Condensing your life’s great work into a two paragraph succinct summation is daunting. In fact, it’s down right frightening. It took me two weeks to get something that I liked enough to send out. (Special thanks to fellow TWB writer Corey Haydu, who gave me great advice!)

Now I’m working on the querying process.

So that’s what I’ve been up to, in addition to turning 25 years old, balancing a wonderful relationship with the most amazing person, and trying to fight off pesky colds. Still, I promise to be better, if you’ll have me!

It’s good to be back.

Popularity: 19%