The Post-Modern Narrative (Elec's Excerpt #3, draft 3)

Since WWI, the traditional third-person omniscient narrative voice has fallen from popular use. Authors reason, "Life doesn't have an all-powerful voice revealing new and interesting facts to us - why should literature?"

Thus was born the occasionally confusing but indubitably realistic concept of narrative unreliability.

Just as people can lie, mislead, and get their facts wrong, so, too, can first-person narrators. Emily Bronte was massively ahead of her time with the idea when she filtered Heathcliff's story through Nelly. Faulkner pushed it to its limits when he recounted Addie's death in As I Lay Dying. Modern literature teaches its readers to distrust the ostensible story line.

Cut to the Post-modern era. Authors know their first-person narrators are inherently unreliable and, more importantly, readers know to question the stories such narrators convey. However, rarely do authors provide multiple perspectives for readers to compare with each other and thus deduce the true tale.

How, then, are readers to look beyond the filters of their narrators to the truth?

To start? Readers must remember that, as in life, the more frequently a speaker insists upon something as true, the more that something should be questioned.

Identification (Elec's Excerpt #2, draft 3)

People excel at labeling. And no, I don't mean boxes, although those, too, occasionally get tagged and classified.

More than anything else, people excel at labeling people.

Innocent. Liar. Drama Queen. Man-whore. Popular. Rich. Charming. Dangerous. Smart. Geek. Holy Roller. Bitch. Witch. Asshole. Dick.

The best thing about this labeling mania people have is that it's self-inflicted and self-enforced. Labeling is as integral to giving ourselves a place as it is to putting others in theirs.

Actually, those two functions are the same thing. Holistically, we call it "identity."

Loves Her... (Elec's Excerpt #1, draft 4)

She's the light at the end of her tunnel, head-lamp of an oncoming missile. She's headed straight for destruction, on down the tracks to pain. She crashes, burns, tries again, plucks the petals from a daisy. But every bloom claims "loves her not," and she's so silly - she believes them.

The ring of truth sprouted faeries, and that kicked her to the dust. The sensations are back again - they never really left. Her eyes regard the midnight sky, envious of stars. For once in an "upon a time," she held herself high, and there she was, if not a goddess, at least a human.

And now she wastes away, alive but dead upon the ground. Half-asleep and never noticing, she waits for the ending chime, but it never comes, it never sounds. (After all, if there is no start, there can be no finish.)

She knows those stars were once her friends, and she knows she might join them once again, but does she try? No, never once does she lift a finger except to grasp another stem. Left up to luck, her gamble's gone, and now she knows the answer. She crashes, burns, cries again, plucks the petals from a different daisy. And every bloom knows "loves her not," but that's the question that she gave them.

What Memories are Made of

It was relatively dark in the ice-skating rink, and the multi-colored lights did little to alleviate it. The ice sent a certain breathless chill through me, cool and crisp and exhilarating.

The pants I was wearing felt strange after months of skirts and tights, and I felt slightly self-conscious, even though I knew I looked great - I'd been getting glances all night.

There's a blond in a blue shirt that's been particularly appreciative, and I'm the first to admit the feeling was moh-tual.

Gia was standing next to her ex near the plexiglass barrier, looking small in contrast to his hulking darkness, talking to Mr. Blue Shirt.

This was my opportunity for an intro.

I glided to a stop, and his gaze made a direct transition to me.

He looked even better up close.

~*~

I didn't think he was too terribly interesting at first - just another sophomoric sophomore male.

That is always a mistake. People are invariably more interesting than they initially appear to be.

I was struggling to hook the chairs together, my blue dress gaping slightly at the front and my tights beginning to slide from gravity's persistent tug. It was late and my feet hurt, and these chairs were not cooperating with me!

"Here," he said, pulling back the cushion on the adjacent chair, looming into my line of vision. "Let me help you."

~*~

It had been your standard English class - sleepy, but half-hysterical. I did not feel anything remarkable - not even relief- at the ten o'clock bell.

Tamora, however, was practically bouncing.

"How was your weekend?" I asked as we bled into the hallway.

"Crazy!" she exclaimed. "Nicholas asked me to the prom."

"Wait... the North Ford prom?"

"Yeah, " she replied, side-stepping an anonymous student. "And I met this awesome guy-"

A shoulder met mine, and I glanced over in surprise. Collin. I could only see his profile, his strong nose and curly blond hair, but it was the first time I'd ever seen him in school.

"Good morning, ladies," he drawled.

"Well, I can't very well talk about you if you're right there," Tamora huffed, faking exasperation.

His shoulder stayed solidly connected to mine.

~*~

There are so many more I could describe, distill down to their most powerful emotion. However, they all have to do with how I feel with people. I love people, like breathing and sass and sarcasm, the knowledge that a smile is a more precious gift than biblical frankincense and myrrh combined, and all the more so for its frequency. Power, confidence, laughter, and orange energy - these are what memories are made of.

Detox Just to Retox

The scent has all but faded from your t-shirt along with any sense that this thing (yeah, this you and me thing) might work out. It's over already - we just don't know when we'll part ways.

I feel like I've been here before.

But I've bought the prom tickets and tomorrow I'll submit the form. (It'd be a shame to waste my parents' money). We're locked in until May.

I'm still wearing your t-shirt, burying my nose beneath the collar to catch the last lingering traces of what you and I could have been. I'm not sure if the hardest part is letting go, or holding on until one can get a better grip.

On the Writing Process

Every once in a while, my head gets buzzy.

That's almost certainly not the best way to describe it, but it's a starting point. Everything has to start somewhere.

My head gets buzzy and I begin to think in poetry. Snatches of poetry really: beautiful lines that seem as though they should fit together, but really have little to nothing to do with each other.

Which, of course, drives me bat-shit. It's like having schizophrenia that manifests itself in vines.

That's actually a pretty good description.

Because, to make sense of this poetic series of arabesques, I attach them to characters. The poetry becomes a voice, and thus gains a context.

Much easier to deal with than random lines that flow into each other without connection or coherence.