"Girls Who Write"

Someone recently posted a link on the CollegePlus Forums that sent me to a recent post about Girls Who Write. You can find it here

Well, now. I'm a girl. And technically, I write. Not just for my blog. My blog is like a fun ramble zone where I can just let everything out and make up words and say whatever I want. My blog is where I can talk. Which is why I center my text, because it is more conversational, and less informative looking.

And yes, I just totally made that up, I center my text because I want to, and it's my blog, so I can do what I want....within reason.

So this post, was written by a girl. A girl who, presumably, writes. Who knows what she writes, I only read the one post. But it caught my fancy. Because some of it is so very true. But, again, some of it is not. So I would like to quote some snippets of it here, and of course, it will be followed by opinion, because I can do what I like, remember?

Here we go:
"You’ve heard all the clichés about girls who write. Usually we’re stereotyped as glasses-wearing, book-lugging, ridiculously shy nerds with too many cats and next to zero social skills. While some (or all!) of this may be true, there is so much more to us."

Okay, I found this descriptive, but untrue. Just to be fair, when someone says, "That girl is a writer." I think about Jo from Little women, and her animated portrayal of Rodrigo.

"Girls who write see the world through different eyes.
We notice things you don’t. Our eyes caught a glimpse of the tiny scar on the end of your chin and we thought up fantastical stories about how it got there. We noticed the old man on the bench with his faded red baseball cap and leathery tan hands, and we imagined the woman he was waiting for. Every whistle, every hum, every giggle reached our ears, and we knew there was a tale behind it. We see the stories behind everything, and we long to tell them."

So, I like how this makes me feel like I have superpowers. But that feeling only lasts about 30 seconds because then I remind myself that it isn't completely true. While I do have a tendency to develop stories about people, I do not do it obsessively, as in always, or constantly. Mostly when I am in line at WalMart wasting 10 years of my life so I can buy some bananas.

"Girls who write are distracted by everyday details.
Everything reminds us of a book–a story–a character. We zone out in line at the grocery store. We forget to take notes during lectures. We doodle on the edges of programs, bookmarks, and shopping lists. If you try to have a conversation with us, we might blink suddenly at the mention of a funny name or a pretty picture or interesting quote. We’re imagining how we can use it. How we can take these everyday details and moments and shape them into our own stories to share with the world."

Told ya. Those WalMart lines get to the best of us. Now, not everything reminds me of something....generally speaking. So don't worry, I won't freak out if you don't fit into a book. But I will probably read a book and stop mid-sentence because you remind me of the character. Also, I love art, but I've never honed my doodling skills, so that is not true for me...bummer, I hear doodling is pretty great. I'm more like, let's go to the museum and copy the Degas. Again, I do not try to fit people into my own stories either. I have tried before, and always stop at the thought, "WHAT IF THEY READ IT, AND THEY KNOW IT'S THEM?!" That would be awkward.

"Girls who write will love you and use you.
We view life through a romanticized haze. Every new friend is a best friend. Every adversary is a crushing foe. Every crush is the start of a beautiful romance. It’s not that we’re trying to be dramatic or sentimental. It’s just that we love genuinely love people. Everyone is a character, and we understand that everyone around us has hopes, dreams, fears, and doubts. We want to fix everyone’s problems and develop everyone’s lives. We love deeply because we care deeply. We know that a book isn’t made up entirely of a main character, but that everyone else is just as important. And so we fret and worry about the people around us because we want to make a difference in their lives, too. We will prod and tease and encourage and love you, and then we will use you in our stories because you make us smile. And you just have to be okay with that."

I disagree with most of this paragraph. The pendulum she describes sounds intense and frightening. She kind of makes a mountain out of a molehill here in the first few sentences. However, I think people who write have the tendency to try to sympathize with everyone, and choose "sides" as infrequently as possible. I want everyone to be happy, and right, and loving all the time. But I also know that isn't life. In life, people are irritating, funny, weird, frustrating and fantastic all at once.  Also, I hate the last sentence, "You just have to be okay with that." I would be un-okay with that.

"Girls who write will laugh at anything.
We see the humor in silly little everyday moments because we know that tension needs humor and life needs laughter. We might squeal when you soak us with your spilled bottle of coke, but we think it’s funny that you ran out of napkins to help us clean up and are using your sweater to absorb the liquid on the ground. We might be irritated that you’re running half an hour late to pick us up, but we enjoyed watching the two boys hanging upside down on the playground, shouting at each other in Scottish accents and pretending to be pirates. We don’t get embarrassed easily, and we’re quick to laugh at our own mistakes because we know that failures are part of what makes us human."

All this is true. I laughed tonight like a crazie, just because someone told me that their lil sib called them a Dinglehopper. I mean, just the sound of the words together make me smile. Right. Smiling at my computer. My computer can't even smile back. So, the only thing that isn't true here, is the whole "we don't get embarrassed easily" thing. Untrue for me. Being embarrassed is like the worst thing you could do to me.

  
"Girls who write will change your world–slowly, sneakily, and beautifully.
We’ll wake you up and force you to sit on the porch with us as the sun rises. We’ll drag you through musty old book stores in search of Steinbeck novels and beat up volumes of poetry. We’ll always take too long to tell you about our day, because everything will seem like an adventure. But then we’ll ask about yours with genuine and curious interest. We might forget to give you a birthday card, but we will write you sweet notes on random Tuesdays and always describe you to our friends in the warmest way. We’ll take you on a journey and maybe, just maybe, you will love every heart-pounding, breathless, spontaneous, meticulous, odd moment of it."

I would never force people to watch the sun rise with me. That would ruin the environment. It's like on Peep and the Big Wide World, when they tried to hear the sun set, and Quack would not be quiet. I would go through an old bookstore, but I would look for Agatha Christie before a book of poetry. RANDOM TUESDAY NOTES?! Other people do that?  So cool. 

Yeah, well that's the end. So much for snippets, but I couldn't take it all apart, you just had to read it in context for it to make any sense at all.

In conclusion (how official those words sound)
Girls who write can be quirky and fun and weird. They can also be dorks and want to have fantastic adventures and do spontaneous things, just because they read somewhere that it was possible.

So remember-
If you read it in a book written before 1984, it is possible.

Yup. that was a little literary joke.