Entry 7: A Fluke

 Over the past few weeks I have been as busy as a beaver, no that's not busy enough, make that as busy as a twenty something year old, third year teacher still working late at school in order to create the best lessons ever while simultaneously trying to keep laundry baskets and kitchen sinks empty, bathroom counters and kitchen floors sparkling, dinner tables full with healthy, delicious, home made goodness and doggies properly exercised, all while taking a grad class that (rightly so) requires lots of writing and thinking... and oh yeah... also trying to maintain a healthy relationship with a husband, parents, in-laws and friends. Now I know this is not the place to vent, but perhaps it will help explain why it's been some time since I've blogged. Like I've mentioned in my last post, I LOVE my blogging time, but I've been so tired over the past couple weeks, I didn't want to blog because it felt like work and not only did I not have the desire to do more work, I felt like I was going to have a melt down if I did. I was exhausted, and I was too tired to sit down and think... and then write... and then think... and then re-write.

Now it wasn't that I was simply ignoring this class. I had spent many hours researching and working on my  expert genre presentation. And I've spent even more time doing research and planning for my genre piece project. But during the past week, I had started on a downward spiral. I was starting to become frustrated because I couldn't nail down exactly what I was going to create for my first piece with the information that I had collected, and because of this, I also didn't know if I had collected enough information... so then I kept trying to find more. I started to dread the assignment. Today, as I tap out my blog, I realize now what my problem was.

Deep down I still have that unfortunate tendency to think of writing assignments purely as a chore, with one way of doing it - the five (or 25) paragraph research paper. Even though you told me not to Dr. Jones, I had somewhat subconsciously constrained and restrained my thinking by designating my first piece to be a somewhat traditional research paper. Oh yes, it was going to take the shape of something different and digital (a Prezi) but it was still going to have the same formula. And this was just not exciting... it was again more work. So then... I started putting off my genre piece too.

Crap! Now I was TWO writing assignments in the hole. But then something happened.... a fluke actually.

This past Saturday afternoon I sat down for some popcorn time (the time devoted to me... Alyse... where I sit and read and enjoy a good book while munching on hot, buttery homemade popcorn) and picked up my current read, Christopher Moore's Fluke. Christopher Moore is my new favorite author. While his fictional tales are somewhat crude, they are often entertaining and have literally made me laugh so hard that I was actually crying. As I was reading, I became acutely aware of his use of descriptive writing.

I rewrote one particular section that I found to be an excellent example of the descriptive genre (Tompkins, 2009). I color coded the words to emphasize which technique of descriptive writing Moore used.

Technique One: Specific Information
Technique Two: Word Choice
Technique Three: Sensory Images
Technique Four: Figurative Language

Excerpt from Fluke: "Leather bar girls worked the charter booths at the harbor, smoking Basic 100's and talking in voices that sounded like 151 rum poured into hot grease - a jigger of friendly to the liter of harsh. They were thirty-five or sixty-five, the color of mahogany, skinny and strong from living on boats, liquor, fish and disappointment. They'd come here from a dozen coastal towns, some sailing from the mainland in small craft but forgetting to save enough courage for the trip home. Marooned. Man to man, boat to boat, year to year - salt and sun and drinking had left them dry enough to cough dust. If they lasted a hundred years - and some would - then one moonless night a great hooded wraith would swoop into the harbor and take them off to their own craggy island- uncharted and unseen more than once by any living man- and there they would keep the enchantment of the sea alive; lure lost sailors to the shore, suck out all of their fluids, and leave their dessicated husks crumbling on the rocks for the crabs and black gulls. Thus were the sea hags born... but that's another story. Today they were just razzing Clay for leading two girls down the dock."(Moore, 2004, p. 61)

And one additional quote to show Moore's use of technique five-dialog:
"Rum." said Kona."Too much hostility in dat buzz. Rum come from da cane, and cane come from slavin' the people, and dat oppression all distilled in de bottle and come out a man mean as cat sh*t on a day." (Moore, 2004, p. 99) The character Kona is not originally from the islands but is rather a twenty-something native of New Jersey who mimics "rastafarian".

I couldn't help being inspired as I read Moore's book. How fun must it be to create such vivid images and colorful and creative characters - it made me want to write my own zany narrative. Alas, I couldn't handle one more thing on my plate... so writing a novel was not in my immediate future. Coincidentally, I just showed a video in my Earth Science class called "Born of Fire". This video was an educational video focusing on plate tectonics however it was narrated using descriptive techniques. My kids were enthralled with it. I asked them at the end why they liked it so much, their comments: "She said weird things. It was said in an interesting way. Like when she said 'the earth passed gas... really bad gas'!".

Where is this all going? WELL! I killed two birds with one stone. I figured out my first genre piece, AND I caught up on my blogging (almost). In writing this blog, I was able to nail down what it was that I wanted to create with the fracking information that I have. I'm going to write a descriptive expository piece on the formation of fossil fuels and the process of fracking. I'm using Christopher Moore as inspiration and "Born of Fire" as a mentor text (even though it's a video). I am now SUPER excited about my genre project... I've included my very first draft (just the first paragraph) below. 

The initial paragraph of my very first draft for my descriptive expository genre piece: 

Ten million years ago, on a warm sunny day in the tropics, a phytoplankton floated lazily on the ocean surface. The phytoplankton had chosen this particular section of the ocean because of it's vicinity to the sun. As a warm, gentle breeze strolled along the surface, it carried with it photons, subatomic whirling balls of energy, produced in the core of the sun. The photons slammed into the phytoplankton, bombarding the chlorophyll within it's cell. The phytoplankton didn't mind however, this assault was welcome for it spurned the process of photosynthesis, a reaction that not only provided the energy to build all of the organic matter within the plant like microorganism, but also to carry on all of it's living processes. 

Moore, C., 2004. Fluke. New York, NY: HarperCollins.  

Tompkins, G. E.  (2012).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (6^th ed.). Upper Saddle 

             

             River, NJ:  Merrill.