Character Interviews

I was nosing around one of my favorite blogs for creative writers, pymprompts.blogspot.com, when I stumbled upon an idea that I tweaked and thought I'd share with everyone. The idea is basically this: before you start a story, or if you're stuck on what to do next, pull away for a bit and examine your main character(s) in-depth. Interview them with these questions, and any others you can think of that might be pertinent, and you might find yourself knowing where to lead them next. If not, you'll at least get to know them better, which is always important for a writer if you want to write well. :) If any of my fellow-writers comes up with any more great questions, please let me know! I added about 20 to the list from PumpingYourMuse already, but I'm always up for more!

Relational:
How old are you?
Who do you look like? Your mother, father, or someone else?
Do you have any brothers or sisters?
Are you married or single?
Do you have someone you care about?
Did you or do you know your grandparents?
Is anyone in your family famous?
Are your parents still living?
Are you adopted?
Who is your best friend?

Personal:
What do you like to drink?
Where did you grow up?
Are you a morning person?
What are your hobbies or interests?
What nervous habits do you have?
Do you have any quirks, secret talents, etc?
What kind of music do you listen to?
What do you do for a living?
What is your education level?
What's your favorite food (or drink)?
Do you travel much?
What do you hope to accomplish in the future?
What burning question(s) do you want answered?
What (or who) haunts you?
Do you like to read?
Where are you going?
How can a person cheer you up when you’re sad?
What’s your biggest secret?
What is your biggest regret?
Do you have any allergies/health problems?

What is (or was) your favorite subject to study?

Which Describes You Best?
Nervous or calm?
Teacher or student?
Leader or follower?
Brave or fearful?
Religious, superstitious or neither?
Humble or proud?
Tall or short?
Long hair or short?
Honest, stretch the truth when necessary, or all out liar?
Introvert or extrovert?
Lover or fighter?
Reactive or proactive?
Creative or Paint-By-Numbers?
Popular, Liked, or Loner?
Spontaneous or a planner?
Dreamer, cynic, or realist?
Philanthropist or Scrooge?
Clueless or Quick?
Organized or chaotic?
Trusting or guarded?

Complicated or What-you-see-is-what-you-get?

The Twelve Days of Christmas--12 (and final)

Paul really outdid himself on this one: "10 of these and 2 of these will keep you warm and cozy while I'm away..." Ten fingers & two arms, as pictured below--and the hands are detachable and filled with rice so I can pop them in the microwave anytime and use them as a heating pad! (Although, I'll have to find some fleece gloves to cover them because the rice spills out of the knit ones.) :) And yes, he stuffed and sewed the whole thing up by himself, by hand. What a catch I have! :) Of course, I'd rather have the real thing there with me on holidays, but our time will come soon enough. This is our last Christmas as singles and we're determined if not to enjoy it, then at least to grin and bear it. :)

Merry Christmas to all! I hope this time fills you with gratitude, love, and celebration of togetherness. May you stay warm and healthy, and may Santa bring you everything you really want this year. :)

The Twelve Days of Christmas--9, 10, & 11

A daydreaming prince, a sleeping duke, a lyin' king...Lion King! (9 lives...)

Ten is made of a line and a ball. The written clue looked something like this: l O o. Well, if you put those together differently, it looks kinda like this: o---O, which kinda looks like a Skip-It, which is what day ten's present was.

Eleven little letters on a little heart carried by a teddy bear ornament: "BEST TEACHER".

:) Day 12 is going to wait until either tonight or tomorrow, right before Paul leaves for Chicago. Curious...

Writing Club--The First shall be Last :)

For this prompt, we took the last line of our favorite poem and turned it into the first line of our own original poem. Mine's from Archibald MacLeish's "Ars Poetica":

a poem should not mean, but be.
as dewdrops freezing on a flower petal,
or bumpy itch from the stinging nettle,
the laughter from a tiny child
as he stomps through strawberries grown wild,
a poem dances on the world’s tongue, free.

a poem is the cover of our waking sleep.
it tilts and rises, sways and falls
over model planes and porcelain dolls
and bumps against the nightlight thrice
whilst whistling through sugar and spice,
and up the pipes like a chimney sweep.

a poem is an Artist’s masterpiece
it frames itself in frivolity
and cultures inequality.
it’s painted fears, love, wonder,
our triumph blended with our ev’ry blunder.
it defies the meaning, seeks release.

a poem should not mean, but be…
to puts our insides out to see.

The Twelve Days of Christmas--8

8 Disney Princesses! Aside from being Disney, which gets an automatic A in my book, and aside from being figurines, which takes me back to my youth when Charissa & I would play with "Thumbelinas" and Polly Pockets for hours and days, this mostly makes sense to the Ya-Ya's, my old college roommates. One day my roommie got "Sleeping Beauty" on DVD and we all took the Disney Princess quiz to find out which princesses we were. Some of us took them multiple times. :) But the long and short of it is that each of us were tied to a different princess, which was pretty amazing, and so these Disney princesses became a part of us:

ME: Belle

Mel: Snow White

Erin: Ariel

Shirley: Jasmine

Jamie: Cinderella

Clair: Sleeping Beauty

I've been looking for some Disney princess memorabilia to take with me as gifts/souvenirs for our reunion in Summer 2010, and these are a perfect go-along to what I was thinking! Happy days! PLUS there are two princesses that came along in this package that I get to keep because they weren't on the Disney princess quiz. I'm pretty stoked! :)

The Twelve Days of Christmas--7

Today's gift was a children's picture book called "Sector 7" by David Weisner that I "read" for my children's lit class this semester. It's AMAZING. It's a wordless picture book that I can actually follow and enjoy! I'm giving my copy away for Christmas, so Paul got me my own copy! Yay! I HIGHLY recommend this book for anyone who loves art and imagination. Especially if you have toddlers and little people at home, it's fun to watch them "read" and tell you what's going on in the book.

The Twelve Days of Christmas--6

Today's gift had the clue from Paul, "This is something that I have, and what I would be if you left me..."

It was a 6-pack of orange Crush. :P

On another note, it's sort of sleety outside and very slick, which is just so much fun and of course makes me want to go out for my final this afternoon! Oh well. At least I have only 3 finals this week, one today, one tomorrow, and one Saturday, and I get to return a few books and hopefully get my paycheck & go shopping on Wednesday! Can't complain about that.

The Twelve Days of Christmas--4&5

Day 4 was a 4-in-1 math tool, which will come in QUITE handy for my final on Monday!

Day 5, I'm not sure yet how the "5" plays into it other than maybe that it's 5 oz...but it's a little Christmas-y tube of Oreos (my favorite!).

On another note, here are some pics from the PMO Christmas show! Being something of an amateur musician myself, I had SUCH a great time listening to the talent around campus. I should've known, but somehow I didn't realize that Purdue doesn't really have any music majors, so everyone in the show is doing all this while studying other things, like political science, nursing, engineering, and so on. Sweet!

I couldn't help but compare this show to BYU's...it's interesting to see how Christmas music is always, always, always, always so beautiful and invites the Spirit in--it's a testimony of Christ! But there is something special about an entire body of young Latter-day Saints celebrating all we know of Christ through music and dance that Purdue just can't quite capture. Oh well. It was still AMAZING and I still had a FABULOUS time!

The snowglobe-like curtain of the 75th annual PMO Christmas Show...

Paul, enjoying the pre-show stretching, with the crazy Santas all over the walls in the background.

Us! :)

Yes, this is the program. I'm a nerd!

As close-up as I could get without a flash of the Purdue Kids Choir performers...and a friend of ours from the ward, A.K., in the background! (The one in the blue right in the middle.)

Quickie

"Dead week" on campus is over...now it's just three finals, and I'm home free!




I haven't received day 4's gift yet, but the clue was "What four things did you need in your math class to build similar triangles?" (Which, the answer to that is a compass, protractor, metric ruler, and inch-ruler.)



We made these adorable melted snowflake ornaments in enrichment the other day, and I loved them so much I had to put up a pic and the basic directions for future reference...

1. First, you lay out some wax paper. Lay out a little bit of tiny, silver thread tied in a knot as your hanger at the top.

2. Get all your little pieces ready (the hat is made out of black rolled-up felt, the scarf is cut felt, the nose is half an orange toothpick, the stick arms are cinnamon sticks, and the buttons are small black beads...oh yeah, and iridescent glitter!).

3. For the melted snowman part, use a hot glue gun to outline (yes, in glue!) the shape that you want--it should be around the size of your palm, maybe a little smaller. Then fill in your outline with hot glue, making sure to get any of the holes.

4. Here's where you have to work fast--sprinkle glitter on the whole thing (unless you have a phobia of glitter, in which case you can skip that step), then press on the scarf first. Toothpick, arms, beads--you might want to use another toothpick to kinda push the small objects down in the glue a bit. Lastly, put on the hat (if your glue has already hardened at this point you can just glue on the hat last).

5. Let it cool for a while, around 1/2 hour, and then when you're ready to pull it off the wax paper put it in the freezer a few seconds to really get hardened. The wax paper will probably still stick to the glue blob, but that's okay. If you really don't want it there, you can carefully rinse it off with some water...but honestly, we all decided it was better just to leave it on, the whole thing is still semi-translucent and it's SO much fun to see the finished product!

Hmm...what else? Dad's surgery went well, all things considered. We're hoping to go visit him today or tomorrow. Oh! And Paul & I are going to the PMO Christmas Show! I'm stoked. I haven't been to one of those since I was little!

Okay, I have to go be semi-productive now so that I can enjoy my evening. Omaroma, over and out.

The Twelve Days of Christmas--3

The clue for today's gift read, "A _____ with three _____." And then below that was the "sheet music" for a snippet of the "I Dream of Jeannie" theme song.

This morning, I opened up the DVD of my favorite Disney movie, Aladdin!

And tonight I get to go to my mom's house and put up the Christmas tree...what a happy holiday week it's turning out to be!

The Twelve Days of Christmas--1&2

Paul's amazing. He's doing this 12 Days of Christmas thing, with each day's gift tied to the number...

Yesterday I got one card/certificate that proclaims me totally awesome.

Today I got two socks, the plush and fuzzy kind from Old Navy, in my favorite colors.

I can't wait to see what other fun things are in store!

On a completely separate note, today was my last day at Otterbein Elementary. It was a bittersweet morning, and I'd put up pictures but I signed a professionalism agreement that said I wouldn't put any pics of the students up online anywhere so I can't. But it was fun. I gave the class some stickers and books and magnetic letters, and my teachers some ornaments and a little memory book I made for them. Mrs. Davis gave me a little tabletop Purdue Christmas tree that she put together, which I LOVE and will keep forever and ever! I had a great time at Otterbein and I learned some awesome things, and I already miss my kids! But I am ready to move on with the holidays and then on to Klondike next semester for new experiences!

FHE S'mores!

Paul & I have started recently holding our own Family Home Evenings, which is totally different as a couple than it's ever been in any other setting, especially since our own families never really held FHE so we're a little unsure of the drill. It has been a BLAST figuring it out! There's this book, it's actually an old textbook from my strengthening marriage & families class at BYU, and we read a chapter and discuss it as our "lesson." These lessons last about an hour and a half, because we LOVE talking about gospel principles as they apply to the family. Then, for our activity, we do something fun and simple. On Monday, after reviewing the Plan of Salvation, we made hot cocoa and s'mores thanks to a Christmas gift from our friend Shean and watched "Elf". I LOVE that movie! It's a ton of fun, one of the happiest, feel-good-iest movies to date, I'm convinced! I also decided I'm going to take more pictures of these activities and such so that I can make an FHE scrapbook, to pool ideas from for future dates and FHE's and such. I'm stoked, and so very grateful for the inspiration of the prophets in instituting the Family Home Evening program weekly in our homes and churches across the globe.

The Giver

Paul & I have become huge fans of the Greater Lafayette Civic Youth Theatre, which puts on a handful of shows every year where the entire cast and most of the crew is 18 years of age or under. Last night, as an extension of our anniversary, we went to their rendition of one of my all-time favorite children's books, "The Giver." I had no idea that Paul had never read the book when we first got there, so it was unbelievably entertaining watching him react to all the new revelations about Jonas' utopian society. He couldn't stop talking about how, if Hollywood's making Spice Girl movies, they should make this book and other like it into movies, too! I had such a great time, and the young actors did a great job trying to capture the society they all lived in and the emotions of the Giver and the Receiver. Two thumbs way, way up!

Next on the list that we want to see is "The Importance of Being Earnest," in April, and "The Stinky Cheese Man & Other Fairly Stupid Tales" in June! Even better, I can feel good about promoting the arts for children and paying for their constructive hobbies and talents to soar. :)

Student Teaching Application Essay

I had to answer this question: Describe factors that have influenced you to become a teacher, and/or personal attributes which you feel will make you a successful teacher (250-300 words).

Can you say HARD?

But here's what I came up with and sent in last week, and I'm proud of it because I was as honest and direct as I knew how to be:

As the oldest of nine children, teaching has always been a natural and foundational element of my life. Everyone in this profession has had inspirational examples and mentors that have shaped their desire to teach, and I am no exception. Memory alone, however, merely determines our present condition, and must be coupled with passion and purpose if we wish to accomplish anything for our students in the future. I feel that it is this passion, this clarity of thought and vision of where I want to end up, that drives me and qualifies me for this work.

I have a passion for learning and for creation. School is a transient thing, but education is a lifelong pursuit that is deeply, intrinsically pleasurable to me. Because of this thirst for understanding, sharing my enthusiasm with others and teaching them skills that will enable them to become self-sufficient learners is my ultimate goal. I do love children, and feel that they are innately good, yes; but I have been around students enough to know that not all kids are "cute" all the time. I can get frustrated some days and still want to be a teacher, because of the importance I see in the process of learning, problem-solving, and overcoming our weaknesses.

Schools, as a whole, are failing children. Federally-mandated testing and the mediocrity of many teacher education programs are preparing children and teachers alike to be test-takers, not learners. Test taking matters, academics matter, but only to a point. Learning to approach challenges with hope, solve problems, work hard, and become active, responsible citizens in a democracy is the real crux of an education, and it is that focus that I wish to restore to my students. I want to leave the world better than I found it.

Yay, me!

I have to celebrate the little things or I get anxious and depressed. So here is what I'm happy about today:

(1) I finished not one, not two, but THREE major projects for school today, and have uploaded everything I could possibly need onto Taskstream, the bane of every elementary education major's existence. With the exception of my social studies journals for the last 8 weeks and reading two short young adult novels and doing some minor math homework, the rest that's left of the semester is three finals!

(2) I am getting closer to mastering the right amount of rice to cook for dinner. Paul & I always seem to make too much, and rice just doesn't save right, so then the leftovers sit in my fridge, piling up...but whenever I try to skimp on the rice, we both end up wanting more. :) Tonight, I only had about 3/4 cup of rice left over, and if we hadn't been munching on crackers and chocolates all day we'd probably have finished it off!

(3) I didn't swell up in hives today. Whether this is because I'm no longer allergic to the frigid winter air or because I ingested some allergy meds yesterday afternoon that haven't worn off yet, I don't know, but any day you don't swell up in puffy, itchy hives is a good day, right?

That's the end. Now, since Paul's into his book and I don't feel like reading any more than I already have had to today, I'm going to go play mindless games for a few hours and enjoy being proud of myself.

One last post, I promise!

I just wanted to thank all of you readers for your support and encouragement at such a crazy time in my life. You are all so wonderful and loving and I consider you all dear friends. Thanks! The end.

YAY!!!

I figured it out. My internet was just being dumb. :) And now it's back to studying so I can have fun tonight. But first:

Yesterday was our anniversary. It was fun. Paul & I went to O'Charley's, which is a great restaurant not so much because of the food but because of the sentimentality attached to it. It was at O'Charley's that my flirting with a random waiter sparked Paul's will to act, and where he jokingly offered to be my "boyfriend for the day"...which, it just so happened, stuck. :) No flirting with any waiters was involved this time around. ;)

Then we came back to my apartment to watch Prince Caspian, but we were both a little tired and more in the mood to snuggle, anyway. So we just snuggled and talked for about 3 1/2 hours, 'til he had to leave. It was marvelous.

Happy one year to us!

Okay, back to studying, for real this time.

GRR!!!

:) I'm over my pity party now, but I have to admit, I'm having a hard time changing my blog background. Nothing works! So if you're reading this on a white background, check back in a few to see if I didn't figure it out. I might have to give up today...