Creative Writing Excerpts
Shared introspective reflection is a bit too much right now
There is something very romantic and almost inherently feminine about writing about yourself in a notebook. Whether you call it a diary, journal, poetry workspace, etc, writing anything in a physical notebook— especially with a smooth and comfortable-in-hand pen— is satisfying and therapeutic.
I’ve been writing in journals a lot lately for all of these reasons. As something of a creative writer (I have taken two creative writing classes and written extensively, yet I’m not sure at what point exactly you get to coin yourself “a creative writer”), I enjoy writing my diary or personal journal entries with colorful language and metaphor as something of an educational exercise. I’ve been writing these journal entries consistently for the past few weeks, and in the past 6 days, I’ve also turned back to my old friend the CommonApp to write some more college essays to throw into the mix. All this goes to say— I’ve been writing lots!
As I mentioned in my last post, I always think about my next blog post almost immediately after publishing and that wonder is everpresent. When I’m not writing anything, I think about what I should be writing. When I’m writing exclusively personal, unsharable material, I wonder when I will write something to publish for you all.
When I was in my last creative rut, I absolved the lack of inspiration by writing about the lack of inspiration itself. But before I came to the idea of publishing something of a letter to my empty creative stores, many of my friends implored me to publish some of my creative writing. I’ve been against this idea because I feel that prose, poetry, and short stories are not what I started this blog to share with you all. However, after numerous requests (a grand total of 3), I have decided to offer you all some of my work from the past few months in creative writing courses I’ve taken at school.
{ P.S.— I love it when you all send me ideas or questions to answer for this blog, please do not stop, it makes me feel like a 17-year-old Carrie Bradshaw. }
Piece 1: Teenage Girl Checklist
This piece was published in the Horae, a literary and artistic magazine at St.Paul’s, and I received more positive feedback on this piece from women on campus than anything I’ve ever written in my life!
Teenage Girl Checklist
1) Celery
As children, we are told that meanness from boys is flirting and that they just have a crush. We are taught to accept cruelty from boys because it’s flattery in disguise. Our athleisure-clad mothers say that celery has no calories and that the skinniest way is the best way. “Skinny is pretty and skinny is sexy,” we are told to make ourselves smaller in order to feel more important. Celery is on the TGC because we scarf it down and swallow it and don’t know that we’re really choking on the grief of being a teenage girl, the grief of skinny being beautiful and beautiful being right and anything else being wrong.
2) Crushes
In elementary school, we meet boys and become cognisant of the fact that they are a bit of a big deal. We realize that the funny way a few of our friends act isn’t a unique personality trait, but that it’s just a general “ boy thing.” We become excited about school and grow fond of picking our outfits out for the first time, we giggle with our girlfriends when they pass us in the hall, we blush when they address us in the lunchroom. Crushes are fun and exciting and give us a reason to steal our mother’s Lancome mascara– in high school, we wish we could still have that feeling like we once did in childhood. Crushes are on the TGC not because we have them as teenagers, but because we remember and long for the days when boys had crushes just to have crushes. The boys who “like” us now don’t have crushes, most of them have a momentary urge to move our relationships from platonic to physical. We wish that boys had innocence and tenderness for us as they once did, we resent the way they are now.
3) Lip Gloss
In middle school, Serena VanderWoodsen taught us that lipstick lasts longer but gloss is more fun. Lux Lisbon applied it before the homecoming dance, an act deemed so irreverent that the rebellion of the swipe of gloss was all we wanted. Naturally, we only wore lip gloss from then on out. Sharing lip gloss is the epitome of teenage girl camaraderie, it’s a necessary community in girlhood that all starts with a kiss. Gloss is an essential part of the TGC because it is more than a cosmetic product– we offer it to girls in bathrooms, we collect tens or hundreds to try them all, we apply it to draw attention to our lips, we stole our mother’s when we were little girls.
4) Cat Calls, Wolf Whistles
As teenagers, it hits us that we are turning into women sooner than we had prepared to. Becoming a woman isn’t getting our period or shaving our legs for the first time, it’s the first time we are yelled at from a moving car. It’s the first time we notice the older man in stiff khakis walking a little too closely behind us in the grocery store. It’s mentioning something someone did that made us uncomfortable and our so-called boy friends scoffing and moving to their defense. Leaving girlhood is just the phasing out of the question: How many times do I have to pretend to appreciate “You should smile more, you’d be much prettier”? Cat calls and wolf whistles are on the TGC because we simply can’t check them off, they will always be looming. Girlhood was about recognizing the discomfort in being a female in the world, womanhood is coming to terms with it.
5) Heads on Shoulders
In high school, we come home from school exhausted and riddled with homework. We complain and bitch and compare assignments and drop our heads on our girlfriends’ shoulders. We drop our heads on shoulders when we cry, we drop our heads on shoulders when we laugh, we drop our heads on shoulders because touching and embracing and caring for other girls is normal and beautiful. We adorn the heads of other girls with braids and buns and hairspray, even with flowers. Sometimes, we thank our lucky stars that we get to be teenage girls because most teenage boys wouldn’t dare hold one another. We are thankful that heads on shoulders are on the TGC because if we don’t love eachother for what we are then no one else will.
Piece 2: Courtesy and Your Hands in Rhode Island
This is a piece of “flash fiction” or prose I wrote in September that was the first piece of creative writing I’ve ever workshopped in a classroom environment. This experience was… interesting… as all of my peers in the room knew this story a bit too well! However, it elicited a positive reception overall and proved to be somewhat relatable— according to those in the class.
Courtesy and Your Hands in Rhode Island
Courtesy is your hands holding mine under the table at dinner. Your concern, polite and measured, eases my mind while your mother pours you another glass of merlot. She tips the bottle, crossing my face, and I hope the wine spills on her linen tablecloth. I hope it stains her skirt from the boutique down the alley and I hope they have no return policy. I hope they aren’t courteous to her when she walks in and demands everything from the poor girl at the front desk. I hope your hands keep holding mine under the table until the bottle is empty and until your mother goes back inside and until it’s just us on the porch in Rhode Island looking out at the bay. If only the sailors had the courtesy to keep roping the ships to the docks, giving us something to watch– maybe we wouldn’t have had to say anything at all. We could’ve stayed quiet and watched. Maybe it could’ve just been us, hand in hand under the table at dinner.
Piece 3: Me and Him in the Armchairs
The last piece I’ll share is the first “flash fiction story” I ever wrote. I kind of loathe it nowadays, but I believe there is value in anything written from a heartfelt, lived experience.
Me and Him in the Armchairs
When I think of everything he has given me and bestowed upon me, the first thing that comes to mind is our parallel armchair talks. He in his beige armchair with his beige tray and perfectly measured and calculated dinner. Me in my beige armchair sitting criss-cross applesauce, asking and listening.
We’d watch movies in the armchairs, he’d tell me stories of his youth in the armchairs, we were best friends in the armchairs. He seemed to know something about everything, I now know something about everything. The armchairs are the reason I can never shut up watching films because the facts about the production and the actors come spilling out, the reason I can explain the difference between different financial terms and business jargon, the reason I know what I do about my grandparents’ history.
When I sit beside anyone, us in separate chairs with our shoulders in a line hunched the same direction, I think of his and my armchair talks. I wonder what he might say if he were hunched in a third chair beside us.
I don’t speak with her much, estranged might be the best word. I know that before I came, she sat in my armchair and spoke to him. He and her surely laughed, discussed, wondered together. Like I do with him now.
When I sit in my armchair, waiting for him to come from the kitchen or bring my sister’s toys or get home from work, when I sit in my armchair alone, I wonder how the armchairs were positioned when it was just her and him. Were they parallel, or did they face one another?
I hope you all enjoy this quick change of content in my blog and I promise I’ll get back to regularly scheduled (figuratively, not literally, I couldn’t keep this blog on a schedule if I tried) publications sooner than later. I hope to write from my vacations after Christmas and maybe chronicle some of my adventures overseas for the new year. Happy holidays!
-Annabella