Meta: I'm No Eggers

During my senior year of high school, my English class read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It was, at times, both heartbreaking and a work of staggering genius, and it's author made no show of being modest. To the contrary, AHWSG, as we came to call it, was a memior that blurred the line between fact and fiction. It was autobiographical in nature, and yet there were things that could not, or at least should not (we hoped not, as readers, for Eggers' sake) be true. But that was alright, because in addition to making no claims towards modesty, Eggers also made no claims toward truth. His stories may have begun in fact, but ultimately ended in fabrication. In essence, he gave himself the license to say whatever he wanted.

And this, in essence, is what I wanted to do here; the problem is that I am no Dave Eggers, and no matter how much I say otherwise, there will be those of you who believe that my work is just a thinly veiled collection of Mary Sues. In fact, the fact that I deny this over and over again has caused me to question it myself. But then I wonder, if these were really all Mary Sues, why wouldn't I just give every story a happy ending?

Ultimately, I think it comes down to what I want, since I am the author, and you are the reader. I don't want to be the characters in my stories; I don't want to be the girl behind the wheel in Drive or the one who crosses campus at midnight in search of love and adventure in my NaNoWriMo piece. Nor do I want to be the slightly strange but mostly harmless boy in Bad News (though nobody has accused me of that one, yet) or one of the chatty middle schoolers in Love Story and The Beginning of Something? All of these characters are a part of me, in some sense - they came out of my heart - but they are not me, and they live out a seperate existance from me.

Now, once again, happy reading!

What is this, really?

Ok... so there's already a "what is this?" post on the sidebar, but it's a bit lyrical and doesn't really contain much substance, so if you're still confused, this is probably the post you want to read. All of "this" is fairly simple, really; it is a blog and an outlet for my writing, but it is not a diary in the traditional sense because (as indicated by the title) I make no claim to stick to the truth. Since I'm just getting started here, I can't really tell you what (if anything) will appear here in the future. My intention is to fill the pages with short scenes, some connected, others much less so; they will be the beginnings of stories (or maybe the middles or even endings), but since my attention span is short, I must warn you in advance that I may often fail to finish what I start. Some of the stories may be written in parts - I plan to make it obvious which entries are attached to previous scenes, you should be able to tell when it happens. Also, I may decide which pieces to continue and which to abandon based upon the feedback I receive - which gives you all the more incentive to actually read and comment her. ^_^ Finally, I must excuse myself for certain recurring themes, phrases, and names that you may discover in the next few entries, which are old scenes that I wrote back in November in anticipation of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) While these scenes are fundamentally different in concept, I reused several of the same ideas, since I had the feeling that only one of them would eventually develop into a full-fledged story. As it is, I have yet to develop any of them, and I'm not quite sure if I ever will, but nevertheless I want to share them with you. I hope you enjoy them. ;-)