I feel obligated to answer this one. I used to have a travel blog, Vicarious Vistas. Sadly, time has affected both that blog and the places.
From an early age, I dreamt I’d live on a sailboat, I dreamt I’d be an author, I dreamt I’d go to Africa. I dreamt I’d have adventures.
Living abroad (not tourism, which is heavily sanitized) will truly open your mind to what the world is, what makes us different, and what makes us all the same (more than you think).
I could cite Simon & Garfunkle, Johnny Clegg or a bunch of Beatles song lyrics, but I’m going to go with the Boss and two lines from Jungleland.
I decided that my way to Africa was as a teacher. It took two years to get everything sorted. And longer to get there. I was facing two big hurdles: I’d never taught, and I’d never lived in another culture.
The WordPress/JetPack writing prompt for today is:
Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are? And my answer, without taking an easy out, is both.
I’ve been thinking Sam Neill thoughts since learning of his passing. This has led me back to “Until The End of The World” (1991). The film is a good example of a William Gibson’s quote that I like, “The future is already here, it’s just not distributed evenly.”
One of the interesting weeks we had in my writing course was where we had to deconstruct then rebuild a famous story, in this case, Frankenstein. I decided early on that my version would have Elizabeth Lavenza (Victor von Frankenstein’s fiancé) as the hero, and that the story would involve nanotechnology.
Writing is often filled with tropes – preconceived ideas that both the writer and the reader bring to the story. For this assignment we were asked to redefine a fairy tale trope of our choice. I chose trolls.
For a creative writing class, I was taking, we had to write a 500-word scene from The Catcher in the Rye demonstrating a specific perspective of our choice. I chose to do third person limited from D.B.’s perspective.
