My Tata, Ramon.

My grandfather is my favourite person.
He scoffs when I tell him this. "I'm your only Tata," he says, scowling. "I have to be your favourite." In the same breath, however, he'll also wail that I'm the only person that loves him and that at least I won't dance on his grave.

He often tells me stories of his uni experiences. "One of my friends got a chicken from his mother," goes one such story. "He forgot about it and left it under his bed in the package. We were hungry the next day, and even though that chicken smelt more terrible than your grandmother's feet, we ate it."
"Did you get sick?"
"Pah, no. We'd eaten worse."
Chile, he says, is a land where they protest for the sake of protest. "Natashitaitaita, if you go to Chile and don't protest, I will disown you."
"Did you protest?"
"Of course. I don't even know what for, but I did." One time, he says, he narrowly escaped arrest out of sheer laziness. "The university students were protesting... ah, I don't know, something. I got bored halfway through and went home. I didn't live too far away. The next thing I know, my friends have been arrested."

He knows, or at least knew, a fair variety of languages. Spanish, of course, was his first language, but he also knows snippets of French. He has learned Italian from watching operas. German, I don't know how he picked it up. In fact, no one really knows how he picked it up. My grandmother nearly died of shock when they were travelling Europe and suddenly Tata's having a nice old chat with some German folk. His English, for a non-native speaker, is better than mine. This could bother me, I suppose, but it more awes me and makes me want to learn more. My mother tells me I must get my taste for words and languages from him because I clearly didn't get it from anyone else in our family.
However, he knows these languages in a manito de gato way - he knows their shortcuts and goes about them the easiest way. He taught me to speak "like a true Chilean". Apparently doing so means chopping 's' out of all your words and chewing on the words before you let them loose with a blase roll of your tongue.

No matter where we go, he has a book. He's sort of forbidden from taking them shopping, but he has, on occasion, hidden them under his shirt until Nana has pushed her trolley into Woolworths. On Mondays when I lived at home, he used to pick me up from work because he was also picking up my cousins. I would have a book on my phone (he always sneered at that) and he would reach into the pocket behind the passenger's seat and pull out the latest JD Robb/Nora Roberts.
Nora Roberts is one of his favourite writers, and I like her too. However, she does romance and crime separately. Tata saw me reading one of her romance novels and beamed. "You like Nora Roberts?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Me too!"
Surprised, I closed the book. I'd read it before. "Have you read this one?"
I'm not sure what Tata thought Born in Fire was going to be about, but he snatched it up eagerly. "No! I've never heard of this one!"
"Borrow it then."
The next day he picked me up for work, and Born in Fire was resting on the dashboard. He levelled me with a glare the second I opened the door.
"Romance? You read romance?"
"... didn't you realise?"
"I read through the night, waiting for the murder! It never happened! They got married!"

The other day, Dad was over at Nana and Tata's fixing Skype. (My cousins are over in Argentina/Chile at the moment, and it seems Nana can't go 8 weeks without talking to them.) Dad texted me, knowing I'd be on my phone, and asked me to Skype-call Nana.
Dad's there discussing the program with me, and Nana's leaning far too close to the webcam for me to actually see her, when I hear a shout. "Ay? Is that my Natashitaitaita?"
Nana and Dad got pushed out of the way and Tata filled the screen, saying, "IT IS! Finally someone I want to see! Did I tell you it's boring without you here? I miss you!"

My Tata is a man of crazy.
But he is also a man of excellence.
And I miss him something chronic.

Obligatory procrastination post

If you're in Australia, it's Tuesday.
(My American readers, I have no idea what your crazy time zone is doing, but I'm sure it's going swimmingly and that the past hasn't changed much. The future is pretty darn swell.)
I digress; it is currently Tuesday, and I have a 3000 word draft due on Thursday.

My current total of words is sitting at, ahem, 0.

BUT THIS IS TOTALLY FINE.
I mean, it's completely reasonable to procrastinate, right? Doesn't my best work come from procrastination? Well, I wouldn't know otherwise, it's sort of hard to remember back when I was studious, but I'm pulling fairly decent marks and such and - oh man I'm screwed.

Anyway, because I'm screwed, I figured I'd write you a post which will probably total 3000 words of drivel.

Things that I have been doing to procrastinate:

Trying on jeans that fit me when I was basically a twig.
It happened once, I was a twig. I lived where there were massive hills and lots of steps and I was poor so I rarely ate.
Result, 10 kg dropping off.
I put said 10kg on again when I moved down home (because at home, parents pay for food and you forget that this food is a regularly occurring thing so you eat ALL the food out of fear it's your last good meal ever and you'll be back to eating microwaved puff pastry), and have probably lost five kg if I examine photos. I am scared of scales, so I wouldn't actually know.
Anyway, I ran up and down the stairs in our house 20 times each way today. It was a feat of skill and excellence, and one that has my legs cramping just thinking about it. For some reason, I think I must have thought it meant that the last five kilos would simply admit defeat and storm out of the place.
I can fit into the jeans better than I did before, though my gosh, my black jeans that were too small for me when I bought them?
NEVER AGAIN. Far out, and I used to rue the CorsetJean then.
I have also discovered that I no longer like bootcut jeans, and am extremely grateful for my straights and vaguely skinny jeans for their ability to go well with heels.
I have also had a stern talking to my hips, and have politely asked them to start storing their excess baggage somewhere less noticeable, like my ears or perhaps on someone else's body.

Dancing around to The Jezabels
I say that as though I have many of their songs, but I really don't. I have Hurt Me and nothing more. Does my listening to Sigur Ros make me any less of a musical pariah? Apparently the abundance of Aqua and Simple Plan in my iTunes playlist is something I should be ashamed of.
So dancing around to the Jezabels is a lot of fun, until you dance past a mirror and realise you look like you're strangling a monkey. I apologise, airmonkeys, for continuing anyway. I also apologise for the rampant punching of your airhabitat, but the song demanded it.

Trying on all the shoes in your cupboard
I have some extremely high heels, and they are fantastic.
However, I think my wardrobe has changed slightly and the shoes no longer suit.
Dismay!
I would use this as an excuse to buy new clothes and/or shoes, but apparently I have bought enough dresses recently and I should probably take out shares in Bardot to make up for my spending (okay, I bought two dresses, but if I can make money on it I should do it).
If anyone has a saucy dress that could go with khaki heels, send it along to me. 10 and I get along.
Also, military boots of any variety are pretty much on fun-par with pirate boots. Get ye some of them boots.

Watching things with Nathan Fillion
So new episode of Castle came out yesterday/today/some day. I watched it today.
SWEET BISCUITS THAT WAS BRILLIANT.
Simmy, one of my lovely pals, tells me that this is the last episode this season (if I was good at things I'd know this myself, but that's what friends are for - succeeding where I crawl under tables). This isn't so good, but it did prompt me to finally start watching Firefly. And what a good show Firefly is.
Aw, man, now I want to watch Doctor Horrible.

Downloading Doctor Horrible Soundtrack to accompany the blitherings
I can't really comment on this, because I've just started doing it. But I imagine it'll be legend- wait for it - DARY.
See what I did there?
... did I even do anything there besides make a really terrible NPH reference? No. I did not. Let's all pretend that totally made sense, mmkay?
Oh man, I just said mmkay. Twice.
But speaking of NPH references, this Avengers-slash-HIMYM post is just gold.

Glaring at every other book on your bookshelf
Well, why shouldn't I? They had the resolve to write 3000 words. Heck, they wrote more than that. Then they had the resolve to get the flipping thing published.
This is the point where I just fall flat on the floor, my legs mutiny after being forced up the stairs too many times, and the Alsatians come for me. Trina, Nick and Glen should expect this as a thing. I will be dead by morning (I think the Alsatians will find me quickly; no three-week wait here. I'm a despondent uni student going into a career where deadlines are a thing and procrastination is not. Oh gosh, I'm screwed.)

Try and find the Bridget Jones screenshot of the Alsatians
Just for reference, it doesn't exist.
I WILL MAKE IT EXIST.

Finally realise that downloading All The Movies doesn't make the essay appear.
Can I just go to sleep instead? It seems more logical.

Darn it, it's a story, not an essay. Your future career in words and non-procrastination (there's a word for that, isn't there? Gah!) is looking bleak.
I sincerely hope that any future employer sees this post and goes, "She's a funny one!" rather than phoning Richmond Clinic and asking could they please prep the straitjacket.

Resort to washing up.
When all else fails, there's always dishes to be washed.
Dangit.

My heart

I've probably mentioned Neruda.
Maybe.
You know, once or twice.

Recently I've been losing myself in his poetry again. I am a sucker for love poetry, and his take all the cake and perhaps the entire bakery.
My heart dances when I read this. If a man was serious and told me this, I would quite possibly faint from sheer overload of awesome and happiness. Of course there comes that he better be saying even cooler things to God, but that goes without saying. Regardless, because it's 2:05 and a poem sort of seems like a good idea, this is Neruda's Sonnet XVI as translated by Stephen Tapscott.

I love the handful of earth you are.
Because of its meadows, vast as a planet,
I have no other star. You are my replica
of the multiplying universe.

Your wide eyes are the only light I know
from extinguished constellations;
your skin throbs like the streak
of a meteor through rain.

Your hips were that much of the moon for me;
your deep mouth and its delights, that much sun;
your heart, fiery with its long red rays,

was that much ardent light, like honey in the shade.
So I pass across your burning form, kissing
you -- compact and planetary, my dove, my globe.

30 Days of Writing, Day 3

Explain your Point of View and Writing Style Used


Two things:

1. That list that I copied and pasted is really badly phrased. Must go and fix that.
2. Yeah, I felt guilty, and this one was an easy one.

So I'm a huge fan of first person POV. I think in stories like this, it's much easier and it allows you to see more of the character. As this story charts Carmen's self-discovery and journey (wow, that sounds so douchey, but I hope there isn't too much judgement being passed), it only makes sense for her to personally narrate. It also allows me to show her to any readers in a more subtle way - so, for instance, I don't have to blurt it out that she does xyz, I can just sort of show it through the way she tells things, through what she says and doesn't say, whatnot.

It's also fun, because I'm toying with the idea of Carmen being a slightly unreliable narrator. She's a book-child. She gets swept away in fantasy and in what the best way of telling this story would be. So first person unreliable narration would very simple.

Writing style.

I get told that most of my stories are stream-of-consciousness style. Apparently this is just a nice way of saying I blather on and should edit. 

I can't quite explain how it is in one word, but basically I try and write things that are colourful and that are realistic. If I'm writing scenery, which I hate doing (Romanticism ruined me), I don't want it to be full of cliche and metaphor. I want it to be vibrant and realistic, so you shut your eyes and can see the balcony I refer to. You can see Carmen's hair, you can see Lorena's skin, you can see the party. I personally never described things with huge amounts of metaphor consciously when I spoke as a teenager, and I write as though the words are being spoken. (I am a huge fan of onomatopoeia as a result.) Dialogue is something I love doing, because I come from a family where I am the quiet one (anyone who knows me is choking on their spit right now) and words were something we always had. It's also extremely fun working out someone from the way they speak, and why it frustrates me no end trying to work out people who say very little. 

Summary:

• First person POV.
• Little consciously-used metaphor.
• Onomatopoeia is fun.
• Writing as realistically as possible.
• Writing as though it's being spoken.
• I'm wearing a hat.

I didn't post for two days.

Okay, okay, hate me.
Or not, I'm really not sure how you guys feel towards my lack of posting.
I assume apathy is heavily involved.

Anyway, because I haven't posted for two days and I can't remember what I'm meant to have posted, I am on a dialogue-ish roll that I intend to share with you.
Yes, it'll probably read like a script. This is me on an unedited dialogue-ish roll (repeating words gah) and...
Also, the Spanish will be bad. I haven't spoken it in two years. Don't judge me.

SCENE

"Carmenita."
I say what.
She glares at me. "Porque tu no hablas como una niña..."
"Una niña linda, proper, what?"
"Polite."
"Because," I say, knowing full well how it sets her off when I start with because, "I am not linda, proper nor polite."
"You could be," she insists. "Ay, mi Carmenita, you'll never be married."
I reach for the cheese she's been carefully cubing, and get my hand slapped instead. "Maybe I don't want to be married."
"Don't be ridiculous," she says. "What will you do otherwise?"
"Travel. Read. Wake up at noon and go back to bed at 8."
She exhales.
"There's more to life than being married."
"For men, yes." She puts the fly net over the cheese, then begins to roll out the dough. "For you, no. Do you think that you'll be able to work?"
"It's not 1953, Nana, I can work if I want to."
"I only worked until I married your grandfather. He provided enough for me, and I never went without. Yet you and Ana, ay, both of you! Your hermana knows what's best. Why do you think she is marrying David?"
"Because Magdalena," I say, "is a gold digger and for some reason found a man who was stupid enough to not figure that out, and realised how rare a find that was."
"Your sister is clever," Nana says.
"She doesn't love him," I say, though I'm not entirely sure if it's true. "She saw lawyer and ran towards it, eyelashes fluttering."
"Cristian would be a good boy for you."
"Cristian? Nana, are you crazy?"
"He's studying medicine, niña, and he's a good boy. He thinks you're pretty enough."
Pretty enough, the compliment to last me through the fortnight and back to Melbourne.
"And your mother likes him, and his mother seems to like you. Well, no wonder, you're just like her."
I wonder if Nana sees my life playing out as Tia Camila's has. Spontaneously married, unhappily allowing affair after affair, reluctantly divorced and then probably dying bitter and alone.
"And do you know why she got the way she is?" She looks around the otherwise empty kitchen, as though suspecting Tia Camila is hiding in the pantry, and whispers, "Why she's divorced?"
"Because she married a horrible pile of idiocy who didn't understand til death do us part meant not banging every woman he came across?"
"Carmen!"
Oops.
"Don't use that language!"
I can't actually tell which part of my sentence most appalled her.
"She got that way, niña, because she was too fussy. She thought he would be perfect, because she had been with so many other fools." She leans towards me and gestures with her rolling pin. "Don't be a fool like her, Carmenita. There's no prince until you make him your prince, he won't ride in and save you, and the sooner you stop being foolish and thinking that you can exist by yourself and that a husband is only a maybe, the sooner you'll be married."
I remember now why I avoid visiting my grandmother.

30 Days of Writing, Day 2

Genre of your story, explained in detail

Another difficult one, so I'm going to be lazy and basically copy from my Reflection Statement of 2009. I did more research then that I'm unwilling to do now.

(You got me, I want a nap.)

Or not. Stupid Reflection Statement had to focus more on Romanticism.

Basically, this is YA fiction, fuelled by multiculturalism and the feelings that are involved when you're a kid with a foot in two countries. As I've probably said, my father's Chilean. He came over here when he was 18, and he hasn't been back since. My grandparents never went back either. My grandfather and father decided to cut the cords suddenly and to not look back. My uncle went back (and goes back yearly; he's currently there now with my cousins and aunt for two months), and I think my grandmother never went again because my grandfather refused to go. 

My mother is Australian, and is possibly as stereotypically Aussie as they come. She was raised on a farm in Tallimba, a 16 hour drive from Brisbane.

Because these two sides are as different as they come, I find it interesting to explore this, and I find it interesting to explore this in different age groups. I've written this story - or variations of it - for a long time now, probably since I was 13 and beginning to freak out about what it meant to be Chilean Australian. I myself was known as the White Girl in the family (in comparison, my cousin Daniela is referred to as Black Girl). To my father's side of the family, Daniela's perceived Black Girl status is good. The White Girl to them is an alien, one who has crossed the border from mid-80s Chile to modern Australia. I have never liked being touched, I chose to study French instead of Spanish, and I can't dance. Three inconsequential things, but my family is good at making a big deal of nothing.

To summarise:

• Young adult fiction.
• About a uni student.
• South American culture.

"This just sounds like your life!" I hear you say.

And yes, it basically is. It's the memoir in novel form, and I've chosen to do this so I can create situations that I want. (However, when I was 13 and first wrote Carmen (she was 18 turning 19), I wrote her as exactly who I wanted to be when I grew up. I sent one of those drafts to Joshua a year ago and he said, "What? Are you just writing yourself? Is this memoir?"

So at least I've accomplished one life goal.)

Read Looking for Alibrandi and you'll understand the genre, vaguely.

30 Days of Writing, Day 1

Name of your current project and back story of the name


This doesn't work for me, really. Titles are never a good thing for me to figure out, and they usually come far down the track. As I don't actually have a title for my story as of yet, let's go with some previous titles I've used for other stories and why I used them, then I'll say what my story's about (or will be about) so you can get an idea about it.

• Age 6: Two Little Girls
  We begin the creative process young. Two Little Girls was, as expected, about two little girls who went on adventures. These adventures were things like trips to the zoo and whatnot - things kids get excited about in Sydney - and were carefully handwritten with accompanying drawings. My best friend at the time, Alyssa, wrote these with me. 
• Age 13: Pretty much any title involving Simple Plan/The Used/Good Charlotte/Blink 182 lyrics
  Oh, to be thirteen again. I had black hair, black clothes, a bleak life outlook and terrible taste in music. (My taste is still terrible, according to all of my friends, but I maintain Aqua is brilliant music to listen to when doing assignments. The Swedish get pop dance stuff right. Or are they Danish?) Anyway, these were mostly terrible fanfics where my main character, a thinly-veiled version of myself, would have shenanigans of some description with these bands. I am truly thankful I never discovered Fanfiction.net, otherwise I'd have a lot of explaining to do.
• Age 16: Vivir Con Miedo, Es Como Vivir A Medias
  If anyone's familiar with Australian cinema, you'll know that's a Strictly Ballroom reference. I wrote this when I was in the throes of staying at home (woo panic attacks) and I basically was watching all the Baz Luhrmann, all the time. This story was an appropriation I had to do for Extension English - we had to appropriate Frankenstein. If you feel like reading the story, it lives here. I look at my old short stories and wonder where my skill in writing creepy stories went.
• Age 17: Exotopy OR A Season Called Home
  I chose Exotopy, my tutor chose A Season Called Home. Exotopy was an interesting word I stumbled upon when researching this novella. The word literally means outsidedness. According to this website, it's also used to describe when an author 'speaks' the authentic voices of characters outside their own. This was probably my most deliberate title choice. The characters were migrants, as I've been focusing on for three years now, and for two of them, they existed by assuming identities. For Fernanda, she wanted to be a part of her family and so allowed herself to become Spanish over Australian. For Cristobal, it was the opposite. For Santiago, the outsider feeling was the dominant feeling. My tutor added the very corny Season Called Home because Extension 2 English is stupid. I had to incorporate Romanticism into it (why, why didn't I get to study life writing?) and I focused on the seasons - each character was associated with a season. Unfortunately I had to put a really obtuse reference to that in the title, because my English teacher kept nagging, my tutor became exasperated, and I let her do as she saw fit.
• Age 18: Understanding
  Back to Chilean stories. This is the first attempt at my Novel and Memoir story, except it's a short story. The title was so chosen because the second last line was something like, "One day, mi vida, you'll understand." I'll go into more detail when I explain my novel.
• Age 20: About the Toes
  A memoir piece relating to my father's toes. I went with a Sedarisy angle, and Sedaris uses quirky titles for his pieces. Okay, that's a lie. I literally couldn't think of anything else, and an hour before I submitted the assignment I tacked the title on, printed it off, and fled to the train.

Now, the novel.
Basically this novel is an extension of Understanding. It may have the same title when I get around to it, who knows. It'll revolve around Carmen, age 19, her mother's best friend, whose name escapes me (it's in my room somewhere) and this woman's son, Cristian. Rather than doing the whole woo teen love angle (I'm going to slightly cover that, if I can make it realistic), I'm going to focus more on the relationship between Carmen and her mother's friend. Carmen is basically an outsider, and I enjoy writing these ones. I found my closest relationships outside of my immediate family (such as for much of my teenager years, my grandfather was my surrogate father - due to my insanity, not my father's - and is now the person I love more than anyone in the world. He, too, was the black sheep in our family), and I find it interesting to explore the relationships that aren't typical. The woman and Carmen are similar, but different, but understanding life in the confines of a certain culture is the outcome.

So there you have it. I've also pretty much done an assignment in here - had to write a pitch for Novel and Memoir. Polish the last paragraph up and I'm done!
Muchas gracias, interwebs!