Gloria & Audrey Harchar

OurWorld is a fun is a fun online multiplayer game I have been getting into. They update the site all the time to keep up with all the new aspects they develop. It’s fun to play puzzle games by yourself, or visit an area where others gather and join in. Whatever strikes your mood! You can tell when you first enter the site that everyone is striving to make their avatar look awesome. As you level, you get more options available to you.

Come play with me!

Were you on time to class today? If so, tell me by commenting to this post. Be sure and tell me the class, whether it was 5th period, or 6th period. One comment for each period you were on time, please. At the end of the week, I will use my number randomizer to choose two winners for a bottle of gatorade!

Definition of timely per Merriam-Webster:

1 : coming early or at the right time <a timely decision> <timely payment>
2 : appropriate or adapted to the times or the occasion <a timely book>

— time·li·ness noun

By Carl Stephenson

What a strange, yet horribly tragic story, (we read it for language arts class). It’s about this guy named Leiningen who owns a plantation in Brazil. He gets word that there’s a huge horde of ants coming toward the plantation–two miles wide and ten miles long. The District Commissioner warns him that he must leave and take all his workers with him. But Leiningen figures that he’s smart and that he can take control of his fate by conquering the ants.

It’s an amazing tale. The author did well in describing how the ants worked–they really are intelligent. They made boats out of leaves, and they built a dam. I remember seeing on the Discovery Channel those big ants with incisors and snapping jaws, and how they could strip a stag of its flesh clear down to the bone in only minutes–six according to Stephenson’s novella.

My skin crawled as I was reading it. I kept slapping at my legs!

Leiningen was bull-headed, brave, and fool-hardy, imo. He thought he could defeat nature and the ants. I guess he did, and he did make a run for the dam to release the river to save his men, and nearly got eaten by the ants.

But he lost at least two men–peons is what the author called them. Ugh. How demeaning. It was written in 1962. I didn’t realize they called Brazilians, peons. Not very nice. Anyway, sad that the plantation owner felt he could sacrifice his men for the ants, and they didn’t even save the plantation. Too, I couldn’t help but notice how the author compared women to oxen!

Here it is if you want to read it, a classic short story:

Leiningen Versus The Ants

Here is the practice test you can, well, practice on before you take the real test for a grade.

I love salsa, especially Black Bean salsa. Here is a good recipe that I found in the Tulsa World:

1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 (11-ounce) can white shoe-peg corn

1/2 cup chopped green or red pepper

1/2 cup chopped red onion

1 medium tomato, diced

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 cup Italian dressing

3/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped

Mix all the ingredients together. Serve with baked tortilla chips or in a tortilla wrap with leftover chicken.

I’ve been listening to a series of lessons designed for eighth graders on story structure. Really, it’s quite fascinating. I’ve taken so many courses and workshops on writing, as you can imagine, through Romance Writers of America, classes at the Tulsa Community College, classes at Oklahoma State University, and at conferences at Oklahoma Writers Federation.

I’ve read shelves of books on story structure. Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation and Conflict. Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas, Beginnings, Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress, How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler, How to Write Bestselling Fiction by Dean Koontz, and so many more.

But I have never heard conflict described quite like this:

You have a Central Conflict–that is the main conflict that drives the plot all the way to the end of the novel. Then you have secondary conflicts. Of those conflicts you can have External and Internal Conflict. External Conflict can be divided into three different kinds: Character vs. character, character vs. nature, or character vs. society. Internal conflict is character vs. self, (self being broad–like emotions such as lack of trust, confidence, fearing a lack of good morals, etc. They didn’t delve into the self). I thought it was good since the lessons took another angle. Although I did end up making a Power Point presentation to expand on other areas that I thought were lacking.

What they called the central conflict, I always called the red string–or the main conflict that wasn’t resolved until the resolution. All the minor conflicts and subplots were resolved, the table is cleared, loose ends are tied up–except for that big conflict.

Interesting.

I’ve read all the Harry Potter books, Terry Brook stories, Cassandra Clare’s series. To me, the appeal of these books are that the characters are fully fleshed out. All of them have an Achilles’ heel, where they are vulnerable. And even the good guys aren’t perfect. In other words, the characters are very real.

For instance, I loved it when we discovered in the 5th book that Harry’s father was cruel to Snape when he was younger. Throughout the series, we thought Snape was just jealous of James Potter, and so he took out his hatred and jealousy on Harry, who deserved none of Snape’s dislike. We thought Snape was envious of the outgoing James Potter, who was good at Quidditch, popular with the other students, had the most beautiful and intelligent girl in the school, someone we discovered Snape secretly loved. Then, when Harry saw the sliver of dreams, we discover that James had a cruel streak; he bullied and poked fun at the awkward and socially inept teenage Snape.

Cassandra Clare does well with this too when the parents who adopted Jace end up not trusting him, and therefore don’t protect him from the Inquisitor. Then later they are remorseful for doubting him. I love the mystery surrounding the adults’ pasts and how Clare  interweaves the past with the present.

Terry Brooks really explores the dark side of his heroes. His characters, who are constantly fighting evil, worry about becoming evil themselves, about fighting so much that they forget how to love. In Armageddon’s Children, my heart just withers for poor Logan Tom, who lost his whole family when he was only seven years old, and was raised by a military guy who ends up losing his sanity, and Logan ends up having to take care of the man he loved as a father. He worries that he, too, will go insane.

For me, characters make the story memorable. And you’ve got to have characters with an Achilles’ heel.

I am the coordinator for the Cyber Academy for high school dropouts who have decided they want to come back to school to earn their high school diplomas. Also, I’m in charge of arranging speakers for our special interest groups. For instance, instructors from Pioneer Tech and Oklahoma State University. Plans are made to have human resources to come to teach students how to interview, fill out applications, create a resume, and arranging counseling sessions, etc.

This is one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve had, besides writing. I love talking to teens who’ve had a tough start in life, and who are determined to get their degrees. Several have discovered that it’s nearly impossible to get a decent job without a diploma. They don’t want to work as a hard laborer for the rest of their lives. I’m telling you, I’m getting lots of fodder for mine and Audrey’s books. There are so many heroes and heroines I can see us developing in our future stories. This is exactly what I needed to give my writing a jump start again!

Too, I’m teaching eighth grade language arts at the alternative school, and I’m in charge of the Fast ForWard Reading Program. The students there are ones who either don’t like the crowds at the middle or high school and have chosen to be in smaller classes at the alternative school, or ones who have been kicked out of school for drugs, fighting, emotional problems, or other reasons like teen pregnancy, rough family lives where they missed too much school.

It’s challenging and I’m constantly urging them to take control of their lives, to get their eighth grade behind them so they can go on and finish high school. So I’m sure you can imagine how much this is helping me in writing this teen novel. The kids have a lot of conflict to deal with at home, school, with their peers.

What is your biggest challenge as a teen? I would love to hear!