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kasihyaMy assignment for tomorrow is to write a letter from my character, in order to better develop that character's voice. My first attempt was kind of crap, so I took a different tact and wrote about the process of him writing the letter, what he was doing, etc. Later, it occurred to me that this was not the assignment at all, so I emailed my professor to make sure it was unusable and did the assignment properly. I still consider it a success; at this point in time I fail to see any writing completed and self-revised as a waste of time.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kai curls up in the bean bag chair in the corner of his room, pulling a notebook into his lap. He taps his pen on the paper, which is either a looseleaf notebook with mangled spiral binding, or a sheaf of heavy, smooth parchment bound by leather. After a moment he realizes that instead of words, he's just ruined the paper with absent scribbles. He tears out the sheet of paper, folds it into an airplane, and throws it, watching it spiral into the pile of its lopsided kin beside the wastebasket.
A letter. Yes.
Dear Hana,
Two weeks ago, I started working for Mister Sebastian Edwards in the antique shop next door.
Was it really two weeks ago? Kai stretches until he can see the calendar hanging on the wall behind him, the kind of scroll that could be purchased at any Chinese restaurant for five dollars. No, more than that. He draws a line through the word two and writes a tiny 3 in its place.
It is minimum wage for eight hours a day and five days a week. It smells all the time of old things, particularly books. I don't mind the smell, but the dust makes me sneeze.
Having spent what feels like a large proportion of his life in the library basement, he had felt at home the moment he stepped into the shop and sneezed three times in a row. Mr. Edwards had looked at him and coughed, and muttered about how youth these days dressed like hooligans. In the here and now, Kai's face heats up from the memory of that moment of humiliation. He tries to shake it off, reaches into his head for something more interesting and friendly towards him. In his mind, the room around him falls into darkness lit by neon strip lighting, and the khaki bean bag becomes a decadent velvet couch. An imp in jester costume plays a flute accompaniment to a massive pipe organ at the end of a long corridor in front of him. Kai smiles and motions to the imp to continue playing. This is better: he can control this, and maintaining the illusion for himself leaves no room in his thoughts for anything unpleasant.
A truck on the road outside his window honks, sending lights, couch, and imp fleeing. Kai scrunches his eyes shut for a moment before he forces his attention back to the paper. What else would interest his sister? In his experience, her attention is captured by things that Kai finds supremely unimportant. Broad picture things, and whether or not Kai has talked to anyone today besides their aunt and uncle.
Mister Edwards says it's the most organized that the shop has been since his daughter worked there. I can tell. It's like the rock layers we learned about in school. It's stratified. Sometimes I pick up a pile of books all jumbled together, with the cookbooks next to the travel guides, and underneath there will be the entire collection of the Hardy Boys, all in order.
Kai's grandparents used to give him Hardy Boys books at Christmas and on his birthday from the time he could read until he was fourteen or so. He always felt awful because his grandparents didn't visit often enough to realize that he was never going to be the type of boy who reads mystery books. Upon seeing the collection at the bottom of the chest the other day, he had sat down with the first book once again, and found it just as uninteresting as he had when he was seven. Fifteen pages in, Mister Edwards had called for him to come downstairs and help a customer move a gigantic glass swan to their car, if he's remembering correctly.
Yesterday I found a closet in the wall behind a big mirror with a pink frame — and this was in the corner with all of the salt and pepper shakers — but in the closet were eleven tea services! They were all set up to be displayed, but very dusty.
This is true, and it had taken the rest of the day to clean them to Mr. Edwards' satisfaction, but as he writes it, Kai gets a nagging feeling that he's gone off topic. He scans the paper — what had he been writing about? Ah, right.
So you can tell that it did used to be organized, a long time ago.
Kai rereads his letter and decides that should be enough to satisfy her for now. Then he stares at the wall for a while, letting his mental images of the events he described float in his mind's eye. He embellishes a little, adding heavy curtains to the windows and faces in the mirrors. When he's satisfied that he remembers everything the way he wants to, he signs the letter, tears it out carefully, and tacks it on his bulletin board so that he'll remember to send it.
Kaibutsu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
However, I'm very glad that I did redo the assignment. The first rendition helped me understand his thought processes; the second time around, I got to develop the character as someone who does live in a world with other people, however much he might deny it, and I think it makes him a more grounded, realistic character than the previous exercise. (It also shows off his sense of humor, which is creepy but well-intentioned, and which is important because he's not a solemn character. At all. He's just bad at displaying his emotions in real life.) And I was kind of surprised that he did care so much about his sister, and that he liked her fiance well enough to joke with him and talk to him about something like Macchi-Macchi. I have to remind myself that the depressing, borderline pathetic dropout guy who works at an antique shop and lives with his aunt and uncle - that is not how Kai sees himself. Kai sees himself as the fantastic Spook Master.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Hana,
I've started working for Mr. Edwards in the antique shop on Poe Street. It is minimum wage for eight hours a day and five days a week. It smells all the time of old things, mostly books. I don't mind the smell, but the dust makes me sneeze.
Mr. Edwards says it's the most organized the shop has been since his daughter worked there. I can tell. It's like the rock layers we learned about in school. I pick up a pile of books all jumbled together, with the cookbooks next to the travel guides, and underneath there is the entire collection of The Hardy Boys. And yesterday, I found a closet in the wall behind a big mirror with a pink frame — this was in the corner with all of the salt and pepper shakers — but in the closet were seven tea services! They were all set up to be displayed, but very dusty. So you can tell that it did used to be organized, years ago.
I met someone today. Her name is Violet, or Hyacinth, or a flower name of some sort, and I met her at the library because she wanted the same book about reading Tarot as I did. It's the one I've already taken out seven times, so I let her have it. I told her about the set of Tarot cards with the skeletons on them that Mr. Edwards keeps at the shop. He says he bought them in Transylvania, but I like to pretend they came from somewhere completely different. It's just next door, I said, but she said she had to go home and would maybe come and see next weekend. I think she was just being polite. Now you can't say that I never try to talk to anyone. It just doesn't work is all.
Please tell Jethro that I said hello and that if he does not propose to you soon I will send Macchi-Macchi to break his fingers.
Kai
P.S. I was joking about the fingers if you didn't know.
~~~~~~
Dearest brother,
Kai! You talked to someone. I'm very proud of you and I mean that, honestly. it doesn't matter if you don't become best friends with someone in an instant, it's good practice even if you don't get to show off your alien Tarot cards.
Jethro and I went furniture shopping last week, which was exciting although I don't think you'll be very pleased with how cheerful our house looks now. I've put in pictures so you can see. The first one is the living room (the gold blur in the corner is Morrigan running to the front door to meet the mailman); the second is the kitchen, and the third is the view from the living room window, which is lovely.
We'll probably be coming to visit for Christmas, so don't go turning the whole guest bedroom into a circus like you did last year.
Love,
Hana
P.S. Jethro says that he has a lightsaber and isn't afraid to use it, even on one of your monsters, and that he will propose once the car is paid for.
~~~~~~
Dear Hana,
My room isn't big enough. I need it for my other things that aren't part of the carnival. But I made everything except the haunted house so that I can pick it up and put it in my room when Aunt Althea and Uncle Jerome have guests. I found a book in the library of modular origami with a design for a lamp that I can use to build the opera house.
Your kitchen is very white. You should make it darker and give the spiders somewhere to hide so that you don't end up with flies in your food.
Violet came back! She did come back to see the cards. I was in the attic, so Mr. Edwards shouted from the register that someone from the Renaissance Fair was playing hooky to come have their fortune read. I'm glad there were no customers there to hear. Everyone already thinks we are both crazy. It rained all day yesterday, and since there were so few people coming in Mr. Edwards cleared the boxes of daguerreotypes off of the table in the middle of the store, and he and Violet and I played rummy. I don't even have to pretend to myself that today was any stranger or more interesting than it was.
Kai
P.S. I could send Macchi-Macchi to bring you the engagement rings that Mr. Edwards has on display by the cash register so you don't have to wait until you pay for a car. Tell Jethro that he is light-saber-proof anyway.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kai curls up in the bean bag chair in the corner of his room, pulling a notebook into his lap. He taps his pen on the paper, which is either a looseleaf notebook with mangled spiral binding, or a sheaf of heavy, smooth parchment bound by leather. After a moment he realizes that instead of words, he's just ruined the paper with absent scribbles. He tears out the sheet of paper, folds it into an airplane, and throws it, watching it spiral into the pile of its lopsided kin beside the wastebasket.
A letter. Yes.
Dear Hana,
Two weeks ago, I started working for Mister Sebastian Edwards in the antique shop next door.
Was it really two weeks ago? Kai stretches until he can see the calendar hanging on the wall behind him, the kind of scroll that could be purchased at any Chinese restaurant for five dollars. No, more than that. He draws a line through the word two and writes a tiny 3 in its place.
It is minimum wage for eight hours a day and five days a week. It smells all the time of old things, particularly books. I don't mind the smell, but the dust makes me sneeze.
Having spent what feels like a large proportion of his life in the library basement, he had felt at home the moment he stepped into the shop and sneezed three times in a row. Mr. Edwards had looked at him and coughed, and muttered about how youth these days dressed like hooligans. In the here and now, Kai's face heats up from the memory of that moment of humiliation. He tries to shake it off, reaches into his head for something more interesting and friendly towards him. In his mind, the room around him falls into darkness lit by neon strip lighting, and the khaki bean bag becomes a decadent velvet couch. An imp in jester costume plays a flute accompaniment to a massive pipe organ at the end of a long corridor in front of him. Kai smiles and motions to the imp to continue playing. This is better: he can control this, and maintaining the illusion for himself leaves no room in his thoughts for anything unpleasant.
A truck on the road outside his window honks, sending lights, couch, and imp fleeing. Kai scrunches his eyes shut for a moment before he forces his attention back to the paper. What else would interest his sister? In his experience, her attention is captured by things that Kai finds supremely unimportant. Broad picture things, and whether or not Kai has talked to anyone today besides their aunt and uncle.
Mister Edwards says it's the most organized that the shop has been since his daughter worked there. I can tell. It's like the rock layers we learned about in school. It's stratified. Sometimes I pick up a pile of books all jumbled together, with the cookbooks next to the travel guides, and underneath there will be the entire collection of the Hardy Boys, all in order.
Kai's grandparents used to give him Hardy Boys books at Christmas and on his birthday from the time he could read until he was fourteen or so. He always felt awful because his grandparents didn't visit often enough to realize that he was never going to be the type of boy who reads mystery books. Upon seeing the collection at the bottom of the chest the other day, he had sat down with the first book once again, and found it just as uninteresting as he had when he was seven. Fifteen pages in, Mister Edwards had called for him to come downstairs and help a customer move a gigantic glass swan to their car, if he's remembering correctly.
Yesterday I found a closet in the wall behind a big mirror with a pink frame — and this was in the corner with all of the salt and pepper shakers — but in the closet were eleven tea services! They were all set up to be displayed, but very dusty.
This is true, and it had taken the rest of the day to clean them to Mr. Edwards' satisfaction, but as he writes it, Kai gets a nagging feeling that he's gone off topic. He scans the paper — what had he been writing about? Ah, right.
So you can tell that it did used to be organized, a long time ago.
Kai rereads his letter and decides that should be enough to satisfy her for now. Then he stares at the wall for a while, letting his mental images of the events he described float in his mind's eye. He embellishes a little, adding heavy curtains to the windows and faces in the mirrors. When he's satisfied that he remembers everything the way he wants to, he signs the letter, tears it out carefully, and tacks it on his bulletin board so that he'll remember to send it.
Kaibutsu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
However, I'm very glad that I did redo the assignment. The first rendition helped me understand his thought processes; the second time around, I got to develop the character as someone who does live in a world with other people, however much he might deny it, and I think it makes him a more grounded, realistic character than the previous exercise. (It also shows off his sense of humor, which is creepy but well-intentioned, and which is important because he's not a solemn character. At all. He's just bad at displaying his emotions in real life.) And I was kind of surprised that he did care so much about his sister, and that he liked her fiance well enough to joke with him and talk to him about something like Macchi-Macchi. I have to remind myself that the depressing, borderline pathetic dropout guy who works at an antique shop and lives with his aunt and uncle - that is not how Kai sees himself. Kai sees himself as the fantastic Spook Master.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Hana,
I've started working for Mr. Edwards in the antique shop on Poe Street. It is minimum wage for eight hours a day and five days a week. It smells all the time of old things, mostly books. I don't mind the smell, but the dust makes me sneeze.
Mr. Edwards says it's the most organized the shop has been since his daughter worked there. I can tell. It's like the rock layers we learned about in school. I pick up a pile of books all jumbled together, with the cookbooks next to the travel guides, and underneath there is the entire collection of The Hardy Boys. And yesterday, I found a closet in the wall behind a big mirror with a pink frame — this was in the corner with all of the salt and pepper shakers — but in the closet were seven tea services! They were all set up to be displayed, but very dusty. So you can tell that it did used to be organized, years ago.
I met someone today. Her name is Violet, or Hyacinth, or a flower name of some sort, and I met her at the library because she wanted the same book about reading Tarot as I did. It's the one I've already taken out seven times, so I let her have it. I told her about the set of Tarot cards with the skeletons on them that Mr. Edwards keeps at the shop. He says he bought them in Transylvania, but I like to pretend they came from somewhere completely different. It's just next door, I said, but she said she had to go home and would maybe come and see next weekend. I think she was just being polite. Now you can't say that I never try to talk to anyone. It just doesn't work is all.
Please tell Jethro that I said hello and that if he does not propose to you soon I will send Macchi-Macchi to break his fingers.
Kai
P.S. I was joking about the fingers if you didn't know.
~~~~~~
Dearest brother,
Kai! You talked to someone. I'm very proud of you and I mean that, honestly. it doesn't matter if you don't become best friends with someone in an instant, it's good practice even if you don't get to show off your alien Tarot cards.
Jethro and I went furniture shopping last week, which was exciting although I don't think you'll be very pleased with how cheerful our house looks now. I've put in pictures so you can see. The first one is the living room (the gold blur in the corner is Morrigan running to the front door to meet the mailman); the second is the kitchen, and the third is the view from the living room window, which is lovely.
We'll probably be coming to visit for Christmas, so don't go turning the whole guest bedroom into a circus like you did last year.
Love,
Hana
P.S. Jethro says that he has a lightsaber and isn't afraid to use it, even on one of your monsters, and that he will propose once the car is paid for.
~~~~~~
Dear Hana,
My room isn't big enough. I need it for my other things that aren't part of the carnival. But I made everything except the haunted house so that I can pick it up and put it in my room when Aunt Althea and Uncle Jerome have guests. I found a book in the library of modular origami with a design for a lamp that I can use to build the opera house.
Your kitchen is very white. You should make it darker and give the spiders somewhere to hide so that you don't end up with flies in your food.
Violet came back! She did come back to see the cards. I was in the attic, so Mr. Edwards shouted from the register that someone from the Renaissance Fair was playing hooky to come have their fortune read. I'm glad there were no customers there to hear. Everyone already thinks we are both crazy. It rained all day yesterday, and since there were so few people coming in Mr. Edwards cleared the boxes of daguerreotypes off of the table in the middle of the store, and he and Violet and I played rummy. I don't even have to pretend to myself that today was any stranger or more interesting than it was.
Kai
P.S. I could send Macchi-Macchi to bring you the engagement rings that Mr. Edwards has on display by the cash register so you don't have to wait until you pay for a car. Tell Jethro that he is light-saber-proof anyway.
