How many friends do you have that say they are writing a novel? How many of them do you think will ever start, let alone finish? Well I am one of those guys who is currently writing (co-writing with my sister actually) a novel, although I don’t like to talk about it for fear of toolness (so don’t tell anyone). I’ve never found it hard to write, I’ can’t think of a time when I was affected by writer’s block, but “writer’s suck” is something I am very familiar with. Writer’s block? Just whip an alien at the story or kill someone. Good writing? Hmmmmmm……

I’ve taken writing courses before, but I was never sure how much I trusted my teachers. They’re academics, what do they know about dragons, right? (Foolhardy, because as I found out many teacher are well versed in the topic of dragons.) I looked to the experts. You probably won’t be reading this blog unless you’re already into the literary arts, but to those who are beginners, like myself, I think this post might be helpful. I’m not anyone to be giving advise, I can only relay what information I thought was beneficial.

For any aspiring writers The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White is a great place to start, yet it is more a treatise on the structure of prose, not the structure of character and story. On Writing by Stephen King, part autobiography and part “how to,” was a book I found extremely helpful, and not because it gave me any particularly specific tips on character building or storytelling. Chuck Palahniuk’s tips for writers, found on his website, were also very helpful. Palahniuk and King, both very popular writers, are not what you would call pillars of the “serious” writing community, but they seem to be the least pretentious and most eager to share their knowledge over most other authors. Their tips were strikingly similar.: write often. Both Palaniuk and King knew enough that they knew they couldn’t impart their success onto others, but “write often” is something that many beginning writers, like myself, need to take to heart, even when you have nothing to write about. The muse visits during the act of creation, not before.

I’m not anyone to be giving advise, I can only relay what I thought was helpful. You could read a million books on writing, and King’s On Writing is a very interesting one, but that won’t give you any grand ideas—those will come to you after the first hour of writing. Never mistake writer’s laze for writer’s block, if you’re truly blocked, whip an alien at your story, even if only to be edited out later.

But for me, Twitter had to go.

I parted ways with my account some 3 days ago. The obituary should be appearing soon in newspapers around the globe, spinning in black and white toward the camera with melodramatic trombone tones announcing the end.

Why delete my Twitter account?

A waste of time, yes. Inherently stupid, sure. Flamboyantly meaningless, absolutely. But what really bothered me about my Twitter usage was that it was sucking blood from my writing. My writing.

Free to constantly rattle off any fragment, any snatch of a sentence that sounded good, what was at first liberating was quick to become tiresome. The phrases I found myself constantly splashing up were pointlessly cryptic, not intriguing. They were lazy, not profound. It’s not as though you can edit “tweets.”

I realize of course that Twitter doesn’t claim to be, or want to be, some powerhouse writer’s tool. It’s a fun, silly little outlet for all the run-over Facebook can’t contain. But I have to be a writer first — I can’t trade off instant gratification for dilution.

So, I say tweeting is for the birds.

Chatty, Nosy Person:  “So, what’s your major?”

Me: “English.”

CNP: “What are you going to do with THAT?!” Or, “So, are you going to be a writer or a teacher?”

What if the answer is “neither!” or, worse, “I don’t know yet. I haven’t figured it out.”? I’m greeted with blank, confused stares when I tell these chatty, nosy –but well-meaning– people that I’m not entirely certain what I’m going to do with my B.A. in English.

One of Google’s more recent features is an updated version of the “auto-complete” search, where users can see what others have recently searched for. I typed in “English majors” on Google’s search engine, and one of the first responses I noticed was: “English majors are useless.”

I guess I can understand why some may have this mindset about English majors. It’s not a major that always leads to a definitive, pre-established career, like engineering or nursing or architecture. But this is why I am an English major: I love the English languge. I love the beauty of words, I love how they fit together, how they can be chaotic or orderly or both, or somewhere in between. I love discovering new words and feeling a sense of accomplishment when I find myself able to use it naturally, without even thinking about what I’m saying. I love correcting typos and grammatical errors, finding continuity errors; it makes me feel like a problem-solver, a sleuth, a modern, copy-editing version of Nancy Drew. I love reading, getting lost in literature and poetry, immersing myself in a fantasy world. I love writing;  it’s my main creativity outlet, it’s the way I express myself, it’s how I vent and put my messy feelings into words.

So are all English majors lost in fantasy land, wrapped up in literature, language, and the beauty of words? Probably not. But I know that I certainly am, and for now, that’s good enough for me. I can figure out the career stuff later.

(I swear, this isn’t the beginning of a bad joke. Bear with.)

So the other night, myself and a friend of mine are watching the remake of Halloween. I should hope, as a film major, that I know a little bit about film, and this friend certainly does. So we’re complaining, a bit pretentiously, about the movie we’ve voluntarily set out to watch: “Ugh, why would you remake such a classic?” “Ugh, Rob Zombie’s directing style is all wrong for the atmosphere.” “Ugh, why would you try to totally explain away all the mystery that makes Halloween creepy in the first place?”

Of course, the movie was terrible. Or at least nothing like the original us horror elitists tend to idolize.

But it got me thinking — why don’t people remake books?

“HAH! Because that’s a terrible idea, it’s completely different,” you automatically think, and how perceptive you are.

But why? What makes it such a different animal?

Films and novels have the same goal: to tell a story in the best way possible according to the demands of the material. That might call for being understated, over the top a la Michael Bay, abstract like William S. Burroughs, or something else entirely.

But if we can, and commonly do, “rewrite” someone’s images — and even, more literally, their dialogue — why not somebody’s words? It’s effectively the same process: taking the meat of a story and revamping the bells and whistles for the sake of modernizing it, fixing a flaw, or fleshing out some murky part of the plot.

Yet no one rewrites books. No one even takes the idea seriously. Does this mean that novels are more personal and unique than films? That a story on paper can only be told one way? That style and content are more closely intertwined than in perhaps any other medium?

Anyway, I’ll be thinking about all this when I do my “surfer dude” retelling of Ulysses.

But you know what? English is an easy major. I’m not going to apologize for it, either. It is easy because I’m doing what I love. Nobody likes crunching numbers for accounting or reading stale textbooks about the expediture schedule. Duh. The reason why people with majors in the hard sciences or business feel they have hard majors is because they hate reading about their major. Then on top of it, whenever I have to write a paper I just have to write what I feel or think (emphasis on “feel” because it is just so girly to feel things). Whereas my friends have only one answer, and if they don’t get that answer they are wrong. It is easy to see where there is a lot of stress for them and pressure. All I have to do is defend my argument clearly and not make up BS.

Of course, then they never see preparing for any finals because most of my finals are final papers, and not nerve wracking final exams. In literature courses, there really isn’t any type of cumulative exam you could do except for maybe testing me on if I have read the material. Of course, I have been in classes where we have a final exam and it amounts to writing a couple of mini essays about themes discussed in class. But seriously, we can all admit that is less stressful than rote memorization of business facts.

English may very well be an easier major, but too bad for everyone else.

Alright, I can’t lie. One, I like Starbucks. Contrary to popular belief the baristas are always super-friendly, and their Frappuccinos are freakin’ awesome. Two, I like writing, and unless the weather is particularly gruesome, where better to write than… well, a coffeeshop?

And while Starbucks — ever easy to find, being located conveniently in three or four locations per block — is a good standby, sometimes you just need a different (pardon the pun) flavor. And when the need for a location change in the old writing routine strikes, where in Philadelphia can you go?

Well, I’ve found a few decent spots, and I’m just nice enough to share them with you.

Intermezzo on the edge of Drexel’s campus is my prime alternative to Starbies. (Yeah, Starbies. Take it or leave it.) Generally, the servers are decent, you can get sandwiches and (pre-made and pre-wrapped) muffins or cookies to go with your beverage of choice, and they tend to stay open to midnight – minimum. The hours change daily, so call ahead, but if you’re pulling an all-nighter and need to escape your roommate’s endless Guitar Hero renditions of Freebird, bank on this place.

Hausbrandt might serve up a little more pretension than some can stomach, but the atmosphere is airy and pleasant, and the menu, while a tinge pricy, is quite broad.

The Saturn Club Hair Salon & Café — don’t be put off by the name, it’s simply two businesses sharing a building around Penn’s campus, near Bubble House — is a cute, comfy little joint. On the opposite end of the spectrum from delightful Euro-pretension, Saturn is better described as (hate to use the word) “funky” or earthy.

Walnut Bridge Coffee House will be our last sampling for today. The space is tiny, but artsy decor with no expenses spared and a luxurious offering of chocolates and truffles behind an inviting glass case makes it feel cozy rather than cramped. The sofa and fat chairs that provide much of the limited seating adds to the homey atmosphere as well. The only caveat with this place is, the hours are somewhat short, so if you’re looking for a late-night experience, skip it and head back to Intermezzo.

At any rate, hope anyone who likes to read or write or god forbid chat with friends will find something enjoyable in at least one of these Philly coffeeshops. Happy hunting!

This guest lecturer is a British man called Anthony Penrose, son of painter Roland Penrose and photographer Lee Miller, here to talk to us through the sub-Saharan heat of the lecture hall about the nature of the Surrealist art movement.

You would think Surrealism would be confined to painting. And you’d be wrong.Surrealism is, he explains, more an approach to life than some exclusive school of painting, and extends to film, photography, and poetry. (I highly… highly… recommend listening to the audio sample in the link to poetry, by the way. Highly.)

One of the Surrealist poets was Paul Eluard. He wrote a poem in 1940, originally dedicated to his wife but later renamed “Liberté.” According to Penrose, copies of this poem was dropped by the thousands by Allied planes during World War II as a rallying point for the French.

That struck me. I think — I hope! — we’ve all seen Casablanca. Assuming (yes, I know) we all have: you know that scene, where the French start singing against the Germans, and everyone at Rick’s starts crying and there’s lots of soft light and teary eyeballs and things like that? Well, that’s a nifty scene, but I always thought it was a little goofy. Good for a movie, but for real life…? Well, I wasn’t there for it, but this poem seems to have had a similar effect. I don’t know, something about the image of thousands of sheets of paper wafting down onto bombed buildings (okay, maybe just normal towns, but let me romanticize it) kind of struck me.

Just figured I’d share.

On the first day of my first college English class (which wasn’t taken at Drexel), the professor handed out the syllabus and went over the books we’d be reading and all of that normal stuff. We were given a reading assignment for the next class. The beginning of the next class started with a question by the professor – “How many of you actually did the reading?” About 11 out of 20 hands went up. The people that didn’t raise their hands were told to get their things and leave the class. Leave the class! The professor locked the door after the students left so that they couldn’t go skim and then come back. It cracked me up. Luckily, I had read for that day and was able to stay in class. 

You would think that this would make some people drop the class, and it did. A few of the non-readers weren’t there the next class. But I think this was the professors way of “weeding them out.” I never went through the freshman writing sequence, so English class was a choice for me that semester. I could have dropped as well and taken something else just as easily. But it’s not always about things being easy or you loving your professors. They are here to teach you, to push you, to make you write at the top of your game. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but it’s also a wake up call. I’ll never forget the look on some of those kids faces when they were literally told to leave because they hadn’t read. I think about that day often, and what it means to be a student who is willing to put in the effort not only to get good grades, but also to learn.

So, this made me think – do I always want to keep movie and book separate? I think I’m the type of person that will either read the book OR watch the movie. I chose to watch “The Kite Runner” instead of read the book, I read Palahniuk’s “Choke” but have no real interest in the movie… same with “Trainspotting.” I don’t know, maybe I don’t have an interest in the way someone else interprets a novel because I already have my own interpretation and don’t want it shifted by a filmmaker’s vision. I’ll have to mull this one over.