Jessica McKee’s Blog

I admire a lot of writers. But it’s mainly a tie between Sarah Dessen and Jodi Picoult.

I’ll introduce Sarah Dessen, though. Sarah Dessen was born in 1970 in Illinois. She says she has always been a big reader and was writing since she could remember. After graduating college, three years later she released her first book “That Summer” (good book! One of the first I read by her) while she was still doing her old waitressing job. After the release of that book, she was offered a job to start teaching. Since then, she’s released 9 books for teenage girls and is still continuing. My favorite quote by her is: “I love Starbucks mochas but they make me way hyper. I subscribe to too many magazines. I make a mean bean salad. I could go on, but the truth is, my books are much more exciting than I am, and that’s a good thing. It’s always more fun to make stuff up anyway.”

What I like about her books is that they are so relatable. Yeah, thats a vague term, but really, they are just something that 16 year old girls can relate to, and I think that’s what a lot of girls my age need in a book because they feel like nothing or no one else knows what they are going through.

1. Write about something you know about, seen, or witnessed yourself. It’s so hard to write a story in which you have no idea how the characters are supposed to act or talk like. Putting feeling and emotion into something you have no idea about just makes the story seem cliche or not interesting to read. So always know what you are writing about!

2. REVISE. Revising for me in the beginning of the year was so hard. I always would just write something and leave it be. I hated looking over my work, but after the sthort story unit, I got really interested in revising and now I really enjoy doing it. There’s so much you can add after all the rambling on about what you are trying to convey in the story.

3. Just write. You never have to have an excuse to write. You can write whenever and you don’t have to have a prompt. Most people I think see writing as something that you can only do when you have a whole idea of what the piece is going to be, but that’s really not writing. When you are writing, just let your emotions flow and CREATE something, don’t write something that’s already created.

I loved this book. It’s a simple book with embarrassing, funny, and dramatic stories of the worst or best moments of being thirteen. The first story in the collection is called “What’s the worse that could happen?” by Bruce Coville. It’s about a boy named Murphy Murphy (yes, it really is Murphy Murphy) “It’s like a family curse. The last name I got from my father, of course. The first name came down from my mother’s side, where it is a tradition for the firstborn son.” Murphy likes a girl named Tiffany Grimsley, and can’t understand why he has this sudden obsession with her. Just to impress her, he tries out for the schools play that season because she was too. Turns out, Murphy has intense stage fright. He spends all day, every day worrying about how he’s going to manage performing in front of hundreds of people and Tiffany.

The second story in the collection is called “Kate the Great” by Meg Cabot. In this story, when Jen turns thirteen she’s allowed to get her ears pierced and babysit, two things she has been looking forward to ever since she met her neighbor Kate. Kate was a tenth grader and Jen completely looked up to her. Jen finally had her first babysitting job at the Weinmans. Kate usually babysat for them so Jen was really surprised that they asked her instead of Kate. They told her not to let Kate over while they weren’t home, and that really shocked Jen. Right as the Weinmans left, Kate and her boyfriend Patrick show up and want to come in. Jen is faced with responsibility and making choices that might get her in trouble. That’s thirteen for you!

The fourth story in the collection is called “If You Kiss a Boy” by Alex Sanchez. The story is about a girl ends up liking her best guy friend Jamal. She thinks he likes her back because he buys her the movie ticket and her popcorn and everything. When they go sit down in the theater, they realize they aren’t in the action movie, but in the romance movie. They just decide to stay and make fun of all the mushy kissing scenes. They start laughing so hard that they end up falling onto each other in the aisle and she kisses him. He stops laughing and both don’t know how to react.

I would definitely recommend this book to a classmate. I never realized how awkward thirteen is until I read about these stories and realized I had similar things happen to me. I think it was a good book to read and realize that those things didn’t just happen to you when you were that age. It happened to everyone.

What did I learn about this genre of short stories? This is such a typical question and it’s probably the hardest because you never know when you really learned something. This book was filled with humor. I think I learned that humor can be conveyed without being so upfront about it. Instead of saying “I did this and it was so funny” in the story, it’s all about how you form what you are going to say and use language that reflects the feeling of the sentence of paragraph. Especially with such an awkward topic, I think I realized it was really more enjoyable when they didn’t use the more common things that happen when you are thirteen. Instead of it being something like ‘I bent over and ripped my pants’ but something more like “I stuffed a cupcake into my mouth and started choking in front of my crush.

I think I realized how varied the structure of short stories can be with the stories “Such Foolishness” by Maureen Ryan Griffin and “Jeremy Goldblatt is So Not Moses” by James Howe. In “Such Foolishness” the lines are practically just like those of a poem.

“They say it’s a difficult

stage. But what I remember

from that time

is the sultry summer day

rain came through the sun

to release me

from the childhood stretched

tight over my chafing skin.”

That was just the first couple sentences of that story. If you say that it’s a short story even though it doesn’t look like one, it’s still a short story. If I were to look at this, I would definitely think it was a poem, but when you read through it, there a beginning, middle, and an ending so it really is a story. In “Jeremy Goldblatt is So Not Moses” there are little chapters or paragraphs with their own title like a little short book rather than a short story. I thought that was a really cool idea. The stories just have to convey a message and have a story line with the proper format, the structure is just up to the author.

What my reading confirmed was the fact that anything can be made into a short story. In this collection there were stories about a getting in a gang just to get new shoes “Black Holes and Basketball Sneakers”, a girl submitting something to the school newspaper and starting fights and drama “Noodle Soup for Nincompoops”, and a story about a girl being called a squid girl and finding a boy whom she wants to be named Travis “Squid Girl”. Stories don’t need that much thought when you are beginning to write one. You can really write about anything you feel like.

To me, the best story was “Such Foolishness”. It stood out to me because of it’s structure and the way in conveys a really important and special story by using such few words. It really left a lasting impression on me since I read it. I remember being thirteen and not being able to wait until I was finally 16 or 18. I loved the idea that I was becoming an adult slowly and I wasn’t just a 12 year old and more. I thought I didn’t need any help from anyone and I would soon be the high school kid. I think Maureen Ryan Griffin really portrayed the feeling of the short story really well and make it really easy for the reader to put herself into the position of the main character.

I have no idea. I tend to stick to the cliches because I believe that anything that has to do with love will turn out to be cliche. Especially if it’s written by someone who has never really fully been in love herself.

AHHH this is impossible.

I have no idea why to write about.

If i could have any kind of superhero power, it would be to instantly have any kind of food from anywhere that I want. I’m always craving something I can’t make or I can’t have and that’s always really aggrivating. Another super power I wouldn’t mind having would be to be able to give all children what they need, I guess. I mean, after living in India and witnessing the whole situation in Africa, I just want to be able to save those kids and give them what they need in life. That’s really cheezy, and kind of cliche, but it’s just kind of a dream for me.

My perfect world. Well, in my perfect world, everyone would always be happy and nice to each other. I know that sounds cheesy, but that’s the way I want it to be. No one would have cars, we would just all have super fast, eco friendly scooters. The food would be amazing and you would never have to pay for anything. Money would be unknown in my world. Everyone was different, there would never be the same type or kind of person but everyone would still have people they really get along with and soul mates. No one would ever be late or ever hungry. Your stomach wouldn’t grumbed in the middle of class. In schools, you would either fail or pass, there would be nothing in between or no number system. Homework would be a thing of the past. It would always be summer, or the winters would just be really short. Long enough for people to realize they miss the sun, but short enough so that the winter haters wouldn’t have to bear through it very long.

So, since i volunteered to do give you guys a blogpost this week, I guess I should at least post it on time.

Sorry if this is late for a couple of you. I just remembered

What do you want to be when you grow up? How does taking Creative Writing tie into it?

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Lily had always wanted to touch the sun. Her ruby red hair with her pink ribbon gliding back and forth as she sways back and forth on the Elementary playground swing; the glitter on her shoes reflecting little laser beams, searching for something to shoot. It was time for her to shoot to the moon, to find out what it must be like, and she knew how it was going to happen. She ran into Mrs. Newcomers room searching everywhere for something that might help her. She gathered about 50 paperclips–she’ll have plenty. She skipped her way back onto the foamy ground of her launching place. Carefully combining all the paperclips, making a paperclip chain, she started on the swing again. She took out her favorite pink ribbon, and tied it to the top of the paperclip chain. The swing started getting higher and higher, her legs pumped back and forth. That paperclip chain was going to lift her up to the sun as soon as she jumped. One, two, three. Her face landed right on the foamy ground. She stood up, looking towards the sun. Her face lit up as she saw her pink ribbon being pulled up by the wind, further and further. At least some part of her got to get that close.