What lies here could best be described as essays or editorials. Things that express my opinion, tell a story that I feel is necessary, whatever.

Getting Back to my Future This would be an essay I wrote as a term paper during my senior year of high school. This paper expresses the history of my Back to the Future fandom fairly well.

Reading the "Future" Another essay for school where I drew on my vast knowledge of BTTF to achieve an A. I recently stumbled across this all-but-forgotten essay, from the first term of my freshman year of college, as I was combing through old files. The cited sources are missing from the text, but oh well. It's my attempt to sound scholarly when discussing my fave films. :-)

Of Writing I wrote this, originally, in my private journal that I have maintained since 1992 on my computer. The version here is a slightly-edited-for-all-eyes form of it. I was trying to capture and explain my feelings about writing and I think this is as good as it gets with me explaining what that medium truly means to me.

MY SHORT STORIES

Below are a few short stories that I've written over the years -- mostly for creative writing classes, since I'm really a novel-length kind of writer -- that I thought may interest people. What the hell. This should gradually expand when I find the time to go through my files, pluck things that aren't hugely cringe-worthy, and upload them.

"Friends Forever" This story was my first published work -- ever! I wrote it in the fall of 1993 when I was a freshman in high school, for my Creative Writing I class. I had so many ideas then, so much time and inspiration. I had a huge level of output for things that freshman year, and a wonderful class that allowed me time and encouraged me to spill that out on paper. I also had an awesome teacher, Ms. Monnier. It was much fun visiting her years later and giving her a copy of my first published novel...especially since I started PIT in her class! Anyway, this is me being Melodramatic and maybe a bit angsty. The story is pretty short for me and first appeared in SAVANT, the Arts & Communication High School's student magazine. I submitted it to the magazine, and was shocked when it was selected to be published. (Again, I was a lowely freshman.) The publication was interesting -- they had rewritten the beginning (gasp!), which surprised me. (My first realization that that could happen.) But someone also made an illustration to go with the text, which I thought was cool. My parents laminated me a copy of the published story, which I still have somewhere. I was so proud, it wasn't even funny.... Looking back on this story now, there are sooooo many things I'd change. But this is where my writing level was when I was a 14-year-old high school freshman, if you're so inclined to be curious.

"A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words" Another short story from my freshman year, during the fall of 1993. (I was extremely prolific that year, due to being in my first creative writing class, having an awesome teacher, and being in an environment that was supportive of my writing ability.) I have a lot of weird ideas, and this story is one from the "what if?" files of the imagination. Which is kind of the genre I still like to read and write in. (PIT is definitely a "What If" scenario sort of thing.) This story, in spite of the pretty massive length (it was about 20 pages double spaced) was also published in SAVANT at the end of that school year. I remember my CW teacher thought this story idea was really unique and creative.

"The Mirror" I have little to no memory of writing this story. It was for my creative writing class in the fall of 1993 again. Short stories are not my forte, BTW. I'm more of a novel-girl. If I remember correctly, my point in this story was to follow an object through time. I've always dug those kinds of stories. In fact, I'd like to do a novel-length work someday in that sort of vein.... This piece wasn't published in the h.s. lit magazine, BTW, mostly because it was something I did that was pretty much throw away. I didn't have the same passionate, strong feelings for this as I had for the aforementioned pieces above.

"Joyride" This is a short story that I wrote in the spring of 1997, in a short story creative writing class at my high school. If I recall correctly, the whole thing was kind of an experiment; I was trying to see if I could maintain an action sequence and pacing for so long, as well as experiment with writing a story from the first person perspective of a guy. Since writing short stories is not my forté -- generally a "short story" for me is, like, 20 pages! -- I figured this could keep the page length down. The results were pleasing enough that the story was recruited and published in my high school's literary magazine, Savant, in June 1997. Later, when I tweaked the tale a bit and submitted it for a creative writing class my sophomore year of college, it was the only thing my professor liked. (The version here is the tweaked version from fall 1998.) I have thought about trying to get "Joyride" published somewhere professionally, but since the teens in this story are flagrantly breaking the law, I dunno how well it would go over with editors. And for anyone who's read my first "Partners in Time" book -- yes, two of the first names of characters from that novel are in this story. What can I say? I like those names, and at the time who knew PIT would be published? But the characters in this story are not the same characters in PIT. And no, I did not write this from firsthand experience!

"The Photograph" This was written for my sophomore year creative writing class in college. At that time -- the fall of 1998 -- I was going through a very difficult time, emotionally, in my life. I had been put on the drug Accutaine for some bad acne, and was suffering from the side effect of depression. Unfortunately, the doctors didn't believe at that time that drug was the cause of my feelings, so I was left believing I was going genuinely nuts. A year or so later, when the FDA put out this warning about depression being linked to the drug, I was pretty pissed. If I knew at the time it was temporary, I would've felt so much better.... But once I got off the drug, the bad feelings went away. "The Photograph" was the result of me writing something very very dark that matched my current state of mind at the time. Post-nuclear stories have a weird and creepy fascination for me, and I suppose this was my way of being like, "Well, as bad as I feel now, at least I'm not this character!" I deliberately left her unnamed in the story, and I also cobbled a bunch of details from my own life in the story. (The bit about the view from her childhood bedroom -- that's from my own life.) When I shared this story with my classmates, though, I found it interesting that people were polarized with it; people either really liked it or really hated it. Most people come away from reading this feeling kind of depressed, so I apologize in advance. My intent was not to do that in writing this; rather, it should show people why nuclear war is bad. Hopefully a fate like this will never come to pass for anyone.

"First Love (A.K.A. The House of Cards Collapses)" Ummm, the less said about this one the better. Like "The Photograph," I wrote this for the same creative writing class about the same time, in November 1998. It's cringe-worthy mostly to me, perhaps, because this is sort of my "Worst Case Scenario" that I could see playing out with the first guy that I fell in love with. (And, of course, those feelings were unrequited.) Hopefully said-guy will never see this. And if he does... well, uh, what can I say? I was a melodramatic nineteen-year-old who dealt with the frustrations and problems in her life by writing stories.