My writing style is hard enough for me to pin down (probably why I haven't written anything worthwhile yet), but my usual style is: witty, descriptive without making the reader aware of any verboseness, oriented towards females (sorry guys!), and I enjoy coining new words and phrases to perfectly fit the situation.
In November 1999, I got pulled into the world of weblogs and created one on my girlhacker.com domain. I write short postings pretty much every day. It has helped me refine my writing in short bits, which will help me out when I string bits into larger blobs.
During a dry spell in my creativity, I kept my writing going by composing essays about my life, sparked by my old t-shirts. This resulted in my T-Shirt Chronicles web site, which was later featured as a Yahoo Weekly Pick. I recommend that anyone with writer's block try writing about something that you know well, such as your own life. It may feel lame and uncreative, but it helped me a lot. When you don't need to worry about making something up, you can just let the words flow out. The ideas will come if you relax and let yourself go.
In the summer of 1999, I took a fiction writing class at Stanford through their
Continuing Studies
program. Here are some of the pieces I created for the class assignments:
(note: these have all been saved out in Microsoft Word, which
means that they contain all sorts of horrendous Windows and Internet Explorer
specific formatting. I truly apologize, but I haven't had the time/energy to
convert them into decent, universal HTML. If you really need to read 'em in
a better format, let me know. You can blame me instead of Bill -- though I will
just go ahead and blame Bill myself.)
Dialog Study - the assignment was to create a dialog
where the characters were in conflict but did not directly refer to what it
was. Reference story: Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway.
Sense of Place Study - describe a place of significance
to you, evoke the feeling of it.
Character Study - a sketch of someone you know, first
person, starting with "some people I just don't get".
Pink and Grey - final story. I'm currently revising
this, including fixing the tandem jump inaccuracies, thanks to Lisa D., and
tightening up the lengthy middle dialog.
Earlier Work:
Melody Of Fate - a short story that has been soundly, but nicely rejected by the highest caliber of literary journals. I got a very nice rejection note from someone at Story, which made it all worthwhile!
A true story about a Mother's Day in my past
How I Survived Comdex 1996 - roughly written musings on my trip to Comdex. Hopefully it will amuse you!
The Virtua Fighter Factor - an essay on my resolution to stop apologizing for being how I am. (still rough draft)
A Letter to the Editor - an actually published letter to the editor! Wow. I'm in print! (I actually had another letter published in the Mercury News' "West" magazine, but it was short and acerbic and had something to do with them photographing the butt-view of a celery stalk for a food article on cassoulets. Not worth repeating here. Suffice to say I coined the description "Martha Stewart-esque".)
Another letter to the editor asking why there weren't any women in the Oct 11, 1998 cartoon about the "nerd bird". This was published (yay!) in the Oct 25 paper. Hey, I'm 3 for 3!
Poem about learning to enjoy now.
Feedback on any of these is appreciated.