Free Choice: A Scene

Abioye crouched low on her haunches, trembling from excitement, but trying to stay completely silent. This was her first hunt of large game. The savanna grasses matched the tan color of her hide and hid her from the eyes of the baby wildebeest which was wandering too far from its mother. Abioye felt an inkling of kinship with that wildebeest for she too was young and frightened without her mother near. She had only just begun losing the long tufts of sandy brown hair that was the mark of a lion cub. Her sides sweat from having her legs tensed and held so close to her body as she struggled to be invisible. "A calm mind and body is best for the hunt" her mother had often told her, but Abioye was having trouble putting that counsel into action.

Free Choice: a poem

Enlightened

"I am the life and the light of the world"
The scripture says that Jesus lights all things
For He is in and through and of and by
all that was made. Shineth forth in Darkness
which comprehendeth not His blessed light.
How can I comprehend? How can His love
Make me to value other's lives before my own?

The Beginning of a personal Essay modeled after Kincaid's

I was not even five years old when I went to Dance for the first time. The room that I danced in was not in the Richards Building, where it was every Friday for the next ten years, or taught by Miss Becky, who was with few exceptions my teacher every time I went to Dance with BYU's children's 'creative' dance program, The Young Dancemakers. Dance was creative from the start. It was all about making up movements on the spot, no set steps or patterns out side of an occasional 'skip' or 'gallop.' For most of my growing up years going to Dance was a significant part of my life: a special treat, a fun time to see my friends, a time of adventure as I roamed the Richard's Building when we were there early, and eventually a time to be embarrassed of. On that first day we ran around, played tag, and froze in interesting shapes. If the teacher's son made a shape low to the ground, so did everyone else. If he made a high shape, we all followed suite. The teacher told us to make our own shapes, and I tried to do the opposite of what everyone else seemed to be doing, but I was never very good at it. And I suppose that's been my pattern in life ever since.

Free choice post- story ideas

I want to write a story about lions living in the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania. I am reading "Things Fall Apart" right now and I have had this idea in mind ever since I saw an episode of PBS's Nature about the lions. The show told the story of one lion pride that had almost been wiped out by sickness in the 1960s and had suffered the effects of inbreeding ever since, being more susepable to disease. They were also threatened by hyena competition and most of all competition from another pride of lions. This other pride was coming in to take over their territory. I have done a little research on the lions, and I am wanting to write maybe a tragedy from the perspective of the aging patriarch of the pride. He gradually loses his hold on the pride until he is driven off by the rival males so that they can mate with his females. He goes off injured to wander until he finally dies from hunger. I am not sure how to organize this kind of story. I don't just want to rip off what I saw on "Nature," but I am interested in the story and the themes that it shows of pride, fate, power, and the pain that comes with necessary change. I don't know if it could fit into a short story, or fill up a novel, or if I should work on some kind of an epic poem.

Sight- Final version

Sight

Blinking, rubbing, but unable to behold clearly
Back-lit leaves glistening green on a blaze blue sky: Breathtaking.
I look fast
The brothers bloodied, eying wounds, filled with flies before they die
They tell in age the king ignores the wife of his youth
But where can I evade it?
Love wishes their welfare before its own
Stomach falls when I glimpse her but can't recall the name
Short, smart, shy, and quixotic

Sight- Original version

Sight

Short, smart, shy, and quixotic
Squinting, straining, but unable to see clearly
Stomach drops when I see her but forget the name
Back-lit leaves glowing green on a blaze blue sky: Blinding
Love is wishing their welfare before your own
I run fast
But where can I escape it?
Towards the scripture, towards the hymnal, towards my knees
They say, in age the king forgets the wife of his youth
the brothers beaten, licking wounds, blown by flies before they're dead.

Falling off My Grampa's Lap: a photograph

Our whole family is wearing blue. Blue is my favorite color and my grandmother's favorite color, but we always called her Gram. Gram and Grampa's house was a magical place for me when I was young. It still is, come to think of it. And part of that magic is this old. family portrait hanging on the living room wall. We are all wearing blue jeans and blue shirts. The kids also have blue sweaters. We are out behind my grandparents' house by the orange trees and the fig tree that I always loved to climb. Some of the adults are on chairs and stools. My Mom is standing in the back row holding my little sister and laughing. My Mom has never looked bad in a picture in her life; she says that it is from practice smiling as a high school pom-pom captain. My Grampa does not have that much lap in this picture (he has lost a lot of weight since then) and I can't seem to stay up on it, so I'm falling off.

FACTS: Stools, chairs, orange trees, family members, blue shirts.

The King's Ransom: a short-short story

"They have betrayed you. Every last one of your men have deserted your camp and defected to the enemy. Fear of his innumerable swarms of soldiers ate at their hearts like a worm feeding on a cherry beginning at the time it just starts to turn from green to orange. At first they left only in small groups, never alone, but in twos or threes pledging each other to secrecy and mutual protection. The rest gradually started to disobey your orders even as I gave them. Now there is no one left who has not taken up with the enemy, and you know what he will do to them. After intimidating and enticing them into his camp, he will enslave them and send them to the front of the battles that he knows he will lose. He never has supported his troops, especially defectors. What are we going to do? How will you save this situation? Ransom? Subjects ransom Kings, Kings do not ransom their own subjects. Why not just destroy them all like ants crushed beneath your mighty power? Then all of your subjects will become your heirs?"

From a Writing Prompt in Chapter Seven

My Parent's Courtship
I don't know much about my parent's courtship, especially from my from my Dad's point of view. He does not talk much about his past, not because he is ashamed of it, but because it either does not come up, or he can't remember the details. I have heard a few bits of the story, but now, at a time when courtship seems to be such an important part of my life I try to fill in the details. My mother and father were both 27 when they met. They might have been shy and afraid of decision and commitment like me, I think, but I know that both were engaged at least once to other people before they met each other, so that theory does not really hold up. Even though both had graduated, they were still hanging around BYU for some reason, which confirms my fear that there is little hope of finding a mate outside of Provo. They met at a mutual friend's house and hit it off immediately. My mother says that she was all ga-ga in love after that first meeting, but she says that it was that way with all of the several people that she fell in love with. I imagine a lot of witty dialogue and playful teasing right from the start, maybe because that is what lovers do in plays and movies. But when I try to think of something my Dad would say in that first meeting, it always comes out as the sort of self-deprecating, ah-huck ah-huck humor that makes him seem so patriarchal when he is talking to family friends and relatives. "Another day, another dollar in the hole" I hear him say, but that does not quite fit the rest of the story, that was supposed to be a quick, whirlwind romance where my Dad brought flowers and chocolate the day after the first date, and gave my Mom a kiss on the forehead. She told all her roommates that he was the one. They only dated six weeks before they were engaged, and for a good portion of that time my Mom was back in Washington, D.C. so their only communication was letters and calls. My Mom always says that they had played the field and that they finally knew what they were looking for by the time they met each other, so they did not have to date long. The romantic in me thinks that it was fate that kept them available so long and made all of their other relationships end in failure. The worry wort in me says that if I ever get to be that old and find my self still single, I would be desperate enough to settle with anyone who would take me.

Two goals for this class

I like to write, but I do not have a lot of experience as a creative writer. My overall educational goal is to make it through graduate school and go on to teach at a collage level, and I will be doing a lot of writing along the way. That said, one specific thing that I hope to learn in this class is how to write a good personal statement for a graduate school application. I think that they are supposed to be creatively written, so that seems like a goal that fits this class.
Also, I hope to be able to get something that I write in this class published, even if it is only in a BYY publication like Insight.