Sunday, April 1, 2012

On Buring Popcorn...

I live in a dorm.

As my original, peppy, beautiful RA once said "We live in a house of sticks."

She was so very, very, very, very right.

And today, when enjoying some bonding time with my roommate, we are getting along so much better now than we once did which is a Godsend, I burned a bag of popcorn. And then, for exactly twenty seconds, the fire alarm went off.

In the course of the year we have had two fire drills, one each semester, and so far (which I say with fingers crossed) we have not had to evacuate because of someone being a moron and lighting things in the microwave on fire. Today I was that moron.

Thankfully, I had the sense to 1)shut the microwave to stop smoke from billowing all through our common room 2)open all the windows in said common room, including one of the screens which I then threw my burnt bag of popcorn out of (it was not on fire, no worries). And then, when my roommate and I were basically being smothered by smoke, the alarm started a high pitched squeak, which is very different from it's normal loud blaring shriek that sounds like the world is ending, and the alarms began to blink, that bright white light which will no doubt blind you if you look right into it.

And then, twenty seconds later it was done.

No one had to evacuate, though a few of the girls on my floor were like "Hayley what did you do?" and then we all laughed about it.

Which got me thinking, writing is almost like burning a bag of popcorn.

Bear with me for a moment, and I'll explain.

Writing almost always starts out fun, with promise of delicious treats and spunky characters, things that one loves. Then you get going, popping one could say, and sometimes everything goes down without a hitch. Other times, the popcorn burns. You get going and you've got all these great kernels of ideas and you're writing away and then you hit a road block, maybe you started over thinking, maybe you just can't think anymore, but either way it starts to burn.

And that is where writing just goes weird. Or rather it seems like that, seems like it's completely out of whack and nothing will ever straighten out. Like you may just have aggravated forty other kids who now have to go outside in a cool foggy afternoon when they'd rather be playing video games or watching television, and they will never speak to you again.

Well it straightens out, and it works. It may take twenty seconds for that alarm to stop preparing itself to ring, and then you can laugh. Then you can just look at your writing and stop taking yourself too seriously and it's all okay.

So you burned one bag of popcorn, maybe this one story isn't meant--just yet--to be. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the burnt bag of popcorn anyways! Give it out to the squirrels, laugh about your mishaps with your friends, enjoy the process that it took to get you to that burned bag of popcorn. And all the stuff that comes after.

I know I'm not making any sense right now, but I don't know. The idea just came to me and, well, I just was really inspired. By a bag of popcorn.

Yeah.

It's the little things, right?