2011: An Active Life

When I was in high school, I regularly participated in student journalism competitions. Yes, there is such a thing as competitive journalism. One year in particular, at a local competition at Fresno State, I thought I wrote a killer feature article. To where I was convinced I was going to win. As I recall, it was about the Gandhi statue that lives on the campus.

I felt so good about things that a friend and I went speed bowling. I think that may have been the only time I ever broke 100, and I did so in under ten minutes. I'm a terrible bowler.

Imagine my surprise when they called out the top three finishers in features, and none of those names were mine. It turns out the judges' notes on my article said I used the passive voice too often, a big no-no in journalistic writing. Up until then, I had no idea what passive voice even was, let alone how to avoid it. But now I know.

Basically, in the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action. In the passive voice, the subject just sits back and takes whatever the object throws at him. For example:

Active: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Passive: The lazy dog was jumped over by the quick brown fox. 

As an editor, when I get a manuscript written entirely in the passive voice, I kind of want to cry. Recasting passive sentences into the active voice is a tedious, time-consuming process that often seems never ending. But the end result is always worth the effort.

What does this have to do with my goals for 2011? Well, it turns out I live a pretty passive life. I know how to dream big, but I haven't figured out to how to work to make those dreams realities. So that's what I want to do this year. More examples:

• How often do I sit and watch TV, read blogs, or re-read books (passive) when I could be writing, creating, and sharing (active)?
• How often do I go to craft fairs/blogs/stores and say, "I could make that," (passive) when I should actually be making those things (active)?
• How often do I eat what someone else has cooked for me (passive) when I could be increasing my talents and passion for food by creating it myself (active)?
• How much extra time do I spend lying in bed (passive) when I could be spending that time exercising, studying the scriptures, or making a healthy breakfast (active)?
• How long have I been waiting to be loved (passive) instead of looking for the one who might be waiting for me to love him (active)?

So 2011 is the year I edit my time, recast some sentences, and basically just make my life read better. It'll be tricky and it'll likely be tedious, but I'm utterly confident the end result will be totally worth the effort.

Dress code, and other perks

Here is a list of my new job's pros and cons. Consider the pros "treats" if you will.

Pros:

• Wearing jeans to work is wonderful.
• Reading novels is part of my job description.
• Working on a Mac means I can have Firefox, InDesign, and iTunes running simultaneously without my computer crashing.
  
• Having my novel (which is yet to be written) published just became a real possibility.
• Relocating to a place filled with friends and family I have missed dearly will happen soon.

Cons:

• I left my house at 6:15 this morning. Seriously folks. To know me is to know that is crazy talk.
• Gone are the days of going home and watching a lunch-time episode of Gilmore Girls.
• My commute jumped from 3 minutes to over an hour.
• I must leave my lovely home and roommate next month, not to mention a city I adore.

Me and Lorelei or, the BBC 100 Books Meme

I spent far too much time trying to rip a clip from the episode of Gilmore Girls that aired today. Lorelei pretends to be a book editor while making small talk with some guests at the world's most heinous bed and breakfast. So here's what they say:

Lorelai: I published Good Night Spoon... and the Horse that wanted to Bark.

Guest: Oh, I've read to my grandson! The horse really wanted to bark, and it finally does, and... (to Lorelai) How does it end?


Lorelai: It dies.


Rory: But... the horse learned to bark and achieved its goal, so it was really a happy ending!


Well, Lorelei Gilmore is merely a pretend person who pretended to be a book editor. I, on the other hand, am a real person who really is a book editor! This week I was offered a position at a tiny little publisher down in Springville, Utah. I'm so excited, and I feel so blessed to be able to work in my chosen profession.

However, since it is Thoughts for Thursday and I feel like I ought to prove to the world that I do more than watch Gilmore Girls, I will now try and prove that I am worth my salt as a reader.

I lifted this from a friend's blog, who in turn lifted it from a friend's blog. Also, my sister also did this on facebook.

"The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?”
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X (So many times. Sooooo many times.)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible X (I'm pretty sure I've read it all. I took Bible as Lit and went to seminary.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X (I'm really surprised that you haven't read this, Rachel.)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (My cousin's favorite book. I own it and it's on my list.)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34 Emma - Jane Austen X
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X (Right now, it's tied with P&P for my favorite story.)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X (One of my least favorite books that I had to read every year from 8th to 10th grade.)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (I've borrowed it from one of my sisters. It is swimming in the sea of books next to my bed.)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (I remember that one of my sisters used to LOVE this book.)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X (I think I did. I may of fudged my way through it in high school.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
TOTAL: 35. Now, I have a degree in English, but last I heard, 35 was more than 6. I think I'm in possession of at least 5 more, so I'll keep on going.

Thoughts for Thursdays

Okay, Thursdays are going to be something slightly more academic: an article that I found interesting, an essay, perhaps a book review. However, today, it's only a link to an article I found interesting. It's an article about the sordid history of the Times New Roman font. Who knew such a boring and common font had such a potentially controversial history? I initially had more to say, but it got preempted by more exciting news:

I have an actual interview, with an actual publisher to be an actual editor.

I know! Who'd have thunk that the English major might actually get a job in her chosen field of study!

People say that you shouldn't get your hopes up. I say tosh to that. All of my hopes are so far up that it will be nothing short of a spectacular let down if things don't work out, but I've survived spectacular let downs in the past, with the help of my friends Ben and Jerry. I'm just the type of girl who goes all in, no matter what. It's a better way to live, if you ask me. Try it some time.

Anyway, wish me luck, pray for me, whatever you feel comfortable doing. Thanks!