I try to over compensate.
Actually, I'm planning to write an email to a friend, and I'm a little rusty with my writing skills since I haven't typed anything or had an original thought in several months. It's weird how my inner monologue tends to mimic the narrative style of the most recent book I've read. Unfortunately, the most recent novel I've read was a whining tale of teenage angst.
I really didn't like that book.
Usually when I'm into a book, I try to finish reading it in one or two sittings. That being said, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was a hassle. I would have used a different word, but some people might have been offended. I read the first twenty to fifty pages in the library and then I bought a used copy from the half price bookstore. The next day was a blur where I spent most of my time either reading in bed or on my desk chair. I remembered I stopped once to warm-up a can of ravioli. I'm sure my copy of The Deathly Hollows still has several stains of meat sauce. I'm that classy.
There were very few books that interested me in middle school, but I specifically remember one novel that captivated my attention from cover to cover. It was a very dumb book; I'm not even going to look up the title. The novel revolved around a colony of talking lemmings who were approaching the fateful day where they all committed suicide. If you haven't heard the common misconception about lemmings, they're cute furry rodents who run off cliffs in mass hoards for no apparent reason. The protagonist of the novel curiously wondered why they all committed mass suicide, and every lemming he asked, whether they were young or old, told him the same thing, 'We've always jumped off cliffs; it's just something lemmings do.' It was very unsettling for the lemming, but when it was time, he felt the sudden urge to run. And while he ran, other lemmings joined him until the whole colony was around him and they were all headed toward the cliffs. And at the very tip of the cliff, he had a sudden urge to live. He scurried past the waves and waves of lemmings plunging toward their deaths, and when he approached his family's burrows, he saw that all of the young infant lemmings were left to restart the colony and the older lemmings had died to insure enough resources for the next generation. One of the infants asked if protagonist the was going to help them rebuild, and he said that he needed to find his own place in the world. He wasn't a lemming anymore because he didn't jump off cliffs; he survived. It was a very short book, roughly a hundred pages.
I'm sure the book was about peer pressure or self identity or something, but I've never really thought about it. I was just easily amused, and I had a soft spot for talking animals.
Sometimes when I write, I wonder if I'm being original by preserving my thoughts and feelings instead of passively letting them slip through my consciousness like everyone else. I guess it's weird that I'm in early twenties, about one year away from graduating college with two science degrees, but I'm still fixated on writing stories and creating characters with depth and emotions. I wonder if I'm being progressive or regressive with my thoughts and ideas, and when I approach my metaphoric cliff, if I'll jump, stay an adolescent, or become something else.
These are just a few thoughts stirred from a short book that I read several years ago.
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