Archive for the ‘Writer’s Corner’ Category

21
Sep

Ah, the virtues of plagiarism….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno

It’s been a long time since I last blogged. I know this because my last post was about my near-death experience giving birth to Mason, which was in honor of his birthday…seven weeks ago….

If I hadn’t remembered that fact, my absence still would have been apparent by the fact that I couldn’t remember my username. Or my password . Okay, I admit it: I couldn’t remember my blog URL. Happy now?

And why do I even bother to check the little box that says “Remember me”? It never does.

                  Blog: Password? 
                  Me: Hi, remember me? I made you? 
                  Blog: Password?
                  Me: Blog, I am your mother.
                  Blog: Password?

My failure to compose hasn’t been for lack of chaos. There’s been lots of chaos. Abundant chaos. Chaos overflowing like 6-people’s worth of laundry out of a pitiful wicker laundry basket. The problem is that either A) I get sidetracked by more chaos on my way to document the chaos that already happened, B) I compose a pithy blogpost in my mind, somebody interrupts my train of thought by asking why I’m talking to myself, and I forget that I was even thinking, or C)…um… I’m pretty sure I had a “C” when I started this list, but I have no idea what it was….

The other major stumbling block has been the fact that my blog and I have this agreement that I won’t turn it into a forum for pointless ravings and rantings, and it will remember me if I check the box that says, “Remember me”. Only one of us is keeping our end of the bargain. But if you nice people are going to spend ten minutes of your time vicariously experiencing gross ineptitude  through my leopard-spotted reading glasses, then I feel I should at least thank you by wrapping it up into a neat little package and tie it with a bow.  If you’re going to be so kind as to hop on my train, I should get you somewhere, right? But making sense out of chaos is no easy task, and so I’ve chosen the path of avoidance.

Now, it’s probably obvious by now that I’m back on track, sitting at my computer typing, and ready to share with you a glimpse of the chaos. Obvious, yes, but also dead wrong. When I sat down, I had high hopes of telling you how the two older kids and I spent our day walking up and down one of the busiest-yet-least-interesting streets in town while my Suburban was having the a/c replaced, and how we ate Sno Cones at Bahama Bucks and the toilet is so high off the ground that our feet dangled (one of us who is not me actually had to get off the toilet by falling into a fake plant). But for the life of me, I can’t think of any way to make a freakishly-high commode relevant.

But I did get this really funny email today, courtesy of my writing buddy Helen Hanson (HelenHanson.com), to whom I owe an email regarding her generous offer for me to participate in a new blogging endeavor. See? I’m not even composing email these days. Anyway, for lack of anything better to share with you, I’m going to share half of this funny email with you. I’m saving the other half in case I’m still deep in avoidance next week.

You probably shouldn’t drink anything hot and/or fizzy while you read this, unless you enjoy having hot and/or fizzy liquid come out your nose.

A paraprosdokian (from the Greek meaning “beyond” and “expectation”) is a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax . For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists. Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a syllepsis.

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

If I agreed with you we’d both be wrong.

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?

Some people are like Slinkies … not really good for anything, but you can’t help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that you don’t need it.

Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “If an emergency, notify:” I put “DOCTOR”.

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6
Apr

Book review: My Bangs Look Good and other lies I tell myself

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno Tags: , , ,

I read a book last week.

Seriously–I did. Cover to cover. Including the prologuey-intro part. I had to lock myself in the bathroom to do it, but I read it.

No doubt you are asking yourself, what book could be so riveting that Ashley finally broke her longstanding record of not managing to read anything longer than SkippyJon Jones? Well, I’ll tell you, because I hate to keep you in unnecessary suspense.

The book is My Bangs Look Good…And Other Lies I Tell Myself: A Tired Supergirl’s Search for Truth, by Susanna Foth Aughtmon.

Right off the bat the title had me hooked, because there is a reason why I don’t wear bangs. Just sayin’.

Now, I have to tell you—this woman is my soul sistah. Case in point: in relating a story of an unfortunate laundry injury, Aughtmon writes, “I always knew the laundry was a tool of Satan.” OHMYGOSH—ME TOO!!! Can I get a “AMEN,” fellow soul sistahs?

Aughtmon’s writing is fresh and conversational. Her anecdotes are you’d-better-read-this-with-your-legs-crossed-if-you’ve-given-birth-more-than-once funny. But it’s not just a collection of funny stories. See, each chapter addresses a different lie the Liar (that would be Satan) uses to defeat us Tired Supergirls (oh— when you read the book, you get to be a member of the Tired Supergirl club. I mean, there’s not like a form to fill out, or an official membership card stuck between page 12 and 13 or anything like that. It’s like a secret sistahood of superness. And tiredness…).

On the subject of whether God really cares about each of us as individuals (because you know the Liar would love to have us believe that He doesn’t), Aughtmon uses the example of  her love for her own children:

“I am surrounded by three small people almost all day long…they still tend to cling to my legs or lie on me or breath very near to my face almost every day. Every once in a while I just yell out, ‘Everybody give me some room!’ This works for about 3.7 seconds, and then I am back to being swarmed. But the thing is, I would do anything for these three little people. I think about them almost all the time. I will do kung fu on anyone who tries to harm them. (I don’t even know kung fu, but I’m sure it will come to me if and when I need it.)”

 I personally like the image of Jesus breaking out the spiritual kung fu on my behalf.

One of my constant struggles is hearing God’s voice. Sometimes I think that because it took me so long to finally submit to listening to Him (okay, in the interest of truth and accountability and stuff, the whole submitting thing is still a work in progress. Don’t judge.), that my ears aren’t tuned in to Him like they should be. I am easy pray for the Liar when he says (in Susanna’s words): “Obviously, God has someone else he would rather talk to. There are certain people that he talks to, like pastors and small group leaders and Beth Moore, and then there is you. You? Not so much.”

Of course, God has given us the truth in His word. In each chapter, Susanna cites applicable scripture that speaks to the tired supergirl’s heart to confront the lies.

Many of my friends—not just my real life, hug you on the way out of church friends, but those sweet cyber-friends that I am so blessed to have met through the blog and the FB Down syndrome community—have told me, “You need to take everything you blog about and put it into a book.” I love when people say that, because it makes me feel all loved and validated and stuff. And I’d love to write a book like that, if I ever finish the novel I’m {THIS CLOSE} to finishing.

But while you’re waiting (and knowing me, it could be a long wait), you should totally check out My Bangs Look Good. Just don’t forget to cross your legs….

Seriously, go get the book. It’s available NOW at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Oh, and from Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/goodbangs  And in the meantime, you can check out Susanna’s blog, Confessions of a Tired Supergirl. It’s on my blogroll, over ———-> there.

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7
Feb

Pride and—-no, just pride….

   Posted by: Ashley Moreno Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I love wordsmithery, shopping for words in the rich aisles of the English language, meshing and moshing and molding them together to paint pictures vernacular and spectacular. And like Ozymandius and his ill-fated stone monument to greatness, I dream that my words will live on when I’m gone. Because I’m all delusional and stuff, too….

About a week ago, I penned a quick blurb and posted it as my Facebook status. A few minutes later, a friend commented and copied it for her status. It’s an awesome feeling, knowing that something you wrote resonated with a fellow traveller on this journey. Another reposted, then another, and soon I was seeing people comment on their postings, saying things like “I like this—I’m going to copy and post it, too!”

Somewhere along the way, as I saw my words posted and reposted, taking on a life of their own, reaching people I never could have reached on my own, a thought crossed my mind.

“I’m not getting the credit for this.”

Admitting that makes me cringe.  While a whole community bound together by nothing more than a thread that runs through an extra chromosome in our children saw truth and spread truth, I started pouting that my by-line wasn’t attached to it. Nevermind the fact that somewhere in the wild word, someone might read those words and be changed by them. That person would never realize that it was MY words that changed them.

I related this story to my family today at the lunch table. I asked them if they could identify the sin behind my emotions, and before I had the “-n” tacked on to the end of “si-” Ethan blurted out “PRIDE!” 

Ah, there it was, obvious even to a 10 year old. Pride, we learned this past week, is the root of all contention. The elevation of self-interest over common good. Not to say that my words were such an enormous, world changing contribution to the common good. But boy, did I act as if they were. God’s gift to Facebook.

I’m not going to post the post-in-question here. Believe me, I want to. I toyed with the idea of starting out this post with the quote-in-question. But I’m not going to. Call it an exercise in exorcising the spirit of pride.

A few days later, it happened again. Only this time, the quote was something I’d written a few months back, recirculating among the Facebook community. And here it was, being posted and commented on and reposted. I felt that familiar monster clawing through into my consciousness. And I stopped myself. What does it matter whether anyone knows whose words those are? Isn’t it wonderful that I am part of this community of wonderful people who strive to empower each other in the fight for truth? Isn’t the far greater issue that someone might read one of these posts and see Down syndrome in a different, more truthful light?

It’s been a week of growing for me, to be sure. (And not just because I’ve fallen off of my diet and eaten an entire loaf of homemade bread and 3 boxes of Triscuits and 1/2 a bottle of Shiraz this week. Tomorrow’s another day….)  I’m honored that someone saw promise and hope and truth in my words, and that rather than tossing them into the FB dust-bin that is the “older post” page, they shared them.  That is something real. It doesn’t matter whether I get any credit for it.

At least, not until I’m a published author with an agent and an editor and an option deal. Then I’m pretty sure it’ll be copyright infringement….

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