Blog 23

Guilty by association

Here I am, sitting next to this person who I used to know very well. I’m infuriated with myself for letting my friends convince me to do what they do. This kind of behavior always gets me in trouble. This room is getting colder and colder as time goes by. I’ve obviously been in a room like this before but things are different when you don’t belong here. This time I can’t leave until someone shows up with some money or these badges have a change of heart. At this point, I don’t think john even cares about where we are and what we are here for. John might as well have his own apartment here. If you haven’t guessed, we are in jail. I don’t want to get into why we are here, but I will so you can understand why I feel the way I do.
I guess it will all start with my friends. The friends that I have are my friends for a reason. There were a few times in particular when I needed someone to talk to or just to be there for me, and they were always there. True friends never need to be asked twice for help. In one specific situation, someone in my family passed away and it left me in shock and I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. Instead of me asking my friends to spend time with me, they just did it. My friends came by the house every single day with my favorite candy and other things that make me smile. The thing about these friends is that we treat each other like family. I honestly believe that what happened to me gave me a reason to cherish my friends more. College made things weird between us, but I found a way to make it work.
I usually come home on weekends to spend time with my friends because I don’t live around them anymore. The sad part is, I’m the only one from my crew that made it out of the city for school. This makes things weird when I come home because in order to be with my friends, I need to be around some things that could be illegal. Even though I was raised to stay away from these types of situations, part of me still wants to take the risk. I already knew that some of my friends were involved in drugs and alcohol but I only made a big deal out of it when I saw the flashing lights. We got lucky more times than I can remember simply because we were dumb youngsters and they had bigger fish to fry, but I’m sure that they didn’t forget our faces.
One time in particular, I wasn’t as lucky as I was used to being. My boys and I were headed to a party when one of the guys started talking about what he did last night. The kid named john was telling us that he broke in to this old lady’s house and stole some money and jewelry. John said that someone might’ve seen him break in because he heard the infamous sirens as soon as he took his first step out the back door. As expected, he took off running into the woods. In some cases, the woods would be the first place that police look when there is a disturbance. While John was running, he said that he heard keys shaking from different areas of the woods. At this point he realized that the cops had him cornered. At this point he fell to the floor and covered himself up with leaves and dirt. It was so dark outside that police couldn’t see him with their flashlights. John had on all black clothing and ended up sliding to the nearest bushes. Eventually the cops left the woods and returned to the house to try and gather some clues. John decided to run as fast he could to our friend’s house that lived a few blocks away. The new fugitive realized about an hour before we left for the party that he was missing his wallet. A flashback of his run through the woods came to john immediately. Unfortunately John was careless and didn’t treat as seriously as the rest of us. We were now about ten minutes away from the party when we saw the flashes of red and blue on the houses around us. We all suddenly took off like a rocket in all directions. I don’t know why I ran but my instincts decided for me. This decision was very stupid because as soon as I ran, I became a criminal. The cops don’t care why I’m running and they are planning to throw me into the same jail as the real criminals. I guess I have extremely bad luck because as I ran I realized that John was right behind me and so were the cops. We ran into a dead end and realized where I was headed. I was too scared to think and the sound of keys made things worse.
The cell was small and cold. I had plenty of time to observe my surroundings in case someone asks me what it was like. I also had enough time to think about what got me into this dark lifeless corner of the world. I was associating myself with the wrong people. I felt like I had to be around them because they were my friends. I can honestly say that I have made progress despite my current situation because I have identified the problem. I realize that a part of my heart felt as if I owed them for being with me through my rough times. In actuality, true friends don’t do things like that for a reward. I guess the title of this chapter of my life would be called guilty by association. I wasn’t a guilty person. I was as guilty as my friends were because I was with them for the wrong reasons. I guess this was yet another lesson learned. I just hope I get out soon so I can learn from my mistakes.

Blog 22

Big Ugly Review
This is an organization based on giving writers a chance and place to be noticed.The big Ugly Review is a non-paying market which ensures us that they only have room for writers who love and seeing writing as art.This is a theme based venue that gives the writers freedom to write about anything as long as it has something to do with the current theme.

Past themes- Fight or flight, The Body issue, The Contest issue, Hidden agendas, Maps, Broken things, and The First time.

Submission- All submissions must relate to the theme. Responses are from 4 to 8 weeks in length.You can enter via email or via US Mail.

Fiction submissions: fiction@biguglyreview.com
Non-fiction submissions: nonfiction@biguglyreview.com
Poetry submissions: poetry@biguglyreview.com
Photo-essay submissions: photo@biguglyreview.com
Music submissions: music@biguglyreview.com
Film submissions: film@biguglyreview.com

Categories-
Short Story: Up to 5,000 words

Flash Fiction: Up to 2,000 words

Creative Nonfiction: Up to 5,000 words

Poetry: Poems of any length and form.

Photo essay: series of ten photographs with captions

Music: send as an mp3 attachment or on CD

Film: films of 5 minutes or less


Big Ugly Review is posted online twice a year which gives plenty of time to perfect your work.

blog 21

In the homework I noticed that there was alot of writing about how important the readers are and how you need to tap into what they want.I specifically liked one of the suggestions about picking an idea from our journals and writing different beginings to the strories. It is also important to write from different points of view. This strategy will be helpful because it will give you so many different options to choose from.I do see why it is important to find some inspiration to write because it will give you feelings and emotion which turns into words. i used some of the strategies with my fourth draft revisions, I found it to be very helpful.