The following stress release, or rant if you prefer, is meant to relieve the stress I am feeling over completing my Twitterive assignment for Writing Research and Technology.
In the first few weeks of the semester I looked forward to the weeks that would be focused on the Twitterive since I was finding the reading based blog posts to be so cumbersome. I had no idea what I was in for.
I call myself partially creative. Only partially because I love writing creative stories and I can be quite good at it, but I need guidelines. Tell me to write a story about the book we just read from a different character's point of view. I'm right there. You would like a poem based on my tweets? No problem. You want me to create a personal essay on why I write? When can I start?! But now you want me to decide on a place (any place, even a feeling) and create a "Twitterive" (what the hell is that) with a prologue and multiple genres as the only guidlines?? You lost me.
Whose idea was this? What am I basing my place on? When should I a have a SPECIFIED number of genres? Where do I start?  Why can't you pick the genres for me? HOW DO I DO THIS?!
How's that for 5 W's and 1 H?
The ironic thing is that this is just the sort of challenge that I wanted to be able to "grow as a writer." Every good writer has faced challenges at some point right? Be careful what you wish for. Now I've got this 5,000 pound burden attached to this Twitterive: If I don't do well, I'm a bad writer. I realize no one told me to put that much stock into this project, but there's no going back now. However, I am open to an intervention. I spend much more time worrying about the Twitterive than I do working on it. I do have other classes and assignments due this semester, believe it or not.
The good news is, I've finally gotten to the point where I can semi-productively think about my Twitterive without having stomach cramps. Can you call that growth? I don't know. All I know is that this better turn out to be one heck of a Twitterive, or it might take me years to recover.

The following blog post was created for my Writing Research and Technology class. After working on a project called a Twitterive for a few weeks we had the opportunity to discuss our progress with our peers, get feedback and make revision plans. This is a brief summary of the revisions I plan to make.
After getting feedback on my Twitterive there are some things that I am sure that it needs. I was aware that it lacked cohesiveness and a reptend before the workshop and my classmates have helped me to develop some of my ideas. I would like to make the map concept that I have been working on my reptend. I am still playing around with exactly what this concept will result in, but I am getting closer to settling on one idea. At this point I am trying to decide between coordinates or step by step directions that culminate in some sort of map. 

I would also like to add a story, fictional or real, to add cohesiveness to the entire Twitterive. I am also struggling with the execution of this idea, but I started writing a couple stories so that I can at least figure out what type would be best. I will also add a few of the six word stories we began creating in class, although I am not sure where I will add them in. 

Although this may not seem like a lot, these are major elements that were missing from my Twitterive and having more of a specific direction to go in has renewed my confidence that I will turn out a great final product. I would like to thank my classmates for their help and I look forward to their continued feedback next week. Some questions I would like answered are:
Does my "place" make sense to others?
Is my Twitterive cohesive enough?
Is there anything that takes away from the Twitterive that I should take out?
Is my Twitterive boring?
Is there any way to make the formatting less uniform?

The following blog post was created for my Writing Research and Technology class. The questions being asked and answered are regarding my Twitterive and are meant to aid my process and help me to make improvements.
1. WHO are thee characters in you story?
The characters in my story are my mom and me. Since my "place" is the feelings that result from the conversations we have, I didn't think it would be appropriate to introduce any other characters. However, a potential 3rd character could be whatever voice my mom is hearing in her head that keeps her from listening to me.
2. WHAT is your story? WHAT genres/modes are you using for your story?
My story is the ongoing struggle and emotions that result from my attempts to have a successful conversation with my mother. It is also the story of how I've tried to bring our conversation problem to her attention and the feelings and reactions that result from that.
So far I have used a song, a recipe, a phone conversation, pictures, a letter, a poem, tweeets and fading font. I am currently working on more genres including the concept of a map and a story.
3. WHEN does your story take place?
While the "place" that I am discussing in my Twitterive is one that I have been in for years, my story focuses on the time when I found myself in this place more noticeably. This occurred after I left my job of 2 years in late January and it continues now.
4. WHERE is your place?
My place is a feeling of loneliness, despair and frustration that is borne out of not being heard by my mother.
5. WHY do you feel a connection/lack of connection to this place?
I found it hard to answer this question since my "place" is a feeling of disconnection.  I could answer why I find myself in that place. The reason why I find myself in this place is because I found myself in a situation that required a sympathetic ear and this has always been something that my mother has had a hard time giving. I have known that my mother has this issue, but in my vulnerability I was hoping that she would understand how serious my need was and adjust accordingly. It is also very difficult to completely eliminate your mother as a person that you can go to when you need someone to listen.
6. How do you show your audience your connection/lack of connection to this place?
I mainly show my audience my lack of connection to my place by illustrating my failed attempts to communicate with my mother and her reactions to those attempts. I also let them see what I see when I am trying to talk to her.

   The following is the writing process I have gone through so far in creating my Twitterive for Writing Research and Technology.
     My writing process thus far has had the appearance of being painful. Painfully slow, painfully jumbled and painfully bad. I have found the simplest tasks, such as posting to Twitter, to be incredibly frustrating, time consuming and ending in dissatisfaction. I started the assignment by reading other Twitterives and then sitting and thinking about what I wanted to say. I first experienced a disconnect when attempting to decide what I should include in the project and how to make the readers understand how I am feeling. I have been taking notes on what genres I would like to include, but I am finding that it is better to not to try and make the writing fit the genre. I need to accept the the mode as it comes. What I have come up with has come in disconnected, disjointed spasms. The most frustrating thing is that I cannot seem to dig myself out of this rut. I have attempted to change my location, my process and even my writing style, all to no avail. It has not helped that I have been waiting until the last minute to begin putting my ideas on the actual page.
    Through this process I have discovered that the disjointed spasms might be the best method for allowing my readers to understand how I feel in my place. It has been the only assignment that can be made better by this stunted, disorganized process. I can think of a random piece and add it in without thinking about organization just then. Since it is personal I  do not have to force a connection. I do not feel connected in my place, and that is the point. I am not limited by genre, and this has made the process much better. If one genre isn't working, I can move on to another, and another, and another and they will all work together to make an awesome final product. The writer's block I have been limited by is finally working in my favor. I am confident that it will all come together, and this is the first time that I have had that confidence in months.

The following is a prologue for a project for Writing Research and Technology, called a Twitterive. A Twitterive is multimodal narrative in which multiple genres are used to show readers a person's relationship, or lack thereof, to a specific place of that person's choosing. This is the introduction to the Twitterive and is meant to illustrate my inspiration, my place, my theme and my repetend. I am still working on my Twitterive and my progress can be viewed under the assignments tab on this website.
    I discovered my place while attempting to avoid another one. My twitter posts were focused on the issues I was having before during and after quitting my job at the beginning of this semester. Since I still find that topic very depressing, I wanted to steer clear of it. Quitting was such a hard decision and I am still struggling with the change and so it continued coming up in my tweets. I realized it would be nearly impossible to not address this topic in my Twitterive in any way so I began taking a closer look at the issues that were coming up after my resignation. One that has always been there, but seems to bother me more at this time of uncertainty, is the trouble that I have completing a conversation with my mother.
    Since I can never tell when she has stopped listening, I can talk to her for long periods of time before I realize she hasn't been paying attention. I have chosen to make my place the feeling of building frustration and despair that results from these incomplete conversations. I have begun to feel like an outsider in my home, since it feels like I am the only one who encounters this problem with my her. Even though I know my mom very well, these conversations make her seem like a stranger to me, especially since I've tried to address the problem several times. My repetend is the feeling of talking to myself. All of my attempts to address the issue fall on deaf ears. It is also important to not that although this is something that bothers me, it does not define my relationship with my mom. It is just one place in our relationship.
The follow tweets inspired this Twitterive and vice versa:

• The funny thing is, when I pretend to not listen to her she doesn't seem to notice. How do I get through???!!! #twitterive

• She thinks I'm dramatic. Maybe I am, but how would she know when she only ever hears half of any story? #twitterive #mommyissues

• Look at me!!! #twitterive

• I can't live with her, but I definitely can't live without her. #twitterive #mommyissues

• Ever have one of those dreams when you're talking but no sound comes out? When I'm awake I'm talking, but no one can hear me #twitterive

The following is a Found Poem I created for Writing Research and Technology using my own tweets which are listed below the poem. This poem is meant to convey the frustration and isolation I feel when I am trying to have a conversation with my mother and discover that she is not listening.

Alien
Talking over never
blast of accomplishment
only draining time without focus
no part of truth
close look.....
                harder looking......
slave of dreams
long silence....
new effort impulse
                 ..... enter impossible
                                    ...... alien.

The following microfictions were created for Writing Research and Technology.
"The Conversation" is based on the tweet below. The tweet is the first line of the story.
The line "I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing." in "Red" was taken from page 6 of How to Tame a Wild Tongue, a chapter of "Borderland/La Frontera" by Gloria Anzaldua.

The Conversation
                I can’t live with her, but I definitely can’t live without her. I walk in the door and the burdens of the week begin to lift. It’s been a long one. “Hi” she says, “I haven’t seen you all week. How was it?” These three magic words are the only excuse I need to tear down the defensive wall that’s been under construction all week. I tell her the whole lot; the lows, the highs and everything in between. I tell her about the one part of my week from hell that I’m proud of. I worked up the nerve to tell my boss that I deserve a raise. She’d been telling me I should for as long as I can remember. I was confident, succinct and resolute, just like my boss when she told me no. I tell her how I’m not sure if I should continue if I’m not going to get what I deserve. Saying that out loud makes me cry because thought of leaving a job I love and having to do something else is overwhelming. Despite the tangled yarn of emotions I’m feeling I can’t help but to be at peace. I’m home now and she’s going to tell me how to make it all come together. I am finally silent and look to her with tear filled eyes of expectation. “You know, you really should ask your boss for a raise” she says. “If she says no, you should seriously consider doing something else.”
Red
Louis avoided the stare of a scowling older woman, walked to the curb and unlocked his car on auto-pilot. He didn’t see the red until he got in and noticed that sunlight wasn’t penetrating the windows as it should be. It was then that he looked up and saw what looked like blood smeared on all of the windows. They had concentrated on his windshield so he couldn’t drive it. A lump was working its way up his throat, but he defiantly forced it back with a hard swallow. He turned on his windshield wipers. They smeared the top layer of the crimson paint, but the bottom layer had dried. He had grown accustomed to this type of harassment. His neighbors had taunted him mercilessly since he moved into the apartment building. They saw the term “registered sex offender” and only thought of one thing. He hadn’t touched a child since he was a child, but they had no interest in hearing that. She had been his girlfriend and only two years younger than him. None of that mattered to anyone, the judge, the girl’s parents, potential employers.  I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. He went back into his apartment, turned all four burners to gas, doused his curtains, mattress and couch in lighter fluid and set them all ablaze. He walked back down the steps, waved to a smirking older woman and walked to work.

Perhaps this is sad, but Wegman's grocery store is my native place. It has been my favorite place to shop for years and like the character in "A Native Hill" I choose to go there even though there are several stores much closer to my home. Unlike the character I am unable to find flaws in my native place. I am a person who does not enjoy change and Wegman's has remained the same friendly, enticing, affordable place that it has been from the first time I set foot inside. I know where everything is, and to my great pleasure, this remains true in any Wegman's I happen to visit since all of the interiors are identical. Like Berry's character, I am so familiar with my native place that I know where everything is. I am able to go to the areas I frequent on auto-pilot, sometimes going those places by accident. I know to avoid the cheese section since I hate cheese and the way it smells. I know to pass the bakery section in case I see something good. I can tell from a distance if they are out of an item.
While Berry's character was able to embrace the changes his native place had undergone, I would not be able to do this. I have abandoned brand name for the high quality, low cost of Wegman's own brand. I am so comfortable with my strange place because of the atmosphere the employees create with their friendly demeanor and superior preparation of fresh items as well as the low prices. If any of these things were to be removed I would not continue to go there. While Wegman's is a sort of "home" for me, I would not want to go back simply for memories. Berry's character was thrust into his native place at birth. I found mine over time and chose it for myself.

"An Encounter" takes us on the journey of two young men who have grown weary of the everyday and want a brief change of scenery. I ended up in my strange place as a result of similar motivation. Out of a desire to break away from the school/work routine that keeps me isolated from those I love for 15 weeks, I decided to visit my brother in Boston for his birthday. Knowing I would only be able to spend a single day away and that my funds were limited, I purchased a Mega Bus ticket which would allow me to travel overnight both ways, giving me a full 17 hours in town.
_My longest bus ride to date had been 20 minutes within the same city and so Mega Bus was my strange place. Like Joyce's characters I tried to remain serious and stoic while waiting in line and after getting on the bus. This did not last long since there were a lot of friendly people in line. I had to wait some time outside for the bus to arrive, a concept I am not used to. A man behind me struck up a conversation about the sudden return of winter and how short the line was in comparison to his last trip. He thought this was a good sign and that not many people would be on the bus. I want him to shut up. He is messing up my mean mug. And he was wrong.
Because of my disdain for heights, I strongly desired to ride on the lower level of this double-decker bus, but those in front of me in line chose those seats first. I scrambled to the upper deck to find that the only row of multiple empty seats was at the back of the bus where there were five seats across. There were four empty seats. I folded myself into the one closest to the window on the right side. I was feeling good about my seat selection until a couple of loud, young girls sat next to me. One had a voice similar to nails on a chalkboard. Of course she doesn't shut up for hours despite the silence and even snoring from the other riders.
The bus smells like a musty man's armpit and someone has the audacity to eat what smells like an Italian hoagie. The smell gets worse. My seat is much less comfortable than it felt originally. The lights above me remind me of alien spaceships. After what I feel is a reasonable amount of time, I put my ear phones in and let my Ipod drown out my annoying neighbor. Much like Joyce's character I would be relieved to run into the annoying man from the line. I did not experience fear in this strange place, but discomfort was a theme that carried throughout.
The universal themes I identified were fear of the unknown, despite the whole ordeal having been our own idea, having to adjust preconceived notions of what our "strange place" will be like, wanting to be left alone to process our "strange place" in our own way, a strong desire to blend in and grasping for anything familiar when things become uncomfortable.