ATHOUSANDWORDS

Well played office, well played.

(via theofficenbc)

popculturebrain:

Interesting.

Not sure how I like this Office writers. We will see.

(via huffposttv)

fishingboatproceeds:

88,000 notes?!

(By the way, you can follow Sarah on tumblr. Also the President.)

Kansas City Public Library, Missouri. The building was designed by Dimensional Innovations. Local residents selected the titles of the books that are displayed on the bookshelf.

Awesome!

(via earthswinging)

jessblack:

Sneak peak pt 2 + color

This is an illustration proposal that Jess has done for my children’s book! This is great!

I finished a written piece today and it feels great!!! It feels really satifying to finish one of my written pieces. I have been working on a children’s book for the past 3 months that I am going to submit to my college publishing company for hopeful publication. (Which would be amazing!) The thing is it still needs major overhaulin’ and the illustrations need drawn still. I am in luck though! I have this college colleague, Jess, who just graduated college this past school year who is (biased opinion) an absolutely AMAZING artist. I have always really liked her work and had told her a couple of years ago that if I ever had the chance to publish a children’s book she would be the first person I would go to for illustrations. I wanted to write a story but didn’t know how to get started. My fiancee one day said I should write a story about Jess’ monsters that she draws, so I set out to write the story. It has taken me longer than I wanted to, but I finished it and that is what matters. So as far as today goes … I am a winner!

Here is Jess’ tumblr: http://jessblack.tumblr.com/ and here is her artist facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/panduckstudio. Check her out!

novicephoenix:

When will people understand this?

So incredibly true!

So last week I presented at my university’s annual Day of Scholarship and I was incredibly happy with the final project and the turn out of people. But what happened on the Day of Scholarship and how it went isn’t the main focus, the main focus is that of the topic that I presented on and the knowledge gained.

For the past semester I have been in an independent study course that a professor of mine and I created. The course was entitled Pushing Boundaries in Adolescent Literature. The course has sparked a lot of great conversations and topics but one question that continuously comes up is the idea of censorship and literary merit. For example: if a YA novel contains sex scenes or drug use does the merit of that novel decrease and more importantly is that content “okay” to be published for young adult’s eyes? I tried to make the claim in my presentation last Friday that if we can experience or read about it in the news why can’t we read about it in fiction. Part of this claim is loose ended though, because fiction tends to depict a much more descriptive version of certain topics. But the difference is censorship. I think people have this idea that there are some sort of censorship gods that disperse their censoring skills all over our media and literature; obviously this is not true. What is more important, and much more realistic, is the fact that we have our own potential to be “censorship gods.” This happens on many different levels though. We, as readers, can choose not to read a certain book because of the content that is enclosed, but even if we do choose to read a novel we still have the choice to be as discreet and graphic in our own minds as we want to be. What is even more important is the fact that it is a work of fiction. We don’t have to believe shit if it is labeled as fiction. I mean, we as humans are so eager not to believe shit when it is real; so why do we have such a hard time with fictional novels? But nonetheless I think what is most difficult to swallow is the facts. It is difficult to know that YA authors are writing about topics that were once seen as taboo and that is hard for society to be okay with. It is difficult for mothers and fathers to be okay with 24 children being thrown into an arena to fight for the death or coming to terms with their daughters reading about a small town girl having a bed shattering sex experience with a vampire. And although the stories premises may be fictional there are still tangible themes that can be related to current teenagers; parents, and I am guilty too, have a hard time believing that these events that happen in fictional stories happen to their own children and people in society every day.

To finish, I had a professor who attended my presentation last Friday that reminded myself and those in attendance about one piece of fiction in particular. He started by telling us that their is a famous piece of literature that was published 150 years ago and was banned almost as soon as it hit the shelves. Then 50 years later it became acceptable again, but as soon as it started to become popular the education systems started to challenge it. Nowadays there are many different versions of this novel available, some that have been rewritten and even today the original text is challenged. Mostly everyone in the room knew the professor very well, since he use to serve as chair for the English department at the university, and even though he didn’t mention the title until the very end, right from the beginning we knew he was talking about the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. What this says though is that no matter what is published, whether it is factual, partially factual, or completely fictional there is always going to be a challenge. There is always going to be some topic that is taboo or some issue that is hard to swallow, but nonetheless teenagers need their favorite YA authors. I would like to think that YA authors save the most lives. Children find safe havens and homes within the cracks of YA literature, whether the content is challenging or not. YA authors provide teenagers with a save place to learn, think, and experience life’s situations in the fictional worlds of characters. So my plea to people is that instead of waiting for some censorship god to come to earth and get rid of all the books that shouldn’t be read by teenagers, teach your children, teach the children of America, and teach yourself the power of self-censorship, because in the end, those “censorship gods” are just merely publishers and if they think that a novel’s content is okay for the world than that shit is going to be published. Happy Reading! -Nathan

Here’s the deal - I have not posted anything in a while, obviously, this is due to many different things. (1) Life (2) School and (3) Dealing with life and school. Nonetheless I am back, under the agreement (With myself) that things with this tumblr account are going to be … tweaked a bit. It is still going to serve as a location to talk about my creative writing, but I have decided to expand it to all forms of English-y things. I will be posting about new books, news about new books, my creative writing, and the leisure reading that I am doing myself. Ultimately, I do really enjoy this space and although I may have not posted anything in a really long time I still am on here at least once a day looking at posts and going-ons.

So now my new tumblr task has been created: A Thousand Words, roughly, about me and the English world that I am apart of.

I am thankful for the time I have with family and friends on this holiday. I am also thankful for those in my life who love me and accept my love in return. I am thankful for the opportunity to have an education and progress my learning. And I am thankful for the knowledge to create pieces of literature, so ultimately I am thankful for the power of reading-without that all other things would not make sense.

Happy Thanksgiving!