My Life (In some perfect world I don't live in)

Biography

The person you know as missmaple grew up on a syrup farm in Canada. She was born of the forest. Her hair was the pine needles, her limbs were the swishing branches of the trees, her laughter was of the birds that nested there, and her eyes were as bright as the sap of the maple trees that brought her to life. Maple syrup ran through her veins, making her the sweetest thing in the woods. When she met her first human, they brought her to their home and raised her as their owne. Gradually she became accustomed to the ways of humans. Still, her influence was apparent. When she laughed and ran through the woods, the trees produced more syrup than ever before, and the log cabin she and her family lived in gradually became covered in new life, while the logs that were used to build it grew roots and flourished once again. Alas, one summer the trees that brought her into the world tried to reclaim her. As she walked through the woods, tree branches and roots crept towards her like never before, yearning to twine around her and make her a sapling once again. Frightened, she fled her leafy home, but there was no escape. From all around, plant life attacked her, trying to bring back their daughter. The sky, which had long been jealous of the forest's power and greed, saved the young girl. With a gust of wind, she was blown into the clouds. Unable to return to land for fear of being eaten by the woods and because the clouds would not allow it, she stayed in the sky. Clouds slowly shaped to build a house for her in the sky, where she lives to this day, floating high above the land (and ever so conveniently, a computer just so happened to fly up there as well). A/N: Hehe, I kinda lied :P I don't live in Canada!

And... for my real biography.... Hello! I'm missmaple. I love kidpub, reading, and dreaming. One thing you should know about me is that I never finish anything, particularly stories, so I'm hoping my kidpub book, Almost Life, will be different. My favorite ways to spend my time are reading, again, watching movies, drawing, and doodling. I've never been out of my country, America, and I've never met a blast-ended skrewt. My greatest ambition in life is to become an author and revive the great art of the coonskin cap. Now, moving on from the cookie cutter bio, here are a few lists... Here are some of my obsessions: Harry Potter Johnny Depp Dogs Pirates of the Carribean My animals Kidpub Books Reading random facts Baking Chocolate Guinea Pigs Some of my talents are... Reading Drawing Making balloon animals Writing on grains of rice Writing Sleeping Breathing Some things you should never ask me to do for fear of complete failure are... Finish anything I start Remember anything Keep something safe Pick out your wardrobe Eradicate stinkbugs from your house I can't stand... Stinkbugs Twilight Chewing gum Soda Loud noise Losing things Cats My favorite foods are... My dad's mac and cheese Chocolate Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies Pizza Strombolis Mexican food Chinese chicken Cheese Pets I've owned or currently own... An evil cat, Ripken A huge Saint Bernard, (Gentle) Ben 3 Guinea pigs (Sonny, Matilda, and Stella) A hamster, Cheddar A gerbil, Cheese Two frogs Three fish Five chickens, Henny Penny, Lacey Lou, Sweetie Pie, Peck, Check, and Dash 3 Parakeets, Rico, Patrick, and Bananas Some things I would like to do are... Visit Europe Publish a book Learn to walk on stilts Meet Johnny Depp Plant a tree Grow a giant pumpkin You should know... I tend to ramble I get off topic a lot I write really long comments Half of what I write on here doesn't make it to the final post I'm not ticklish I love the word "chuckle" I am not a pizza

And here's an awesome poem made for me by Rockshadow:

 

Golden liquid

Pours down the glass

Running in rivers

Moving so slow

But yet so fast

Faster, faster

It reaches down until it hits my tongue.

Sweet sap

Sweet syrup

Savor it

It won't last forever

Until I have another drop.

 

Dark brown waffles

Stand in front of me

Along with a glass

Of the sweet syrup

I so crave.

 

Drop after drop

Cup by the cup.

It pours in rivers

In streams

Creeks

In my mind

Fish swim in and out

Frogs croak happily

Maple trees sway

Dripping maple syrup by the bucketful in the stream

By the leaves

The vision ends

 

Liquid gold streams down my body

Sticky

Sweet

Sap

It forms into puddles

Making creeks

Streams

Rivers

My head tips back

Enjoying the rain

Of

Maple

Syrup.

 

Join Date: June 10, 2010.

 

And here's a word of advice, from Lemony Snicket:

 

 

Dear Cohort,

Struggling with your novel? Paralyzed by the fear that it's nowhere near good enough? Feeling caught in a trap of your own devising? You should probably give up.

For one thing, writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day. Every magazine and newspaper, every hardcover and paperback, every website and most walls near the freeway trumpet the news that nobody reads anymore, and everyone has read these statements and felt their powerful effects. The authors of all those articles and editorials, all those manifestos and essays, all those exclamations and eulogies - what would they say if they knew you were writing something? They would urge you, in bold-faced print, to stop.

Clearly, the future is moving us proudly and zippily away from the written word, so writing a novel is actually interfering with the natural progress of modern society. It is old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy, a relic of a time when people took artistic expression seriously and found solace in a good story told well. We are in the process of disentangling ourselves from that kind of peace of mind, so it is rude for you to hinder the world by insisting on adhering to the beloved paradigms of the past. It is like sitting in a gondola, listening to the water carry you across the water, while everyone else is zooming over you in jetpacks, belching smoke into the sky. Stop it, is what the jet-packers would say to you. Stop it this instant, you in that beautiful craft of intricately-carved wood that is giving you such a pleasant journey.

Besides, there are already plenty of novels. There is no need for a new one. One could devote one's entire life to reading the work of Henry James, for instance, and never touch another novel by any other author, and never be hungry for anything else, the way one could live on nothing but multivitamin tablets and pureed root vegetables and never find oneself craving wild mushroom soup or linguini with clam sauce or a plain roasted chicken with lemon-zested dandelion greens or strong black coffee or a perfectly ripe peach or chips and salsa or caramel ice cream on top of poppyseed cake or smoked salmon with capers or aged goat cheese or a gin gimlet or some other startling item sprung from the imagination of some unknown cook. In fact, think of the world of literature as an enormous meal, and your novel as some small piddling ingredient - the drawn butter, for example, served next to a large, boiled lobster. Who wants that? If it were brought to the table, surely most people would ask that it be removed post-haste.

Even if you insisted on finishing your novel, what for? Novels sit unpublished, or published but unsold, or sold but unread, or read but unreread, lonely on shelves and in drawers and under the legs of wobbly tables. They are like seashells on the beach. Not enough people marvel over them. They pick them up and put them down. Even your friends and associates will never appreciate your novel the way you want them to. In fact, there are likely just a handful of readers out in the world who are perfect for your book, who will take it to heart and feel its mighty ripples throughout their lives, and you will likely never meet them, at least under the proper circumstances. So who cares? Think of that secret favorite book of yours - not the one you tell people you like best, but that book so good that you refuse to share it with people because they'd never understand it. Perhaps it's not even a whole book, just a tiny portion that you'll never forget as long as you live. Nobody knows you feel this way about that tiny portion of literature, so what does it matter? The author of that small bright thing, that treasured whisper deep in your heart, never should have bothered.

Of course, it may well be that you are writing not for some perfect reader someplace, but for yourself, and that is the biggest folly of them all, because it will not work. You will not be happy all of the time. Unlike most things that most people make, your novel will not be perfect. It may well be considerably less than one-fourth perfect, and this will frustrate you and sadden you. This is why you should stop. Most people are not writing novels which is why there is so little frustration and sadness in the world, particularly as we zoom on past the novel in our smoky jet packs soon to be equipped with pureed food. The next time you find yourself in a group of people, stop and think to yourself, probably no one here is writing a novel. This is why everyone is so content, here at this bus stop or in line at the supermarket or standing around this baggage carousel or sitting around in this doctor's waiting room or in seventh grade or in Johannesburg. Give up your novel, and join the crowd. Think of all the things you could do with your time instead of participating in a noble and storied art form. There are things in your cupboards that likely need to be moved around.

In short, quit. Writing a novel is a tiny candle in a dark, swirling world. It brings light and warmth and hope to the lucky few who, against insufferable odds and despite a juggernaut of irritations, find themselves in the right place to hold it. Blow it out, so our eyes will not be drawn to its power. Extinguish it so we can get some sleep. I plan to quit writing novels myself, sometime in the next hundred years.

--Lemony Snicket