As most of the folks who read my blog regularly probably know, I’m going for my MFA in Creative Writing. It’s been an awesome experience so far and with every class I get happier about the decision to do this!

Today, I started an eight week Young Adult (YA) Fiction Workshop. I’ve never written in the YA genre but I’m looking forward to it.

The first assignment was to write a brief introduction to the class but while using the voice of my 12-18 year old self.

My Intro (Can you guess the year?):
Hey, what’s up? I’m Valerie. But call me Val. I always feel like I’m in trouble when people call me Valerie and, besides, one syllable names are so much cooler, don’t you think? I convinced my best friend Nicole to go simply by ‘Cole, apostrophe and all. It’s so much sexier than Nicky, even spelled N-I-K-K-I, which is how she wanted to spell it before I suggested ‘Cole.

Today was our first day of 8th grade. How cool is that? I can’t believe we finally get to go to high school together next year! But I’m in no rush… This is gonna be a great year and I plan to enjoy it. Besides, I’d love to have boobs by then and they’re apparently in no rush either.

We both totally lucked out and got Mr. DiGiesi for homeroom, in addition to Social Studies and English. Miss Graber, the math teacher, is okay too, I guess, but I suck at math. I’d hate for her to catch me copying ‘Cole’s homework before the bell rings. But seriously, everyone loves Mr. DiGiesi. All the girls have crushes on him. Miss Graber is probably in love with him, too. It would explain why she wears hooker heels and so much makeup. I wouldn’t be surprised; he’s by far the coolest teacher in the school. The cutest, too. He’s also smart and funny and he has great hair. Thank God he teaches the classes I like, too, so I’m bound to impress him if I can manage to focus on the material instead of simply watching his mouth form words.

Anyway, in homeroom today, Mr. DiGiesi handed out black and white notebooks and told us to take them home and decorate them however we like. He’s calling them our “Me Notebooks” and he said we’ll have some specific assignments, like poetry and stuff, to write in them but he said for the most part he wants us to use them like journals. He said we can draw on them and write whatever we want in them and that no one will ever look at them but us. I love the concept but I’m skeptical. I mean, I’d put a photo of him on mine if I wasn’t sure he’d see it at some point.

So instead, I’m going to decorate it with pictures of some of my other current obsessions: The two Coreys, Slash playing guitar, George Michael in the Gotta Have Faith video, Prince (I’m still obsessed over Purple Rain), INXS, Bon Jovi, Milli Vanilli and the lyrics to my fave Rob Base song (I get stupid…I mean outrageous. Stay away from me…If you’re contagious.), Madonna, Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson (because who can pick?), cheese fries, mint chocolate chip ice cream, rollercoasters, Yoo-hoo, ripped jeans, The Flyers, Wet and Wild lip gloss and my crimping iron. Oh and Drakkar Noir… wow, boys smell so rad when they wear that.

That brings me to the thing I love most: Boys! Don’t get me wrong… I’m not completely boy crazy. I mean, I have other hobbies, too, like writing and reading and dancing and singing (though I’m awful at it), but mostly, well, mostly I love boys.

Anyway, I’d better go. I need to locate my lucky scrunchie so tomorrow’s perfect. TTFN.