Monday, April 11, 2011

Forks!

In T-minus 2 days, I'm leaving for a week in Washington State. I've been planning this since last August, and it's finally here...the Tribal Textile Treasures workshop with Judith Mackenzie McCuin. I'm extremely excited. And trying to contain myself, because I have three more days of the day job to wade through to get there.

My friends Connie, Stephanie, and Debi and I are leaving Wednesday evening, around 9:00 pm, I believe. We'll arrive in Seattle in time to crash in a nearby airport hotel, then rise bright and early to rent a car (more likely a minivan to hold the mounds of FIBER!), and drive to Forks, WA for the workshop. Recently we were e-mailed a rough itinerary, and it looks like Thursday will be a meet-and-greet, Friday will be the day we journey up to the Makah tribal museum and Neah Bay (and learn to weave with cedar), Saturday will be a spinathon of feathers, mountain goat, and woolly dog, Sunday will be our day in La Push, learning from the Quileute elders, and Monday we'll finish up around noon. My fiber buds and I decided early on to extend our trip a bit, and we'll be heading back to Seattle to explore the area a little. Tuesday we have plans to go whale-watching, which is pretty darn cool. The return date is Wednesday. It's times like these I really mourn the usual American policy of stingy time off!

You may have noticed that I mentioned a few places that are familiar from the Twilight books (Forks, La Push, etc.). I might be the only person in the world who has not read these books. I tried twice to read the first one forever ago and put it down. I hate to be critical (especially because I know how many people love these books), but I have a problem with the writing. Everyone I know swears up and down that I'm crazy. My little sister Alea (aka, liTTle) threatened me with bodily harm if I didn't read at least the first one, since I'll be in the heart of Twilight country. So I borrowed it from a friend and am plodding through. I'm on page 317, and it still hasn't grabbed me or anything. All that seems to be happening is a lot of mooning over how beautiful Edward is. Stephanie Meyer ignores the most basic rule of writing: show, don't tell. Weave the words to create mood, character, and plot. But don't directly tell the readers how we should be feeling.

I'm a reader and love great books and am not trying to be snobby or anything, but this book just seems...blah. We've got piles of basic subject-then-verb sentence structure, mounds of passive rather than active verbs, and I keep finding myself skimming rather than reading. Can someone please explain what I'm missing?