Orchid Thief

Ah, so sad. Our last blog post. I believe this is past due, however, i will submit it anyways. My favorite thing about the Orchid Thief was the underlying passion Susan Orleans kept in her writing. She claimed to not feel at all passionate about anything. As Landon brought up in class the other day, how can she not be passionate about writing? I mean, one must be to be able to write 3 hundred or so pages about flowers right? I think Susan is passionate about her writing but, i don't think she considers it a passion. That seems odd i'm sure. Hear me out, though. A professor of mine (who just so happened to be a grad student also, which goes with my theory that grad students make the best teachers because they are in the middle of being taught) told me that writers do not write because they want to. Writers write because they physically feel that they have to. They write because without writing their head might explode or they might start screaming and never stop. I like it. I think that's why i write. It helps if i feel passionate about what i am writing about. Sometimes though, i'm not. That's why i feel Susans Orleans passion more than i read about it. I think everyone felt it. She couldn't help the control these orchids had over her. I don't think it was about the orchids. I think it was about finding a really great story.
I was frustrated at the end of the book. As i believe most of us were. I wanted passion, guts, glory...something. But she didn't give it to us. Which is lovely when you think about it. It's more like life than anything i have ever read. Most days nothing happens to me either. Well actually nothing happens to me at all. It was like life.
I don't really wish to talk much about the book. It was a good read, slow at some points, but i feel brighter for having ingesting ingested it.
The movie was absolutely kick ass. It is a WAY creative interpretation of the novel. I like Nicholas Cage's lines in it. The whole thing about being so egotistical he wrote himself into his own script. That line made me laugh. My little brother asked to read some of my writing the other day. I showed his something i wrote for this class. He's a profound little asshole and when he finished he looked at me and said "damn Alex aren't you vain." I think i prefer to call myself funnily self-deprecating. He's right. I mean all writers are pretty egotistical. How the hell could we put ourselves all the way out there on the page without an ego? We'd be utterly naked, and probably better writers.
So i've been rambling on about pretty much nothing. Trying to stretch this into 500 words. But i've got to go to my spanish exam. Cue sticking my finger towards my opened mouth and gagging grossly. I really appreciated this class Dave. I want to thank you for such "never too harsh just harsh enough" writerly wisdom. Checked out your blog. Dig it.