Author: Morgan Crosby

It’s officially fall now, and while it doesn’t feel like it in the glorious state of Mississippi (there was sarcasm there), I’m ready to be in the spooky mood. I could do the typical horror movie marathon (something I’m very partial to) or look up creepypasta stuff online. but, as a literary, I think I’ll attempt to write a horror story! I usually write gore, but the closest thing I’ve gotten to a horror story would be my bus story. And that was not scary at all – it was better suited for children to read and giggle at. But whatever! I’ll take on a bit of a challenge, and speaking of challenges or contests… There are several horror contests! I don’t think some of them run during October (a superior month) though. Which is silly, but who cares about my opinion? 

Anyways, I’m going to include some contests I’ve found here:

Horror Writers Association – This association is a non-profit organization of writers and publishers that started in the late 1980s. They host several contests and awards like The Bram Stoker Awards,  The Dark Poetry Scholarship, the Mary Shelley Scholarship (for females only, sorry boys!), and some others. I’ll include the links at the end of this post for those who are curious, but don’t want to do too much searching. I found the Dark Poetry Scholarship and the Mary Shelley Scholarship through Fastweb, a site that shows you scholarships that you qualify for. I’ll leave a link for it too because it’s a great resource for those needing scholarships, and I know a good amount of us want scholarships; I know I do. 

Bram Stoker Awards

Dark Poetry Scholarship

Mary Shelley Scholarship

The Scholarship from Hell

Fastweb

Sponsored by Every Writer, the 5o Word Horror Story Halloween Contest deadline is October 28, 2018, so if you’re up for a challenge, try that out! The prizes are $500 and endorsement on their website and social media.

50 Word Horror Story Halloween Contest

To anyone applying to those contests, good luck!

At my old school, we used to have a broadcast journalism class. If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically news. We did podcasts and stuff, and last year had started writing daily articles about what’s been going on in the world. In a way, I guess I should be used to blogging, but what I wrote were half-researched news articles. They weren’t the best, but it kept the class busy for a bit so I can’t blame our director for that. And if you guys don’t know me fully yet, I’m bad at speaking. So being in that class was hell sometimes. I hated doing interviews because I’d be nervous about having to talk to basically a stranger (even though they were usually fellow peers) and they’d be nervous about being on camera. It sucked a lot. I joined the class in my freshman year by accident, thanks to my mom and the sneaky teacher, but I still love them both. 

It wasn’t so bad in my first year because I was the only freshman in the class for a while until another girl joined, and we became the best of friends. But the class were mostly seniors, which sucks because I got incredibly close to them and then they left in May. But that was my best year in high school so far, I’m sure it’ll change though the longer I’m here. But anywayyyy… I’m bad at speaking. But I think I volunteered to be our podmaster for my sophomore year because I wanted to try it out. That was a mistake. The teacher and director had already planned for me to become the director for the class in my junior year, and I was freaked. I already had the script editor position in my first year because my English was “amazing”. But it was strange how it happened. One of the three juniors talked to our teacher one day about my grammar skills and such, and they decided that I needed some position in the class as the editor. I wasn’t around for that discussion. Then he and I were interviewing someone where he mentioned it, and I was hella confused. When we got back to the classroom, the teach was like “Oh yeah, Morgan, how would you feel being script editor? Because you’re our script editor now.” 

That was my legitimate reaction. It was too early in my high school career to give me positions, no matter my capabilities. But I guess it didn’t really matter because I didn’t really have to do much. It was just the thought was daunting at the time. Now, I’m okay with taking on positions, but I have to really want it.  

It’s getting close to that time! The time of cooler air, crunchy leaves, and spoopy decorations. That’s right! It’s almost time for fall! Fall is my favorite time of the year, and October is my favorite month of the year. I wish all year could be fall honestly. It would be the perfect temperature, it’d be gorgeous year-round, and it’s just my aesthetic. I’m not a pumpkin spice girl, but the smell is nice at times. Until it becomes overbearing, then it just makes me nauseous. I’ll be looking for new wallpapers for my phone later so I can get better into the spirit of the season!

Football is already in full swing, so TV’s are constantly tuned to ESPN or FOX or wherever the games are aired. Honestly, I’m looking forward to watching a game or two when I go back home. Maybe I can try to score tickets to an Ole Miss or State game… I love going to football games simply because of the energy of the students and/or fans. It’s so cool and it helps get me pumped for the game too.  I find it funny to hear people say they don’t enjoy watching football, but everyone is entitled to their opinions. So I’ll just say that I love watching football and a lot of other sports too. Which is a bit ironic because I’d either never participate in most sports, but I find them interesting. 

Christmas is nice, Thanksgiving is too. So is Easter and all the other holidays, even the obscure ones. BUT… Halloween is the queen of all holidays, and I don’t care about what others think. Halloween is the best holiday to me. I don’t care about the whole candy thing, but dressing up and hearing/seeing all the creepy events go on is what draws me to Halloween. I love seeing the little kids running around in their costumes and seeing how excited they are to show them off and to get their well earned treat. Last year, I passed out candy with my best friend, and that was a pretty funny night. She accidently made a toddler cry, thanks to her Lemongrab mask. The poor child didn’t even want to come up to the door to get the candy. Several kids were creeped out by that mask, and it was funny to see their reactions. It sucks that I won’t be home for Halloween. The past two years, I would go home with her and we’d pass out candy together or go trick-or-treating. I guess we won’t be doing that this year, but I’ll try to make it up to her later on. 

I don’t think you understand how much I love fall. Just about all of my best memories were created in the fall, and I plan on making many more memories from now on. 

This weekend was an interesting one, I guess. My mom picked me up from the school and then we headed back home. I stayed for a night there, and on Saturday, I stayed with my grandma and grandpa because my cousin and I were gonna see a movie together with my friend. We went to see The Meg, and it was interesting. I enjoyed it, but they didn’t really find it awesome or anything. It was a cliché shark movie really, just involving a prehistoric shark this time, but those were my favorite type of movies when I was younger. Jaws is my favorite shark movie of all time. 

Not to be funny or anything, but I didn’t really miss anyone. At least, not my family members. I love them, don’t get me wrong, but I just wasn’t worried about how  anything was at home besides how my dog was doing. I’m fine being away from home, but I think that’s just because of my dad always telling me that I would get homesick. Every time he said it, I always thought to myself, ‘No I won’t.’ I think that because he kept saying that, it cemented the thought that I wouldn’t miss them after I left. I’m gone again, and I still don’t miss them. It’s strange, but I know I’m not the only one around here who doesn’t really miss their folks. My grandma cried because I was leaving again. I tried to comfort her, but I’m not the greatest at comforting people when they cry. She said that she was going to be upset as I left, but once I made it to the school, she would be fine. Everyone has said that they’re proud of me, and I’m glad for the support that I do have. I’m glad that my family is supportive of me, and didn’t try to beat down on me for not wanting to finish school where I was. I’m enjoying myself here, and I’ve actually been able to do what I love, which is to write. While at home, I barely wrote because I was constantly uninspired or was always distracted. My little brother was always loud, my sister was never really a problem, my parents would leave and I would be stuck babysitting. There was never anything new, but here, there’s always something going on. Every day is never dull here, and I’m glad to call this school my new home. 

All I really want to do right now is sleep, read, and listen to music. I’m in such a blank mood right now, I can barely think. I left my earbuds back in my dorm, so I can’t focus on that while typing. I nearly froze to death in my first block this morning. At this point, I just want to sleep. I messed up and didn’t sleep until two in the morning, so I’m running on four hours of sleep, which is what I’m normally accustomed to, but it’s different here.  During the summer, I stayed up until at least 3 every night, but now I’ve been going to be around 12 or 1 so I’m slowly getting used to sleeping for at least five hours over four. Boy, does that one hour make a difference. I crashed during first block, so I’ll probably take a nap during fifth block. But that’d just lead to another night of scrolling through Instagram on my phone until two. It becomes a cycle, an annoying one. 

Sleep sounds good right now, but can’t exactly sleep in class unless I want to fail so… Guess I’ll just force myself to stay up then. I need my own personal Mr. Sandman. Just so I can sleep at night. Nothing keeps me up except the quiet and overactive thoughts. I’ve tried to look up some ways to remedy that, but they haven’t worked for me yet. So I’ll just stay up on my phone until I pass out while texting a friend or while reading. 

At one point, I couldn’t go to bed without music playing, and not classical music or anything labelled as ‘sleep music.’ I would listen to pop or rock music instead, and often times, I could hear the songs in my dreams. I vaguely remember having a dream about Cody Simpson singing “Pretty Brown Eyes” because that’s what was playing on the music channel. I’ve graduated from listening to music to just playing around on my phone until I conk out for the night. That’s probably not a good tactic honestly, but it works for now, I guess.  

On the topic of sleep (or rather lack of), one of my favorite bands, Set It Off, has a song called “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.” When I listen to it, the song feels like it’s about insomnia. A man just pacing back and forth in his room as the world around him sleeps. Of course, a big clue of what the song’s about is probably when the singer says “All insomniacs please raise your right hand, and kindly repeat after me: ‘I guess I’ll sleep when I am dead!” But you don’t get to that part for a while, so you have to draw your own conclusion. Anyways, because of that song, I actually started a story called Insomnia, but it’s not about true insomnia. I’ll have to work on that some. That’ll be my goal for today, but that’s all I have to say for now. Ciao! 

It’s a bit late, given we did the assignment about two weeks ago, but I kind of wanted to share one or two poems that I wrote for our ekphrastic poetry assignment. Now, as a warning, my poems are usually vague or obvious. It’s easier for me to understand in ways, but it’s up to you as a reader to interpret it in your own way. With that being said, I present some of my work.

 I was unable to locate the photographer of this picture, but I didn’t take it!

Title: Fire Spirit

The flames spoke to the sky
Inviting the stars to watch its beautiful destruction
The wood cracks and its charred remains float into the wind,
Swirling to make a dance that the sky would be proud to witness

The spirit of the flames lives and breathes
Taking in the energy it needs to keep its flames burning
The heat from its flames invites others to come close
To bask in its warmth and to stay for the show

The ashes fly up into the air,
spiraling to make patterns against the black of the night
The fire spirit enjoys its purpose
To burn what’s put into it and to create something beautiful
In its stead

The fire spirit is not a malevolent being
It lives in the flames
And warms the hands and hearts of those around it
The fire spirit burns to emit its spray of ash for the sky to watch

But do not mistake its kindness
At any second, the fire spirit can burn those around it
Torch homes and trees
Scar the landscape around it
The fire spirit lives and breathes
And it can destroy too.

For this next poem, I was actually able to find the name of the photographer. His name is Ronald Ong, but the photo (as far as I know) did not have a name.

Title: His Light

The bright light glinted against the backdrop that was the sky
His hand grasped the base of the light bulb gently
As his eyes took in the rainbow sherbet sky
And the bright bulb illuminated his greyish-green eyes

The stars were trapped within the bulb along with the girl
She was his light, but she never knew it
She didn’t know she was what lit up his life
She was his light, and he admired her every night
Night was when she shone the best

She watched the stars dance around her as he watched her joy
The sliver of moon made her hair look radiant,
and he longed to touch her starlight hair
She was his light, trapped inside the thin glass membrane of the bulb
His to admire, to love, and to cherish

So there he stood, admiring his light
As she admired the stars
And both were lost in the radiance of their lights

Those were only two out of the six poems that I wrote for the assignment. Please do tell me what you think of them, either in the comments or to my face! 

I’m not very good at creating poetry, mostly because when I think of poetry, I think of this deep, emotional spew of words that have the power to move a person. Well in this case, I’m an immovable rock. I can’t find a way to put what I think or feel into words, because sometimes I don’t even understand why I feel certain ways. Poetry doesn’t faze me like others. It can be amazing and hold so much meaning, but it just doesn’t click for me. Maybe it’s because I don’t know the person in the poem. When I read books, I get a chance to meet the character, decide if I like them or not, and if I’ll get attached to them. Usually I get extremely attached to them, but I don’t get that experience with poems. The speaker doesn’t always introduce his/herself in their work or the poem isn’t about a specific person, but an event which makes it hard to connect with.

Now there was poem that I read last year that I did enjoy. It was called ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen, and was about a gas attack in a trench during World War I. I didn’t know that Owen was actually a soldier and experienced such an attack until just a few minutes ago while I was looking for the name of his poem. I guess that shows how much I pay attention to such things. I couldn’t remember much of the title besides ‘dulce’ because I was (in lack of better terms) shook by the ending of the poem, but I won’t spoil it too much for anyone. I can remember part of the poem though. Like when the speaker watches as a fellow soldier is killed by the poisonous gas. The description is what made me remember that particular part of the poem, just not the full scene described. But I think that’s the only poem that made any sort of mark on me. 

Honestly, I think that everyone should read it at some point. If you aren’t interested in that sort of thing, then fine. I can’t really force anyone to read it. Just give it a try for me though? But I have to thank my English 2 teacher for having us read that poem as part of our practice for the English state test, so thank you, Mrs. Thibodeaux! 

I guess this is my first blog post for this school year, but I’ve been going through the greatest bout of un-inspiration since the beginning of summer. Yeah, it’s not great, but I’m going to pull up my big girl pants, force myself to sit at my desk, and force myself to type. I can’t promise that it will a work of art or even something that I’ll be remotely proud of, but it will have to work for now until I can find my real inspiration.

In my bio, I said I was a dull girl. The same applies to my writing at times. Sometimes the work just never lives up to what I create in my head, or I get the feeling that it’s a huge crash and burn. But I guess I’ll have to let go of those inhibitions and just write. That’s why I’m here. I’m here to write, express myself through words, and to let go of my minor worries. In the end, my stories will be read by someone. My mom, my closest friend, a stranger, anyone who will give it a chance.

There’s a piece I’ve been working on for about two or three years now. I can never past one part of it, and that’s been daunting me. I never thought about how hard a car crash scene could be. Maybe because I’ve never been in one that I remember. Maybe when I was a baby? I’m not entirely sure really. There are parts to the story that I should probably get rid of, and that’s mostly because they aren’t really vital to the story. A bit of Mommy issues is just a bit of character development, I guess, but it’s not important to the essence of a story about a girl wanting to kill her sister over a man. So, maybe I will get rid of that part later today, and find a way to improve on that story. Develop the characters more, find a way to write the crash, and eventually finish it. The story is long overdue for an ending, so I’ll have to finish it. I’ll say it here: my goal for my junior year is to finish that story and to be content with how it turned out. Maybe one day I’ll share it in class while it’s in its infantile stage, just like I am.

I’m here to grow my skills as a writer. My end goal in life is to have at least one book published, but I don’t expect it to become a bestseller just because of how my brain works. I can be pretty pessimistic about anything I produce, but there are some stories that I will occasionally be proud of and willing to share. We will just have to see how the year turns out and see what I will produce. So with that being said, I’ll end this post with this: good luck to all the literaries here and I hope we all will meet our own goals.