Author Video Chat

Word Count: 832

I thought the video chat with the authors was an interesting experience. As someone who doesn't write in their free time or even consider themselves a writer, I think they gave out good advice to those who do identify as a writer. The professor leading the class (I forget his name) kept joking around with Daisy Johnson and Rebecca Schiff and dropped the “f-word” a bunch of times, which I thought was hysterical. Even Daisy and Rebecca thought it was funny. Daisy had such a nice British accent that I enjoyed listening to. She was really funny and seemed to have no problem answering any question she received. One thing I vividly remember was the professor asking if it was true that Daisy used to watch horror movies at her birthday parties when she was a little girl and make all her friends scream. Daisy laughed and said yes, that she has always been into horror and that genre, which I found wild considering I am twenty years old and still find horror to be terrifying. I’ll watch and read things every now and then, but I definitely was not willingly watching horror films at twelve years old.

            What I gathered from Rebecca is that she likes to write sex scenes and even told us how to write them. Her advice was to write about the good stuff, not necessarily the pleasure of the sex, but the things people want to read about it. I don’t think I’ll ever be writing sex scenes… but if I do, I have Rebecca to thank for some advice (lol).

At the end of each video chat, the professor asked them each to leave us all with a prompt. I recorded both of them because I knew I wouldn’t be able to write as quick as they said it.

            Here’s Daisy’s:

            Here’s Rebecca’s:

I am choosing Rebecca’s prompt. So, the meanest thing I have ever done is vandalize my neighbor’s playset when I was twelve years old. My best friend at the time, we’ll call her M, lived up the street from me, probably about 10 houses. We spent almost every day together; playing four square, cops and robbers, or walking our dogs… we pretty much did anything. I should add that we weren’t bad kids either, never got into trouble or did mean things (except this one time). Back to the story, this new family moves in next door to M and there’s a girl who is a year older than us, named A. We invited her to play with us and the neighborhood, but we soon realized that we didn’t really like her. We thought she was weird and not the friendliest or most outgoing person. Her and her younger brother were always spoiled so that was another thing we disliked about her/them. I think it was several months after they moved in, her parents built them this amazing playset. I’m telling you it looked like a castle; had multiple slides and swings, took up their whole yard, and even had sprinklers built into it. We both had a single mom so we didn’t get many cool toys or things like this... we were extremely jealous needless to say. I can’t remember how we even came up with this idea, but we decided we were going to vandalize the playset since they were on vacation. M had three cats, so we went downstairs in her creepy basement to her cat’s litter box. We put cat poop in a grocery store bag and tied it up for the time being. We grabbed some eggs out of her fridge and went next door. We threw several eggs at it and put cat poop all throughout the playset and in the sand that was under it. I think we even spit on it a couple times. I know we laughed about it and thought it was the best plan but we definitely did not think it through at all. The next day, M called me and said that the cops came to her house. Apparently, A’s parents called the police and M had to confess to the police and to A’s family that her and I were the ones who messed up the playset. I felt terrible because she had to do that all by herself. We did not get in trouble with the police, but we did have to go back and clean everything up, which sucked. I remember our moms were so mad at us when they heard about this, especially because it was so unlike us, and then they grounded us. So yeah, that is the meanest thing I have ever done. Looking back, it was so stupid and pointless and I learned never to do something like that ever again.

It looked kind of similar to this picture, to give you all an idea:

I can't find a real picture since her parents had made it, but it was definitely big and extravagant.