Before we begin I think it would be beneficial to address certain subjects, delve a bit into some particular words to try and find the meaning—or at least a meaning—for what we’re about to get in to. Yeah, I’m talking about Runestone. But what is a Runestone exactly? Well, it doesn’t turn lead into gold like some other fancy rocks out there, nor will it hatch into a dragon if thrown in the fire. But what it can do is tell a tale of heroic proportion, boldly boast of mortal feats and martial prowess, or sing one’s praises long after they perish from this world.

Runestones were used by those prideful Scandinavians way back in the day, carving into naked stone their windswept poems, shield wall songs and Viking exploits, usually in singular praise to some individual more active and vocal than the rest. These stones seem to say, “Clearly I was an important person. Look at what was carved about me!” Now some might consider this to be shameful boasting, but I think there lies within us all a call similar in motive and intent.  Who doesn’t secretly want their name to be regarded for all time?

So why all this claptrap about stones and future glory? Runestone is the name of our undergraduate literary magazine, a place reserved specifically for all of us budding writers who want to both write something worth publishing and see other undergraduate works. Runestone offers both.

So I’ll ask the question again: why Runestone? Let’s face it: we’re not going old school with chisel and rasp, ink and parchment is so last century, and yet we still wish to immortalize ourselves through words. Runestone is an online journal; it will act as the great preserver, the ark of undergraduate literature that will withstand and endure the tests of time, growing fuller and more robust as the ages unfurl. No pages will be marred by the passing of seasons, nor will the fires of Caesar scorch this treasured trove; it will live on in the digital universe, forever preserved as a testament to the skills and imagination of the underdog undergrads.

In our new age of digitally inspired diaspora—the mass migration from print to byte—the path to immortality no longer lies in gouged granite or stained parchment. The new permanence is saved files and shared folders, hyperlinks and blogs. Aptly named, Runestone is the future’s tool in keeping our works alive.

With Runestone, our works will never fade.

Meet the blogger:

Charles DuBois is a graduate of the Hamline University BFA program where his major was creative writing in fiction. He also likes to eat popsicles while driving with the window down mid-winter, which he erroneously believes is an allusion to being cool.

As a creative writing student, I find that one of the hardest parts of writing is actually doing it—physically sitting down and writing something. The number of times I’ve promised myself that I’ll start writing every day, and then broken that promise the very next day, is much higher than I care to admit.

I recently watched an interview with Kate DiCamillo, the author of the beloved middle grade novel Because of Winn-Dixie, in which she says that in the decade from when she was twenty to when she was thirty, she called herself a writer, but did no writing. I know a lot of other writers who face this struggle—graduating from college with a degree in creative writing and then failing to write a single word. I also know many people who wouldn’t consider themselves writers, but who actually write more than those who call themselves writers, whether it’s for their job or just for themselves. All of this raises the question: what makes someone a writer?

If you were trained as a writer but haven’t written in years, are you a writer? If you write hundreds of emails and memos at your job, are you a writer? I recently saw a video that addressed this question. People from all walks of life were interviewed and asked if they considered themselves writers. Many people said yes, some said no.

Those who did consider themselves writers came from all kinds of writing backgrounds. Some were “obvious” writers—those who wrote as a profession, such as reporters, technical writers, or authors. Some wrote in other ways for their jobs, such as a lawyer who wrote legal documents, teachers who wrote lessons plans for their students, or an artist who wrote artist statements to accompany his pieces of artwork. Others wrote for other reasons, such as a mother who helped her six year old son write, or students who wrote papers for school. Some wrote for themselves, such as journaling or personal poetry, some wrote letters or emails to friends.

The interviewer asked those who didn’t consider themselves writers to explain why they didn’t, and many, over the course of their explanations, reconsidered their answer. For example, a man who worked in a business office setting, who originally answered no, realized that for his job he wrote memos, emails, and quarterly reports, and therefore decided that he did consider himself a writer. It appears that the majority of people, at least in the United States, use writing in some part of their lives.

Many people think that only those whose profession is writing are “writers.” However, it’s clear that this definition is too narrow. Writing comes in many other forms than just fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, so it makes little sense to say that only authors are writers. How broadly the term “writer” should be defined, however, is up to debate. So, I’ll leave with the starting question once more: what makes someone a writer?

Meet the blogger:

Lizz Berge graduated in May 2015 from Hamline University, having double majored in physics and creative writing– a combination she highly suggests, since science is awesome and writing is awesome, and who wants to choose? She writes fiction of all kinds and loves reading anything and everything.

The best thing I have read recently was not written recently. It was published in January of 2012 by Daily Science Fiction, an online journal which publishes science fiction and fantasy shorts. The story, called “Visiting Planet Earth”, is a short story written by Eric Brown.

Let me preface this by saying, science fiction is sometimes ignored or brushed off by the so-called educated class. But before we allow this work, or any others for that matter, to become the victim of nose-snubbing simply because of the genre it falls into, let’s give it a chance. Science fiction is not a genre merely for those looking for a cheap method of escape, as is often the argument against it. Though it does provide that, but then again so does all fiction. Science fiction allows us to explore the possibilities of this world, not escape it. It expands the human understanding in a way normal fiction, bound by the limitations of this world, never could.

“Visiting Planet Earth” is a short science fiction story about an ancient and ageless alien who comes to Earth to watch humanity. The alien has no name, at least none that we are told about. While watching earth, it is discovered by a child. The alien marvels at the child’s innocence, which it recognizes because the child has no “trail”. Trailing, we are told by the alien, is what happens to mortals during their lives. The alien can see all the people in a person’s life who have died before them trailing along after them. This is part of the reason it says coming to earth is too painful.

“Visiting Planet Earth” is written beautifully but simply. Though a story showing the innocence of a child is nothing new, that innocence is given a new feel when seen through the eyes of an immortal alien. The story is a reflection on the youth and innocence of the human race as a whole and a reminder of the backs we are standing upon to reach even this high. Though it is short, only about two pages, this story finds a new way to grapple with our mortality as a species and forces the reader to look at us, humans, as if they were not one.

Eric Brown lives in England with his family and is the two time winner of the British Science Fiction Award for short stories. He has published many short stories and novellas and has written over twenty novels and a handful of children’s books. His most recent novel is called Satan’s Reach and is the second novel in his Weird Space series.

Meet the blogger:

Andrew Brabeck is an undergraduate student at Hamline University. He is in the BFA program studying Creative writing with a focus on fiction as well as the BA program studying philosophy.  He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Your first thought: maybe today, maybe today will be the end. But as you fumble around under the comforter on your bed, fingers searching for the familiar ice-metal of your phone, you know. You just know. 

The writer’s block is still here. 

Of course, there are “exercises” you can do to help, so say your professors and the internet. But it really seems like only time can kill the block. Time and distractions.

Your fingers finally find the phone, somehow wrapped in the sheet near your left calf. (How, even?) Check Gmail, Facebook, Instagram. Swipe out notifications about updated applications you hardly ever use like Amazon and Flipboard. All the while you’re thinking about it. The project, your baby. 

It’s the poem sequence about your nana. There are so many things you want to say, memories you want to include, but where to even begin? How to even begin? A shower might help. 

You remember all the times you visited her house after school to do homework. But you never did the homework. Nana would coax you into the kitchen with the smell of Betty Crocker brownie mix and the promise of using her measuring cups. Olive green plastic. But how to put those details into a poem about her death? 

You hold the new bottle of Mane N’ Tail shampoo in your hand. You’ve heard it helps hair grow longer and stronger, but it comes out of the bottle in congealed spurts. Is this what the reviews meant by “creamy?” (It does kind of smell like apples, though, as one reviewer swore.)

But now, what was that memory you were just thinking of? Nana…Nana and a smell you can’t quite place. If only you hadn’t been in the shower, you could have written it down. But maybe the shower is what sparked the memory. When you have writer’s block you can’t hold on to thoughts, like trying to capture water with open hands. Toweling off reveals your fingers have pruned, like hers used to in the pool. But she hated swimming. Is there something there you could incorporate? 

Probably not. 

And you have no motivation to even try. It’s all been so discouraging whenever you’ve attempted to type or even hand write the past week. You know what might help? Some breakfast. Specifically, some ice cream for breakfast since it’s Saturday and you don’t work. And Netflix. 

You choose “Parks and Recreation,” but quickly realize you’re basically like Ron whenever you sit down to write down memories of Nana. 

So you turn off Netflix. “Modern Family” is always relaxing. You stream an episode from season 4 called “Career Day,” where it turns out Jay has writer’s block while trying to convince his wife Gloria that he can be a writer:

“Chuck Stone…sat at the interrogation table. His mind was a blank. A complete blank. He literally could not think of one single solitary thing. 

Then he noticed the spot. It looked like syrup left over from breakfast, which made him realize it was lunch time. 

Bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, or BLT as Chuck Stone called it, would really hit the spot. 

The secret, Chuck realized, was real mayonnaise, not that healthy crap his wife kept buying for their son. I mean, what’s the point of tttt t for t t for two…”

You realize, again, you’re just like the character. You also realize, you should be writing, or at least trying to, like Jay. 

Because Jay, the old crotchety character on the show, is making more of an effort to write than you, the youth going to school specifically for writing.

There’s no fighting it anymore.

You give in, pull on your comfiest sweatpants with the Cheetos finger stains on the thighs and snuggle up on the couch with a bag of chocolate, a notebook, and a handful of pens, just in case one happens to die. Your laptop stays in your backpack across the room with your phone, because the internet is too tempting to resist when suffering from a case of writer’s block. 

But sitting alone away from technology, with the Lindt bag of truffles, you’re reminded of the chocolate fudge Nana would add to the brownie mix. The way the oil would cling to the sides of the green measuring cup, refusing to mix with the water from the tap. How she used to whisper-count each stir of the spoon, the bowl cradled in the crook of her elbow, up to one hundred before your turn. 

The bag of chocolates is empty, and your pen is dead. But you can almost smell her now, over the wall.

Meet the blogger:

Mariela Lemus studies creative writing at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota as a transfer senior undergraduate student. She will graduate in December 2015 and hopes to pursue a career in editing and publishing.

Lynda Barry is not afraid to show herself on the page. Her alter-ego characters, like Marlys and the nearsighted sock monkey and Sea-Ma remind me of all the things we are to ourselves and the people in our lives. It’s a good reminder if you want to be the funk queen of the universe, start looking at the characters you’re bringing to the page. 

Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, dedicated one of his Life in Hell collections to Lynda Barry. I was only just getting into Life in Hell and had no idea who Lynda Barry was, but if she was the funk queen of the universe, I had to see for myself. I found her in Marlys, her terrific semi-autobiographical comic, and years later as a student, I found her again in What It Is, her creative writing text/art book.

Barry describes a lot of ways to get those images into words, just like every creative writing textbook you’ve been assigned. What it Is is different. Every page of the book is a collage, with layers of color and images and words – handwritten, typed, cut from magazines and encyclopedias.

At some point, stop reading the book for the exercises and start looking at the art as a way to leave words behind for a while. Lie on your back with the book overhead and turn it around so you can look at the images and words from a different angle and see if there’s something different in where they come together.

If you’re in a writing program, you may or may not hear much about the Process. If for Barry an image is “the formless thing which gives things form,” then the Process is the formless thing that moves you to write and, in a lot of cases, the thing that shuts your writing down. The book includes an illustrated story of how Barry became an artist, with all the doubts and fears that push writers to the sidelines. You’ll recognize yourself in her pages, and from there you can find your own images to keep writing.

Meet the blogger:

Elaine Kenny has worked as a paralegal, wedding officiant, tarot card reader, and a bartender before becoming a student. She attends Hamline University, working toward a BFA in Creative Writing.