Familiar?

After having read the prompt for this writing assignment i am at a loss. I have no idea where to begin or where to even start a thought process. I find that most, if not all, of my writing comes from a very personal space and allows me to express my views of the world and portray my actual understandings and experiences. This assignment has taken me well out of my comfort zone and is throwing me right into the wolves. I am going to end with this for now and come back and write about finishing the assignment and what i felt i learned or had the most trouble with.
I just finished typing my piece and I don't know if i like it or not. I tried to portray a daily commute into nyc as differently as possible and i think i began to breach the surface of what i could do and where i could go with it. i had trouble with making it believable and not giving away the ending. I liked my idea and think i can do more with it now that i have a starting point. if you read this please feel free to comment on my piece or where to go with it or what to take out.

I agree with Hunter's idea of us writing short stories off of the papers we pass in class. I think for one of our assignments about a story of our choice, we should do the "person and a problem" passing thing to get some ideas! I think that writing a story is not the most difficult part, but rather coming up with something to write about! This activity could generate some very peculiar and interesting stories! Those stories would also be more fun to workshop because a character I created could be living in a strange setting and solving a problem thought up by one of my peers.
On a different note, I haven't finished both short stories we are reading for tomorrow, but I've read one and a half and I think they are both different versions of Bluebeard. This is a pretty cool concept. It reminded me of the activity we did in class when we passed the papers because we all wrote different renditions of the same stories just in different settings. Reading all of the different versions is very entertaining! I think another interesting idea for a paper would be for us to write a different version of a story either written by us or by one of our peers. This exercise would be quite a challenge because we'd have to be as creative as we could but i think it could be fun and worthwhile.

Why can't I have my sentence?

After reading Heather Sellers passage on revision, one sentence stuck out to me: "A writer has to let go of favorite lines and passages in order to put all the focus on on the best part of the piece" (377). I disagree with this passage. I understand that if you have limited words to use and so much you have to say that there are certain parts that need to be disregarded. However, I am curious about why you cannot have wonderful lines and passages and use them to only enhance and improve another line or passage. Why can you not have two wonderful passages. Why must their only be one? I think that in order to improve your writing you should be able to write what you want and if one passage is stronger than another, take that as a challenge upon yourself to improve the other passages. Don't back down and take out the better passage, challenge yourself and improve what writing may be less than good. Everything should be used only to enhance your writing. The way Sellers offeres to handle the situation it sounds as if people should only back down and move on, and I think that is accepting defeat. Obviously sometimes there is nothing you can do to improve a piece, by why get rid of whats good? CHALLENGE YOURSELF!

I have found that writing just to write has helped me to write some of my best materials. That is why I particularly enjoy our writing activities in class: you have only a few minutes, a topic, and all you have to do is write. I am golden. It may not be the best writing, but it gets my brain flowing and the ideas start running. When I really struggle is when I have no ideas and someone just tells me to write something(personally, I could not get any ideas generated for the first workshopped essay). I also struggle to write fiction: to me, it seems like everything has been "done", why would someone want to read my story, and how can I possibly add some interesting twist? Never seems to work out for me, I usually end up sitting in frustration. But, in class, when we can just let our minds wander and write, I seem to generate more material and actually see the writing style that I want to incorporate into my formal writing come out. Maybe it is that I am being too self conscious when I actually sit down to write, but I cannot seem to get those juices flowing. If someone told me to write a 7 page paper about a specific situation, it would be done. No problem. Give me a blank canvas and I am like a deer in headlights. What do I do? I guess I need to just find some free time to sit down and write. Ah, a writer's dream, to have ample amounts of time to write. It will be great when that happens.

fict writing

I really enjoyed the reading (Galveston Bay) for Wednesday’s class. The imagery and personality of it was what kept me interested. When we talked about Galveston Bay in class I had a few realizations about the story from other people’s perspectives than I did while I was reading it, which is always something I find interesting. What I observed during our discussion was that even though there were tons of images there was a good deal of thought that went with them. I used the example of the scene during the storm when Old Bull is describing the horses and other men flipping and twisting around him. The scene is so abstract that you need to stop and think what exactly is happening. Although it did not occur to me when I was reading the piece the night before in class I realized an undertone of comment on what Native Americans think of one another as uncivilized. I felt that Old Bull and his friends related more to the white man than the Indians they met while traveling to the ocean. I got this sense after we noticed the descriptions of the new Indian’s dances, face paint, and lifestyle. The writing exercise we did at the end of class was a good parallel to the story. I felt that Old Bull described the ocean as something new that he had never seen before very well and I felt that in order to do that the author must have looked at this experience through Native American eyes. I think as young writers we don’t always remember to talk through our character and simply talk as ourselves. It is important to remember this exercise over the semester and for future writing.

Ok, so after all this image work in class, I got to thinking. Why is it that sometimes the least descriptive things give you the best images? Is it some subconscious connection that you make which allows you to connect some part of the words to an image, or a moment in your life? As a writer, descriptive writing is something that I am constantly battling with. I found that today, in that activity we did where we had to pick two passages and write what images came to mind, with the ones that had less descriptions(ie Sam and Buddy), it was easier to let the mind wander and creat images in our heads. Whereas the one about the guy putting up cones on the NYU campus did not leave much to our imaginations. Great visuals, but didn't "do" that much for me. So, what do I do with this as a writer? I feel like when I try to put descriptions in my writing it usually comes out horribly cliché. And it drives me nuts! How do I combat this? Do I describe things in less detail? How much detail is too much? Too little? Sometimes I feel like those in depth descriptions of the arbitrary things like a watch or some article of clothing are totally unecessary, and sometimes(like in the case of that piece we read in Class on Monday), they work. I just always feel like a cheat writing these descriptions in stories or essays that I just don't really believe. I guess I am being a cynical writer, but I just don't care for the excessive descriptions most of the time. However, I don't really know what to do in the place of them, since I am obviously still struggling to find a balance between less and more. Is less more? Or is less less?

Oh Sam and Buddy...

In today’s class, when we did the exercise on visualizing the passages, I really wasn’t sure going in what we would really get out of it. I mean, how different can people really see things?

Boy was I surprised!

Looking back, I have to say (quite sheepishly) that going in to the exercise I hadn’t really thought about the different ways that people “see” things they read. As a rabid reader and aspiring author, this was really rather remise of me. What was so interesting about today’s exercise was that, going into the ‘writing’ part, I had made an assumption about everyone’s interpretations without even really thinking of what my own interpretation was. It took me a minute to think about what I was really assuming before I could write, and in that I think I learned the most. The visual I had of Sam and Buddy from excerpt 3, without being necessarily concrete, was nevertheless so fully formed that I hadn’t even thought about it. I just subconsciously pictured what my conscious mind was reading without even considering the associations I was making. What was surprising to me was just how different everyone’s interpretation was. They were not just a little-bit different either (which I had expected), but a whole lot different. My personal interpretation was so ingrained into how I read the passage, without even realizing it, that to hear everyone else’s interpretations was really startling and quite cool.

On a slightly unrelated note, that last exercise (the one about writing from the perspective of a peasant transported out of his time) was really cool and would make a fun next-assignment (hint hint). ^_-

Reading

After doing that exercise in class today where we wrote the images we saw when reading certain passages, I had a realization. I really noticed just how subjective images can be when we read. I know that I automatically picture a certain situation and certain scenarios every time I read a few words strung together, but there is no way that anyone else can picture what I'm seeing. Our past experiences shape our reading to such a large extent. This could explain why people have different tastes in reading. If someone had a similar experience to a character in a story, the reader will automatically connect to the story better and picture their own situation reoccurring. The fact that we know someone else is experiencing the same things we do is comforting. This idea also explains why people rarely like movies as much as books; because the characters and the scenery from our minds are altered and we, as humans, typically tend to get grumpy when things change. I find that I am now acutely aware and incredibly curious as to what other people see when reading the same thing that I'm reading. How crazy would it be to get inside some one's head for a few moments and watch the images moving, and then be able to compare that to the image in my own head! If only... No, I guess that would be a little creepy. But still, it would be cool to know all the different versions of characters that we think we know so well.

Blog #... I already lost track... yikes

I almost forgot to write my blog entry this week. A thought stemming off of my previous blog entry regarding blogging (a topic that I desperately need to kill as soon as possible), it baffles me how bloggers can make a life out of blogging. Do they speak face-to-face to people about their writing material or do they consider their (anonymous) audience their friends and confidantes?

Well, it’s exam week(s) and this school is once again a petri dish of sickness. Is it just me, or do the two always seem to coincide? I am not quite sure what the topic of this blog entry is… is a topic required? I always thought of blogs (here we go again…) as being random thoughts splattered across a canvas.

I honestly don’t understand why I cannot get a grip on unifying my tenses throughout my writing pieces. I speak very casually so I tend to type the same way – even if the topic is deadly serious. I think that the key to writing is just to write… when I have writer’s block, I write whatever thoughts on the subject come to mind and at the end of my disorganized, inapplicable piece I feel totally satisfied and relieved that I have a start.

I agree that energy can be subjective. Just like in class yesterday when some people thought that the part about the labyrinths in "Garden of the Forking Paths" had a lot of energy, while other people found it really boring. However, was that because of the energy in the writing or was it just the content? I think we all have to remember that when we are trying to evaluate the energy in a piece.
Also sometimes I think authors try too hard to describe things that aren't really important. I know that having lots of details can add to the energy and that showing is definitely better than telling, but sometimes there can be too much. I think that sometimes authors kill the energy in their piece by overloading their stories with worthless details. That's something that drives me crazy when I'm reading. I guess an author has to find that happy medium where they increase the energy using descriptions, but not so much that they bore the reader to death. It's something that's a really fine line that an author has to walk.

Energy--

I agree with many of Seller's points on energy, but their is one point that I believe is subjective to each reader. Yes "Tiny details observed from a single point of view" can be nice. But too how much to each person. Joe Shmoe down the street maybe happy to read about the wood door that swung open so smoothly without a single creak, but to me I find intense energy to be quick, fast, moving sentences. Oh course sentence variation is necessary, but I think that "good" writers get to hung up on the energy piece and the amount of details necessary to make that piece worthy. This may stir up some argument but take for example Tolkien, great writing, to some. Of course I think he's a great writer, but all of his minuscule details are boring to me. To my father, however, they make the story come alive. Do you have to have little details to make a story have high energy, I don't think you always do. I think some people go over bored and it becomes boring. So though I agree with Sellers, I also disagree with her belief that tiny details are necessary. I understand she was making the point from a point of view, but in general I believe that little details can become cumbersome to the story's strength and flow. So therefore where's the energy?

Workshop worked!

I've never felt more comfortable in a workshop setting ever in my career as a student! I loved the small groups because I felt safe and less intimidated. My group was very helpful in every aspect of the workshop: they provided plenty of constructive criticism and also added compliments to keep my spirits up. It was so cool how we all talked about each other's stories and characters as if they were completely real and had occured. We took everything so seriously but still managed to have fun and get the job done.
Getting inside people's heads through reading their work is a great way to get to know one another as well. Viewing a character in a story can give insight into the writer's mind. Also, while watching the characters handle certain situations, I got a sense of the type of person the writer was. While this is a fiction class, many of us couldn't help but put a little bit of ourselves in our characters. After all, we are drawing from real life experiences to make our writing as real as we possibly can!
I feel like getting to know one another as people and as writers will not only bring the class closer together but also make us more comfortable as we continue to workshop. The more comfortable the setting, the more likely we are to be honest with each other and bring out the best in each other's work.

Oh, Fail

Dear Class,
Sorry for completely forgetting about the blog. However, if it is still permitted, I would like to say that I loved the workshop. It is amazing to see everyone's ideas come together in different ways. Many people have different styles and it is very humbling and amazing at the same time to take the time and listen to everyone's point of views. I find it also very intriguing to see people's minds work in similar ways. Everyone at once would pop up with the same idea. It is amazing the way that stories can make you feel, and how different people's perspectives sometimes change the way the story was actually perceived by you. Sometimes I find it a little disappointing to here everyone else's side of the story because they may change the way that I feel, not that it is a bad thing, but at times it takes away from my experience. It's like an author not leaving parts of the story up to the imagination of the reader, because what could stir up your imagination or what did stir up your imagination is being changed. It is not their fault obviously, but just the way that the world works. Like a book into a movie, at times it can be difficult to perceive other people's interpretations. Alas, at the end all that matters is that we felt something and the story has impacted us in some sort of way.

Thank you for your patience with my delay.
-Erin

workshops

This was one of the most successful workshop experiences I have ever had. In past classes in high school it was usually one on one, which didn’t provide a lot of feedback because it was based off of one opinion. Also, in previous college writing courses I have put my piece of writing up for everyone in the class to critique. This can be helpful but also rather nerve racking. I enjoyed the way our class workshops because it is in a small group- but having the group allows for more feedback than just one on one. I found a lot of helpful critiques as well as saw my story from a different perspective with all the different ways it was interpreted. I also found in the workshops that by reading and evaluating other group members stories I found places in my own writing that could be fixed. Overall, I think the biggest problem I faced with my writing was that I “told” everything and did not “show” it. I needed to describe what my main character was feeling/seeing more than I was. Also, many of the readers found the introduction to be a bit cliché which I agreed with after re-reading it out loud. One major issue I faced was because I decided to take part of this story from true life I found myself holding back significant details. The other group members overall made me feel more confident about my writing but gave me some important advice when I am going back over what I originally wrote.

CR Blog 3 Sept 15-19

Blog 3: Week Sept. 15-19 First story work shopped

There was a lot of confusion about my story, which kinda made me sad… I thought I did a fairly good job explaining things as they came along, and indeed, some members of my group said things started to make sense after page two, when I explain the galaxy collision. However, they did also say that they felt the first two pages were “lost” to them because they didn’t know what the hell was going on. I wonder why it is such a problem to accept the way the story is at first, knowing that, of course, there will be plenty explanations soon enough. I could understand there being an issue if, let’s say, I never explained anything until the very end, and just plowed ahead with the story. I don’t really feel as if I can only understand my story because it’s already in my head, and that I need to explain every little bit for people to be satisfied. Hell I know when I read a story, I just accept the world for what it is, like Angela Knight’s Jane’s Warlord or Johanna Lindsey’s Warrior’s Woman which are very futuristic. Anywho, I don’t mean to rant or defend anything more than just state my confusion. I do know it is a very rough draft, and my group members loved what they read, which is a great start. I just pray I have the time to really sit down and write this story the way I envision.

Sigh. I completely forgot to post this after writing it yesterday afternoon. Like I mentioned before, my brain is a cruel entity.

This blog is going to be about description. After participating in two peer review sessions and getting to read a number of different stories, I have concluded that we are all too in love with words. They really aren’t that great. Description is the gateway to morbidly obese stories, too fat with drippy, thick adjectives and adverbs to move about on their own two (how many legs does a story have?) legs. Now, I am not saying I am against description or the use of adverbs or adjective. I am pro adjectives. Really, I am just struck by my own inability to let the silence in a story speak for me. Most of my stories are the chunky bastardizations of whatever trashy ideas pop in and out of my head during my rarer moments of lucidity. Real stories, the compelling stuff, and not the dribble I have produced in my long journey to average writing competence, are living, breathing entities. They present themselves with dignity and poise, not an overabundance of tacky light and dark metaphors. I really want to break some rules. Writing with heavy description is like trying to fly a plane with a whole mess of cows strapped to the wings. You don’t get very far and your whole effort smells like manure. Just terrible.

Workshop thoughts

So, first things first; I want to say thanks to everyone who gave me such wonderful feedback on my story! I hope that I was even half as helpful to you as everyone was to me.

Moving on… so, this week represented our first writer’s workshop, and, now that I have had my piece work-shopped, I must say that I have slightly mixed feelings about the whole process (definitely mostly positive, but still mixed).

On the one hand I know that I received some excellent feed-back, and I cannot wait to implement some of the ideas that I gained today. On the other hand, though, I really think that overall the workshop format is not necessarily terribly productive. Sure feedback was received and given, but one of the things that I noticed right off-the-bat on Monday was that often, when we were in the first part of the discussion (before the author could speak), the readers would have very different ideas about what was good, and what was bad, in a piece. Though this conflict in and of itself is hardly bad, what got tedious was when the critics would argue back-and-forth, enforce each of their points. Though I admit that I was certainly guilty of this, I feel that, rather than allowing differing points to be heard and evaluated by the author him/herself, the discussions at times turned into contests between the critics, which wasted quite a bit of time. This didn’t happen all of the time, or even necessarily most of the time, but it did happen.

Though the overall workshop was productive, I feel that it might run even better if each critic were allowed, say, a minute to say what they wanted about a piece, and then that they have to be quiet and let other critics speak. After everyone has said their piece, then everyone could talk again.

Again, in the end I defiantly feel that the workshops were fairly successful in providing feedback, I just wonder if they couldn’t be made even more efficient and even more successful. I also think that allowing the author more time to speak and ask questions would be beneficial, as I felt sometimes that being able to ask a critic why, say, they did or did not like a part of a story would have served the whole workshop much better.

In the end, though, the workshops went pretty well, and I did get some really great suggestions (and if anyone would be willing to proof-read a later version of my tale, that would be awesome!)

Thanks Guys!

I have really enjoyed doing the workshops the past two classes. It's actually been more fun than I thought it was going to be. Going through the stories as a group really helps to see things in the stories that you might have missed on your own. Also I found that it helped to be able to talk things out as a group to try to get more ideas for the writer. It was also interesting to see how people would sometimes disagree about how certain parts of the story should be changed/left alone. It really makes you think about how difficult it can be to write something that large amounts of people are going to enjoy. Also I thought it was interesting that a couple of different times people took away things from the story that the writer hadn't intended.
I really enjoyed having my story workshopped because it was interesting to see what different people saw as the most important parts of my story. I also really appreciated all the different ideas that people had to help my story flow better and make more sense. I would never have come up with a few of the good ideas that other people had for my story. In the end I think it was a really good experience for me.

Thanks Group

I really want to thank my workshop group. I was so very nervous about work-shopping my story. I worried that everyone would hate it. Reading some of the products from my classmates only increased my fears. There are some truly exceptional writers in my group and I was incredibly intimidated. I want to be an author more than almost anything else and I saw their great potential dwarf my own.
But in the end I was afraid for no reason. Far from telling me I'm amazing (which I would never have believed even for a glorious moment) my group told me that there was potential. They liked what I had written and they offered the kind of constructive criticism I sorely needed.
When I work-shopped papers in high school I was always in a group with people I had known for literally all of my life. They all knew my goals and not one of them would have ever told me I couldn't achieve them. The problem was that they then didn't give me constructive feedback. For a while I was proud. In a very small school I was one of the best writers and it certainly went to my head.
Coming to SLU where the size of my class is bigger than my high school and middle school combined, woke me up to the realization that I'm not so great. For the first time I questioned my dreams. I managed to make the transition to writing college level papers without a hitch. But I was afraid of sharing my creative writing within the college sphere. I was terrified that the one thing I love most would be torn to shreds so small they couldn't be used to light a fire.
As I said before, I didn't need to be so afraid. I know I have a long way to go, but after today, I'm pretty sure I can make it. Thank you.

Workshopping was really interesting. I have never really done a workshop before, besides small groups of peer editing and even then we really didn’t get into the stories as deep as the question on the checklist make you look into the story. I can’t deny it but when I came into class on Monday I was a tad skeptical of how this whole workshop thing would work out, and even before that when I had to write the critiques on other peoples stories. During class I found myself pleasantly surprised. The small groups enabled us to look at works thoroughly and pick out what we loved, liked, and weren’t so crazy about.
I realize that reading other’s stories and deciphering what I think is good and bad about them, really helps me find out what I like in writing and I think can help me to discover what type of writer I am. At this point anything that helps me that way is definitely accepted with an open mind. Finding your style in writing is hard, and sometimes its hard to see your voice when you feel young and don’t see yourself like the great authors, a fine wine that has aged and become better over time. Hopefully the voice I am looking for will come and my writing abilities will become better with the work we do in this class. Over all opinion…. I approve of the workshops.

Blog 2

After having been work-shopped I am very pleased with the level of honesty and sincerity the class has shown to my work as well as to the rest of the class. I enjoyed reading everyone's essays and was surprised at the level of writing our 'techniques' class has. The only thing i wish was different is if everyone could comment on everyone's essay; I know the class is entirely to big but just by having that many more minds looking and dissecting your piece can give it that much more appeal to other readers. The workshop process has always been an important part of my writing style and I am thankful that it will continue to be a part of this class.
This next little bit is more of a rant and completely off topic. I recently had a heated debate as to what the plural of mongoose was; I figured goose are geese so mongoose are mongeese. WRONG! The plural is 'mongooses;' I feel slightly stupider when I say it. I know it doesn't come up in conversation often, if not at all but it still pisses me off. After I found this out i remember a while ago seeing fish spelled ghoti. The 'gh' as in couGH; the 'o' as is wOmen; the 'ti' as in naTIon. I have always been a terrible speller and the English language does absolutely nothing to help me with my problem. I have always been amazed when a foreigner grasps the English language at any level because of its many backwards and misleading rules. I just had to get that off my chest.

Blog #2

First of all, I would like to say thank you to Sarah and Hunter for mentioning my creepy story in their blogs. To the other half of the class, my story was about a teenaged boy named Jacoby who was obsessed with stuffed animals. In the end, his mother turned psychotic and adopted them as her friends when Jacoby left for college. I was honestly slightly worried that as a first impression, you all would assume I had childhood issues. I became invested in my tragic plotline. I even considered making Jacoby have an obsession with torturing his stuffed animals, but that was a little too much even for me to handle. As a method of procrastination, I watched an episode of Arrested Development (I want to marry whoever writes the script of that show –it is hilarious) and while he was hiding out in the attic, the family’s father, George Senior, starts talking to dolls when he sits them all down for tea because he was lonely… I was inspired.

Anyway, that was totally off-topic. I actually just read an article on CNN about Larry King’s interview with John McCain’s daughter who apparently has a blog of her own, titled “Bloggette” (www.mccainbloggette.com). To be honest, I enjoy reading Perez Hilton’s blog (www.perezhilton.com) and the whole concept of blogging has always intrigued me. I’ve hysterically considered dipping my mind into the experience, but then I remind myself that aside from maybe my family out of pity, no one would enjoy reading what I have to say on a daily basis. Who genuinely enjoys reading other people’s frequent, random rambles? Even Perez gets old, because once a blog takes on a tone, that’s what the reader is stuck with. So if I happen to be in a slightly thoughtful mood, Perez actually saddens me. But I guess that is the whole point of blogs, to instigate emotion and ultimately a reaction.

I was really blown away by the quality of writing that I read for our workshop today. I am not going to lie, I went into this class expecting to read some pretty standard stories, but I was very pleasantly surprised this weekend when I sat down to read the stories of my peers. Everyone took such a different spin on a really broad topic, and the results showed not only creative promise, but really great writing and talent. Going along with that, I felt that my workshop group(group 1), really had a lot of insight as well as compliments for each author who was workshopping. It was refreshing to hear what others had to say about my piece, and it always shines a different light on your work when you hear what others really liked, or thought needed improvement. Some paragraphs that people really highlighted in my piece, for example, were parts that I had never really done more than glance at, so it was a nice confidence boost as well as help to give the essay more direction.
I thought everyone really brought a lot to the discussions in workshop today, and I especially want to compliment Adam, Ali and Craig for starting us off so well. Each of them did a great job in various ways: Adam had great language and voice, Ali had a really original, almost creepy plotline, and Craig's imaginative story as well as his intensely poetic descriptions made for some great reading and discussion! I am looking forward to the next workshop on Monday. Thanks again to my group for all the help and advice, I really appreciate it.

First Blog

I've never really blogged before so this should be fairly interesting. I woke up a few minutes ago and realized that I had forgot to contribute and then I spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how to actually post something. I have always enjoyed creative writing ever since I was in middle school. I remember always getting essays assigned about history or book reports and even into high school always being assigned research papers and analytical essays etc. I hated them; I would groan the loudest out of the entire class and procrastinate as much as possible thinking that putting it off might actually make it go away. But there was always that one assignment where the teacher let you write about whatever you wanted. "It's a free-essay. Write about what ever you feel." That's when I smiled and rushed home to write an essay. To put me on the page has always been a fun thing to do; much more fun than analyzing Willa Cather's "My Antonia." During class when we do the exercises in the textbook I get lost in time. Something just takes over and I write and continue to write. Writing creatively is the only activity that can completely capture my attention; I never watch a full t.v. show, lectures tend to bore me, and I have a difficult time paying attention for longer than an hour but when writing creatively I can get lost and keep writing.

Chanelle R. Blog 2: Comments on short story #1 first draft Raising Arms

Blog 2: Comments on short story #1 first draft Raising Arms

It was great to have that extra time to work on my story- I just want to say thanks again! But what really helped was having the chance to talk to you. Knowing that someone understood the wall in which I was continuously bashing my head on, and hearing that the head bashing was completely normal and acceptable helped to relax me and allow myself to think. You did basically give me my ending, I will say. If I were writing this as a novel, than Rohzen would have the time to save Pluto, but as a short story, I realized it was ok to leave it in a place where the reader knew she would try to do something, and at the same time allow readers to imagine what that solution she will think up. And as I was sitting and listening to you, I had an image of how to move on from tedious explanations to the present time and continue with the story. After that, the other ideas I already had in my head flowed into the paper. I just hate how writing what you already have ideas for takes so long! It’s because when I have a vision, it must be perfect, and I won't stop trying until it is, because if I do, I know I will hate what I write. I still haven’t written the battle scene, but I have what I think is a great plan for it. Originally, I was going to describe a battle scene, in all its bloody glory. But after reading page 60 of Tran’s The Gift of Years, I was inspired to describe a whole other type of a horror of war. I can’t wait to show the class- assuming I like how it comes out.

Dialogue and such- Lauren W.

“Lets leave the bitch to die.”
I thoroughly enjoyed today’s discussion on energy in a piece of writing and how to include energy by adding interesting dialogue. I found the most successful dialogues in “A gift of years”. It was useful in contrasting the characters of Mai, Lam, her husband, as well as Lam’s wife. As we said in class what contributed to Lam’s interesting and complicated relationship with Mai had to do with his past and more present memories of his youngest daughter. It is the dialogue, however, that leaves us wondering if his actual good memories of Mai being “innocent” are actually accurate to real life. It is also very clear from the dialogue in this piece that Mai’s life style and priorities were very different from her fathers.
When we used examples of dialogue from the stories we read to an actual class activity I found this effective in how to make dialogue in our own pieces of writing more interesting. I know I did not include any dialogue in the current piece of writing we are working on and hopefully this exercise helped me so I can change that. What made my dialogue with Craig so interesting was that we added humor to what we were saying because our characters were so different. We focused more on what our own character wanted and therefore it created suspense and argument. I think the exercise led us both to realize this is an effective thing to include in a story. The question is can we put it to our own writing?

It always seems to me that when I am reading creative essays, or any creative piece, that there is a sentence or a part that is not necessarily the most eloquent, that really captivates me. In reading, "The Gift of Years", I was particularly struck by one simple line on page 52. It is in reference to Ong Binh, the father of the girl that Mai kicked, and this is the moment when Lam went over to teach this man a lesson. When the father came out, the narrator said, "He stood hunched as though there were weights on his back". Normally, this bland cliche would irritate me(and I read about someone else not being irritated by something in this story that would normally irritate them), but in this situation, it worked. I do not know why, but I got so much out of that sentence. This sentence is very normal, very simple, but yet to me it conveyed so much. At this moment(it is not a particularly suspenseful moment); I got this amazing visual of a father, a figure in this story of such stature and prestige, who was not hunched, embarrassed and ashamed of himself. And worse, his daughted was behind him to witness this pathetic moment. For some reason, I really appreciated this line and it makes me hopeful that sometimes I can throw some cliches into my writing in hopes that they will not seem cheesy, but rather will spark the readers' interest. It is funny how sometimes the worst techniques work the best in writing, thus complicating the task of writing even more.

Blog 9-10-08

Blog 9-10-08

So, I was doing the reading for today in “The Practice of Creative Writing” when I realized something; Sellers approach to putting energy in writing really annoys me at times.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I really think that a lot of what she says is interesting and possesses merit: her section about avoiding generalized terms/themes I found especially helpful. But in today’s reading, I got the distinct impression that she was only focused on writing ‘modern-day’ fiction. Her heavy emphasis on writing about your own, personal experiences was something that I found rather tiring after a while, especially as, in her emphasis on ‘writing what you know’, she seemed to be discounting the writing of things that you cannot know in the personal way she describes; things like historical fiction, fantasy, or science-fiction. I do concede the point that when one writes about another time and/or place research into that time is incredibly important. I believe that good writing is not so much a matter of writing something that you are an expert in, but is rather a matter of making the reader believe in what you are writing, whether it is normal or totally far-fetched. As long as you can make the reader believe in, and associate with, your story and characters, than you have succeeded.

Also, beg to differ on some of her points about writing about a character’s thoughts. Though I whole-heartedly agree with her points about filter words, I think that her discounting any method of examining a character’s thoughts was rather odd. There are plenty of instances where the examination of a character’s thoughts or feelings (without using such words as thoughts, wondered, or felt), can actually add a great deal to the energy and pace of a story. Thought she kind of indicates this in her student-teacher story example, I really think that she didn’t make this point well. Characters don’t need to be around other characters all the time; energy can be kept up perfectly fine when they are not through careful word choice and scene and/or plot construction.

Finally, on the matter of description, I totally agree with the idea that leaps and gaps in your text add energy, and that one shouldn’t spell things out, but I feel that sometimes a large amount of description can really help a story, especially one that isn’t occurring in the here-and-now. Description needs to be balanced with gaps in text, but it also is what can really allow, if used right, for a reader to become totally immersed in at tale.

What I am trying to say is that, thought I don’t totally disagree with everything Sellers writes about in regards to creating energy, I also don’t totally agree with it. The best writing needs to have a balance in the level of energy, and that is something that Sellers has not (so far at least) really explained well.

Blog 1

Creative writing. I am in awe of it, if I am to be completely honest. I thought that, after such a long while, I would still be able to harness whatever was left of my creative impulses into a story idea. Or even a few lines of each paragraph, just enough to help fill in the key moments of the story. These inspirations did not come, I was alone without the best parts of my brain. I have found that brains often do this. They care for us, nurture us as we develop, and then, as soon as we really need them, they move out. My conclusion? Your brain is a terrible roommate. All it does is make you watch TV and sit around reading books. Then, when you need some of its spontaneity, it gives you this blank stare from the spaces behind your eyeballs as if to say, “Uh, dude. I think all of those Nick at Night reruns did something funny to my thinkermajiggy. Sorry, bro.” My brain is a total dick. So my story is lame. Frankly, I am a bit relieved I was able to write anything at all. The best stories are the ones that move you as you write them. They are the stories that consume you. I was just looking for a way out in this one.

Blog 1

I have to say that I agree with Alice. I really got caught up in the suspense of “A New Kind of Gravity.” I felt like the story had a hold of me. Not in the usual, I couldn’t put the book down kind of way but that the story wasn’t going to let me go. It wasn’t me holding on to the book, it was the book holding on to me. I didn’t actually care for most of the story. It is not something I would have chosen to read but once I started the story I felt compelled to finish it.

I wasn’t surprised at the way Charlie acted in the end. The author had foreshadowed Charlie’s want to hurt Camilla’s father with Charlie’s memories of his ex and his desire to hurt her ex. I actually spent the last couple of pages of the story anticipating his action. However, I was surprised that Charlie actually acted so violently with Camilla and her mother as the audience. Looking back on the ending, I’m not sure why this surprised me. His action would have had so much less meaning if he had not acted in front of Camilla and her mother.

I felt extremely disappointed with the end. By acting so violently against Camilla’s father it seemed that Charlie was, in the eyes of Camilla, no better than any of the other violent people in her life. In those last few moments that she saw Charlie, her whole opinion of him was forced to change. He was suddenly not her friend but someone who would hurt her happiness and to a child in Camilla’s situation all she could possibly want is for her family to be whole and happy. I felt something almost like heartbreak at the thought of what this poor fictional child must have suffered at that moment. In my mind it was awful.

I think a couple of the points that Sellers makes about good writing styles are really interesting. At one point she tells that we should be specific about what we are writing about and give a lot of solid details. Then in another section she warns us about the danger of giving the reader too many details. She says that by being too specific the reader might lose interest because they can't use their own imaginations and then they lose the desire to figure things out for themselves in the story.
At first glance these arguments might seem to contradict each other, but I think they go hand in hand. I think that at least half of the difficulty in writing a story is figuring out how many details to give and when. I didn't really think about that until I wrote the first story for this class. There were a couple of times when I had to try to stop myself from rambling on (I didn't always succeed) and giving too many details. It was really easy to get carried away with things that might seem important to me but had no real importance to the story. Then there were just as many times when I had to decide whether or not I had given enough information to get my point across. That will have to be something that I will have to work on.

Blog 1

I wasn't sure of what I was suppose to write about in this blog, and I'm still now sure, so I'll talk a little about the different readings we had.

The first story I read was "The Gift of Years" by Vu Tran. I actually enjoyed reading it, even with the lack of chronological order. Normally that would have drove me up the wall, but in context of the story, it fit. The narration was from the father's, Lam's, point of view and him remembering his youngest daughter Mai. our memory doesn't flow chronologically so it made sense that the narration of the story didn't either. Thankfully, Tran makes each change in time clear and I was never confused/irritated by it. As for the overall story, although not much happened over a course of many years, I still found it interesting. I enjoyed the internal conflict within Lam's character and how he questioned his own and favorite daughter's innocence in his son-in-law's death. From the beginning, I as the reader was set up with the image of violence and Mai. Once I read her husband had drowned, I immediately thought the worst of Mai and thought she had pushed him in the river, despite the fact there was no evidence to believe that. The very first image of Mai we were given was of her watching her brother being beaten and offering no help to him. This image rose up again when I finally learned that she had not directly killed her husband, but offered no help to save him either. She did think about getting help, but was unable to do so. This made me rethink her character when she was younger and think that the reason she didn't help her brother before was because she was too scared and had no idea what to do. After all, she was just a child at the time. I thought the end was absolute genius when we learned that once of Lam's fondest memories of Mai was actually not of Mai. It made me rethink all of the "memories" he had of her and realize (with some after thought) that memories are not completely valid and cause us to judge that person in a different light.

I also enjoyed reading "A New Kind of Gravity" by Andrew Foster Altschul, though, at first I thought the narrator, Charlie, was female and I'm not sure if it was simply because I'm a girl or I associated him with one of my favorite characters, but it took me a while to realize that he was actually a he. Aside from that bit of confusion, the rest of the story was fairly clean cut (ignoring the fact I also didn't know where Charlie was working for a few pages). Like "The Gift of Years", I found Charlie's situation to be really interesting and unique. Working in a women's help center is not an everyday profession and it was interesting to see how it worked (if the story is accurate to real help centers). What I found really interesting was the different interactions Charlie had with the people within the help center. He had a set of rule to abide by when dealing with the women, while his relationship with Horace and Camila were completely different and unique. I loved Charlie's relationship with Camila even though I was always wary of a bitter, maybe sweet, ending between them. The situation simply called for it and I couldn't imagine it going well. The ending wasn't really sad, but more so realistic. That was something else I liked about the story, it was real. I could imagine each even actually happening somewhere, sometime, and that helped draw me into each event.

Blog One

In The Practice of Creative Writing by Heather Sellers, there is a lot of discussion about energy and the power of making your own ideas and choices with characters. Sellers discusses how to properly use energy to capture the readers and draw them into the story. Sellers also discusses the importance of leaving a lot of the imagery and details of the story up to the imagination of the reader. I completely agree with Sellers on this point, "it's like prechewed food. We want to chew for ourselves. We want it to feel like we are seeing this, that's happening before our eyes" (81). When I am reading any story, yes, I enjoy the basic underlying description, however, I do not want all of the nitty gritty details of what the pimples on a girl's nose were like. I want to be able to imagine it for myself. That is why I find it so crushing when I see a movie before a book, I lose the power of imagining people for myself. That power and energy is taken from me. Similarly, I am angry when I watch a movie after reading the book, because generally, it is nothing as I pictured in my head. I feel like it is very vital to leave certain power up to the reader as Sellers states. It is their story, we are writing it for them, give them the gratitude of their own imagination. The stories that give me all the power to figure out my own description and help build the characters with the author, are the stories that I believe are the most well written. If I am getting a prime steak from a chef, I want to cut it and chew it for myself.

Blog 1

While reading The Practice of Creative Writing, I have found the quotes randomly stuck on the pages to be rather inspiring. I especially enjoyed the quotes in the Leaps section of the Energy chapter. Agnes De Mille was quoted saying "The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark." I found this quote to give me confidence in my writing. She has a point, we don't exactly know what we're doing all the time. But this quote reassures me that someone else has had the same thoughts as I have and I'm more likely to take chances in my writing knowing that other people feel the same way. I also loved Cynthia Heimel's quote which reads, "When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap." After reading this quote, I had all of my confidence back. Not only are we not alone in the creative writing process, but we're all goofy hesitant fools trying to put our thoughts on paper. The best any of us can do is put our ideas out there for others to read and cross our fingers that they are well received. After all, according to half the class in our discussion about Shumway, there's no such thing as bad art! I think that as long as we really put in all the effort we can muster, write with as much as energy as we feel, and transfer the images in our head to the paper, we can be successful creative writers!

Let me just say I loved the subtle suspense that was built in “A New Kind of Gravity.” For several pages I was so curious as to what Charlie’s job was. When the narrator finally spilled the beans that he was working at a safe house, I was weirdly disappointed at first. I can’t really explain why, I just guess I thought the story was going to go completely down hill from there and begin to get depressing. To my surprise it was very interesting in a violent way. Maybe the constant threat of danger from an abusive husband or the violent attacks that occurred on the job was what caught my intention and was so intriguing. It was morbidly bizarre, the sheer drama surronding the homes (trust me however I am an advocate I do not think abusing women is positive in anyway, however for the story's sake... it was an interesting look into the lives of these women through a security guard's eyes).
Even from the beginning when I saw Charlie form these attachments to the young girl Camila, early on, and then his almost romantic inclinations towards Camila's mother later; I just knew, even though he acted so level headed, that Charlie was bound to take action. Action was what I as the reader wanted and felt that should be done, but the out come of beating up Mariana’s husband was not what was expected. It was just as if I had been thinking like Charlie had, wanting him to act impulsively but not seeing the harm it would actually have on Camila and her mother. You just wanted to see him try to put an end to the vicious cycle, and the result was detrimental.

Blog 1

In “The Practice of Creative Writing” on page 72, the author referenced Amy Fusselman’s piece, “The Pharamcist’s Mate” as an example of great literary energy. I know that this is extremely cynical, but aside from the captivating title and first eight sentences, I felt increasingly depressed as I read her piece. Perhaps this is because the idea of your father dying is a miserable topic that I had no interest in reading, but I felt even her literary devices became repetitive and thus lost my intrigue. I loved the excerpts from her dad’s journal as a med student in the marines, but all the talk of her dad being dead became too heavy in contrast to Fusselman’s attempt to make the writing a relatively easy, thoughtful read. I think that she had dark motivation behind her piece but it seemed like a personal quip written too heavily to be considered “energetic.” I agree that the format of the piece was lively and refreshing but only because it was unique.

Also, the song lyrics at the end of the story seemed very twisted to me. She implied that her mom was unattractive and called her parents “old” (who wants to be reminded of their age when they are actually aging?) and the point of why she thought her mom and dad “ruled” revolved around her receiving undeserved gifts from them. This seemed to contradict the profound emotion behind appreciating the sacrifice parents make, so it undermined the final sentence of her piece, which was supposed to reveal heart-break.

Craig Conroy Assignment 0

Be warned, I felt like being a little melodramatic when I was writing this.


To begin with, I am here to study English. I have, for the most part, taken only literature classes, saving any creative writing classes until now. My love of writing is inspired mostly by artistic impulses. I believe that writing is one of the most profound mediums we have stumbled upon to date. I write for the response. I write with the grandest of aspirations; I want to topple cities with my words, I want to raze civilizations. I want to change the world in ways no other person could. This may seem silly and misguided, or I may come across as part sociopath, but honestly, I am just trying to get the most out of what I can do, for good or bad.
I grew up just south of Boston with one brother, one sister, and two parents divorced for some years now. Living there is a strange experience for me. I have moved a few times in recent memory, twice in high school, and most of my friends live at least a few towns away, but for now it still feels like home.
The real love of my life is acting. I would say that ninety percent of what I write is originally imagined as a performance and that everything I write is better read aloud. At least I think so. Most of my other hobbies and interests are marriages between writing and acting.
As far as my reaction to feedback on my work is concerned, I am open to critique. Writing is a personal endeavor. When you present your work to another person you want to change them in ways they could not have imagined previously. You want to make them laugh, cry, soil themselves; anything to help your work survive. Sometimes, and most times in fact, that is not the case. So I take criticism and I work harder on perfecting my style because I want to be, like everyone else, the best. I won’t hide my desire to be the best I can be, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to strive to be your ultimate self. Most of the feedback I can remember is negative. Not, “your work is a travesty,” negative, but suggestions for my improvement. A lot of it was focused on my sentence length because, especially in stories, I sometimes like to amuse myself by creating long, winding sentences.
My favorite work of all time is Miltion’s Paradise Lost. I read it when I was thirteen, before I had ever really considered writing to be anything more than an exercise in word count control. I’m sure you’ve all had that moment where you read something and it just pops. Paradise Lost was what writing should be. It was sublime. It had none of the incessant brevity of the modern era. Beautifully crafted sentences, many lines long, were its strength not its weakness. For me, this was the only example of what writing could and should be. Good writing should be beautiful no matter what the subject matter. Good writing inspires people, and that’s why I am taking this class. Because I want to be inspired.

Assignment 0

I am a sophomore here at St. Lawrence Univeristy. At this point I have not delcared a major but I am considering either psychology or anthropology. Pschology interests me becuase I think it is important to understand how and why people act the way they do. I am fascinated by how the mind works and the reasons that it sometimes doesn't work the way it should.  Psychology gives you great insight into understanding other people's behavior and makes you look at society in a whole new light. I am also interested in anthropology because I enjoy learning about different cultures from around thw world adn how humans have changed and evolved throughout time.

I am from Darien Connecticut. I have enjoyed growing up there; New England is a very beautfiul place. My town is located along Long Island Sound, so in the summer it is always fun to go to the beach and swim or sail.

Aside from writing my interests include skiing, biking and crocheting. Throughout high school I attended Okemo Mountain School, a ski academy in Ludlow Vermont. This school gave me a chance to fully pursue an activity that i really well. It also gave me the opportunity to form close bonds with numerous unique individuals. I also enjoy crocheting, a hobby i picked up at Okemo Moutain School. It is notuncommon to walk through the lounge downstairs and see the students knitting or crocheting hats and mittens. My other major hobby is biking, luckily many of the roads surrounding Canton are very good for riding.

My first year program was really the first opportunity I had to get feedback from my peers. Most of the other feedback i had recieved was from teachers of professors marking comments on rought drafts of my papers. Although it can be difficult to hear people critisize your work. I now have the ability to keep and open mind and hear what others have to say about my work.

I believe good writing has two elements. I think that the author must feel excitment and passion about about what he or she is reading and be able to transfer this to the reader. I reader must feel the energy that the writing was putting into his story.

One author I admire is Khaled Hosseini, the author of "Kite Runner," as well as "A Thousand Splendid Suns." This author manages to draw the reader into a world that is completely foreign to most of the western world. Both of thses books revolve around the issues faced by the citizens of Afghanistan. Hosseieni has used his skill as an author to both entertain the reader as well as educate readers about this country. I believe it is important to have knowledge on cultures besides your own. Reading his books dismisses many misconceptions about Afgahnistan. 

I hope this class will enable me to freely transfer the thougts and ideas I have onto paper for myself and others to enjoy. I took pleasure in writing stories when I was younger but lately I have not had the opportunity to write creatively. I also hope to acquire writing skills that will help me throughout the rest of my college career and later on in life. 

Leah, Assignment 0

I all! I’m Leah, and I come from a lovely blue house nestled snug in a suburb of the city of Rochester, which is in Western NY. Rather like upstate, I grew up with four-season weather that didn’t necessary stay in its respective season. Hail in summer, 70 degree days in winter… yeah, I’m used to it.

I am here at SLU studying English and Environmental Studies. Within English I am focusing on writing, and within Environmental Studies my focus (or perhaps I should say ‘primary interest’) is on environmentally sound agriculture/architecture. I am in Environmental Studies because I have a deep passion about the environment, always have, and would desperately like to do my part to help save the planet and humanity. I am studying English because I like nothing better than to loose myself in another world for a while, and dream of someday putting the worlds in my head out on paper for others to enjoy as well.

In the course of my writing career, I have received both good and bad feedback, and have had both good and bad experiences getting feed back. The worst experience has to be from the writing club I was part of in my early teens. I never was sure if my teacher didn’t like me, my writing style, or simply my subject, but every time we would take turns reading the stories we were writing she never let me read, sometimes even passing right over me to the next kid. In that case, actions really did speak louder than words.

The best, well, the best and most positive experience I have ever had came when my dad read the fairy tale I had written for my fairy tale class last year out loud to my family. It sounded so amazing being read like that, and my family was supportive and honest in their feedback.

Another really good experience with feed back is comes from my foray into fanfiction. Fanfiction, for the unenlightened, is when one takes another author’s characters/setting and builds their own stories or character studies out of them. Fanfiction lets people play with style and technique without also having to create their own worlds and characters. There are some huge communities out there, and they can be wonderful about critiquing works. They can also be nasty at times, but so far my experiences have been very positive and beneficial.

As you might be able to tell by my love of writing, I love to create things in general, whether it is through sewing, drawing, cooking, mad laboratory experiments, writing, sculpting, or any other activity that tickles my fancy. I profess to no great skill in all of these endeavors, but they amuse me (and hopefully others) non-the less. I also enjoy sports including downhill skiing, figure skating, snowshoeing, hiking, and target shooting. At school I am active in the Advocates, Class Council, and the Costume Shop.
But, of course, my favorite activity of all is reading. ^_^

My favorite book of all time is, without question, “The Deed of Paksenarrion” by Elizabeth Moon. This is a book that I have read faithfully in all its 1024 page glory every year since I was 12; the characters are fascinating, the plot totally engaging, and Ms. Moon manages to strike a wonderful balance not just in her levels of description, but also in her use of language and ‘world-building’. Other books I enjoy are the witty dialog of Aaron Allston’s “Starfighters of Adumar”, the “OMG!” ending of Timothy Zahn’s “The Icarus Hunt”, and the beautiful and believable world of Robin McKinley’s “Sunshine”. Finally, I have to say that some of the best writing ever, and more specifically the character examinations ever, belongs to Matthew Stover’s novelization of “Revenge of the Sith”. Read it, you will understand.

Though I am (clearly) a fantasy fan, I will admit it now that I simply detest the works of Stephanie Meyer. You know the ever-so-popular “Twilight” teenage-vampire romances? Yeah, I hate ‘em. I find her characters flat and 2-d, her plot full of gaping holes and moralistic objections, and her descriptions frankly pathetic. As a writer I would like to be the opposite of her in everything but her popularity. ^_^

In regards to ‘good’ writing, as I see it, there is a difference between good writing and excellent writing. Good writing is when you read a book, enjoy it, have no real complaints about it, perhaps even find it mildly interesting… but promptly forget it as soon as you finish it. Excellent writing is, in contrast, writing that simply sucks you in. It is the book that you cannot put down and rush back to your room to read at every available chance until it is done. It is the story you have read so many times that you quote it to your friends. It is the book whose spine is so bent, whose pages are so dog-eared, and whose cover has been so loved that the whole thing is simply falling apart. That is excellent writing, and that is what I dream of being able to create.

I want to learn not to be an ok writer, not even to be a good writer, but to be an excellent writer. I do however realize that this is not a goal that is feasible in one semester. That is why my hope is not so much for this class to make me into an amazing writer, but for this class to give me the tools needed for me to be able to constantly ‘tweak’ my writing throughout my life until I reach that wonderful, dreamy pinnacle of happiness I call “being an excellent writer”. I want to learn from this class how not just to write, but the mechanics of thinking critically about my writing so that I may constantly improve myself.

So, at 1000 words, can anyone tell why I chose the adjective “Loquacious” for myself in class the other day? ^_^

Assignment 0

I am a sophomore, with an intended major in philosophy, and a double minor in English and Psychology. I really enjoy philosophy because it is simply people challenging each other but still with respect. I believe ideas need to be challenged but that respect is still key. Therefore, I really enjoy philosophy because of all these different aspects. I also enjoy philosophy because I am intending to go to Law School.

I am from Lebanon, NH. It is ten minutes away from Dartmouth College. It is a small little "city." It has a lot of different activities going on but after 19 years of living there, those many different activities become very cliché. However, I have a lot of really good friends there so life is not as dramatically boring as I am making it out to be. It is actually a good little city with lots of dedicated and caring people, and is a nice place to return to after Canton, NY.

I am interested in doodling, different, I understand, but I like to doodle on clothing and such. I really love reading leisure books. I like spending time with my friends. I enjoy going to the gym. I enjoy watching T.V. and movies. I also enjoy photography. I enjoy being an active member of my church community as well.

I have had some pretty bad experiences with writing feedback. My teacher last year would simply write all negatively critical comments on my paper up to a point and simply say that I should take her previous comments and apply them to the rest of the paper. Though I understand that writing issues can be similar throughout the paper, I believe that if I take the time to write the paper, the reader should take the time to read it. Most of my experiences with feedback haven’t been that good except for my F.Y.S. teacher last year, who discussed my work with me in detail whether good or bad to help me clarify my ideas.

Jane Austen and I have a love/hate relationship. I could never be as eloquent as her, but she is a literary genius to say the least. When I was younger and tried to read Northanger Abbey I was greatly bothered that she over described every little minute detail, when it could be said in several words. However, after reading Pride and Prejudice, I fell in love with her ability to twist her plot in such a way that captured the reader. So I aspire to capture people like her stories but not deter readers with lengthy descriptions.

Good writing captures the reader, is clear and concise but rich. It keeps you wanting more. It makes you feel alive in the story and empathize with the characters. If writing is good you will constantly be searching for more, and when it is finished you will be left satisfied. Good writing makes you think and challenge your ideas. Good writing does not stop for intellectual writing and words, it continues for the story and point that it is trying to convey. Good writing grabs hold of a reader and shows them a point and never leaves the reader confused for a second.

In this class I hope to accomplish clarity. I have had problems with my flow and clarity. I hope to be able to convey a point that has my reader not asking questions of the point I was trying to make, but questioning how that point affects them. I want my writing to not cause any doubt but to stand firm and solid.

Assignment 0

Assignment 0

Greetings all!

I’m Sarah Hathaway. I’m majoring in English with a writing concentration and probably a literature minor. I could go on for ages about why I love my major. Most of my reasons all come back to the fact that I love words. More importantly, I love what we can do with words and language. It is my greatest and most overwhelming desire to be an author. I particularly enjoy the fantasy genre and I am currently working on a fantasy book geared towards sixth grade students. I am ridiculously enthusiastic about writing and almost equally so about reading.

I’m from Cape Vincent, New York. I usually have to use several points of reference when describing the location of my home town to anyone not from the immediate area. For simplicity’s sake, my itty-bitty village is located where the St. Lawrence River meets Lake Ontario. It takes about an hour and a half for me to drive home. I absolutely love my home. Our village is so small that, honest to goodness, there is not one single stop light. Speaking of lights, however, we do have Tibbett’s Point Light House and it is a great source of pride in our little community. I live on what used to be a French nobleman’s farm; built in the late 1850s from limestone quarried from the creak located a half mile down the road. My nearest neighbor is about a mile down the road and I count the freedom of living in such a rural area as one of my greatest blessings. I lived a childhood of immense freedom and splendor that I would not trade for anything in this entire world of pleasures.

The pleasures that I most prize in this life are simple. I love to laugh and I try to fill each of my days with as much laughter as I am granted. I also adore reading. In the words of Jane Austen, “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” Personally I could not agree more but I will admit to the fact that I am not vehement in my accordance with this statement. I find long meandering walks with no set destination irresistible. This is probably due to my wandering thoughts; I love to see where I find myself at the end. I take great enjoyment in the serenity of nature, especially under tree canopies and beside bodies of water.

Moving on to feedback about my writing… I went to a very small high school (my graduating class had 87 students) and there are pros and cons to this. On the positive end, most of my English professors incorporated peer review into our classes. The negative end is that as one of the more talented students in my English classes, my peers rarely gave me valuable feedback. I was often placed in groups where the majority of the students were poor writers because my professors could count on me to give valuable help and advice. Though I don’t believe this harmed my writing I do believe that I could have benefited more from more varied feedback. My college experience has been much more useful. I have received a great deal more constructive feedback, both from my peers and my professors. I can honestly say that only one person has ever told me that my writing was, “poop not fit for an outhouse,” and apart from that one experience most people have offered me much more constructive criticism.

This is going to sound either corny or pretentious but in all honesty my greatest influence is God. He has granted me with a gift and a goal and for that He will always be my greatest influence. As far as influence from other writers goes there are so very many. Jane Austen is an extremely influential force. Sometimes I sit and write about the most trivial events of a day, all the while trying to mimic her style. I love her way with words. I also love the way John Keats makes words and images dance across pages to rhythms in ways I can only hope to dream of doing. His way with words is almost like magic, spectacular and almost unbelievable. I also find the work of Emily Dickinson extremely motivating. A book of her poems is sitting just by my elbow right now.

I think one of the most wonderful aspects of poetry is that there are so many forms; no one person could fully explore them all without doing many forms an injustice. Poetry has the capability to be both simple and complex, almost in the same way that life is both simple and complex. Poetry offers both the writer and the reader a great deal of freedom and that freedom is a precious thing. I don’t believe I can actually articulate how truly amazing I find poetry to be. It is truly an art, and one that I wish I were more competent at.

My goal for this class is to grow as a writer. It is a simple goal but it has the potential to be a difficult one for me to achieve. I have a tendency to remain static in one attitude as a writer and it is one of my greatest obstacles. I am hoping to overcome this over the course of the semester as well as the obstacle of my pride. I have a very potent compulsion to believe that I know best as far as my own writing is concerned. It is a cumbersome thing and hopefully this course will help me to jump that hurtle as well.

=)

Hi all, I am Ali! I am studying computer science, which I enjoy because of the technical aspect of it. I think it is rewarding to code a computer to do whatever I want it to do… and I am amused that I find that rewarding; it is something I did not predict I would have a knack for. Just two years ago, I was leaning towards majoring in psychology, etc… my academic goals have recently totally changed.
I am from Boston, Massachusetts; a beautiful city that is the economic and cultural hub of the East Coast. Pick any spot on the earth and you can find delicious, at least somewhat authentic food from that location in Boston. Boston is famous for its historical events (the Tea Party, Battle of Bunker Hill…), medical facilities (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s…), as well as sports (Red Sox, Patriots, Celtics, Bruins and Boston College Eagles. My personal favorites are the Patriots and Celtics – and I, along with the rest of the Boston fans, am an extremely sore loser). There are at least forty post-high school educational institutions in the greater Boston area, so during the summer months, the city is noticably more quiet. The subway system in Boston is endearingly referred to as “the T” and along with being the first subway system established in the United States, it is also one of the few major public transportations across the country that allows dogs to ride the T. It is a gorgeous, historical city but there is a huge dichotomy between the suburbs and rural areas, which can be frustrating if you happen to be stuck in one or the other.
I love traveling, the sun and beach… any beach will do… ALL music and spending time with my family and friends.
In previous courses I have always received good feedback on my work. I think any feedback is generally good; even if I disagree with it, it ultimately expands my view.
I do not have any particular authors who have influenced me, mainly because I enjoy a huge variety of novels and I find classics generally boring. I really enjoy reading any meaningful story with a twist of humor tossed in cleverly.
Good writing is very engaging and an excellent form of communication. Good writing enables the reader to finish reading feeling some kind of emotion… and wanting more.
I write privately, as a way of expressing myself, so I chose to take this course to work on writing in a manner that could be published. Also, more importantly (since I do not actually plan on publishing my writing), to build my confidence in order to feel comfortable sharing my written work. The active peer involvement will be a challenge for me, and that research and effort put into my writing is what I look forward to learning.