On Writing

I really enjoyed and agree with King when he says to use plot as an absolute last resource. Often in my writing I have a pretty good idea of what I want to say and where I want it to go , or so I think, but I often find that it does not go the route I intended. Normally I become frustrated when this happens but King has opened my eyes to the fact that it may be for the best. He states that as a writer, we are not the creator of a story but merely a discoverer and interpreter of that story. I felt that he had just let me in on writings biggest secret. Why hadn't anyone told me this before? Why were people not running through the streets shouting it from the tops of their lungs? I wish they were. I wish I was amongst them! I know I will keep that bit of information with me and as a future Educator I will be sure to pass it along. It'd be selfish of me not to.

Memoir Choices

So thinking back on my life there were really only a few big events I thought were worth telling. I thought about writing about my parents divorce but it was a typical story that, frankly, I am sick of telling and sick of writing about so I immediately scratched that off. I also thought I might write about almost losing a cousin of mine but that happened in 2002 and though that doesn't seem too far back my memory of that day and the months our family endured at the hospital everyday is jumbled. So what it comes down to is:

1) I lost my grandfather a year and a half ago. He was 78. He had gone to the hospital for knee replacement surgery and began to crash during recovery. Doctors discovered a really bad ulcer in his stomach and planned for an emergency surgery. He was in the ICU for 15 months battling infections and trying to heal. My grandmother, of 93,  was at his side from noon to about eight o'clock everyday he was there. The family, all 22 of us, came to his side to say goodbye the day he was scheduled to be taken off life support.

2) My friend Clay passed in 2007. A few months later My friend Morgan's mother passed, and the day after the funeral her life long friend, and one of my best friends, Sara's dad passed. It was the end of the school year and everyone was coming home and getting ready for a summer that was bound to be epic. Clay had gotten into an accident at the end of finals week, our friends skipped their finals to be with him in his last hours. Sara was away and working at a camp in Philadelphia when Morgans mom passed and when her father passed.It was a rough summer for all of my friends and me.

3) Throughout my childhood I had a friend named Anna. We were very similar and very different in many ways but always managed to keep an amazing relationship and have a great time together. We found ourselves in trouble quite often throughout high school and were dubbed with the nickname Trouble when we were together. Luckily we never got into anything serious with the police. We loved to go to concerts and 2 of our favorite bands were coming to St. Andrews Hall in Detroit for the Jagermeister Tour. I picked her up from Wayne State after class and we headed over. I through the car into park and she pulled out a liter of Jager and said "In the name of the tour". I laughed and began to unscrew the top. An hour and a half later the bottle was gone and we were inside waiting for the concert to start. As far as my memory, that's where it ends. I had to be told the next morning the events that took place the previous night and why we had to drive back to Detroit to get my car and, upon arrival, why My back window was smashed.

4) This last one is the most personal and most recent of events. I have realized that my attraction is not just for the opposite sex and have recently began dating someone of the same sex as me. Though I am telling you this now, I have only confided in my older sister and two of my close friends, one of which lives in Spain. What you must know is that I have a very close relationship with my entire family and a few of my friends but I can not seem to fathom the idea of them knowing. I am afraid my father wont be able to look at me. My mother lives out of state and her boyfriends daughter is gay but I still do not know how my mother would take the news. I am sure my brothers wouldn't care but it's still hard for me to tell them. It's not that I am ashamed or embarrassed of the person I'm with, I wish I could bring them to family events and introduce them to my friends but I go through phases of being absolutely terrified of people knowing and then thinking "well who really cares?" But you don't know peoples true feelings about this kind of stuff until it smacks them right in the face and who knows how they'll react. Anyway, it was and still is a huge eye opener to life as well as something I am struggling to incorporate into my life without causing harm or stress to those I care about most.


Thanks for the future feedback!

Crucial

I love writing but I don't necessarily love the rules and regulations for sentence structure and such. Maybe that's why I love poetry so much because in poetry you don't have to follow the rules. However, I know how extremely important it is to know, understand, and execute the rules of writing. Why is it so Important? If you can not correctly piece sentences together and create a nice flow to your writing people will lose interest. If you are writing an argumentative paper, how do you suppose you'll convince someone that you're right if they can not understand what you are trying to say simply because your grammar is off or you're lacking important punctuation? If you are not writing poetry and you are writing for an audience it is crucial to know and use all elements of writing to ensure a well rounded and interesting piece of writing. The Elements of Style was not the most interesting and exciting thing to read, to say the least, but the information within was well worth the read. It is a great piece to reference when writing anything really and I will be doing so with most future writing adventures.

If interested:
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/style.html 

Give It All

Annie Dillard's work "Write Till You Drop" was extremely inspirational to me. I have always loved to read but only recently have I gained a passion for writing. I have only written poetry which only seems right to me because I will pick up a book of, or on, poetry before anything else. Don't get me wrong, I love a great non-fictional piece of work or an Epic of sorts, but poetry is where my heart calls home. When Dillard quoted a poet saying, "One line of a poem, the poet said - only one line, but thank God for that one line - drops from the ceiling.", it really struck a chord with me because I know that feeling; whether it's in my own poetry or someone elses. I may be enjoying a poem but then BAM, you get ONE line, or two lines, that really just bring it all together and you can't help but nod and say, "Yes! Yes, yes, yes."  It has the potential to pull on every heart string, make you feel like you've been punched in the stomach, or make your heart race. This feeling is one I would not trade for anything.

I also really enjoyed how she pulled from all different aspects of art to inspire people to write. She quoted painters, sculptors, writers, scientists and even used sports as a parallel, which I could relate to. I do believe my favorite part of this work is the second to last paragraph: it left me breathless. "Spend it all" she says. Don't save anything for later because something more, something greater, will lend itself to you then. I have so often "saved" things for later pieces and most often never end up using them. It is a piece of advice that will stick with me throughout the rest of my life. 


I hope that most people find inspiration and courage to write after reading this, and if not in this than in something.

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