They say that the revision process is the most important part of writing. Who are they? I don't know, but someone sure says it because I have heard it many times. Revision is also one of the hardest parts of the process. By the time I've written a piece, I have figured out what I actually want to write about, but it can be difficult to make where you started and where you ended up flow smoothly. Previously I thought of the revision process as the time when you remove all the parts in your writing that suck and replace them with something better. I think my most important take away from class this week was that it is also really important to make note of what you have done well. This isn't just a feel good step to improve your confidence in your writing and hopefully keep your revisions from ending with you losing all hope, although both of those are important! Taking the time to find specific things you like about your writing helps you figure out what you want your piece to look like. You want to use this habit to make sure you don't get rid of the parts you like and so that you can do those same things later.
I also read a Harvard article on how to revise drafts more effectively. https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/revising-draft One of the interesting things I learned this week is that you can look at art and literature in similar ways. You can analyze them in basically the same way. I liked thinking about art and literature like this because I really enjoy art and I can easily spend an entire day in an art museum. I felt very inspired by how viewing art was presented in the ted talk that we watched. I really want to get a story out of the art that I look at and I want to make an emotional connection to it, but it just isn't realistic to expect that connection with every piece. I want to see all the pieces but when she said that she only lingers on ones she felt called to, I felt really affirmed because I like to spend lots of time in a gallery but I don't want to divide that time evenly. There are some things I would happily spend hours looking at, creating a story, and finding meaning in, and some I don't need a second glance at. The same thing goes for reading. Sometimes I will get really into something I'm reading and I will have an insatiable need for more, some works I could talk and theorize about for hours. Others, every sentence is a chore and I gain nothing from. I guess that the biggest takeaway from this week's lessons is that this is okay. I don't have to be moved by everything. I don't have be changed by everything I see, and I don't need to bend over backwards to force an emotional connection that just isn't there. If it's good, revel in it. If it's not, that's okay, move on to something that is. Another relevant article Not all writing is literature. Sometimes a story is told in a way that deepens the meaning, and makes a work beautiful. This is literature. Literature is when the story is woven like wool into a textile full of complexity and subtlety. In addition to the article we read in class, "Story Versus Literature", I read an article called "Are Literature and Fiction the Same". One of the insights that stuck with me was that literature "can serve as an introduction to a new world of experience." A story may be able to show you a different world, but literature can thrust you into the experience of a different world. Literature isn't contained within what is written on the page, the words create a three dimensional vision that is so much more that what is literally written. It is interesting to think of literature in this way because it really highlights the importance metaphors have in literature. Metaphors can provide authors the ability to make their work more than what is on the page, to give it multiple layers of meaning. Maybe that was one of the purposes of the visual metaphors project we did, to think deeper and more critically so that our writing can be more like literature. When I read the poem ‘The Eagle’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson this week, I saw an eagle. I saw the image of a beautiful and serene scene, the focus on an eagle swooping down from a cliff. I knew that there was probably a deeper meaning, something you had to read between the lines to find. Still, I didn’t quite see it, and, to be honest, I didn’t particularly care to. It seemed just fine to me to read a poem that's about an eagle, plain and simple. One of the important things teachers can do for students is to challenge them to step out of their comfort zone and to become an active participant in their education and to move past passivity. My teachers gave me a push to analyze the poem further. When I started to look at it in a different light it made more sense. There were still some parts that I had a problem with. I still was not a fan of the imperfect analogy between the eagle's dive from the cliff and a person's fall from power and loss of control. When an eagle dives, it is a calculated and important maneuver. An eagle doesn't lose control when it dives, it knows exactly the fish it is swooping down to catch. Maybe I'm not letting myself enjoy the poem by being nit-picky. That one analogy is one of the reasons I dismissed the poem's meaning in the first place. What if it isn't perfect for good reason? Maybe eagles don't fall in the same way that they don't have hands, in the same way that the sea doesn't crawl. Maybe what I originally thought was a weakness in the writing was really another way Tennyson was conveying the meaning of the poem. The whole time, the thing bothering me most about the poem was a intentional literary element, another example of personification. Maybe next time I can push aside my doubts until I have fully let the full meaning sink in, instead of denying the entire purpose of the poem. I feel really good about the book that I chose to read over the next few weeks. When Mr. Schoenborn said that we were going to walk around the room and get a feel for the books and see what appeals to each of us the most, it sounded like the classic English class "what is calling to you" voodoo, but I always just roll with it. So, I pick up one of the books on my desk because it has an intriguing cover, a woman's face surrounded by fruits in a cool art style, and it vaguely reminded me of the painting 'American Gothic'. It's called 'Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit' by Jeanette Winterson. I read the back and it sounded interesting, plus I really enjoy memoir-type books (I loved reading 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' by Maya Angelou last year). I thought it was probably a bad plan to commit to reading the first book I picked up without at least browsing the others, so I continued around the room keeping Winterson's work in mind. So I looked at all of the books but I kept comparing them to the first and nothing seemed to measure up. It was kind of weird that the right book was right in front of me, but I definitely believe in the power of coincidence, is this what it means for a book to 'call to you'? So far it's worked out well, the book seems super interesting and I enjoy Winterson's writing style! It turns out 'judging a book by it's cover' worked out pretty well for me. |
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