Personal Reflection about my Blog

            This is not the first blog that I have done for my classes.  I have used UMW Blogs before for my poetry seminar class and WordPress for my education class.  We used each blog differently.  My poetry blog was a place we posted the poetry we created in the class.  My education blog was used as a place to write about what was going on in my life and in my practicum classroom.  I really do like having blogs because I think it is a neat place where you can post your writing.  I really wish I had used my blog more during this semester.  When I looked at other people’s pages that had added more to their page than just the assignments, it made me wish that I had done more to my page.  I wish I did freewritings and then post those because then it would show my progression with freewriting from the beginning of the semester to the end.  I think the blogs main importance was to show the progression of our writing and ideas about writing during this class.           

            Even though I think having a blog is very beneficial, it does make me nervous to think that my works will be read by others, even people that I don’t know.  That is the only concern that I have with the blog because I don’t know how other readers would react to what I wrote.  I think that was more of a concern when I was doing WordPress because that allows access to anyone, while UMW Blogs only allows people from UMW to access my blog.  When I wrote my posts for this class, I did not worry about what people thought when they read it, but maybe because I was just doing the assignments.

            As I said before, I really wish I had done more with the blog.  I felt like I only really used it for the assignments and since I didn’t feel like I connected with the blog.  It was a busy semester so I did not really have time to make my blog more personal.  If I had made it more personal then it would have had more value to me.  I would have liked to have used the blog more, like posting more responses to articles.  I think if we had to freewrite like once a week and post that on our blogs, it would have made it more personal for me.  I would do it if I was told to freewrite or do some type of writing activity each week.  That way we would do something that was personal to us and that would make the blog more personal.

            I also think we could have commented on each others blogs more and make comments about the freewrites or the responses that we had to do.  That way we can see each others writings and keep a close eye on everyone’s writing development over the course of this class.  I also think it would be beneficial if after we posted our papers on the blogs that the people who critiqued and revised my paper could look at the final draft and make a comment about the changes from the draft to the final paper.  I think that could be beneficial for us to see the changes and how we helped the draft and how the writer used our feedback to make adjustments to the final paper.

             I think this blog has the potential to allow us to reflect on ourselves as writers, but since I did not feel a personal connection with the blog, I considered it more of an assignment.  As I said earlier, I think I would have more of a connection if we did more assignments with the blogs.  This class has helped me with my identity as a writer and I wish I could have shown that more with the blog.  I think if I made it more personal and did freewrites and reflections on my blog, I would have been able to reflect on myself as a writer.  Even though I did not have that connection with these blogs, I can see a big potential in the blogs for that personal connection and reflection on ourselves as a writer.  I think blogs are really cool and beneficial and I think you should continue using the blogs.

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A Birds-Eye-View of our Class’s Blogs

            While looking through out class blogs, I noticed that a lot of people spent their time composing their responses and adding additional freewrites and posts to add to their pages.  It was really neat looking at the progression that many of us made throughout the course of this semester with our responses and papers.  I noticed that Ashley G. made a lot of progress with her identity as a writer.  At the beginning of the semester, she said that she is more of a reader and was very shy about her writing because she did not really like to write.  As she progressed with her posts, there was an increased confidence in her ability to write, which she thanked freewriting for.  She used freewriting as a way to get out all her ideas, even the ones she did not know she had, and get her voice out into her papers.

            I think many people found freewriting helpful in giving them confidence as a writer and helps them get their voice in their writing.  Some people found the blogs useful to post these freewrites.  Lauren had some freewriting in her blogs: she wrote about meta-thinking and “caffeine drowsiness.”  Her freewrites are very detailed and just get out all of her thoughts and ideas.  I can tell in class that Lauren has a lot of ideas and loves to write, so I think using the blog allows her to write and get out all of her ideas out on the page.  I do like the humor though, especially in her freewrite “caffeine drowsiness.”  I like the humorous play in the title, caffeine drowsiness, and the humorous explanation of the title in the first paragraph about the crash and burn of caffeine and how it affects her mood.

            Humor is really nice to have in the blogs because it allows the person to play with writing.  Dave uses a lot of humor in his papers and responses that he posts in his blog.  I can tell that he loves writing and playing with language, especially when listening to his presentation on Lynn.  I like that he uses the reference of his paper “Black Hamlet” in his memoir and two of his response posts: the one on race and response to Miller.  I loved reading Dave’s memoir because I loved his play with language and then his inner turmoil of using what could have been considered inappropriate word choice and then his realization at the end that it’s okay.  Throughout this paper, and many of his other papers, he is very funny and that is entertaining for him to write as well as for us to read.

            Mostly everyone had all of their papers and responses posted, but I focused on a few of the blogs that people spent a lot of time on: the ones that were really detailed in their responses or had creative/humorous responses or had added extra stuff to their blogs.  Kelley posted a poem on her page from Langston Hughes.  I liked that she did this because she found something relevant to the class that was not assigned, but she wanted to post it on the blog because it was relevant to the first post on race and on voice.  I also liked how Jocelyn took a narcissist quiz when we had to create a post about narcissism.  I thought that added a little extra something to the post and allowed us all to take the quiz if we personally wanted to see how narcissist we are.

            Kelsey also added some extra stuff to her blog.  She wrote in her memoir about one of her English teachers, Mr. Waskowitz, who had a pivotal impact on her writing.  She had googled him and emailed him.  She posted the response he sent her back and I thought that was so neat because it was a very personal post because this teacher had such a huge impact on her writing.  I noticed that Stephanie was also very personal in her posts.  I thought her papers and responses were very in depth and detailed.  She talked a lot about her family and boyfriends, and was very personal.  I like that she was able to use the blog as a way to get out her feelings.  She also used the blog a lot and placed extra stuff in there.  She read an article and posted her responses to it.  I really liked the comic and YouTube clip she posted because they pertain to our writing class.  The clip focusing on problems with Elbow’s writing, which is good because this class does focus on the positives and negatives people have with Elbow’s ideas on writing.  The comic was humorous too!  I love Calvin and Hobbes and I like how it focuses on the writing process with academic discourse.

            I really enjoyed looking through everyone’s blogs and focusing on those who really used their blogs for freewriting and posting items of importance in them.  They did not just use it for class assignments, but for their own personal uses.  The most important thing the blogs were used for was to practice show how our writing has progressed throughout this semester.  I would have liked it if we had more assignments to post on the blogs so then we could take our times to expand our ideas and then post it so everyone could read our response.  I think this would show how our thinking about writing has changed during this class and show how our writing has evolved and improved.

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Struggle between the Reader and Writer

            My identity as a writer has always escaped my hands before I could lay my finger on it.  Maybe I am confused about my identity as a writer because I consider my identity as a reader.  Let me explain why I consider myself a reader.  I have a passion for books.  I started reading at a young age and devoured all the books I read.  I read a lot of fantasy books and was absolutely enthralled at the creativity in these novels.  The authors were able to create characters and settings in such great detail out from the corner of their mind.  Reading these novels made me want to write exactly like those authors.  Reading was what made me want to become a writer, since I wanted to try and write just like those authors.  That is why reading is above writing in my mind and identity.           

            That was an early stage of my life, when I still associated the reader and the writer as the same person.  Everyone has a reader and a writer inside of them; I mean I am a reader and a writer.  I usually thought that since everyone has the ability to be a reader and writer, these two mental concepts were combined as one.  I now know that even though everyone has the capability to be a reader and writer, they have to be a reader and writer separately, not at the same time.  There is a separation between the reader and writer, which I did not realize before.  Maybe that is why every time I tried to write short stories, in imitation of the authors I red, I would not be able to finish them after I reread what I wrote.  After reading my creative fiction, I would mentally compare it to the novels I have read.  The comparisons were never good for the stories I wrote; my stories just never matched up to the creative genius of my favorite authors.

            Peter Elbow mentions the difference between the reader and the writer in his article “Being a Writer v. Being an Academic.”  The way Elbow describes the reader versus the writer makes it seem like a boxing match.  Elbow explains that the reader and writer struggle with each other to gain control over the text.  So you might be wondering why this struggle.  What does it mean?  The reader and writer try to control the text through the meaning in the text.  The writer is the person who places the meaning and voice into the text, which gives the author power over the text they just wrote.  What makes elbow upset is when the reader comes into the picture and has to take meaning out of the text.  This is where the reader has beaten down the writer in the boxing match and stripped all the power from the writer.  The reader has the ability to determine whether or not there is voice in the paper and they get to choose what meaning they take out from the paper, whether the author intended it or not.

            Even though I respect Elbow as an academic and writer, I think he goes a little far when saying the reader’s intention is to kill of the author.  I do see a power struggle between the reader and writer because there is always a struggle about the meaning of the text.  What I do not see is the extreme struggle of the reader trying to get rid of the writer’s meaning completely.  My own personal struggle as a reader is trying to figure out the meaning from an article - trust me, we’ve all had those experiences, when the author’s message just flies over our heads.  All I’m doing is trying to find the meaning in what I read.  If I can grasp the message the writer is trying to convey then I will be more than willing to accept that message.  Although, when I hit that struggle with finding that message, I have to grasp whatever meaning I can get from the text.  Even when I find my own meaning in the text, I still respect and understand what the writer’s intent was in writing the article.

            I believe that readers can take their own meanings from the text, but I do not like how Elbow says the reader takes the meaning from the text without respecting or giving thought to the writer’s voice and the writer’s intended meaning.  I am sure there are some readers that do not care about what the writer intended to say, but not all readers are like that.  Many readers respect writers and take what they are given from the writer.  These readers also respect writers when they can get a reaction from the reader about a character or the plot, whether it is a positive or negative reaction.  If the writer can make the readers feel something over the character or message, then they are a really writer good and readers should recognize this and respect them as a writer.  I have read many books where I have absolutely hated or loved the book depending on how I felt about the characters or plot.  If a writer is able to make me feel so much about one simple character, I would say they are a very good writer.

            Now looking upon this issue from my writer’s identity, I do understand how a writer could be upset if their meaning is taken into the wrong context.  I understand that feeling when writing a creative fiction story, and I get nervous as others read what I had written because I wonder if they are going to take the same meaning from it that I place in my paper.  Unfortunately, I need to face the facts that some people will view it differently from my point of view, but others will understand what I wrote.  All writers should realize this risk because all readers will get a different message from the paper.  No one thinks the same or pull out the same message from the paper, which depends on their mood and environmental setting.  It is something writers need to be ready for when they write a paper or publish an article or book.  As long as the readers get something from the text, then the writer has done their job.  They may not have passed on the message they were hoping readers to see, but I believe it is fine if the readers are able to take some meaning from the text and connect it with the article.  The whole point of writing a paper is to have the reader delve into the paper and come back out with a message from the writer and if the writer is able to accomplish this, then they are a good writer.

            Elbow further the separation between the reader and the writer by placing them into different categories.  The writers are placed in the “creative writing” and are known as “writers,” while the readers are placed in “academic writing” and are known as “academics.”  A writer is someone who loves to write in order to discover meaning, expel their emotions, or communicate through their writing.  I think anyone can be a writer as long as they can get their feelings, emotions, and ideas out of their head and onto paper.  An academic loves to read and get information from books and figure out the answer to tough questions.  Elbow explains he wants his students to be a balanced writer and academic, but that is hard for students to attain.

            Not many students can feel like writers and academics because it is very unattainable.  Where does that place you and me, as academics or writers?  I consider myself to be more of an academic, no matter how much I hate the sound of that.  I would like to think I am a writer because they are creative and have a passion for writing, and I do not think I have a love for getting information from books or answering tough problems.  I do not feel that kind of passion for writing, like I do for reading.  That is why I place myself in the academic group, because I love to read.  Reading is my passion and I have not transferred that passion over to writing yet.  I like to write, I just do not have a passion for it yet.  Being placed as an academic might be why I have a reading identity and struggle with my writer’s identity.  I believe most students would place themselves with the academics because it is what we know, what we were taught throughout school.

            Throughout school, I was taught how to be an “academic.”  We had to write our papers with strict format and were told not to use “I” in our paper.  Putting in “I” would make our papers personal, so we had to lean how to hide our voice.  I wanted to place my voice in my paper because it was my opinions, but I had to keep it hidden, like a subliminal message, since you could not see it but know it was there.  My teachers did not want us to show our voices or use our opinions because we are supposed to argue a point in our paper, and use other sources and academics to back up our argument.

            Although, David Bartholomae would object to this definition of academic writing, because he believes that academic papers should not discuss topics we already heard from.  Bartholomae wants new topics that have not been covered before by other academics.  That is nearly impossible because almost every topic has been covered before.  As academic writers, we use other academics to support our argument and disprove the arguments of others.  Academic writing, no matter what subject it is on, is prevalent throughout the schools and overrun the creative writing classes in school.  Look at all the literature classes there are to take and the few creative writing classes that are available.  The sudden change from academic writing into creative writing can be difficult for a lot of people.

            The change from academic to creative writing was difficult for me.  I do like creative writing, but after being taught and drilled to use academic writing, it can be hard to find my own voice, and my struggling identity as a writer.  That is why I have a hard time finding my identity as a writer because I have not been given the freedom to write how I please in papers.  I cannot write the way I want to write, but the way academic discourse tells me to write.  Being controlled by those restrictions makes it harder for me to write about limitless broad topics.  I like knowing what my topic is, and having to pick a topic from a broad category can be challenging for me and others as well.  I am usually more comfortable using academic discourse since it is what I have learned the longest and been influenced with the most.

            If possible, students should try to combine their creative, personal writing with academic discourse.  Students should find a way to express their voice in their academic papers because that will make their paper stronger.  This is a strong hurtle to overcome, but finding a way to place your opinion in a paper will make it a very interesting paper.  Academics are good at finding information to back up their argument, but writers are good at stating their opinions about the argument.  A good paper will show the writer’s argument and their opinions about the topic and research that can back up that argument.

            The separation between readers and writers is growing, especially since scholars like and including Elbow has placed them under two separate categories.  If it is possible, students should try to find their identity as a writer and reader because both are important.  I know they are in separate categories, but they depend on each other; you cannot have one without the other.

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Miller Response

            When Miller writes, she uses almost a different persona in her writing than you see in real life.  Her identity changes when she writes and becomes a different person, her writing makes her seem older and more mature than she really is in real life.  She does not use herself in her writing because she does not want her text to imitate her, but she wants it to create new parts of her.  Miller uses her writings to create extensions of herself, parts that were not visible before but now she wants to spread to everyone.  I think it is important to show different sides and extensions of yourself in your writing and it is a way of using your voice.  These extensions are coming from Miller, so they are still a part of her voice even if the extensions are not a significant part of her.  Miller is trying to say that writers must use their voice, but that voice can change from your setting and environment around you or any influences you have; it is still your voice, even if it is only an extension of yourself.

            This relates to Bazerman’s idea of the “spot” which is when we are demanded to write and we must write whether we want to or not.  Miller’s concept is more that when we write, we are influenced by the setting around us and mood we are in and that changes the way we express our voice.  Miller varies in the way that she rights, either she writes down a lot in one burst or she slowly takes her time carefully writing, thinking as she is writing.  She also explains that our backgrounds have an impact on the way that we right because we are expected to right in a certain way and that should be our voice.  These extensions that come out of us, constructs a new voice that is a part of her and Miller explains when she is writing, she is that voice that is in her writing.  She is in the moment of her writing and that is her voice.

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Poetry as Expression

            As I trudge through a little over two decades of memories cluttered throughout my mind, I wonder which one of these memories include something significant that happened to my writing process.  Questions flutter in my head: “What part of my writing process has been affected, the actual writing process or the thoughts that go behind the writing?  What is affecting my writing process?”  While examining these questions with my memories, I came to the decision that poetry has had a significant impact on my thoughts and ideas about writing.

            Why poetry?  I love to write, I really do!  Creative writing has always been my favorite to write, but poetry has never been on that list.  When I was younger, I used to read a lot and through reading I began to write creatively.  I read a lot of fantasy books and was consumed by the creative ideas and details the authors use in their texts.  I was so excited by this creativity that I wanted to create my own stories to show my own creativity.  I started to write a lot of short stories, but they were usually only one or two pages that I could never finish.  I just did not like the way the stories were going and when I compared my work to the author’s that I read I lost some self confidence in my pieces.  They were nowhere near as creative as those books.

            I still want to express myself creatively, but I wonder how I can express myself through my writing if I feel self conscious with my fiction writing.  How about poetry?  But what do I know about poetry?  It is so different from regular fiction and I do not have much experience with writing poetry.  I guess the reason I don’t know much about poetry is because we do not learn or write much poetry in school and I am personally intimidated by poetry.  I know that might sound silly.  Why be intimidated by some short lines that rhyme?  Well poetry to me is more than that.  When I think of poetry, I think of something abstract that has so many layers of meaning that I can never figure out what the poem actually means.  I guess with my straightforward writing style, I just feel like I can’t write that abstract or layer my poem with meanings.  Even though I have not had a lot of experience with poetry, I have had experiences that shape my views on poetry.

            I rack my brain, trying to think of one of my first experiences with poetry.  Images flash through my thoughts: star, yellow, pigtails, song.  It’s a picture of me when I was about 3 or 4 years old and I was the North Star of the Nativity Scene in a Christmas play held in Monterey, California.  I was wearing yellow footy pajamas, a big star on my back, and my hair was in pigtails.  I’ll be honest; I looked absolutely adorable in that picture.  This picture was the base of a poem I wrote as a junior in high school.  I started writing my poem about me being a star, the Christmas Star that is.

            I was only three and already a star

            Of a Christmas play in Monterey, not far.

            And when I say star I say it literally;

            I was the cutest star that ever could be!

That is a part of my poem that I wrote.  I was so proud of it when I wrote it.  It took a while to start it, as it always does for whatever I write.  The words began to pour out of my pen and onto my paper, only hesitating when I was trying to find a rhyming word.  That’s why I was so proud of my poem, I found good rhyming words for it and it was such a cute poem!  It was one of the few poems I have ever written and I was really happy with it.

            Looking back at this poem and others, I realized that I liked to rhyme my poems.  I know they did not have to rhyme, but back then, they were not considered poems to me if they did not rhyme.  I also realize I wrote very literally I my poems, but as I said before that is my writing style.  I cannot just change it to make it “abstract” just to write a poem.  That changes my writing style and hides my voice from the readers.  I guess I also just assume that writing poetry in a literal voice shows my attempt at writing poetry, compared to the professional poets who are able to write abstract poetry.

            This viewpoint of “abstraction” in poetry I had was changed as I took an Intro to Creative Writing class.  This class is split up into two different sections (which I did not realize as first) into creative fiction and creative poetry.  I was fine with writing fiction because it is what I am used to, but the poetry part scared the crap out of me.  One, I do not write much poetry and was not expecting to take a class on creating poems.  Two, I did not want other people in the class to read my poetry.  And three, I thought everyone would be able to write good abstract poetry and mine would look bad next to theirs.

            When I first stepped into the poetry class, I remember one of the first things my professor told us.  He said “Poetry is not abstract.”  What?  That was completely the opposite of what I had always thought of poetry.  What does that mean poetry is not abstract.  Well, he explained to us that if poetry is abstract, then the reader gets confused because there are no concrete details.  Poems need details just like fiction (which I now notice as true, but then did not realize).  I was surprised about this information because my mind was still molded around the idea that poetry was abstract.  I was happy because I am better at writing descriptions instead of being abstract because that was not my forte.  I was not as scared about writing poetry after that lecture because I can be descriptive, just like writing a fiction story but in a poetic form.  Now this would be the time to put up an example of part of my poems, but unfortunately I do not have any of the poems.  They were on my old computer’s hard drive, but after that computer crashed on me, it took with it a lot of writings I composed for my college classes.  This class helped me realize that I can write poetry and gave me confidence that I can write good poetry as long as it is detailed.

            I was able to use some poetry as a way of expressing myself through prompts in these classes and I was able to use whatever style of poetry I wanted, which was usually a poem with lines of different lengths that rhymed in couplets (aabb) or every other line (abab).  I just needed to write detailed poetry about the prompts I was given.  Even though I thought I understood everything about poetry then, I had an eye opening experience with poetry when I took my poetry seminar class last semester.  Ironic how the class I only took because I needed a seminar would be significant for my comprehension of poetry.

            To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I would have taken this class if I realized what it was really about.  I just assumed that it was another creative writing poetry class where we just wrote poetry and shared it with everyone.  In a way it was; we did have prompts and got to write poems and share them with the class, but we had to write the poems in strict form.  I have never written a poem in strict form.  That means we had to focus on the meter of the lines and each line had a specific length and stress pattern and either rhymed in a certain way or not.  This class made me extremely nervous!  At that time I wasn’t even sure what meter was!  The only poems I had ever written were without form, so this was very different and pushed me out of my comfort zone.

            The wind blows softly, leaving cold remains

            Of loneliness which lingers on my cheeks.

            The creaking wooden swing is rocking back

            And forth.  Companionship is what it needs

            In order to find its happiness.  Leaves

            Fall, dance, and play with loving friends down on

            The playground.  Twirling leaves from up the trees

            Lay memories in my mind.

                                                           Swinging high,                                         

            This was part of our first poem.  That had to have been one of the hardest poems I have ever written, well this poem along with the rest of the poems I had to write for this class.  This prompt has us write a blank verse poem.  I did not know what blank verse was, but I found out it was a poem that was written in iambic pentameter (line with 10 syllables and is unstressed then stressed) and does not rhyme.  The poem was different for me because I had to focus on the actual length of the lines and find the stresses, and also because it did not rhyme.  No one usually does well at something they are uncomfortable with the first time.  What my professor had us do first before we wrote the actual poem in order to help us out with the poem was to write it in prose first before we wrote it in poetic form.  That way we could get out ideas out and understand what we were going to write our paper about, so we don’t have to worry about our ideas and can focus on the form.

            I had an extremely hard time writing this poem, especially since I had not written a poem in strict form before.  I liked how it did not need to rhyme because after you start focusing on iambic pentameter you don’t want to focus on anything else, including rhyming.  That made it a little easier for me when writing this poem.  What I really had difficulty with was trying to decide what syllables were stressed or unstressed.  I know the stressed depend on how the person reads the words/sentences, but some of the words I just could not tell if they were stressed or unstressed.  I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I was saying words out loud trying to hear the stresses.  My friends made fun of me a little bit every time I did that.  I guess it is pretty funny, but it was the only way I could somehow hear the stresses.  That was what I was worried about after I turned in my paper.  I was afraid I had placed the stresses in the wrong places, but luckily when I got my poem back my professor said I did pretty well with the iambic pentameter, which made me happy and boosted up my confidence in that class.

            Rapunzel torn from earthen home, my eyes   

            are they deceiving?  Some intruder not nice

            is stealing from me.  Thief I curse your first

            innocent child to me, so you hurt

            forever.  Crying, after one year along,

            has reached my ears; a baby girl is born.

            When looking at this section of my poem, you probably think this is a blank verse poem.  Does it look like the last words in the lines rhyme?  If I was reading this poem before taking this class, I would have said it did not rhyme, but now I know that they do in fact rhyme.  They are slant rhymes.  When my professor explained slant rhymes to me, I just did not understand what she was talking about.  I had no idea what a slant rhyme was or how I would use it in a poem.  I finally ended up rhyming the vowel sounds together.  So in these first few couplets, I rhymed together “eyes” and “nice,” “first” and “hurt,” and “alone” and “born.”  With each one of these slant rhymes I found the vowel sounds and then found a rhyme.  Even though it took a while (it always takes a while but even more now that I had to do slant rhyming) I was complimented by my professor on my use of slant rhyme.  She liked most of my slant rhymes, which feels really good because I had never tried it before.  I actually enjoyed slant rhyme more than regular rhymes because there are more words that can be slant rhymes than regular.

            Even though this class was a lot harder than I expected, I began to understand the concepts behind poetry and learned the strict and unstrict form of poetry.  All the classes I have taken in writing have been turning points for me.  They all influenced me in some way with my poetry.  I know that my poetry is detailed poetry that can rhyme, slightly rhyme, or not rhyme at all, and may or may not use strict form.  Poetry is now another option I have of expressing myself through my writing and showing the creativeness of my mind.

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Memoir

            I finally got my computer back from Circuit City.  Apparently my hard drive hard drive had crashed, so I  had to wait for them to get a new one and then install that.  I have my computer back, and now I can post my memoir.  I know hard drive crashed so I had to retype my memoir again, but since we got them back on Friday, I was able to retype my paper.

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