Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Start Somewhere 8/30/11

Start Somewhere

8/30/11

Sitting in class today, I was starting to understand the idea of what a memoir needs to start out with. We listened to a passage from “A Girl Named Zippy”, and the first thing I noticed was how descriptive her background was. The author listed everything down to how many churches were in her town. It was just the very beginning, but I already got a feel of where she lived, which made it more interesting to me because where she lived is the exact opposite of where I lived. Mrs. Evans said, “There’s something interesting in everyone’s story.” She also said, “What may be boring to us, could be interesting to someone else.” While listening to the passage, I started comparing my background with “Zippy’s”. For example, her father did not believe in religion, but in my family, we are Christian and have Christian beliefs and values. Right off the bat, her story became more interesting. Then we heard a passage from “Shitty Rough Drafts”. What I got out of that was, the more drafts you write, the more ideas you create. The first rough draft always sucks because you are just starting somewhere. You have no idea where or how to finish. But why do one draft, when you can do two or three and make the story two or three times better. I do not remember the exact quote from the passage, but if I were to summarize it, it said, “…imagining critics looking over my shoulder, snoring at all my descriptive ideas.” I think that if the author imagined having critics around her, she became a self-critic by judging her own writing and trying to make it better. So not only can you generate more ideas by creating more drafts, you can also be creative and push yourself to use “extremely” instead of “very”. Rough drafts can be your first or second try, until you feel you did it right. I also caught a symbol from the passage. I let the angry rats in jars represent frustration. By “putting the rats in jars” you turn them off. When you are frustrated with what to write, it tends to prevent you from writing, but again starting somewhere is better than nothing. This lesson made me think of this song. Enjoy. J (Fast Forward to 0:43) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjnbozivsEo&feature=related