Final thoughts

Over the course of the semester I feel that I have learned quite a bit. My approach to creative writing began as very cynical but has progressed into something of which I am proud. I know about spelling and grammar and rules of standard American English, which have been very hard to break, but I now feel that a creative approach to writing is something of value that I will continue to experiment with. Thursday's class especially put everything into perspective, I think. Our discussion regarding how our blunt, honest, and creative insticts are beaten out of us from years of school really made me feel guilty and upset. It's unfortunate that writing has been labeled as something rigid and difficult by authority figures on the matter and that notion motivates me to break the chains of writing preconceptions, because they really appear to serve as more of a limitation in many settings.
In terms of my writing style, the Goldberg book has been very helpful. Most notable, though, are the bits about concrete detail. I know I've written about them in a past entry, but concrete detail has both simplified my writing attempts and made them exponentially better at the same time. I never knew that detail could be so concrete, I guess. Maybe the reason I had troubles in the past with details is because I put much emphasis on things that didn't really matter and things that didn't contribute to the plot. Who cares what color pants and character was wearing or what day of the week it was?
Another thing, I always struggled to describe things with words that really didn't describe so much as string a train of adjectives, one after another. But it's as simple as describing something that's concrete, like a "blue sea" to describe "her eyes," or like the "fire of a thousand suns" to describe "my body temperature after running around the restaurant in my struggle to wait on 10 tables at one time." Learning how to effectively describe using concrete details has been the most useful to me in my writing, especially my fiction/essay writing, over the course of the semester.

On Essay Packet Dos:

Living Close to the Knives was very moving and delivered a very upsetting message about the beginning of AIDS in the United States. I felt that much of the essay was lengthy and monotonous, but I changed my mind about it very quickly near the finish. It makes you physically ill to imagine that someone with AIDS, early-on in its developmet and priot to it's recognition as a non-discriminatory disease, would be reduced to the scum of society and forced to seek desperate treatment (like Typhoid!) to save his life. The idea that people were so ignorant in their approach to AIDS or to someone with the disease that they would refuse them treatment or refuse to touch/teach/be in the same room as them is just a tragic human injustice. To think that AIDS was a punishment by God  to the gay people of the world is just awful. Living Close to the Knives really pulled at my heart-strings, depicting a deteriorating man who tried to be feircely independent and in the end felt utterly alone despite the support he received from friends. It seems that AIDS began to affect his mental stability and it forced him to let go of his former life. The essay tells of the struggle of AIDS in a personal, emotional story that also shares the realities of popular conceptions; that people with AIDS should be quarantined on an island, that the governement withheld monetary and informational/research support  to combat the disease, that people homosexuals were and are murdered, humiliated, blamed for their association with this "death sentence."
The Fine Art of Sighing shows the connection of the entire human race with something so simple as a sigh. At a most simple notion, we are all the same; we share the same emotions, consider the same thoughts, breath the same air no matter where or who we are. The author first makes this simple fact of life so personal by discussing his mother and father and making the reader aware that not all sighs are created equal. Sighs can indicate emotions which the author narrating the inner thoughts that might have been going through his parents' heads as they let out that long gust of breath.
What is someone thinking? That's something that may never be known, but maybe the expresion of a sigh, however it is delivered, gives us a realistic idea of the secret life someone is leading (whether consciously of uncounsciously) within the confines of their skull. Is sighing just a reflex? I think the author would argue 'no,' I would argue 'no.' A sigh seems to often be indicative of something we wish we could say, but maybe don't have the words, or something that we're afraid to reveal. The author is able to give the reader a connection with an entire world of people (young, old, American, Chinese, Iranian, Korean, Russian) and in this instant one realizes that we are all the same afterall, one gains this sense of awareness that was so simple and yet we never thought of it before.

More on Essay packet one

On Mute Dancers:

"Mute Dancers" really embodies my mental image of a "creative" essay. It weaves fiction with nonfiction in a way I never thought could be acceptable for academic purposes. At times, it seems to be a narrative history of hummingbirds; from their significance to ancient Aztecs to their "humming" identification by the first American colonists. And at other times, the physiology and intimate details of a hummingbird's vitality is given and their role/interaction with the world at large. I found "Mute Dancers" captivating and insightful and it made me look at hummingbirds in a much more complex context.                                                                                                
I never really thought about it before; a hummingbird is this tiny, almost helpless, little bird, and yet so resilient. The essay puts the hummingbird into this historical context as far back as the Aztecs and in the very next paragraph narrates its vulnerability. Jeanne Mackin's tabby cat nearly made a meal of that tiny bird, and yet the bird, though injured, was nursed back to health within a night. And to think that these gorgeous birds are able to survive and prosper in spite of so many obstacles like tabby cats, and thousands of miles of ocean, frigid mountain passes, hawks, jungle cats, and even sleep! And when they lay create offspring, they often only have a very small chance of carrying on this legacy of persistence and creators of beauty, with only up to two eggs at time with which to work.
As a 'flower kisser,' they sure have a lot of exhausting work. The way that 'Mute Dancers' creates significance and awareness for the hummingbird is truly enchanting. For something that was once so simple in my head, hummingbirds honestly deserve more credit than they are given. 

On Essay Packet 1

My attitude was very polar while reading this packet. I either loved the "essay" or I hated it. I really only enjoyed two of the essays while I was confused by the others. I very much enjoyed "Farder to Reache" and "Total Eclipse" to be specific. While I was reading the packet, I was confronted with my own perceptions of an essay. Frankly, I'd never even imagined what a creative essay would be like or if it even existed. I always imagined essays to be like those of John Locke or Karl Marx or Malcom X; more as proposals to address a certain issue or persuasions regarding a certain topic. What is an essay and how is a "creative" essay different? What is the purpose of a "creative" essay as opposed to an academic essay that usually intends to inform/persuade? It is apparent that a "creative" essay does not necessarily intend to outline a story/plot, except in "Total Eclipse." It is an analasys of an event as it pertains to the meaning of life, maybe?
I found "Farder to Reache" very interesting."It isn't easy to walk through a day...with the mind fixed on infinity." This quote rung true to me. I love to revel in the sense of freedom that infinity brngs to mind, but sometimes the thought of infinity can make you feel so lost and overwhelmed. Sometimes in this class even, the realization that I can write whatever I want in a burden. I could write anything, everything, and that realization alone puts me at more a loss of words than a solution to my dilema. I also liked the bit at the end where the author imagined 'shooting the shit' with Whitman and Kepler atop a veranda in the fog of the morning. It sounds so romantic and relaxing! And the idea of collaborating with the finite formulators of infinate ideas sounds fascinating.
"Total Eclipse" was absolutely captivating. At first I though, what does a story about an eclipse have to do with an essay. But when I neared the end, the author tied it all together very nicely with the lifesaver and fried eggs and relating the eclipse to the mind's inner-workings. While I was reading about the Crab Nebula as a star in the process of exploding that originally exploded in 1054 and expanded at a rate of 70 million miles/day and yet had barely increased in size as seen from Earth, an interesting idea popped into my head. What if the progression and concept of time was different for every galaxy? What if that explosion almost a thousand years ago and its expansion into the universe only equated to a day or an hour on that side of the universe? I assume others have thought about this, too. The author speaks about living half her life asleep and the other half only half-conscious. I considered an idea that a friend brought-up with me. Might our lives be a construct of our own minds? Might our minds create everything and cause things to happen in our lives? Maybe we're always asleep. The author brings up the idea that our minds are pacified by trivial things, like fried eggs or a spaniel. "The mind wants the world to return its love." The writer seem to cling to the idea of God but that is where I'm fundamentally different. Maybe the universe has nothing to return? Maybe it's meant to be cold, dark, and meaningless and we should stop frantically searching for an answer.

On The Lion's Share

I have no time to read virtually anything outside of school. I don't even have time to read half of the (text)books for my classes because my reading load is already so much. I am a history minor, and even being a history minor, I have read a lot. One such history book that I am reading is called The Lion's Share which is a "short" history of British imperialism. It is very interesting and informative and covers 120 years of information (1850-1970) in a proportionately small novel of 350 pages. It's not so much a text book as it is a novel. It reads more like a very long essay with each chapter divided into four to five different subjects under one larger topic.
I find it particularly fascinating to see Britain's varying approaches different colonial territories. In conjunction with the reading of this book, I am taking a middle eastern history class where a lot of this information regarding British imperialism is reinforced from learning about Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine/Israel. Britain often took a very controlling stance when it was in their economical/territorial interests and they were very hypocritical in terms of allowing their territories to exercise the basic democratic rights that they claimed to stand for, unless of course that territory happened to be inhabited by (white) British subjects.
The Lion's Share displayed Britain's approaches to dealing with it's colonial territories. Peace was much more profitable than conflict. Peace facilitated ease of trade and shipment. So, it was in Britain's best interests to suppress rebellions at any cost.  Eventually though, these rebellions forced Britain to ease their control and the force of western customs/beliefs on native populations.

On Burrow's Writing Fiction

The excerpts of Burrow's "Writing Fiction" on the topics of detail through concrete language, active voice, and rhythm are incredibly inciteful. I wish I would have read this before even starting to attempt fiction writing, unfortunately I did not have the chance to read this until today. I always thought that by cramming as much detail as possible into a story, you would not only easily meet length requirements but you would also have a better story. Burroway has provided several helpful and educating examples that shows this is not true! You must be selective in the detail you choose to provide. If I'd have realized this sooner, I might not have taken to fiction writing with such impatience. All this time, I've been taking the time to provide details about material appearances and pleasing sensory images when I should have been paying more attention to details that actually develop characters and places. Like Burroway pointed out, there are thousands of tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired twenty-two year olds in the world, but you must explain to the reader what makes this character significant.
If the reader is indifferent, it's probably due to the author's lack of sensory and conrete guidance also. If all you provide as an author are generalizations and abstractness, the reader will never see how or why it is that way. He was happy that she wrote him does not show anything. But His heart skipped a beat upon opening the mailbox  to reveal a letter addressed from "the one that got away." is the kind of concrete detail that matters and advances the story. As Borroway pointed out, you could spend all day writing about abstract generalizations and it would take at least twice as long to gain the readers trust. So, although it may take more time and effort to think of concrete examples that show rather than tell, you will get your point  across in less "story."
I also thought Burroway's section on prose rhythm was very interesting. I never really thought about rhythm within a story before and I only ever considered it in poetry and music. But it's true, if you want to, say, portay a character or scene in a fast-paced, urgent way, it makes sense to create a multitude of shorter sentences rather than long, complex ones. Or the oppososite, if you want to create a "slow" image, you should use longer, more complex sentences. Fascinating!
This information was definately helpful and I will take advantage of it!

On To After That

To After That was very interesting in terms the ideas it contained and in between my noddings-off. I don't really know how I feel about it. I was hoping as a short story it would have more substance, more action, more of a topic that I was actually interested in. Gladman was "writing about the writing about the writing" of After That which would have been a story I'd more like to read had it ever existed (64). I had a hard time grasping some of the concepts, many of which were very complex and drawn out. Gladman acheives moving and "going nowhere" in this book (her intention, I believe). Nothing really happens, except when she recalls actual scenes from After That. The speaker (Gladman?) just writes and rewrites this book in various locations. The time spent between drafts and the locations where they were written affect the outcome/plot/writing of each draft. It's interesting how Gladman wants to be direct and to get the point across in few words to an extent as influenced by Herve Guibert, like when she refers to characters with single letters; S, M, R, etc., or even to refer to her book; AT, and later AF. She does this, this almost impatient writing, and yet she drags on the story with long, deep thoughts and considerations about words, sentences, novels, characters, places, and especially time (51).
Reading "excerpts" from the actual story of After That, a very strange, almost dreamlike world is revealed. Who comes over to borrow sugar and than lingers to cook waffles and proceed to scream at their boyfriend (?) over their cell phone in someone else's apartment? The main character has this irrational fear of cell phones, and her girlfriend, Frog, is fascinated by the contraption, runs away with it and shuts herself in the bathroom! Not only that, but the main character just randomly falls asleep, is pushed down a manhole by some guy named Fred and they both fall asleep together watching water leak from a pipe(51). Strange.
Gladman brings up some interesting points and ideas that I'd like to mention. Gladman explains how the telling of lies is much more invigorating than the telling of fiction. Does she mean the telling of lies that pertains to her own life? And isn't lying essentially that same thing as fiction? I found a few interesting quotes that I'd like to share as well. "The fury we feel at the neglect of the present works itself out in our projections. We Create Fiction." (62) That's how I've always felt about fiction, and specifically the writing of it. If I find my world to fall short of what I really want, I always have the option of creating a new reality through fiction. Gladman also focuses a lot on the idea of time. "I had written nearly one hundred pages of a day in the life of four years of me." Gladman explained that her constant disapproval and rewriting of After That was due to the fact that time had elapsed between drafts and within that time she had changed and the current writing about herself in the novel was no longer her.
A couple other interesting elements inluded the excessive blank space throughout the book. There were varying font sizes. The story is set up so that it could retell itself infinately. The last paragraph of the book is the same, word for word, as the first.