Chapter 3: Common Writing Assignments

Writing about writing is one of the hardest things for me to do.

First you have to summarize in your own words. For me, I know the plot and the key points, but putting it on paper is tough. It's like the summary is floating around in my head and I know it, nut telling someone else the plot line is tough. Have you ever tried to tell someone a story, got halfway through, and then said "no, no wait--I forgot something!" Well, that's what its like for me when writing down a summary.

Explicating is even worse! Making my thoughts clear--its so difficult! I can pick up on figurative language and syntax but it seems obvious to me, so expressing it in my own words seems redundant--like I'm missing something.

Analysis is my favorite. Picking apart the the characters and their layers and why they are the way they are. Brilliant.

Compare and contrast: Easy. There is always something similar within works and always something that is not. There are so many aspects to a story that gives so much room to compare and contrast. For example, characters, plot, imagery, symbolism, etc.

Essay exams: This portion of the chapter really helped me think about writing in class essays and how to approach them. Being prepared with the material is a definite plus when it comes to writing the essay. Rushing through an essay is something most people do, but sometimes taking too much time on an essay kills your score. Outlining your essay in your head is important under pressure--most people can't handle it.

Chapter 1: The role of good reading

Learning to read takes a lot of work. We have to learn the alphabet and the sounds certain letters make and of course there are exceptions to every rule. But now, we have to learn to read correctly, as reading in depth and analyzing the work.

Rereading is something I have always taken for granted, but important to do especially if you don't understand what the author is talking about. It's worth the time and energy to reread if it helps my understanding.

Critical reading: Annotating. Love and hate it. I love it because it makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something and picking apart the author's work into my own words. I hate it because it's time consuming and sometimes there's just no reason to annotate.
And when it comes to using reference materials, this is something I definitely don't do on a regular basis. If I don't know a word, and the person I'm studying with doesn't know it, then it stays unknown. But this is a really bad habit. It takes three seconds to look up a definition on google so I should really start taking advantage of that.

Asking questions about the text is the hardest part because you have to think of the questions before you can answer them. Most of the time we subconsciously ask and answer the questions we have about the text while we are reading it. But more in depth questions take a little time.

When it comes to questions about the author, finding out about the author's life makes their work that much more interesting to me even if their life had nothing to do with the work.

When reading, cultural context does come into play and it is important to know what the culture was like during the author's time to understand a work sometimes. For example, things are very different now than they were in the 1800's and the book uses the example of attitude toward death then and now--it's really different. Back then it was a fact of life-people dropped like flies. Today, there is a cure for everything. Therefore, a piece about death today might contrast sharply with the tone of a piece about death back then.

It's so important to know who the listener is in a work, just as it is to know who the speaker is.

Reading is no longer reciting your ABC's or memorizing a Dr. Seuss story that your mother has read to you 213 times. No. Reading is for big kids now.

Chapter 5: Writing about Poetry

Poetry is word melted into song. Rhymes and iambic pentameter are like music to my ears, like a steady heartbeat that speaks out loud. Analyzing poetry is half the battle to writing about poetry--first, you have to know what it means. Dissecting the poem line by line is helpful to understanding what the author's message is. Sometimes, the rhythm of the poem can have a message too, though. for example, when Shakespeare breaks the steady drum of iambic pentameter, it breaks the pattern, signifying a change in the character's words or intent.
Not all poetry is easily understood--sometimes we miss the point the author was trying to make completely. But we still interpreted the poem in a way we comprehend, and that is what makes poetry interesting. People always have their own interpretation to a story.
Writing about poetry is putting our interpretation of the poem into words. It's analyzing what the poem means and the author's intent.

Excitement. Adventure. Spec-Ops 27: Literary Detective.

Have you ever wanted to change the ending of Jane Eyre or take a vacation into Wonderland?
What about meeting Hamlet or chatting with the Chesire Cat? Have you ever wondered what it would be like if books were treated as gold and the boundary line between fiction and reality was softened?
Jaser Fforde has. And he creates an epic adventure in this world full of mystery in the Thursday Next series.

I began with book one--The Eyre Affair, the introduction to a world full of strange ohenomenon such as Chronoguards going rogue, neanderthals conducting trains, and secret Shakespearean works being discovered. The New York Times calls the series "Harry Potter for adults."
I fell in love with the Eyre Affair and its witty humor. An excerpt from the book:
"Why is a raven like a writing desk?
Because Poe wrote on both.


People who know literature will enjoy this series as it alludes to so many other books. It's difficult to stop reading: I read it in all my spare time while on the boat in Germany.

The leading lady, Thursday Next, is a sketchy character--I never could get to the point of knowing exactly what she was going to do. It kept the story interesting, but also a bit aggravating when she would do something that seemed completely out of character. But it doesn't ruin the enjoyment of the book.

She is a Special Operative-27: Literary Detective. There are other divisions in SpecOps that are equally as imaginative and most are mysterious. She finds a way into Jane Eyre to defeat an arch enemy, and ends up changing the ending of the book (for the better.)

I haven't felt this way about a book in a very long time, and all I want to do is read.

The story gets even better in the second book, Lost in a Good Book, as Fforde continues to layer the characters and plotline with small circumstances mentioned in the first book. Thursday dives into and out of books and meets all sorts of characters that jump from their book to the real world.

I want to be Thursday Next. Except not as sketchy.

Actors are people too.

Cecil Blount DeMille. Legend in the theatre world, maker of the film world. His autobiography is very well written and inspirational--I highly recommend reading it. DeMille started one of Hollywood's first film studios out of a barn out of a pure love of producing and directing. He came from a theatre loving family and attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts--a highly prestigious acting school in New York (now also in LA.) He learned other actors philosophies on acting, but stayed true to his own. He believed the director should guide the actor instead of making the actor into the director's puppet.

Actors are people too. The way DeMille describes acting in his autobiography is the most perfect way to describe the art. Any actor would agree (if they're any good).

"Onstage, you are protected by your role. It is not you there on the boards; and yet through your role you are in contact daily with the changing audience, you are projecting something to them, it is you who are making them laugh and cry, fear and hope. You learn to play on them as on a great organ; and their response, that indescribable feeling of contact and communication that a responsive audience gives an actor, is one of the most satisfying of human experiences."
-The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille

These words beautifully articulate the feeling from inside that actor's cannot describe. The craft of acting is here for a reason, and DeMille makes that reason concrete with these words.

Acting is not just a form of entertainment--its and art. It's a craft. It's a comment on social problems. It captures the essence of people and who they really are.

You mean I can study the world?!

The most newsworthy happening at GCSU this week is the addition of a Geography major to the curriculum--which is pretty neat. I took the article to write for our school newspaper, the Colonnade, knowing that it's what I wanted to write about.

Sometimes in a staff meeting, you hear a slug for an article and you know in the pit of your stomach that it's the article you need to write about--no matter how boring or how depressing. (Like an article on how the school was 30 people away from breaking a Guinness World Record for the largest rock, paper, scissors tournament in the world, and how those 30 people were eating lunch at the dining hall and felt that their presence didn't count. jerks.)

So this morning I was fortunate enough to interview Dr. Doug Oetter, coordinator of the geography program. I went in reluctant of what I was going to talk about with him, because I didn't understand what a geography major does for a person or what you could do with it. It seemed useless to me--like a theater major.


But Dr. Oetter loves geography. His passion for geography is like that of Romeo and Juliet's passion for rebellion. He explained that geography is the study of the world and its citizens. His philosophy of geography is that people in the US need to learn the ways of other countries and people to make our hometowns better places to live. People's behavior will change for the better when they understand the way other parts of the world work, and become better students, better citizens.

I never realized that you can do anything with a geography degree. As Dr. Oetter says, "the skills of geography are applicable to city planning, travel, civil service, pursuing law and government positions."

It's odd how people work. For example, I never would have thought twice about taking a geography class--it didn't matter to me. But when I spoke to Dr. Oetter today, I saw geography through his eyes. The passion and excitement of learning about the world--its people, the culture, the reason and rhyme. My own imagination sparked as I thought about the world. I think I might take a geography class.

So here's the thing: I have my friends at home who have known me since middle school, but when we moved to college, we went our separate ways. I moved to Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia while my overachiever friends applied to Yale, Davidson and Brown. It's not that I couldn't get in to those schools. I just didn't want to go there. And the application process was too much work.

Anyway, I moved to GCSU and became best friends with two people--Matt and Brent. I always had a huge group of friends that all knew each other, so transitioning to having two people that I did everything with was a different experience.

Brent is your typical movie buff, so the first two months I knew him, our conversations centered about movies because he didn't know what else to talk about.
Matt is your intense but outgoing computer nerd who can talk about anything from the paint on the wall to his emotional involvement with the universe.
I rounded the trio out as the theater/dance kid. 'Nuff said.
Of course, we had a fourth counterpart that joined us most of the time--Bryan. Bryan was Matt's roommate and added flavor to the group with his crude humor. He's the kind of guy that's shy, but a badass with combat boots.

College life has its quirks. The first weekend I was at school, I was walking around campus with some other people celebrating a birthday, when a guy who was intoxicated came up. He was upset because his friends forgot his birthday. One of the girls I was with offered a piece of cake to the drunk guy, and said we would lights some candles for him and everything. The guy looked at her and said "I don't smoke candles." And walked away. He wasn't being funny. He was serious. It made me wonder what went on in that slow brain of his.

At first, college seemed like punishment. They make you live with a bunch of people your age, feed yourself on your own, do your own laundry, oh and if you want to stay, you have to make A's, B's, and C's. Except if you worked hard in high school and are one of the fortunate ones to have HOPE Scholarship. Then you have to make really great grades to keep it.

But college has its benefits. Like Study Abroad, coffee shops, and getting to control the temperature in your room. That's the best.