Blog Post #3

I'm not sure what I'm going to do for this assignment. I have never been able to keep up a journal because I don't feel comfortable talking about myself (even if no one else was reading it), but this assignment requires that I choose something and my mind immediately goes blank. 

After thinking it over for a week I've got some ideas that do come to mind but I'm not too sure what I want to write about. 

- I played tennis for about 7 years and had to stop due to an injury to my shoulder. I plan on including flashbacks to when I played and then insert instances in which my injury got in the way (for example, the time my shoulder got so bad that it caused  muscle spasms in my back and I could not move because of the excruciating pain). The problem with this one is that I'm not too sure what my point would be.

- Just last week I was seconds away from being involved in a pretty bad car accident and I remember that when I was a child going on vacation with my family one of our planes wings caught fire and I could see the smoke from the window. What stands out to me is that fact that even though I was not in a car accident I was very aware of my mortality, my small car would have been whipped around by the large Jeep that sped down the highway. However, as a kid on that plane I thought it was an adventure, a story to tell, that there was no way we would die (despite the fact that the plane was on fire and we were in the middle of the ocean). If i juxtaposed the two situations and reflected on the difference with which I analyzed the real danger of the situation. Here my problem would be the fact that my memory of the plane being on fire is, for lack of a better word, blurry. I know it happened, I can remember being told to put my head between my legs, I know there were nuns and a boys soccer team on board and somehow everyone thought that was reassuring because of course a plane with so many innocent children and a bunch of nuns won't go down in flames. But then I remember tragic stories of innocent people dying in horrific accidents and how there really was no guarantee that we wouldn't become one of those stories you hear on the news. 

Well I guess I fleshed out that second idea more that I had initially anticipated. I still have my doubts as to how I will write my story without falling into the realms of fiction and without being too preachy or letting the reflection take over the story. 

Blog Post #2

Based on our discussion in class and the reading assignments we had for homework, creative non-fiction is a retelling of a true story by using some elements from fiction writing such as dialogue, point of view, dramatization and others. It is important to remain truthful and not create characters that do not exist or events that did not happen.

Digital publishing allows for feedback from the audience and also opens up the dialogue for the writer to see a situation from different perspectives. Digital publishing also allows for a writer to go back and edit their work after publication. 

Blog Post #1

Each text that was assigned for reading this past week were similar in that they all had a purpose. Each writer had a specific focus despite their varying styles. The features of creative non-fiction that I saw based on the four texts assigned were: dramatization, metaphors, diction, involving/inviting the reader into their world (giving the reader a clear picture of the situation), and probably one of the most important parts would be the authors own unique voice speaking out through the experience they chose to share. All of the author's were reflecting on some aspect of their life and by telling their story they took the reader through a journey that would then (hopefully) lead them to that realization as well.

The shorter pieces tended to be more direct and to the point (Marquart) while the longer pieces flowed more like a traditional story (Beard). Ebert's piece was just difficult to get through, probably because, as a reader, I could not relate to the speaker of the text. Beard's piece and Marquart's piece, although different in length and style, were easy to follow and relate to. Marquart's piece seems better written because the word choice and the conciseness of the piece spoke a lot about the main topic of the story. The author utilized even the brevity of the story to perhaps signify the brevity of the "procedure" she had been through. Marquart's piece was by far my favorite because she took everything about this text and made it work toward her topic.