the final reflection
It feels wrong to end this class, I can see very clearly how this will forever change my work as a writer. Usually, in education the steps are small, but this has been a giant leap. I didn't read all that I thought I would read, and some day will get to the other works I intended on my proposal list. However, I read differently than I had ever read, I made connections and conquered some of my old fears.
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As Writing Arts Majors we have several goals to make in seeking an education, at Rowan University. I felt like this class actually exercised every one of the Core Values, certainly some with more than other, however all of them were part of my writerly training this semester. The ones I felt I developed the most were:
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Core Value 2. Writing Arts students will understand theories of writing and reading and be able to apply them to their own writing.
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We studied theories of writing, for me I felt the pieces I did on my own novel Scarlett Splinter probably fulfilled this challenge the most. In my Blog about Scarlett Splinter I show how the use of reading for themes can be applied and then the work re-crafted to take the work to another level.
When used McKee's ideas to value graphed the prologue I was able to see how I could have set up the work to follow through on the thematic promises in the prologue. Additionally, in examining American Dreams, I began to question the particular way in which I would tell my story in response to the off-putting feeling I had reading Sapphire write. To me when I was reading her poetry I was often stuck between the stance that she took it too vulgar and that the rawness in her poetry contributed to the aesthetic emotion of the reader. While I didn't read "Rhetorical Analysis," by Selzer for this class, I was able to notice something in it that spoke to the work I had read in Sapphire that probably better explained the conflict I was having. Selzer said "A text-based rhetorical analysis considers the issue that is taken up, of course- what the writer has to offer on a given subject to a particular audience. But it also considers, more basically things that rhetorical advice offers by way of invention, arrangement, style and delivery," in effect I was using my own rhetorical analyses to censor Sapphire. Why did I do that? I believed what she was saying, she had developed a strong ethos. Seltzer defines ethos as. "that quality of a piece of writing that persuades through the character and trustworthiness of of the speaker or writer." I believed that Sapphire's poetry was strong, and that she had it written in a way that stabbed at the reader. I believed it was too graphic, because it was not how I would have written the story. However, after examining it more clearly, I realized, a big step for me in my own writing came in the acknowledgement of my own rape story. A year ago I wouldn't have put in writing that I had been a victim, yet alone add it to a website that could be accessed by anyone. It occurred to me that the reason I wanted to censor Sapphire was because I was wanting to censor myself. While I certainly never lived in the kind of cult that my characters lived in, I did live in a culture that allowed for children to be victimized. In fact, the way to make my work actually be "socially important," is to show, we all live in that culture. |
Core Value 3. Writing Arts students will demonstrate the ability to critically read complex and sophisticated texts in a variety of subjects.
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I wish I had gotten to all of my proposed texts. That certainly would have shown this more directly. However, I was able to read books that seemed daunting. My work on Lolita was perhaps the most challenging. It rubbed against all of the things I believed to be true about the victimization of women and children. I think in particular, reading outside of the idea that this man Humbert was just a dirty old man, to a place where I saw the manipulation and lies he told himself was perhaps the biggest step I could take. When I read Metamorphosis, I challenged myself to read outside the idea that, I already knew I didn't like the story (from reading it in high school) and also that there was something to be offered in absurdest fiction. I was trying to read it under the idea that I could get something not at all absurd out of the story. In fact, I was able to see a very realistic message in a story about a man who turns into a bug, which I examine in my Annotated Bibliography. When I worked on Slaughterhouse Five, I had to just read it mimetically, I annotated questions I found, and in some cases, never found answers. I struggled with things with angry questions like "What the Hell does this all mean?" and then it hit me- that is the point isn't it? Vonnegut is saying "There is no point," we all live this life and nothing really matters. His story was structured to show that we see tiny trails that end for no point, with no great reason. In a way it took a story steeped in the reality of war, the absurdity of science fiction and the lust of porn to show that in the end, the Hitlers, the housewives and the heroes all die, the same. "And so it goes."
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Core Value 4. Writing Arts students will be able to investigate, discover, evaluate and incorporate material into the creation of text.
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When I blogged about the text I show that I could investigate, discover, evaluate and incorporate material into the creation of text. Perhaps, more effectively this will show up in the strings I attach to my own writing. I have already began to see places where discovering something about another's writing will cause an intertexual relationship to my own work. Lolita will definitely appear in Scarlett Splinter.
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What I had madly possessed was not she, but my own creation, another, fanciful Lolita-perhaps, more real than Lolita; overlapping encasing her; floating between me and her, and having no will, no consciousness- indeed, no life of her own. |
I see in this text possibilities like the one above, to reflect as the man I read this story for, to add into my story a man that has done something wrong but is not all bad. He shows sides like this where, while I could look at them as justification, I can also look at them as honest. He wants to believe, that he is CREATING a version of a Lolita and that he hasn't wronged the original Lolita. In this I wonder if I can add a dialectic side to my story wherein the one offender is a man who believes he is doing the right thing.
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Core Value 5. Writing Arts students will demonstrate self-critical awareness of their writing.
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I show this in the transition in beliefs in my blog of Metamorphosis where I am reading for the controlling value of "If you break your routine you find your own humanity." By following McKee's method, I went to the last acts climax and realized the value that won in the end was about not letting yourself be owned. The last act shows how the family found meaning in their life when they were no longer kept by the beast's protection.
Leaning back comfortably in their seats, they discussed their prospects for the future and concluded, on closer inspection, that these were not at all bad; for all three had jobs which, although they had never really questioned each other about this, were entirely satisfactory and seemed to be particularly promising. |
So in re-examining the method, I created a new meaning to explore, and strengthened my own ethos to my readers.
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I felt like I grew this semester. I saw in reading even for other classes connections that I wouldn't have made if I hadn't taken How Writers Read. I think the greatest evidence will come after the grades are in and I get to work on my book again. I saw an opportunity to make my story more than just an unpublished (even if very creative) piece to a work that could be important. I saw it for once as more than just entertaining almost literary YA, to a place where it could hold it's own with the classic novel, and I want to get it there. It wasn't just in reading classic texts, but in changing the way I read them to see the possibilities. I always say writers read with pens in their hands, waiting to grab a piece and alter it to print a new possibility. In this class I felt like those strings of possibilities became not just a thin bit of dental floss but a red yarn of possibilities that seem to have a clear connection.
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