#6 Lit Book

The literature textbook so far is just a review of what we've learned in history like when we were in 8th grade. Nothing new I'm reading about. I think I'm improving on my annotating though which is a good thing. I know when it comes to school though, annotating will be hard for me because i'll constantly be wanting to read fast so i can get it over with. Also when reading the books throughout the year for school we have to annotate certain things and info which is hard for me because sometimes i don't know what the right type of thing i should be highlighting or taking note on. Reading the textbook now really makes me want to go back to reading the actual novels that we're supposed to read. I guess when you realize the boring textbook you have to read, it makes you appreciate the good novels you have. But I did find one good quote while reading. It talks about the "brooding romantics" and how their thought process is when writing their horrific tales, "Once the romantics freed from the restrictions of reason, they could follo it where ever it might go." SO it pretty much says they let go of all the rules of literature and just wrote for the sake of themselves. Maybe they were trying to prove something, but we'll never know. We just make things up in the book that we think have some sort of magical meaning.

#5 On Writing - "...say shit more often than sugar."

80 pages to go and counting. I didn't realize this book would actually be giving interesting tips On Writing. Ha ha used the book title in their. Anyways at first I thought, "Oh this is just a documentary book." But now he's really getting into each topic of writing. Well not really deep and technical but on a level that we high school students can actually relate to on some level of understanding. He's mentioned how to start a story, dialogue, character description and how to write about them, and symbolism. Mainly when writing he says that you dont have to say every little detail about every little thing. Letting the reader figure out certain situations or traits leaves a understanding between the writer and reader. Now I dont know if this can relate to writing essays or maybe it can when we're not writing research papers and useless biographies. But maybe when we're writing an actual fiction story (if that'll ever happen in school) it leaves us more room for imagination, which we can actually use the advice he's giving us from the book.

#4 On Writing

Half way through with this book! For these 50 pages were where the best quotes were. Whenever I saw a really good quote it trully stood out to me. I don't even know why. It was like finding the golden tresure in the sand of words. I then highlight it and then I'll share them with you. It's so weird I wonder if it shines like it does to me to other people. These quotes aren't like the answers to life, but I think they really represent the book and it's meaning. But there were also the hardest parts because in the third part of the book he starts using all these examples from other books. I'm not even sure why he's using other books as examples. It's really confusing because you cant really grasp the meaning of the quotes he's using since it's an entire different book that you've never read.

Here are a few quotes that stood out:
" I was wiping my ass with poison ivy again, this time on a daily basis....." p. 96
" It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged." p.114
and lastly...
"One of the really bad things yo can do to your writing is to dress up the vocab, looking for long words because you're maybe a little it ashamed of your short ones." p.117

#3 Catcher in the Rye - "Goddam"

Yay I started reading my second book. Is that really a yay moment? Anyway, I hope I don;t find it difficult to read two books and think that one thing is actually happening in another book and I get all confused and Gahhh! But in this book I can't make comments on the side because my book is tiny, including tiny words and tiny margins. Which doesnt help when I like writing in the margins. So now I use post-its and have to pause everytime I want to not something down. Then I have to stick the post-it somewhere and I get lost. THAT is my difficulty with this book. But the content of the book is quite interesting though. For instance I take note in my jumbled up brain of how he explains different situations. For instance, "He never really broke your heart when he went back to his room." or "... you either froze to death or died of the heat." He explains or better word complains about different situations and uses the oddest one liners there are. What more do I notice??? He says "goddam" alot because of his iliteracy (he even admits to it) and thinks everyone is a phony. I think I'll touch more on the phony topic in the next blog post.

#2 On Writing

This round of reading On Writing I found interest when he talked about his middle and high school years. Particularly when he was started his own newspaper called the The Village Vomit. I really related to this. I mean I haven't started my own newspaper or anything but I really have wanted to start my own fashion magazine, or zine as you call it for shorter magazines. But then at the same time there are those Ms. Margitan people out there that break your dreams and tell you "writing fiction is a waste of your writing skills". These people are just jealous I guess or don't like to see new talent shine.

Quote of the Post:

" John Gould taught me more than any of them, and in no more than 10 minutes."

As I was reading the part when he gets a job at the weekly newspaper, he said the quote above. In school I feel like you're not open to the outside world. Which you need when writing. You need the experiences of life and other people outside of class to critique youir writing. And get new topics besides writing about boring topics that the teacher's probably recycled to the class about a million times. What more can you learn from sitting inside a box?

#1 On Writing... I Don't Know

I have to start with this, On Writing is actually an ok book. I recently found myself reading more biographies this year and this fits right in with the rest of them. Well not right in beacause this is about an old or middle aged man remembering his past memories. While the ones I read before were about the unglamorous life of being in a rockband or the relationship of two artists living together in New York. I've noticed that once I started reading I want to take note of every little detail because my teacher warned us of her tests and how she likes to quiz on tiny details that we probably wont remember. So I have many side notes that probably are not professional or intellectual you might say, but they're weird comments that'll help me remember what that part was about. So I realized two things so far about my book, well not MINE but 1) I want to underline every sentence in it that I see and 2) he likes to say, "I don't know" alot. He emphasizes a lot throughout the first 20 pages that he doesn't remember his child hood as well as other books and says his mind " is a fogged - out landscape from which occassional memories appear like isolated trees..." I think that it's fine he doesnt remember but couldn't you say IDK less to seem atleast a bit more professional or mmaybe he just wants to be on a more relatable level with all his readers. Who knows?