Journal #1

  • No rules
  • “Ideas are everywhere. The writer of fiction must learn to search the world for these seeds”
  • Backyard of your own life
  • “Even the tiniest seed can sprout multiple story ideas”
  • Use the newspaper
  • History
  • Don’t confine your story to the way things really were
  • Designated writing times: when you feel most free and stimulated
  • There are different camps of fiction
  • Many different ways to develop a story but you need keep writing for it to improve

Journal #2

You know how some people carry a rabbit’s foot with them for good luck? I carry money from my dad. It’s a $50 bill that simply says, “Happy Birthday, with love from dad.” I think he gave me a card of this form to keep me safe in all situations, as it’s too special to spend. It’s the knowledge of having it in my pocket at all times in case an emergency happens.

Last night I was sitting at dinner with my mom and she was all over me. “Your grades are down the toilet and you don’t even have any hobbies. What do you do with your time? I asked you to do the dishes for the past five days but guess who didn’t do them? You need to start having some respect my friend, or I’m going to kick you out!” I could tell she had a really bad day, she does this sometimes when she’s stressed with work but this day was bad for me too. I got so angry that I ran away in the middle of the night. No plan in my pocket.

Like in the movies, I get on a bus not having any idea where I’m going. The driver was too careless to notice I never paid or got off, so I slept on the bus. I was starving when I woke up and got off at the first bus stop. I knew I had the money from my dad, but I couldn’t spend it. In the lobby of the bus station. I see a magician. These people have always amazed me so I go over to him and watch. He starts to conversate and asks what I’m doing. That’s a good question, because I actually have no idea. I realize my mom’s probably worried sick about me. But I can’t go home like this. I need to prove to her that I can actually be somebody successful like she is.

The magician is turning $1 dollar bills into $100 dollar bills. This is skill that could possibly impress my mom. I ask if he can teach me, he says it would make his day go by a lot faster. He asks if I have any money and I explain the money that I do have. He tells me to take it out, then turns the $50 into $500. I’m amazed. Eventually, I learn how to do this amazing trick and he asks me to be his companion. I tell him that I’m still in school, but can join him on the weekends. We make a deal and I decide it’s time for me to find my way home. I find a $5 on the street, turn it into $50, write “have a great day” on it and hand it to the bus driver.

There is no one at my house when I arrive. I open the gate and Ollie, my dog greets me. School will be starting in an hour and I know I have to be there to make anything right with my mom. I write “I love you.” on the $500 bill, put it in an envelope labeled mom and slip it under her door. Then I start my walk to school, completed homework in hand. When I get home from school that afternoon, there’s a envelope from my dad with my name on it. I guess my mom had told him what I did. Inside is a $50 bill saying, “Proud of you, with love from dad.”

Journal #3

Culebra

It was the perfect morning to go sailing on the ocean. Blue, sunny sky without any clouds. No one knew it was the calm before the storm, except for Finny. She could sense all the storms the morning they were going to happen, and watched in sadness as all these naive shipmen took their boats and foreign passengers to the water. This particular day, a couple took their child on a snorkel excursion. It was not going to be a short trip, as they were traveling from Vieques to Culebra by sail on the open water. Once they arrived at Culebra, they explored the culture and saw many stray animals. The child wanted to pet them all, but her mom told her they had to keep their distance because they could carry disease.

The family stayed on shore in a motel on the river that night, while the tour guides slept in their sailboat, which had a small room. In the middle of the night, a storm started to brew and Finny became very concerned about the small child. It rained so hard that the river almost reached the motel, and the winds had taken all the docked boats out to sea. The tour guides woke up in the middle of the ocean, as the boat had started to sink and water filled the cabin. Their bodies filled with water and adrenaline, as they they tried to pry open the cabin door.

Empty

It’s hard to grow out of comfort. Eliza was always an active, small girl. Always participating in sports and going on adventures. Puberty hit her, and she felt okay until one summer she read a book. She wanted to be like Belly, the girl in the story. She was beautiful and skinny. This book gave Eliza extreme self doubt that her body was good enough. That’s where it started.

Run to the end of the road and back in the morning. Measure ¼ cup granola and ½ cup yogurt. Do an ab workout in the bedroom. Make a salad and wash it down with green tea. Time for a bike ride to the beach then an hour swim. Dinner with the parents, eating as little as possible.

This was how the summer went. Day by day and pound by pound. People began to notice. Eliza felt incredible and loved all the attention she was getting.

With her dream body came her dream boyfriend. Everything was great and he told her she was beautiful every day.

More tea. Less calories.

It was time for a checkup with the doctor. Eliza’s mom expressed her concerns and the doctor diagnosed Eliza with an eating disorder, then sent her into counseling.

Darkness

Ten minutes ago, everything was normal. I was doing homework in my dorm room on my laptop as usual. Then the power went out. This was odd, as there was no wind. Everyone goes into the hallway with their phone flashlights, wondering what has happened. Security tells us that this is an unidentifiable situation and we stand by. My friends and I go to bed assuming we’ll have power by morning.

On the fifth day everyone is anxious. All our phones, tablets, and laptops have lost power at this point. Classes have been postponed because there’s no light and no way for professors to display their presentations. If it had been years earlier, we would all know what to do in the dark and communicate without the internet. Instead, no one knows what to do and we sit in silence. The power outages have spread around the country, and all the flights to leave borders are booking fast. This was the beginning of the end.

Journal #4

“HANDS IN THE AIR”

“Sir, I believe it is you who should put your hands in the air for trespassing.”

“This is not your home.”

“Who are you to tell me so? I’ve lived here 5 years now.”

“If it is, tell me your name, your wife’s name, and this dog’s name.”

If he were a newbie burglar, he’d be clueless about this. But he had done research on this particular family, and was not worried.

“My name is Elias Contra. My wife, Chayenne. This dog, Stewie.”

“Fine, then explain why you are going around with a trash bag?”

“Oh you don’t know.”

“Clearly? Explain.”

“The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up”

“Magic? Tidying?”

“I am simply performing Marie Kondo’s method of minimalism. I pick up every item in my home, and ask myself, does this spark joy?”

“So you’re saying the only items that spark your joy are the expensive ones.”

The policeman was not in the mood for this. He had just dealt with taking six kids out of a meth lab and left them back a the station when he got alerted of a burglary. He had to find a home for them by nightfall, and didn’t know where to start.

“There is no need to take up the room in my nice apartment with cheap, useless items is there?”

“I’m done here. I have more important cases to deal with.”

Journal #5

Chapter two gave me a good insight into developing characters. It’s interesting how we are the creators of our characters, but we do not necessarily have total control of their actions. Showing versus telling is another important argument in chapter two. There are some things you have to write in, but there also has to be some things left unsaid, for the reader to decipher and imagine what is going on. I picked some quotes I really enjoyed:

“Description, no matter how beautifully crafted, cannot carry a story. What the piece needed was a driving force, a momentum to thrust the reader foreward” (27). I really like this quote because in all stories, short or long, there needs to be something that keeps the reader interested. If I’m reading a book and don’t want to stay up late reading it, than I probably won’t finish it.

“Literature is filled with great villains. Part of what makes them so compelling is the tiny bit of ourselves that we see in them” (30). I really like this quote because I think people, more often than not look for something to read or watch that is relevant to their own lives, whether it be a character trait or just having it be about something we’re interested in, or have experience with.

“You do want a sense of surprise in your characterizations; it’s part of what creates a satisfying sense of journey and discovery in a story” (33). This quote basically says what the quote I made in class says: “Go the unexpected route.” I think some people have an idea of where their writing is taking them and many don’t. Either is okay, but when you go a different direction than the audience expects, it creates tension and more interest in the story.

Journal #6

Setting definitely has a lot of impact on how readers interpret characters. Just by putting a character in a certain place, it can tell you a lot about them. I think this is true for people in general, as everyone typically has a certain place or places where they go and are comfortable, or where they live. This is summed up in the quote, “Much like animals, people have a certain way in their natural habitat, and you want to pay attention to how your characters are shaped by their setting.” (158). In this chapter, Gotham offered a lot of advice about place and time. I have realized that this, as well as naming characters are things that I did not think a lot about before when I have written stories. I like the quote, “Traveling to various fictional places and times can also be one of the most entertaining aspects of reading, be it a journey of escapism or straight into the familiar.” (181). I like this because it emphasizes how traveling even in your mind can be a great experience. If you don’t have your characters be in or go to interesting, out of the ordinary places, there is not as much imagery in the reader’s mind, as they most likely will view the character in a setting like their own. Time is also very interesting, as it can mean many different things, such as what time, what year, what season, what age, etc. Just by changing the setting and time, you can change the whole story.

Journal #7

For me, this book is easier to read than Gotham. In this chapter, I was really able to connect with what they were saying about the famous poets such as Whitman and Dickinson, and how they use their own lives as inspiration for their poems. The main theme of this chapter was “write what you know” and I definitely have done this in poems I have written in the past. Fiction is different, as the characters are often made up and tend to go in a different direction than reality, but in poetry you can write exactly what happened and how you feel, through specially chosen words and verses which show rather than tell. Poetry really allows you to enter someone’s mind, and when written well, you can feel like you have experienced what the poet has described. I liked how the last part of this chapter summed it up, “You’ve been given one life, one set of unique experiences; out of those particulars, make the poems only you can make.” (28).

 

Journal #8

I really liked how this chapter was named The Music of the Line. I haven’t put a lot of thought into the specific ways in which we breakup poetry but after reading this chapter, I can see how much poetry is like a song. I realize how much meaning and effect these breaks can have on poems, making it read differently. We Real Cool was a good example of this. The first version which used enjambed lines was a lot more interesting to read than the second version which used end-stopped lines. It makes me realize that sometimes although one version of something may look neater and more professional, the other version that is more abstract is more meaningful. I also enjoyed reading the poem Here. It did not include any punctuation or line breaks, yet I wanted to keep reading because I felt like I was in the writer’s mind and could feel their emotions. I liked how it said in the end, “there are no real rules, only effects” (112).

Journal #9 

(see poetry page)

Journal #10

This chapter was interesting as we often add similes or metaphors to our work but we don’t tend to think about doing it, at least I don’t. People generally compare one thing to another very often when speaking or writing, as it gives us a better image of that thing and makes us think differently. In the example poems, unique comparisons are used and it really works for the poems. I like how they said about the similes used in Feared Drowned, “Such a radical alteration would, of course, wrench the poem in another direction, taking us away from its central concern” (96).

Simile Exercise:

Tired as a nurse after the night shift

Hot as the sun that beamed on my face while in the lifeguard chair

Waves unfurled like the twirl of a ribbon

After the shelling, the town looked as if bigfoot had gone on a run

Disgusting as my turtle tank after not being cleaned for a week

The child trembled like a tree trying to stand tall in a hurricane

The airplane rose like a balloon that slipped from a child’s hand

Black as the night in the country during a new moon

He entered the room like he had a dark secret

Their lovemaking was like fire melting ice

Journal #11

Imagery is a really interesting concept in which writers can create unknowingly. When I read a book, I always have an image in my head as if it were a movie. Then I may watch the movie and it’s completely different than what I had in my head while reading the story. I think everyone has some sort of a different interpretation and image in their head that goes with what they are reading. In the beginning of this chapter, the author talks about how “a day in your childhood comes back, every detail sharp and precise.” My mom has photo albums from my life growing up, and I feel like my memory is boosted a lot from these pictures. I wouldn’t remember my trip to Disney when I was young if it weren’t for the picture of my dad holding me as I’m wearing a Winnie the Pooh shirt and eating Teddy Grahams. Just from the picture I remember my relationship with my dad, what I looked like, where I was, and what I liked to eat. I love how language and words can create such a precise image. Even while reading this chapter at the part where it talks about looking at the first snowfall, I had a clear image of it.

Journal #12

Revision is a part of writing that I enjoy most of the time. In the process of writing there isn’t a whole lot of thought put into all the questions that Jane Hirshfield asked her students. Before reading this book, I never really thought about poems being drafts. I generally think of a poem as someone’s feelings, writing it once and being done with it. But I like how it says, “revision is a process that has no clear ending point. A poem is like a child; at some point we have to let it go and trust that it will make its own way in the world” (188). Poems have a way of being both different and similar to other forms of writing. In a poem, all the words matter and the placing of them matter equally. In a story, there’s more focus on the events that occur throughout the words. I like the idea of putting a poem away and looking at it again with new knowledge. There is almost always room for improvement in art, but sometimes it takes a vacation from it to realize what the revisions should be.