I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.
For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish, encompassing editing in the entire process. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent.
I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed it either, as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.
I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things (the extreme) I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month (another extreme) without doing anything worth noting.
The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote stayed as the first line of the piece, followed by the second, then the third, etc. I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines, took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse (it made me sound like a giant second grader). With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.
My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friend’s house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned poem/song piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and, although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case of revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.
Beyond poems/songs, I write short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (two separate sittings = giant leap forward for my clogging funnel of a writing process) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending and would love to change it. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the first take. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us is talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water. No matter what I do to the story, I have yet to find anything that gives it some much needed improvement.
It’s hard for me to consciously tap into the mood I need to complete writing I’m proud of. My writing process is driven by what I feel and what is happening around me in that moment. This form of composition is not the most trustworthy or effective in getting results. As one who aspires to write and become more accomplished in it, obviously I’d like to refine the way I do things. Even with this piece, it was composed entirely in order and edited in order. For my academic writing, I am generally satisfied with what I do. There are exceptions. With this piece (and other‘s of a similar nature), I do see the value of me putting all I can into it, but my very rigid process does limit my ability to get everything out. In my own personal writing, I have the ability to put things on paper I like, but can’t clean them up enough. I’d like to develop my writing to a point of where I have more control. I’d like to be able to tap into my capability to “write well” Even now, as I type these very words, there is an air of “not quite doing it,” that I can’t shake. It’s not that the process doesn’t serve me well at all; it just doesn’t every time I need it.
I would definitely like to have a more conscious control of my writing process. I like to write and would be satisfied in doing it in some form or another, as part of a career. I personally don’t feel that I am capable of doing this with the place I am as writer now, though. I need control and drive. It does appear to be somewhat of an advantage to have the roots of my process be subconscious. It allows me to pull in all the things that influence me, no matter how little an influence they are, that are around me without having to deal with too much a filter. It lets me step outside my mind, if only for just a while. But I want a more conscious effort and the ability to change my own words effectively. By reading my classmates’ drafts, I now find that I need to certainly have a more accomplished editing process and maybe dabble in some prewriting; somewhat of a whole writing process rework. Will it happen? Maybe, and I hope so. I’d love to work at it (and work at it consciously) but that hasn’t been my method so far. I’ll need to get some drive, inspiration, and maybe a little liquor. Well, maybe more than just a little.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Things to tell me about:
did i just talk to much about the works rather than the process
does it read well
did you like it
is it terrible
does my theme match the evidence i presented
suggest a conclusion maybe?
anything else you think . . .
you can ignore these and just go too
Note: I did not entirely finish but almost
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.
For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish only stopping so I may glance at the television. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent. I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed either as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.
I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month without doing anything worth noting.
The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote, “Your smile greets me like the sunrise on my doorstep,” stayed as the first line of the piece and I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse. With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.
My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friends house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.
Beyond poems/songs, I also like writing short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (that’s a real big deal in my case) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the original. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us are talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water.
did i just talk to much about the works rather than the process
does it read well
did you like it
is it terrible
does my theme match the evidence i presented
suggest a conclusion maybe?
anything else you think . . .
you can ignore these and just go too
Note: I did not entirely finish but almost
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I flip open my lighter and torch a cigarette, dragging it hard until my lungs fill with smoke. For the next five minutes, I’ll smoke this cigarette as anyone else would, taking indulgent rips on the end of the filter until it is ready to be flicked from my finger tips. I won’t consciously think about each inhalation that I undergo every few dozen seconds anymore than I would of every other breath I take. My doing it just happens naturally in my mind and is implemented through my hands, out into the world. This is my writing process personified. I think about what I will write beforehand as much as I think about smoking that cigarette beforehand. I get a feeling that strikes me and I can’t shake it free. In the case of writing, that thought will be put on the page in the mood with which I found it. In the case of a cigarette, it’ll be smoked in the mood with which I desired it. Both methods are raw and emotion driven. And just like emotion, it cannot be controlled. It may be possible to control how one’s emotions are perceived by others; but, on the inside, no one can eradicate a feeling that’s washed over and hit them like a tidal wave. And as I dive into that emotional pool, a hunger to interpret what I feel creatively almost always appears; and then I write. If I feel raunchy, then it comes out as though my tongue is a whip. If I feel lonely, then it could be a personal arrangement of existential despair. No matter what it is I’m feeling or whatever mood I may be in, my writing reflects it in a way that is both narration and creation brought to life with the subconscious and direction.
For the five years or so that I have been interested in writing, and have essentially enjoyed it, it’s always been about the “doing” and not about planning at all. Any academic piece of writing I do, such as the Literacy Narrative, is essentially the product of flat out procrastination and then, the night before the paper is due, writing the whole thing out from start to finish only stopping so I may glance at the television. There is no prewriting and pre-thought is basically, but not entirely, non-existent. I will not dismiss the act of thinking before hand with academic writing, because I know it happens sometimes. On some occasions I will think about what I might do with an assignment when it’s being assigned, days before I write it, or even the hours leading up to when I know I’ll have to (usually the day before it’s due). With academic writing, it is written as though I were playing a game of Russian roulette, for I rarely proofread after I have completed either as I am just thrilled with the thought that I have finished the wretched thing and don’t have to touch it again. It may not be the best way to write for a grade, but I have been doing it this way for a very long time and can’t complain too much about the results.
I write creatively for personal reasons quite often. I typically keep a notebook on me at all times specifically for making sure I don’t let some idea I have go to waste by relying on my suspect memory. By far, the things I write the most are poem/songs. I lump them together because if I can play music as an accompaniment and recite or sing it, than it is a song. If can’t, then it is a poem. I’d say I will write down some line or a stanza of something about three times a day. I average a piece that I like and go back to or play about once a week. That’s not to say I get good things once a week but rather, some block of days I’ll get as many as three or four things I complete and deem as acceptable and then I will go a month without doing anything worth noting.
The process I go through for poems/songs is the best representation of my writing process as a whole. Around Thanksgiving this past year, I had been drinking lightly and was hanging around the fringes of being drunk. It was late and I sat down in bed and picked up my notebook, for I had a case of “Mama, you’ve been on my mind” for a lovely young lady I had been spending time with. I knew I had to get something out on the page and all of it just came to me fairly quickly. The first thing I wrote, “Your smile greets me like the sunrise on my doorstep,” stayed as the first line of the piece and I wrote the rest accordingly, stopping only to get the right word or phrasing here and there. I’d say the whole thing, totaling about 20 lines took just under ten minutes. I then set my book down and went about the rest of my night. Afterwards, I did ditch the whole last stanza but the rest of the piece remains untouched, except for the last line of the first verse. With this work, I simply tapped into a mood I felt strongly and interpreted it as poignantly as I could with a pen and paper. Furthermore, I do believe that the slight amount of alcohol in my system did help the process by allowing me to eliminate and self-consciousness that I would have with my own words. It sort of “lubricated” the composition of the piece.
My writing process is no stranger to different substances one would use to seek inspiration. One of the more significant pieces (significant to me that is) I’ve written came along under the influence of relatively popular “vegetable.” I was over a friends house well into the morning hours before finally heading home. When I finally arrived I immediately grabbed that same notebook and went to work. Filled with a particular feeling of determination and a desire for self growth, I wrote a very personally powerful piece. It is entirely driven by two things: 1) my need to “turn a corner” as a person and 2) the emotion that had derived from the influence I was under and the thoughts that influence had provoked. Like the aforementioned piece, “A Transition” was composed in entirely one attempt and although I have tried to improve upon it since, I have lacked the ability to find anything better to include or replace other lines with. It is as though my ability to feel the way I felt in that moment or perhaps even to be that version of myself that I was died the moment I deemed the piece finished and closed my notebook and walked away from it. Even in the case revising an already existing piece, my ability to create things I am satisfied with has never been something I can tap into.
Beyond poems/songs, I also like writing short stories here and there. One that really sticks out in my mind was about my father dying five or so years down the road and how I would deal with it. I wrote this about a year ago in two separate sittings (that’s a real big deal in my case) about half a week apart. The piece totals about 5000 words. Overall, I like what the story does but I can’t stand the ending. I’d also like to fill it out more if possible. I’ve tried to do both (especially change that horrific ending) around a dozen times I’d say over the past 12 months. I can’t get anything at all. Everything that I have gone and done to it has been awful. Where the original is so full of that raw emotion and mood I’ve been going on about, every revision has this fake, Disney feel like I’m writing for twelve year olds. I can’t get any of the realness that I sought after and attained in the original. There is the one segment where I describe my brother picking me up from the train station and how neither of us are talking about what’s actually happened and why I’m home. I’ve tried to put dialogue in it and it just never takes. It’s like oil and water.
Blog 13
Charney's Overall theme: to review relevant educational and psychological research on reading regarding the problems hypertexts can pose.
-the more cohesive the text the easier it is for readers to create a good mental representation
-people rely on structure and expectations to decide on what's important
-readers rely on the writer to tell them what they should really know
-readers are not good at assesing the adequacy of the information they have encountered
-reader's preferred learning methods may determine how well they use hypertext
-dependence on patterns creates a contradiction between creativity and "normalizing"
-the more cohesive the text the easier it is for readers to create a good mental representation
-people rely on structure and expectations to decide on what's important
-readers rely on the writer to tell them what they should really know
-readers are not good at assesing the adequacy of the information they have encountered
-reader's preferred learning methods may determine how well they use hypertext
-dependence on patterns creates a contradiction between creativity and "normalizing"
Friday, March 5, 2010
Blog 11 Revisited
For my literacy process work, I still don't have a solid idea what I want to do with it. Here are some of my jumping points and detail ideas:
-Talk about individual events where a similar procedure but the details surrounding my composition of a work are compared and contrasted, highlighting what worked and what didn't.
-Gather information a series of different moving writing process' that I take notice of and breakdown basically as they're happening.
My writing process can be broken down as following:
Personal Writing
Observe something that inspires me, be it in person, on a screen, in my ears etc.
Take that inspiration and begin to rapidly brainstorm, sometimes on paper.
Write it. just get out everything I can before the fuel runs out.
Leave it. Come back later. Fix what I see can be better if I have something better.
Academic Writing
Get assignment and give it some immediate thought that is never recorded.
Procrastinate
Deadline is very close. Do entire paper in one fell swoop. typically with no post editing and never
any prewriting.
Hand in.
Both of these ways of writing are typically effective for me but also frustrating. The former, because I have no control over it and anytime I force my creative writing I get crap; and the latter, because I'm always pulling all nighters and that's annoying.
This my my very simplified and generalized writing process.
-Talk about individual events where a similar procedure but the details surrounding my composition of a work are compared and contrasted, highlighting what worked and what didn't.
-Gather information a series of different moving writing process' that I take notice of and breakdown basically as they're happening.
My writing process can be broken down as following:
Personal Writing
Observe something that inspires me, be it in person, on a screen, in my ears etc.
Take that inspiration and begin to rapidly brainstorm, sometimes on paper.
Write it. just get out everything I can before the fuel runs out.
Leave it. Come back later. Fix what I see can be better if I have something better.
Academic Writing
Get assignment and give it some immediate thought that is never recorded.
Procrastinate
Deadline is very close. Do entire paper in one fell swoop. typically with no post editing and never
any prewriting.
Hand in.
Both of these ways of writing are typically effective for me but also frustrating. The former, because I have no control over it and anytime I force my creative writing I get crap; and the latter, because I'm always pulling all nighters and that's annoying.
This my my very simplified and generalized writing process.
Blog 12
Going in to the editing of m Literacy narrative, I was looking forward to changing quite a bit in my paper to make it have more the focus the original assignment asked for. Now, a week after handing it in, I don't think I changed enough. My whole conclusion was basically stripped and redone. I ditched the whole "writing proclamation" last paragraph and really built up the problem's that I have. I'm happy with this change. However, where I should have more clearly stated my focus throughout the body of my paper, I simply made simple modifications to different sentences and themes. I still think my paper works and is good, but not good enough. I'm sure it's clear I'm very constricted about it.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Blog 11
My Literacy process is simple. It is always one of or a combination of the falling things:
1) I hear or see something that I really dig and am inspired create something of my own off it.
2) I take some intoxicant and get in a "mood" I can go with and come up with a least the skeleton of an idea I almost always seem to like. (This is usually my most effective process)
3) I am under pressure to do a paper or something of that nature bacuase it's due like tomorrow and I just pump it out all on a whim, usually without any revision.
Note: I never prewrite. In my own works that I do for me in my time I do revise but only if I come up with something I like. I never force it.
1) I hear or see something that I really dig and am inspired create something of my own off it.
2) I take some intoxicant and get in a "mood" I can go with and come up with a least the skeleton of an idea I almost always seem to like. (This is usually my most effective process)
3) I am under pressure to do a paper or something of that nature bacuase it's due like tomorrow and I just pump it out all on a whim, usually without any revision.
Note: I never prewrite. In my own works that I do for me in my time I do revise but only if I come up with something I like. I never force it.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
What I Talk About When I Talk About Me And Writing
For 20 years, I’ve lived entire life to get to this moment right now. I haven’t necessarily spent all that time building up to write my climatic literacy narrative for my Writing class, but rather, all I have is this moment right now. The same will be true in ten years and then, should I do this exercise again, I would certainly write a drastically different piece. As for my relationship with reading and writing, it can be summed up in 2 simple stages in my young life: 1) A long “Dark Age” with small increments of notable material - and - 2) A still existing renaissance that started about 5 years ago. Since this mental “rebirth” of the written word (and language in general) within me, I find myself constantly reshaping the way I perceive everyday. As for the purposes of this paper, I will present the logical evolution in my literacy development as well as my own memory allows. Furthermore, I will begin at the beginning.
My earliest memories of reading and writing are few and far between. My earliest, I couldn’t have been more than 4 for. Every night before bed, my mother read me the same Thomas the Tank Engine picture book. Eventually, I would read it to her. I had not mastered reading at such a young age; I simply had it memorized.
A few years later, I’d say around age 7, I was working in my phonics book in school. My teacher asked the class to turn to page whatever. As usual, she asked if anyone wanted to try to read the directions (my class and I was learning to read around this time as well). I raised my hand and said I would try. I read those directions like I had been reading for years and received three gold stars for it. It was pretty epic.
Around the same time as the direction reading affair, I was in the car with my mother and the radio was on. Some generic 90’s College Rock song was on that I happened to like at the time. When I arrived home, the melody was still in my head so I did something I now find very interesting; I wrote my own words to the tune. I wrote a song. I vaguely remember the lyrical content being about some baseball players I was a fan of and the girl across the street I had a huge crush on then, but I can’t recall specifics. I’d give quite a bit today, to have that piece of paper I scribbled that chicken scratch song onto. Unfortunately, it was probably disposed of within the few days after it was written.
Flash forward a few years and you’d find I had moved once, grown a lot, and developed a knack for not doing my homework. You would also find me, at least on one evening, in my parent’s kitchen, crying. What 5th grader wants to do a book report? As you’ve probably guessed, certainly not me at the time. I remember I had barely read the book I had to report on and my paper had almost reached the two page requirement, when my mother asked to proofread it. As soon as I handed it over, I knew trouble was on the horizon. “You have to rewrite this. There are mistakes everywhere.” Already fed up with this stupid book report, I wouldn’t have it. I got very angry first, but when that didn’t get my way, I began to cry. The last thing I wanted to do was rewrite that damn report. In the end, I lost. The paper was rewritten.
There would be a long gap in between this event of significance and the next. In that time, I moved again, went through all of middle school, got a whole new set of friends three different times and changed the person I was every four or five months. I was a very confused young adolescent. But then, like a beacon shining out over the sea on only the stormiest of nights, I found someone real to me. I was a Sophomore in high school. I was typically angry all the time, misunderstood. I had acne. I was to skinny. I hated wearing eye glasses. School was going awful. I felt terrible. I met Holden Caulfield.
It cannot overstated how much The Catcher in the Rye changed and reshaped me. Up until I read that book, I hated reading and writing. The deepest thoughts I had were what was I doing after school. Then, all of a sudden, I found myself engulfed in what this fictional kid, a year older than me had to say about a few measly days in his life. I finished the book the day after I received it. I went crazy. I reshaped every thought I had ever had. It’s harder to explain than it is to understand, but I believe it is best described as a change in direction. My ideas were reinforced by the prospect that others who read the book told me that Holden reminded them of me. I was completely reinvented. I quit the terrible band I was in and started playing by myself, and writing my own songs. I began reading every book I could get my hands on, at least if they seemed like books Holden would approve of. It was around this time I began to drink and go to parties and really expand myself socially. It all happened in an instant and yet it took more than a year. More significantly, I now know had only made a small leap in where I wanted to be. I wanted to write and I loved music. I wanted to write songs. But I hated that high school heart ache bar chord terrible monotone screaming no talent bull shit that I was listening too. I needed something else to give me something more. I found it in what I think is the greatest way I could have.
I had tried smoking marijuana well before the start of my senior year of high school. I did it once in a while but it was only casually and with no real developed taste for it. Two close friends of mine asked me early on in Senior year if I was interested in going out with them one night. When they picked me up, I asked where we were going. They said we were just going to drive around and as we left my neighborhood, I was handed a joint to smoke. After getting well away from the main roads we each lit up simultaneously and I heard the sound of a voice I’ll never forget hearing for the first time. “I dig a pygmy by Charles Halltree on the deaf-aids! Phase One in which Doris gets her oats!” That was all it took. John Lennon’s gibberish at the beginning of the Beatles’ album opened the door for Let It Be to kill me on the inside and left every pore of my skin to be filled up by the rest of the albums that follow. Revolver, The White Album, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul. I couldn’t get enough and the three of us at least a few nights a week met up and let them blow our minds all over again. We’d roll a few joints, get in a car, put on whatever we wanted to listen to. Soon, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel (among others), joined the party. It was a great awakening for all three of us and any others who joined us on random occasions. And yet I still had so much left to learn.
By the time 2007 approached, I had some direction. I wrote sparingly, mostly short stories and little pieces of songs. I began reading the classics. Tolstoy, Joyce, Hemingway all now graced my bookshelf. But unfortunately, I could not write a thing that I enjoyed or was happy with. It got worse as my high school graduation approached and I became more removed from being a student. That summer I wrote almost nothing and as college approached, I wanted nothing to do with a classroom. As my first semester progressed, I began hearing a name I always knew about, but never cared much for, all over the place. He was being mentioned in my lectures in class. He was showing up in different things I read about. He was all over the “composer” spot on the music on my computer. He was Bob Dylan.
I had never really given Bob Dylan any kind of a fair shake in my headphones. He was this enigma I knew was important in the music world who wrote ridiculous songs and couldn’t sing worth a dime. Basically, I didn’t know the guy’s work, except for a few songs that were real famous that basically everyone has heard a few times. But I made a conscious decision around this time to seek out Dylan’s work and at first I was unimpressed. His voice did annoy me. And the songs sounded like word vomit that I couldn’t grab on to. Still, I knew something was there. I pressed on listening and was rewarded like I have never been rewarded before. I can now say more than two years later that Bob Dylan has and still does ruin music and the English language for me. With Bob, I discovered how to write like me (which can sometimes seem like I am writing like him). I can be irreverent, descriptive, forceful, or tender whenever I am inclined to do so.
One of my problems, however, has been my lack of control in my ability to write. If I am not inspired to do so, I don’t. Without a creative emotion that I’m feeling, I can’t put it out onto paper. This, of course, is only with personal and creative writing. Academic writing is helped along by the idea that I have deadlines to reach. Lately another thing troubling my mind has been my lack of originality. Just recently, I’ve started creating my own based entirely off other pieces that really struck we well. This includes songs, poems, movies, books, things friends have said, my brother and it’s been quite unnerving. The only thing that gives me solace in this is a quote by Leo Tolstoy I heard sometime ago. “Good poets imitate. Great Poets Steal.”
I love writing. I write with rhythm and I always seek out correlation in my work. I bring things full circle if I can. I write songs about the things I do and poems about things I don’t understand. I want to write books. I want to write a movie. In the end, My goal is to be able to write freely; free from the constraints of everyone else and free the constraints of my own head. When push comes to shove, I just want to write.
My earliest memories of reading and writing are few and far between. My earliest, I couldn’t have been more than 4 for. Every night before bed, my mother read me the same Thomas the Tank Engine picture book. Eventually, I would read it to her. I had not mastered reading at such a young age; I simply had it memorized.
A few years later, I’d say around age 7, I was working in my phonics book in school. My teacher asked the class to turn to page whatever. As usual, she asked if anyone wanted to try to read the directions (my class and I was learning to read around this time as well). I raised my hand and said I would try. I read those directions like I had been reading for years and received three gold stars for it. It was pretty epic.
Around the same time as the direction reading affair, I was in the car with my mother and the radio was on. Some generic 90’s College Rock song was on that I happened to like at the time. When I arrived home, the melody was still in my head so I did something I now find very interesting; I wrote my own words to the tune. I wrote a song. I vaguely remember the lyrical content being about some baseball players I was a fan of and the girl across the street I had a huge crush on then, but I can’t recall specifics. I’d give quite a bit today, to have that piece of paper I scribbled that chicken scratch song onto. Unfortunately, it was probably disposed of within the few days after it was written.
Flash forward a few years and you’d find I had moved once, grown a lot, and developed a knack for not doing my homework. You would also find me, at least on one evening, in my parent’s kitchen, crying. What 5th grader wants to do a book report? As you’ve probably guessed, certainly not me at the time. I remember I had barely read the book I had to report on and my paper had almost reached the two page requirement, when my mother asked to proofread it. As soon as I handed it over, I knew trouble was on the horizon. “You have to rewrite this. There are mistakes everywhere.” Already fed up with this stupid book report, I wouldn’t have it. I got very angry first, but when that didn’t get my way, I began to cry. The last thing I wanted to do was rewrite that damn report. In the end, I lost. The paper was rewritten.
There would be a long gap in between this event of significance and the next. In that time, I moved again, went through all of middle school, got a whole new set of friends three different times and changed the person I was every four or five months. I was a very confused young adolescent. But then, like a beacon shining out over the sea on only the stormiest of nights, I found someone real to me. I was a Sophomore in high school. I was typically angry all the time, misunderstood. I had acne. I was to skinny. I hated wearing eye glasses. School was going awful. I felt terrible. I met Holden Caulfield.
It cannot overstated how much The Catcher in the Rye changed and reshaped me. Up until I read that book, I hated reading and writing. The deepest thoughts I had were what was I doing after school. Then, all of a sudden, I found myself engulfed in what this fictional kid, a year older than me had to say about a few measly days in his life. I finished the book the day after I received it. I went crazy. I reshaped every thought I had ever had. It’s harder to explain than it is to understand, but I believe it is best described as a change in direction. My ideas were reinforced by the prospect that others who read the book told me that Holden reminded them of me. I was completely reinvented. I quit the terrible band I was in and started playing by myself, and writing my own songs. I began reading every book I could get my hands on, at least if they seemed like books Holden would approve of. It was around this time I began to drink and go to parties and really expand myself socially. It all happened in an instant and yet it took more than a year. More significantly, I now know had only made a small leap in where I wanted to be. I wanted to write and I loved music. I wanted to write songs. But I hated that high school heart ache bar chord terrible monotone screaming no talent bull shit that I was listening too. I needed something else to give me something more. I found it in what I think is the greatest way I could have.
I had tried smoking marijuana well before the start of my senior year of high school. I did it once in a while but it was only casually and with no real developed taste for it. Two close friends of mine asked me early on in Senior year if I was interested in going out with them one night. When they picked me up, I asked where we were going. They said we were just going to drive around and as we left my neighborhood, I was handed a joint to smoke. After getting well away from the main roads we each lit up simultaneously and I heard the sound of a voice I’ll never forget hearing for the first time. “I dig a pygmy by Charles Halltree on the deaf-aids! Phase One in which Doris gets her oats!” That was all it took. John Lennon’s gibberish at the beginning of the Beatles’ album opened the door for Let It Be to kill me on the inside and left every pore of my skin to be filled up by the rest of the albums that follow. Revolver, The White Album, Abbey Road, Rubber Soul. I couldn’t get enough and the three of us at least a few nights a week met up and let them blow our minds all over again. We’d roll a few joints, get in a car, put on whatever we wanted to listen to. Soon, Pink Floyd, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel (among others), joined the party. It was a great awakening for all three of us and any others who joined us on random occasions. And yet I still had so much left to learn.
By the time 2007 approached, I had some direction. I wrote sparingly, mostly short stories and little pieces of songs. I began reading the classics. Tolstoy, Joyce, Hemingway all now graced my bookshelf. But unfortunately, I could not write a thing that I enjoyed or was happy with. It got worse as my high school graduation approached and I became more removed from being a student. That summer I wrote almost nothing and as college approached, I wanted nothing to do with a classroom. As my first semester progressed, I began hearing a name I always knew about, but never cared much for, all over the place. He was being mentioned in my lectures in class. He was showing up in different things I read about. He was all over the “composer” spot on the music on my computer. He was Bob Dylan.
I had never really given Bob Dylan any kind of a fair shake in my headphones. He was this enigma I knew was important in the music world who wrote ridiculous songs and couldn’t sing worth a dime. Basically, I didn’t know the guy’s work, except for a few songs that were real famous that basically everyone has heard a few times. But I made a conscious decision around this time to seek out Dylan’s work and at first I was unimpressed. His voice did annoy me. And the songs sounded like word vomit that I couldn’t grab on to. Still, I knew something was there. I pressed on listening and was rewarded like I have never been rewarded before. I can now say more than two years later that Bob Dylan has and still does ruin music and the English language for me. With Bob, I discovered how to write like me (which can sometimes seem like I am writing like him). I can be irreverent, descriptive, forceful, or tender whenever I am inclined to do so.
One of my problems, however, has been my lack of control in my ability to write. If I am not inspired to do so, I don’t. Without a creative emotion that I’m feeling, I can’t put it out onto paper. This, of course, is only with personal and creative writing. Academic writing is helped along by the idea that I have deadlines to reach. Lately another thing troubling my mind has been my lack of originality. Just recently, I’ve started creating my own based entirely off other pieces that really struck we well. This includes songs, poems, movies, books, things friends have said, my brother and it’s been quite unnerving. The only thing that gives me solace in this is a quote by Leo Tolstoy I heard sometime ago. “Good poets imitate. Great Poets Steal.”
I love writing. I write with rhythm and I always seek out correlation in my work. I bring things full circle if I can. I write songs about the things I do and poems about things I don’t understand. I want to write books. I want to write a movie. In the end, My goal is to be able to write freely; free from the constraints of everyone else and free the constraints of my own head. When push comes to shove, I just want to write.
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