Friday, August 31, 2012

Joan Didion began her essay discussing how John Wayne was her childhood prince she imagined sweeping girls by their feet. We notice that  through her personal experiences with him, she notices change in him. This change into action movies, manly parts, and the south cali cowboy lifestyle of John Wayne had her dream quite twisted. I feel she no longer adored him for being the guy that would one day come and sweet talk her into falling in love with him, but rather for the cowboy life form out west. When she meet with her infatuation for dinner all these years later, her dream had become reality but not in the sense she hoped. Her facing what she had imagined John to be was a trip, because he wasn't the guy that she had sworn in her dreams.

Will Smith's performance in the film "The Pursuit of Happiness" had an impacting effect on me as i saw his character do what he had to do to provide for his son. Though his wife left him for his earlier failure, though he became homeless with a son, though he didn't have the tools and chances to become successful, he still went out to fight for his opportunity. His hard work had lead him to the chance to become a stock broker, where he made it big. It might just be the classic rags to riches story that gets me but i feel he had such a great drive to become successful for his son.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Anne Lamott's essay of "Shitty First Drafts" opened up a new way of writing for me. For the most part i did believe that great writers need not hesitate when they sat down to draft. Rather, i believed that the words came flowing into their head. When i realized that they do also have trouble getting started and putting words on paper, it made me realize that getting words on the paper is the most important part. Once you put those ideas on paper, everything will go from there. I paused as i realized that everything i put down the first time can just be for the sake of creating ideas for the real topic.

A writing task for me is a grueling, lengthy "one-sit" type of process. In that, i mean that getting my task done in one effort without having to go back and edit it over a span of time is what i preferred. This process is one of late nights, and several mindblocks that gobbles up time. For instance, rather write a shitty sentence and get a good word out of it and go from there, i would sit in my chair for 20 minutes pondering on the right sentence. This causes my writing process to be very slow, but end in one effort. My first draft seems to be my final draft with just some grammatical corrections.

Writing is frying eggs. In the beggenning its raw, but once its cooked the final product is delicious.