Adding a human element to the literature

    One thing I took away from Roth talking was that writing still isn't "easy" for him. Obviously, he has a natural inclination towards it and comes out with some pretty great results, but he is human just like the rest of us and still struggles to create something that he finds worthy. I find that I feel a similar way about music composition -- the thing that I am majoring in. It is what I am most talented in, work the hardest for, and the art that I have been the most successful in creating. But when people ask if it comes "easy" to me? Hell no. Writing a good piece of music is one of the most difficult challenges I have ever faced, and the better I become at it the more difficult it becomes.
    I felt that Roth had a similar notion towards writing, particularly when he admits that he still has no clue how to start a story. He has created beautiful, successful pieces of writing that brim with confidence and control over the language. But he didn't sit down and just have it all flow out. This confident, lucid language that he has created came from hours of discarded sentences and irritably rewritten paragraphs until he finally came up with something that he is satisfied with. This is one reason it is so nice to hear the author talk after finishing his book. It shows the human element that goes into a work of art or literature. I find that when I have finished a piece, I will go back and listen to the complicated counterpoint and harmonies and wonder "how the hell did I write this? It must've been a fluke. I'll never be able to do this again." Even something that I have done myself seems inaccessible and unrealistic to create viewed as a listener, but when I start on a new project and fight through dozens of deleted work and struggle with it for hours and hours, something beautiful (at least in my eyes) miraculously emerges.
     So, hearing Roth talk about how he writes was a great way to understand the process that a successful writer goes through. How, no matter his talent or achievement, he still struggles to craft a story and portray the language in a way that he is happy with.

The perfect combination

        I think blog writing holds considerable merit because it helps writers to develop a voice -- and to focus on getting a point across clearly. Academic papers put so much emphasis on the actual language used that the actual message is often jumbled and loses coherence. With a blog post, we can forget about strict grammar rules and syntax and diction and so on and just write. This allows for us to focus all of our attention on what we are trying to say -- and that is always the overall purpose of writing something -- to get a point across. I think academic papers have an importance of their own, as people need to know how to form sentences and paragraphs into a cohesive argument. Therefore, I think that writing blogposts in conjunction with more formal papers is the best way to develop a strong writing voice. I enjoyed the mixture that we did in this class, and I felt that it was very well balanced. Blogs also allow for much shorter assignments, which opens up room to work on a  much larger variety of topics and techniques. I think that this is one of the things that is great about blogs -- the variety of things that you can work on. With academic papers, you spend days or even weeks focusing on one certain technique, where as with blogs you could work on 3 or 4 in just a couple of days. But on the other hand, term papers allow you to work harder on perfecting something specific. Once again, this shows that an optimal approach for develop writing technique and voice is a combination of the two.

Jewish cat!

Trying to get on the roof

      So, one of my friends and I tried to get on the roof of Alice Lloyd. We thought we were so prepared -- we found a door to the roof, youtube'd how to pick a lock, found a bobby pin. We picked at the lock for awhile to no avail. So, refusing to give up, we went down to the 3rd floor and tried to pry open the window that opened directly to the roof. Luckily, we found a fellow LHSP english class member who had a toolset with complete with pliers, hammers, and screwdrivers. I fought with that damn lock for what seemed like hours. Long story short, I broke most of those tools and didn't get any further than just completely wearing myself out. I tried for awhile to physically pry off the window with my hands, but it wouldn't budge. So, still refusing to give up, we went outside and tried to scale the wall, but handholds stopped happening halfway up and we had to drop back down. Finally, disheartened, we had to call it quits. For now.

Brainstorming!

     I found this article to be particularly engaging and easy to read. This is because it is written through a series of real-life examples that help to interest the reader and solidify the point, instead of just explaining a point. This makes it so so so so so so much more interesting and easy to read.
However, I have a gripe with the article. It starts by explaining how effective brainstorming is -- giving plenty of examples and totally convincing the reader. Then, it ends by telling us that brainstorming doesn't work.

     This highlights a larger problem with writing in general -- it is so easy to find examples to back up any point, and to convince a reader. Since he had real life examples and statistics to back up something that is proven ineffective and successfully convinced me of brainstorming's merit -- why couldn't he be doing the same thing while using examples to disprove brainstorming and show a more effective method of creating ideas? By starting the essay like he did, it made it difficult for me to trust him for the rest of the paper. I think he could have made a more effective and concise essay by just taking out the whole beginning about brainstorming. 

      Overall, I think it is written well. Although it establishes an untrustworthy tone, the overall writing style and examples make it a very enjoyable read.

Appetite

  No one has ever believed what I say about my appetite until they actually see me eat. I eat an average of 8000+ calories per day, and somehow am unable to gain any weight. My typical food day in West Virginia would go like this: for breakfast -- a pizza (whole), egg and ham omelet, and bagels with cream cheese and salmon. After this, I eat protein bars and random assorted snacks to hold me over until lunch. Lunch usually consists of some sort of pizza again, and three or four sandwiches of some sort (preferably subs, preferably from Jimmy Johns). Protein bars and salads are once again consumed to hold me over until dinner. For dinner, my mom is a great cook, and cooks a nice meal (often of chicken or some sort of meat) every night in huge portions. This is followed by desert and then random meals of pop-tarts and protein bars until bed time.

          Now, in college, I eat almost primarily granola and yogurt. And cookies. The cookies here are so damn good. So is the granola. Everything else is so awful. But those are delicious. I don't know if I quite manage my 8000 calories a day here, but if I do it consists entirely of granola and yogurt and chocolate chip cookies. I strategically seat myself right next to the cookies and snag armfuls every time a new tray is brought out. I have trained myself to be able to judge almost exactly how fresh or old a cookie is by how the light glistens off of the chocolate. Not just -- if it's glistening they're fresh and if they aren't they are cold -- I can tell almost exactly how fresh or cold they are now. From experience. I also steal a lot of stuff from the dining hall. Not really because I want it, but just more kind of in spite against how terrible the food is. Anyways, my diet is pretty messed up here. They need better food.

I hate you sleep

Sleep. Ha. I remember that. It has slyly alluded me ever since college has started. I'll be dozing off all throughout the day -- straining as hard as I can to keep my eyes open and mind attentive. Then, the second I get into bed -- I feel like running for miles. I immediately get so much energy that I don't know what to do with it. I lay awake for hours trying to stop my brain from thinking about a million things at once. Then, when I finally maybe am able to fall asleep, my roommate has an unfortunate tendency of coming into the room and turning the lights on at 4 in the morning. Add two concussions into the mix and some crazy concussion-induced awakenings where I am not quite sure where or who I am for a little while and countless 3 AM Jimmy Johns adventures and the occasional 3:30 Pizza House trip and... Well. Sleep. Shit. I miss you so. I'm able to sleep like a baby in written theory class -- but does that really count? My sleep schedule is ridiculous. Take now for example. It's 2 in the morning and I have an 8 O'clock class on north campus. Why am I not asleep? This makes no sense. Why are you so cruel to me sleep? Why can't we just get along? Why do you overwhelm me with your seductive powers when I'm practicing the piano but desert me in the waning hours of the night? I miss sleep.

Maud Newton's blog

        Out of the literary blogs listed, I found Maud Newton's the most interesting. Why? Well, first -- the aesthetics. It has a pleasant looking casual font, and begins every post with a picture. These don't necessarily add much to the overall content, but it helps to catch one's attention initially and encourage them to dig deeper. I found this to be an issue with many of the other literary blogs. The content may have been good, but if there wasn't something that immediately drew me in, there's a good chance I would never have read any further.

        This seems like a pretty obvious one, but another thing that makes the Newton blog good is that the author of the blog is quite a good writer herself. There are far too many blogs on the internet that are poorly written -- people tend to forget that beyond all the pictures and glitz a blog is, in essence, writing. Maud maintains a very readable style that is casual and simple yet still serious in relaying the message.

      This blog seems to jump around from topic to topic without too much of a common thread at times. I can't quite decide if this is a good or a bad thing -- it keeps my interested piqued from not getting worn down by the same thing over and over again; but at the same time, I can never quite figure out where it's headed or what the overall theme of the blog is. I think the concept of jumping around from topic to topic is good, but maybe could be executed a little bit better (having somewhat of a common thread or explanation behind why she is posting such and such). For example, she jumps from a post about her grandfather's rocking chair to a post about a painting imagining a dog's life after death. 
It took me a little while to find it, and I was almost about to complain about a lack of an about me -- but I found it and it is very informative. I think having a good about me is an essential part of a blog -- don't we want to know something about who is writing it? The blog also has a link to her published writings, which shows how accomplished she is as a writer -- something that adds merit to her posts. Finally, all of the posts are very well organized into easily accessed and navigated archives.



     I can't find much wrong with this blog, and I think that it is a great example on how to write a successful blog.

Entirely unrelated picture to catch interest