Writer's block is a tricky thing to overcome. This week, I realized that it's even harder to overcome when your entire group for an essay has writer's block. I kept noticing over and over how someone in the group would say an idea and it would be followed by a "yeah" or two and then just silence. Most of the ideas we typed out ended up being deleted or we sat with our fingers on the keyboard, never actually typing, for long periods of time. Thankfully, fate was on our side this week. We did a creative writing and for some reason, I decided to write about fears and failures. I honestly have no idea why this topic came to my mind but I wrote it in a way that was like a pep talk to myself. I basically told myself exactly what I needed to hear without knowing I needed to hear it. I started to see that my block was caused by a lack of guts, not a lack of ideas. I didn't want to write anything that wasn't going to be perfect.
Something I really want to work on is getting my thoughts and ideas down and then going back through and editing things. I almost want to treat all of my writing like creative writing in a way. I want to just write without fear until I lay everything out that I want to say. Finishing it off later with organizing and adding citations. I can't necessarily speak for what caused my partners' writer's block, but for me it's a pretty simple solution: write now, worry later. This week I decided to link my creative writing. I haven't looked at it or edited it at all so my apologies if it doesn't make sense. I just thought it was the best thing to show what my natural, raw writing looks like. I want to use this as an example of what writing should be like: full of movement and voice rather than silence and blank spaces.
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This week we read a poem at the beginning of each day. It was the same poem every time, titled The Eagle, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. We looked at different aspects of the poem, answered specific questions, and interpreted its meaning. All of these things are pretty typical; I'm sure I've been told to do them in all of my English classes since elementary school. This time felt so much different though and I think that's because I actually came up with my own conclusion. Instead of simply nodding along to whatever the people at my table were saying or writing down exactly what the teacher wrote, I took the time to think through the words in the poem and find a deeper meaning on my own. To be honest, it wasn't very difficult either. All I did was recognize what came to my mind when I read the poem. By saying all of that, I know I'm kind of admitting to not giving 100% in my past classes but I wanted to talk about it because I'm shocked by how ridiculous I was to not even try. A poem can literally mean anything you want it to. My teacher mentioned something about the metaphorical meaning of literature being completely up to the reader and that the author of a piece was most likely writing very literally. I could see this thought come to life all throughout the week when I talked to the people around me about The Eagle. Hearing what other people noticed about the poem really proved to me how flexible metaphor can be. While I compared the poem to a God or a higher power, someone else thought it was about a person growing older. I loved being able to hear all of the different angles people saw. This is one of those things that I think help people grow: being able to keep an open mind about everyone's different perspectives on life and seeing new ideas brought to the table. This is a lesson that can never be taught too many times, I just wish I would have caught on earlier. This week I decided to link a website that talks about the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I read this book in tenth grade and I really did not like it. Looking back, it's probably because I never looked past the literal meaning of the text. I did not try to find a meaning behind all of the symbolism which left me to read a very long, dry book. I think this relates pretty well to want I did this week because I was able to prove to myself that taking the time to find metaphors can seriously change how you view a piece of literature.
As I'm making this post, I'm sitting in class on a Friday morning. I'm trying to come up with words to talk about what we learned this week, which just happened to be writing. Yes that's right, I can't figure out how to write about how to write. We talked a lot about forming our own opinions and using our own words. This makes total sense; of course we should say what we actually think. Why then, is it so difficult to do? All my time spent writing in class, I don't remember being told to use my own voice. I remember being told to use MLA format, to cite my facts, to use this word instead of that one, and to separate my run on sentences. Now don't get me wrong, I know these things are important in order to write an essay, but isn't stating your own opinion and making your voice heard equally as important? This year I really want to work on saying my own thoughts rather than stating the teacher's thoughts with a different arrangement of words. After all, the teacher already knows what they think on the subject, why would they want to read thirty other essays stating the exact same thing? We also discussed how we got to where we are: in an AP Lit class. If I’m being honest, I had a pretty difficult time finding an answer to this question. I thought it was a weird thing to ask because I never thought of not taking the class. I took Honors English all throughout high school so taking this class was just a given for me. The more I think about the question though, I realize it really was a choice and no matter how I came to that choice, I’m so glad I did. It will most likely turn out to be the class that opens me up to knew thoughts and opinions and I'm beyond excited to see where my writing takes me this year. Below I linked my vsco page. I use vsco to take and edit photos that show small bits of my life at a time. I think the site helps me find a voice because I share whatever I want at that time and I post pictures I like, whether I think others will appreciate them or not.
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