The purpose of this blog post is to create a description to create a theme from three readings. If you seem interested and want to know how i came about my roundtable click the links below: Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray) Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life | pp. 28 -34 | Short Assignments & Shitty First Drafts (Anne Lamott) I had just finished my first week of class, and decided to stop by Barnes and Nobles because I heard from my english teacher that there were going to be 3 famous authors,guest speaking. As i went to go sit down they introduce themselves as Don Murray, Mary Karr, and Anne Lamont. Here are some of their favorite writings:
They informed us that they were going to be talking about writing in general. This inspired me to start writing but there were a few questions i wondered about, where do I start, What to write about, where do I end, will my work ever be done. Anne Lamont said something that I thought was very interesting, she said “You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively.” Then I went into a daze, I was sitting down in the library at 3pm on a monday thinking of some things i can write about but nothing came on paper, i did the same thing for a week and still nothing, then i remembered Anne saying “ try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.” and finally creativity was on the paper. “In order to create creativity go to your quiet place and imagine the scene and the noises in that scene and write what you see.” I felt a tap on my shoulder , which got me out of my daze and back into reality. As Anne is talking she gets into story writing and a member from the audience asked about creating a plot and Anne says “Plot grows out of character. If you focus on who the people in your story are, if you sit and write about two people you know and are getting to know better day by day, something is bound to happen.” then I asked a follow up question “ if the plot grows out of character then how do you create one?” “Find out what each character cares most about in the world because then you will have discovered what’s at stake. Find a way to express this discovery in action, and then let your people set about finding or holding onto or defending whatever it is. Then you can take them from good to bad and back again, or from bad to good, or from lost to found. But something must be at stake or you will have no tension and your readers will not turn the pages.” Anne continues talking and then she finally ends with helping us find our voice and then its Mary Karr turn. Karr starts by saying “Every writer I know who’s worth a damn spends way more time “losing” than “winning”—if success means typing a polished page that lands in print as is” I start to ask myself, out of my middle school year i was worried about winning and passing, was i even worth a damn... she then starts to say “every writer needs two selves, the generative self and the editor self. The editor self thinks only of saving the reader time and shaping a powerful emotional experience. She can’t turn her complaints and suspicions and doubt off.” then everyone in the room started to clap and Don takes a bite of his donut and says “Our critical skills are honed by examining literature, which is finished writing; language as it has been used by authors.” Then i stood up nervously and said “a writing piece is never finished” you could hear the shakiness in my voice which made me take a sip of my water. Karr had then made my nervousness go away by saying “ A writer can always go back to an earlier draft.” but then as don is talking I realize that he was trying to say “There must be time for the writing process to take place and time for it to end. The writer must work within the stimulating tension of unpressured time to think and dream and stare out windows, and pressured time—the deadline—to which the writer must deliver.
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