Lamott

This reading tells the story of how to write a story. Giving helpful tips and hits on how to easily write, or improve, your fiction writings. Starting off with how you first start your story or writing. Sometimes you need to let a story come to you, in a matter of pieces. Starting with one piece of the puzzle to help you start the idea and then slowly adding more and more to make the full story. Lamott describes it as a Polaroid. While developing, you can't tell what it is exactly, but once fully developed you see everything, even things you may have missed in the beginning when taking the picture. Lamott talks about going to the special Olympics and seeing the girl who had her crutches and slowly, but surely, finished the race she started. How he waited so patiently for her to finish even though he was starving. Then when going to find food, he ran into the cool guy. Who was obviously special, and showed him a picture of him and his two friends. Then later seeing that that cool guy was the star of the basket ball game. This cool guy was the start of Lamott starting his writing. Then the girl with the crutches was what followed. He used them as pieces in the puzzle of writing an article on the special Olympics.
Next was talked about characters. How to develop a character in a story. How to really focus on how a character feels, thinks, talks, walks, eats, writes, understands. To make a character up and give them a full personality is hard. And of course they are all going to hold a part of you in their personality. Some will get your good, and some will get your bad. Lamott gives you great ideas on how to pick what your character will be. Who they will be. What kind of person they are. Also, how a narrator is a key role in any story. If you have a good narrator who can connect with the reader and the reader feels they have a connection with them, then the reader is going to enjoy your book. Lamott said they could watch their favorite narrators wash dishes and still enjoy it. Because they connect and enjoy their work. Having a likable narrator is key. I thought of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' when I read this. Scout is the narrator of the whole book, and shes is a small child. She has a whole different perspective on life than most of the other characters in the book. Like when they go to court, Scout gives her intake on what is going on, and because she is young, she doesn't have as good of an idea of what is going on compared to an adult. But I still love this book. I just love the way she tells the story, and how innocent but very smart she is. I feel like I really connect with her whenever I read the story, and I think she as narrator is what makes the books so wonderful.
Plot was talked about next, and there isnt much to do with plot. Pretty much just dont focus on it. focus on characters and let the plot go from there. The characters are what matters. If you base your story on plot, your characters will not be as developed as you want them to be. But Lamott tells you how to write your plot once you have the characters down, and how to help the characters help develop your plot even more.
Dialogue was next, and how important it is to a story. If your story doesnt have good dialogue and flow well, then the reader isnt going to enjoy it no matter how good of a plot or characters it has. It has to flow smooth and just role of the readers tongue. Thinking about this remindes me of 'The Hunger Games.'. don't get me wrong, I love the books, but there were some parts of them that seemed to be very plain and just really boring. I found myself day dreaming while reading a page. I was really into the book and where it was going, but then suddenly I could care less about the exact details on something that did not matter. Writing a story should have you try and keep the reader entertained, and happy. when writing dialogue, you want it to flow nicely and easy to follow along.

Writing exercise #1: concrete vs. abstract

#1
To be the Son
like the others
creating light.
helping me see at night.
but by its self
different.
a million miles away from a brother
longing to find another.
must be lonely
in the pitch black
being wished on but having no wish.
stuck alone in the abyss
who knew
someting so similar. so familiar.
flying right by.
something just like itself
but somehow faster. brighter.
then in an istant.
gone.

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

More poems? oh, yayy. I swear I am just not deep enough to understand what the writer is trying to say, or express in the poems. When talking about the other poems in class, everyone seems to know, or have their own idea, of what the author was talking about in that poem. What every word really means, or the pain or joy that they felt. I honestly zone out when reading poems, and have to re read the poem about 3 times to fully understand it. You have no idea how long it took me to read this whole book. Forever and a day. And honestly, I still zoned out after reading the same poems over and over again. It may have been because I worked all weekend and tried to read the book between jobs and also after work, and I just wasnt focused on it and just wanted to sleep. As always. But anyways, I did find that I could understand the main event happening within the book, and what the main idea of all the poems together were. There were a few poems that I did really enjoy in this book.
"Katrina" on page 31 is one I thought I could understand pretty well. As soon as I read it I thought of Hurricane Kartina, and the damage it did. Also in other parts of the book hurricanes are mentioned and I feel that that is was is being talked about. It says at one point "gut dragging and bulging with ball lightning, slush, broke through with branches, steel" and to me that sounds exactly like a hurricane. Waking up scared to the sound of lightning, having watery slushy mud outside, or inside, your house, branches would be flying in the air, and all over the ground, and there would also be steel around from either destroyed cars, or household items, or other things. It also says "I loudly loved the slow bones of elders, fools, and willows" and that to me means that they lost someone, or multiple people to the hurricane. Someone elder to them, such as a grandparent or even a parent. A fool to them could maybe be someone they no longer talked to or liked, but was still effected by the death of them. And willows could be the lose of the land where the hurricane happened. They could of lost their home, and everything they had to call theirs.
"Tankas" on page 38 is also about a hurricane. Just the way the poem is set up reminded me of one. The sonnets are in a zig zag kind of order, and looks like they got tossed around a little, just like a hurricane would do so. Many times through out the poem you can tell they are talking about a hurricane or storm of some sort. Some lines such as:

• "never has there been a wind like this"
• "he falls and barely splashes"
• "to drown out the waters teeth"
• "here is what drowning feels like"
• "what in the water?"
• "before the mud smells your skin and begins its swirl"

Also about this poem is that I found it very sad. They talk about having 3 children, but only 2 arms, and one falls into the water but its very light so it is a younger child. Then they talk about finder her sister in the water, and her father under rocks, I assume they're dead. Then about drowning and what its like to drown. And then at the end, crossing over. Meaning that they died? Or are they describing how someone else has died and they are just reliving it?
This whole book was pretty deep and sad in most of the poems. But I did enjoy it a lot. Some poems I found very straight forward and others were a little more difficult to understand. But I could tell, even from the cover, that it was about a hurricane or storm and losing loved ones in it.