Hello and Welcome! This is my 6th blog post! For this blog we were asked to use the scene from Blog 5 and make it counterfactual. For this blog I asked myself “what if the weather was different?” and “What would’ve happened if it was a nice sunny day?”
My friends and I bought tickets to go see a concert at Penn's Landing. Before the concert I checked the weather. I noticed that on the day of the concert it was supposed to be a thunderstorm. I took a screenshot and sent it to a group chat with the friends I was going with. James quickly replies “whocares I am still going” Five more of them emphasize James’s message. I texted back “I guess if you guys are with it I’ll still be with it” It's the day of the concert and it was dark, cold, and rainy. It was 12 p.m. and the concert started at 7 p.m.. We all got dropped off at the trolley stop in the middle of town. Our plan was to take public transportation down. We all had big heavy rain coats on. Once we got to the city the storm was ten times worse than it was back home. I turned to my friend John and asked “Do you want to go home?” John looked at me with confusion and said “No way!” We arrived at the concert and it was a long line to get in. James says to us “I wish I went home this sucks!” The worst part about this day was that the concert was outside. When we were waiting in line the rain suddenly stopped and the clouds opened up. The sun was so bright when it was shining through the clouds. It was like a miracle that the storm flew by. John yelled across the people “Paul and James lets get closer!” The three of us started to push through the crowd. It took forever to get up to the front but we finally did. John said to James and I “I can’t believe you guys wanted to leave, we would have missed out on this awesome concert!” James quickly said “It was all Paul he’s the one who wanted to leave.” I explained to them “I honestly did not feel like standing here in the pouring rain all night.” James agrees with me “Yeah, this would’ve sucked if it was raining.” The concert seemed really fast to me. I guess time does fly when you're having fun. Towards the end of the night John asked “Do you guys want to take the train or uber?” James replied “I don’t really care I am fine with either.” I agreed “Yeah, I don’t care how we get home?” John explained “Let’s just call an uber I don’t feel like waiting for the train.” The three of us walked a block or two and John called an uber. It was a long but very fun day.
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Welcome! This is my 5th blog post for my English Composition 1 class. For this post we were asked to compose an emotional scene using dialogue. We were also asked to connect our story to Hills Like White Elephants (Ernest Hemingway). In the short story, Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway writes about an unplanned crisis with a man and woman in a relationship using a lot of symbolism. This relates to a time when my friends and I went downtown for a concert and our plans quickly changed unexpectedly. It was a spring night, about 70 degrees, and my friends and I went to a concert at Penn's Landing. I remember looking at the weather before I left and saw that it was going to be a nice day with clear skies. It took forever to get down there using public transportation, and when we got there it got dark really fast and the wind started to pick up. It was not looking good. In about twenty minutes the rain started to come down. I turned to my friend John and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going home.” He said, “Same, I’m getting out of here.” The storm got worse and worse. People were running out of the outdoor venue and into their cars. John and I were alone and could not find anyone we came with. John said, “Paul, I think we should try to make our way back to the train station.” “Let’s go now before it gets worse,” I said in agreement. We started walking in the direction of the station when we came across a flooded street. I said, “How are we getting around this? There is no way I'm walking through it.” John told me to follow him and we started looking for another route. When we both thought it couldn't get worse, both of our phones died. “John, we have to just get back to the station and we will be good, just stick with me,” I told him. We kept walking in the storm and it was so dark you couldn’t see a thing. We ran into a man and John asked, “Excuse me, do you know where the train station is?” The man said, “Keep going straight three blocks then make a right.” Finally, we got back to the station. John said, “Paul, I am drenched.” We waited for 45 minutes before the train got there. I don’t know what it was but the station smelled even more horrible that night. “I'm never going to another concert again!” I said, I was so happy when I saw the bright train light coming down the tracks. Hello! Welcome to my 4th blog post! In this post we were asked to read three different articles (links provided below) about the writing process from authors Don Murray, Anne Lamott, and Mary Karr. Then we were asked to create a scene using three quotes from each article we read.
Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray) -- introduction is not required reading 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) It was a warm day in Los Angeles, California. I arrived on a Monday for a business trip. This was my first time in L.A. and I was looking for a good place to get something to eat. I went to the front desk of the hotel I was staying at to ask. There was a gentleman in front of me in line and I noticed his shoelace was not tied. I tapped him on the shoulder and said “ Your shoelace is untied sir.” He turned around to thank me and I said “ Oh my god your Don Murray!” He laughed and thanked me. I asked if we could get a picture. Don said “Yes, actually would like to join Mary Karr, Anne Lamott and I for dinner?” I said “yes, of course”. I was always interested in writing so I thought I would go and ask some questions about how they became so successful. We met Mary and Anne at the restaurant and we all sat down and got talking. “I always had trouble starting off my writings, what do you guys do to start writing?” I asked. Don Murray said, “ Prewriting is everything that takes place before the first draft, prewriting usually takes about 85% of the writer's time.” Mary Karr quickly responds after Don and says, “In the beginning, when there are zero pages, you have to cheer yourself into cranking stuff out, even if it lands on the cutting room floor.” I was also very curious about how much time they take to draft their work. I asked, “How many rough drafts do you usually do?” Anne says, “The idea of a shitty first draft, all good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.” She also says, “ In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.” Mary chimes in as well and says, “In the early draft, the generative self shakes pom-poms at every pen stroke and cheers at every crossed t. In a month or so, this diligent and optimistic creature gins out, say, two hundred pages.” Don begins to talk about what helps him and says, “The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say.” “The first draft is like a child's draft, where you let it all pour out then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one’s going to see it and that you can shape it later.” says Anne. “Do you guys have any advice for me when it comes to writing?” Mary says, “After a lifetime of hounding authors for advice, I’ve heard three truths from every mouth: Writing is painful, it’s “fun” for novices, the very young, and hacks; other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before the current age. Which lends them a sense of history and raises their standards for quality.” Don then told me, “We have to be patient and wait, and wait, and wait. The suspense in the beginning of a writing course is agonizing for the teacher, but if we break first, if we do prewriting for our students they will not learn the largest part of the writing process.” I was very happy that I got to speak to these amazing authors. They gave me so much good advice and plenty of tips on how to improve my writing. |
Paul ConlanI use this blog to explore the writing process to make meaning. ArchivesCategories |