Week 8: Famous Last Words

This week I believe my best writing was in my storybook post. I have spent a ton of time researching my characters in order to develop their personalities into what I believe they would be like. I am really enjoying spending time on this and making it the best that it can possibly be. I am still editing it, so it is not absolutely finished, but I believe you can never edit too much. I think that we can always find something to fix in our work.

For this assignment I did not experiment with a new style because I have been using the same style for my other storybook posts. I did try to include more of my characters in my dialogue though, because this is a critique that I have received from a few people so far. I believe I still need to do a little more of this though.

My other classes are going well! I am just in a lull right now, the week before this was super busy, and now I have some down time. I don’t know if other people are struggling with their motivation right now, but I sure am. I am just ready for spring break.

(Waterfall in Costa Rica. Source: DeviantArt.)

For spring break my family and I are going to Costa Rica. I have never been here before, but I have always wanted to. I love the jungle and all wildlife, so I am very excited! My family hasn’t had a “family vacation” in a long time. My brother graduated from college 2 years ago and it has been hard getting everyone together while he has a ‘big boy job.’

On a side note, I gave up sweets for Lent this year, and it is probably one of the hardest things I have given up during a Lent. My roommate also did it so it’s nice to have some support, but our other roommate thinks it’s funny to bake cakes and buy candy… But that’s why we love her!   

Commenting Review Week 8

Comments have been very useful for me to improve my writing. The comments that I believe are the most helpful to me are when a person is specific about something that they see is messed up. This helps me to realize the types of things that I am missing when reading over my own writing. I also like very broad comments that just say what they felt overall when reading my posts. This helps me to really understand if what I am writing is actually getting through to the other people who are reading them. I like having a mixture of both types of comments.

The comments on my project have been extremely helpful for me. I have had people who give really specific comments on certain things to fix that I have overlooked. Also people have given me feedback on what I should add to my stories to make them better. Both of these have helped me a lot to make my stories the best that they can be.

When I am writing a short comment I like to focus on what I felt when reading the stories. I really like to leave positive comments, because I feel like that gives people motivation to keep trying. Personally when I receive too many corrections it is just overwhelming to me, I like having people add some positive comments.

There are definitely some comments that I have received from others that have helped me to improve my writing throughout the semester. Many people have helped me to grow as a writer.

(Nick Miller from the show New Girl. Source: Spylight Blog)

Writing Review Week

Writing so far in this class has been a very interesting experience for me. I love to read, but have never really been much of a writer. I have enjoyed learning how to push my imagination and to try new types of writing that we are not asked to use in normal academic writing. It is challenging for me but also very rewarding in the end.

I believe my greatest writing success in this class has been my Storybook. I have spent a significant amount of time researching, planning and writing the stories for my storybook. I also enjoy writing these posts the most because I can really just make the story my own.

Some writing goals I have for myself are to just really focus on my grammar and sentence structure. This is something that I struggle with every time and I would like to work on this more as we move forward. Another goal I have set for myself is to just try out some new storytelling styles. I tend to just stick with a few characters if I am using dialogue and I would like to move away from that.

The feedback I am receiving is really helping me to improve my stories. It helps me notice the things that I would not have seen myself. Sometimes when you read something so many times you no longer see the mistakes in it, and other’s feedback helps with this problem. I really like having the feedback of Laura and the other students because it helps me take my stories to a new level that it wasn’t at before.

(Ganesh. Image Source: Flickr)

I picked the picture of Ganesh because it is one of my favorite pictures that I have used so far in this class. It is also the picture on the front page of my website. Ganesh is an integral part of my Storybook so I thought I would use his picture for this post.