Reaction to "The Boston Photographs"

Nora Ephron's "The Boston Photographs" was a really easy and interesting read for me. I liked how she started off the story by speaking from the photographers perspective. She talked about taking the photographs and how she "realized what was going on and completely turned around, because I did not want to see her hit." She really grabbed my attention and I was eager to read the description of the pictures or see the pictures themselves. The structure of the story was very clear and made it an easy read for me. First she quoted the photographer's thoughts as the mystery pictures were being taken, then she described the pictures in detail. She stated facts about where the pictures could be seen and then proceeded to put more of her thoughts about what happened into the story. I feel like the pictures were controversial for many reasons. The pictures show a mother and a child in the act of falling to their death. The first of the three pictures should have been the only one published because they were still standing on the fire escape. The second and the third pictures of them in midair falling to their death are pretty gruesome and I know if that was me I would not want people seeing that. I do understand that it is their job to report the full story but I think that the reporters point could still be made without the horrifying pictures.

Is it Possible to Avoid Writers Block?

Freewriting is something that I have never done but always been interested in. I have always felt like keeping a diary or a journal of your thoughts from that day was something that only girls did in movies or tv shows. Peter Elbow talks about freewriting to improve your writing skills. He says that writing ten minutes a day without stopping to pause is a great way to improve your writing skills even if you do not have anything interesting to write about. My favorite part of his thoughts on freewriting was where he said "Freewritings help you by providing no feedback at all." Whenever I write I feel like it is always catered to the audience which is usually the teacher or professor. Writing just for myself would be very different and something that I have yet to do before. The largest reason why I am interested in keeping a journal is that I feel like it would be cool to look back on what you wrote when you were a young 18 year old kid, 10 or 20 years later. Another point that Elbow talks about is that it will be easier for you to write that essay that you would have struggled with in class. Your thoughts come to you and you are just used to writing them down like you do during your ten minutes of freewriting everyday. I know that always happens to me when there is a certain page limit on an essay and I have to fill up more space just to get a good grade. I get writers block, stare at my laptop screen for a half hour without writing down a thing. Another quote that he says is that "The main usefulness in the exercises is not the immediate product but the gradual affect on future writing." I can definitely relate to this because over time I have seen the improvements that I have made as a writer. I haven't done the daily freewriting exercises but just writing in general for class has caused a significant improvement. I kept all of my pieces of writing assignments in high school on Google Drive and when I look back at them compared my more recent essays it is encouraging to see how far I have come.

Reflection to Essay #1

I think that writing Essay #1 was a little difficult to get started. When you think about what made you become the writer that you are today it is hard to try to point out one thing. It started with my mother reading books to me every night when I was a child. That is where my first thoughts about writing most likely came from. Then in school when I learned how to write letters that also contributed to the writer I am today. I chose to write about high school because that is where my opinion about writing really changed. Coming into high school I did not like writing at all but once I was introduced to writing for a different purpose I realized why people got enjoyment out of it. Once I was able to process all of my ideas and get started on the essay it was fairly easy to write. I liked that it didn't have to be very formal and it was easy to write what came to mind in my essay. I just wrote about personal experiences. I think I would like to try to add some more details about my second teacher that I wrote about to make it more personal. There were some things that happened in class that I forgot to write about in the first draft that I would like to add to my revised essay.

Just Write

After reading Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts", I felt like I could relate to it but I also feel like it was over exaggerated. She said "Almost all good writings start with terrible first efforts." I disagree with this statement because I have tried to write essays with terrible first efforts and I either have to start over or I receive a terrible grade. When I have written my best essays, my first drafts have been well thought out and there has been lots of effort put into it from the start. On the other hand, I do see what she is trying to say where it is better to write out your thoughts rather than have writer's block and not write anything out. Sometimes when I am writing whatever comes to me I come up with really good ideas that I would not have come up with unless I was rambling on in an essay just to make the essay longer. Lamott has similar experiences "There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph...but there is no way to get this without getting through the first 5 and a half pages." You have to read her text with a grain of salt. What she says is a good strategy to a point. When you write down whatever comes to you, there can be some great thoughts you put on paper but this doesn't mean that you can plan on writing with terrible first efforts and expect to create a well-written paper.

Breaking Down Locked Doors

In the story "The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me" Sherman Alexie talks about his experiences as a young indian boy on the reservation who learned how to read from Superman comics. Alexie does not remember many specifics about the issue of the comic or the villain Superman fought, but he does remember one panel where he breaks through a door. This panel has great significance with the ending of the story because when Alexie is older he continues to visit the reservation as often as he can to teach creative writing to the kids on the reservation. Most of the kids love to write but there are others who have empty notebooks and don't carry a pen or a pencil with them. Alexie describes them as having "locked doors." He says, "I throw my weight against their locked doors. The door holds. I am smart. I am arrogant. I am lucky. I am trying to save our lives." This quote is a metaphor from the panel that Alexie remembers from his childhood Superman comics where Superman breaks down the door. Like Superman, Alexie wants to save their lives by breaking down their "wall" to get them to learn how to write to advance the literacy level of that Native American reservation and Native American people in general.