It really stuck out to me how each writer followed a very strong theme in the pieces that we read. For example, Sloan’s technique of casually jumping back and forth between times (but writing them all in present tense), or Stephen Elliot’s recurring motif where he starts nearly every paragraph with ‘I slept at…’, or even Jo Ann Beard’s honest and unadorned language in “In the Current”. It’s helped me realize that I can’t just create a mishmash of different writing techniques and expect it to have the same impact. It doesn’t always have to be complicated, because sometimes simpler is better.
I was particularly inspired by The Green Room as an example of how to play with time and memory to create a compelling and personal piece. Many of the pieces we read this week used similar techniques, serving to emphasize its importance. I think that this clicked with me partially because I enjoy playing with withholding information from readers but haven’t yet explored how to spread events and explanations in a creative nonfiction/personal narrative setting. I am hoping to start considering this in my own essay assignment, using separate smaller stories to complete a theme or idea.
This week has helped me consider the temporal frame of stories and essays, and how it can be incredibly powerful for an author to use time shifts or even ambiguous time frames to further a narrative or emotion. I think it’s really interesting how, especially in “The Green Room,” authors use time; Sloan considers the different periods of her life in a non-linear order, which I think adds a specific energy of reflection and memory that is hard to capture otherwise. I found it to be a really compelling way to draw the readers into specific moments of her life and her relationships with both herself and her father in a way that is directly reminiscent of the act of remembering.
I was very impressed with Sloan’s ability to use point of view to cause shifts in the story. After we discussed these points of the essay in class, I realized how impactful these shifts in tense were to the developments of the narrative and the authors refection on her past experiences .
I felt quite moved by the pieces we read in class this week, as well as the topics discussed. I enjoyed reading the various creative nonfiction pieces; most of my understanding of nonfiction has been around educational material for classes or history oriented readings. I realized that I had completely forgotten about the memoir as a whole, and as we got through each of the readings through the week I was captivated by them all (but my favorite was probably The Green Room). I found the writing exercises we did to be helpful as well. In describing places or things that are familiar to me, my default is to put myself in whatever narrative I’m writing; taking myself out of that and describing a scenario in which I didn’t exist was a foreign concept that seems rather obvious now.
My takeaway from this week was just the sheer impact families and the domestic habits of people influence writers when they are sharing a story. Whether it be Beard, Eliot or Hamilton, we can clearly the impact of their family lives in each of their stories. I personally, too, was unintentionally inspired by these writers this week, for when I glanced at all the essays I worked on this week, they were clearly influenced by my family and family life. All in all, the readings and writing exercises this week only reaffirmed what I already suspected: works of writing that are influenced by our loved ones are often the most impactful pieces.
In The Green Room, Eliot says she is a man and might be gay because of her father, and this made me think of my epigenetic class. We learned that genetic information is passed down to offsprings, and that information cannot change by someone’s likes and dislikes. Therefore, the characteristics that she describes cannot be passed down, and so in my mind I find her worries a bit comical.
Although many of the initial thoughts I had about readings and perspectives have left my brain throughout the course of the day, I have thought about the use of imagery in most of this week’s readings. Specifically in Sloan, Didion, and Hamilton’s pieces. The imagery is used to set a mood for the readings and often sounds like a weird, ominous premonition. It is a form of foreshadowing what fate the characters may hold. I found this intriguing because, while it makes you feel as if you were in their shoes at that moment, the colors, sounds, and time all impact the way the story is told. The “Lamb Roast” did a good job at this, making the audience feel as if they were part of the family but giving cues in her past self’s child-like persona. The author incorporates their current emotion (sadness and anger for the divorce) in the oblivious younger self through what they do (drinking soda at the end). The slight feeling of uneasiness the characters feel demonstrates the future self’s real emotions. I loved seeing this new turn in the pieces and wonder how I can incorporate this in future assignments.
It really stuck out to me how each writer followed a very strong theme in the pieces that we read. For example, Sloan’s technique of casually jumping back and forth between times (but writing them all in present tense), or Stephen Elliot’s recurring motif where he starts nearly every paragraph with ‘I slept at…’, or even Jo Ann Beard’s honest and unadorned language in “In the Current”. It’s helped me realize that I can’t just create a mishmash of different writing techniques and expect it to have the same impact. It doesn’t always have to be complicated, because sometimes simpler is better.
I was particularly inspired by The Green Room as an example of how to play with time and memory to create a compelling and personal piece. Many of the pieces we read this week used similar techniques, serving to emphasize its importance. I think that this clicked with me partially because I enjoy playing with withholding information from readers but haven’t yet explored how to spread events and explanations in a creative nonfiction/personal narrative setting. I am hoping to start considering this in my own essay assignment, using separate smaller stories to complete a theme or idea.
This week has helped me consider the temporal frame of stories and essays, and how it can be incredibly powerful for an author to use time shifts or even ambiguous time frames to further a narrative or emotion. I think it’s really interesting how, especially in “The Green Room,” authors use time; Sloan considers the different periods of her life in a non-linear order, which I think adds a specific energy of reflection and memory that is hard to capture otherwise. I found it to be a really compelling way to draw the readers into specific moments of her life and her relationships with both herself and her father in a way that is directly reminiscent of the act of remembering.
I was very impressed with Sloan’s ability to use point of view to cause shifts in the story. After we discussed these points of the essay in class, I realized how impactful these shifts in tense were to the developments of the narrative and the authors refection on her past experiences .
I felt quite moved by the pieces we read in class this week, as well as the topics discussed. I enjoyed reading the various creative nonfiction pieces; most of my understanding of nonfiction has been around educational material for classes or history oriented readings. I realized that I had completely forgotten about the memoir as a whole, and as we got through each of the readings through the week I was captivated by them all (but my favorite was probably The Green Room). I found the writing exercises we did to be helpful as well. In describing places or things that are familiar to me, my default is to put myself in whatever narrative I’m writing; taking myself out of that and describing a scenario in which I didn’t exist was a foreign concept that seems rather obvious now.
My takeaway from this week was just the sheer impact families and the domestic habits of people influence writers when they are sharing a story. Whether it be Beard, Eliot or Hamilton, we can clearly the impact of their family lives in each of their stories. I personally, too, was unintentionally inspired by these writers this week, for when I glanced at all the essays I worked on this week, they were clearly influenced by my family and family life. All in all, the readings and writing exercises this week only reaffirmed what I already suspected: works of writing that are influenced by our loved ones are often the most impactful pieces.
In The Green Room, Eliot says she is a man and might be gay because of her father, and this made me think of my epigenetic class. We learned that genetic information is passed down to offsprings, and that information cannot change by someone’s likes and dislikes. Therefore, the characteristics that she describes cannot be passed down, and so in my mind I find her worries a bit comical.
Although many of the initial thoughts I had about readings and perspectives have left my brain throughout the course of the day, I have thought about the use of imagery in most of this week’s readings. Specifically in Sloan, Didion, and Hamilton’s pieces. The imagery is used to set a mood for the readings and often sounds like a weird, ominous premonition. It is a form of foreshadowing what fate the characters may hold. I found this intriguing because, while it makes you feel as if you were in their shoes at that moment, the colors, sounds, and time all impact the way the story is told. The “Lamb Roast” did a good job at this, making the audience feel as if they were part of the family but giving cues in her past self’s child-like persona. The author incorporates their current emotion (sadness and anger for the divorce) in the oblivious younger self through what they do (drinking soda at the end). The slight feeling of uneasiness the characters feel demonstrates the future self’s real emotions. I loved seeing this new turn in the pieces and wonder how I can incorporate this in future assignments.