The essay that suck with me most was Solnit’s, and how they weaved color into imagery and memory, how all the instances of color further elaborate on nostalgia and memory. I think I had this in mind when writing, although it was not as obvious, I do think that it influenced the way I talked about certain things in my essay.
Solnit’s essay about Blue really stuck out to me because I noticed the motif appeared in multiple other pieces we read. One case that stuck out to me was how Dillard mentions the ‘blue of distance’ when describing the Yakima valley. At first, all the usages of blue that Solnit writes about made sense in theory, but seeing it repeated over and over again in other works really hammers in the point. I guess I just never thought about how blue can be used and applied in so many different ways.
When writing my first essay, using the in-class writing exercises helped me a lot because I had something to build off of. Also, I really enjoyed talking about the different readings and hearing everyone’s opinions.
This week, I was mostly thinking about finishing my essay. I had a lot of different directions in which it could go, and I had a hard time settling on any. I wrote a lot of individual scenes and then ended up sewing them all together without being sure that I had chosen the right path — a true test to my ability to let a draft be a draft. I think that that experience was important for me; first, it indicates how influenced I was by each reading we did and all of the different styles those included. Second, I was able to be inspired by my own thought process, since creative nonfiction is not something that I’ve done before and I expected to be stuck in a rut in a very different way than I was.
This week I was reminded how hard it is for me to write a flash essay or piece of writing without direction. I found the writing prompts and exercises to be extremely helpful resources for jumpstarting my essay and simply getting words on the page. I also enjoyed hearing the different interpretations to the readings as I feel like it gave me a new perspective on the stories like Dillard’s Total Eclipse.
This week, what interested me most was how Laymon portrayed a serious discussion in a very matter-of-fact manner. The way he weaved dialogues with his anecdotes, and flipped the topic and name of the essay was something that I kept thinking about. I liked his usage of shorter sentences, mixed with longer sentences. I also kept thinking about Laymon’s transition sentences and how they gave the essay a very interesting form. They were an interesting way to keep the reader aware of his age, while also portraying the events in chronological order.
I kept thinking about Solnit’s form of expressing themselves using color. I sensed fear and longing for a time that existed at some point, specifically a portion in the piece where she describes blue as being distant. It is used as a form of measurement but also in time. There is a fear we all hold—forgetting the past and no longer feeling the emotions you felt at that time. With aging and making new memories, we forget. And for us, the only way to keep those alive is by writing them down and setting them in stone so that a part remains. It reminded me of my motives to write and how part of my memories that constantly change are being stored and provoked a new sensation with the imagery of the color.
The essay that suck with me most was Solnit’s, and how they weaved color into imagery and memory, how all the instances of color further elaborate on nostalgia and memory. I think I had this in mind when writing, although it was not as obvious, I do think that it influenced the way I talked about certain things in my essay.
Solnit’s essay about Blue really stuck out to me because I noticed the motif appeared in multiple other pieces we read. One case that stuck out to me was how Dillard mentions the ‘blue of distance’ when describing the Yakima valley. At first, all the usages of blue that Solnit writes about made sense in theory, but seeing it repeated over and over again in other works really hammers in the point. I guess I just never thought about how blue can be used and applied in so many different ways.
When writing my first essay, using the in-class writing exercises helped me a lot because I had something to build off of. Also, I really enjoyed talking about the different readings and hearing everyone’s opinions.
This week, I was mostly thinking about finishing my essay. I had a lot of different directions in which it could go, and I had a hard time settling on any. I wrote a lot of individual scenes and then ended up sewing them all together without being sure that I had chosen the right path — a true test to my ability to let a draft be a draft. I think that that experience was important for me; first, it indicates how influenced I was by each reading we did and all of the different styles those included. Second, I was able to be inspired by my own thought process, since creative nonfiction is not something that I’ve done before and I expected to be stuck in a rut in a very different way than I was.
This week I was reminded how hard it is for me to write a flash essay or piece of writing without direction. I found the writing prompts and exercises to be extremely helpful resources for jumpstarting my essay and simply getting words on the page. I also enjoyed hearing the different interpretations to the readings as I feel like it gave me a new perspective on the stories like Dillard’s Total Eclipse.
This week, what interested me most was how Laymon portrayed a serious discussion in a very matter-of-fact manner. The way he weaved dialogues with his anecdotes, and flipped the topic and name of the essay was something that I kept thinking about. I liked his usage of shorter sentences, mixed with longer sentences. I also kept thinking about Laymon’s transition sentences and how they gave the essay a very interesting form. They were an interesting way to keep the reader aware of his age, while also portraying the events in chronological order.
I kept thinking about Solnit’s form of expressing themselves using color. I sensed fear and longing for a time that existed at some point, specifically a portion in the piece where she describes blue as being distant. It is used as a form of measurement but also in time. There is a fear we all hold—forgetting the past and no longer feeling the emotions you felt at that time. With aging and making new memories, we forget. And for us, the only way to keep those alive is by writing them down and setting them in stone so that a part remains. It reminded me of my motives to write and how part of my memories that constantly change are being stored and provoked a new sensation with the imagery of the color.