Profound Text.
Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis
This week I basically just continued to learn and write about the elements of literature. What I found particularly interesting was how there were elements of fantasy in The Most Dangerous Game. While I was first reading through it, I thought there wasn't any. There wasn't any magic, nor unicorns, or anything of the sort. Those were the things I thought pretty much defined a fantasy story. While I was writing my essay, however, I realized The Most Dangerous Game had more fantasy in it than meets the eye. A lot of the plot draws parallel to what can be encountered in a fantasy story. In addition, I felt some things within the story referenced traditional fantasy. Things like how the protagonist shows up to an actual castle to receive his quest. If castles aren't fantasy, I don't know what is. Or how he is greeted at the door by a giant. A giant in a castle seems extremely fantastical.
Beyond these references to fantasy, however, there isn't a whole lot more. Everything afterwards in the story just logically runs its course. What I learned from doing this is that there are a lot of parallels within different pieces of writing that I probably often miss. I'll try to be more observant when I read in the future. That being said, I'm not sure how important recognizing these parallels are. With The Most Dangerous Game, even though I know that it has the basis of a fantasy story, I don't think it really adds anything to my experience or comprehension. This something I think I will find out by reading more.
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The thing I found most interesting this week was what James Jackson said about just sitting down and finding a place to write. I don't personally have a designated place where I write; I just sit on a couch somewhere in my house with my laptop whenever I have something I need to write. I think that I'll probably get around to finding a designated spot and see if it helps me write. I also thought what Jackson said about the statistics of who will like your writing was interesting. I liked how he talked about how he was still confident enough to keep writing books, even though statistically, only a quarter of his readers would actually enjoy them. I personally have an irrational dislike of letting people read my writing; I think partially for fear that my writing will be judged. The most important takeaway from his message for me is to just keep writing no matter what other people think. It's a good message that I'll keep in mind as I'm writing in the future, and with the other things I do, since the message can apply to many other things.
In addition to hearing from James Jackson, this week I also learned more about the short stories and elements of fiction. After reading the pieces with humor as a prime element, I didn't find them to be particularly funny, at least in the traditional sense. The story about rape fantasies was only funny because of how weird it was, and The Drunkard was sort of funny in a corny, ironic way. That being said, they were funnier than most other Lit-y stories I've read before, and I can definitely see how the humor makes the stories merely weird, not super weird and dark. This week in class was pretty much just carried over from last week, so it doesn't really feel like I learned anything all that new. That's not to say that this week was unproductive, however. I found the time spent on revising my creative writings to be particularly useful. I find that I really hate reading and revising my own writing for some reason, so to have some time dedicated to only that was beneficial to my productivity. Especially since a lot of my creative writing was on my college application essays, it helped kill two birds with one stone. With my revisions, I realize that most of them weren't really revising anything major like the ideas I'm trying to express, but just revising things like word choice and phrasing. This seems to correspond with the biggest trouble that I have with writing, which is that I know what I want to say, but I can't seem to find the right words to convey it. Because of this, my writing sounds a bit fragmented or unclear before I revise it.
In addition to revising my writing, I also appreciated the poems by Ross Gay. I learned from them that good poems can pretty much be about anything, that the main topic can be seemingly small and inconsequential but the connections large and profound. I think this particular bit of knowledge will help me be more free in choosing topics when I have to write my own poems in the future. |
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