Post 15, The Final One

As you already know, I love music.  I love any type of music and when we were talking about the lyrical essay all I could think about was how much it sounded like a sort of song.  I love lyrics when it comes to music and it seemed like a lyrical essay focuses a lot on word order and form and certain words that you choose.  It reminded me of a song that I know by the group Atmosphere called “Scape Goat”.  The song is basically just a list of different words and excuses that people use when things don’t go their way.  It is very poetic in the word order and Slug does an amazing job coming up with different ideas and topics that people like to blame things on.  In the chorus he goes “On and On and On and On, The list goes, On and On and On and On” and I think that is a cool way to show that people like to blame anything on someone else.  Here is the song:

After each verse Slug also says "It Ain't Me, Nawh it Ain't Me".  I just think this is an awesome way of using lyrics and words in a different way to get a point across and I think that is the major idea of a Lyrical Essay.  Word order and structure are such a key componant of what makes good writing great and I think Slug does a wonderful job at showing this.

Post 14

I was going to shy away from writing this post but I feel like it will make a good post.  I think Emily’s editorial she wrote called “Separation of Church and Hate” was brilliant.  I think she makes amazing points in it and it is true that people hold stereotypes on people or have beliefs that just shock me.  I consider myself a Christian.  I believe in a higher power and I believe that Jesus is my savior.  What I don’t believe in though is the fact that just because someone is gay means they are going to burn in hell for eternity.  I thought the whole idea of having a religion and faith was for hope.  Hope that when you die something good comes from it.  I didn’t realize that it was to scare people away from it.  I walk to class some days and I hear those dumb Bible pushers standing in front of the AF trying to scare people into believing and I feel like smacking them.   That’s not the way to do it.  It doesn’t work at all.  It is the reason why I think religion is becoming more nonexistent in America.  The way these Bible pushers try to throw a religion on people is horrible.  I’m not saying everyone needs to believe in Christianity or anything like that but I feel things get labels now that don’t apply to everyone.  Gays get the label of being horrible people and that they are demons and evil and all that other nonsense by “Christians” and the press labels all Christians as these hardcore, throw the bible at them and make them believe, types of people and neither are true.  I’m never one that enjoys talking about having faith and everything else like that because I feel people judge me just because of that then.  They think “Oh, he is gonna judge me because I don’t believe” or “Well I’m not going to talk to him because he is going to throw all this bible talk at me” and honestly I’m not like that at all and it frustrates me that labels like that have to be made.  It was refreshing to read Emily’s editorial because it was nice to read kind of the same idea but from the other side.  She felt the same way.  She hated the labeling that she felt for being a gay American.  She felt that when she tells people she is gay they judge her and don’t want to be around her and I think it is horrible to realize.  The one thing that makes America as great of a country as it is people can be who they are.  The country was founded on individualism and it seems like people want to make everyone like them instead of embracing individualism.  It just frustrates me to no point and I’m glad Emily wrote such a great and wonderful paper on how she feels.

Post 13

When talking about whether Creative Nonfiction is more Fiction or Journalism I still don’t know how I feel about it.  In the beginning of the class I was thinking it was more towards the Journalism side then the fiction side because of the idea that no matter what, you are going to be telling a story.  The story is also a true story so that’s why I would lean towards the Journalism side.  I felt the fiction side of it was more because of the idea that you are using heavy description to describe the moments and how they felt in a real story.  To me that sounds a lot like a journalist.  But then I forget now what was said in class that made me flip back to the fiction side but it got me thinking about the dialogue.  When you think about it you aren’t going to be able to get EXACT dialogue unless use a recorder.  And if you use a recorder it ends up being more journalism then anyway.  So if you create dialogue to make the story move smoother would that make it fiction? Even now writing this I’m flip flopping on where I think creative nonfiction stands.  I still think though that Creative Nonfiction falls about halfway between journalism and the half-way point.  I just feel the main idea is to get a story that you feel is important across to people who you feel need to hear what you have to say.  I can see why people would feel it could be more fiction then journalism but I just don’t feel as strong about it.   Even if someone takes parts of a story and puts them together to make it seem like they were there for the whole thing like the one story we read about the meth addict from Philly who found the money in a bag, still to me is considered more of a journalistic type of story.   It might not be AS journalistic as some of the other stories but it still has a journalistic feel to it by the way the author still had to do research and was imbedded in the situation like a journalist  would be.

Post 12

In one of the previous posts that I wrote I talked about how similar making a movie or even a music video in my TV Production class is to writing a creative nonfiction essay.  I remember when My friends and I were working on our 4500 competition video we had to write scenes, or at least have a basic idea of what we wanted to do.  When we finally pieced everything together it all made sense to us and my favorite part of the process was coming up with different shots to tell the same type of thing that a basic boring shot would do.  I think that is a huge component of what creating a creative nonfiction essay is.  When writing creative nonfiction it’s all about taking a boring story or something that has happened to you in your life and putting a different spin on it to make it seem more interesting or intriguing to your audience.  Just like how it was the hardest part of creating our videos, it is the hardest part of creating a creative nonfiction essay.  I figured with the background that I have with making movies and writing scenes I wouldn’t have as much trouble as I did with this class.  To me, it was much more difficult putting my thoughts and ideas down in a creative nonfiction story then it was in a script or storyboard.  I also talked to one of my friends about the same type of thing and she agreed with me.  She had a creative nonfiction class 2 years ago when she was a freshman and she thought it was the hardest type of writing she has ever had to do.  She was also in the TV Production class with me when I was a junior in high school and she was also part of the TV Club so she was just as involved in it as I was.  It made me feel better to know that I wasn’t the only one who struggled with this.  I know I have a lot more respect to people who do try to get into the writing business as a career.  It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.  I am always critical of journalists and say “Oh, I could do such a better job of that” when in actuality I couldn’t.  It takes a lot to put your writing out for people to rip and critique and I know I don’t have whatever that is.

Post 11

I’ve gone through so many ideas on what to write about for my final creative nonfiction piece.  I knew I wanted to do baseball but I just didn’t know what.  I also knew I wanted to base it around my high school season and winning the state title, I just couldn’t think of a good enough story to tell.  I would have talked more about my homerun but I felt like that was too much navel gazing.  I was going to talk about how the relationship between my father and I grew because of the fact we both shared a huge love to baseball but I just couldn’t get a good enough focus around it.  I finally figured out what I wanted to talk about and it had to deal with our team manager Josh Rose.  Josh was always known as the kid who had messed up arms and legs and rode around on a wheel chair everywhere to class.  I’m glad I was able to meet Josh though.  Josh is one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.  I don’t know how I let him slip through when I was trying to come up with different ideas to write about.  I used to think the same exact things that everyone else did until I actually got to know Josh.  He is the true essence of a positive thinker.  No matter what obstacle he has been faced with he always has a good attitude about it and somehow or someway completes it.  He became a superstar after we won States.  One of the coolest moments I’ve ever been involved in was when we finally had a ceremony at half time of a basketball game to get our rings.  Everyone was called out one by one and Josh was the last one to be called.  He also got the biggest ovation.  Everyone stood and clapped for him as he huffed his way across the gym to receive his ring and the team started to chant “Hova! Hova!” as he walked across.  It’s funny how different moments in your life can still seem like they were just yesterday in your own mind.  That’s what makes writing them down so wonderful because every time you read what you wrote; it’s almost like reliving the moment.

post 10

Last class we wrote as our warm up a reflection of the class overall.  So I figured I’d add on from that and keep talking about the class.  I knew going into the class I wasn’t this spectacular writer to any sense of the word.  I am terrible at grammar, I’m horrible at spelling, and honestly, when I try to put my thoughts down on paper they come across very choppy.  Even I know that when I write.  So I was really nervous about the class.  The only reason I was taking the class was because I need it to become a teacher.  I’m stuck in the English area of teaching because what I really want to do is become a TV production teacher in high school but my advisor talked me into switching into English because I’ll have a better chance at landing a job.  So my expectations for the class weren’t very high to begin with.  The thing I enjoyed most about the class though was the fact that even though I’m not an award winning writer like I think some of the students in the class have a chance to become, I still felt like I could contribute and follow along in the class.  My grades aren’t exactly what I want them to be but I have to go with the flow.  I also think Dr. Morris is a wonderful professor and I’m not saying that just because you’ll be reading this.  I truly believe you wanted to help us become better writers, or at least better thinkers, and that is a lot more then I can say about some of the other professors I’ve had so far at Kutztown.  Anytime I needed help you were willing to help me out and you gave me good feedback on what I was writing.  I know I have a lot of work to do with my writing but I feel this was a step in the right direction.  I enjoyed making videos and things of that nature in my TV Production class in high school.  I liked trying to come up with the most creative shot that I could when filming something.  The more and more work that I do with creative nonfiction the more and more I see a similarity in the two.  The different styles of writing that we read throughout the year  and the way that they were told were a lot like the different ways I would try to show different scenes in a video.  I thought it was really cool to look at it that way and I’ve never really looked at writing that way.  It’s all about telling a story the best possible way.