Consider the readings that you have done for this class thus far. Select two or three parts of these readings that resonated with you and discuss how you have approached or plan to approach your writing differently as a result of what you learned from these readings. Your response should be six to ten sentences long.
19 thoughts on “Blog Post #4: Reading Reflection”
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I resonate with the quote that from the Shitty First Draft,“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the downdraft—you just get it down. The second draft is the updraft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately.” I totally agree with this quote. Before I wrote my first draft, I wrote down the key events that I want to talk about on my notes. I struggled with the first paragraph because I didn’t know what my hook should be, so I started with the second paragraph. My first draft doesn’t include many details and some words are not accurate, so my main goal for the second draft is add more details and delete unnecessary sentences. I also resonate with the quote from the Mother tongue, “But I do think that the language spoken in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in shaping the language of the child.” My family speaks Wenzhounese, a city language of Chinese. My mom is not good at Manderine. My friends can not understand what my mom is talking about even though she is speaking Manderine, but I can.
From all the readings that I have done for this class, there were two specific readings that stuck with me the most. The first one being “No words.” In the article, the author talks about how hard it is for them to communicate with others. The author constantly struggles with finding the right words to express themselves. I can really relate to this. I very frequently find myself struggling to speak because I can’t find the words to convey how I feel. The author then talks about a solution to the problem which is using similes and metaphors. I never looked into using similes and metaphors as a solution but I will start incorporating it into my writing to better express myself. The second reading that stuck with me is called “Shitty First Drafts.” This article talks about how first drafts are supposed to be shitty. They don’t necessarily have to make sense, it’s supposed to be made up of useless and useful information. Personally, I tend to stress a lot about my first drafts. I write like my first drafts are supposed to be perfect but I learned that that’s exactly the opposite of what I should do. From now on, I know to pour out all my idea, no matter good or bad, onto my first draft and just revise from there.
There are two articles that resonate with me. One of them is he Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts. “Writers must learn to be their own best enemy.” I agree with the sentence. No one can write a perfect composition. The author needs to continuously check and modify to make his composition more perfect. Another article is No Words. The author described that he was unable to express what he wanted to say because he couldn’t find the right words. This reminds me that when I first came to the United States, I didn’t know how to communicate with my classmates. Whenever my classmates ask me questions, I can only answer them in the simplest sentence. Sometimes I can’t find a suitable way to answer their questions so that I can only respond to them with a smile.
The readings that I have done so far that have resonated with me are “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua and “No Words” by B. Manson. What resonated with me the most from the reading “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua was with how she described what it meant to be Mexican by writing “Deep in our hearts we believe that being Mexican has nothing to do with which country one lives in. Being Mexican is a state of soul—not one of mind, not one of citizenship” (Anzaldua 76). I was able to perfectly understand what Anzaldua meant by her final lines since I’m also Mexican American. Although me and the author grew up in two different geographies which has shaped us to experience different things, there’s still this connection of being Mexican even though we’re different. Another text that resonated with me was the “No Words” by B. Manson with the part of the reading “Am I hurting? Am I depressed? Am I lost? I don’t know, and I would rather give too little of the truth than too much of a lie” (Manson 85). I understood what he meant with that sometimes there aren’t words to express exactly how you’re feeling. In the reading the author expressed his challenge of how the people close to him had a difficult time understanding him and I have also felt the same way with explaining to certain people my exact emotions. How I plan to approach my writing as a result of what I learned from these readings is that I will focus more about staying true to myself and what I want to express about my culture rather than thinking what everyone else will say. It’s more important to have my voice heard whether that’s using fewer words or more, either way I’m expressing my thoughts.
The readings that really stuck with me where, “How to tame a Wild Tongue” because she explains how proud she is of her home language and you can see that through her writing. I really liked the fact that she explained how different her Chicana Spanish is from the Standard Spanish which is something I can relate to since my Dominican Spanish is nothing like formal Spanish that you would speak in a formal meeting or event. The next text that resonated with me was “Shitty First Drafts”, in this case I was shocked by the message the text conveys because is telling us to not be worried about the fact that our first draft is not perfect, rather we should be proud we put something on paper and now have something to edit and work on. Alike “Shitty First Drafts”, “Suffer less, Writing is a process”, gave me a relief because I always think my first try has to be perfect and now I know that writing is never perfect, there is always something you can fix.
Based on our reading so far, I can associate with the readings “Mother Tongue” and “Caught Between Two Worlds: My Journey Towards Self-Acceptance.” In the first one, from the author’s experience with language, I can connect to the translation process from Chinese to English due to my mother’s lack of English. Her highlight of how English is spoken within our families shape us, made me realize that the English I use at home is different than how I use it outside. And her struggle with reading achievement tests compared to math tests is something that I have also experienced. Reading about how she chose her mother to be her audience makes me realize that I should have a clearer audience. Instead of simply telling my story, I should consider who do I want to tell it to. I think that will influence the language that I should use in my story. The second piece really speaks out because I share a similar struggle when I come across my two identities. Seeing how she approached her writing, that is what made me write my narrative on the changes and realizations I come across between my two identities.
The piece “Suffer Less: On Writing as Process” stood out to me from all the readings we’ve done so far as it is the one that made me laugh out loud. Especially on pages 22 and 23, I found it so relatable and funny with the way the author wrote it that I read it to my friend through messenger. Procrastination may be the big reason why students and many others start work at the last minute, but it could also be like what the author said about the humans’ instinctive reaction to assignments due weeks later and working on the “10,000 other assignments, chores, and obligations” approaching deadline. Whatever it is, students especially end up pulling all-nighters to write whatever comes into their minds while muttering about hating the class, assignment, and teachers. The two advice from the text that I find useful is “Break it down” and “Just focus on the content of the assignment”. It helps by separating parts of the assignment throughout the weeks before it is due so you don’t feel overwhelmed. In addition, starting is often the hardest part so if you set time to sit down and brainstorm, you would have a big part of the assignment down. The ending advice of “Switch off the “OMG I have to write this paper” channel, and switch on the “frogs” channel. The frogs are your friends,” is hilarious.
In addition, from “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts”, I learn that if one wants to be successful in revising and improving their works, they have to step away from their writing and scrutinize it like its someone else’s. Although this would be hard to do, I hope to give it a try to see if I can better identify my writings’ problems.
I would also like to say that as I read “Mother Tongue”, I found many similarities between Amy Tan’s experiences and mine. It makes me reflect on my own writing as many of the other narratives we were assign to. While reading these pieces, I would have these “feelings” rather than thoughts, but I couldn’t piece them together as to how I can incorporate some of these into my own writing. The similarities would even make me doubt my writing at times when I see there’s no “uniqueness” to my experience and I can’t find a way for me to tell it in an interesting way.
Base on the reading so far, one of the stories resonates with me is “No Word” by B. Manson. In his writing, he wrote the isolated himself because he has the limit words to emphasize his feeling. I know how the feeling was when you don’t know what to say. This always happens when my parents, friends, and teachers ask me, “How was the school?” and “How are you today?”. They always get the same answers from me, “good” “not bad” and “fine” because I can’t find out words to describe my feeling. So. I sometimes tell them a story or everything that I saw. Another article that resonates with me is “Mother tongue” by Amy Tan. She shows how the language using at home is different from the language that using outside and academic work. In my family, I also take the same job as Amy. Because my mom doesn’t speak English, she always lets me call the companies or fill out the forms online. In the beginning, I also spoke broken English in the call, then I learn how to speak perfect English from their answers. Now, I still using Chinese at home and sometimes using broken English with my brother, but I try my best to use perfect English outside and in my writing.
Based on our reading so far, I found “Suffer Less: On Writing as Process” very relatable and stood out to me. Yes, I must admit that I procrastinate everyday. I procrastinate when I have projects due tomorrow, papers due midnight. It’s a bad habit and I need to get rid of it because it does nothing but harm and stress to me. From the reading, Kate Eickmeyer said “Yes, you can probably get through college this way, but you’ll be training your brain to depend on adrena-line, and then you’ll suffer when you start working in an office.” I completely agree with this quote because it won’t benefit me now and it won’t benefit me in the future when I have a job. I sometimes have to pull all nighters to finish my college assignments because I procrastinate too much when I should be focusing on learning and working. I also found “The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts” interesting. What resonated and stood out to me was Anne Lamott wrote “Writers must learn to be their own best enemy. They must accept the criticism of others and be suspicious of it; they must accept the praise of others and be even more suspicious of it.” I agree with this quote because the process is often rough. We need embrace the negativities and comments that people have on us and our writing. If we want to have good writing and success, we need to learn from our mistakes and comments that other people have on us.
After a short brainstorm, a few things appeared in my mind about the readings I have done so far. I recalled how people can use languages differently to create discourse. From this section of the reading, I learned more about self-acceptance and how diverse language could be when it comes to different discourse communities. I noticed that I do not need to be exactly the same as anyone, but I should be more focused on my own way of expressing ideas. This section helped me realized that I had my own distinct way of expressing my relationship with language. Moreover, another reading that caught my eyes was the one about the first draft. It assisted me to understand how ideas can be all over the place, and how the first draft is not the end of the writing process, yet, it is the start-point of all. Even though the reading was after I wrote my first draft, it still appealed to me on how to form an initial plan for any writings. I do not feel that I will change anything toward my literacy narrative because I had done what the reading had later told me. What I will focus on right now is to make more edits and corrections to my narrative. I also learned from the most recent reading that I should focus on the bigger picture of the narrative before going into minor details. This is a very constructive suggestion as I am editing my paper.
An article that resonated with me is the Shitty First drafts article because for as long as I can remember I would procrastinate my work and wait till the last minute to do it. I would overthink what I had to do and put it off for later which would give me anxiety. He said to get all your thoughts on paper even if it sounded bad. It helped me realize that with a first draft it can be terrible as long as I had words on paper. I tend to overthink everything and need it to be perfect, but with this advice it helped me work through my literacy narrative more efficiently because my first draft was terrible and after revising and editing I improved it because I already knew what I wanted to write, I just needed to make it better.
For all the readings that I have done for this class thus far. The two readings that resonated with me the most are “No Words” and “Suffer Less: On Writing as Process”. For the reading “Suffer Less: On Writing as Process”, the quotation resonated with me the most is “when you’re tired and hungry and ready for the next thing, so you glance over it, find it looks vaguely exhausting and isn’t due for a month, and stuff it into your backpack.” I had similar experiences as the author and I have a serious problem with procrastination. Whenever I find the task is so difficult, I will wait until the last minute to finish the task. However, after reading the article, I figured out a way to solve my procrastination, which is to break down the task. Breaking large tasks down into smaller, which will also break a difficult task into an easy task. Such as I can do a little each day, which makes me don’t need to rush at the last minute. For the reading “No Words”, the quotation resonated with me the most is “Having a problem with words ended up being more than just a problem with words; it became a problem with emotions. I struggled to explain to people how I was feeling, and when they ‘didn’t get it’, I just stopped trying to explain things altogether.” When I first came to the United States, communication was a serious problem for me since I had very little English vocabulary. I also encounter situations where people do not know what I was talking about, and l just gave up explaining. And this kind of situation really makes me so upset. And the way I solve this difficulty is quite the same as the author. I use metaphors, similes but sometimes I also use body language. However, the best way for me is to increase my vocabulary. In order to increase vocabulary, we need to use the word, not just by memorizing the word such as to make a sentence with the word and really know the meaning of the word.
From all the reading, I most resonate with “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldúa and “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” I had a similar experience with my language. For example, when talking to my mom I would start out talking in Chinese then I ended up speaking fully English. It came out naturally. In “Shitty First Drafts” I always had trouble getting words down onto the paper. In the literacy narrative, I couldn’t think of what to write about. It was hard to find one concrete idea. I tend to stress out on first drafts like if I have two ideas and couldn’t decide on what to write about. I would debate in my head which topic and it would switch back and forth. I learn to just write what I think and not to think back onto the other topic. It’s easier to focus on one topic than on multiple topics.
From all the readings, I resonate with “Responding – Really Responding – to Other Students’ Writing” and “No Words”. From “Responding – Really Responding – to Other Students’ Writing”, I resonate with “Just keep it simple.”(34) I agree to not overthink when writing, just keep it easy. The reading continued with “You’re okay, I’m okay. Everyone’s happy.”(34) This part teach me to not think too much when writing, just ease out and chill. From “No Words”, I resonate with “Bottling up my emotions began to hurt me in the long run.”(86) Having all thoughts and emotions sealed inside myself brought myself to run into many trouble. I was not able to keep my mental health healthy and ended up in bad situations. I am going to approach my writing into simpler and more open version.
Readings I’ve done reading so far, two that inspired me the most are “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldua and “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan. In “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, at the beginning, the doctor stated, “We’re going to have control your tongue.” The reason it moved me so much is that I’m from one of the 56 ethnic groups in China, and I have one more language which is Korean as my mother tongue. Sometimes at home, I would start a conversation with Chinese then end with English or Korean, yet sometimes parents or friends would have a wierd looking at me since some of the phrase they would not understand. My parents and my teachers used to try to force me for speaking only one language, which I found myself similar to what happen in the story. One quote that I have resonated with is, “Who is to say that robbing a people of its language is less violent than war.” the quote is by Ray Gwyn Smith, and the reason why I feel resonated with this saying is I do think that it is a such unreasonable idea. Also, from “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, she stated that since she knows multiple languages, her writings contains much more elements or some of them may contain many perspectives due to the effects from different languages. For me, even now some of my writings are affected by Chinese writing naratives or Korean language yet without looking at the negative aspects, it also gives me the opportunities to make my writing more interesting to read or contains more naratives while analysing different events. I am planning to approach the level where I could combine multiple ideas from different languages into one piece and make them more reasonable and more pursuasive.
Two readings that resonated with me were “Shitty First Drafts” by Lamott and “No Words” by B. Manson. In “Shitty Frist Drafts”, something that stood out to me was when she said, “Start by getting something—anything—down on paper” (25). It made me think it’s okay to have a bad first draft. I always try my best to write the best first draft possible, which gets me in writer’s block and procrastination. I have no idea what I want to write or how to make it sound perfect. However, after reading “Shitty First Drafts,” I realized it is okay to write anything down. I shouldn’t have a big filter on what I should write. I shouldn’t have the idea of being perfect as much as I think I need to. Only then will I get some good ideas out of my writing. Which is what happened in my first literacy narrative, and it worked. For “No Words”, what resonated with me was when he said, “Bottling up my emotions began to hurt me in the long run” (86). I felt a sense of empathy for him. I also struggle to express my feelings well. I keep many things bottled up inside me, and when I do say something, I worry what I say isn’t what I mean or if I am even expressing myself correctly. Sometimes I get lost in my emotions, and I don’t know what I am saying. However, he overcame it by expressing himself in similes or metaphors. I usually never think about telling myself in that way, but it made me think maybe expressing myself in such a way will help bring out the emotions I feel in my writing.
The reading that resonated with me was “No Words”. The line “I struggled to explain to people how I was feeling, and when they “didn’t get it”.” resonated with me because I was able to sympathize with it in some way. It can be frustrating to explain some concepts that couldn’t simply put into words. It also helps that narratives didn’t necessarily have to be transitioning to “nation” based culture. “Shitty First Drafts” also resonates with me. The line “I’d write a first draft that was maybe twice as long as it should be, with a self-indulgent and boring beginning.” resonates with me as usually my first drafts even though not long, were terrible. I use the first draft as the building frame of my writing as the first draft to me is just the foundation where ideas are put and later the rough draft would just be to add ideas, details, or fix mistakes.
From all the readings I have done for this class, there are two most specific readings that appeal to me the most. The first one is “Shitty First Drafts”. Personally, I always thought that the first draft was also very important. I think the first draft also requires very logical sentences and no grammatical errors. This article discusses how to deal with the first draft. They don’t have to have a specific meaning and a perfect sentence. It can be composed of any information, whether it is useless or useful information. So my thinking changed after reading “Shitty First Drafts”. In the first draft, I do not force my own inspiration, I let myself write down any ideas or inspirations. Even a word, an imperfect sentence.