Week 11 (3/26-4/1)

Bird by Bird

            This week we move back to learning how to improve our writing skills through the readings of Bird by Bird.  I really enjoy reading this book because it has taught me a lot about how to get over problems that writing presents on an everyday basis.  She focuses more on what a writer goes through everyday, and what to do with what problems you are presented, and less on what problems you face as a published author.  This makes me think that she understands that many of the people that are going to read her book aren't published authors. 

            During this weeks reading I found a couple different sections that I found interesting.  The first section that I really liked was "Jealousy".  She writes, "Of all the voices you hear, the most difficult to subdue is Jealousy".  She says that adding Jealousy to your story can be extremely difficult, and for me this is really true.  I have a really hard time with adding things like Jealousy to my writing.  Jealousy is a very strong emotion and can add much to a story when it is added correctly.  This section gave me some great ideas for how to ad jealousy the right way to my pieces of writing and taught me how by adding it can really help my story. 

            The next section of Bird by Bird that I found very interesting was called, "The Moral Point of View".  This section was really cool because it gave you ideas without telling you that you needed them in your writing.  As she writes, "If you have a message, send a telegram".  I understood this as, if you have a moral for the story then make sure you include it in a big way.  On the other hand, I also thought that it was saying that if you don't have a big moral or if your story isn't based around a moral, that is alright.  She also showed us how to add the moral of the story to our writing.  This helped me clearly make my stories better and more clear as to what they are emphasizing.  She was clear that the stories that we are writing don't have to be morally correct or right, but if they are already headed in that direction then why not run with it.  I thought this section was very helpful to the stories that I have written so far.