Blog #2

Writing for me seems to be a bit of an illusion. I tend to try and use extended metaphors in as many pieces of work as I can. This gives the reader something to ponder about while reading. Illusions within writing pieces can describe aspects of an event or person better than a normal description in some circumstances. Especially while writing poetry, I explore the use of similes and metaphors to capture the audiences attention. Illusions within in writing intrigue and captivate your audience to the plot line. Well done pieces of work with many illusions is a difficult task. With that being said I think it shows a level of maturity and experience in writing. By no means do I consider myself a fantastic composer of literature, but when I use illusions within the writing, it is an interesting concept to grab for your audience. Personally, I love reading pieces of literature with a diverse amount of illusions. It makes the reading more like a puzzle that you continue to learn the farther down the page you read. Although I have not perfected (nor will I ever) this captivating writing technique, I will continue to stretch my mind and writing to new levels by utilizing the use of illusions such as similes and metaphors.

Blog 2

Explore your own metaphors for composing, for example, “For me writing is like….,” and so on. Analyze these metaphors. What do they say about you as a writer? About your history with and attitudes toward writing? What media images of writers and/or writing do you think may have   

influenced your metaphors? What personal history? Tell stories.


As I ponder over what I believe writing is like for me, I struggle immensely to come up with some type of comparison.  I guess I would say writing for me is like being filled with hunger but not being able to decide where or what to eat.  In greater detail, it is like going to a food court with many different choices of restaurants and different types of foods and having no idea what to choose or where I would want to eat.  For me, beginning a paper is the hardest.  Where am I supposed to start?  What do I actually want to say?  What is the essential goal of this paper?  What do you want the reader to initially get out when first starting to read?  Knowing where to start and what to choose, like for diction and style, the process before you even start writing is the hardest.  For me, writing is like going to a theme park but not sure what ride to go to first.  There are so many options, so many routes to take and just choosing that initial route is the hardest for me.  Looking back at these metaphors, I would say these examples symbolize my indecisiveness of how I start my papers.  Most of the time, when a teacher assigns a topic and I have a ton of ideas, or maybe none at all, I tend to have no idea where to start.  Here's an example of how my indecisiveness effects my writing.  My senior year in high school, everyone was required to write a 15 page research paper.  We worked all year on writing and editing the draft.  The first couple months were the hardest for me.  I originally had a topic I wanted to write about, but then the next week realized I really have no desire to write about theologians and their ideas.  Changing my topic for the 5th time, I decided to write how the American Dream has changed over history.  Once I learn how to better prepare myself before I even begin writing, I feel as if I will have a much easier time with writing assignments.              

Blog #2

For me writing is like telling your version of a story. Of course most papers are going to have requirements and certain criteria you have to meet in order to get a good grade, but it’s completely up to you on what the paper contains. I’m not a huge fan of writing, but when I do write I particularly like how what I write is genuinely mine and contains my thoughts and feelings on a subject, and isn't influenced by any outside opinions. This doesn't necessarily mean I am a great writer, but instead that I truly believe in what I write. I can specifically recall some assigned papers in high school where quite a few people would just copy and paste or use other peoples’ past papers and put their names on it. I didn't do that. Instead I wrote my opinion and views on the subject at hand and devoted myself to write from my experiences and not from the experiences from some random person on the internet. I might not have gotten the best grade on the paper, but at least I knew I had put in the time and effort and I also knew that the people that just copy and pasted didn't gain anything from it when I had. When you write, you should make it your own and you should be proud of what you write. Those who are willing to put the time and effort into their papers are going to get the most out of it.

Blog #2

For me, writing is like the last five minutes of an eight hour shift when yet more customers continue to pile in… from the moment I begin to write the only thing I can think about is being finished and free to do something I enjoy. On the other hand, just like having a job, the benefits of expanding my talents as a writer are far greater that putting it off completely. Looking back at my history as a writer, I realize I have only experienced one side to writing and that’s where it has been forced on me by teachers. I have always been told what to write and when to write it, instead of writing on topics that I am passionate about. One step in changing my attitude to one that is positive is to view writing as a flight to unknown vacation instead of a forced job.

Blog 2

Explore your own metaphors for composing, for example, “For me writing is like….,” and so on. Analyze these metaphors. What do they say about you as a writer? About your history with and attitudes toward writing? What media images of writers and/or writing do you think may have influenced your metaphors? What personal history? Tell stories.

For me writing is like screaming at the top of my lungs.  Writing is like jumping into bed after an exhausting day.  Writing is like breaking the surface after holding your breath underwater.  Writing is like lucid dreaming. 
What these metaphors say about me as a writer is that I write for relief.  I'll admit that some days I just write in my journal whatever comes to mind.  It's my way of realizing how I feel about someone or a situation.  It helps me reminisce on things I would like to always remember (or forget).  It helps me say the things that I could never say out loud.  Writing for me is like gossiping to no one.  My creative writing teacher whom I took several classes with in high school taught me to sit down and just let your mind flow onto paper.  One thing I don't like about writing is that I can never write as fast as my mind thinks and I worry that I'll miss something.  My writing is never organized or dated but when I look back at an old journal I know exactly who or what I was writing about.  The grammar is never correct or the sentences don't even follow proper English but its coming from me, my thoughts and memories, and I enjoy looking back on what I once believed in. 

Blog 2

For me writing is like practicing baseball, you don’t really want to do it but to be successful you have to. In baseball you have to spend countless hours in the batting cage to obtain a good batting average and in writing you have to constantly practice and build on your writing skills to receive a good grade on the paper. I have never really been fond of writing and the only reason I wrote was to make the grade in class. The same was with baseball I didn’t really want to go hit baseballs for hours at a time when I could be hanging out with my friends but if I wanted to make the team and get to play I had to. I think this metaphor represents me very well because I’m willing to do what I don’t want to do in order to obtain a goal. I have learned from not only baseball but writing as well the more you practice the better you get and the more enjoyable it becomes. As of late I have started to enjoy writing more, I’m still not excited when I am assigned a five page paper but it definitely doesn’t ruin my day, instead I try to look to it as a chance to expand on my ideas and hopefully make the grade in the process. I no longer play baseball due to an arm injury but I think through playing almost my whole life it has definitely had a large influence on my life and even what I write about. That is why I feel like I can most closely associate writing with practicing baseball.

Blog #2

           In order to help portray what writing's like for me, I'm going to use the famous Forest Gump quote, "life's like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get." In my eyes, writing is always different. It's true.. you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes I start out with a terrible first draft, or I don't like the subject of the paper, but later realize that the piece is actually somewhat intriguing. There's been so many times where I've dreaded writing a paper just because the idea of it isn't fun or exciting, and it's usually never something that I want to be writing about. But there are also times where I surprise myself, in a sense that I'm actually excited to be writing. Like many people have said, I like writing about things that I'm passionate about, because it's information that I feel strongly about. But when I have to write papers about boring, monotoned things, it isn't enjoyable what so ever.  I believe that everyone has a passion whether it's sports, art, school, etc. Writing about things that interest you, is always going to be better than writing about things that don't. But the thing is, we can't always choose. Instead, the teachers choose for us, and often times we don't know what to expect until it's being assigned or we're having to figure out what to talk about.

         I think that writing is like a box of chocolates because each writing is so unique. I've written a fair amount of essays in my life, and sure a lot of them have the same sort of feel, but not one of them has been the exact same. There's so many different kinds of chocolates, and so many different topics or ways to write papers. There's the more bitter chocolates, the super rich chocolates, the smooth and creamy chocolates, etc. This goes to show that there's going to be essays where you'll just absolutely hate the topic, and there's also going to be essays that will have such good rhythm or flow, that you won't mind writing them at all. That's one of the reasons as to why I find writing so interesting. I know there's definitely been times where I've written something, and then read one of my friend's papers afterwards, and been like "wow this is so different from mine, do I need to change something that I've written?" or "Is mine not good enough?" But now I realize that everyone's so unique in so many different aspects. I hope that more and more people realize this, because I know it's easy to get down on yourself when you think you're not doing good enough... but writing is a challenge for most people, and every paper is it's own individual masterpiece.

Blog #2

Writing for me is still a new and unexplored world.  Yes, I've written a lot due to classes I've taken and various notes I've had to write, but there is so much more to writing than these little assignments. The world of writing is so large that it is nearly impossible to even touch a piece of it at the young age of 18.  As I continue to write I see new doors opening for different writing opportunities and time to still explore.  As I continue to write, I keep an open mind for different ideas.  New writings and topics being poured out upon me may create a new interest in a specific writing.  Being able to go out and explore all of the different writings and topics is such an experience that I cannot wait to continue to grow.

Blog #2- Hewitt

Writing, when not for classes, is a treat/sweet. I write because I like to write, but like a treat, I don't necessarily want to share it with others all the time. This is for personal writing, writing for classes and assignments are different than writing in my free time. My writing is personal and I will share it with others when I feel like it's good enough to show others. Usually my ideas come at the most awkward of times, so it usually takes a day or two for even just a stanza to sound good; by that time I might share a line with a friend (the same friend every time, because I know how painfully honest she is), but I would still not share the whole thing with her. Everybody knows that I like writing, but they are so confused as to why I don't share it ("WHAT'S THE POINT" everyone says), and the reason why I write is for me... I don't write for others and I honestly don't see the point of just writing for me. I think i may use writing like this to just improve skills for when I absolutely have to turn in writing for classes, sort of like homework or just review. Practice makes things go by easier, and I know that because I write often, writing for classes is a lot easier for me than most people. I use writing as a hobby and as separate review for class, but mainly for pleasure and to be able to organise ideas.

Blog #2

For me, writing is like having to eat something you don’t like, you have to do it and at the same time you don’t enjoy doing it. The only times I write is when a teacher tells me I have to do so. I have never done it in another way. I think the biggest reasons I have this feeling about it is because I have always been forced to write, and mostly on things that were given and not really things I wanted to write on. During my three years in high school in Switzerland (I don’t know if it is the same in high schools in the USA), all the writing stuff we were doing in French was either analyzing a sentence on a five paragraph model during four hours or analyzing a poem or a two to three pages passage of a book we had previously read. For me, this is not exciting at all especially that I have never had very good grades that could have encouraged me a little bit.

Sometimes, I think that the last couple of words I have just written are very good and that they are going to help me find a good way to continue writing, and this is probably the only moment I enjoy writing, because I know what I want to write then. But when after a little while I reread them, I realize that I was too enthusiastic and that what I have just written is actually, not poor, but probably not that exceptional as well. All my enthusiasm then goes away and I am twiddling my thumbs while asking myself what I could possibly write to make my paper look a bit better. This doesn’t really fit in my metaphor because I don’t think that when you taste something you first think it is good and then you change your mind and find it bad, but I couldn’t find one that was imaging all of that at the same time.

I hope to be able once to enjoy writing from the beginning to the end of a text, even though I know it is going to be hard to achieve. To write without a specific form to stay in is already more enjoyable to do than what I have experience until now, I therefore don’t lose hope!

Blog 2
For me writing is still not a pleasure, I do it because I have to do it for class. I think I do not enjoy it yet because I struggle to find good ideas and put them in a convincing manner on the paper. Even though I sometimes impress myself with some sentences and feel very satisfied once the work is finished I feel more constrained than free. I write too much for the person that is going to read me and worry too much about the comments instead of letting my mind flying away like a bird inspired by the beauty of the nature and the world.

For me writing is like an immersion into the desert. I see the white pages like an endless landscape of sand with sometimes a little plant coming out of it bringing hope until I see another one. It is a long journey before finding an oasis where I can possibly become the inspired writer for some seconds before it fades away.

For me writing is like a flight to an unknown destination. You never know where your text is going to bring you. Sometimes it can bring you very far away and sometimes you come back into your place finding yourself looking for inspiration.

For me writing is like a stranger with whom you have to get familiar to be able to argue with. To trust him, to be confident are important things you have to share with him.

For me writing takes time.

Blog # 2

                Writing for me has always been a bit taboo. I enjoy writing when it is something that I am passionate about. On the flip side, writing is always difficult for me. This makes writing a serious love/hate subject for me. As I am slowly realizing, almost everyone seems to have some kind of trouble with writing. It is nice to know that I am not the only one. For me writing is summed up in one humble phrase, "you get out of it what you put in". Writing is another aspect of life, I will get what I give. I relate that phrase to every aspect of my life, especially my writing. It is easy to write the minimum amount, or read the minimum. As a midshipman in the Navy, I pride myself with never striving for the minimum. I feel much better about myself when I know that I have gone above and beyond what is expected. The values that I have learned from my family, and the Navy, have molded me to always do more than required; though that often makes a task much more difficult. I often view a situation and think, if they can do it, then I can do as much or more. There is a certain level of satisfaction that you feel after realizing that you gave your all.  It is that amazing feeling that keeps me going, no matter how much I may dislike the task at hand. Many of the older writers, especially Hemingway, have greatly affected my writing. He was the kind of man who went out to experience many of the amazing things he wrote about.

                In a unique way, I can relate my writing to many of my previous hunting trips across the country. A good paper is like a hard hunt. They both demand serious effort. I could wake up at noon and head out into the plains and hope something happens. I could write only a few pages with no real effort. Both of these methods defeat the purpose of what you are attempting to accomplish. I believe that if something is worth doing, it is worth doing properly. My hunts require an incredible amount of work and determination. I have never really wanted to wake up at three in the morning, but I know the reward could be well worth it. At the end of all the scouting in the dark, the miles of walking, the weeks of planning, the horribly cold weather, you have the opportunity to find an amazing animal. On the same note, I never want to sit for hours on end thinking of what to write, but I know the satisfaction I get once it is done is worth it. Writing is my opportunity to express myself without having to repeat myself multiple times. Writing will always be like a family member that you cannot stand at times, but can't help but appreciate because of all they can do for you.