Workshop #2

Monday, we critiqued the work of those who had brought in work to be critiqued. Critiquing other people's writing is a thing I've always enjoyed; it was pointed out to me that I'm good at noticing flaws. I think I have a good ear for good writing. When it comes time to having my own work critiqued, it won't be quite as fun. I don't know why I get such joy in searching for flaws, but since it was addressed, I've noticed that it is a thing I tend to do. I don't think of myself as a negative person anymore. I think I look at the world in an extremely positive way for how realistically I approach it. I don't think I'm predisposed to look for flaws everywhere. I think I look for good things where I think I'm supposed to like it and bad things when I think I'm not. I've noticed lately that I have trouble forming my own opinions on things and filtering out other opinions I've heard of what is biased or up for debate. That sounds really bad. At the same time, I must be forming my own opinions on who is credible who's opinion is worth considering. Still, there was a time a little while ago when two of the people who's opinions I regarded perhaps higher than anyone's disagreed on a topic extremely relevant to me, and since then I've been struggling with this issue of who to listen to and who to trust. The way I've dealt with it is by trying to find uniform factors in both sides so I can try to make sense of it.

Workshop #1

The workshop today was a little slow. We didn't do any writing like I thought we would. Reed seems to have a very different approach to writing than I've seen. He emphasizes entertainment value over meaning. I always think that if the meaning part is nailed, entertainment will come along with it. He also lost me a little when he was talking about how every novel is a mystery novel and started to list novels that have murders in them. That didn't make too much sense to me. It started to make sense to me when he explained that all novels were mystery novels because they all answer the same four questions. Who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? What does it mean?
His way of finding inspiration was interesting to me too. He uses newspaper stories. This was cool to me. We've learned a lot of ways to come up with ideas in STAC. He had the same attitude that writer's block or any kind of artist's block is just an excuse.
Today was a lot of basic stuff, but I'm really excited to get started with this first chapter assignment. I've never tried writing a novel before, so I'm excited to jump into it.