Two Questions By Lynda Barry Analysis

2. What writing strategy does the author use that you think is effective, and why? For example, does he use examples, or does he make

I liked that the book is organized into small little entries. It makes it easier to read and to divvy up the book. I also liked the extended metaphor of a creating a tree that speaks to you; becomes you. In Speak, Melinda’s tree slowly becomes better and better. Along with her tree, she becomes more optimistic rather than pessimistic. By the end of the book, Melinda’s final tree, was given an A+, and her attitude and state of mind were better than ever. I love how relatable the book is to my actual life. The connections between me and Melinda made this book even better. The only thing I disliked about the book is that the incident of Andy Evans raping her was revealed closer to the end of the book. I couldn’t comprehend why Melinda was acting like this until 130 pages in. I wanted to know why Melinda was acting like this in the beginning of the story, so I can understand more clearly why Melinda was acting this specific way. I really don’t have many dislikes for this book, it was pure

I feel like the topic that was written in this short story was good to write about because even through I am not the best of a writing either and don’t really like to write as much. That doesn’t mean you have to give up or hand in any kind of paper. Its always best to get better at

It is essential to understand that classes taken in grade school do not give students a full understanding of each subject. With the topic of writing, there will always be a new lesson to learn, an aspect to improve, or a differing way to explain. Author Craig Vetter states in Bonehead Writing, “This is your enemy: a perfectly empty sheet of paper. Nothing will ever happen here except what you make happen.” Each story, essay, or response comes from a writer’s experiences. With each attempt at a new piece comes an underlying story of emotions the writer is facing. Each person’s writing is unique and the ideas people have are related to their past experiences and what they believe to be familiar with when deciding which writing style to use. As a high school student, I have learned many things about writing that helped me become the improved writer I am today, but the most essential advice I have received is practice makes perfect. Although there is no actual perfect way of writing, I have discovered that each essay I write, my writing improves. It is easier to spot mistakes, find areas to improve, and ponder elevated word choice to use.

The author’s style of writing is straightforward and to the point and the novel is unique because it is written through the different perspectives of the four main characters. The switching of perspectives throughout the book is what made the book so hard to put down. I could see, compare and contrast how the characters themselves feel about the situation. As this goes on, the reader can comprehend the characters’ personalities better and their view on the other characters. If this story was written from just one point of view, one wouldn’t be able to figure out each character’s thoughts and perception of people around them.

I found “Shitty First Draft” interesting due to humorous tone remains throughout the essay. After reading this paper, I realized how important to convey different tones of writing in accordance with the situation or the story you are telling; it is reflective of your writing style, current mood and even your point of view towards certain subject matters. For example, in “Shitty First Draft”, the author reveals some facet of writers in face of challenging themselves to finish writing. Instead of being calm and relaxed, those writers are anxious and worrisome as the author states, “It is not like you don't have a choice---because you do---you can either type or kill yourself.” By telling the readers a few writing stories in an amusing way, the author successfully makes the difficulty of writing understandable to the readers. It is like telling yes, I understand your pain because I went through it before and everyone did. By doing so, the author makes herself approachable to the students who struggle with writing and those potential readers are now more willing to listen to her advice.

Prior to my development of routine introspection and, consequently, maturation, I wrote not to encapsulate my ever-growing discomfort towards life, but rather to gain praise and acknowledgement for my efforts in writing. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I sat on the floor of my kindergarten classroom criss-cross applesauce-style as my teacher, Mrs. Glickman, asked the class to write a short story and to provide an illustration to accompany it. With smudged and disorderly speckles of graphite sprawled across my paper, I managed to write a story in my signature chicken-scratch handwriting. The story was relatively simple, about a girl who had thought she was a hideous monster until she looked into a river reflection and realized she was beautiful. I even drew (or attempted to draw) a beautiful girl for the second part of the assignment. At the next school assembly, Mrs. Glickman granted me a sky-colored paper, reading “Award of Recognition: Kiana Lucin, for her creative writing and exemplary drawing skills.” From this point on, I prided myself in writing, and excelled

In the article “Best Practices in Teaching Writing”, Charles Whitaker outlines eight points on helping students succeed as writers. The first

This entails working on the Seven Steps to Writing Success will be taught twice a week and writing tasks will also be included during literacy groups. Sizzling Starts and recounts will be the focus text in term one. Narrative and creative writing will be taught too and in both cases the emphasis will be on creating strong sentences with good structure. The lesson format for sizzling starts and narrative/creative writing will be explicit teaching to the whole class. My role as a teacher will be to identify the student’s level and provide appropriate feedback to support to move students toward the next level.

As the overall book, I actually kind of liked it because it was kind of hard to understand because they couldn’t use “I” and I like challenges. They had to use “We” instead of using “I” to explain they self or the story. The book was okay as a whole but still kind of hard to understand I got kind of irritated after a while, while I was reading the book because of the way it was written.

Reflecting on my life as a means of deciding on a topic, one time period struck me as particularly important in terms of writing itself: my second year of second grade. Moving to Poway in 2007, the first class I was in was Mrs. Ramin’s 2-3 combo at Painted Rock. I had purple wire-rim glasses, a brown Hello Kitty tracksuit, two friends, and a hatred of writing. This was particularly unfortunate for young Analise, since Mrs. Ramin’s main focus was writing. She encouraged her students to write daily, setting aside 20-60 minutes each day for it. Although I hated it at first, my passion for creative writing grew as I turned my love for my sister and for Webkinz into tales of adventure and peril parallel to my then favorite series, Magic Tree House. I wrote, drew, and colored whatever my seven-year-old imagination spun for me. After that spark, the fire of writing died down to a smolder until eighth grade, when I wrote my first successful essay, “Flowers for Algernon: A Comparative Essay On How Two Versions of the Story are like

Writing is a practice that most of us were taught when we were young. We were taught the basics of grammar, how to form a sentence, conjunction words, how to write paragraphs and more. Although we have learned this skill while growing up and have used the skill every year after entering kindergarten, this does not mean our writing process will ensure the best work. The authors that I chose each encourage their audience to excel in the art of writing in their own way to help with the writing process.

Writing is often considered mundane and banal to some students. In fact, people have even written things down since the beginning of time. I dreaded writing until I had Mrs. Dunlap for 4th block English during my 8th grade year at Mount Juliet Middle. This is the story about how she made me the writer I am today with what I like to call ‘Write’speration.

I found this book to be well written and researched, the downside of it was it felt more like an essay. The background stories and information was repeated several times, repetition can be good but to much just makes it seem like you ran out of things

The history of the right to bear arms, this has been an American tradition since colonist set foot on North American soil. Mass murders have been cause by guns does this mean we should only allow our military to have guns? I believe in the constitution we have the right to bear arms. It was written in the constitution for a reason. Without guns it makes our country weak. I’m not talking about just our military having them I’m talking about citizens not being able to have guns.