Prewriting Garb

I've decided on my project, webbed out a bunch of topics i want to touch upon, and have began to type rather aimlessly. Once i get the framework of the puzzle done it seems to fit together much easier. Shoes is the topic, look out.

Research & Brainstorming

A few brainstorming thoughts based off of the two topics that are really in question, bikes and shoes.

If I were to write about bikes I would use a few different tactics to get my views, opinions, and stories across. I would definitely share storied from my past to help people understand why I feel the way I do about bikes and the activity of actually riding a bike. I would also look up many articles about the benefits of riding a bicycle, be it for health reasons, because it's stimulating, or even for rehabilitative reasons.

If I were to write about shoes I would go about writing about them in the same way most likely, it would just be a little different because I would be talking about a different subject. Instead of talking about the benefits of bicycles, I could speak of the benefits of different shoes. I've actually read an article before that was arguing that shoes were bad for your feet because it skews the natural formation of your foot. I could comehow incorporate that to show different sides of the argument. I would be able to then place myself somewhere in between based on my opinions of everything.

Final Essay Topic

The topoc I've thought about writing about for my final essay is bicycles, which is more than likely what I will write about. Others that I've thought about would have been father/son relationships, medicinal marijuana, shoes, motorcycles, and jobs. They've all been pondered over, but it's looking like bikes or shoes. Word.

DQ

So instead of concluding a piece of writing by restating some kind of thought, or your project, like you would in a stereotypical "school-assigned essay," for this class especially we should think more of ending with parting thoughts as to what we've been discussing? He referred to it as developing a line of thinking, or more simply put, ending with a thought or group of statements that continues the dialogue of the essay.

The Death and Quilting Notebook

I hated this essay. The first page or two I was interested, after that though it just went gradually downhill to the point where I couldn't understand why I was reading anymore. I could never really find where this was really trying to go. It speaks of a lot of things that are centered around death, or at least the thought of death in some way was able to conjure something back up. I'm not too sure about the way it was broken up either, although I'm sure there's relevance or a purpose.

I did take notice to one thing that she did a lot in her paragraphs. While amidst a sentence talking about something, she would commonly keep coming out with detail after detail about something she was writing about, one after the other, all separated by commas. For example, in section 6 in the first sentence she says, "I only played once - behind the junior high, at lunch, in spring, in the shade of an Austrian black pine." There's really not a reason why I'm mentioning it, just something I picked up.

DQ

He says that revising an essay is more about taking an idea and changing multiple parts throughout the essay that stem from that idea. Would you be considered revising if that one idea only led you to change multiple things in a single paragraph, as opposed to the whole essay?

Why I Ride

Good read. Obviously appropriate after our discussion in class yesterday of how we need to show more in our writing as opposed to telling.

I like thinking about the reasons in which she subconsciously says she rides. For the feeling and the love of the bike. I have the same feelings for both bikes and motorcycles alike. Being on two wheels since age three has instilled such a passion for the sport as well as lifestyle of it all. Jana seems to, regardless of how much she claims to really know about the whole deal, really love being on the bike and amidst the process of riding and it shows through her sometimes seemingly overly-detailed writing. I don't know if that's possible, whatever.

I also enjoy Jana's anecdotes and tidbits on her family and religion and such. The essay's title claims that the essay is about "why she rides," and it does. However, she speaks about so much more including the relationship with her parents, relationship with her husband Will, her previous jobs and the different paths she's chosen. All of these separate bits of information all give you insight on why she loves to ride as well, and none of it has anything really at all to do with a bike.

Good read.

DQ

Couldn't you make "reflexive" remarks back to anything? An accident that happened as a kid may have shaped your views on this or that which stems to why you feel this way about a topic that you may be writing about. But should you credit that in a text? I guess, where do you draw the line?

Essay Edits

Then known as Axis Media and Marketing, there were a lot of different jobs and tasks that they had strewn about their plate. At this point they were managing multiple companies teams, operating a fully functional design studio, taking on the art direction for multiple companies, and operating a photography business. I knew that they produced a vast amount of things for the BMX industry and that was all that really mattered.

Given my age, the experience I’ve been able to acquire has been priceless. I’ve been in charge of making travel plans and hotel reservations for more than a few bicycle teams at one time. I’ve learned more than a handful of processes in which to dream up and create packaging, create catalogs, clean up photos, sort and categorize photo caches, create mockups for t shirts to be designed, create logos, blog, handle pantones, request quotes for everything under the sun, I could go on for a while. No other twenty-one year old has the industry experience that I’ve been able to obtain pre-bachelors degree.

DQ

Just to understand a little better, would acknowledging influences in a way be what you just asked us to do while writing our childhood/work experience essays? As in making a model for our writing out of one of the essays we had previously read?

On Going Into A House

I really enjoy A.A. Milne's humor in the first few paragraphs. He's putting off such a dry humor that I can really almost hear him saying. Living in a house, indeed, seems to be such a different feeling as opposed to living in a flat or town house or what have you. As I live in an apartment at the moment, I can really relate to having to deal with other tenants that are actually sharing the whole of the building with you. Having to adapt to all the various noises that one may hear throughout the course of a day is something that definitely takes patience. One always has to consider whether or not dealing with the noise whatever it may be is going to be tolerable. The thought of bothering somebody because of noise seems a bit petty to me most of the time anways. There are obviously times when one should be considerate in how they live when it's in such close proximity to lots of others. That's why living in a house has such a different feel. You can call it yours and yours alone.

DQ

With countering, even though it is said that the point of countering is to not end the conversation but to further it, can a countering statement end an "argument?" or would that not really make it countering?

Live Nude Girl

I, much like the she herself seems to be, am torn at what to think about the author. After being lassoed in by the first sentence in this essay, I was completely turned off by the second. I found myself in such a position of uncertainty many times throughout this essay.

I love confidence, who doesn't, and the author exhibits quite a swagger. But I was reading this essay as if it was written directly to me as some type of letter, and that she was speaking directly to me. In doing this I was able to "paint my own picture" of her and give her all the qualities that I thought she exuded through her text and the way she wrote. I pinned her more or less kind of an airhead; a little absent-minded with a motivational problem. Attraction to what I've mocked up in my head, despite personality flaws, still exists however. I'm torn.

As i mentioned, confidence is a very attractive thing, but conceitedness is gross. I'd rather be burnt at the stake then listen to a girl talk solely about how sweet she is. The author by no means went that far, but she is really into herself. I say this based off of the amount of people she boasts she's been compared to, which she does multiple times. Then again, she has a small lack of self-confidence which shows a vulnerability that once again, leaves me extremely torn on whether or not i love this girl, or loath her.

I like this author. I also like this essay. I just decided that. She shows a lot of confident, professional qualities that make people into something bigger. She also possesses and shows off her more human, down to earth qualities as well, which gives her the best of both worlds. Her self-doubt ads a lovely blemish on a seemingly perfect person.

DQ

If it is rather easy to do, what could be some signs that a writer is over-extending another text in their writing?

"DQ" from Wed.

Since I wasn't in class, I figured I'd just respond to the pages read.

I really enjoyed these pages. This is one of the first textbooks used for any of my classes after 4+ years that actually speaks to me in a way that I can actually get into it and let the text soak in. Reading how the author wrote about entering a conversation through writing made a lot of sense to me and really kind of made me think about why it was so hard to write papers a few years ago. I've always had trouble writing papers, as it is definitely not one of my strong points. Maybe because I was writing out of my range in order to satisfy the pipedream of impressing the professor, who knows. But thinking about writing papers in a manor close to free writing, right off the brain, makes me really mad that I didn't.

I also really enjoyed that piece he pulled from the author writing about the Dodge commercial. That author really did paint the perfect picture that was that commercial. I think I really began to enjoy that chunk of text after he wrote about how the aim of that piece was to not explain the commercial but to use it to support and even further an completely seperate argument that he was trying to make. I need to do that, it's good.

Once More To The Lake

Immediately after the first paragraph I was already turned off by this piece of writing. I thought it was just going to be another couple pages of random jumble that probably wasn't so interesting. That opinion had 180'ed after the first page. E.B.'s one particular sentence midway through the second paragraph stating "It is strange how much you can remember about places like that once you allow your mind to return into the grooves which lead back," sums up the gist of this whole piece. Each paragraph winds down a random road starting from one thought or memory and sparking an intensely detailed recollection of sights, sounds, smells, etc. Each paragraph is seemingly unrelated yet every memory is tied together by the one place that is E.B.'s sacred lake.

I think everybody could relate to this story as everyone has a certain special place they hold close with them. It's cool that he is able to take this trip back to his boyhood paradise with the likes of his own son, a person who he sees more and more of himself in. However, put into perspective, this also seems like an outing that could lead to a serious midlife crisis...

Sept. 15 DQ

In reference to the different types of quotes listed through pages 29-31, are there different types of writing that these are appropriate for and not appropriate for? There are obviously different situations in which one would be more appropriate than the other, however, are there some forms of writing that any one of these would be absoultely never used?

To The Reader...

Is Montaigne a very open person willing to let the common person peer into his life as all is on the table, so he claims? Or could he just be jotting down his ideas on the person he would like to be or even possibly the person he assumes he is? Who knows, I don't know the dude. He seems like a good guy by the autobiographical paragraph he wrote and called an essay.

I'm obviously not a writer, so me saying that this is or is not an essay really don't matter at this point. I can say that, after reading Essaying An Essay there are some parts that seem to coincide with what is believed to be an "essay" and some that may not. Connecting directly to the reader, sure. Apparent ego, possibly. Revealing thoughts, I guess. All of these may be signs that point to a well thought out essay according to the latter piece. But who's to say he's not a cynical, selfish, fake? Could he possibly be jotting down the stream of thought about the person he wants to be, or even so much as the person he assumes he is? I suppose it's simply up to the reader to decide.

Ben's Rhetoric...

First post. Blogging for class is a fresh idea and a damn good idea. Looking forward to this class.

If you're interested, I blog for the company I have worked at for the past four years DUO Brand. Check it out here. DUO Brand is a BMX parts/accesories company out of Columbus, OH.