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?