As you know, I’ve been feeling like a beta author who supplies occasional story ideas and grammatical and stylistic edits to our fics, rather than a full-fledged co-creator. We both know that many of my feelings are irrational, and are deeply rooted in my own insecurities in my worth as an independent human being. However, the fact is that I feel the way I do, no matter how absurd these feelings may seem to you and me. I do think that at least some of these feelings have tangible sources that, if you’ll permit me, I will attempt to explain.
The crux of my feelings concerns the entire premise of our fictional series. When we first started writing, we did so purely for fun, and to make ourselves happy. We indulged in our fancies without any restrictions, and though we were embarrassed to confess our secret pleasure to others, we had the freedom to be wild and inventive and simply write for the sake of experiencing relationships and emotions against a canvass of creative thought. But now, the stories have become a spiritual endeavor. Their purpose has evolved from pure fun and games into a process that is supposed to bring us closer to God, and to uplift everyone around us. This purpose is pure, good, and noble, so it has been difficult to explain why this new paradigm of story-making has left me feeling so trapped.
To be honest, when you first proposed dedicating our stories to Gurudev, and to making the premise of our universe a spiritual one, my first instinct was to
The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer to the Heart of God by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge is an interesting book that’s supposedly filled with useful information about how to live like a Christian and become more like Christ. However, this book has many issues. Brent Curtis and John Eldredge attempt to get us as readers to understand how to live and be more like Christ by comparing the pains and sufferings we all go through in our everyday lives to that of arrows piercing our hearts. As Curtis and Eldredge talked about arrows piercing our hearts I realized there have been times in my life that happened to me. Finally, after reading the book I realized that this book has the potential of being an interesting read but, it’s many errors leave us as readers confused.
At twenty-two years old my younger-self had previously pictured me in an entirely different place. I never imagined living in Texas, I’m originally from Chicago, and that’s where I thought I would reside. I thought I’d be graduated from college already, but fate had a different plan. And never in a million years did I think I would become a drug addict; but I am, and you know what? It’s been the best thing that has ever happened to me, it’s something I’m truly thankful for now. See, all the things listed above may seem like negative things if you look at them from an outside perspective; however to me, they’ve changed me in ways I never thought possible just six months ago. Multiple circumstances have led me to this point, but a few stick
I feel as though I have really grown as a writer because of this class. Before taking W131, I always had a hard time trying to put my thoughts down on paper in a way that made sense. No matter how many times I would rewrite my past papers I never seemed to be able to convey my thoughts and beliefs accurately. This course really has taught me the importance of prewriting and revising. Before, I would simple sit down and stare at a blank computer screen and just kind of start typing and what I ended up with was extremely unorganized and hard to follow. Now that I have found a way to prewrite that works for me, I feel as though my writing has really improved and become more organized.
From writing thoughtful poems to research papers, I have experienced composing a diverse portfolio of literary analysis and criticisms throughout the school year. I started out the year writing minimally. By the end of the year, I noticed I was able to express my ideas and thoughts in a more clear and concise way on paper. Ultimately, each composition allowed me to widen my horizons as a writer and see how I could improve as a writer.
Throughout history, literature has served as a prominent tool in the examination of social values, ideas, and dreams. In addition, literature has provided a vital connection between historical, social, and political events. Through the incorporation of religious principles and philosophies, writers have discovered a way to portray different time periods, characters, feelings, and most importantly God.
Over the course of this semester I learned a lot about myself as a writer. This English 101 class has really allowed me to expand my essay structure and ways of thinking. This was my first college writing course and it has given me much more freedom when writing because in high school I felt limited and like what we were writing was not very important. In high school I would write essays to just to fulfill the required word or page count and to a degree I still feel like this but maybe that is why I am an engineering major but in this course I actually was able to express my ideas and for the first time really test the limits of my writing capabilities. I really enjoyed being able to incorporate my voice more in my essays and I believe
When writing a piece of literature the content is often influenced from the background of the person who is writing. The author, whether consciously or subconsciously, adds in personal experiences or beliefs into their pieces. Flannery O’Connor is a good example of this trend. Her short stories illustrate the hardships, beliefs, and society at the time she lived and was writing. It is most blatantly demonstrated in her collection of short stories entitled, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and Other Stories. Flannery O’Connor reflects her disease, in the mutilation of her characters, her religion, in the types of characters she chooses, and her being an outcast of society, in her characters’ traits, throughout the plots of
Feeling thwarted in every effort to set circumstances right, in my life - not between us, becomes intense with patterns and connections. Illuminating my mind, emulating the strings from ballistics in a crime scene, or worse, a schizophrenic’s garage, complete with wall covered newspaper clippings and red marker lines that model no reality but chaos. My connections are evidence based, empirically proven models of physical systems; my subjective realizations were at least based on such arrangements and configurations, architectures and harmonies. Between the visits to the women trying to help me I have assignments. The next two weeks include writing my strengths, progress in the past year, and compliments. One of those is your supportive, wonderful email that doling out strokes for learning proper grammar. That felt
Eventually, in my early teens, I took up reading books such as The Odyssey by Homer, and various other works relating to the Trojan War. As is typical with many Greek stories, The Odyssey presented me with a hero I could look up to, but I was dealt my first shock when I realized that not all books have a happy ending. Quite the contrary in most Greek literature. While the Odyssey does have a fairly happy ending, other books on the Trojan War presented a much different picture. Achilles, another one of my heroes at the time, dies, and the city of Troy is sacked. I wasn’t sure how to take these bizarre endings. I say bizarre because as a kid in this day and age, I was presented with stories that always ended happily. The guy always got the girl. The hero always saved the day. The criminal was always caught. This was quite out of the ordinary in my world. I began to realize that the stories and movies I had previously always been presented, were in no way a honest view of reality. Bad things did happen, and that was life. Instead of turning away from this reality, I embraced it, realizing that while the stories themselves may not be true, the reality of the situations faced in them were.
Known as a safe read throughout the literary world, Christian fiction is devoid of true human condition such as the grotesque and the sexual. Richard Terrell proposes in his essay Christian Fiction: Piety is not Enough, that Christian fiction cannot rely on being religious anymore to earn the title of “good fiction”. He addresses the issue of Christian fiction limiting itself to a certain range of topics because it is a “religious” work and these limitations result in mediocre writing. Though the credibility is weak throughout Christian Fiction: Piety is not Enough, the elements of logic and emotional appeal are effective in convincing Christian readers that today 's Christian fiction is subpar.
One unique quality her work portrayed was what other written works had not. O’Connor incorporated the major struggle of living a spiritual life in a secular world into each of her stories. She also took the brave approach to include spiritual issues in her works. She did this by providing moral, social, and psychological conditions that offered awareness and enthusiasm that the readers could enjoy.
I believe I have made tremendous progress as a writer from the beginning of the year. I feel as though I am a total different person as a writer than I was at the beginning of the year. I know I have made progress in the area of citing sources and knowing whether or not the sources are reliable or not. I think I have come along way from the beginning of this course.
Given the certain circumstances, literature is a very strong thing in this world. It has the power to shape beliefs of the reader, such as who to love or hate, why people did certain things in the story, or even the understanding of whether someone did the right thing or not. The author has the control of what to think, and it’s like they are the puppet master in the whole operation. Not only do they have the control of the reader’s belief, they get to choose who is given power, and gets to shape people’s beliefs in the story itself. It’s not also positive sometimes either. As shown, in literature, power can be given to individuals whose use it to negativity shape people’s beliefs.
I’d like to state the most obvious observation that I’ve made about spiritual formation; that is that I will always need to be seeking for ways to nurture my personal spirituality throughout my life. I know that to most people this may sound like a “duh” statement, but for me it has truly become a reality and one that I must admit I have been struggling to embrace. I was brought up in a church that, like most traditional churches, stayed happy living in the “comfort zone” of their Christianity. They took everything that the Bible said at face value without digging in to find out why they believed what they believed. I had never been challenged to look deeper into the text. In the past few years I have felt the need to tunnel out of this
Have you ever been given an assignment where you say to yourself, “how the heck am I going to do this?” or maybe, “what am I supposed to write about?” Well that’s exactly how I felt, thought, and did with this writing journey. Coming up with something to say about my writing journey has been difficult. I would be bold enough to say nearly impossible. So impossible it’s like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle. Okay that might be an exaggeration, but it has been difficult. The idea that I have a writing journey I understand. But thinking of an event or something that has made my writing the way it is has been difficult. So, what I’ve decided to do then is to write about my writing journey writing this paper.