Reading Response to Ariel Cartwright's "The Machine of Wonders"

  You do a very good job of getting into the mindset of a child. I love all the imagery that comes with that as well. Like describing the nurse as a rubber duck, and the only scene with the cigarette machine was great. Also just the air of the mood was just on point. You do a good job of setting a very emotion and intense scene set in the eyes of a child. And I thought that whenever your tenison scene would come up, it wouldn't work that well because it is from the eyes of the child but it did work and it was great.
  One thing I would change is I want the child, when she leaves, to wander around much more. I know she is just walking down the hall but that is what children do. I feel like having her wander past different rooms and see different patients and having her thinking about that. Also I want her to walk into the room seeing her mom. I know that is really morbid but I would be very intense and emotional and you can play around with how she interprets what she sees.

Reading Response to Dan Yurcaba's "Red Checkered Suit"

  Wow, I was not expecting that to end. All throughout the story I was curious where this was going. I get that the man was a little creepy and and had probably "Made sure she made it home ok" before but man this was intense. When she hit her head in the market, the tension rose immensely. Also you do a very good job of establishing how close these characters are, Paul and Cheryl. The line "She did not notice and he noticed she did not notice." was to intense. Also you do a good job of describing things. You use a lot of adjectives in places but they aren't complex words, they're more or less simple. And that works well for your story.
  One thing I wish was different is that up until we know that the speakers name is Paul, you keep referring to him as the man in the red checkered suit. I get that this is the title and it holds a very significant meaning to the story but I gets overused and losing its meaning. Another thing is I'd really like to know more about this man, Paul. How old is he? How often does he follow Cheryl home? Is this an obession with him? There are a lot of unanswered questions about him that I's like to know. And you could even start the story with a paragraph of Paul almost getting caught or something from his childhood involving his parents.

Reading Response to Timothy Collier's "The Passing Days Only Brighten"

  You do an amazing job of describing this town that is Rhodesia, Alabama. The way you describe the contents of the town, the people and their reactions to everything, and also the weather, all of it reminded me when I lived in a very small Alabama town. Another part I really enjoyed was on page four in the assembly when the speaker is hearing all the people talking. It seemed really realistic to me because you have Butch just getting snippets and tail ends of conversation. Some of it made sense, some of it didn't so that is working well for the story.
  One thing I was left curious about was the character Carver. I get that the whole story is based around this man dying and we learn a whole lot about him through people talking about him in the assembly and what not but I want to know what Butch thinks of him. When he goes back to his house I like that you have the character conflicting back and forth between the campaign and this man but it just seems unnatural to me because it isn't clear of what kind of relationship these two men had, Carver and Butch. Also you throw in this letter and Butch is so distraught by this his senses are blurred. What is going on here? Why is he so upset? And just as I start thinking about these questions we and in a different part of the room. The ending seems to fast paced and leaves too many unanswered questions.

Reading Response to Emma Hyche's "Pulaski County"

  First off wow. This was an amazing story. For the very beginning you no one captured my attention but you kept it entertained the entire way through. I love the speaker. You have the suspicious sense of not knowing whether or not she actually cares about her kids or if she is just too tired. You constantly feel bad for her but as soon as you get into that mind set she does something that throws you away from that. Also I think the first person perspective works great for this story. Also you do a great job of describing the setting. "I'd trace my fingers over the black and white sand and shiver as the wind whistled in through the cracks in the floorboard."
  One thing I want to see more of is this connection with the grandmother, the speakers grandmother. There are two paragraphs at that end of page four and beginning of page five where we learn a little of the history between the grandmother and the speaker but not much else. If she is this prominent figure in her life bring that out more. I don't think it would take away from the feel of the story. And I feel you can bring this out just before the police officer shows up. Have her be deep in sleep and wanting to be back in that moment either with her grandmother or Jeremy and talk about both good and bad moments.

Reading Response to Carrie Mullenholz "Normalcy"

  So I like the idea with where this is going. You have a college girl who is very close to her mother, as stated in the opening paragraph, and is ultimately betrayed when she finds out that her mother has been cheating on her father and sudden the shift of loving her mother more goes to the father.
  You have a very good setup for your speaker. Mainly that initial paragraph dealing with the flowers. Your speaker just seems so fleshed out and so natural when she talks to people and when she experiences grief. Another good thing is your descriptive use. You give good details on the setting, even though most of it is subtle, which isn't a bad thing. The part in particular was when so was running back to the house and she trips. You have this fast paced moment where the speaker in distress and doesn't necessarily know what is going on around her but you manage to make it believable in the things she does comment on. I feel a lot of writers miss that.
  Places where I can see you to improve is dealing with the father. We don't really know that much about him and he really doesn't take hold of his character until the speaker goes back to college and she calls him every night. Another thing is the last conversation we get between the speaker and the father in the summer on page 5, it seems to...ehh...I want more out of the conversation. I want to see her react to this information about a woman she has trusted so much just devastate her to the point of being broken down. I understand his reaction to the recent actions of his wife but this is all new to the speaker. Lastly I feel that the ending could be changed. Everything seems to be summed up, not all nicely but enough to make the reader happy. I feel like the ending we have can work but it need to be another page longer. Have a bigger argument between them. Make us see how much the mother hurt her daughter and how much the daughter is hurt.

Reading Response to Kiki Young's "The Sibling Savior"

  So I like where this story was going. There is set up for a very interesting controversial story especially with the idea that the baby would be donor match for the speaker and save her life. You have so much information and set up to make a heart clenching story but it falls short in the end. It feels like you just wrapped up the story in that last paragraph because you didn't know where to go with it. Also you give all this information earlier in the story of medical information put you don't explain how the bone marrow transfer from a baby would work.

  With talking about the medical information. You present it in such a formal manner that it feel unnatural. You have a doctor explaining very complicated information to a 17 year old girl who is scared. That was my main complaint with the story. We are given all these characters like the speaker and David and we don't have any real reason to care about them. Yes it is nice that David is helping her sister and it is bad that the speaker as cancer but I feel like the cancer is forcing the reader to care. We don't have a natural reason to want to care that the speaker will get better. Mainly because we already know. 

Creative Writing Event 2

  The second event I went to was one of the local art museum's "Third Thursday" events. It was a special one because it was the Jake Adam York Tribute Reading. I had never heard of this man before but noticing that we moved to a bigger room and had three times as many chairs out I figured that he was very important. When the event started I found out who Jake was and the impact he had on the Auburn poet community. What he wrote the most about was martyrs and supports, their story, of the civil rights movement. I can't think of the new of the type of poetry at the moment.
  The night had four speakers, each one was a close friend to Jake. The first was his publisher. He talked about his experience with Jake and how he sent him a copy of his last book only a short time period before his death. He then proceed to read a few of his poem. The next person who went on was another older man. His readings of the Jake poems is what really set me apart that night. He read a poem, a long one, and it was about this very detailed account of a woman experiencing her life pre and during the civil rights movement. And believe me Dr. Spell when I say that it made me teary eyed. (Not just a single glistening tear, sorry I couldn't resist)
  After that night, it kind of gave me a jumpstart to start writing creatively again and not just in my poetry but also in my fiction. This inspired me to really dive into my second story and helped me write it from my mother's perspective. It also solidified that I need to write about things other than myself and my emotions, but to try and write about others and other things.

Reading Response to Za'Tasja Baker's "A Racist Cry"

  So when first reading the title, I was very interested in what the story was going to be about, and I did enjoy the story. I think, to me, what set the story to work were was the integration of the poem and the reaction we got from the teacher and the speaker. The idea of this story is a very good one. You have a set up for readers to see a change in perception, not necessarily for the characters in the story but the reader themselves.

  And while I think this is a great idea and I can see it happening the story falls short in a few aspects and in turn it takes away from what the story can do and tell. The biggest thing to me was the initial complaint that the speaker has with Jimmy. I feel that if you had let him continue his racist remarks, and maybe even have a them go into more detail, and let the teacher make a fool of himself it outlast would be much more better. I can't really argue for me being a privileged white individual, but I understand the meaning you meant by his comments and how they were racist but I feel it was just too short of a discussion on his part.

  Another the that I was confused by was where this taking place. You describe the past setting but nothing about the classroom and nothing about the main characters. You give a lot on emphasis on the discussion of the characters but nothing really about where they are or who they are.

Response to Olivia Baugh's "Nightmare"

  Ok so going into this story I was a little curious as to what was going to happen. It intrigued me to the point where I wanted to finish the story. Also I was very nervous when you threw in the Harry Potter lingo because I thought, oh boy this made the story just drop all tension it had going for it. However, I had forgotten about this disorder you threw in with the character so when it came to and Damian was back in reality, the tension heighten so much more I was all into this story . It was such an indirect way of going about it.
  But let that lead me into my next point. I think that it is too much of an indirect way that it takes for the story. Also you don't explain at all what the disorder is other than it causes Damian to have episodes. I feel if you went into a little explanation of what it was or briefly describe a previous episode. I know that might not make the story have that same surprise but without some explanation, to me it just leaves to story lacking.
  Another key thing to look at is that scattered all throughout the story you go into a lot of over detail, and you repeat the same thing. Not as in the same words but you will describe something in detail then you would reiterate what you just said in the next sentence with three or four words. Also the "Dum's" to me aren't working. I see what you are going for and in this context it just adds more than what is needed to the story.

Reading Response to Jhumpa Lahiri's "Once in a Lifetime"

  You told us in class that this was a very hyper realism story and for some reason I thought it was going to be a lot different than what it was. I loved, however, what it actually was. The story was interesting. Lahiri had this really interesting way of voicing the story. It seemed as though she was recollecting everything that she had experienced as a juvenile thirteen year old girl to her friend from a much older age. The way she dies this is by referring to him as you and those things associated to him as yours.
  I kept getting angry at this mother of Hema's. I don't know how traditionally one is to pay respect to guests in their culture but everything her mother did just seemed to infuriate me. I get that she is thirteen and the other family helped them out a lot when Hema was first born but still, everything that her mother did was mainly to just impress her friend and her family. It almost seemed like jealously.
  In relation to the essay you also made us read for today, I was curious why you made us read this as well. There is a few lines on the second to last page that goes against everything you said about tears and how they don't need to be in stories. However, I then thought that this is the speaker getting us into the mind of this thirteen year old girl and I realized that that is how a thirteen year old would say that. What solidified it was what came next and it was our speaker saying she was crying because of being so close to a dead women and that she stayed in her house, etc. The whole story was told this way. The speaker would change voice as time progressed and done in the hyper realism way of writing, it makes the story seem more natural.

Reading Response to Jennifer Davis's "No Tears for Me, Please"

  What is interesting to me about this essay is that I was just talking about this, this morning. About how we can't use certain words in both our language or on the page. And it isn't even the fact that it is so much a cliche, but merely the fact the word tear has lost all connotation with what is it can emotionally mean. I has become a dried up word, like a fruit left out in the sun. I do like the mini conversation that Davis gives between her and her student. I feel like she was trying to tell that student that it isn't the fact the Shakespeare is timeless, the word tear isn't. Five centuries, the word tear wasn't used in every single romantic, teenage, fanfiction piece of fiction, film, or conversation. The word tear could be said to readers and listeners and give them the emotion it is trying to provoke.
  These days we can't do that, we as writers have to come up with clever ways to say things that provoke emotion and meaning. I know many times I fall into that trap that is cliche and I have used the "tear streamed down her face and began for form puddles of salty pool on her pants" in some form or fashion more than I'd like to admit, but at the time it was mainly because I was lazy and didn't want to be clever. In today's writing world people have to learn that the words they think hold some emotional power just don't anymore and tear is one of them.

Reading Response to Amy Hempel's "In The Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried"

  I have to say that I really did enjoy this story and not because it was a sad and I do think that sad endings are some of the best stories but that the story actually made me mad. All throughout the story you have to two best friends, one who is terminally ill and the other who is coming to see her, interacting with one another. Our speaker comes and see her best friend in the hospital and they do everything wrong. Every idea you have of someone visiting a dying friend, whatever it is you thought throw it out the window. The whole story is about the speaker trying to deal with her best friend dying and all they do is talk about pointless trivia. And to be honest, after finishing it I realized that a story like this much better than one that follows to ideal route for a story like this. I realized that if I read something like that I wouldn't get the great internal struggle I do see on the page, and i wouldn't see the how great the ending was, coming full circle. Most of the time when I see someone do that I don't think it necessarily works out but in this case it does.

Reading Response to Elissa Schappell's "Endings"

  When first coming across this essay, I thought to myself, I don't have a problem with this. I'm great at writing endings. Then as I went through the essay and looked at the good and bad endings I realized that I fall more into the bad endings than the good ones. And the few good ones I do fall into I fall into what messes it up. The one that I do a lot because I always thought I was witty and smart and wanted the reader to see my message was the "Overly Symbolic Ending". I love the way she describes authors who do this, "It isn't uncommon for an author, anxious about his woefully unsatisfied ending, to attempt to seduce readers by getting them drunk on poetics, overripe similes and metaphors, and low-hanging fruit of symbolism, in hopes that some uber-image will emerge to which the reader to which the reader can attach profound meaning." Once I read that, I vocally stated in my room "Dammit!" Because it's true!
  I feel like with all these endings she gives don't necessarily matter. You can categorize and label the different goods and bads of endings but to put it bluntly, "Endings are a bitch" and they always will be. You should do what you want with your ending but the important part is that it isn't forced, it isn't bland, and it isn't just something you wrote just to have an ending.

Story 1 Revision

THE RECORD THAT DEFINED MY SUMMER

BY: AARON SCOBIE

It was dark now. The moon glowed immensely over the water of the lake. I just stared at that moon and traced its outline with my finger. I saw her in the side mirror walking up. I wanted to lock the doors and drive off but I let her in. I didn’t deserve this.

 "You know what's funny?"

"What?" she asked

"This record you gave me", I paused. "the second track is called 'The Summer's End'. It is basically what is happening right now. I just thought that was funny." I’m crying now. What are you doing Ron.

"I don't understand."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't tell me you're sorry!”

"I just . . .."

I’m being an asshole. I never yelled at her. Do I?

"I'm sorry please don't cry anymore." I can always figure out a way to hate myself. I wish she wouldn’t cry so easily. How often did I yell at her? Did I make her cry then? Did I Even care? I’m a nice guy and I treat her right. Even this far into out relationship I just don’t want to say goodbye to these three years, but I don’t want her to cry anymore.

“I’m sorry.” I think that was the first time in a long time I meant that.

“My family is waiting on me. Can’t we talk about this later? I didn’t even want to talk about this right now. I wanted to wait.”

“Just go.”

“Call me when you get home, please?”

“Yeah.”

And she left. I sat in my car waiting for time to stop and reverse itself. My eyes started to turn red as I waiting for their cars to leave. They’re waiting on me. I put my car in reverse and start to drive. I decided to keep the radio off. I can feel my hands pulsate as lead this line of cars to the turn off.

            It was completely black all around me now. The road was thin and curvy. I tried to go pretty fast as to try and keep some distance from the other cars. The road was long and narrow road. It was a dirt road in its plainest sense. I had my windows down. I could here toad croaking so. I wonder if there is a swamp near by or if that is just the lake behind me.

Finally I got to the turn off which lead onto the highway. I’m pretty far ahead of the rest of the cars. I decide to sit there and I start to contemplate what to do. If I go right, it leads to pushing the inevitable conversation to some other time. If I go right that I’m just going to keep pushing. How I want to go right, but my hands have decided otherwise. I turn the wheel left and home home.

            I have driven this drive at least a hundred times before now: in the morning, late at night. Everything seems so unfamiliar this time. I begin to look for landmarks that told me how far or close I was to being home but no matter how hard I try to focus in on those things, I never can seem to find them. Not the giant billboard that someone spray-painted “myspace.com/fadetogrey2” or the obvious intersection in Abbeville. Everything seems so new. From where I left, the drive would normally be an hour and a half, and while I thought it was going to feel like forever it actually felt like I had just blinked

            I made it home. I got a text from Fanny saying that her mom was making her do something and that she would be able to meet up for at least another hour or so and that she was sorry. I knew she meant that but I didn’t want to believe her. My mom asked why I was home. “Ronald what’s going on?”

            “Mom I . . .me and Fanny are having some problems.”

            “Oh Ronny.”

            “It’s ok. Really” I started to cry again. I feel so worthless and pathetic.

            “Has it happened yet?” Mom asked.

            “No were going to meet in an hour.”

            “An hour! Ron it is already . . .”

            She could tell I wasn’t in the mood to fight to she stopped and hugged me.

            “I’m going to be in my room.” I walked off to my room. Home always has the stench of a mixture of cat hair, dog hair, and stale cigarettes. I sat down on my bed for a minute until I fell to the floor and grabbed a shoebox. I kept a lot of our mementos over the years. Here’s the rock from our one year anniversary where we to that quarry next to Chewelah in Auburn. Oh and here’s the tickets from our first date. I was so nervous for that. 

We went to La Parilla for dinner for our first date. It is one of the chain Mexican restaurants that looked like it was really nice from the outside but all the food was crap. I took her there anyway because that’s where she wanted to go. I think that was the only time she actually decided on a place to eat ever in our entire relationship.

I remember she had on this red dress and it was covered in little penguins. We sat and ate and talked and soon it was over. I took her to a movie after that. I couldn’t remember what it was but that’s not important. I caught myself grinning remember what happened that night at the movies. I remember I had my hand on her leg. It was funny to look back on both of us back then and how we had this weird semi-sexual moment. Having just as quickly I had moved my hand in, I moved it out. I felt like I was a freshman in high school, blushing and grinning very wildly.

After that we held hands. I had held hands with plenty of girls before and I don’t want it to seem like cliché arrogant romantic type to say that that time meant more than it did but it didn’t. I played it off to her as though it was the most sensational moment I had ever had while holding hands with a girl but I just wanted her to like me. I took her home, we made out at the front door, and said bye to each other. I got back in my car and fist pumped the air.

I set the tickets down next to the rock. There are few things in here I don’t really remember why they were so memorable. I began to dig through the box in hopes for finding something meaningful other than the obvious one year, two year, first date, first valentines day, etc. My hands are moving much quicker now and the sound of that fucking AC unit next to my window is starting to get on my last nerve. I threw the box across the room and just lay back on my bed. I rolled over and was face first in the soft, white comforter. The smells of old smoke resonated in my nose. Between this and that noisy AC unit, I want to just go home now.

            Why I was waiting for Fanny to text me, I remember a time when we were going for a drive. We did that a lot only because we didn’t like to walk around outside anymore, or at least I didn’t, and also I probably couldn’t think of anything else to do. But I remember this on drive. We were going back to her house and we were talking about something involving religion. I’ve never been the most religious type but she was and I tired to respect that. But we were talking about something and we started arguing about it. We always did this we never seemed to just discuss things; we just had to fight about them. Most of the time we would fight and she would stay quiet for a long time and I would say I’m sorry and she’d get over it. This time was different. This time I yelled at her for the first time.

            “You know I really don’t get why you get so worked up over things like this.”

            “Things like what?” I asked.

            “You know, it seems that whenever you get to try and talk about something that seems the smallest bit controversial you get up in arms and you stick to one side.”

            “I do not!”

            “Yes, you do.”

            “Like what? Give me one . . . three examples.”

            “I not doing this with you.”

            “Look the only thing I can think of where I got worked up was when we were talking about female preachers and I ended that because I knew it would lead to something stupid for us to argue about.”

            “Why does something like that have to be stupid?”

            “What female preachers? Because it isn’t a big deal.”

            “Well I think it is. I says in the bible that the role of a preach has to be filled . . . “

            “Well that was written thousands of years when women weren’t seen as people and why does it matter if they preach or not? People who bicker and argue over semantics and nit pick over every little detail in the bible are stupid and it just causes for more controversy and argument. Like”

            I waited for her to respond but she just diverted her eyes from me. I kept making quick glances at the road and at her waiting for her to say something.

“What? Don’t not look at me. Hey!”

“What!” She replied.

“Hey.” I said back much more softly. I realized I had over stepped my boundaries so I tried to pull myself out of this hole I had put myself in.

She still didn’t look at me. Her eyes had focused on the road and they weren’t moving.  I took more focus off the road and just stared at her. I watched as her face turned to a dark shade of red, which ran to her eyes. She starts to cry.

“Take me home, now . . . please.”

I opened my mouth to try and salvage the moment that had obviously crashed much earlier than where is was at but I didn’t. I kept my mouth shut for the first time in a long time. I turned the car around at the nearest median and started back. It was odd. There was an eerie calmness to the car. The radio was off and neither of us was talking.

I thought that if we had a reasonable talk that we would get back together. I kept jamming words and sentences together in my head; pitting together scenes and scenarios where I would talk myself out of losing who I thought would be the only girl I would ever love. The record she gave me earlier that day came to mind. It was full of break up songs ironically. I tried to focus on that song “The Summer’s End” and hope, no pray that that would be how this summer would end. I continue to deny the idea that I would be alone, and feeding the idea that I was this perfect guy and she needed me so much more than I needed her; I deserved her for how great and wonderful I had been to her.

I got up and went to the bathroom. While I was peeing I remember something that wasn’t in the shoebox. It sat on a table full of boxes of trinkets and jewelry stacked on top of each other in my mother’s room. I finished up and ran to her room. I heard her get up and ask me what was wrong but I didn’t answer. I moved all the boxes aside aside until I found the one my mom used to keep her special jewelry in. I opened and pulled out a ring. It was my grandmother’s wedding ring. It was small and golden. The diamond was very tiny but I thought of this ring as better than any huge rock some people would propose with. She had it for me to give to the girl I wanted to marry. I had been saving it for sometime. I grabbed it and wrapped it up in a napkin to keep from scratching it. Maybe if I told her what my plan was she would change her mind.

            I walked but out to my car. I sat waiting for the phone call of where we were supposed to meet. After about ten minutes she calls and tells me to meet her at the Taco Bell near my house. I cranked my car. I rubbed my hand against where the ring was. I felt the lump as it moved between my fingers and watched all those thoughts in my head fade away. All the scenarios and speeches I had prepared were gone. I stuck my hand into my pocket and pulled the napkin out. I slowly unfolded it, feeling the fabric slide on my hand. I pulled the ring out and held it up to the moon. I had the strange desire to want to ring to shine in the moonlight, as some weird sign that everything was going to be ok. That when I drive to meet her, we would cry and make up and be laughing with each other the next day. But no, those stories don’t happen.

            I closed my hand and held the ring. I closed my eyes and let out a few more tears. I grabbed the napkin, wiped my ears and wrapped the ring back up. I walked back inside and handed to my mother. As I left my house to go to Taco Bell I thought about the record again. And this time the first song I had tried so hard to keep out of my head started playing. I got back into my car, cranked it, and headed off. 

The sky is so black today. It is so dark. It’s much darker than the water of that murky old lake I saw earlier today. I sat in the parking lot of that Taco Bell waiting for her to arrive. She would be a minute for how far away she lived. So I rested my head against the headrest and laid my seat back and closed my eyes and I waited.

“Let’s just forget everything said and everything we did: best friends and better halves. Goodbye autumn nights . . .. I just think its best, cause you can’t miss what you forget. So lets just pretend everything and anything between you and me was never meant.”

Reading Response to Dorothy Allison's "Place"

  Going into this essay, mainly from the opening paragraph, I didn't know what I was getting into. I disagree with Allison's view on why we read but that is not important. The main thing is that I thought I had a good view on what place was and how to write it. Boy was I wrong. Allison talks about place being this other character in the story, this other manifestation that has an outreaching hand that can convince and control the reader and also the characters in the story. One example that came to light to me was Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and how the she explains the place in which the Bennet's live and how their village is this other character.
  One part I especially like well more so a line I liked was, when she was explaining how to generalize a city or a part of the country and how it can give place a very distinctive meaning. My favorite was "Central Florida is despair." I think this is great because I have plenty of friends from that area and if you ask anyone of them to describe it, they would say this. It is just an interesting thought to think about a place or place in this light. I know one too many times I have fallen under the idea the place and setting are one and the same and that a story can be told only from the perspective of a room or a simple area. My struggle is I don't describe how the place affects all my senses and this essay brought this to light to me.

Reading Response to Louise Erdrich's "Disaster Stamps of Pluto"

  I have to say I really enjoyed this short story and mainly for the fact of how they went about explaining the story. From the very beginning of the story it seems very introduction-y. And I mean that in a very good sense. It has this very fun way of introducing the town in a way that gives us an idea to who the main character is, her personality, the town itself, and the history of the town. We are also introduced, through giving the history of the town, that this town seems to make itself have the persona that it is interesting and a cause for people to stay. One of these is the mystery of the main character's family being murdered and also the banker running away with all of the towns money. I mean come on. This is a small ass town in North Dakota called Pluto with a population of God knows how many.
  I feel like Erdrich was trying to impose the outlandish event that happen in this small town to give meaning to this only doctor and our main character. Our main character is an older woman with no family and one friend and through these very intense and crazy events that happen in this town, we are given a reason to want to know this woman and continue to be interested in her. The reason being because all of these events are in some way or fashion tied to her: her family, her friend, and her newsletter.

Reading Response to Chris Offutt's "Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia"

            I have to say that I do agree with what Chris Offutt is saying in “Performing Surgery Without Anesthesia”.  In the first three to four pages of the essay he describes his own personal struggles with revising which are also similar to mine. A lot of times when I write something it isn’t for a class so I write it and then set it to the side. However if it is for a class then I have to revise and that makes me look back at the paper. To be honest I don't want to a lot of the time because like Offutt said, I try to but my heart and soul and pour all my emotions into that paper, story, etc. and if I look at it then I'll see exactly what is wrong with it and also what can be fixed. That requires me to see that what I wrote originally was not the best thing in the world and that it does need to be revised or how Offutt puts it “to see again”.

            The second half of the essay is Offutt’s input to the problem that I have and also how writers should go about looking at problem of revising. I like the idea he gives that is you have a story about a father and son from the son’s perspective and you know the story will be better if you did it from the father’s perspective do that. The main problem he what to get across with revising is that when you do revise do it big. Don't just change a little chunk here and a little chunk there. Either go all in or don't revise at all.

Response to Za'Tasja Baker's "Cinderella Pink Doll House"

  You sure know how to make some tension. While I was a bit surprised that a fire happened and that it killed Trevor's brother, I really enjoyed the argument Trevor and Hanna had between one another. Not that it was a good thing but it felt really natural and you poured so much emotion out of Trevor in that one big rant he did. It made me want to dislike Hanna even more. Also You do a good job of describing Hanna based off of her attitude about herself. There is a line on page two that made me chuckle, where she is trying to figure out what to where, it just seems so genuine.
  One thing that bugged me was that you forces these situations for Hanna to say and feel so different from Trever that it takes away what I like about her. I didn't understand why Hanna would want to break up with Trevor just based on a dinner that I have no idea what happened. You give a short description about how Trevor's parents were being good parents to her but we don't get any thought about it. I want to see that dinner and I want to see Hanna struggle emotionally at it. It would make a whole lot more sense to me if I saw why she felt so different internally Trevor to lead to her breaking up with him. Also add some little spurts of information between the fire and the funeral. Like a line or two of what Hanna is thinking as days go by.

Ekphrasic Exercise - September 15, 1857: the idea of the tree

  Upon first glance I see a tree laid upon twelve different sheets and each sheet is a different color. However when I get closer I see that these sheets actually pages from some manuscript. Whether they're from the same manuscript, I can't tell. I notice that the painting over the manuscript, the tree, Is encompassed by a blue box. It seems to be the from for the painting, the tree and the actual frame is meant for the manuscripts. The artist likes to make things in layers.
  I notice that the artist made this in twelve steps. He didn't glue the pages together first and then paint, but rather he did each page individually. And for each page, he drew in a different design and made sure to keep the color corresponding to that page. The more bold or noticeable pages are the two in the middle and the second one from the left on the bottom row. They stick out mainly due to the fact that this is the focal point of the piece and also that the lines drawn for the tree are thicker and with heavier strokes. There is even some smudging. I think this is this way because the viewer sees the middle first. If they take the time to look around the middle then they will notice the smaller lines, the more focused and detailed lines.
  When we read a story we don't look at the small details around the main idea, or picture in this case, sometimes. Sure this was a very nice tree and I like that he used manuscripts and his backdrop but if I hadn't taken the time to look past that "main focus" I never would have noticed the beautifully detailed lines around it. It's like teachers always told you in grade school, "read between the lines."

Response to Timothy Collier's "Wounded"

  First off I really enjoyed this story. You give a great deal of descriptive use in both the environment around you and your  main character. One of the lines I loved was when you were describing the cut on the first page, "... and below the gleaming, pink tissue, hundreds of yellow-white beads stirred, reflecting at intervals the warm streetlights." Another big thing I liked was the jumping back and forth between narratives. For the most part those are done very well. A little of halfway through I noticed that it really started to complement Jason's character in a way that told me much more about him than, I feel, just a straight narrative of only one of the story would have told. My favorite was when Jason was confronted with Nick. I feel like that told a lot about his character in a more subtle way if that makes sense.

  One thing to like at when revising is how you transition into these narratives. Some of them were a little hard to follow, possibly because they started on a different page, and I got a little lost at times. The main one being at the beginning of page seven. On page six you have this interest narrative of Jason as a small child with his grandfather. If you ended that one not as abrupt when going back into the Nick narrative, it would feel a little smoother. Another thing is I want more of a development between Jason and Mickey. I feel as though you only used that narrative a a grounding for your story but I feel like it could have just as much development out of Jason as the narrative with Nick. 

  All in all you have a great story here and I think the three narrative does work but you do have some kinks to work out.