It's Official

So it's official. Feature articles are the hardest to write. I just finished mine. It's like a formal biography about someone. Even with great information, which I had, putting it all together was tougher than any of the other writing we have done in class. You want it to be perfect: afterall, it's a real story about a real person's life. Making it flow seemed hard also, but, like everything else we've done, the rule is "Get it written. You can go back and change it later." I have it written, and I can see myself going back to change it later.

Review

We are now working on reviews in class. Reviews for music, movies, food, you name it. A pro is that it's the writer's opinion. I wrote my review on the movie, An America Girl: Chrissa Stands Strong. The movie is about a little girl standing up to bullying. To find out what I think about the film, check out my article, Leading By Example.

Picture Caption: Sammi Hanratty (green), Ariela Barer, and Kaitlyn Dever with two fans at American Girl location.

*Note- Sammi's t-shirts says, "Let's be buddies, Not bullies." What an awesome shirt!

Picture from http://www.verymeri.com/tag/celebrities/

More Creative Outlets

I know it's been a while since I published some poetry, so I thought I'd continue today. One day within our unit, we listened to music and let of hands write what they would from the sound of the music. Our quote was "In the dark time, the eye begins to see" by Theodore Roethke. I wrote two poems that day, called Together and Hide and Seak.

Creativity with Words

Yesterday, I finished my 20 page spec script. It didn't take as long as I thought it would, but I still encountered difficulties, mainly spacing. I added in a lot of new scenes just so that everything would flow properly. Also, the grammar was a pain. Numbering the pages was hard: we have to do that manually. Here is the beginning of my script, however, I didn't include the title page, but only the current working title.
Script writing is completely different than anything else I have written. There seems to be more rules (or maybe that's just because I'm just learning about scripts now). It also seems to go quicker, once the idea is created, at least. This was the best unit so far.
I love movies, especially Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and both of the Step Up movies. I also love to act. It's the only art I'm good at. I would love to be in Hollywood for a movie premier. If that movie was my own, I would love it even more.
Movies are a big part of life, at least, for most of the world. If you think about it, a lot of social outings are movies. What about the common date of a dinner and movie? Even TV shows talk about movies within them.
Movies allow the writters to communicate ideas, thoughts, opinions, and advice with use of our favourite actors and actresses. We can learn a lot depending which movie we're talking about.
This is yet another way to be creative with words.

1 Page = 1 Minute

In class, we are now working on our own spec scripts. 20 pages:2 weeks. It seems like a lot of work at times and it seems like a task that may not be met. Even with the story graph in place, I'm finding it hard to write the first twenty pages. How can I make it so that my Inciting Incident doesn't happen on page 5, but around page 18 instead? The pacing is definetly that hardest, followed by the formatting. Did you know that there were so many rules for where to place things on a page? I didn't. I think I've pretty much gotten a grip on the formatting, but I'm sure some of my classmates might not have. The Formatting Police (Ms. Stronach) was going around the other day helping us with it, which was good. If we catch our errors early 1) we won't repeat them and 2) we won't loose marks for them. Overall, I think this is my favourite (maybe more stressful) unit so far.

Inside and Outside

Our first poem on the next day was to create a poem by travelling inside ourselves where we met our essence, our souls. We were then to write a poem about that very experience.

Afterwards, we walked over (in the freezing cold) to the nearby park to write poem number two. This one was to be written about what we saw only. No inside voice.

So that's how I got to write Inside and Outside. Again, I prefer the first poem, and I'm interested in what you think.

Love and Death

Poetry is often a way used to express feeling of love. Anyone remember Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? We had to go outside and pick a random object and bring it back to class. We then had to write a poem (our first on our own) comparing this object to something bigger. My object was a leaf (it is fall. There's lots of them around). I compared it to my unnamed love. I called it, Undying Love.

We then had to do the opposite: Choose a broad topic and compare it to something small. There was a tree by the school being cut down, so I decided to write my poem on Death and compare it to the tree. It's called, The Inevitable.

I personally like the first one better. What's your opinion?

Poetry

Poetry is creativity. At least the good ones are. Poems show off emotions, or thought, or ideas, generally through the uses of metaphors. Personality, I prefer reading poetry over writing it. The phase, "let's write poetry" scares me. But not so much anymore. Over the past few days in class, we've done many different exercises to help switch thoughts from the front of our brains to the back. The back is where creativity comes. Right after doing those exercises, writing poetry didn't seem so hard. Mind you, I generally gained a head-ache during the process. I still prefer to write stories over poetry, but I believe these exercises will help with my short story writing as well. the whole point of them was to activate our creativity, which can come out in many other ways than just writing, such as art and sports. Overall, maybe this poetry unit wasn't and isn't so bad after all.
Here is the first poem we wrote in the class. Each one of us put two phrases on the board and we then had to create a poem from those lines, using every line but a few. Mine is titled The Five Senses.
A few days later, I wrote another poem about senses. We were blindfolded and had to walk around like that. This is the poem I wrote in response.

Thinking About Nothing Can Help You Write

Let me explain. Today in class, we did an exercise in which we closed off the front part of our brains and used the side parts (the parts where creativity comes from). We then wrote. First a journal entry with a pretty wide range of ideas. Then a group poem about fall. As far as the poem is concerned, the lines we came up with were good, but I would have liked time to organize them, not just shove them together. The journal was easier to write. I didn't feel as if I was at a lost for words, which I usually do when I write. So maybe thinking nothing can be a cure to block the writers block that we all experience.

Commenting on News Articles

Opposite Editorials (Op Eds) are an opinion piece written based on a hard-news article. The hard-news article that I chose to connect with was my own written about the GSA. I titled my Op Ed, Why Must There Always be a Fight? Yes, this article is written based upon my own opinion and you may feel differently. Maybe this will inspire you to write an Op Ed, perhaps to contradict me. Enjoy your reading and writing!

Communicating News Worthy Items

Every day there are events that happen that deserve to be shared. But how do you share them? Word of mouth can work wonders, but details could end up being changed over time, like the telephone game. By writing these stories down, we can share all of the details, and the correct details. I wrote my 'hard news story' on the new club at EDSS called, The Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA).

The Art of the Short Story

Writing can be such a wonderful experience. We can place ourselves in the middle of someone else's mind and their world. We can be anyone that we choose. A quiet, shy girl could be a serial killer. An older man could be a young teen climbing through the waves of the Pacific Ocean. But the hard part isn't always choosing the story to write, it's actually writing it. The beginning of my story came to me easily, like I knew which words to use, but when it became time for my protagonist, Erica, to return home, her parents sounded fake even after rewriting the conversation. I am happier with it now, after the third (or is it fourth?) time rewriting it. Feel free to read my short story titled, It's Wasn't my Choice.

What To Say

Sometimes, writing your words down is the easiest thing to do. As opposed to face-to-face talk, that is. You can go back and edit what it is that you want to say to make it perfect. You can make sure that it won't offend them, or that they will understand where your coming from. With face-to-face talk, every word exchanged is thought up at the moment. The hard thing is knowing what to say before having the conversation, but then again, how can you know what the other person will say or do? So, I guess if there is a pressing issue that you need to get across, sometimes a letter is the best way.

The World of Words

How do we connect with the world? Well I, for one, generally tend to use facebook (both on the computer and on my cell phone) to talk to and message friends and family. Facebook's pretty great. There's games and quizzes (some are cool) to occupy your time. I love being able to log on and send an e-mail to anyone on my friend list. It's better than the Sympatico e-mail in the sense that almost everyone has facebook.
I don't mind texting people, but remembering to charge my cell is a challenge. I do prefer to talk to people face-to-face or on the phone, but I've got friends and family that don't live anywhere close to me. It's easier to talk to them on facebook.
Communication is changing to digital and I can handle that. But I'd rather have an actual conversation, where you can see the other person's physical responses alonside the verbal.
News is also changing. Sometimes I prefer the print newspaper, but sometimes I prefer the online newspaper. If I'm researching for something, like a school assignment for example, online is easier. I'm already there looking at other websites (generally not 'newspaper' sites) so it's quicker to get my information, but on Saturday morning, the print paper is great. I'm sitting down ready to read. Either way, I love the comic section!
Which ever way you read, it's still a learning experience and it can be a great one!

Perfect Time To Write

Is there ever a perfect time to write? Maybe. In school, you write, but it's not always on a topic that you choose. If you like to write or want to write, just sit down, grab a pen and paper (or computer and keyboard) and just start. Write a sentence about anything and just let your creative juices flow. It's only a first draft- it doesn't have to be perfect, it shouldn't be perfect. So the perfect time to write? Whenever you sit down with nothing else to do.

The First Words

Have you ever gone to start writing, but couldn't find the words, or even the ideas? Have you ever had a fantastic idea, but forgot it by the time you went to go write in down? That's happened to me a lot. Hopefully, with the aid of this blog, we all can start getting rid of the writer's block that slows or stops our writing, and instead create beautiful lines of music for all to read and enjoy.