Week 2 reading (Wilderness of Childhood)

From the very beginning of this reading I was simply enjoying it, which I think was the intent of the author. He used old-fashioned yet familiar descriptions of childhood that would make anyone feel good but also introduced his point through that childhood is a wilderness even in the normal everyday world. I like how he used the comic strip as a segue into the world of childhood in fiction too and then brought it back to reality just as gently with the fictional biographies. When he started talking about how someone really gets to know a city that just struck me as all too true because his description of overprotective childhood sounded sadly a lot like mine. After that all I could do was agree with him, simply because of the fact that my dad's childhood definitely had the wilderness as described at the beginning of the reading, and when he was my age he was completely on his own and fine. Yes I'm away at college not even in my own state, living on my own and not even homesick, but my parents helped me move in and out, they buy my plane tickets for breaks, and I still don't even know how to change a tire. One last note: It's easier to try new things on your own when you're a kid, there's fear but unless there's something really seriously dangerous going on there's also an underlying sense of having nothing to loose, even if it's subconscious. That's just what I think and I also think that adults shouldn't be so quick to forget that.

Week One Reading

From the beginning of the reading I could plainly see that it's purpose was to show it's readers that a first draft doesn't have to be perfect. It worked for a few seconds because the author immediately introduced a novel idea that I'm sure at least most people can relate to. I understand wanting a short assignment but the new part is that a bad beginning can be a good thing. Now that sounds like a great idea, and apparently it's true and I know that because I feel I can trust the author. She's relating to me and using interesting images and a little bit of humor, so I decide to give her a chance. All of a sudden, though, the only thing that stands out to me is the fact that I don't care about how good of a writer I am if I'm going to have as hard a time as the writers she's talking about, but even that doesn't make me want to stop reading. The author is so open and relatable, and even random, that I hear her out for a little longer. I realize that maybe it could be fun and even beneficial to let my first drafts be crazy and just not good. Fun, just like the reading itself.