Best of Week: Shadow Catcher-Truth vs. Sort-of Truth

          Reading Shadow Catcher was an interesting experience. Marianne Wiggins's mind seems to be all over the place as she tells the story of Edward Curtis, and sometime I question if what she writes for some sections are even all that relevant to the main story. But, I think, that really, this story is not only the story of Edward Curtis, but rather, a story about her inner conflict of writing the beautiful, complex unaltered truth about the man instead of a mythological tale told to children to hold off the questions until they mature mentally, or in her words,  the "Hollywood" version of his story that is so predictable and cheesy that it would most definitely have Gerard Butler starring as Edward and Jennifer Aniston co-starring as Clara. 

          This book seems to be Wiggins' "vision quest" to find her own personal truth of what she really believes gets her message across better- the truth, or fiction. She tries to get us to think whether it is better for us to cloud our minds with illusions of our idols being much greater and larger-than-life than they really are to help us cope and look up to them and think during tough times, "what would they do?", or to face reality, become disillusioned, and accept their flaws as well because those are a part of them as much as the myth they wrap themselves up in to cover those things. I'm losing my train of thought, though.

          But I believe humanity is not ready to accept truth yet. We enjoy imagining up a perfect being that can withstand anything like Superman, or be so selfless and loving as Jesus, and sometimes we get carried away. I have no idea where I was going with this thought, and I feel I have strayed far from what the point of this novel was. But to be honest, I'm really trying to make sense of what I read, and if Wiggins is really messing with me and she wasn't really sure what she was writing, so she wrote whatever came to her head and haphazardly wove these thoughts together like how most of my writing is, then I am not amused. :C 

          I really am not sure what to think. All I know is that the true Best [part] of [the] Week is that we're done with this God-forsaken novel that makes my brain cry, "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!" in agony. Thanks, Humanities teachers, for choosing this novel to challenge our post-summer-shriveled-up minds with. My brain is ripping its non-existent hair out. *_____*

Metacognition: The QE Essay

          I wish I could turn in the FINAL final version of the essay I reluctantly had to turn in today in 8th period. It isn't as rushed, and I'm actually proud of it. Last night, I stayed up until 11 typing and just trying to get the paper done, and I was on a roll until my dad scolded me into going to bed. Then I assumed for some odd reason- maybe due to sleep deprivation I interpreted the schedule for Thursday as being the one for Friday- that we had one last day today to finish up the essay. That proved to be wrong, so yes, I fail at life. Sue me.

          But for the whole thinking process, I took pretty much two periods thinking up the ideas for Section II, keep in mind that I spent the time thinking instead of typing paragraphs. I am not capable of writing well on the spot as my brain takes a while to refine my ideas about the topic, and takes even longer just to write them. So you can infer that I failed epically at the rough draft of Section II. I then edited Section I until I was satisfied, I developed the paragraphs of Section II and III over a span of 8 hours after school, and spent 3 hours finishing what I failed to finish in turning in the final paper.

          I don't expect much in my grade for what I turned in, but after Mr. Allen grades the papers, I'll accept the earlier grade I received because I acknowledge that I screwed up. But out of sheer curiosity, I'll show him my latest paper that I wish I could have turned in and I'll ask what grade I would have received if I turned that in. I at least want to know where I stand in my skill with writing essays. All I can say is, this has been a learning experience, and it was sort of fun analyzing my writing process.


::EDIT::
FFFFFFFF THANK YOU MR. LATE PASS! 8B
Hello better grade!!! 8D

Blogging Around

     I looked around at some of the blogs on the blog list, and Jon's "Best of Week" blog entry captured my interest. I was able to relate to how he felt about analyzing the creative process in order to learn how to be creative and how it defeats the purpose and takes the fun of naturally being creative as creativity becomes a large and never-ending competition. 

"Better words could not have been written. These were my exact thoughts as I write about the idea of developing creativity, something which I also believe cannot be forced, as well as being forced to write a specific type of blog entry with the inevitability of sounding like a generic student because of limited ideas to choose from. And then we are penalized for sounding generic! Bitch, please! D:

To be honest, I prefer not to think about being creative, or even analyzing my thoughts and creativity. I would go insane from thinking too much if I did, and I think too much anyways! I prefer to just let things happen. Or, I at least wait until math, when all my creative talents, inspiration, and energy activate and prevent me from pretending to give a crap. All I know is, this entry you wrote is real, and does not come out as forced because you were honest how you felt about writing it. This entry is AN EPIC WIN. *claps enthusiastically* 

I'll definitely check out your entries more often, as they sound legitimate and non-generic. And the spelling! My God! You can actually write correctly! Bless you, Sir! (okay, I'll stop now...)

Liz Zaborsky
P.S. sorry for the length. >_>"




Like Jon's blog, I found Matt's Metacognition blog entry to be extremely entertaining and interesting. The funny thing is, his description of his writing process matches my method of writing almost exactly. 


"You pretty much described my entire writing process. I can't just start writing paragraphs on the spot when I have an idea- I type out my thoughts, delete, reword what idea I'm trying to get across, delete, repeat. It's because of this problem that I'm going to fail Section II of the QE Essay. I don't understand how people can practically crap out five paragraphs in a period of 50 minutes. It takes me an ENTIRE DAY to even develop my ideas before being able to refine them. I suck at writing on the spot, but when given an entire weekend, I can work some freaking magic and write a satisfactory essay.

Liz Zaborsky

P.S. By the way, I recently got a big-ass monitor (my dad is a major electronic/computer geek, so he wanted some top-of-the-line shit to make up for the years of having an outdated Windows 98 that eventually crapped out on us a few months ago), and man, it's f***ing amazing. I would definitely recommend a Samsung HDMI screen. I wouldn't say I'm a better writer because of it, but it makes watching DVDs and YouTube videos more interesting."