Meeting #7

This meeting did not have set guidelines, so we were on our own in terms of structure. We made the focus of our meeting more on our reading than the other meetings have been. We each discussed our books and how they relate to what we're working on, or don't relate. Barbara is just about finished with Crime & Punishment, which is quite different from her piece about Fairybelle Marybeth Sarahsuse Pomp. We discussed why this might be, and came to the conclusion that reading a different perspective keeps her from being stuck in a specific style and mindset while writing. Barbara had previously decided that she wanted to change the tone of her piece from being all rhyme to only having thoughts and speech in rhyme to avoid monotony and repetition. Elizabeth is reading Emma, which is very reflected in her writing as it inspired her to write a story in the style of Jane Austen, which is still in progress but she added to. We all gave feedback on what we thought of the new part and how we each envisioned the story to go, as Elizabeth was unsure of what to write next. Then we read the ending to Katie's story, which we all agreed was a great ending and definitely matched the tone of the story. Katie is reading The Fountainhead, which is unrelated to her story but she did start before the started reading, and told us at the beginning of the semester that she had always wanted to write a story in this style. Then I read the beginning of a short piece, sort of a combination between an essay and a story, that I am planning on elaborating on for next class. I am reading East Of Eden, having finished Prodigal Summer (which was excellent, thank you Maida for the recomendation), and we all agreed that my theme for the semester is adventure/earth books. My piece is not an adventure but it is about the Earth so it's pretty related. We're all looking forward to having more to show next group meeting!

Blog for Meeting #6

This meeting's theme was Criterion-Based Feedback. First, we read through the handout and the criteria for both nonfiction and fiction writing. We focused primarily on discussing the criteria we each thought was important for fiction writing, since all three of us have fiction pieces in the works. We also discussed the non-fiction criteria briefly. We looked at the "Power of Sprinkles" story, and disagreed with the sheet's evaluation of the criteria. For instance, we weren't sure that the story was "ironic and witty" in tone (although that's just our opinion). We agreed with your statement that the criteria could be somewhat limiting but we decided that we could also create different criteria to accomodate what we wanted specifically from each piece.
We began to go over our own pieces. Elizabeth read her short story, to which she had just given an ending. Having been wondering where the narrator's life was going to go in relation to the tree, we were thrilled to find out the ending...which I'll let anyone who is reading this find out for themselves. In terms of the "character" criteria, we found the narrator very real and believable. Another criteria we focused on was language. Sam and I noted that we especially liked the personification that Elizabeth used with the tree, and Elizabeth noted that she had focused on personification in the past.
Sam then read an addendum to her story, which was meant to fill the "meaning" and "character" criteria by giving motivation to her central character for the decision she made to stay on Earth after everyone else left. We discussed the decision of the character, and different potential motives for staying on a decaying Earth, but decided that the motive Sam chose was easily the most intriguing. We're looking forward to seeing the character develop further.
I read the revised version of the essay that I wrote, focusing on the coherence and focus on task. I had attemtped to hone my focus on task since last time, in part due to a comment Maida had made about why it mattered that the views of humanism change, which I incorporated into the thesis. I plan on attempting to hone the clarity of language next. I also took out the handwritten notes I have for the end of my short story and we discussed the narrator character and his motives for the character criteria. Elizabeth's and Sam's responses were extremely helpful.
With a few minutes remaining, we called Barbara and told her get well from the ladies. :)

writing group meeting #5

(edit: sorry guys! I had thought I'd posted this, but I only just realized I'd pressed 'save' instead. This is what happens when I rush.)

The subject of our fifth meeting revolved around voice. We began as we did in our last meeting: by drafting questions we wished our groupmates would respond to. It was easier this time, now that we had more experience and generally knew what to expect. We didn't have to rely on each other as much, and the whole process went quicker.

Our next step was to determine each of our five-star quotes. This took a bit. Picking a passage from our own pieces that would stand as the perfect example of what we each thought our own voices to be was a bit of a daunting prospect. In retrospect, we all agreed it would almost have been easier if we each shared our pieces and had our groupmates agree on a quote that they thought best portrayed our individual voice. It's more difficult to choose ourselves, since we are all so familiar with our own personal writing styles. Sometimes a different perspective.

Yet, in the end we still managed to select passages we felt did us justice and then presented them to our group. It was actually incredibly interesting seeing the differences in all our styles when presented in such a straight-forward way. This concept led us to a small tangent on how voice is something like a writer's fingerprint: each one individual. Which in turn, led to a tangent off a tangent in which we all compared our fingerprints.

We got back on track though, when we decided to each take a turn reading each of our "voice-filled quotes" aloud. We went in a circle, the person whose quote it was being the one last in line to read, so as not to influence the other groupmates. This process was beneficial as well as fun, since we took the advice of the sheet given to us and played up our reading, over-dramatizing the voice but still doing our best to portray what we get from the quote. By the end, we were all sore from laughing yet still left with a much broader view of the voice in our piece.

The last fifteen minutes we spent discussing the questions we had drafted at the beginning of our meeting. Most of them actually directly addressed voice, so we spent the remainder of our time comfortably tossing ideas back and forth in regards to each of our questions, lightly discussing the changes we've made to our pieces and how we thought it all was going, sometimes slipping off into minor digressions but bringing ourselves back every time.

Once again, another victorious L.A.D.I.E.S meeting. Huzzah, sisters. Huzzah.

finally, meeting # 4 recap

It's taken me forever and a day to get this up, I realize. For that, I apologize. But here, finally, the much awaited and anticipated L.A.D.I.E.S. meeting #4 summary!! (yay!)

The topic of this meeting was "Ask a Question." In it, our goal was to learn more about our own pieces and writing styles through the feedback of our groupmates, coming up with a particular question about our work that we wanted answered. So we spent the first few minutes of our meeting pondering what we wanted our questions to be. We expected this to take less time than it did, but composing the questions was more difficult than we originally anticipated. This was most likely due to the fact that we were all trying to construct a question that was meaningful, that would prompt responses beneficial to our writing process and garner feedback that we genuinely could appreciate. That's a lot of pressure. It's much easier to immediately lean toward more superficial questions, such as "What did you think about this addition here?", "Do my sentences flow?", etc.

In order to ward against that type of judgmental questions, the L.A.D.I.E.S. actually drafted their questions together, bouncing ideas off of one another and asking as they wrote "Do you think this question could prompt a genuine response from you guys?" or "Is the wording too confusing here? Do you get what I'm asking?" Using each other, we immediately felt more comfortable with the situation and all came up with decent questions.

Our next step was, of course, to share our pieces. Sam started us off with a poem she wrote. It was entitled "Letters" and the question she wished us to respond to was whether we thought the fact that she chose to make it rhyme added or took away from its impact. After sharing our initial impressions of the poem (calling back to a previous group meeting by instating the "summary and sayback" feedback technique) we addressed her original question. It ended up being rather difficult to answer. Although the rhyme scheme made it interesting and kept us actively listening, it seemed a bit discordant with the subject and mood of the poem, which was rather darker than the mood the rhyme lent it. This led us to a small tangent discussion on whether anything that rhymes can ever truly take a serious tone, or if we are all biased to immediately assume a consistent rhyme scheme to be juvenile (not in the insulting sense, but rather meaning that it is meant for children to enjoy) and lyric-esque. We ended up concluding that perhaps Sam should keep the rhyme but somewhere in the middle add a change (perhaps one single line to stand on its own) that would break up the consistency of the poem and alter its feel. But then, on the other hand, wouldn't doing this simply give the poem an awkward, unpolished feel to it? (Ugh. All our answers simply lead to more questions. Why is life always like that?)

Moving on from Sam's poem, Elizabeth shared her revised piece with us: the story of a girl who has her very own tree. This is a piece we were already familiar with, so we were eager to see where she had taken it. The question she wished for us to answer was if there was something about the story we would change. If so why, if not why not. After sharing her revision with us, we began with sharing our impressions with her. It was openly agreed upon that the work gave us a very warm and happy feeling. As for changes, at first all we could agree upon were simple grammatical things. But we soon found ourselves in a conversation about where Elizabeth might take the story and how she planned to finish it. It was when we were discussing these things that we were able to bring up potential alterations of a section here or a section there, simply to fit with a certain ending or plot shift. We had many laughs bringing up ridiculous potentials (she and the tree merge to form a ZOMBIE!!11!!1) but in the end, genuinely felt like we helped with her story and really look forward to the next draft.

Lastly we focused on my own piece (which was actually nonexistent that particular day). Since I did not have my revision with me, I called upon my groupmates' memories and asked (much like Sam) their feelings of my choice to continue the story entirely in rhyme, and (concerning the short story part) what age range they felt my writing style was geared to. I had been feeling that the same rhyme style over and over might be getting repetitive, but the group felt it consistent and still enjoyable. As for age range, it was a bit harder to come to consensus. My writing style cannot be said to be geared toward young children simply because I have a young child as the heroine. We wondered over whether I should write an alternate practice version, dumbing it down a bit, using language appropriate to that of young children. But for now, the piece I am working on might be said to be middle-school level. My groupmates shared, upon my request, their own visions of what the appearance of my main characters might be. They helped me narrow down some initial sketches and gave their feedback about potential places I might take the plot.

We finished off (being short a member of the L.A.D.I.E.S that day) by discussing each of our particular readings and going on a tangent about Disney movies and squiggly daggers. (Long story.) Overall, it was a very successful gathering.

2/08/08 Summary and Sayback Discussion

During the last class, we read the summary and sayback and really tried to make sure that we understood the difference between the two concepts. We then read our pieces aloud and after we had read them, we used the concepts of summary and sayback to give the person comments. After each person read their piece, we would summarize it and then ask the author questions which sometimes they could not answer. This would then be helpful to them because it gave them new ideas too think about if they were writing a story, or in Elizabeth's case, something she didn't think about when writing her poem.
Barbara continued with her children's story, Katie continued with her short story, Sam began a short story relating to the book she is reading, and Elizabeth wrote a poem to experiment with rhyming. As a group we did not modify the meeting guidelines since they worked well for us, but a significant moment for us was when we listened to the short story that Sam wrote (which was about the last people on earth) and discussed what we think life would be like if we were the only ones left. In our next meeting we are looking forward to the progress of the short stories. Each time we hear something new it is like a new chapter so it keeps us waiting to hear more. Overall, the L.A.D.I.E.S. had a nice meeting.

Group Meeting 1/30

We read the handouts from class, and the short story "Sprinkles". We discussed the story and agreed that we didn't much like it, because it seemed as though it was just a lot of complaining and didn't make a point or truly go anywhere. Then we each read our pieces out loud and gave one another feedback. Barbara and I both had poems, and Katie and Elizabeth both wrote short stories. We each decided to revise and/or finish our pieces. Finally, we discussed a book that we might all want to read, but we didn't select one. We all planned to think about what we wanted to read and will decide on a book next meeting.

What we did on 1-22

We met, and shared our object stories. Barbara's object was a stick she found when she was younger with her name on it, Elizabeth's was a series of post-its with abstract doodles that helped her concentrate, Sam's was a whiteboard and dry erase markers, and mine was a collection of used books. We talked about these, and their significance to us. We then talked about what we were reading and what we wanted to write this semester. We shared our goals with one another, and then we each shared ways in which we might be able to assist one another with our goals. It was interesting to see where some of our goals overlapped and some of them were unique.