Extra Credit Blog

          Over the course of this semester we have had to do several different kinds of assignments. We have had to do poetry writings, reading assignments, fiction writing, writing exercises, and compiled multiple portfolios of our different works. Of all of these assignments that we have had to do, if I had to choose one that had a greater impact on me or my writing practices I would have to say it was the Fiction Portfolio assignment. The fiction portfolio was much more enjoyable to me when compared to the other forms of writing we did, and this is why I think I tried harder, sent more time, and overall, created a better final product in my fiction writing.
          This assignment helped me to expand the limits that I thought existed in my writing abilities. Writing poetry can be fun, however, there is only so much of it that I can take. I was never much of a poetry person. To me, poetry is best when it reads like music, however, not all see it this way. I found it difficult and tedious to write poetry eventually. As for the creative essays, I found it difficult to stay away from fiction writing as I wrote my essays. They should be creative, but not so farfetched that they border on fantasy. The line between the two was so thin that I just got frustrated. However, writing the fiction essays allowed me to use the parts of my imagination that I do not normally access. I learned that there are so many different paths you can take when writing fiction stories. There are limitless boundaries to what you can say or have your characters do or even what they can look like. They could do magical things or just ordinary things surrounded by a magical plot. Knowing that I had that much room to write helped me to get out of my shell and think outside the norms.
          This allowed me to broaden my horizons and take my writing to new heights. I feel like I did some of my best writing and expanded and improved on my rough drafts with the help of my fellow classmates and teacher. The most impactful part of writing fiction was that I could include a lot of my own person tastes in storytelling and I could incorporate my life events to make my writings both personally interesting, and interesting for others. I was able to place so much of myself in the fiction and still tell a story. I drew from other fiction that I enjoyed reading and I used writing techniques that I saw in their writings as well as the writings of those that we read in class.
          Overall, I feel that in writing the fiction portfolio, I wanted to create a better final product and that made me strive to write more in-depth and sophisticated work. This helped me learn ways in which I can improve my writings and ways in which I can learn to work off of other sources of inspiration. I think that it helped me to tap further into my creative side and use that to write papers that I was proud of. They were papers that I did not actually mind writing, and that can make all the difference. I am pleased with what I accomplished with the fiction portfolio because it was a compilation of my favorite stories that I wrote of my favorite genre, and I will try to use what I learned in that process when putting effort in to my future pieces of writing. This is the impact that the fiction portfolio had on me and my writing skills.

          This week, for my blog update, I have been assigned to write about a section in the last part of our Maps To Anywhere novel. In particular, I wanted to write about the section we covered in class and add a few of my own personal thoughts into the discussion. To start off with, this section was called "The House of the Future". The story centers around the main character and his experience with watching his brother fall ill and eventually pass, and the aftershock that was born from his passing.

          In the beginning, the man is talking about this house and what he sees in it. It is a very futuristic house, as the title gives away, and the drive there is when he give detail about the state of mind of his parents. His father is eager to arrive whilst his mother is more or less lethargic and uncaring. After the death of his brother, the mother basically shut down and could not do much in the way of coping or resuming a normal behavioral regimen.

          They arrive at this house and it is there that we find him reminiscing of all the things that he saw his brother go through. He spoke of the times he would come home from a trip away and expect to find his brother completely healed and walking around, entirely healthy. Yet, it was never so. He would arrive to find his brother in his crippled, bedridden state. At one point, he recalls a time when he was younger and learning to swim for the first time. He remembered his brother bringing him out into open water, letting go of him, and encouraging him to paddle his way to him, moving further away though, so as to give the boy more practice. It was such a tiny insignificant moment, and yet it was still important enough to write about alongside of the other gruesome details of his brothers passing. This, to me, seemed like a metaphor for the way he felt about his brother during these times. The sink-or-swim scenario seemed to reflect the way he felt about caring for his sickly sibling. The way he talked about him always moving further and further away, though it was simply to get him to swim further, was a way of saying that he felt he could never get close enough to his brother, for when he did, it was as if he would slip away every time.

          One other thing that I noticed throughout the story is that the author does not ever give much of his own personal feeling about the whole ordeal. He does a lot I the way of showing, as opposed to telling, us what he felt and how saddened he was. The details that were used and the memories that were included helped us to understand what the author felt when he may not have been able to really explain straightforwardly. This could have been his way of coping with a devastating situation that no man could put adequately into words. This was his outlet. There is also another section of the book entitled "Underwater", wherein there is another experience that this boy had in a dream that he was drowning and h e had to watch the life fade from his parents eyes as they drowned. This could be another way of relating what he felt watching his parents suffer in the wake of the horrible tragedy that they experienced in losing a son.

          Perhaps he wrote this story more to tell his brother's story than to tell his own. Perhaps he was trying to help others relate to his experience or to relate with others. Everyone experiences hardship and when we do, we want to know that others understand what we are going through and that we do not have to go through it alone. I think that The House of the Future symbolizes a better place that only time can get you to. It is a light at the end of the tunnel where a happier life awaits and even through the darkest of times, like the sickness of a loved one, that light will always give you hope.