Throughout this trimester I have learned and evolved as a
writer. The blog posts and the ongoing reading at home have brought me to see
the creativity in writing as well as the form and structure. Although I am
still not the best writer, through more experiences like this blog, I will
learn more. Starting off this year was a little bit difficult. Reading is a big
weakness of mine. I am a very slow reader but I have noticed an improvement
within this year. One struggle I had through this experience was that it was
hard for me to just sit down and start reading. I worked past this by making
myself every night read a certain amount of pages. Also another struggle was
thinking of a good blog to write about. I worked past this by thinking about
the characters in the story, and how they affect the theme and the plot.
Through some thought and certain processes I was able to write a good blog
using textual evidence and creative thinking. Also, a strength I had in writing
blogs was picking out the main ideas of the text as well as writing good
questions at the end to bring literary thought to the view’s mind. Although I
did not read many books this year, I found an interest in writing and reading.
Over
this year, I have become a better writer. But also, I have grown to understand
the main ideas of character and theme. The ideas of character and theme were a
bit complex for me in the beginning. I knew what characters did and looked but
I did not understand the reasons and thematic concepts within each character.
For example, in my 2nd blog post of this trimester, I explain a
little about the main character. “In this book, the main character, Robert
Langdon, is a symbolist who knows lots about the history of ancient cultures”
(Sones, 2). Before, I would not go in depth on characters. All I knew was the
outer shell of a character, not the mindset, feelings, and contributions to the
story. I did not know the ideas of dynamic and flat characters as well as
complex and static features of each person in the story. Along with my
misunderstanding of complex characters, I did not state anything about theme in
my blog; this brought an uncreative and boring aspect to the blog. My lack of
creative thinking was clearly shown through many of the passages in my 2nd
blog post. “I predict that while investigating this terrible crime, Robert will
get himself into lots of trouble like in the last book, The Da Vinci Code”
(Sones, 2). Before, I did not go in-depth about theme. I simply wrote down what
I thought was going to happen in the plot with no intelligent information, when
I could have talked about a prediction of what the theme will be.
Fortunately,
over the trimester, my writing severely changed for the better. As we talked in
class and I wrote/read more, I grew to understand the concepts of theme and
character. In time, I added more detail about the complex characters and how
they bring messages, convey theme, and pull the plot forward. Also, I brought
more thematic ideas to the table. In my 7th blog post, you can see
the changes I made to improve my critical thinking and conceptual ideas. “Olivetti
is a Swiss Guard leader that is very strict and strong. Olivetti is very
aggressive and can disagree a lot. He pulls the plot by being weary about the
Illuminati attack. As the book moves on, Olivetti helps bring the Illuminati to
justice. One symbol that would describe him would be a teacher's apple. This
describes Olivetti because Olivetti is very strict but is giving and caring
like a teacher” (Sones, 7). I grew as a writer over the trimester because instead
of putting plain and simple observations, I went to extremes and described how
they affect the plot as well as describe them as people. I described each main
character with a symbol to show the metaphorical aspects of each person. I now
can describe character’s roles in a story as well as how they act, feel, and
their characteristics. With my advance in critical thinking on characters, I
also became better suited for describing the thematic statements. In my 4th
blog post, you can see the development of my writing. “The author Dan Brown
shows the ideas of good and evil in the book…The good and evil in Angels and
Demons is depicted in the way the characters act and do in the book. The nature
of good and evil can reside in all people; it just depends on how they use
their minds. The book also describes how evil should always be stopped and good
should always be within society” (Sones, 4). At the beginning of the year, I
just wrote simple ideas on plot. I never was able to talk about the concepts
and ideas in each character and book. After more reading and writing, I was
able to form theme ideas within texts and post them on my blog. I was able to
talk about the ideas the book referred to, like good and bad.
In
all, I grew as a writer over this trimester. I started off writing simple
observations with no critical thinking. Eventually, I learned the ideas of
character as well as the concepts of theme and thematic ideas.
