Blog 6

I thought that the readings about voice were really good. I know a lot of people do not enjoy the Spandel book, but I really do. What she says about a professional writers voice being recognizable is so true. Sometimes when I read a quote I will say "that has to be a Hunter S. Thompson" or whoever, and when I looked at who wrote it I was correct.

What are the things that I thought odd was a quote in the book, "It is a common misconception that voice is an afterthought, like salad dressing on the side." I would not think that that was common. Maybe it's a common misconception for people that don't write often, I don't know.

I understand what Spandel is saying when she says that students will imitate writers that they enjoy. I know from personal experience. I was in a phase of writing like Stephen King for a while, then I was using the phrase "for good or ill," a pet phrase of HST.

I'm a little conflicted with one of the things that Spandel said. She said that we have to be careful of the books that we use to model voice, and that we have to love those books or reading them will be a chore. I get that, but what if there's a book that you just hate but has a good voice. For example, I hate the book The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. While I hate it, I think it would be really good book to incorporate into a middle school class because it does have a really good voice and does not have the normal "dead white guy" author.

I have to say that in the beginning of Chapter 12 of the Smith book I was really enjoying it, and that's uncommon. I really liked his quote, "nothing in the world is self evident; nothing announces itself. Everything we know about the world we must have learned." It always irritates me when people say, "that's common knowledge"; there is no such thing as common knowledge until we actually learn the thing that is supposed to be common knowledge. Later on in the chapter, the Smith that I'm used to appears, with his philosophizing and his dense paragraphs.