Blog Number Six

Tom Ramano's story of his daughter Mariana and her development of a story, and how the story developed her as a writer was heartwarming, but I didn't find much to the piece beyond the retelling of a story and an emphasis on the way success in writing, even if the success is personal, helps a person to blossom as a writer.

In Smith's piece on how we become writers through learning he makes man interesting points. I like that he quickly hits upon the fact that, in a good writer, "their ability is a matter of selecting conventions rather than applying rules." (177) I appreciate that, because most of my favorite authors were best known for defying conventions and taking prose somewhere new that the rules had previously forbidden. I also like that he states "learning is a natural as breathing" (179) and that it's applying what we learn both formally and intuitively that gives us tools for good writing. Overall, this piece was very effective, and had many strong points as to what motivates us to learn and how that links to language and then writing.

I like that Spandel addresses issues of voice. I've seen a lot of writers struggle with the issue. However, she seems to address the matter by asking the reader to identify voice and by stressing the importance of voice, which I find less valuable. She makes some points I found cheesy such as "voice is power", where I would much rather she expand on the matters of perspective and how that lends to the writing, which is very briefly mentioned. The biggest mistake she made, as I see it, is using Stephen King as an example for someone who experiments with voice. It was a quote from his book On Writing, which made me realize why I was never quite fond of his work. To try and end positively, she was smart to point out that you need to listen for the rythm of voice, especially with dialog, in order to make it seem natural.