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-Jodi Picoult
In this blogpost we have to write about three good things that happened each day this week. A total of 21 good moments.
Tuesday 10/30: 1.) Starting this assignment itself is a good thing. 2.) I had a good start of a conversation with my boyfriend and my mom. 3.) I managed not to eat McDonald's today as a part of my diet routine.. Wednesday 10/31: 1.) I went to Fright Factory Event and also to Terror Behind The Wall event for halloween with my friends. 2.) I got back home before my curfew. 3.) I offered my night prayer on time. Thursday 11/1: 1.) Honestly, wasn't feeling good but could have been worse so that's a good thing. 2.) I finished my math quiz. 3.) My boyfriend took me to Amish Country to Lancaster to help me relax. Friday 11/2: 1.) My therapists said I'm doing better than before regarding my anger and depression. 2.) I took my brother to school today. 3.) I got my hair done. Saturday 11/3: 1.) Pay -Day is my happy day. 2.) Went shopping. 3.) Went to visit my niece and nephew at the hospital. Sunday 11/4: 1.) Visited my niece and nephew again this morning. 2.) Bought them toys. 3.) It was my parents marriage anniversary so we celebrated later that night. Monday 11/5: 1.) Made coffee for my dad. 2.) Took my brother to school. 3.) Managed to be at work on time.
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For this blog post I am going to write about my experiences so far in this class and I am also going to talk about three of my intrinsic goals for the rest of this class.
My experience in this class has been a very stressful and also beneficial. It was stressful because of all the blog assignments and the deadlines were one after another. Especially for me it was very difficult because I am not a writing person. I get very anxious while thinking about how to start the writing, keep it going and even when I drag a conclusion to it. But the good thing about this is it got me spending time trying to overcome those challenges, had me think deeper and I believe I improved a little but in the writing and thinking area. If I would have to choose a couple of assignments in the class that have affected me or got me to really look deeper into myself would have to be Hills like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway, listening to the podcast by Lulu Wang, and the very first blog assignment where the objective was to write a story based on the quotes from famous authors. Hills like White Elephants basically talks about the iceberg theory. It gave me the thought that I would need to be better on my symbols and motifs and if I wasn't doing that already, I would need to start doing so more. The Podcast by Lulu Wang was about assimilating other forms of text and how it could help a story move faster and smoother. Listening to the podcast by Lulu Wang in class, I learned the importance of diction that can really help create any feelings the author wants if they use it correctly. About the blog assignments, the first blogpost that was about writing process was the most effective and helpful for me to start my improvement on writing. Up until then, I hadn't sat down and really written anything in a while, and I kind of had forgotten how calming and relaxing it is, while at the same time being super exciting when I make it to the deadline and finish writing something that I put a lot of time into. My primary intrinsic goals for the rest of this class would have to be to continue doing better on my writing in certain ways. A few of these ways I have learned more so in my time in the class, being to get more creative and be able to use my imagination more while I write, to enhance my vocabulary to the point where I am not repeating the same words more than once every paragraphs, and to be more focused on the main topic. Blog post Section I: Found Poem
For this blogpost I am going to find a 100 words from my Narrative Project and come up with a found poem using the vocabularies and phrases that are the main focus of this Narrative. This Narrative Project is a true story about a moment from my past that strongly impacted my life in both a negative and positive way. I had a hard time to accept the fact that I had to leave my country, everything where I started, forever.. A conflict happened between me and my parents as I was against that decision of leaving. While writing this narrative a lot of memories and emotions were brought up. I was a bit of overwhelmed but expressing these feelings were good. The descriptive method in which I describe the situation has helped provide for my poem. So here we go.. Gravitational force of Attraction memorize the definition mumbling,distracted,disturbed Concentration, distant sound more intense impress blowing hundreds of paper to-do lists rearrange,overwhelmed flushed with all these thoughts staring at space new opportunity, start things fresh seemed like a villain In this blog post, I read My Mother Gives me a Writing Lesson (Martin Lee), to revise my blog post 5, and write a telling scene after the scene to provide the reader with the context. A story from my past that impacted my life deeply.
"Wake up! Open the door!” There was a heavy knock on my door. It was 7 am in the morning. I jumped off the bed, my head was blank for the first few seconds and all I could think of was what could possibly happen so bad that my mom cried out like that, yelling my name. I opened the door and there was my mom, crying like it was the end of the world. It happened in 2016, on my birthday. My parents took me to the movies for my birthday celebration. It was a wonderful evening. We had a fancy dinner. Especially my dad had big dinner. One big bowl of rice with chicken curry, shrimp cooked in gravy but with that Diet Coke on the side though. He is a all time food lover. It was a perfect family time. We took endless pictures of the moment. Everyone was good until the next morning. “Call 911 immediately!” My mom yelled. “What? What happened... but..” Hearing that my heart dropped a beat. I was gonna ask my mom but my subconscious mind knew it could be my dad, but I didn’t want that to be true. So right when I was about to ask my mom what happened, I looked over and found my dad sitting at the corner of the room with a hand on the left side of his chest. He was in pain. Seeing him like this that day, I realized that this was my greatest fear. It felt like everything was spinning and I was in the center, all the furniture, lights were just making noises and our family is their target. I didn’t know what to do or what to say. My hand reached my pocket and took my phone and dialed 911. It was happening automatically. I was there, frozen. The ambulance arrived in about 7 minutes. My dad looked up. "Make way for the patient please, Ma'am I need you to step aside please" The voices started to fade in the background and I was staring at the blank space even though it was nothing blank in front of me. It was the most terrifying moment for us. I was standing there thinking to myself, "Why? Why my father?" In this post, I am going to write a past scene from my life where I faced my greatest fear and how that impacted my life. What You Don't Know by Lulu Wang gave me an idea of how this one should go.
It was back in 2016. The next day after my birthday. My parents took me to the movies as a celebration for my birthday. It was a wonderful day, everything was going well. We had a fancy dinner, took pictures. Everyone was good until the next morning. My mom knocked on my door so hard, yelling my name. I jumped off the bed, my head was blank for the first few seconds and all I could think was what could possibly happen so bad that she would cry out like that. I thought of all the worst possible things that could have happened. I opened my door and there was mom, crying like it was the end of the world. Well, to her, it kind of was. She told me to call the ambulance right there and then. Hearing that my heart dropped a beat. I didn't know what happened, or what was going on because it all happened in just few minutes. But I figured, it was about my dad. My mom didn't even have to tell me what was it about. I could tell by the look on her face. Even though it happened in the morning, I felt like everything started to get darker around me. Like I was in the center of the scene and there was this imaginary hurricane going on around me right when I saw my dad sitting at the corner of the room, with a hand on the left side of his chest. He was in pain. I didn't know what to do or what to say, I was so panicked and lost to see him in that condition. The ambulance arrived in about seven minutes. He was taken to the emergency unit and after a few hours of diagnosing the doctors reached out to us with a news that I wish I hadn't heard. His heart was blocked and could have had a heart attack anytime. My mom was so devastated at this that she couldn't utter a word for the next fifteen minutes. Our world fell into pieces. It all happened right after that night. And since that day, I feel guilty to this day, that maybe my dad wouldn't have had to go through this if it wasn't for me, if it wasn't for my birthday. Because I knew that he was a cardiac patient and he is food lover, it was my responsibility to keep an eye on his diet. I mean, as a daughter I could have helped him but it happened because of my ignorance. Maybe not all of it, but still I could've stopped this from happening. From the title of this blog it is very obvious that I am going to write a present scene from my life with dialogues and symbolisms. I read Hills Like White Elephants by Ernest Hemingway to improve my kills on present scenes.
He is on his phone, probably scrolling through his instagram page, I don’t know. Constantly staring at his phone, with a bored face. “Who is he texting?, what is he watching on his phone that he doesn’t even have the time to look at me.” I wonder. I am wearing his favorite color, just got my nails done today and also got my hair treated, but he doesn’t seem to notice any of these. It’s whatever now. It’s been like this for a while now. I don’t even care much about it. I lie to myself saying that I don’t care just to get over it. I’m trying not to start, but I can’t ignore the fact that I feel like there’s a problem going on between us. “How was work today?” I asked just to start the conversation. These days, it’s hard to find a topic to start a conversation with him. “It was aight, not much to say. Alex got promoted to the general manager position so we had a lil celebration for that at lunch”. He replied with a flat tone of his voice, still looking at the phone. It’s started to get frustrating because I can’t get him to look at me. “Hmm, well, it must be a really interesting thing your watching on the phone”. “Huh? Oh, no I’m just scrolling down my instagram feed.” Since he confirmed that he is on instagram, I just had to bring it up again even though we’ve had this conversation a million times, “did you like my recent pictures ?” “Yeah babe, you look amazing in that picture.” He answered looking down at his phone. And I just can’t hold the anger inside anymore. “why don’t you look at me? I’m here talking to you and you can’t even get your eyes off your phone for a second what the hell! Am not I attractive anymore??” “What? No babe, what are you talking about? I was just reading this funny meme, I’m sorry babe.” He looked at me with a confused face. “What? Why you looking at me like you dumb? You looking at me like you dumb Turjo!!!?” He now knows what’s coming so he is sitting there looking at me with the ‘here we go again’ look. “What? Why you ‘mad mad’ for?” “What the hell you mean mad mad?” “You must really be mad mad if you calling me by my name name, no boo, no babe, no butter.” I am losing my mind like I am about to bust all these accusations from the past just because I’m angry and I need to yell for about 5 minutes to calm down. “What the fuck is mad mad? I don’t even care about that shit right now, when I ask you to do something, fucking do it!” His face is straight as ever like whatever I am saying, he already knows what I’m gonna say next. “Okay, I did comment on your pictures, I just didn’t do the last one cuz I was busy but I was gonna do it, I didn’t know you wanted me to do it do it. If you wanted me to do it do it I would have did it right then and there.” “What the fuck is you saying, ‘mad mad’? That’s not English Bitch. Shut the fuck up up, how about that? That’s what you want me to say to get you to shut up!? Up up. Shut the fuck up up! Fucking dickhead dickhead, stupid bitch bitch”. “Damn you really mad for no reason” he replied with an attitude. In this post I am going to compose a scene using the descriptions I read about in "What is Creative Non-fiction?" by Lee Gutkind, "Making Scenes in Memoir." by Lee Martin and "My Name is Margaret?" by Maya Angelou. Scene composing is something that writers should know in order to be a good writer. So here I go.. Driving around Fairmount Park is an everyday thing for us now. Rushing to work every morning, taking the same route, seeing the same view everyday, it has now become a thing for our life. Like I feel some type of way not going there. By our I mean my boyfriend and I. Even though we see this place everyday, it still gives us chills. Like, there is something so interesting about this place. So peaceful. The beauty of it is in its vastness and greenness. I don't know if that's a word. Starting from the trees of different size and kinds, short grass; like its a carpet made of grass, the sound of water flowing down the fountains into the pool, gazebos in the middle of the park, birds chirping to even the roads running down the park are like in perfect harmony. It all seems so perfectly in sync. It is like a perfect place for shooting a perfect romantic scene for a movie. Everything is just so beautifully done there. The design and architecture of this park just touched my heart. We never really took our time to take any good picture there before so we are planning on taking a long walk at the park and also do a photoshoot. It's been a while we've had our pictures taken. It is on this particular Sunday, perfect weather, the sun is calm, chilly wind blowing; making a beautiful sound of nature. We both don't have work today, so we took our chance to reconnect with each other, get our mind off things and just have a nice time together after a long week of stressful days at work. We get there all dressed up. I am wearing red it happens to go perfect with the surroundings. I can't stop but feeling excited because I look so cute and he is just hyping me up. The color, smell and the sounds of this moment right now feels like the park knew we were gonna be there. As if they are calling us. Like a scene from a disney movie. He holds my hand and takes out his phone to take the perfect picture. It was quiet. No noise from the city, no loud music. No restlessness. It was the music of nature that I can only hear at this moment. My hair is flowing along with the wind; it was the perfect resemblance of my mood. My red saree was flowing towards the call of the nature. I can't stop feeling so relaxed. It was all love. And the picture turns out to be better than I thought. Like we are some instagram models. I am starting to feel like this was a much needed break for from the everyday stressful life and to reconnect with each other in this whole new world within the real world we live in. In this post, I will have my three favorite quotes from each reading and also talk about my own thoughts about the writing process.
My cousin took part in the Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Contest last year. I saw him very focused on this. He was very passionate about writing since he was little. He would literally sit for hours, with his doors shut, constantly staring at the blank paper he had in front of him. He looked worried that he does not have enough passion and couldn't decide how to start. But he knew, once he starts to write, it gets easier to keep going. He finally came up with his fiction and he got nominated. I went with him as his support and witnessed a huge crowd of thousands of different people came only for the love of writing. It felt magical and also very inspiring that writing is really a thing for some people to fulfill their need to be visible, the need to make sense of life. We walked through the crowd to find a seat kinda close to the stage. I guess that's a natural thing people tend to do at events like this. My cousin was a bit nervous but mostly he was excited to see so many people like him, chasing the same goal. Suddenly he tapped on my shoulder. I looked at him and saw his eyes got bigger with excitement because he spotted three famous writers he read about in books and articles, in the audience. I looked over and recognized them right away. I learned about them from my English class. Yes, I'm talking about Don Murray, Anne Lamott and Maria Popova. We thought its a great opportunity to go introduce with them. So we found a seat somewhere next to them. I felt very lucky. I said Hi and went in for a handshake. They looked at me with a very positive and welcoming eyes. I liked the vibe. As I was telling them how much I like their writing and that they were great at inspiring people to write, I took a seat right next to Don Murray. Don Murray asked me if I was the contestant. I replied with a laugh; laughing at myself because I could never put my name in a writing competition. I am horrible at writing. Don Murray listened to me with a smile on his face like whatever I was saying was silly. As I was describing my fear of being wrong and my restlessness while writing, Don Murray stopped me and said, " The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say." (1) He also added, "It is the process of exploration of what we should know and what we feel bout what we know through language." (2) I was amazed and my mind was blown at his quotes. I just realized that I never really looked at it this way. Its all about perspective. Interesting. While I was listening to Murray, I think his wonderful quotes caught Anne Lamott's attention. She joined the conversation and said something even cooler, " Writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas smells run down like water- just as writing is also about dealing with emptiness" (3) My cousin and I overwhelmed at these quotes. I was sitting there like how the hell do these people have so much passion for writing, I just don't get it and that's when Maria Popova jumped in with her opinion, "My passion drive me to the typewriter everyday of my life, and they have driven me there since I was twelve, So I never have to worry about schedules. Some new thing is always exploding in me, and it schedules me. I don't schedule it. It says: Get to the typewriter and finish this." (4) Maria Popova said Jack Kerouac describes her thought on best time and place for writing "The desk in the room near the bed, with a good light, midnight till dawn, a drink when you get tired, preferably at home, make a home out of your hotel room or motel room or pad; peace." (5) I could relate to her, because I saw my cousin doing the same things. Even I do it too but still not as much. Maria Popova followed up by mentioning that a Japanese writer, Haruki Murakami shares his mind-body connection, " The repition itself becomes the important thing: its a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind" (6) I kind of started to get nervous because I was comparing myself to them and those who are expert on the writing process. All these big, meaningful thoughts from these famous people coming one after another made me feel a little frustrated because I have none of the qualities these people have. Anne Lamott said, "Writing can be pretty desperate endeavor because it is about some of our desperate needs: our need to be visible, to be heard, our need to make sense for our lives, to wake up and grow along." (7) Hearing all these great ways to improve our writing process, from these great people made me rethink about the teaching system that most teachers use. I asked Don Murray that why don't the schools teach the students about these strategies. Don Murray said, "Instead of teaching finished writing, we should teach unfinished writing. We work with language in action." (8) Two and a half hours passed, while I was enjoying this wonderful, educative conversation with them, suddenly I heard a huge round of applause in the audience. It was my cousin who was called onto the stage for winning the contest he worked so hard for. The three authors congratulated him. I burst into tears seeing my cousin standing out of the crowd, everyone was clapping, I felt so proud. At that moment Anne Lamott whispered into my ears seeing the tears on my cousin's eyes that " Writing is not rapturous." (9). Yes, it was the outcome of the hard work. (1) Teach Writing as a Process Not Product (Don Murray) (2) Teach Writing as a Process Not Product (Don Murray) (3) Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life (Anne Lammot) (4) Quote by Ray Bradbury excerpted from The Daily Writing Routines of Great Writers (Maria Popova) (5) Quote by Jay Kerouac excerpted from The Daily Writing Routines of Great Writers (Maria Popova) (6) Quote by Haruki Murakami excerpted from The Daily Writing Routines of Great Writers (Maria Popova) (7) Teach Writing as a Process Not Product (Don Murray) (8) Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life (Anne Lammot) (9) Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life (Anne Lammot) The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions about one's personality. It is way to show people about their true self and who they really are and it also helps the person who is taking the questionnaire to find out about themselves and that's pretty much what a proust questionnaire is. Here goes my proust questionnaire. __1.__What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being at home with your family. __2.__What is your greatest fear? Witnessing the death of my parents. __3.__Which living person do you most admire? My father, mother and my little brother. __4.__What is your current state of mind? I'm stressed. __5.__On what occasion do you lie? On the occasion of getting caught. __6.__What do you most dislike about your appearance? My body __7.__What is the quality you most like in a man? Man who puts their family first no matter what. __8.__What is the quality you most like in a woman? Self respect and a being a woman who supports other women. __9.__Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Whatever”, “yeah sure” , “what the f*©k” __10.__What or who is the greatest love of your life? Myself. __11.__When and where were you happiest? I don't remember __12.__Which talent would you most like to have? Do computer programming like it's nothing. __13.__If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My body. __14.__What do you consider your greatest achievement? Being a nonjudgmental with a power of acceptance of the world everyday. __15.__If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be? Myself. _16.__Where would you most like to live? Wherever my parents, my brother lives. __17.__What is your most treasured possession? None __18.__What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? When my most loved ones don't understand what I am going through and just ignore everything. __19.__What is your most marked characteristic? Friendly and caring. __20.__What do you most value in your friends? Genuineness __21.__Who are your favorite writers? __22.__Who is your hero of fiction? Black Panther __23.__Who are your heroes in real life? My father __24.__What are your favorite names? Tanzeem, Anwar, Aaron,Timon, Pumba, Simba. __25.__What is it that you most dislike? When people deny the truth. __26.__What is your greatest regret? Wasting too much time and taking too much stress at a very young age. __27.__How would you like to die? I'd like to die in my sleep. __28.__What is your motto? Do what makes you happy and your mother too. |
Tanzeem AnwarI will use this blog to paint my thoughts in words. Archives
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