First .... If You Knew What I Knew Now

This is a very interesting article. It starts off with two boys named Ryan and Ben, next door neighbors in the back of their station wagon coming home from dinner. Ryan expresses that he loves Ben, yet they are only five years old. What could a five year old possibly know about love. He then asks Ben to marry him and is overheard by his mother and she tells him that two boys can not get married. When Ryan is first expressing how he feels about Ben it isn't made clear that he is a boy, so the only thing that would be on your mind from that point up until it is made clear is the fact that he is a boy is the fact that they are only in kindergarten. After he is told by his mother that he cannot marry Ben, the story jumps to him being in sixth grade having to work on a social studies project with two boys named Mark and Jared. He goes to Marks house to work on the project and is tricked into leaving the room so that the boys could begin their plan. They pretend to kiss each other. Knowing that Ryan does like boys but is hiding it they do this to try to make him say it. Ryan carried that moment for a long time until he ran into Jared at their ten year class reunion. Jared began to apologize but Ryan cut him off saying that just by him remembering that night was enough.

On Pandering by Claire Vaye Watkins

On Pandering by Claire Vaye Watkins

                In this essay Claire explains the struggles of her being a female writer. She was never acknowledge as a writer because she was a woman, but to her she was a writer whether she was good or bad she was still a writer. After an email sent by Stephen Elliot saying how he wanted to sleep in her bed and her telling him no and him going on about how she was unsure and was drinking made her realize what she had to do to have her voice heard. She figured the only way to do this was to write like a man. She started to watch men, whatever they did she watched them. She wanted to be able to write something that would be appealing to the famous male writers not just the female writers. She felt like by her being overlooked by everyone because she was a woman was sexual entitlement.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

In “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” David Foster Wallace talks about how he fell in love with this woman he had met in the park. When he met this woman he had no intention of her being anything more than a one night stand. When he had actually approached her he was nothing less than honest and respectful. They eventually went back to the house and did what he planned on doing. They started talking and she told him an anecdote of a time when she was hitchhiking and was picked up by a psychotic sex offender. She explained to him her whole experience with the sex offender and it was during that time he fell for her. He admired the way she told the story without telling it in a way to get certain reactions out of him. During the interview he also explained that how him and the sex offender were the same. Even though he treated her with the upmost respect that was no different from the sex offender picking her up from on side of the road and taking advantage of her. They also came to the conclusion that the people labeled as psychotic are not the bad people. They are the people that is scared and running but don’t really know how to escape.

My Last Attempt To Explain What Happened To The Lion Tamer

 “My Last Attempt to Explain What Happened to the Lion Tamer” is mainly about a clown, a lion tamer, and a flying girl (the acrobat of the air). The clown and the lion tamer were already apart of this circus and the flying girl is just getting there. The clown claims that the lion tamer was not a good lion tamer until the flying girl started working with them. The clown started to fall for her as soon as he seen her but kept his feelings to himself for a while until he worked up enough confidence to finally say something. When the time came when he wanted to pour his heart out to her, he seen her kissing the lion tamer. This caused him to get really jealous and planned to make an act making fun of his act but jokingly, but he had to put that on hold because the lion tamer’s act was not bad like it usually is. The clown kept that act to himself and was going to do it the night that the lion tamer revealed the new act he had been working on. This new act did not go according to plan and the lion tamer ended up dying and since the clown was going on after him and was prepared to mock his act it seemed as if he meant for it to end up like it did. The clown is now trying to explain that he had nothing to do with the incident and from the title I figure that he has tried numerous times to explain this to people and no one is listening so this is his last time and or he’s giving up.

Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott

In “Shitty First Drafts” Anne Lamott explains how every writer goes through some type of issue before they can successfully write something. No matter how good or how much money they have, there is an obstacle that stands in the way of just sitting down and writing an amazing paper. There is a starting point for everything, rarely anything just comes natural. It may take several days, weeks, or even months to get what you really want. As long as you keep working at it, everything will turn out great. Everyone’s motivation is different, therefore everyone has different techniques of accomplishing things. Even though that is true, you must start with the shitty first drafts. First drafts are not meant to be perfect. They are the base of a perfect paper. The first draft gives insight to the rest of your ideas. People fail to realize how important first drafts are and tend to overlook them. There is so much information and or motivation that comes from your first draft. When writing a first draft you write without thinking. You let the words flow out, so your ideas just be everywhere. Once you are finished with the first draft and read over it, then you will see the uniqueness of it.