On "Reviewing A Manuscript"

I have to join in with the author in saying I'm not certain of my qualifications to review manuscripts! I do love to read other classmates work, although I do not know how helpful I really am.

When I bring a paper to be read and dissected for revision, I expect respect and honesty. I don't like it when people just say "this is good" to protect my feelings. I would rather be told if it stinks. I know I am far from a perfect writer so nothing you could say would hurt my feelings, unless you were mean to me:)

I pretty much follow most of the revisionary advice people give me, but it depends from who it comes from too. I have to feel trust towards the person who is doing the revising that they have a good understanding of English and of what I am trying to say in a paper.

On "On Writing" by Stephen King

One of the things that struck me about the pages we read this week was that the number one tool in your toolbox is vocabulary. When King showed the examples of the several types of vocabulary it really impressed me how words can change the style, tone, and meaning of a work. When he talked about just using your normal vocabulary and not trying to dress it up, it made me think of when I was back it high school and I would look up word in a thesaurus to sound smarter. Luckily I have abandoned that practice! I agree that you should use the word you thought of because that is usually the word that portrays what you are trying to say, how you want to say it, and it reveals your voice.

On "A Brief History of Memoir - Bashing" by Ben Yagoda

Can you lie in a memoir? Of course you can, but should you? In my opinion, when a person lies it leaves the genre of memior and enters into fiction. There is no point of writing a memoir if you are going to exaggerate and lie about what happened.

I have to admit I am a person who does not care for memoir for the general public. For example, My grandfather from Germany wrote some memoirs before he passed away and I am very glad because it allows me to know more about him, but he wrote it only for his family. On the other hand, I would never pick up one written by a "famous" person, it does not interest me.

On "First Person Female" by Jim Harrison

It is hard to specifically take an opinion on this article considering I have not read any of the author's novels about women, so I can't say yea or nay to his accuracy:) That being said, I don't think there is anything wrong with male or female characters creating characters of the opposite sex or different ethnicity's portraying other ethnicity's or cultures.

When reading anything that is well written you don't usually even think about the sex or ethnicity of the author because the characters are realistic or the sex/race is unimportant to the story. Although sometimes characters are not portrayed realistically, most of the time that is done on purpose. For instance in the play Trifles by Susan Glaspell, the male characters are ridiculous. This is done on purpose, it is a feminist play and the playwright is trying to make a point through the overemphasized silliness of the characters.

Is a piece of writing authentic if characters are created by people of the opposite sex? No, not a hundred percent, but it can be accurate or close to the mark. No matter what you do a man is not a woman and a white person is not an Indian and vice versa, but that does not mean that experiences with them, observations, study, or living like another won't give you a good insight into how they act and feel. Authors must not be presumptuous though and constantly aware of the balance of their characters.