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The crowding and leaping chapter was interesting because when writing I have a hard time deciding what needs to be put in and when I need to skip time and leave something out. Like with my workshop piece, I was unsure if I should end it like I did or if I should continue it so we get to know more about the other girl and how the girls interact after finding out that they were soulmates. Most people who have read the story want me to continue, but I'm not really sure if I really need to continue it, if their story is over or not.

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The idea of indirect narration as well as the exercise "Telling it Slant" was one that I really enjoyed and one that was really validating for me as a writer because I've always felt that I used too much dialogue. I've just felt that I could convey more through what the characters were saying than through explaining what was happening. This of course, was me avoiding an information dump without realizing it. So, although I have been working hard on learning how to use more description when necessary, it was also nice to see how dialogue can also be really helpful.

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Observer Narrator using first person

The Great Silence by Ted Chiang

“There’s a pleasure that comes with shaping sounds with your mouth. It’s so primal and visceral that throughout their history, humans have considered the activity a pathway to the divine.

Pythagorean mystics believed that vowels represented the music of the spheres, and chanted to draw power from them.

Pentecostal Christians believe that when they speak in tongues, they’re speaking the language used by angels in Heaven.

Brahmin Hindus believe that by reciting mantras, they’re strengthening the building blocks of reality.

Only a species of vocal learners would ascribe such importance to sound in their mythologies. We parrots can appreciate that.”

Changing Point of View

“Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid

“but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school”

The point of view of the girl is seen in this short line, a quick change from point of view from the person giving the instructions.

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“Two Timing” - changing the tense of the narrative

The Rememberer

“He is shedding a million years a day. I am no scientist, but this is roughly what I figured out. I went to the old biology teacher at the community college and asked him for an approximate timeline of our evolution. He was irritated at first—he wanted money. I told him I'd be happy to pay and then he cheered up quite a bit. I can hardly read his timeline, he should've typed it, and it turns out to be wrong. According to him, the whole process should take about a year, but from the way things are going, I think we have less than a month left” (1)

Second person point of view - addressing the reader, rare but still used in fiction

How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)

“Wait for your brother and your mother to leave the apartment. You've already told them that you're feeling too sick to go to Union City to visit that tia who likes to squeeze your nuts. (He's gotten big, she'll say.) And even though your moms knows you ain't sick you stuck to your story until finally she said, Go ahead and stay, malcriado” (1)

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The chapter on long sentences and complex syntax was interesting to me because they are once again both things I do not think about when writing. I think when I write creatively I end up with short sentences because I feel like when I write long sentences they are confusing. Also, I write long sentences when I write academically to fill up space and get the page count down. So, my long sentences do not always make sense and when I'm writing creatively I want to make sense and that results in shorter sentences.

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The punctuation and grammar chapter was really interesting to me because I have never thought about how my punctuation and grammar can affect how the story is read. My only focus in these areas was to have "correct" grammar and punctuation. Although I've gotten better at realizing that both of those do not have to be exactly perfect when I'm drafting, or else I'd spend an hour researching how to use a semi colon when I really did not have to. So, my writing has never really been focused in grammar and punctuation, instead I focused on the story I was telling, However, after reading the chapter and some thought, I remembered how I felt trying to read fanfictions that did have any type of punctuation and all sorts of grammar mistakes. It made them hard to read and I could not enjoy the underlying story because of it. It is interesting how much of a difference grammar and punctuation makes.

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I thought of this poem when reading the imagery chapter. I could see what I picture as fall, the leaves on the trees and harsh winds

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The idea of carefully choosing language is not lost on me, so this chapter was interesting to me. I often find myself looking up synonyms for words when I feel that something does not fit quite right, in both my academic and creative writing. When I want the tone of what I'm writing to be more professional then I try to use words that are more professional, and when trying to create a voice for a certain character I try to come up with language that character would use.

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The form chapter is one that once again brought me back to when I first was learning about poetry. Learning abut couplets, sonnets, stanzas, and other aspects of formal poetry, all the things I was accustomed to talking about when it came to poetry. These being at least part of the reason I did not really like poetry. The strictness of the forms made it hard for me to enjoy the poetry because I was just focused on rhymes and metrical verse. Once I got a professor that did not focus solely on those aspects I found that I started to enjoy poetry more. Although learning about free verse poetry and other aspects of poetry I started to even enjoy writing some poetry. However, I liked to learn about more the formal forms of poetry and while it was a challenge to write them, I enjoyed writing the poetry.

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When reading this chapter I was brought back to when I first remember learning about poetry in middle school. The idea of light stress and hard stress on a syllable was and is still confusing, because to me a person can put extra stress on any part of a word. So when we did exercises where we had to identify the kind of stress of a syllable, I just guessed and moved on. The chapter did not have much on the different type of stresses, just how they are ordered to create different metrical feet, leaving me just as confused. So, I googled it. The explanation I came up with that made sense to me was that a hard stress has a long vowel sounds or diphthongs while light stress has a short vowel sound. With that, I felt like something clicked into place for me, and while it is still hard for me to hear the difference, I know I can just look at vowel sound and know if it is a light stress or a heavy stress.

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When reading the chapter about sound I thought of this poem. The rhyming with "ly" sounds really nice when reading this poem and in my mind those make the words seem stronger

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When it comes to my early writing it reminds me a lot of the imitation style Oliver talks about. Although I did not write poems, I would write fanfiction which in a sense is a little of imitating style. For most kinds of fanfiction a person writes, they have to imitate the style of the original author to make the characters seem believable. The one kind of fanfiction that I can think of that does not follow this imitation is an Alternate Universe (AU) fanfictions. AU are exactly what they sound like, they take place in a different universe than the canon material, thus the characters can be completely different than they are in Canon. Most of my fanfiction writing was in the same universe as the canon material so I was definitely using the imitation style as I took the characters and put them in new situations, trying to write how I think the canon characters would react.

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Le Guin's workshop method focuses on each person contributing when it comes to critique on a piece. This is important for the person being critiqued so they can get as much advice as they can, but in my mind it can be detrimental for both the writer and the people critiquing. If the people critiquing have no particular opinion in the piece, forcing some type a critique can result in bad advice. So the person critiquing feels pressured and the writer gets something that does not really help them.
The main difference between Le Guin's and Oliver's workshop methods is that Oliver's was made with solely on the workshop for poetry, while Le Guin focuses on fiction but believes it could be used for other forms of writing. Le Guin's method is also a lot more structured, giving specifics about how the workshop should run, while Oliver gives more of a general idea of workshops.
While I think Le Guin's workshop model has some flaws, in the end it won me over with the Rule of Silence, because the urge to "defend" my work as a writer is strong, but I know it will not get me the kind of critique I need to grow as a writer.