Reflection #2

When writing about an event that happened in your life, it sometimes feels difficult to write it out because how you felt will reoccur. So a way to tell your story is to fictionalize it. Make it seem as if it didn’t happen to you but rather, someone else. I’ve noticed when I wrote about my greatest fear in one of the earlier journals I thought nothing of it, that it was only a reoccurring dream. But when I read it aloud in class I felt everything I thought would happen to me. I began to tear and hyperventilate as well as tremble with fear. I had no idea how much that dream could affect me out of bed and in the safety of my peers in school.

When I had to fictionalize something that happened in my past, I found it was easier to read this story aloud. The event that happened to me seemed less real. Especially since my story was extremely fictionalized using Unicorns and Pixies. When I was younger, I was an outcast in elementary school because I didn’t like the same things the rest of the children liked. So when I went back home in my apartment building, there was an elderly woman named Dorothy in the 1st floor who would watch over me until either my parents or brother came home. Usually I would have until 8 or 9 with Dorothy. She was one of my only friends I had at the time. Everyday when my bus dropped me off at home I would run straight to Dorothy. She would tell me stories of when she was my age and older. She would read to me and was the reason why I absolutely love reading. She was always so kind to me because like me, she was alone as well. Unfortunately she was very sick at the time and before I knew it, she passed away. I was very young at the time and didn’t understand why I couldn’t visit my friend anymore. Since then I feel as if I have a hole in my heart. Every time I pass by the apartment where she used to live I would tear a little.  Even though my only friend had passed away I knew I needed to keep on going or else I knew if she were still alive, she would be disappointed in me which reminds me of a quote Hoffman wrote in her essay, “I knew who I was when I put my surgery off, a foolish thing to do, and yet I felt compelled to finish the first draft of my new novel,” (page 97). Hoffman didn’t let the possibility of her dying stop her from write her novel, which is truly inspirational. She reminds me slightly of Lance Armstrong. Armstrong became very sick with multiple diseases but still continued with his athletics.
    When I write I don’t necessarily write because I have ideas, I write to create this world that I wish would exist and it helps to bring a smile to my face. Hoffman said something similar, “Writers don’t get to choose their craft; they need to write in order to face the world,” (page 97). When she mentioned facing the world I feel it’s almost like an escape route. She isn’t directly facing the world but she’s doing it through her writing, almost metaphorically.
    I really enjoyed reading Hoffman’s story. The way she wrote gave me a sort of perspective into how freeing writing can be. It reminds me of how I read books; I escape the world the author has laid out for me. Although sometimes I may not agree with the storyline, writing allows someone to change it to benefit his or her interests. “I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see daylilies and swimming pools, loyalty, and devotion, even though my eyes were closed and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.” (Page 98).
    While reading Sue Millers story, one quote caught my attention, “The role autobiography plays in fiction is like that of reality to a dream. As you dream your ship, you perhaps know the boat, but you’re going towards a coast that is quite strange”(page 156). When I read that, I thought of how life is laid out. The boat is yourself and the coast is you future. I thought it was a beautiful way to express how one looks at their life and how it will turn out.

1. Hoffman, Alice. “Sustained by Fiction, While Facing Life's Facts”. Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from the New York Times. Smiley, Jane, and John Darnton. 95-98. Print. 
2.Miller, Sue. “Virtual Reality: The Perils of Seeking A Novelist's Facts in Her Fiction”.Writers on Writing:Collected Essays from the New York Times.Smiley, Jane, and John Darnton.156-160.Print.