Famous Last Words Week 8

Well, I finally got my “snow day” this week! I was so excited when we got the call on Tuesday that school was canceled. I could not believe it. And I really could not believe it when the snow didn’t even start until nearly three o’clock the next day! I thought for sure we would get all of Thursday off, too, when I saw how much snow was accumulating. Still, I’m glad it didn’t get too bad because I was getting kind of worried that my boyfriend’s knee surgery would have to get postponed due to weather. But he had it as scheduled and everything went well. He has less cartilage in his meniscus now, but hopefully he will be off crutches soon.

Again, I didn’t do much for Myth-Folklore this week because I’m still ahead. I’m going to try to get ahead again during Spring Break because it’s really nice not to have to stress out about finishing anything by the due date. I have just one more story left to write for my Storybook Project. I plan to use a story from the Celtic Fairy Tales unit, so it may be a little while before I read that and write my own version. I may jump ahead so I can finish the project over Spring Break.

I’m pretty bummed out because today we “sprung forward” for time change. I woke up and my phone said it was 9:00 AM and I was surprised that I slept in. But then I went downstairs and saw that my microwave clock said it was 8:00 AM and remembered that it was the day of the “bad” time change. I feel like I’ve been robbed of an hour of my day and I’m not at all looking forward to waking up tomorrow for school. I can’t wait for Spring Break!

This week, I have some great pictures of my kitties looking like Disney/Pixar characters:

(Annie poses as Kiara from The Lion King)

(Velma resembles the lovable Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon)

Commenting Review Week

Commenting is probably the thing I struggle with most in this class. I absolutely do not want to make anyone feel bad about his or her writing and I do not want to come across as rude. It is so hard to be sure that I am communicating a positive tone when typing comments because they are just words on a page and I am worried they could be easily misread as rude. That being said, I do try to give constructive criticism in ways that I hope will help the author. I always include positive statements about what I enjoyed and I end on a good note.

It is most helpful to me when the comments I receive let me know that the readers don’t quite understand something or something seems a little off or awkward in my story. Things like that are difficult for me to catch once I am immersed in the story I’m writing. Grammatical and spelling fixes are also appreciated!

Here is a funny cat meme about editing!

(icanhascheezburger cat meme from flikr)

Writing Review Week

It’s so cool to look over the Storytellings I have done so far. I love the online format of this class where everything is organized so neatly and very easy to find (unlike my other classes where I throw old assignments in a folder and have to scrounge around to find them!).

I have a few favorite Storytellings as well as a few least favorites! My favorites so far are Cupid’s Forgiveness from Week 3, Nimet and the Dark Wizard from Week 4, and A Prolonged Elopement from Week 6. The original versions of those stories just really grabbed my attention and inspired me to write. All of these stories are about love (or at least that’s what I focused on in my version). It makes sense because my Storybook Project is also about love. It’s something I’ve always been interested in in my fiction choices.

Some of my least favorites were Gene’s Early Morning from Week 5 and The Lethal Lie from Week 9. I remember struggling a lot in those weeks to find inspiration for writing my Storytelling. I’m not at all saying that these were bad units, just that they didn’t spark something in me like other units did. It is just so much easier and so much more enjoyable to write when I have that inspiration from the original.

(Cupid and Psyche by Anthony van Dyck, 1639-40)

I chose this image because it was my favorite from all my Storytellings and it was my first Storytelling that I really liked.

Reading Review Week

I think that my favorite reading so far has been the Cupid and Psyche Unit. It was a story I was slightly familiar with before this class, but I really enjoyed reading it and writing the Storytelling afterwards. I also loved all the illustrations from this unit. It was also really cool to read other people’s Storytellings and see the different directions each person chose to go in from the same original story. I picked the image below because it was one of my favorite pictures for the unit.

(Psyche by  William Bouguereau)

I had some other favorites, too. I really enjoyed the Turkish Fairy Tales Unit and the Japanese Fairy Tales Unit. Both of these units gave me at least one story that really inspired me to write the Storytelling for that week. While I’m not sure if I enjoyed these two units the most overall, they stick out in my mind because I really enjoyed writing the Storytellings for those units.

I definitely use my Reading Diary posts to write my Storytellings. If I didn’t include a story in my Reading Diary, I know it did not catch my attention enough to be a Storytelling. Also, sometimes in my Reading Diaries I will include rough ideas for possible Storytellings. This is helpful to remind me of my brainstorming even if I write my Storytelling days after the Reading Diaries.