Response to Bird by Bird 4

I had been wondering through each assigned reading where the section Writer's Block was in Bird by Bird.  Lamott's advice for curing your inability to write is, of course, writing.  I thought it was funny but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.  You can not get better at that which you stop practicing.

I also found the section Someone To Read Your Drafts to be helpful.  For those who are serious about writing, I think it is sound advice to find someone who's opinion you find valid and who also is able to read your work and give constructive feedback.  I thought it was important to note that even while something you write may be horrible, no one should ever give you purely negative feedback and that it should remain encouraging.  

The section Finding Your Voice was actually kind of confusing to me.  When Lamotte advises to write as though your "parents are dead" I took it to mean without fear of what others may think or without trying to please someone else.  To write just as yourself is a difficult thing to do, for me not so much becaus eof others opinions, but because of my own.  Fortunately, dealing with your own voice had already been covered in other parts of this book and I suppose in writing this out, I gained some clarification.

Response to Goldberg

I liked Goldberg's section I Don't Want to Die.  I thought the story the titled derived from with the zen master was really interesting and I like her advice to write what you really feel rather than not.  I know from flipping through my old journals that I used to write as though someone else would be reading them.  I didn't even put my real thoughts or feelings out for fear that someone, someday would find my journals, care enough to read them and judge me.  It's a silly thought because frankly, who would really care to flip through a 2 foot pile of stacked teen angst?  Probably no one.  But when I went through them and remembered the events I wrote of, I remembered how I was really feeling and how much what I wrote didn't capture that.  I have since learned to unabashedly write angry rants in chicken scratch to loving words sweet enough to give you diabetes- whatever I really feel.
I also found Reading and Rewriting helpful.  Although the vast majority of writing I do is journaling/venting, I find that if I try to edit it in someway I often fare much better if it has had some time to settle.  Same with the writing I have done for this class.  I also agree with her that sometimes you may not even be aware of something you have written.  Every once in a great while, I'll decide to look through some of the writing saved to my computer and on a handful of occasions I have found something I have vague if any recollection of writing that isn't half bad.
I prefer Bird by Bird to any of the Goldberg selections we've read, but I've found them both to have helpful advice on methods to improving and finding a personal writing style.