When I finished the introduction of Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, this excerpt stuck out to me: "You may also open to any chapter and read it. Each chapter is designed to be its own whole." I decided to take this snippet of advice and jump to a nonconsecutive chapter. Based off the title alone, I was intrigued by Man Eats Car and chose to start my short reading journey there.

Man Eats Car addresses the internal struggle that writers face between their rigid logic and the spontaneity of thought. I felt a connection to this, as I mentioned in my first blog post about the anxiety I felt when stringing together sentences, never really sure if there was a cohesive flow to my passages as a whole. It shows the importance of keeping your writing organic. "Your mind is leaping, your writing will leap, but it won't be artificial."

In First Thoughts, Goldberg set rules to writing exercises that are essentially a lack of rules. She tells you to keep your hand moving, to not correct any mistakes or look back on your own writing, to lose control. This is something that I've tried to do myself. It was actually very difficult to let myself loose and not give myself any type of boundaries. I now plan on doing this exercise again, this time on a giant sketch pad with my favorite blue sharpie marker pen. I sense it'll start with the writing process itself, followed by superficial thoughts before diving into my real feelings. I'll express my true fears and doubts. Once thats uncovered you're just left with the truly bizarre senselessness that's hidden in the recesses of your mind, the nitty-gritty stuff that some people aren't even aware exists.

Joseph Manning. Brother. Son. Gentleman. Scholar. Bank Teller. Student. Future Accountant. Music Lover. Pompous Jerk.

I've never been confident in my writing ability, mostly due to the fact that I can never seem to keep a stream of consciousness, so instead I just string together sentences and hope it comes out sounding like one idea. But I guess that's why I find myself in this class. This counts for one of my required Gen Ed classes, so thats a large chunk of my motivation for joining it. Then, there's the weighing between the importance of writing vs the importance of being able to draw/sculpt/paint. So, I instinctively chose the writing route.

I hope to largely take a comedic approach to this class if I can (not to say that I won't take the assignments seriously). One of the things that I've always aspired to do is stand-up comedy, and the foundation of that is the ability to write well, so hopefully this class will help me build that up.

I guess this will all be very interesting. Interesting to see what my classmates are capable of and what I'm capable of.