John Wayne's "A Love Song"

Didion learns from the John Wayne series of which gender plays which role. She learned that most men should be like John Wayne, a tough gentlemen who can get himself out of any situation. A John Wayne man should be polite and know right from wrong. He stays out of peoples business unless he is brought into them, for example by his brothers and figures out the best way to approach the problem. Didion has learned that being a woman you should grow up proper and find a prince charming who has the qualities of a John Wayne. An example would be realizing at the end of the story that her John Wayne was proper and knew how to present himself in a group of people.

The artist Kid Cudi has played a big role in my high school days. His songs were inspiration for me to find out who I really am. His songs talked about finding your pursuit of happiness and what makes you happy in life. Not to worry about what other poeple think and to have a heart of a lion. To stand up for yourself and your view points on life. No matter if your alone or with a group of people. He songs make me inspired to help people be themselves and not worrying about being judged or what people say. I feel like he sends out a strong message to everyone, inlcuding myself.

Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts"

Anne Lamott's "Shitty First Drafts" was an article about how to write. Lamott explained how all drafts start out shitty, unless you are a god. Noone can make a story, article or book and have one perfect final draft. The essay made me consder that stories take multiple drafts to make a perfect writing.  This essay made me think about my writing skills and techniques and showed me that its ok to have really shitty first drafts or to start off with a wrtiers block or not wanting to write my paper at all. It showed that even the best authors have shitty first drafts and writing takes thoughts, revisions and time.

I have a very tedious process when it comes to my on writing. Most of the time I start out not wanting to writing at all. I have a huge writers block and start off my essay or story. I usually re-write my beginning sentence or paragraph many times, until I find the "perfect" one. And then I will get on a role and write away. As I am writing I will go back and add things where I think they are necessary and make it flow better. I usually write for a while and then go back and edit the beginning or parts that I dont like. I feel like I cant just make a rough draft and leave it the way it is. I need to fix things in my paper when I see it or when I re-read parts of it. And usually by the end I have a rough draft that has very little editing to do because I like to make sure the paper is close to its final draft as posssible.

A metaphor to describe my writing is a volcano erupting. It first starts out slow and bubbles, that is my mind twisting and turning trying to figure out my opening sentence or paragraph. Then when the volcano is finally about to erupt my brain is erupting and I find what to write about and everything poors out. Sometimes my mind can pause and slow down with ideas but then burst again with ideas and creativity.