Mishka asked me to post this because she is busy in real life and wanted to get it in. Please ignore that I am posting it and pretend it is her.

ASSIGNMENT ONE


I did like the first “How I can become a better writer” very much. It was very succinct in its pointers and easy to remember. What I do from the list is edit a lot, so much so that I never finish. I never feel the story is truly done, or as good as it can be. Without due dates I wouldn’t finish any of them.

What I really should do from the list is keep much better notes. Ideas strike me frequently but they’re forgotten quickly. I can sometimes sit down and write a portion of something, but there’s usually a blank place that was filled in before. I then stop the story until I can fill in the blank. That blank gets filled and a different blank crops up.

The second thread was so much more in depth I will need to refer back to it frequently. As far as characters go, I like mine. Personally, if the story is long enough, I think I can make a well-rounded character. My dialogue is also a strong point, but there’s a lot of room to improve.

My weak spot is grammar, punctuation, and the good use of adjectives and adverbs. I would like to have my settings be more vivid and my actions more clearly explained, hoping to give a better mental imagery to readers.

I am not looking forward to the assignment on writing a story without the use of spell and grammar checks. I have it on good authority that some writers are notoriously bad at spelling. I comfort myself with the thought that there are worse things I could be doing besides misspelling things. I don’t remember what a dangling participle is, how to spell it (got help from the tool bar again), or if it’s good or bad to use, I’m just pretty sure that Microsoft Word is taking care of it or no one will notice.