Alexis Lund

May 8, 2016

Critical Response to Adler, LaMott, and Bradbury Revision

Although most people assume that writers sit down at their desk and feel confident in their ideas, then dive right into a piece, Anne LaMott assures us that those assumptions are just a fantasy. She describes the process as writing a really shitty first draft, just hoping that at the end of a few pages, you wrote something beautiful and unique that you could build off of or something pointing you in the direction of which you should go. Considering Alder’s propositions for marking up a book or piece of writing, rereading your material is a key element to making it better. Making side notes and writing down your thoughts while reading material could help you incorporate more ideas into your piece. Almost every single time I’ve written a paper or even some of my creative writing pieces, I’ve always asked more than one person to edit and read them. Also, sometimes I would get major writer’s block off, and having someone else read my work and incorporate their ideas only helped me build off them and make it my own. Even if you mark up a piece of writing that is not yours, this could help you understand and connect with the author more. Alder says that “The physical act of writing, with your own hand, brings words and sentences more sharply before your mind and preserves them better in your memory,” which is a very creative approach to writing and I think Ray Bradbury may do something similar to this. Bradbury said that all his characters came to him and said “Hey! Listen to me!” and he went from there, while incorporating his fantasies and ideas to make them come to life. All three of these talented authors took a very different approach to writing books, but at the same time they’re all very similar in the sense that over time, they know how to take their ideas and bring them to life.

In Alder’s “How to mark a book,” I think that the thesis of this essay is “I want to persuade you to ‘write between the lines.’ Unless you do, you are not likely to do the most efficient kind of reading.” This is the thesis because it is the strongest sentence in the essay. It tells us exactly what his intentions are and the rest of his essay gives us advice and examples to fulfill his wishes. In my opinion, the reading that impacted me the most was Ray Bradbury’s audio guide because I felt that he was actually speaking from the heart and has a huge passion for what he does. I hope that in the future I am as passionate about teaching as he is about writing books.