Reflection Journal Week 4

Listening by Natalie Goldberg was enlightening. My take-away from this chapter came out of
page 59, she wrote, Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things.
1) Read a lot, 2) listen well and deeply and 3) write a lot. I have noticed that once I enter the
University of La Verne back in the summer of 2013; I have been reading much more than I have
in the past 4 decades combined. I have also noticed a shift in the way I approached writing now
compared to in the past years before 2013. I use to overthink my writing and now I do not
overthink my writing; I just let it go.
The second reading this week from, Writing Down the Bones was the chapter titled, Dont
Marry the Fly. My gold nugget is really common sense, but until I read the sentence that read,
If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander. I always knew that a story teller can go
on a tangent when telling a story. However, I never really stopped to think about a writer going
on a tangent when writing.
I also read, Dont Tell, but Show this week. I grasped a better understanding after I read
Natalies definition. She defined, Dont Tell, but Show as, dont tell us about anger ( or any of
those big words like honesty, truth, hate love, sorrow, life, justice, etc.); show us what made you
angry. We will read it and feel it. Dont tell readers what to feel. Show them the situation, and
that feeling will awaken them. She gave an example as to how she tried to convey a story she
loved to a friend that really did not enjoy the story. Natalie then realized that she told the story in
the secondhand and not the firsthand.
The last reading from Writing Down the Bones this week was. Be Specific Natalie gives a
few examples as to how to be specific using a fruit, a flower and a person name. She said to call
a pomegranate a pomegranate not just a fruit. She also said to call a geranium a geranium and not
just a flower, and the same for a person call them by name. When I stopped to reflect on this
short reading it made a lot of sense as to how much more powerful writing will be when the
writer is specific in his descriptions.

Continuation into, A Poetry Handbook by Mary Olivers reading for week 4We had two
chapters to read. They were, page 19 Sound and page 29, More Devices of Sound.
In the first reading, the first sentence was the most interesting part of this chapter. Mary wrote,
To Make A Poem, we must make sounds. Not random sounds, but chosen sounds. As I read on,
I started to realize how important it is to understand the Alphabet-Families of Sound. For
example; understanding vowels, consonants, and semivowels. Understanding these is the
beginning of understanding our working material when it comes to writing a poem.

The second and final reading form Mary Olivers book was the chapter titled, More Devices of
Sound. I learned about Alliteration and Assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of the initial
sound of words in a line or lines of verses. Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within
words in a line or line of verses. I am still trying to fully understand this chapter. It was by far the
most difficult for me to thoroughly understand.