On March 6th, 2012 several classmates presented their Twitterives as pert of Writing Research and Technology at Rowan University. The following is what I thought of what they have so far and suggestions for future revisions.
Jenna wrote her twitterive from the place of family. She used a series of pictures, definitions, poems and personal comments to build her twitterive. While I like the idea of Jenna's place, she could be much more specific in order to make her twitterive more organized and focused. She seemed to focus on her bond with each family member. I feel this idea might be a good starting point for being more specific. Maybe she could talk about what makes each bond special. Maybe she could follow the concept of a family tree and give more of a background of her family and her interactions with them.
Daniele wrote her twitterive from the place of her relationship with her father. I have looked over her twitterive, but since she didn't get very far into her presentation, I am hoping she will present again before I make revision suggestions.
Angela created her twitterive from the NICU where her daughter spent the beginning of her life. I thought her twitterive was well thought out, well organized, focused and thorough. I don't have any revision suggestions except to check for grammatical and punctuation errors.
Alexis wrote her twitterive from the place of being lost. I liked Alexis' twitterive the best so far. I liked the different genres she chose to put us in her place. While there were suggestions for making it more organized and focused, I felt that the organization lent to how she feels in her place. I would suggest that she follow the suggestions of our professor since I will not be grading her assignment, but I had a hard time finding anything to change for her as well.
Andrea's twitterive focused on Doggy Day Camp from a particular dog's perspective. Andre's twitterive was very enjoyable. I feel that the details of the day were expressed well, but I feel that her twitterive could be improved by writing all narratives from the dog's perspective. As fun as it is, it would be much more fun to read the entire twitterive from the dog's point of view.
Tiffany had one of the most interesting twitterive topics so far. Her twitterive focused on Muay Thai training in Thailand. Tiffany's twitterive has a lot of potential and could be improved by adding more about her training experience in Thailand. I feel that her twitterive could benefit from comparison to the place that she trains when she is at home. I would also love to see more pictures from Thailand. She should add more genres as well as make the genres that she has, such as the Green Smoothie recipe, connect better. She should add a repetend, maybe the place she trains in New Jersey would be a good one, to bring all ideas in her twitterive together.
Idalis wrote her twitterive from the place of her relationship with her father, specifically during a time when he was in the hospital and she thought he would pass away. While I thought the content of her twitterive was very powerful and moving, I would suggest that she change her formatting to make it easier to follow and read. The color of the font and the font size is a little more distracting than it needs to be.
Abby also created her twitterive from the place of her relationship with her father. While I like the ideas that she included, I feel that her twitterive needs much more. Particularly, Abby's twitterive could benefit from more narration. She could also include more genres and give us more of an idea of what her relationship with her father is like through words. She could talk about how her relationship with her father changed after he got divorced, after he remarried, what it was like to see him be a stepfather to other kids, etc.
These presentations were enjoyable, not only because of their content, but also because they let me learn more about my classmates. I was also able to get more ideas for my own twitterive and see how I an make it better, as well as hear more about what Professor Mangini is expecting. Good job ladies.
The following is a look at how my eating habits/views on eating might change after reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan and "The Pleasures of Eating" by Wendell Berry for Writing Research and Technology, a class at Rowan University. It is my guess that my eating habits will not change at all. I love to cook and eat. I always have, and I always will. However, there are times in my life, like right now, that become so crowded with things to do that eating gets put on the bottom of the list of priorities, and can be seen as nothing more than an unavoidable inconvenience. While I take pride in making food from scratch and taking the time to sit down and enjoy it, especially with family, when I get busy I eat nothing but processed foods from the nearest freezer, vending machine or fast food joint. I would be overjoyed if the "dream home of the future" Berry mentions could exist, if only for the months that I have to navigate school, work, homework, observations and the chores of everyday life. According to Berry, : "The current version of the "dream home" of the future involves "effortless" shopping from a list of available goods on a television monitor and heating precooked food by remote control." While this may be true, I think it is much more the habits outside of the kitchen that keep people from enjoying the preparation of food. I agree with Berry when he says, "One reason to eat responsibly is to live free", but I also think that prepackaged, precooked, overly processed foods allow us to have a different sort of freedom. We can go out for a day, take long trips, shuttle ourselves, or our kids, to various places while carrying all the non-perishable food we will need for the day with us. How else would I eat before, or during class? As someone who is overweight, I have heard advice from various doctors and a personal trainer or two. While some bits of that advice might have overlapped, I have found that everyone has different, contradicting suggestions. "Drink 1 oz of water per pound you weigh," says the personal trainer. "Drink eight glasses of water everyday," says one doctor. "Try to get most of your water from food," says another. My strategy is to exercise and include water, fruits and veggies in my diet everyday. That's as far as I'm willing to go for now. And part of the reason is the issue that Pollan mentions regarding the "carb free" trend and the back and forth over red meat: "So violent a change in a culture's eating habits is surely the sign of a national eating disorder." We never know exactly what we should or shouldn't eat. There is a new fad diet, research suggestion and nutrition discovery everyday. There is no way that I will ever think about food on the level of the farmer or "The 1972 Russian grain sale and the resulting spike in farm income that fall helped Nixon nail down the farm vote for his reelection..." that Pollan mentions. The bottom line is, when I am kept out of the kitchen because of my schedule, I couldn't care less what I eat, how it was prepared, where it came from or what's in it. Subconsciously, I guess I do worry about the impact of food on my body, but I guess I'm more concerned with the sure and immediate impact that not eating anything would have.
The following is an update on my revision plans for my Twitterive, which is a multi-gemre, multi-modal narrative that I created for Writing Research and Technology, taught by Sabatino Mangini at Rowan University. After presenting my Twitterive, I have several ideas of how to improve it. I had an issue with the use of latitude and longitude as my repetend because the links weren't working how I wanted them to, but thanks to my classmates' suggestion, I have decided that I will keep this as my repetend and make it more clear by adding screen shots of the actual locations. I am also considering adding a map at the end which shows the entire journey to make my place even more clear to readers. I plan to rewrite "The Letter I Wrote", since it was pointed out that while the rest of my Twitterive points to one time period, this letter goes into the general issue and is less focused on this time period. I will revise the letter to make it more specific to the issue I'm addressing. I will be sure to mention why I need my mother right now and why it is bothering me enough to write a letter, which is something I have never done before. I have decided that I will add some comic strip conversations. These conversations will be the ones I wish I could have or what I wish my mother would say and do when I come to her with these issues. I feel that by making it a comic strip, I will make it clearer to my readers that it did not actually happen. I am considering removing the tweets that are in the body of my Twitterive, since I am not sure why I put them there and others did not think that it adds to the Twitterive, and I agree. Even though I expressed fear at my mother's reaction, I am considering adding a video of some sort to give another illustration of what it is like to try and talk with my mother. This is the part that I am the least sure about, and I will only do it if I can think of a way to not show her face. Finally, I was alerted to a formatting issue with "Friday", since it blends with the text around it and does not stand out clearly. I will change all of the days of the weeks to make them stand out more and to make sure that they are all uniform. I appreciate all of the feedback I received. I was able to use all of the suggestions I was given in some way. I am looking forward to the end product and seeing what my classmates think of the changes they helped come up with.
The following stress release, or rant if you prefer, is meant to relieve the stress I am feeling over completing my Twitterive assignment for Writing Research and Technology. In the first few weeks of the semester I looked forward to the weeks that would be focused on the Twitterive since I was finding the reading based blog posts to be so cumbersome. I had no idea what I was in for. I call myself partially creative. Only partially because I love writing creative stories and I can be quite good at it, but I need guidelines. Tell me to write a story about the book we just read from a different character's point of view. I'm right there. You would like a poem based on my tweets? No problem. You want me to create a personal essay on why I write? When can I start?! But now you want me to decide on a place (any place, even a feeling) and create a "Twitterive" (what the hell is that) with a prologue and multiple genres as the only guidlines?? You lost me. Whose idea was this? What am I basing my place on? When should I a have a SPECIFIED number of genres? Where do I start? Why can't you pick the genres for me? HOW DO I DO THIS?! How's that for 5 W's and 1 H?The ironic thing is that this is just the sort of challenge that I wanted to be able to "grow as a writer." Every good writer has faced challenges at some point right? Be careful what you wish for. Now I've got this 5,000 pound burden attached to this Twitterive: If I don't do well, I'm a bad writer. I realize no one told me to put that much stock into this project, but there's no going back now. However, I am open to an intervention. I spend much more time worrying about the Twitterive than I do working on it. I do have other classes and assignments due this semester, believe it or not. The good news is, I've finally gotten to the point where I can semi-productively think about my Twitterive without having stomach cramps. Can you call that growth? I don't know. All I know is that this better turn out to be one heck of a Twitterive, or it might take me years to recover.
The following blog post was created for my Writing Research and Technology class. After working on a project called a Twitterive for a few weeks we had the opportunity to discuss our progress with our peers, get feedback and make revision plans. This is a brief summary of the revisions I plan to make. After getting feedback on my Twitterive there are some things that I am sure that it needs. I was aware that it lacked cohesiveness and a reptend before the workshop and my classmates have helped me to develop some of my ideas. I would like to make the map concept that I have been working on my reptend. I am still playing around with exactly what this concept will result in, but I am getting closer to settling on one idea. At this point I am trying to decide between coordinates or step by step directions that culminate in some sort of map. I would also like to add a story, fictional or real, to add cohesiveness to the entire Twitterive. I am also struggling with the execution of this idea, but I started writing a couple stories so that I can at least figure out what type would be best. I will also add a few of the six word stories we began creating in class, although I am not sure where I will add them in. Although this may not seem like a lot, these are major elements that were missing from my Twitterive and having more of a specific direction to go in has renewed my confidence that I will turn out a great final product. I would like to thank my classmates for their help and I look forward to their continued feedback next week. Some questions I would like answered are: Does my "place" make sense to others?Is my Twitterive cohesive enough? Is there anything that takes away from the Twitterive that I should take out?Is my Twitterive boring?Is there any way to make the formatting less uniform?
The following blog post was created for my Writing Research and Technology class. The questions being asked and answered are regarding my Twitterive and are meant to aid my process and help me to make improvements. 1. WHO are thee characters in you story? The characters in my story are my mom and me. Since my "place" is the feelings that result from the conversations we have, I didn't think it would be appropriate to introduce any other characters. However, a potential 3rd character could be whatever voice my mom is hearing in her head that keeps her from listening to me. 2. WHAT is your story? WHAT genres/modes are you using for your story? My story is the ongoing struggle and emotions that result from my attempts to have a successful conversation with my mother. It is also the story of how I've tried to bring our conversation problem to her attention and the feelings and reactions that result from that. So far I have used a song, a recipe, a phone conversation, pictures, a letter, a poem, tweeets and fading font. I am currently working on more genres including the concept of a map and a story. 3. WHEN does your story take place?While the "place" that I am discussing in my Twitterive is one that I have been in for years, my story focuses on the time when I found myself in this place more noticeably. This occurred after I left my job of 2 years in late January and it continues now. 4. WHERE is your place? My place is a feeling of loneliness, despair and frustration that is borne out of not being heard by my mother.5. WHY do you feel a connection/lack of connection to this place? I found it hard to answer this question since my "place" is a feeling of disconnection. I could answer why I find myself in that place. The reason why I find myself in this place is because I found myself in a situation that required a sympathetic ear and this has always been something that my mother has had a hard time giving. I have known that my mother has this issue, but in my vulnerability I was hoping that she would understand how serious my need was and adjust accordingly. It is also very difficult to completely eliminate your mother as a person that you can go to when you need someone to listen. 6. How do you show your audience your connection/lack of connection to this place?I mainly show my audience my lack of connection to my place by illustrating my failed attempts to communicate with my mother and her reactions to those attempts. I also let them see what I see when I am trying to talk to her.
The following is the writing process I have gone through so far in creating my Twitterive for Writing Research and Technology. My writing process thus far has had the appearance of being painful. Painfully slow, painfully jumbled and painfully bad. I have found the simplest tasks, such as posting to Twitter, to be incredibly frustrating, time consuming and ending in dissatisfaction. I started the assignment by reading other Twitterives and then sitting and thinking about what I wanted to say. I first experienced a disconnect when attempting to decide what I should include in the project and how to make the readers understand how I am feeling. I have been taking notes on what genres I would like to include, but I am finding that it is better to not to try and make the writing fit the genre. I need to accept the the mode as it comes. What I have come up with has come in disconnected, disjointed spasms. The most frustrating thing is that I cannot seem to dig myself out of this rut. I have attempted to change my location, my process and even my writing style, all to no avail. It has not helped that I have been waiting until the last minute to begin putting my ideas on the actual page. Through this process I have discovered that the disjointed spasms might be the best method for allowing my readers to understand how I feel in my place. It has been the only assignment that can be made better by this stunted, disorganized process. I can think of a random piece and add it in without thinking about organization just then. Since it is personal I do not have to force a connection. I do not feel connected in my place, and that is the point. I am not limited by genre, and this has made the process much better. If one genre isn't working, I can move on to another, and another, and another and they will all work together to make an awesome final product. The writer's block I have been limited by is finally working in my favor. I am confident that it will all come together, and this is the first time that I have had that confidence in months.
The following is a prologue for a project for Writing Research and Technology, called a Twitterive. A Twitterive is multimodal narrative in which multiple genres are used to show readers a person's relationship, or lack thereof, to a specific place of that person's choosing. This is the introduction to the Twitterive and is meant to illustrate my inspiration, my place, my theme and my repetend. I am still working on my Twitterive and my progress can be viewed under the assignments tab on this website. I discovered my place while attempting to avoid another one. My twitter posts were focused on the issues I was having before during and after quitting my job at the beginning of this semester. Since I still find that topic very depressing, I wanted to steer clear of it. Quitting was such a hard decision and I am still struggling with the change and so it continued coming up in my tweets. I realized it would be nearly impossible to not address this topic in my Twitterive in any way so I began taking a closer look at the issues that were coming up after my resignation. One that has always been there, but seems to bother me more at this time of uncertainty, is the trouble that I have completing a conversation with my mother. Since I can never tell when she has stopped listening, I can talk to her for long periods of time before I realize she hasn't been paying attention. I have chosen to make my place the feeling of building frustration and despair that results from these incomplete conversations. I have begun to feel like an outsider in my home, since it feels like I am the only one who encounters this problem with my her. Even though I know my mom very well, these conversations make her seem like a stranger to me, especially since I've tried to address the problem several times. My repetend is the feeling of talking to myself. All of my attempts to address the issue fall on deaf ears. It is also important to not that although this is something that bothers me, it does not define my relationship with my mom. It is just one place in our relationship. The follow tweets inspired this Twitterive and vice versa:- The funny thing is, when I pretend to not listen to her she doesn't seem to notice. How do I get through???!!! #twitterive
- She thinks I'm dramatic. Maybe I am, but how would she know when she only ever hears half of any story? #twitterive #mommyissues
- Ever have one of those dreams when you're talking but no sound comes out? When I'm awake I'm talking, but no one can hear me #twitterive
The following is a Found Poem I created for Writing Research and Technology using my own tweets which are listed below the poem. This poem is meant to convey the frustration and isolation I feel when I am trying to have a conversation with my mother and discover that she is not listening.
 Alien
Talking over never
blast of accomplishment
only draining time without focus
no part of truth
close look.....
harder looking......
slave of dreams
long silence....
new effort impulse
..... enter impossible
...... alien.
The following microfictions were created for Writing Research and Technology. "The Conversation" is based on the tweet below. The tweet is the first line of the story. The line "I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing." in "Red" was taken from page 6 of How to Tame a Wild Tongue, a chapter of "Borderland/La Frontera" by Gloria Anzaldua.  This tweet was used to create "The Conversation"
The Conversation
I can’t live with her, but I definitely can’t live without her. I walk in the door and the burdens of the week begin to lift. It’s been a long one. “Hi” she says, “I haven’t seen you all week. How was it?” These three magic words are the only excuse I need to tear down the defensive wall that’s been under construction all week. I tell her the whole lot; the lows, the highs and everything in between. I tell her about the one part of my week from hell that I’m proud of. I worked up the nerve to tell my boss that I deserve a raise. She’d been telling me I should for as long as I can remember. I was confident, succinct and resolute, just like my boss when she told me no. I tell her how I’m not sure if I should continue if I’m not going to get what I deserve. Saying that out loud makes me cry because thought of leaving a job I love and having to do something else is overwhelming. Despite the tangled yarn of emotions I’m feeling I can’t help but to be at peace. I’m home now and she’s going to tell me how to make it all come together. I am finally silent and look to her with tear filled eyes of expectation. “You know, you really should ask your boss for a raise” she says. “If she says no, you should seriously consider doing something else.”
Red
Louis avoided the stare of a scowling older woman, walked to the curb and unlocked his car on auto-pilot. He didn’t see the red until he got in and noticed that sunlight wasn’t penetrating the windows as it should be. It was then that he looked up and saw what looked like blood smeared on all of the windows. They had concentrated on his windshield so he couldn’t drive it. A lump was working its way up his throat, but he defiantly forced it back with a hard swallow. He turned on his windshield wipers. They smeared the top layer of the crimson paint, but the bottom layer had dried. He had grown accustomed to this type of harassment. His neighbors had taunted him mercilessly since he moved into the apartment building. They saw the term “registered sex offender” and only thought of one thing. He hadn’t touched a child since he was a child, but they had no interest in hearing that. She had been his girlfriend and only two years younger than him. None of that mattered to anyone, the judge, the girl’s parents, potential employers. I will no longer be made to feel ashamed of existing. He went back into his apartment, turned all four burners to gas, doused his curtains, mattress and couch in lighter fluid and set them all ablaze. He walked back down the steps, waved to a smirking older woman and walked to work.
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