Independent Component 2 Approval

Plan A:
My first idea is to travel to different settings like LA or the beach, a college setting or a park and write. I will create a new story for each setting with new characters and new plots. They will be short stories, maybe a thousand or so words. At each place I can wander and write notes and generally build stories. Then I can analyze all of the stories I've written to find what continues to come out of my writing and what changes between the different settings. 

The reason behind this is to explore my answers. I can analyze the different characters and what kind of world they live in.My personal experience is one of the best resources for my topic so I think this would be pretty rad.

To keep track of hours I can do a similar blog post to those during Nanowrimo. I will also take pictures at each location for proof. I will even share the titles to the short stories I write.

Being A Writer

Being a writer can be rather difficult. You might be doing ordinary tasks like grocery shopping or filling out a scholarship when BAM you really want to write! It's ridiculous, is what it is. It becomes a pulling urge and you feel antsy until you have a blank sheet or a computer in front of you. Then when you get there, you have no idea what it is that you actually want to write. So you just babble about nothing for a good ten minutes and it's rather fun. You can put it aside, satisfied. Until a half hour later...

"For a certain personality type,it seems that writing is a natural extension of reading." 

-Allen Morris Jones

Independent Component 1

I, Andrea Yzaguirre, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents approximately 56 hours and 25 minutes of work. I got the most help from the book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty which was a step by step guide to surviving Nanowrimo. I also received help from my fellow nano writers via email. They sent me lots of support and encouragement! 

In the month of November I took part in National Novel Writing Month. Along side thousands of other ordinary people around the world, I decided to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This seems sort of crazy, and it sort of was. 30 days to write a novel? With my schedule? With no previous experience? How was that going to work? Well the first thing I did was prepare myself. I read Chris Baty's accompanying novel and it guided me step by step. I planned my daily writing sessions, started an 'inspiration notebook' and created a playlist for writing specifically. Every day of November I was supposed to write about 1,666 words so that by the end of the month I could reach 50,000. Of course that was just a hope and in the end I often fell short of my goal. luckily a few days out of the month I would find a strange sort of inspiration and I would manage to cover large chunks of my story. It was a very stressful month as I tried to juggle senior project as well as classwork and the writing.  I went to a few meets with other writers at coffee shops or libraries where we worked side by side without discussion. Other times I would write in the back of Mr. Rivas's room on a recliner as students passed by. More often than not I would use my car rides as mandatory writing sessions. That's where I wrote most of the novel. And indeed I succeeded. On the last day of the month I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to cover the last 7,000 or so words.  I ended at 10:50 pm with 50,103 words and I had officially won. It was absolutely amazing! I had received my certificate from the official Nanowrimo website and then proceeded to have a dance party by myself as everyone else in the house slept.  If you would like the day-to-day breakdown then just look at my posts tagged Nanowrimo. At the end of every day I posted an update on the writing  as well as my new word count.

This was a perfect assignment for me. It not only introduced me to other authors and new resources, it also gave me first hand experience as an author. When I reflect on my research I can now examine it in a whole new way. I don't have to speculate on how an author might react to something because I can use my own reaction. Not to mention it was really eye opening on a whole new spectrum. I know a lot more about the formatting and procedures involved in writing. Authors don't usually like to talk about those sorts of things very much so this was perfect. 

The following photos are in chronological order. 

Here we have the first meeting with my fellow Nano writers, prior to November. 

Snap chat is a great way to log anything so of course I used it to count the days. 

This was from Day 1. 

I think this speaks for itself. Things were difficult in the beginning.

The seniors went on a hike and I took advantage of that by taking 

photos and stealing rocks for reference.

This was taken the day of my first write in! Local Nano writers and I met at a cafe in Rancho to write in silent companionship.  

Ah yes, I built a writing fort along the way to help me concentrate.  

An important thing about writing was to keep snacking. Other wise you would get sleepy, so I ate lots of oranges and chocolate covered blueberries.  

This was taken towards the end of the month near Thanksgiving. I was excused from helping in the kitchen as long as I was writing! 

I recieved this the last day of the month. I had to copy and paste my story into a word counter on the NaNoWrMo website. It didn't post the story or anything, just counted it up and announced I had won! It was a great moment and I plan to print this out and put it on my wall.

Lesson 2 Reflection

I'm so relieved it's all over!

1.What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?
I am most proud of my hook and activity because they were giving me the most trouble when I was planning my lesson. I couldn't figure out how to involve them without boring them or not making sense. I din't want to ask too much of them but at the same time I didn't want it to be lame.
2. a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation (self-assessment)?
       AE       P          AP       CR       NC
     b.     Explain why you deserve that grade using evidence from the Lesson 2 component contract.
I think I deserve an AE because I think I did really well. My activity was fun and interesting and it reflected my whole presentation. I spent a lot of time putting together my answer and it took even more work to make the presentation flow more like a story than an infomercial. I did my best for it to seem more like a show than a presentation. Not to mention I spent a lot of time making that powerpoint pretty.
3. What worked for you in your Lesson 2?
The power point, but i'm not keen to depend on a power point. The pictures definitely worked well, and so did having my EQ on all the important slides. I am thinking of just using pictures for my final presentation, like a slide show.
4. What didn't work? If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your Lesson 2?
If I had a time machine I would go back and remind myself that the screen is a touch screen. I would have had less awkward pauses if I had just remembered that. The pauses made my presentation sound choppy and lame. I also might give myself a thumbs up and a hug so I could be less nervous while presenting.
5. What do you think your answer #2 is going to be
Character, I am already planning it out.
other options might be:













-character personalities
-morals
-themes
-dedications
-word choice

Interview 3

My interview went great!

This afternoon at approximately 1pm I met up with my dear mentor Mrs. Alison Baker. We talked a bit about the book she let me borrow, Folk and Fairy Tales, and I gave her some book recommendations as well. We went on to our interview and it was so good! By good I mean that it was incredibly thought provoking and inspired me to consider new answers to my EQ. We discussed her novel, a story about two children adventuring with Thor the Norse god. She explained what had inspired her story and what she left in the story that would tell us about herself. We also discussed the academic point of view on my EQ as well as her own. She recommended more authors for me to check out and then we wrapped it up with me asking why she wrote. I would label this as a success and I am excited to do another interview with an author I met at the Fontana library. I would like to compare their answers, since their genres, experience and sex are so different.

"When you hear people talk about talent, I have no idea what that is. All I know is that at a certain age, some kids fall in love with language."

-Bob Schacochis