Authors Response

Blog Assignment 6
Word Count: 522

Both of the authors were very interesting.  Daisy Johnson was born on Halloween which interesting to me.  She currently lives in Oxford.  Daisy Johnson combines English folklore and a contemporary eye, sexual honesty and combustible invention to create a reading experience like no other. Doing the video skype she read her work aloud to us and her words were just flowing. One aspect of the time with Daisy I really enjoyed was when she explained her writing technique a lot of authors wouldn’t have told us their techniques. I’m thinking I should start doing some of the techniques to help me with my writing when I’m stressing about what I'd write about. Daisy referenced another author, Stephen King, and said she followed similar exercises he does as well. She told us how King will write a character, and write what he wants to happen to a character first before he comes up with a storyline. Daisy also follows this pattern which allows her to know where her stories are going to end. Daisy also mentioned how she gets comments on her unique sentence structure but said this is most likely because of her dyslexia. After talking with her, we spoke with Rebecca Schiff. Rebecca Schiff graduated from Columbia Universities with an MFA program, where she received a hen field Prize. Her stories have appeared in n+1, Electric Literature, The American Reader, Guernica, The Guardian, and Lenny Letter. She lives in Brooklyn. She was very true and very erratic, and I enjoyed that because it was different. She spoke about things most people are uncomfortable speaking about and turned it into fiction. She read us a short story about a woman who slept with multiple men, but never felt comfortable in her own body, and also never found "the one". I was wondering why she wrote this piece. Was it a personal experience or was she just connecting it to the everyday world? Rebecca was more open than daisy she showed us her new apartment maybe because we had more skype time with her.  Rebecca always mentioned things going the wrong m when writing about sex, are good.  I feel like she was saying everybody has a lesson learned from a situation they been through. 

Daisy writing assignment 

I have come back and it was just the way I remember…  I remember going to school down south for my freshmen year in college and when I came back on my breaks, my friends were still doing the same thing from when I first left for school.  I believe in change; I think it comes to a point in life where you should want more in life for yourself.  It’s more than being outside 24/7 and joking around with your friends. The older you get the more responsible you should be. Sometimes I think I have this mindset because I watch my grandmother and mother struggle to take care of me and my siblings and I want more for my family and they're doing an amazing job. I know some things come slower than others but you should always want the best for yourself.