Writing
Imaginative Nonfiction
Our main project was to either make a documentary, or an imaginative non-fiction about people that we interviewed. I chose to write about the two people I interviewed: My father, Nate McFarland, and my former climbing coach, Orion Fiest. The interviews were drastically different, which I expected. The biggest differences I noticed were their personality types; Orion is an extreme extrovert while my father is an extreme introvert. There personalities follow there path of intro/extrovert so there are very big differences, but they also have a lot of similarities. It's more of the unspoken things, qualities not mentioned, that they share. It is obvious that they are both generous, humble people and that they both are adventurous, albeit in different ways.
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After my interviews with my dad and Orion I took a few "nuggets", which were subtle but there, from what I learned about them and integrated those "nuggets" into my writing. It took me several iterations of my story but eventually I got to my finalized idea: the story of a person who doesn't need anyone into a person who does. While the story has one character, it is a transition from a person like my dad (introverted, independent, loner) to a person like Orion (extroverted, social).
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I went through many drafts of my story and had many critiques but here was the process:
Draft 1 & 2, critiqued by Joshua McCuiness: His biggest advice was to delete the huge amounts of fluff and filler and add more substance and story. He also suggested making transitions smoother and more obvious.
Draft 3, critiqued by Colleen Greene: Her advice was mostly grammatical, but also helped a lot with character development like adding more background information and explanations to why he is doing what he is doing.
Draft 4 & 5, critiqued by Breeann MacDonald: She helped a lot with sentence structure and making things sound and flow better. Also helped a lot with character development, particularly the transitions between introvert and extrovert.
Draft 6 (final), critiqued by Colleen Greene: There were a few grammar mistakes, after fixing them she approved my final draft.
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Overall the revisions went smooth. I did a lot of editing but I didn't encounter many problems, mostly because of how well the critiques were, and also because most of the advice given was black and white to me: I either agreed with it and made the chance, or I disagreed and didn't.
Critical Lens Essay
I'm reading No-No Boy by John Okada, and I've decided to write my essay using Critical Race Theory. I chose this lens because I think it really applies to No-No Boy. CRT States that that Racism is incorporated and embedded into the fabric of government and society. The main struggle points for Ichiro is him dealing with institutionalized racism. While seeing it as a government induced racism is not clear, reading the book through critical race theory makes it ore apparent. I just think it was super fun trying to find how you could trace certain events and acts of discrimination and racism throughout the book to the government, which is ultimately why I chose this theory.
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The writing process was pretty hard. I first tried to write through a Post-Colonial lens and it wasn't working. I spent a good chunk of m time trying to figure out how Post-Colonial relates to my book. After a while I gave up and switched to CRT. After switching it went a lot smoother and I was able to finish my first draft relatively quickly. Then it was just a matter of getting critiqued, making a revision, and repeating. I think what it really came down to was choosing the correct lens. If I had tried to stick to Post Colonial I don't think the final product would have come out nearly as nice, or nearly as quickly.
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The only issue, like I mentioned before, was from choosing the wrong lens. Other than that I didn't really encounter and problems. I didn't quote my book that much nor did I quote anyone else so I had no issues with plagiarism.
Here is the Final draft.