Metacognition: Short Story

To tell all yall the truth, I went into this editing phase with a hatred towards my short story. I put it off to the very last moment because I had been surpressing the fact that it needed to be done. I didn't want to think about my story because I had no idea what the ending would be, I needed to change who the narrator was, and I didn't want to spend the time finding/writing a more substantial plotline.

The first task I decided to tackle was that of the narrator. Originally I had someone talking about the life of the main character and also interacting with that main character; however, that extra person was not bringing anything to the story. So I chose to make the main character the narrator and she would tell the story from her own perspective.

To change around the plot, I took the original situation and wrote about how the main character felt right before it occured. It turns out that the main character never even makes it to the event, after much contemplation. My short story is about her car trip to the event, but the main focus is her reflection about her past life experiences on the way to the party. The fact that she ends up not going to the party solved my issue of finding an actual ending for the story. I feel I should improve the ending because it is too forces. I would like to find a way to leave a more ambiguous last moment.

I'm still not in love with my story, but now it is bearable to work on. I think in the next step of the revising/editing process, I need to develope the characters more andaborate on the life instances that the main character remembers.

Metacognition: Jane Eyre Transcript

While working on the Jane Eyre transcript the most difficult part was chosing ideas that weren't repetative, confusing, nor contradictory. Crystal, Leanne and I took an approach where we would discuss the topic of love in the context of Jane Eyre and then we would sift through our thoughts to find "break-throughs." This method proved to be troublesome. Often we would over discuss topics and talk ourselves into thinking the idea was bad, unexplainable, or too confusing. Sometimes we even forgot what we were talking about since we would change topics so frequently.

On the other hand, the easiest part of the assignment was writing transitions because we would follow the natural flow of our own conversation and use connections to different pieces of literature in between the Jane Eyre focussed topics.

I'm really glad I was able to work with Crystal and Leanne because it was an ideal balance of fun and work. We each has agenda and other things to do; therefore we were motivated to get the work done. Orginally it was only Leanne and I in a group together; however, after receiving work time in class, we realized the project would be impossible without a third mind. We would get caught up in questions that we came up with but couldn't answer ourselves. So having another person to bounce ideas off of was very necessary.

I feel that, although the class discussed love a lot, it was a difficult topic to talk about because the members of my group haven't fallen in love yet and we didn't want to repeat anything we said in class. However, I think that love was a broad enough topic where we could incorperate the other choices into the discussion, such as feminism, society, and religion/God.

In general, I had a fun time working on this project. I think that was mainly because it was the first time I was writing a script for something that wasn't necessarily going to be acted out. It was especially important for me to get my thoughts down on paper because I am not a very talkative person; so writing down what I would want to say in a discussion was very helpful.