Final

How do the things you read influence what you write about or how you write?

The things people read can influence them of what they write about or how they write it. Sometimes, that applies to me as well. Whenever I read a novel or short story, it influences my writing, even if it’s just the slightest. It is usually more vocabulary on my list and a bit improvement in my grammar. However, I still have a lot to work on so I read a lot to help myself. However, it doesn’t last for a long period of time, so I read long novels as a hobby during the summer, school break, or even when I have enough time. In either case, I still have lots to work on to improve one and hopefully continue on working on this. Sometimes, as I read, I have something in mind, or can think how the author/writer is thinking about, getting their point of view in some points that affects in my writing skills. Reading people’s different opinions that contrasts with yours can also affect your writing. If they have the same opinions as you on a topic but have more reasonable ideas, I would most likely have more reasonable ideas the next time I write about something. With different views and opinions, that can change people’s ways of thinking. For my blog posts, if you read a pretty laid back blog, then you might have the same affect and write like the same for some period of time. If you read a pretty serious essay/report, then you be really serious yourself and go a bit too far with you writing. In either case, it can either take an affect on me or not. But if the novel/report I was reading really inspires me, I might even have the same case as the writer. There are some works where people can be very persuasive in their writing that influences on a lot of people’s writing (that can be me as well).

What have you learned from your struggles with writer's block? Why do you tend to get stuck? Notice any patterns?

During my struggles with writer’s block, I learned that if I take my time working on my blog posts, I can get more ideas during the process, I sometimes rush on my blogs because I have a limited amount of time on the computer. Also, I learned that if I calm down and concentrate on the topic, I can get more ideas to write about the topic. I tend to get stuck because of not having so much information on the topic or running out of ideas to write about the topic. I noticed that if I turn away from the blog post and work on something else like other homework for other classes, I can go back to work on it after thirty minutes or so. However, I still get stuck when it comes to blog posts. I guess working on something else helps change my chain of thoughts on the blog post. Either way, I tend to get after a short while. This is when I realize that this is just a pattern, where I go charging by writing nonstop, doing something else to retrain my thoughts, and then come back charging forward once again. This is a problem since this is very time consuming for a weekly three hundred word blog post. Even now, I still have trouble on this assignment, even though it isn’t a three hundred blog post. It seems to me that I don’t get writer’s block if I am extremely into the topic, I can go beyond five hundred words or so. But that sounds like I am exaggerating or something. Even so, I think if I have enough information on the topic, I wouldn’t be so stuck with any topic (unless it was some thought question that I can’t relate to). I also tend to get stuck when the questions require thinking about something that I wouldn’t think about on a daily basis. Or you can call “deep thinking” kind of questions where some people (like me) take long periods of time thinking about them before writing about it.

Where do you get your ideas for blog post topics? What inspires you to write?

I get my ideas for blog post topics from a variety of sources. Most of my topics I write about mainly from something I have been working/reading/watching from. Sometimes, it would come from something I just thought of from out of nowhere. I usually do blog posts that require a lot of research. Researching my blog topics helps me gather new information I never knew before. Of my blog posts, there are ones that are about books I’ve recently read like Beryllium Murder and Queen’s Own Fool, where I summarize them for those who love to read. Sometimes, I use historical figures for my topics such as King Henry VIII and Baron de Montesquieu. This is an advantage for me because I can research, study for History class, learn something new, and work on my English homework all at the same time. I do movies from classes that I give my opinions on for those who are interested like Maria Full of Grace and Stand and Deliver. Even though I was raised in an environment where there are a lot of Vietnamese cultures around me, I like to research and write about them as a part of another person’s point of view. So what really would interest people would be through people’s stomach! So I try and write about are well known dishes such as spring rolls and phở. I would probably expand this more in the future. Recently, I have been taking up with music, so I decided to write about my favorite music artists. Overall, what inspires me to write is the topic that sparks my interest. If those topics are pretty dull and boring, the result will be a pretty short-willed blog post. I realized that what topic inspires me the most would be the result of my ‘endless’ researching. If I am satisfied with what I have, I am certain that I would have a better blog post than something I just gather up as some last minute thing I just randomly came up with.