Journal 8 from Maddie

Part One: Out the the three essays, I learned the most from Joyas Volardoras by Brian Doyle. Not only was it my favorite piece out of the ones we read, but I have never read anything else like it before. As students, we have all done research essays with facts and statistics, but Doyle showed us that facts and research really can be creatively done. Compared to Scott Russell Sander's essay News of the Wild, where all the factual information felt like knowledge he already possessed. More likely than not, Doyle did a large amount of fact-finding research to write his piece, "Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside." Never had I imagined someone could make facts about bacteria sound beautiful. Before this piece, I limited my creative nonfiction writing to subjects I was already knowledgeable about that required no research and mostly wrote about things that have happened in my own life. This is a style of creative nonfiction I would like to try. In the analysis of this piece, I learned another important piece of advice, and that is to put your strongest material first. Now, of course you need an attention-getter that's going to draw in a reader, but I have always believed if I put the best thing I have to say in the beginning, I will dry out by the end. Doyle followed this example, and it worked well for him. After telling us to "consider the hummingbird for a long moment", he jumps right in with all of these fantastic truths about the hummingbird. I do believe the first half of this essay is the strongest part.

Part Two: The magazine I chose is titled Sweet. I initially clicked it because of the interesting title, but I was greeted by beautiful photography that headed the website which made me stay. On the home page was a list of the essay and poetry writers that were published in the latest issue and the title of their work. Each listing was a link that would take you directly to their piece to read. I selected an essay by Chelsea Biondolillo titled Crazy, again, I was intrigued by the title. It was a genuinely honest essay about herself and how she never felt beautiful compared to her best friend. This piece really exemplifies one of the first qualities we learn from our textbook that personal essays should have, "The personal essay is conversational-often ironic, humorous, even "cheeky"-in tone." It was absolutely all of those things and was a lot of fun to read.

https://sweetlit.wordpress.com/issue-7-2/prose-chelsea-biondolillo/