Thoughts and Notes on Essay 1

I'm writing about home, a topic that I've certainly written about before, but I feel like it is going to be something I can talk in depth about and hopefully something interesting and something with more of a point than just describing my house. The main point that I want to convey is the idea of home as a place that I love, but can't be my destination at this point. It's more something that I need to get away from for now. I'm trying to find a way to express this, though, in a way that isn't so cliche as it sounds. I've used snippets from an essay in which I was told to describe my house, but I'm expanding into something more than just a description. I'm also trying to think of other possible topics that I could transform this into from the draft because I don't know if my topic is going to be too vague. I don't have any very concrete ideas just yet. I feel like maybe I should pick one anecdote to expand on from childhood or something that has "shaped" me, but, again, it sounds so trite. I also need to find a vehicle through which to tell this story. I always think of the movie "Atonement" when I think of that sort of thing. Obviously film is a totally different medium, but I loved how the story was told focusing so much on sounds (typewriter, paper rustling, shoes on wood floors, etc). In other words, it's all about the angle I use, I suppose.

As far as my nonfiction writing experience, last semester I took Advanced Expository Writing, which was all nonfiction. I enjoyed it a lot, perhaps because I found it easier to draw from what I've experienced than to create a world completely from scratch. Or maybe I am just self involved enough to want to write about myself all the time so everyone can know how great I am! That usually tends to backfire when I realize that my own life is something that even I don't find particularly newsworthy, and from what I can tell, people always find their own life much more interesting than anyone else finds that person’s life to be. But I guess that’s what it’s about: trying to find a way to tell the world all the truths you've come to understand and question and invent in a way that does make people care.

A Virgin of the Blogoverse

Up to this point in my time as an Earthling, my experience with blogging has been minimal at best. Of course, living in a rather technologically filled/polluted society, I have had little choice but to be familiar with at least the idea of what a blog is. I have to admit that I never really was entirely sure what a blog was until now. I did have my suspicions, which, I'm happy to say, turned out to be accurate, from what I'm seeing. To be honest, I am still uncomfortable with the fact that all of this writing will be online (big infinite black hole of a place that it is) and not on physical paper. I'll get used to it though, and maybe even grow fond of it...one day...
Anyway, in middle school, the closest to a blog I got was through a group of friends who belonged to a "FanFic" archive. They would post their stories online. It was a bit of a crazed fad for a year or so with them. They went about sharing their "FanFics" with one another in the mornings, crowded in groups on the hallway floor on laptops. It was mostly gossipy things and fantasy couples between friends from what i understood. Sometimes I read them, but mostly was just confused by the big commotion. I caught wind of some exceedingly bizarre adaptations of stories (especially involving Harry Potter) that people would find and read with great vigor. I have no idea if this site is still in existence. So I guess I'm not a totally innocent blog virgin, but we certainly hadn't gotten past second base...until now.