Blog Reflection

     The quality of my writing has improved multiple ways over the course of the trimester. One way that my writing has improved would be that towards the end of the trimester I used a lot more textual evidence in my blog posts than I did in the beginning of the trimester. In the post from earlier in the trimester I connected two different texts and explained how they were similar. However, I didn’t use any quotes to support what I was saying. For example I was talking about how the characters in both novels are similar. I wrote, “The main characters in each book are a brother and sister pair who are very different from each other, both in personality and appearance.” I went on to explain the ways that they were alike but I never used any evidence from the book that showed their characterization. In my post from the end of the trimester I talked about the cliff hangers that ended each chapter in my book. I used actual quotes from the end of different chapters and explained how they were each a cliff hanger for me. For example I wrote, “The text says, ‘Tanya, Elizabeth Elvesden never came out of the asylum. She died in there when she was only twenty-three' (Harrison 108). Reading this gave me the chills. I had to keep reading on to figure out what other mysteries the house held.” Another way that my writing has improved would be that I was able to connect elements in my book to things other than different literature. In my older post I did make a connection from my book but it was with another book. My post said, “Currently I am reading The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan. This is the second book in the Kane Chronicles. As I have been reading this novel I have noticed it has many similarities to the book Children of The Lamp: The Akhenaten Adventure by P.B. Kerr. Both of these stories are centered around the element of magic.” Connecting a novel to another novel is fairly easy and I found that as the trimester went on, I was able to connect elements in my book to more things. In the post I wrote at the end of the trimester I talked about how cliff hangers are not only used in books such as my own but in other things such as the TV series Touch. I wrote, “Books aren't the only things that use cliff hangers to their advantage. Movies use them to get you to want to see the sequel and TV shows use them so you watch the next season. For example one of my favorite series Touch ended with the biggest cliff hanger.”

            One thing that I struggled with through the experience was the decision of what to blog about. There were some days where I had a perfect idea of what I wanted to write about and then there were other days where I had no clue. To overcome this I had to force myself to think outside of the box and come up with more than just your basic book topics. I began to write about other pieces of writing besides what I was reading and I came up with ideas such as how to pick out a good book. One strength I had with blogging would be my ability to write thorough posts. Whether I was summarizing or discussing a literary element in a book, I explained what I was talking about very clearly with great detail.  I did not meet my reading goal but I found goodreads.com to be a very beneficial sight. It was very useful for being able to get good book recommendations. I liked how you could see what your friends were reading and I enjoyed that I was able to rate books that I had read. Over the course of the trimester I would say that my reading has improved in the sense that I have learned to reflect more on my reading. I also have gotten better at paying attention to literary detail in the books. Before I read only to enjoy a good story, but now I have learned to read so that I can appreciate the effect an author’s style of writing has on the story.