Journal 5 - Dani Miller

Part One: One of the things that I found most interesting in this section was how fun non-fiction can be.  Whenever I had to read it for school, I always dreaded it for the fact that it was boring.  But with reading some of the short essays in the book, I found that this information can be fun to read, if the writer knows how to make it into something fun.  The other thing that I found to be important was how much truth you need to tell.  Yeah, you don't have to cite any sources when it comes to creative non-fiction, but you still need to tell the truth.  The best quote that I found for this is, "Making an honest attempt to recount what happened in your life is part of telling the truth in a personal essay.  However, when the essay contains material of a factual nature, something that a reader could actually verify, you must do your homework (pg. 183)."  That seems like a good lesson to learn and to remember when it comes to writing any kind of non-fiction.  As Mike said, if we mess up just once, we can kiss our chances of publishing non-fiction again away.

Part Two: The essay that I found was called "Einstein Didn't Dream of My Mother" by Priscilla Hodgkins.  This essay was about her mother who suffered from a series of strokes and with each one she had, it took away more of who she was.  Her mother would sometimes get stuck on the same train of thought and this would wear on Priscilla as her mother's primary caregiver, but she knew there wasn't anything she could do about this.  As I read the essay, I could really relate to this because I had an aunt who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.  It would hurt me to see her not recollect who some of the people that would come to see her were, but yet she could remember what her and my uncle would do when they were younger.  Priscilla's mother was the same way, having dreams about her husband when he was younger and then reimagining him into an almost perfect spouse.  But yet as the dreams would continue, her mother would say that he was becoming older and less-than-perfect in them.  Priscilla as a writer did what all writers should strive to do and that's pull the reader in.  I could feel her pain about her mother's deteriorating mental health.  I could sense the impending end of this stroke may be the one that does it, the one that sends her mother into a vegetative state.  I really enjoyed this piece and thought that it was an interesting way to show what happens to the family members of stroke victims and how hard it can be on them.