My twitterive was some of the most personal writing I've ever done, and in all the years since I was diagnosed (started chemo in '05, to give you an idea), I've never actually taken the time to write about my experiences. My parents always encouraged me to do something with my talents, knowing how much I love to write to the point that they consider me a Writing Arts Major first and an Education Major second, but for some reason, I never got around to actually putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It's something I truly regret.
The experience is therapeutic in a way that would have helped me immensely through the ordeal. And one of the positive side-effects is that such a piece of writing exists, regardless of the media I use to present it, that could possibly help someone else through their own ordeal. To me, that is one of the most important aspects of the whole project.
Helping others was sort of my part time job while I was undergoing treatment, as I was generally the oldest patient at any given time. If I wasn't, I was the oldest patient that didn't mind talking to all the little kids while my parents talked to their parents. The Lucas family became sort of a cancer therapy in St. Christopher's for a whole year of our lives, and I think being able to do that, to give assistance to others that needed it, helped my mom cope with a lot of what was happening to me.
Alissa – I loved the softball field as your place, and how it almost sounded like a bad breakup when you decided you no longer wanted to play. You've got the sappy song, some emotional poetry, and the whole feel really works well to add depth to your twitterive, I think. One thing I think could be interesting is if you touch on some of the stages of breakups a bit more, like how when a relationship firsts ends, you're just pissed off at the person and everything they've ever done. But once you cool down and some time has passed, your feelings might change, and if you're not in a relationship at the time, you find yourself pining for that old relationship and the comfort of familiarity. An, "Oh, Softball, How I Miss You!" poem might work, because it definitely sounds like there's a piece of you that's missing since you stopped playing. Have you thought about going back? Dave – your chaos twitterive is . . . well, it's chaotic. I think I know what you were shooting for (because my writing process is similarly off the wall and kinda out there, so I feel you on that), but I'm not sure you presented it in the best way possible to make it something viewers can easily navigate. Right now, it's all sort've clustered together and it's difficult to tell where we should start reading and what order we should cycle through the different pieces. One suggestion that occurred to me after class: have you ever done any Prezi work? It's like powerpoint 2.0 if you haven't, and it lets you make some really killer slideshows with all sorts of movement built in to the presentation. If you start posting your writing samples on a Prezi document, you can kind of jumble them up on the main page, or set invisible frames so that some some slides aren't centered or have text competing for attention. The movement, if you do it up right, will also give the viewer a brief sense of disorientation. Like, "how did I get here?" This will give us that sense of chaos I think you want, but because you can control the slides and direct the journey, you can make it so that the reader doesn't have to figure out where to go. Christie – your Outer Banks twitterive was amazing, so much so that I really don't have anything to add to it other than the few things we talked about in class, like moving the days counter to the bottom of the page, and maybe including the speech your grandfather made like the Prof suggested. Really sensational work, though, it was enjoyable and fun to look at. If that was you're rough draft, you're in great shape. And good job, now I can't wait for my own summer vacation! Rebcca - past, present, future are a really neat concept to take into the twitterive, and the framework for your site as you've laid it out is really well put together. It's eye catching without being over the top, and the pictures of different people/things and the blurbs for your roommates are nice, different little genres that both make use of photographs. I like it a lot. But like you suggested and the Professor commented on in class, I think the order of how you arrange the info might need to be tweaked a bit. Whether that's putting all the past stories in one section, then going to the present, and then the future, or if you align the blurbs differently so that it looks like this, |
past past past
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present present present
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future future future,
| that's up to you. You've got all the pieces, though, and right now it's more about putting those pieces together to make something whole. I don't foresee any major changes other than organization, and that's more than I can say for my own twitterive.
What follows is my Twitterive, an assignment that was supposed to cleverly combine tweets posted to TWITTER and narratIVE pieces of writing. My Writing Research and Technology class has been tasked to pick a place that means something to each one of us and, using multiple genres and modes of communication, we are to write about that place, and post pictures about that place, and use poetry and music and video images to capture what it means to us. The place does not have to be a physical space like a park or a classroom, but is allowed to extend to all aspects of life. Love, family, a sense of self, home, a future career. You name it, it can be included as a Twitterive place.
My place, I have decided, will be the most trying ordeal I've faced in all my life, something that nearly killed me a few times over. In the end, it helped change the shape of who I am today and made me a stronger, albeit slightly different person than I was seven or eight years ago. My theme is looking on the bright side of things, something that gets increasingly difficult when you feel like the waking, walking dead. My repetend, or the repeated motif that will link each piece in a Twitterive that may otherwise seem disconnected with itself, is being able to laugh and roll with the punches through a never-ceasing sense of humor.
Some questions:
1.) Genres. I need more genres, that much I know, but I'm struggling to come up with some.
2.) How's the tone so far? I'm aiming to infuse some laughs here and there; do I need more spots to cause the reader to chuckle?
3.) Since non-super-depressing is my goal, how am I doing so far? It's heavy material, I know. Do I need less gloom? Be honest.
4.) I suck at this, so feel free to offer suggestions not featured in these questions section. Comment away! Feel free to be brutally honest - your honesty is probably the best way to shape this thing into a finished product.
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