This so far has been my favorite reading for this class. Every other reading we've had, has been good writing. But I've never really related to any of it in the way I related to Memory and Imagination. I guess you can say it has to do with the remembering things and writing down what Hample, would say are "lies". I can say I struggled with it all throughout high school. Kind of a lot in Spanish we were given assignments where we would have to reminisce about a memory with the family we might have had. Or something like that! I would find myself filling in I guess you could call "gaps" of memories that were a little fuzzy to me, with lies. Or something I would make up for the moment to fill those gaps. But a difference about the steps I took from those of Hample's steps is that I wouldn't go back after my first draft and change the "lies" I wrote in the first place with something I might have remembered to actually be true. I don't know if it is because I was lazy to actually take the time to create a good piece of writing, or I never really thought about it. Maybe I was just in the mind set that I couldn't mess with my first draft I had to leave it the way it was, only fixing grammatical errors my teacher might have found. Its more like when I am writing statistics or facts that I would go back and maybe fix something that was wrong. Never to my own memories did I fix anything. To be honest without reading this text I don't think I would have ever realized I was missing something in good writing. But does going back in your writing fixing things like memory glitches make you a good writer?
Maybe writing things down is the only way TO remember something fully. If its never asked of us to go back and remember a time we once had, how often would we actually try to remember a time with our mom, or a dress that used to be your favorite? If we are not going to remember our pasts, then who is? Like Hample said, there are 1000 books I think that try to prove that the holocaust never happened. Why do people insist on trying to rewrite history? If we just sat back and never tried to remember something that once happened, we might loose our selfs all together.
I agree when you say some memories are fuzzy that you may have filled in the blanks with "lies" or things you weren't sure about. I do think that going back and revising makes you a better writer even though I don't always do it. I think it was 100 books about the Holocaust but whatever and ya I know what you mean about we shouldn't rewrite history.
ReplyDeleteSome very good ideas here, guys! Raquel, you'll want to note that Hampl wasn't concerned with changing the "lies" that she noticed. Instead, she stated that she still hadn't "discovered what the piece wanted her to know." The "revelations", the emotions and "big issues" involved were what was important to her. She didn't create other drafts for the sole purpose of correcting.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the question of rewriting history is very interesting. Isn't re-writing our memories (our own history) a micro-example or re-writing history? Does this give us reason to question history and what has influenced its tellings? Perhaps we should "Question Authority."