Author: Yan Tao

My experience with dialogue writing has been good. I feel like writing dialogue has been the easiest out of all of the writing that I have been written so far. The reason is that I already have a record of the dialogue that I was trying to write so I don’t need to dig into my memory or create something out of the spot. I can just type out the dialogues into a word document, then adding the name of the people who said the line and change the dialogue slightly so it makes more sense for people to understand. So I feel good about writing this dialogue.

My experience with poetry writing has been bad because I have never written any poems in the past. When I need to write poems, I was in a struggle to find out how to write a poem and how should I write it. It was also difficult when I actually start writing the poem since I keep have a feeling of the poem is not fluent and doesn’t sound right. So I often have to rewrite a sentence multiple time to make myself feel good about it. But in the end, I was managing to complete the two poems I was writing.

Two poems that I enjoy reading is “Don’t Quit” by John Greenleaf Whittier and “Do It Anyway” by Mother Teresa. I enjoy reading John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Don’t Quit” because it teaches me to never give up on anything even if it seems very difficult and that you might not succeed. The author includes multiple struggle situation that people often faces in the poem to make people know that they can’t just see a common challenge and then stop moving forward. When I first reading his poem, I empower by his word because it makes me feel that everything is possible if you didn’t quit. I enjoy reading Mother Teresa’s poem “Do It Anyway” because it has a similar meaning as “Don’t Quit”. It teaches me to do everything no matter if there is a difficult situation that it comes with or as a result. The author includes some scenes that can happen in people’s lives and things that can make them stop their actions. But the poem wants you to just continue to do what you were doing since it was your path, not others.

The poem that makes me interesting the most in Staceyann’s book “Crossfire” is “Song of Survival”. I like this poem because it shows the strength of people who tries to survive in a difficult place. Additionally, Staceyann was trying to use this poem to spread information about how black women are treat by the world and what kind of difficulties they have been facing. She wants more people can have a knowledge of the situation of them and tries to help them overcame the situation they are in. So the next-generation black women will not suffer the same as them. I was able to have a decent knowledge of the situation of the black women after reading the poem and it was surprising to see how they keep trying to survive no matter what they facing. I have never had the same experiment as them, but I can know that it was very impressive for people to never give up when constant difficulties come to them.

My experiment with writing short stories has been good. I was able to express my imagination on the different kind of subject. I enjoy writing the short storest since it can take me into a world that is only imaginable to me and will never experience it personally. Compare to writing memoir, I prefer writing short stories because I can just be creative on my writing other than dig deeply into my memory to find a good moment to writing my story on.

The current home is mostly noisy. It was like that because I live in an apartment where there is little to no soundproof and there is a little kid who lives next door to me. Every day, I could hear the kid crying because he did something that makes his mom yelled at him. There will be some silent time in my home when the kid was not crying. Because the coronavirus has cause people to always stay home, the amount of time I can hear that kid cry has increased as the day passes. But I can get some silents when I put on my headphones since it can prevent me from hearing the kid crying. Although I prefer to work in a quiet place, the noise from that kid will not affect me too much in turns of learning new things with the distance learning.

An embarrassing moment from my childhood is when I was about 8 years old. It was a Saturday during my summer break, my mom went out with her friends to go shopping while I was sent to my grandma’s place. I was watching tv all day that day and it was fun. Then my grandma tell me to go to the living room since my mom has come back, so I close the tv and went to the living room. When I arrived in the living room, my mom’s friends were there too. Out of nowhere, I suddenly call one of them mom. I don’t know why I did that and that person looks no way near my mom. Then everyone in the room started to laugh. I was so embarrassed that I rush into a bedroom and covered my head with the blanket.

1. I will never forget that day. That day has been the scariest day in my life and I just can’t forget it. I was camping with my friend in the middle of the forest and I was in the duty of gathering woods for making fire. That’s when I suddenly discover a man was lying down on the ground and there is some blood around his right leg.

2. Amie has gone missing for over half years and there is no other message from her other than the note she leaves for her father. The note was telling her father not to worry about her since she will be gone for a short minute. Her father was very worried about her and even call for help from polices. But the police can’t even find any information about where she went.

3. Everyone was cheerful for Mike when he finishes the race. Mike always has a weak body but he decided to join the 100-meter race in the sports competition. He was practice running every day even though he was very tired after the run and sometimes even seem like he’s going to fall in no time.

4. When I wake up in the morning, everything around me is different than before. I was lying down in my bed last night but I’m in the middle of a forest when I wake up. There is a strange sound coming from the distance and I have never heard that before. The sound is getting louder and louder as time passes.

My experience with memoir writing has been good. I was able to take out a piece of my memory and shared it with others. While I was writing those memories, I was able to recall those events that have happened to me and think about how they have changed me. By writing the memoirs, it has helped me develop my writing skill and storytelling skill. Although I still have some trouble with grammar issues, writing memoirs has benefited me as a writer. But my cohort has greatly help me by finding out the issues on my writing and give suggestions on the changes I can make to improve the writing.

I’m a person that is not very talkative, which causes me to have only a handful of friends that I can know well. Yin was one of my friends that I know from the first day of my freshman year in high school. It was during lunchtime on that day when he suddenly came and sit next to me while I was eating my lunch. He started to ask me whether or not I speak Chinese and I answer him with a yes. He said he was very happy because he was finally not the only Chinese speaking people in this high school. Then we quickly became good friends since we have many interests in common. The thing that makes this friendship significant is the fact that we were able to have someone in school who we can use our native language to communicate with each other. There are zero people in that high school that can speak Chinese other than us two. There has been a challenge in our friendship since we were able to meet much when he went to college. But we sometimes still communicate with each other during social media.