Feedback Thoughts

As a person who is already overly self-critical, feedback can be scary. I have always been told that feedback is just a chance to improve, but it is still difficult to accept that it is not the same thing as negative criticism that implies I have failed. Reading "A Simple 5-Second Habit to Rewire Your Harshly Self-Critical Brain" gave me a wonderful tool to use for dealing with feedback, which is "REBS" (reality-based self-congratulation). It mentions treating yourself for every small step you take, and picking yourself back up after dealing with a setback. I hope to apply this to feedback by not allowing comments to get me down but instead realizing that it is only there to help me. By congratulating myself for the small steps, I feel like I will grow in confidence and be able to better deal with criticism. The other article, "Seven Ways to Crush Self-Doubt in Creative Work," mentioned problems that I struggle with and know I need to solve. The one that stuck out to me the most was that you should not compare yourself to others. This just creates more self-doubt that does not do anything good for anyone. It can make you jealous and arrogant, and it can end up hurting both you and other people.

It can be easy to avoid or ignore feedback. What I have found, though, is that when I do this, I end up missing out on opportunities to be even prouder of my work. Feedback gives us the opportunity to see our work in a new light. Oftentimes we become close-minded with our work because we have spent too much time around it. We become limited to only what our brains allow us to see. Feedback helps us to cut down our time on our work: rather than having to put our work away for a day when we can look at it with fresh eyes, we can instead have someone look at it with their already-fresh perspective.

Over my years as a student, the most productive feedback experiences I can remember are the gentle and inspired ones. Many times, this would be feedback given by a teacher or peer I greatly admire.  Their comments on my writing or project would be encouraging and positive, but they would also add in suggestions that were kindly worded and sounded excited about my topic. They would avoid any kind of judgemental tone or wording, and they would always seem genuinely interested in the subject matter. The most negative feedback experiences I have had were ones that were obviously meant to be hurtful and embarrassing towards me, with harsh words and nothing positive to say at all (it's no wonder I'm so self-critical and a perfectionist after traumatic situations like that!). Feedback that has helped me grow as a learner at work, sports, and hobbies have been very hands-on. Rather than telling me what to do, the person I worked with would show me and work with me until I got the idea.

I absolutely love that this course is set up to separate a number from feedback. As a student, it is so easy to not even care about what feedback says when you can just look at what grade you got. We do not learn and grow from experiences like that, and I am so glad that this course recognizes that. Now I can focus on improving my writing for myself rather than a better number/letter/percentage.


(Image information: The Specter of Failure by Grant Snider)

Topic Brainstorm: Frame Tales and Other Ideas

1. My first idea is to combine the world of Alice in Wonderland (story here) with fables by using frame tales. Our professor helped me think of this one and I really love it! I have always been a lover of the obscure nature of Alice in Wonderland and how it shows the progression and confusing aspects of childhood. I also absolutely adore fables and any story with a moral (examples: the "Tongue-Cut Sparrow", "The Tortoise and the Hare", and "the Man in the Moon"). So the idea is this: Characters (the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, and the White Rabbit) from Alice in Wonderland would be telling fables to a boy who fell into the world and is in need of a few life lessons. I would use common fables but twist them in a way that is unique to each storyteller. With this idea, I hope to learn how to better use frame tales so that I can apply them to my writing outside of this course.

2. Another idea I have is to have a character (potentially from a show, book, or folktale) take a trip through the underworld with Hades who is showing a character how different people died and why they are receiving punishment. I would use stories from fables about greed, anger, etc. The TV show The Good Place has really instilled in me a desire to understand what could happen after death, what it means to actually be a good person, and if any individual truly deserves to be punished for eternity. I would love to explore this and come up with my own opinions on the matter. Plan A for this idea would be to write deceased characters who you would not expect to be in hell and do not deserve the fate they were given (i.e. they were a good person but just did a couple of bad things that landed them in hell). Plan B is to write actual evil characters who "deserve" they fates they were given. 

3. My third idea concerns the backstory of the Seven Dwarfs. I would pick a few of them (if not all) and apply folktales/mythology to them that serve as their backstories. For example, Grumpy might be the way he is because of a story in which a character loses everything he loves (I'm depending on what I learn this semester in this course to give me ideas for stories to retell and apply to this). I am interested in this topic because I always wondered why each dwarf was the way he was when I watched Disney's Snow White. This would be a good opportunity to come up with my own backstories for them. From this, I hope to learn more about how to creatively write backstories because that is something I struggle with immensely. 

4. My final topic idea is twisted and unfair endings. For this one, I would use stories that are supposed to teach people a lesson (like Aesop's Fables), but the endings would favor the antagonist. For example, in "the Tortoise and the Hare," the hare would end up winning the race because the tortoise is too slow and the hare's ego does not get in the way. Putting stories in this light show the harsh realities of life and can bring attention to the fact that life is not always fair due to advantages and opportunities that some are lucky enough to have. I am interested in this topic because I grew up always hearing happy and seemingly impossible endings, and it would be nice to read something realistic, albeit frustrating and negative, for once. They would be more in line with nursery rhymes like Jack and Jill or the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. From this I hope to learn how to avoid writing to please the reader and instead write for the sake of a story. 

(After writing these out, it seems that the most important part of this project for me is that I use stories that can teach a lesson. I am most interested in using Aesop's Fables and Japanese folktales. Whether they are about greed, kindness, anxiety, or other issues, I really hope to convey some type of message. With the exception of the third idea, this is the general pattern of my ideas. Even with the fourth idea, I would still be applying life lessons to my writing, even if they are not happy ones.)

(Image Information: illustration by Sir John Tenniel from Un-Textbook)

Week 2 Story: The Boy and the Bird

Once there was an average boy who grew bored of his average life. He complained that it was monotonous and he was unhappy.

A magician came along and wanted to help the boy. The boy asked to be given all the riches in the world so that he could do whatever he wanted with his days.

For a while, the boy found happiness in the money. He purchased whatever his heart desired. After some time, though, he grew bored and could not find fulfillment in spending rather than earning. He asked the magician to instead show him the opposite life: He wanted to work hard for his money and feel like it was well-earned.

After a while of an impoverished life, the boy grew exhausted and bored once again. He told the magician that he did not enjoy such a hard life. Maybe if he lived somewhere else with his average life he would be happy. The magician granted him the wish.

The boy enjoyed his new home for a while but soon grew bored of it. "I want to go home and go back to my normal life," said the boy. The magician granted the wish, and the boy was content.

A few years later, the magician came again for a visit to see how the boy had grown. The boy was delighted, as he had been growing weary of his monotonous life yet again. He asked the magician to be given a new life of adventure and riches. The magician was shocked and said, "Have you learned nothing? You have seen the best and the worst of life, and yet you still lack the ability within yourself to be happy in spite of your circumstances."

So the magician turned the boy into a bird and said, "Now it will be in your nature to be content with life, as animals live day-by-day and never ask for more."

The bird flew away and found a joy he was not able to find as a boy.

(Image from goodfreephotos)

Author's note: For my story I used "The Man in the Moon" and kept the general pattern of a discontented person asking for change, but I altered the details and ending. I wanted to write a story about how easy it is for a person to forget how good they once had it as well as how difficult it is to be content with yourself. I appreciated how the the original story was very simple, but I saw potential in it for a more complex story that had multiple layers.

Bibliography. "The Man in the Moon" from Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson. Web source.

Reading Notes: Week 2 Anthology - The Man in the Moon and The Three Roses

The Man in the Moon from Laos Folk-Lore by Katherine Neville Fleeson

Reading stories that share wisdom brings me immense satisfaction. "The Man in the Moon" gives advice to those of us who cannot seem to settle and be accepting of what we have. The plot is so basic, but it ends up speaking volumes. Everything that the man chose to turn into--a stone, the sun, the moon, a cutter--was beautiful or reasonable, and yet he found something that did not settle well with him about it. The specific transformations do a wonderful job of illustrating how something "perfect" in one person's eyes can be seen as imperfect in another's. Every transformation was chosen carefully and acts as a grounding tool to make the plot and meaning stronger.

While the story is beautiful, the ending is dissatisfying to me. I am not one to prefer sad endings, and as a person who frequently seeks change in life, I was sad to see that the Man in the Moon did not end up getting his final wish of being returned to a blacksmith. I was hoping to see and have closure with his final character development. As the story progressed, I found myself rooting for him and wanting him to find peace in being a blacksmith. While I can see why the author did not do this, I believe that I would have ended the story with the final wish of him returning to his original state.

The Three Roses from The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis

My favorite part of "The Three Roses" was the significance of the character contrast. The first two daughters were presented negatively, with traits of greed and overindulgence. The following sentences emphasized the third daughter's goodness by her simply and gently saying that all she wanted, if possible, was three roses. Her character is already set up so that the reader only expects good from her. If the first two daughters had not been mentioned, the reader would have barely noticed the heart of gold the third daughter had. I adore this style of writing in which supporting characters are used to stress the importance of and contrast a trait in another character. I also noticed that there is not just one greedy daughter, but two. This high quantity of negative characters even more so plays up the third daughter's good nature. It leaves the reader realizing how much easier it is to be a negative character in this fictional world. Characters should all have a reason for being present. Otherwise the reader gets lost in the content and forgets what is important. This is something I hope I can bring into my own writing.


Image credit:

Moon image from Myth-Folklore Anthology site

Week 2 Reading Overview

Choose from CLASSICAL and/or BIBLICAL units for Weeks 3 and 4.

Week 3: Cupid and Psyche

Week 4: Bible Women

Choose from MIDDLE EASTERN and/or INDIAN units for Weeks 5 and 6.

Week 5: Fables of Bidpai

Week 6: Twenty-Two Goblins or Ryder's Panchatantra

Choose from ASIAN and/or AFRICAN units for Weeks 7 and 9. [Week 8 is review week.]

Week 7: Japanese Mythology

Week 9: Japanese Fairy Tales: Lang

Choose from NATIVE AMERICAN units for Weeks 10 and 11.

Week 10: American Indian Fairy Tales

Week 11: British North America

Choose from BRITISH and/or CELTIC units for Weeks 12 and 13.

Week 12: Aesop's Fables

Week 13: English Fairy Tales

Choose from EUROPEAN units for Weeks 14 and 15.

Week 14: Hans Christian Andersen

Week 15: Europa's Fairy Book

One unit I am really excited about is the Asian unit. I have always wanted to learn more about Japanese fairy tales and stories, but I have never known where exactly to look for them. Being able to read them for a class is wonderful because it is something I have been wanting to do in my free time anyways. There were not any topics I can think of that were not covered, but I am sure that as the course progresses I will be able to think outside the box more and will think of other topics I'm curious about. 

One story I grew up knowing (thanks to the Disney movie) was Beauty and the Beast. Tales like this really ignited my love for stories and they made me into the person I am today. 

(Beauty and the Beast image from UnTextbook blog)