Anna Nemeckova-GulackWeek 4 Analysis

In the Manifesto for Discomfortable Writing, the author keeps addressing over and over again that discomfortable writing should challenge conventions our society including language conventions. One of the main things I noticed in the writing examples was the rejection to a set format, as well as to consistent punctuation, instead preferring to let fragments of sentences make up the writing. This can be seen in Temps Morts, which seems in some cases to be telling a story (or multiple stories) that move and ebb from one idea, time and place to another, with rarely any punctuation. The Melodious Chant also implements this while inviting the reader to speak out loud and analyze the sound of the words spoken. To me both of these bits of poetry seem to act like a stream of consciousness on the part of the writers without the constraints of punctuation and grammar, which I tried to match with my writing.

I honestly had so much trouble getting started on this assignment. I first wanted to talk about a specific topic, but I had trouble thinking of what to say in a way that matched the style of the writing this week. I felt insecure about pursuing the topic in general, which didn’t help. I also thought about the prompt for a white, but in the end, I really couldn’t think of what to say. I ended up just sitting down at my computer and typing a stream of consciousness about what was going on in my head at the time I was writing this. I forwent the use of punctuation and just wrote whatever came to mind, which ended up being a very personal semi-coherence string of complete and incomplete sentences which show a lot of panic, anxiety, and uncertainty. This doesn’t really surprise me, because that was exactly what I was feeling at the time

The only real complaint I have about typing this way is that I am not the best typist, and I always end up pressing different buttons accidentally and causing a word to come out completely misspelled despite knowing the actual spelling. I had to go through and correct a good amount of spelling mistakes but I kept some in for the effect. Also, typing in general for me is really intimidating, because I find it mentally exhausting. Overall though, once I actually got in the zone, typing itself (when I am not thinking about punctuation) allows for a sort of fluidity that writing physically doesn’t have.

I guess I learned that sometimes I need to allow myself to just write something without censoring myself, since there is always a part of me that tries to hold me back. Also, I learned that there is a type of writing that appeals to me in terms of what I want to do. The Manifesto of Discomfortable Writing and The Manifesto for Ultratranslation showed types of writing that I have never explored before and that I am excited to continue exploring, because it seeks to look at and challenge what we know about culture and the boundaries between different people. While I did not explicitly address that in my writing, I hope that I can eventually come to fully understand both Manifesto’s and what it means to be a Discomfortable Writer and Ultratranslator.