Alyssa Robinson
 
    I am finding blogging to be a very helpful tool for reflecting on readings for class.  It's a bit of an informal way to get my own thoughts out there, while forcing me to really think about the readings.  I also like that with a blog I am able to get immediate feedback from the professor and other people in the class, and to see what others took from each piece.  I like the interactive aspect of that genre.  
    I really enjoyed composing the microfiction piece based off of a line from Anzaldua's piece.  As a read the Anzaldua piece there were several lines that jumped out to me that I thought I could potentially use to create my own story.  Eventually I was able to narrow it down to a very dynamic quote that could go in many directions.  The quote I used was "For the longest time I couldn't figure it out, then it dawned on me."  Interestingly, I went in a completely different direction from the way Anzaldua intended the line.  It's interesting that one line can be taken out of context and applied to a completely different situation.
    I never thought of applying twitter to so many different writing situations.  The task of composing a microfiction story based on one of my tweets was interesting.  Tweets have such a limited word count, it was interesting to see how I was able to expand it into a short story.  Then composing a poem from a collection of my tweets proved to be a bit of a struggle.  I already struggle with poetry as a writer, so the restriction of only being able to use a specific collection of words made it that much harder.  I found myself wishing I had gone into more detail with some of my tweets, or used a different word to describe something.   
    The use of twitter was taken a step further as I created a haiku poem from my microfiction story based on a tweet.  From this assignment I was able to see how a different genre can change the tone of a story.  While my poem had the same theme as the microfiction, it took on a more serious tone.  The poem also focused in on just one aspect of the story.