"About Tennis"

"About Tennis"

"About Tennis" is not a published book. But how do I know about it? I'll tell you who the author is. ME!!!!!

I started this story in 2012 and finished it in July 2013. Why did I go on with this task? I did this because I wanted to show my unique writing in a creative manner and so, I did it along with my cousin sister who lives in Bangalore, India.

To be honest, I didn't go for this book at first, but I eventually agreed. And so, I took a Windows 8 desktop and Microsoft Word, and got to work. The final book ended up being over 100 sheets on Microsoft Word, if I printed it on both sides. I put it in chapter book format and got about 320 pages.

Seriously.

I tried to include a lot of good writing craft in there. And overall I thought it was pretty good. I'm sure some of my fellow freshmen classmates have already read it, and they were really happy with it. 

There are a lot of funny scenes, and really dramatic scenes as well. It mainly concerns a group of tennis kids who have strong feelings against one another that results in various problems that slowly try to break the bond of unity among them.

I made myself one of the main characters of the book. So I play the role of Anirudh Talwar; a bitter and cynical former tennis player who is insecure of his friends' success in tennis and life as high school kids. There are other characters in the book, mostly kids in MHS. But I really don't feel like revealing their names. All the tennis team kids are Indians.

The book received major comments on Blogger but emerged as one of the top 100 best stories of the country.  

When I posted it on my writing blog (not this blog), I got really overwhelmed by the number of +1's I got. In one week, every single post received an average of 204,678 +1's when I calculated all the posts together. That's when I made the blog private, but I keep five unsold copies of the book in my locker, for anyone who wants to read it.


The contents of the book are as follows.

Chapter 1: The Win
Chapter 2: Meeting Sathya

4 years later

Chapter 3: Common Dissatisfactions.
Chapter 4: Dolphins vs. Tigers
Chapter 5: The Hospital Scene
Chapter 6: Sathya Gets Added
Chapter 7: The Dance Scene
Chapter 8: Problems Rise
Chapter 9: The Attempt for Revival
Chapter 10: Arguments

Intermission

Chapter 11: A Possible Solution
Chapter 12: The Conversation
Chapter 13: A Small Reform
Chapter 14: Kings Island
Chapter 15: The Yelling
Chapter 16: The Invitation
Chapter 17: Time Passes
Chapter 18: The Final Match
Chapter 19: The Celebration

Epilogue

You guys can ask me if you want to read the book and I'll be happy to lend a copy to you.
Two sequels will be released soon!!!

The writing blog where I posted the book is anirudhswritingblog.blogspot.com. But don't do anything stupid there.

"DIvergent" + Real Life Issue Representations

     

"Divergent" + Real Life Issue Representation

So as of now, I have finished reading 120 pages of "Divergent." And if you ask me what I personally think about the book so far, I think the book is an excellent choice for high-school readers who want some adventure to divert their thoughts a little. 

So let's get to the main point. A real life issue that I am noticing in the text is adapting to new changes in life. 

In the book, Beatrice had to go to a faction called Dauntless, and she ended up living without her family, but with other people who chose Dauntless as well. The major changes she has to go through in order to stay in this faction (and live a life, basically) involve changing her name to "Tris" and not seeing her family, learning how to fight, and at one time, learn how to use handheld weapons.

Veronica Roth uses Tris in order to enhance this issue's presence because throughout the book, Tris is shown to have a lot of reminiscing scenes about her family, and her brother Caleb. This shows how much she actually misses them, and she has to adapt to a new life with other Dauntless members (Christina, Molly, Al, Will, just a few to name out). So based on Tris's constant flashbacks, the change in her life is not easy, but it really hits on her hard, because now she is forced to do new activities that she has never done before. That's how this society runs. Get into a faction at 16 years of age or you have no life. 

If you ask me over adapting to new changes in life, I'm gonna tell you that they may seem hard for a week or two, but after a while, you start to adapt to the new change and you eventually find some amount of happiness within it. Now our society is distinctly different from the story's society, because we don't even have factions. So I can live with my own family for as long as I want, even though I still have to study hard. But where I see this issue in my life is when I started high school. I left the first week feeling wronged by some teachers and I thought I was gonna mess up here. But after 2 weeks, I eventually started to find some happiness within the high school and now, I am much more happier in high school than in middle school.

So, Veronica Roth basically uses Tris to say that adapting to dramatic, new life changes is just not easy. You can have a lot of reminiscing moments about your life before the change. But as time goes on, you eventually find some sort of adaptiveness to the change, as well as some amount of happiness in it.

Krista Ramsey Homework 4/14 Blog Post

Krista Ramsey Homework 4/14 Blog Post

The column I chose is named, "Locking into the magic of Legos."

This column talks about the following: Many young children are so attracted to Legos over the past 65 years, and while they play with them tiny pieces, they learn about the importance of progress, and trial-and-error situations.

To look at the actual column, click here.

The line that I think is best written is, "At 5 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month, a long line of small- to medium sized children snakes along the main concourse of Kenwood Towne Centre." This is the very first line in the column. The impact of this line on the reader is that the reader gets lured into reading more of the article because he/she may not know this fact that comes true in Cincinnati, and they may get even more lured into reading this article if they actually live in Cincinnati. So as a result, they want to read more over why this giant line of kids come at this specific mall in this specific city. For diction and syntax techniques that are present within this line, I am finding the presence of concrete diction and a balanced sentence type of syntax. The reason why I say this is that for diction's reason, there is a tangible idea and a physical quality present. And then for syntax, I see that the number of phrases and clauses in that sentence are equal. 

For Ramsey's writing style, I would describe it as journalistic and terse, because she is providing a service to the public by analyzing news and current events that are going on today, so eventually, her writing is emphasized and enhanced to look like a typical news reporter wrote it. Quotes that help prove this are, "In the U.S. alone, the percentage of people ages 12 to 54 who are nearsighted - meaning unable to see things clearly at a distance - rose from 25 percent in the early 1970s to 42 percent now" (From the first article), "And life itself regains the punctuation that says every day isn't the same as every other, that we are all part of a collective experience and that we honor each other and ourselves when we care about how we're groomed and dressed" (From the second article), "Like sparklers and hugs, Legos are things a child can never have enough of" (From the third article).  Her writing is also in a terse style because throughout the article, I can see that she is always talking up to the point about this current event article over kids' attraction to Legos. She never adds any irrelevant information to the article and she always talks in a cohesive manner up to the point. In addition, she also adds some personal opinions to her writing because that's what a journalist and/or news reporter would typically do. This can be seen in the third quote, for example, from the third column. 

Questions I would ask Krista Ramsey, if given the opportunity, are as follows.

1. How long has your career in writing been? 

2. In high school, did you work for a school paper? If so, were your first articles like the ones you publish today, and still continue to publish?

3. Where exactly do you get the information you need to write your articles, and what are your tips into making their writing so engrossing and unique? 

  

"Divergent" + Author Information

"Divergent" + Author Information

So, while I read pages 61-90 in "Divergent" this weekend, I wanted to learn more about the author, Veronica Roth, and what her life was all about. Well, I researched a lot on some reliable sources, and this is what I can say about her.

Veronica Roth was born in 1988, so she is about 25 years old, and she lived in Illinois. Her parents divorced when she was five, so her mother remarried Frank Ross. They all live near the Chicago area.

She is best known for her "Divergent" series. She studied at Carleton College and then Northwestern University to learn creative writing. 

She later married photographer Nelson Fitch in 2011, and they still resided in the Chicago area. That explains why Veronica's "Divergent" series is set in a fantasized version of Chicago.

Later on, in her college career, she wrote "Divergent" over Winter Break, and it immediately became a huge success internet-wise and publicly. She got multiple awards on GoodReads and Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction. She later wrote two more books, "Insurgent" and "Allegiant." I will be reading those books later on, after I finish "Divergent" that is. 

So that is my whole research over Veronica Roth, and if you guys wanna know more about this extraordinary person, you can go ahead and visit her blog. And you can also view her latest interview in the embedded video below.

Have fun exploring her life more with these resources!

"Divergent" + Vocabulary Observances

"Divergent" + Vocabulary Observances

As I am reading this book, what I have learned so far after reading pages 27-60 is that Beatrice has gone to a Choosing Ceremony the next day after her test, and her brother Caleb, chooses Erudite. And Beatrice, is nervous, but she lures herself into Dauntless. She leaves Abnegation, and so, her family as well. She basically treats herself into starting a new life, so she goes ahead and after a long train journey, she renames herself "Tris." She also gets to know the names of a few other people who have decided to be put in the Dauntless faction, like Christina, Molly, and Rita. Another new character, Max, is a man who is one of the heads of introducing the new Dauntless people in.

So that's what's been going on in pages 27-60.

Now, I gotta say that I think there's too little of the overall story being covered in so many pages to read all at one time. And I think that the reason why this happens not only in this book, but in lots of other books is because the author wants to show the reader his/her talent in writing. Like here, Veronica Roth wants to utilize more pages to show more imagery, vocabulary and her talent in writing. Most of the vocabulary she uses makes a huge effect in the overall imagery of the story. She uses crisp and really effective words to paint scenes more clearly. And as a result, I am more able to mentally visualize every single scene that Veronica Roth writes about. S

So I am gonna make an assumption here. I think that the more time an author takes to show his/her talent in real writing by utilizing more pages, more extraordinary vocabulary, and more imagery techniques, the more recognized his/her writing will be in the stories they write, and the more encouragement he/she will get to write more and more, and therefore, make writing a more enjoyable career.

I got a question for you guys to answer:

Do you really think writers utilize more pages just to show their talent in real writing and attempt to make their books more recognized, as well as teach us readers more vocabulary?

You guys can leave your answers in the comments below and thanks very much for reading and answering this question and post!!!