Journal


26. 9. 2019


1.    Sadly, I don´t really write that much nowadays – it´s not a lack of time, I would say a lack
of motivation


2.    I´ve always liked to write short stories and poems (although those were not really good). And
surprisingly, last semester I also enjoyed writing research papers on books (not all the research
papers we had to write, just the ones on the books I liked, with the others I just felt like I have
nothing much to say)


3.    Like I stated above – I don´t really write when I don´t have to these days


4.    I must say that I do take pride in some of my works, mainly because I know that I did my best
to write them. Honestly, I´m not that kind of person who can just say “whatever” and write some
nonsense; I always strive (well, sometimes more like “struggle”) to create something worth reading


5.    It depends. Some days I´m able to sit down in front of a computer and write two pages worth
of research paper (well, that happened only once and boy, was I surprised!) and other days, writing
a short paragraph is worse than walking barefoot across a room full of scattered Legos


6.    Once I know that it´s the best version possible under given circumstances, I don´t mind
showing it to people. Actually, since primary school, whenever I write something my best friend is
always the first one to read it and give me feedback, even though she just always says that she
loves it (and that´s not really a helpful feedback, although it is very nice to hear that)


7.    I think that as long as a piece of creative writing has some deeper meaning or carries a
message (and it doesn´t matter if it´s your standard good-beats-evil in fairy tales or something
more intricate) it can be considered academic. Because as we concluded in the lecture, “academic”
writing should educate you, make you think


8.    I believe that I am rather open-minded about books (read: I´ll read anything that looks
interesting enough, no matter the genre). Generally, I like detective stories, fantasy novels and
comic novels. My favourite book (although it´s hard to pick a favourite) is Vango. It´s 700 pages
long and read it in three days, I was so engrossed in it! I especially like the structure – there
are many characters and many subplots, but it all comes together in the end and turns out that
everyone knows everyone (that´s oversimplified, the real story is so much better – check it out if
you want)


9.    I´d say that during the semester, I´m able to read one book a week (however, it looks like
that this semester I won´t be able to do any leisure reading L). During the holidays, it depends on
how much time I have, I think my total record this summer was three books in a week (I know it
doesn´t look like much, but it was the Lord of the Rings trilogy)


10.  Well, vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure come to my mind first. There is also the
structure of the whole paper. Then it depends on what I´m writing. For research papers I often have
to extrapolate information from outer sources and incorporate them effectively into my text. For
leisure writing, I always just let my imagination run free (though I guess that´s not a language
skill per se)


11.  I believe that an essay is a piece of writing where the author expresses his or hers thoughts
and opinions on a chosen subject in an interesting and (for the reader also) enjoyable way.