My experience in Pre-writing

     The moment I hear a teacher say "pre-writing", I feel a black knot begin to form in my stomach. It's sticky tentacles reach up and threaten for gag me from within, oozing it's slimy hatred out my mouth.  Pre-writing. I hate it. The idea of it is good, planning out you ideas before you write them SHOULD make them easier to write about and organize. Should. The problem for me however, is that I don't even know what I'm writing or where I'm going until about halfway through a paper. I don't even usually write my thesis at first if I can avoid it(aka we don't have to turn them in early-say- on turnitin.com making me very miserable and at a loss for words as I struggle to condense my entire unwritten paper into one line).  I just let words come and hope they make sense. My words tend to say what they want regardless of what I intend anyway.  Pre-writing for me is just a hassle, it takes up precious time for times writing and often isn't follow when I write the actual paper so it is indeed pointless.
        The contradicting thing however, is that in creative writing I am a  meticulous pre-writer. In a short or long fiction story, I must write down  every event that will occur in order, interesting lines I plan on using, and physically plan out every character(though that's mostly because I am terrible at characters....). My pre-writing is not to help me organize though, more so to help me remember all my ideas until I  have the attention span to actually write them- which, sadly, isn't often. The only time it is ever used for organization or planning purposes is for novel length ideas, not one of which I've ever bothered to go back and write, be it because I lack the focus, or the motivation once I see how the whole story is going to go(its simply not exciting any more....).
     In the end, prewriting doesn't help me much. I might draft a thesis or topic sentences a few times as I come to them, but more so to get wording rather than ideas right. I do not enjoy having to plan what Im going to do. It feels...restraining.  I need the freedom to write what comes to me, as it comes to me. I can't force my ideas to cleanly plan themselves out before I have a chance to fully understand what my ideas even are.

So Long and Good Night

      What must it be like, to live in a constant hell? Awake or asleep, you never escape the pure misery and purposelessness chasing you. The man said it was good to have bad dreams given their situation, for it meant they haven't given up, aren't simply longing for a release.  I suppose I can understand that statement to some degree, but I don't agree. When we have reoccurring bad dreams, it usually means something is wrong (which it obviously is with the characters given their situation),  and is more of an indicator of depression and suicidal tendencies than good dreams are... Does the man not realize that? To never have good dreams means that you have nothing left that can make you happy, nothing left to look forward to, enjoy or hope for. If they never have good dreams, do they really have nothing to live for? Why do they go on? Have they truly so deeply accepted that they'll never experience happiness again that not even their subconscious can imagine it?

The Road:I DON'T Believe You.

       The Road is by no means a poorly written or uninteresting novel, yet I couldn't quite find it engaging.  I simply can not accept the Man's character. Perhaps it's because  I'm not a parent, or because I've never been starving and running for my life after experiencing the apocalypse, but I cannot understand the Man's mindset.
        "We carry the fire,"
       Are these just words to him? It appears so to me. For someone who lives solely to protect his son and keep "good" alive in the world, I can't see him as... righteous. He lacks conviction too much for me to understand why he keeps living, why he keeps his son living.  His "We carry the fire" speech is his only excuse to keep living, but just because you don't eat people, doesn't mean you're a good person or carrying the fire. If he was truly a kindhearted person, why is only the son the one always pressuring him to help people? He may be the lesser of two evils, but he is by no means a good guy. If it were up to him, he'd leave every starving man or animal they pass. I don't blame him for that though, it's every man for himself if you want to survive in his world. There is no fire left for him to carry.
      So that disregards his reason for living of "carrying the fire"...he certainly isn't doing it. But if he lives solely for his son, how come he couldn't muster up enough courage to overcome his sorrow and shoot his son when he died? A small act of compassion to save his son from dealing with the cannibal ridden, lonely and broken world he tried to hard to protect him from wasn't able to break through upon his death. (it was pure luck and by no knowledge of the father that the veteran was able to take in his son after his death). I can't believe his character because I don't understand why he was even there.