HOW I ANNOTATE | FAMOUS LAST WORDS & WHAT ALICE FORGOT

hi there my name is Wyatt and I'm posting something other than a dream daddy a MV I am an English Creative Writing major at Webster University and I love books I love every single book I own even the really really bad ones but if you look through my collection you'll see a lot of books that are taped up bent falling apart or altered part of this is because I cannot stand to be away from my books and the college life requires me to put them into a cardboard box and move them every couple of months and they bang around but another reason that so many of my books look like this is because I like to inhabit a book I like my copy to be my copy and I want to be able to pick my specific copy of famous last words out of a lineup of 70 identical copies my books are an extension of my soul and each one I've ever read it feels like a piece of me with this book in particular famous last words it's a little worse for wear because it was a comfort item for me for several years it is my very favorite book just holding it in my hand makes me feel calm and reading a passage can help pull me out of a panic attack so for several years I literally took it with me everywhere I still kind of do at any given moment there's a pretty good chance that this book is on my person so that's why me altering my books began at first when this book started to fall apart I just taped it up with some regular scotch tape or masking tape and it looked pretty sad and then one day I picked up some washi tape from the store so that I could fix it up a little more lovingly I got this lovely teal tape here that went well with the cover and beautified it I really like doing that so I bought a lot more washi tape I have a ridiculous amount of it and any time I accidentally bend up or tear or damaged a book that I'm reading I'll find something pretty that goes with it and just lovingly doctorat the first book that I annotated was actually not famous last words I did highlight in this book a lot just kind of haphazardly with whatever color I happened to be holding and I had a page in my journal but I used to make notes about the book and write down quotes that I enjoyed but I didn't ever write notes inside the book instead the first book I started annotating was what Alice forgot by the Anne Moriarty if you know me you know that Leon Moriarty is the love of my life her books changed my life changed my writing changed my perspective on the world I own every single one of them I learned so much about writing and how I want to write by reading four books and I wanted to try and mimic her style and learn to write the way that she does because I was so wowed by it so that's why I began to annotate what Alice forgot I don't remember why I chose to annotate this one in particular and not like the husband secret which is my favorite I think it was actually just that I saw this cute little addition at the store for like three dollars and decided to get it and at first I was going to annotate this one but the margins were really teeny tiny so instead I kept this one pristine and annotated my original copy I actually did the same thing with famous last words where I bought a second hardcover copy to help me justify writing in one but ultimately the clean copies just sit on my shelf untouched and unloved and I stopped seeing it as necessary so now I never buy a second copy of anything anymore I've always been a big highlighter a big underline a-- sometimes little stars tons of tabs i like my books if you lived in but I had never really written inside of a book before I decided to in what Alastor got and I approached this one very differently than I found my others I watched other people's videos on annotating and a lot of them have a set system that they use for every book I do not each book has its own system but they don't carry over because every book i annotate I'm entertaining for a different reason with what alice forgot I wanted to dissect Leanne Moriarty's writing style it was completely about structure and word choice and point of view and dissecting the language in the literary devices so the things I wrote in this really have nothing to do with the content I don't talk about any of the characters or what they're doing or why I'm more interested in making notes about how moriarty transitions from the present past how she transitions between Alice's thoughts versus what's happening around her things like that it's messy it's everywhere and I love it it's a big catalogue of my ideas and it feels almost like a diary I even mark at the bottom of the page when I new semester start so that I know when I annotated a specific part such as here I left a sticky note in him using about POV and how Moriarty uses it and I mistakenly call it stream-of-consciousness well my next semester I took advanced creative writing learned a lot about the different types of POV and I have a new sticky note a few pages later that talks about the new things that I learned such as that actually the POV can frequently change even mid-sentence and then you can see that I'm applying that new knowledge to my annotations by marking which POV she's in in each sentence you might have just listen to that I thought wow so in the course of a whole semester you only annotated a few pages and the answer is yes this is something I do for fun and inspiration in my free time sometimes I might not pick up this particular book for a couple of weeks either because I don't have the time to annotate or because I'm instead annotating something else that I'm feeling more interested in at the moment to move on the famous last words you'll see the inside of this one looks very different from the inside what Alistair thought I made a table of contents for the beginning because for some reason that's not commonplace in fiction anymore and on the title page here I have a key for what my tabs mean you'll notice that each color actually means a different thing depending on whether it's on the top or the side unlike what alice forgot i did not approach this from a technical standpoint at all this was she elite love of the book and its characters and we wanting to catalog my thoughts in one place rather than in random notebooks and Tumblr posts here and there this is literally like my 80th read of this book and I still notice new things that I enjoy and just have such an intimate relationship with the story that I cannot think of a better way to truly express my love for this book than to annotate it and breathe my love into it as you can see I opted not to write directly into this one but rather to use these little rectangular sticky notes that I found at Walmart the reason I did it this way is because for one I knew that I would have a lot to say and I thought that having these little pre-made boxes to write in would provide some order and to I wanted this book to still be readable when it comes to what Alice forgot I would not lend one this book not because my notes are personal but because they are very very intrusive and distracting I scribble all over it you would not be able to just read this book normally with famous last words I actually really like the idea of someone reading my copy and seeing my commentary and it just kind of feels like a little pop-up speech bubbles at the top and bottom it feels unintrusive and more like someone is reading the book alongside you on this page the main character Willa's ex-boyfriend Aiden gets brought up for the first time so far basically after Willa's father died she closed up emotionally and that was Aiden's reason for breaking up with her and I have multiple sticky notes here I talked about that I wrote where to even begin with the Aiden situation I cannot stand that he made Willa feel broken that he left her when she needed him the most she needed patience and understanding not anger and abandonment but at the same time I can't totally blame Eden for not having the emotional maturity or a life experience to know what to do at the age of 16 or 17 even so I wish that it was better addressed in the novel that well as pain and grief is not and never was her fault and even is awful for blaming her for it that might seem a lot less intellectual than my breakdown at the analyzation of Moriarty's writing but there's still a lot of analyzation going on on this page I talk about the spirit of Paige who has just appeared for the first time as a corpse floating in a pool having already read this book I know that Paige is actually a benevolent spirit here to help Willa but in this scene all we know is that she's a scary corpse in a pool and yet Katie Ellen described Paige as female wearing a knee-length skirt in a gauzy blouse that formed a translucent border around her ribcage like the body of a jellyfish she was barefoot and her hair hovered and a thick halo around her head silhouetted against the night so that I couldn't tell what color it was or how long I couldn't see her face I was so glad I couldn't see her face that is a very peculiar way to describe a scary corpse I mentioned in my annotations here the description is very angelic Willa is looking up at her from the bottom of the pool against the light as if she's an angel descending from heaven she's barefoot which seems modest submissive and somewhat biblical the flowing gauze around her feel her angelic as well in the shape of her hair around her head is described as a halo I think these details hint that Paige's spirit is benevolent and not harmful I actually just noticed while writing the script that will are being unable to see Paige space seems like a nod to the fact that she can't yet see Paige's true nature god I loved literature I think I'm going to add that to my annotations actually in this book I tapped character introduction to the bright yellow bright pink from Marnie's greatest moments blue for willows greatest moments up and down yellow for Wyatts greatest moments I actually named myself after this character and then I use up and down pink for romantic moments because I really love Wilin Wyatt together and the up-and-down blue for any time Willa has a vision about what at the victims I have tapped this book up all the way through but as far as annotations go I've only annotated the first few chapters so far it is time-consuming but it's a labor of love and like I said I can think of no better way to truly express my love for this story than to breathe my love into it in this way I think it would be really awesome for someone else to read my annotated copy and - maybe garner a deeper understanding or a deeper love for the book based on what I had to say about it now that I've said everything that I want to say I posted on Instagram and snapchat earlier that I would be making this video and ask for some questions Noah wanted to know how I go about picking things to annotate in a work that really has to do with why I am annotating that particular book here's another one I started which is the novelization of frozen which I am annotate in anticipation of the second movie this September and this one is pure fun it's not about the literary value of this novel there is none it's children and so my annotations are sheerly things like oh allah is so cute a ways that i feel that she's similar to me because i've seen myself a lot in honor but in a different book like this one I would never make a note like Oh alice is so cute like it's just a different approaches and different reasons for doing it kitty wanted to know if I approached fiction and nonfiction differently when I annotate the answer is yes I have only begun annotating one non-fiction book which is you can't afford luxury of a negative thought which is a self-help book you can see that this book has a lot of big square quotes in it and I use these of spaces to fit my sticky notes and they fit in there just perfectly the key difference in how i annotate fiction versus nonfiction is that I would never annotate fiction on my first read I do that on at least my second so that I can actually analyze the text as opposed to just react to it technically this is my first read of a frozen heart but since it's based on the movie I already know what happens and there are no surprises with a nonfiction book like this one it's more reactionary it's more diary like it's my thoughts as I'm reading it for the very first time Nicole asked what's my favorite part about doing it and for me it's probably a combination of two things the first is that it gets me very intimately attached the book it forces me to pay very close attention and to come away with a deeper and more complex understanding of the work the second thing would be that it is fantastic inspiration I love to entertain her a while right before I start writing my own fiction it gets my creative juices flowing it Prime's my brain and gets me into the correct mindset and it never fails to inspire me to want to create something as wonderful as what I'm reading I hope that you've enjoyed this video and this little look into my book collection if this intrigued you I really hope that you'll get an annotation to go because it is a really rewarding process and so much fun to look back on later down the road and see my intimate thoughts and ideas about a text and how they've changed over time hopefully someday when I'm a famous author this particular copy of famous last words will be worth a pretty penny thank you so much for watching bye

Channel: Wyatt

Views: 5,546

Rating: 4.9838057 out of 5

Keywords: annotate, annotating, booktube, writing in books, famous last words, katie alender, what alice forgot, liane moriarty

Id: fv8KP_wj4EA

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Thu May 23 2019