LITR 3731: Creative Writing
Student Journal / Portfolio Sample Submission 2003
Dominique Corpus
December 3, 2003
Journal/Portfolio
Introduction
This journal serves as a
representation of the progress I made in Creative Writing.
I enrolled in this course for two reasons.
The first being I wanted to take my writing in another direction,
basically away from the cliched essay assignments.
Second, I wanted to hear criticism once this was accomplished.
My experiences with creative writing prior to taking the course were
minimal. I have an abundance of
academic papers and only a few writings that were not school related.
Term papers and reading assignments took up the majority of my time,
which took away from my writing experience, so I had hopes to expand my
knowledge in creative writing. Although I expected this class to help improve my writing
outside the term paper, I learned more. I
learned how to write better poetry and how to write a drama script.
In fact, I was a little intimidated about writing a poem and drama piece,
fiction was okay, but the others were a little scary.
I was prepared to write and be
critiqued on a fiction story, but since I had little experience with the other
genres this became a concern. Normally,
I am very particular about who reads my work.
However, for this course, I was not prepared to let others read work that
I was not accustomed to writing. Nevertheless,
since the course was Creative Writing, I felt my classmates would share the same
ambitions for wanting to become better writers, so I did not drop.
In my opinion, the poetry was
the most interesting part of the course. I
like the idea of compacting a situation into a few sentences.
The poem I submitted was written during the summer.
However, I had no knowledge about writing poetry, besides the fact that
it needed to rhyme, so this section was very informative.
Out of the other writing genres, poetry is now my favorite.
The fiction and drama sections
were my least favorite, but they were also informative.
The textbook taught me how to organize information prior to writing a
story. Plus, I learned about
dialogue from the drama section, which would have been great to know for my
fiction piece.
All in all, I learned a lot from this course, which was one of my goals. In addition, I got the necessary feedback from others, which was also great. All of my expectations about this course were met. Personally, I am proud of my work and the knowledge I have acquired from taking it. My writing may not be the best or it may need more work, but at least I have the knowledge to go about fixing it.
Poetry
Journal
When writing this poem I had no
prior knowledge about how to write poetry. This course has taught me about two types of poems (free
style or traditional) and familiarized me with rhyming patterns such as slant
rhyme, which is helpful when writing poetry.
I also learned about what goes into a poem as far as imagery and
abstractions. Like I stated in my
introduction, my only knowledge about poetry was that it needed to rhyme.
This writing class has made me aware of the type of poetry I want to
write and the type of rhymes I will use.
After presenting my poem to the
class, and getting their feedback, I gladly made the changes.
In the beginning when writing this poem, my goal was to focus on the
feelings about the forbidden kiss. However,
after discussing it with the class, I felt that this was not accomplished.
Therefore, I took out the physical aspects of the poem and incorporated
add some imagery and abstractions to the necessary places.
For instances in the second stanza, second sentence, I took out the word
“overshadow” and replaced it with “cloud.”
I wanted readers to develop a mental picture of someone breathing, like
when it is cold outside. Within the same stanza, but the third sentence, I replaced
“Shyly we persist” with “Shy lips persist.”
This was also done to draw attention to the actual kiss and not the
people. I also learned that as a
poet, I had the right to spell words to benefit my material.
Therefore, I took advantage of this knowledge and changed some of the
poem’s wording, especially in the end. The
words “Reluctant First Kiss” were changed from their regular sentence form
and written dwindling downward. This
portrays the notion that it is too late to go back to the person who shared the
kiss, so the idea dwindles away. The
poetry part of the course was very insightful and fun.
The idea of playing with words and changing their spellings is what makes
poetry a better genre. Now I feel
as though I have always wanted to write poetry, but I did not know how to
approach it.
Although I was ready for some feedback regarding my poem, I was still nervous. The couple of poems I have written were personal, and no one had read them. Nevertheless, I put all of this behind me because I needed the criticism of fellow writers. In the end, I made the corrections and I am proud of my final draft. I appreciated the responses because no one has ever read my personal work.
Fiction
Journal
Although my fiction piece was not as difficult as the poem, it was still
my least favorite. I had not
written a fiction story since high school, so I was somewhat intimidated by this
assignment. I expected to have to
write a fiction piece, but I was still a bit nervous.
Therefore, I carefully read the chapters in Minot to get the necessary
feedback for preparation in this area, and the text was helpful. Minot’s writing was very easy to understand, which made the
first stages to writing fiction quite simple.
I think this section of the course was probably the easiest to
understand, so why did I dislike the fiction lesson? Well I just did not get enough feedback.
One of my reasons for taking this class was to get criticism, yet I
received a total of two responses about this piece.
I guess I just felt kind of alone when writing this piece as opposed to
the poetry. Maybe the email
exchanges are what made me dislike this section?
Presenting made me a nervous wreck, but I still got the feedback I needed
to improve my work. If you teach this course again, you might consider assigning
partners in order to keep up with who is doing the email exchanges.
Oh, and another thing, when I responded to certain emails, people seemed
to catch an attitude when I recommended changes or asked them to “go into
detail.” Once again, if you teach
this class again, you might want to inform the class not to take questions or
criticisms so personal.
Anyway, my main goal for this
section of the course was to present a fiction piece that was realistic. I
wanted the story’s setting and dialogue to be convincing and truthfully.
Although this was a fiction piece, I truly desired to make it real.
The main character in my story
was an adolescent boy named Donny, who just moved into the SeaSide housing
project. His mother is a dedicated
worker, whose only intent is to make the best of their financial burdens.
Therefore, when Donny asks, “why do I have to go to school?” the
mother selfishly does not respond because she is trying to give him a good life.
SeaSide is not the best of places, but it is all she can
afford. So why tell your son, “to
have a better life” when all she could give him was SeaSide? However, the
mother did not intend on Donny being so observant.
The kid was intelligent, but since this was a new living arrangement, he
had not learned any street smarts like Ke and Carey. Donny is seeing a lot he is not used to; however, the ride to
school does present another way of life. As
far as Ke and Carey are concern, both are doomed to succumb to the streets.
Carey has problems in school and does not seek help; Ke hangs out all
night and does not come home. None
of this is mentioned in the story because Donny is too young to notice these
aspects, but he is observant and notices things, which is what I tried to
portray. All in all, I felt this was an accomplished piece, so I did
not change a thing. However, I wish
I could have received some other advice.
Drama
Journal
Drama.
Lets just say I did not know what to expect from this section of the
class. I had not written any drama
before, nor did I intend to in the future.
I like Shakespeare but I was not ready to write a play.
Honestly, I just did not know how to feel about this assignment;
nevertheless, Minot came through once again.
I sat down and carefully read the chapters on drama, and in the end
discovered (as far as the direction for this assignment) dialogue was the key.
Also, after discovering classmates had to be written in for parts, I
figured why not write a script about school. Therefore, I listened to the drama
pieces prior to my presentation and decided my subject would be
elementary-students. Since everyone
was writing about college I though it would be interesting to make the class
younger and to change names. I have
a thing for being different.
In order to make the elementary
idea convincing, I looked through my son’s homework to come up with an idea.
One night after going over his vocabulary assignment, I came up with the
idea about teaching a vocabulary assignment.
Since my son’s homework that night consisted of making sentences out of
his words, I decided this would be the lesson.
I informed my son to give me his assignment once the teacher returned it
to him. After receiving his
sentences, I went through each one and reworded the sentences and changed some
entirely. Once this was done, I
picked six sentences that would fit the concept of my poem, which then made the
theme easy to come up and everything pretty much fell into place.
I feel this section of the
class was easy because it was just dialogue. However, it was still my least favorite.
I feel as though the drama section was a bit rushed, so I really could
not enjoy it. I liked the idea I
came up with, but it was still a rushed job.
Now, I did like the criticism I received because now I can apply it to my
final draft.
Summary
Overall, I am proud of my work,
but I am aware that I still need practice. However, like I mentioned in my introduction, this creative
writing course has given me the knowledge I could use to improve my writing.
This is what I expected from the course and it is what I am leaving with.
The Minot book was very helpful, so I am keeping it.
I plan on reading it again one day while I am off during my summer
vacations as a teacher. Even though I did not get much criticism about my fiction
piece, I still liked the feedback I received regarding my other material.
Now, I did get two or three responses to my fiction, so thank you to
those that did respond.
I think my strongest genre is
the poetry. I have always liked
putting words together, which goes well with poetry because it is compiles a few
words to express an immense feeling. I wish I could say fiction was my strongest, but I will have
to go over the Minot again to improve in that area.
What I have learned from this course? Well, I can say that no matter how good you feel about your writing there will always be others who feel it could be better. Therefore, writing is a constant learning process. One day you can produce exceptional material, and the next stuff you produce can be crap. Nevertheless, in order to improve with writing, one must be dedicated to making the changes in order to get a good final draft.