LITR 3731: Creative Writing
Student Journal / Portfolio Sample Submission 2003
Kelly Williams
4 December 2003
Introduction:
When I first entered into this course I was very apprehensive about what would be expected of me. How will I manage to survive a semester of constant criticism of my precious work? My work was like a sacred text to me, it was not to be edited and questioned. The whole idea of criticism slowly began to warm up to me as I slowly learned how to not only handle my fears but how to listen to people’s diverse viewpoints. I also learned that the first draft is simply that—a draft that can be changed and altered to fit. How to handle criticism is perhaps the best thing about this course that I have learned.
My poetry work was a first for me, I had written poetry before just not for a class. This was a surprising assignment as well as a daunting task. Just how does one go about writing a poem from scratch? Luckily the book by Minot was helpful in this task. My poetry is perhaps my “weakest link” in this course. It is the weakest because I have very little confidence in my abilities to craft a decent poem. The key word here is “decent”. As Dr. White has commented my uses of the phrase “lamenting the mice” was not perhaps the best choice. I will go into more detail as the journal progresses.
My fiction essay would have to be my middle piece. It not only came in the middle of the semester but it is my neutral piece. It is neither excellent nor mediocre. I have had some experience in writing fiction because I tend to think in sentences rather than cryptic phrases and intense bursts of thought. I also write fiction in my spare time, so this has helped me in this part of the course. Minot talks about using real life experiences to come up with topics in fiction. This method is what I used to come up with my topic.
Drama was the most threatening topic; I had no idea where to begin. Thankfully, I was one of the last to go so I just “followed the others lead” as to what worked and what did not. I believe that this has helped me come up with my drama. The dialogue part of the drama was perhaps the easiest part of the whole course. I just wrote what I thought the characters might say, and it worked!
To conclude this introduction, I have learned much about the art of writing and I hope this journal reflects my efforts.
Draft Exchanges:
I participated in several email exchanges and
was the commentator on quite a few drafts in class. I found that the email
exchange worked well for those that had email and were in the habit of checking
it frequently, this is because some drafts were sent at odd hours of the night!
In class I commented mostly on style and with the fiction, was this real or not?
Poetry was hard to comment on because I have had little experience myself
writing it so I was unsure as to what worked the best.
Poetry:
My first thought was “How in the world am I going to come up with a poem in 3-4 weeks!?!” this thought had me worried that I was not going to succeed with this course. I was wrong because I have succeeded, at least in my mind. Then the bolts of inspiration struck me and I was given the idea to write a poem about writing on the computer. This is something that almost everyone has faced at one point or another. First the mouse will not work , so you have to find another one, then you will have gotten the mouse to work and the file has been corrupted so you “ clashing of keys” pounding out a why-won’t-this-work feeling. I thought I had found the ultimate poem theme or central idea.
My earliest draft included the word “whatever” in the line “whatever happened to the pen” this was replaced by the word “what”. I was advised via email exchanges to change just that one word so I took their words of wisdom and changed the word. I left the poem mostly the same because I thought that I conveyed not only the wonderment as to “what happened to the pen” as the lying eyes of technology say that computers are the way to go.
Another element of my poem is dealing with the title “Waltz for Technology”. Why do some writers prefer to write with just a pen and paper while others prefer to use the challenging computer? Computers have taken out the romance of a writer scribbling on a piece of parchment and have replaced the writer with a writer using a laptop computer.
Fiction:
Fiction as I have previously stated is perhaps my mid level piece. I already stated that I think in sentences and I tend to write down those thoughts just as they come to my mind. My theme or central idea is something that is often summed up in two words “ stuff happens” I took this to mean that stuff happens maybe not to you directly but to people surrounding you and there is little anyone can do about it. In the story there is a little girl named Susan who is run over by the wheel of a tractor. She was run over by Carol’s father in a freak accident. Susan did not deserve what happened but she did however disobey the safety rules by jumping from the trailer. Stuff happens and there is often no reason for things to occur, lots of people in the story were jumping from the trailer but no one else got hurt.
My first draft included a rather unnecessary introduction paragraph that was supposed to help introduce the setting and the characterizations but this did not happen. Instead it was cumbersome and unnecessary.
Here is the original first page:
N.B. - The setting is in a rural Eastern Missouri subdivision where the houses are at least an acre away from each other. So the idea of a community hay ride was something that sounded like a good idea at the time. The point of view is from the perspective of an eleven year old girl recalling what happened when she was six on Halloween. She is a gifted storyteller who plans on being a writer when she grows up. The story is based loosely on a true story.
Her name was Susan; she was in my 1st grade class and lived down the street from me. I don't remember much about her, just what happened to her about five years ago on Halloween. After the accident she wouldn't talk to me any more, as if it was my fault somehow for what happened.
It was one of the prettiest autumn days we had had in a long time. The sky was a beautiful robin's egg blue and there were no clouds in the sky. The image looked like something out of a clothing catalogue with pumpkins proudly displayed on the front porches and the fiery red maple trees waving in the wind. There, sitting in the long driveway was a large tractor and trailer set up, it was an adventure just waiting to happen! Places to climb on, a steering wheel to twirl, and peddles to push (of course with the tractor not running) it was a wonderland…
Details such as “She is a gifted storyteller who plans on being a writer when she grows up” are not needed for this story. It was my first thought that these details were needed to develop the character of Carol more so, but I soon realized that it is best to leave those details up to the reader, and not have an introduction.
Drama:
Drama allowed me to do what the fiction and the poetry really did not allow me to do. It allowed me to create dialogue with the focus on what was being said and not so much as to the action. At first I thought that this would be challenging because we could only use students in our classroom and not change the setting as well. (This really was not that hard now that I think about it in retrospect.)
So I really thought about something that would be so outrageous as to be original. What would be better than having one student be an alien or android? This ridiculous idea plagued my thoughts for weeks before finally coming to terms with it. I wanted to write something “cheesy” and “unique” but I wanted to make a point as well. That point can be summed up in my theme sentence about not judging the actions of a person based on their appearance. I thought about having the character be portrayed as a non Christian but then I did not want to be too preachy and wanted to have some fun with this.
My concept sentence was a summary of the actions to take place. A student is drawing something on his desk and is mistaken for being a creature from outer space. The character of “Kelly” was a paranoid version of me, someone who has seen too many episodes of Space Theater and believes it to be true. “Dawn” is more realistic but even she has doubts about the actions of “Travis” the “alien”.
The original version does not have the line “I’m going over there!” The revision has the line in it. There are also some mechanical things such as bolding the names of the people and I chose not to include a list of characters to make it a surprise as to who would be coming out next. Here is the original version:
Spaced Out Theater
Concept sentence: Students are lead by their paranoia to think up wild stories about a strange classmate.
Theme: Appearances are never truthful. One can not always tell just what someone is thinking based on their appearance.
Scene: Class ends and the students are slowly packing their bags. One student, sitting by himself is apparently drawing something on the desk with his pencil.
Dawn: Psst…Hey Kelly!
Kelly: What? I am missing my favorite show, Space Theater it starts in ten minutes!!
Dawn: What’s Travis doing over there? Class is over, yet he’s still sitting there. There’s a rumor around school that he’s …well not human!
Kelly: Great! Another alien wannabe…
Dawn: Yeah but he seems different somehow…Like unearthly strange.
(Kelly grabs her bag
and walks over to him and boldly taps his shoulder)
Travis: Can I help you, Kelly?
Kelly: Ummm...are you ok?
(Travis blinks a bit before answering.)
Travis: Affirmative.