Karina Ramos 

Essay 1: Learning from Other’s Experiences

Blazing through the literary course of studies it’s almost inevitable that one would eventually attempt to dabble in the writing arts. Attempting to mimic the ‘greats’, a student might stumble through the attempts of producing a work of their own. However the writer would be nothing if it weren’t for the reader. 

For some time now I have been dabbling in writing. Through the course of several years I have taken some classes on the subject with hopes of improvising. This time around was no exception. This semester has been a great leering experience. I have taken away thing not only from my own work and the lectures but from the works of my peers as well.

I have experienced two kinds of creative writing classes. The first, like this one, is the kind where everyone participates. The works of all the students are read and the students, along with the instructor, comment and give advice on how to make the work better. The other was a class were the only one who read the work and had any say on its quality was the instructor.

The latter approach did not work for me. It seemed to me that with the instructor being the only one to read the work there was no real way of knowing weather it was good or not. If only one person said it sucked (maybe with nicer language) who could you really be sure it did. That particular person might just not have liked it. However, if ten or so people said the same, than you could be sure that you needed to work on it some more.

The way I really learned a lot was after that part. Everyone would comment on what they liked or what they felt needed work. They would give examples on how to make it better and disuse way the way it was done didn’t work.

As a literature student I’ve had to read a lot of book. We can said whether its good or bad through because, like with poetry, we have come to subconsiously expect a sertian number of things. “As writers, however, that vague sense is not enough.” We need to educate ourselves in what exactly makes a good story good.

We learned that, “There is nothing so dull as a step-by-step account of what has happened to you over the course of an average day,” There are better ways of making the plot mover forward than giving every single detale that havened to the characters. We were told to look to already published work to find examples of how this is done.

Through the work of the entire class I was able to learn more about writing. I faced my poetic fears and saw that writing poetry isn’t as scary as it seemed at first. It was a lot of fun interacting with other people who feel the same about writing as I do.

1 hour 10 minutes