My Final Reflection

1.    List/discuss several of the different pieces of writing you've done this quarter, including posts, comments, creative pieces, journals, in-class writings, and things you've written on your own.

1.    When I think of different pieces of writing that I have done in the past quarter, the first piece that my mind jumped to was my scary-story writing we did around Halloween. My story is called “The Secrets of a Psychopath.” It is inspired from a picture of a man and a woman standing in front of a door with a body hanging on the wall in the background. I was proud of this piece of writing because I think it wrote itself. I loved unraveling the story and it was almost as though I was reading it and not writing it. I could picture everything happening in my head, and it was just putting it down on paper. This piece made me excited to show people, and I probably got a lot of views by telling people to go read this particular post.

2.    Another activity I loved doing (and maybe went overboard on) was our entry in our journal about giving physical characteristics to non-physical things such as love or depression. It included giving what the characteristic looks, feels, smells, sounds, and tastes like. I did a good many of these, and even recently I have considered writing some more. This is probably my favorite short activity, and I will probably write more in the future because it is therapeutic to write about what heartbreak or childhood is like.

3.    A nice creative piece we did in class recently included making a poem out of words from another. I really enjoyed this because it was therapeutic to get it out of my system. I had gone into that class-period with a lot on my mind, and after writing this piece I feel like I got a lot of it out of my system and it gave me perspective on my own feelings. In other words, it gave me a chance to observe and figure out how I could make myself feel better. We have done many fun activities in class before, but this one really just came in at the perfect time.

2.     Name/discuss a couple of pieces you’ve read this quarter, including other classmates’ work and/or reading you’ve done in or out of class.

1.    In class we read different poems and songs to make our own pieces of writing, and I enjoyed making my own works using similar words as other authors. It really made me think about the different mindset that everyone has and how people’s minds go different ways when they approach the same words.

2.    I read a piece of writing by Trevor Cobb, called “Yellow Submarine.” I enjoyed reading this because it was clever, and we were talking about it for days. I remember texting Trevor later that night after we had written our scary stories, and even he was freaked out and could not sleep because of it. When I read it, I remember thinking about how it could really happen. And it’s the stories that can happen that get to you the most. Even now I think about being trapped in a submarine, and it is a scary thought—to be trapped in a place that nobody would ever think to look for you. This story stuck with me, and is probably one of my favorite writings by any of my classmates.

3.  Write about setting up your blog and what you have gotten from that experience. How did you come up with the name for your blog? Who do you think read it or who would you want to read it? Will you continue to use it on your own in the future? What kinds of things will you post?

                        Setting up my blog was a fun experience. From having a blog, I have gotten a unique way to share my writing with the class as a whole. It allowed me to get comments from other people, and it made it easy to share my writing with friends and family wherever I was because I could always just pull my phone out and show it to them. It was a great way to share things with the world, and it made me want to try harder—even if I knew that there really weren’t outsiders reading it. I came up with the name of my blog by using alliteration, and it just sounded catchy. Trevor followed in my footsteps when he did Trevor’s Terrific Tale (www.TrevorsTerrificTale.blogspot.com, or just click on the cat with the pizza on the left sidebar.), and after that it just seemed like an easy and fun way to come up with a name. My family and friends read it, especially when I wrote something I was proud of and would tell them to look up. My mom would get on and read things sometimes, and my friends would look up specific posts if I told them about it. That was my targeted audience, so it worked out nicely. I think I will continue to post on my blog every once and a while. I will probably post pictures I draw and maybe poems that I write if I get back into doing things like that. If I get inspired by a picture, I may try to write about it again.

4. Write about journaling. What kinds of things are in your journal? Who would you want to read it? Will you continue to journal? What will you write about?

             I may still post things into my journal, at least until I fill up all of the pages. I think most of the entries will be old assignments we have done, but done differently. And I will probably try to do more magazine art. I have poems, collages, stories, and different kinds of art inside of my journal. I do not want anybody to read my entire journal, because some of the entries almost feel like they belong in a diary. Although most people would not know what inspired them or what they represent, it is scary to let anybody see it, just in case. I want to keep my journal forever. I want to be able to look back on it and maybe get inspired to do more creative writing.

5. Type an entry directly from your journal that you consider notable. It could be a paragraph or a page or so.

Depression…

…looks like my journal pages, words filling every space on the page.

…feels like a lump in my throat, and a weight on my heart.

…smells like the ‘willow scented’ hairspray I used in 8^th grade.

…sounds like fast and silly music streaming through my headphones.

…tastes like salt after I cry “just one more time.”

6. Type or copy/paste a passage or section directly from one of your pieces of writing that you consider notable or your favorite that you’ve written. It could be a section or a page or so.

This is me and my brother Kylin,

learning how to play together before we could even walk;

becoming friends before we could even talk.

 

This is two life-long friends,

kept together by a friendship between two young women--

our moms.

 

This is two smiling babies,

without a single care in the world.

 

This is before the fighting, before the separation,

before the move. It is when life was simple. Without grades,

video-games, driver's licenses, heartbreak, hockey, debate, or even potty-training.

 

This is before life really started for the two of us,

before I was scared we would drift apart.

 

This is my one and only older brother,

maybe not by blood,

but by the time we have had together.

7. What creative writing do you plan to do in the future, if any? What do you get out of writing creatively? How does this differ from the other writing you do, in school and in life?

I plan to go back and maybe do an old assignment again, if I enjoyed it. An example would be writing a poem out of magazine letters. I really enjoyed doing pieces of writing stemming from other things. So I plan on doing that again.  When I write creatively, my writing comes more naturally and I tend to write things that I am proud of more often than I do when I write things for school or life (such as a college essay.) Writing creatively is much more therapeutic, and I usually feel better after getting things down on paper. I never knew what it could be like to write things that make me feel better until I learned all the different ways I could go about doing it that weren’t just poems.

8. Offer some final words of encouragement, appreciation, inspiration, etc. for your fellow writers you’ve worked with this quarter.

Trevor- I really enjoyed having this class with you and I think it might have been the perfect class to take together. I say this because I have always known what a great writer you are and I consider myself lucky to have been able to watch your thought process as you write and also to have inspired some of your pieces. (Cough cough, how about them airplanes?) You are my best friend, and please feel free to send me your creative pieces of writing any time. I think you will go far with your career in writing, and I am not just saying that because you’re my best friend. (Although, let’s be honest, I probably wouldn’t be telling you if we weren’t friends, because that might just be awkward.) Please come to Drury and make me more excited than I already am to go there.

Naomi- I am so glad I met you this semester, and I am going to miss you so much next semester and especially after this year when you go back to the Netherlands. It has been a pleasure creating so many memories with you, and I really hope we get to hang out outside of school before you leave! Your writing has always cheered me up, and you are definitely a very large reason as to why I loved Creative Writing so much.

Teyondra- I think I spelt that right! I loved making memories with you in Creative Writing, and I feel like I made another buddy to talk to after school. You are incredibly nice, and have made me laugh many times this year. You are a great writer, and I am always impressed by what you have done when you share it with the class. We should get together sometime just to hang out. You were so great to have in class, and I am very very glad that you came in and sat at our table on your first day. :)

9. Leave a comment on 3 of your classmate’s blogs.

Okie dokie then.