Semester Reflection

I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I started this course. I had taken creative writing in high school and briefly delved into some poetry and short fiction. But its hard to remember any concrete skills I may have carried with me. I definitely told myself I would probably learn to sharpen and expand my repertoire of writing but didn't know where it would lead or how I would learn it.

I think one of the best aspects to the course were the class discussions. It never ceased to amaze me how much insight could be interpreted from our reading HW. Not to mention the diversity of insight was impressive too. A good example that comes to mind was the discussion on Smoke Signals. We talked about the various possible reasons as to why those two female Native Americans drove their car backwards. Were they nonconformists, trying to lower the mileage, trying to decrease their odds of heavy damage in an accident, or was there meaning to them doing this while the beautiful landscape in the back dwarfs them? Sure, maybe! How bought when the idea of truths and lies was brought up and how it played a role with almost every character. Were Thomas' stories symbolic lies to comfort others, what effect did Arnolds lie about Victor getting the winning basketball shot mean, and how did Rose telling Victor the truth give him peace of mind? Or perhaps did it trouble him more? See what I mean? We found several possibilities to the most seemingly unimportant scene (backwards driving) in the film and yet it could also be the most important.

Some of our best discussions were on The Laramie Project, Smalltown Lift/Porn/Letter from Williamsburg from "Stein," and The Rememberer/Before the Train and After from "NSF." I guess what I'm trying to convey with these examples is, there is so much varied meaning to practically every scene we watched and every sentence or cluster of words we read. And this helped me appreciate reading creative pieces that much more. As for my writing, I guess it gave me ideas to create flawed characters. Ones that are more complex which would give them enough depth to be analyzed in different ways. All the characters from Smoke Signals are imperfect and they share similarities at the same time.

I will likely attempt to work on the variety of my writing in the future. Like I want to do a horror piece, a fictional memoir, an epic, a spiritual fiction, and so much more. I want to mix genres and see if they flourish or react. But I want to greatly expand the styles too. I want to give someone two works and have them think they are from different writers. But actually they're mine! I want to master the abstract form I work with now and yet only use it sparingly or to its best potential. I want to improve my characters and make them feel like they are truly unique individuals.

In the end I will never be perfect in writing for, "what is perfection?" (I think that was our professors quote in one of the handouts) But I wait to see how far I go in my writing.